Search Results for: youtube

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/what-is-a-movie-anyway).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 369 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be answering a fundamental question: what is a movie? We’ll also be talking about award season and other stuff. We’re going to do follow up from five years ago. It’s going to be a big show. And because we have a big show and fundamental questions we asked Mr. Fundamentals on himself. Franklin Leonard is here joining us. Franklin Leonard of the Black List fame. Franklin, welcome to the show.

**Franklin Leonard:** Thanks for having me. I’m going to add Mr. Fundamentals to my Twitter bio.

**John:** That would be nice. You were on quite early episodes of Scriptnotes. I remember the first time I think you were on was at the Austin Film Festival.

**Franklin:** Yeah.

**John:** You came on to announce the Black List website.

**Franklin:** Yeah. It was like six years ago. Because we launched the site October 15, 2012. And it’s funny because I don’t think of it as being early in the Scriptnotes’ lifespan, because I had been listening since the beginning. But, yeah, I guess it was.

**John:** You were there right at the start. So, thank you. Our first bit of follow up is actually from five years ago. And so we have a little clip that we’ll play. So, five years ago we talked about iPads in movie theaters. And so Disney was doing an experiment where like you bring your iPad in so you have a second screen experience in the movie theater. And Craig and I wondered if it was going to be a slippery slope. Let’s hear what Craig predicted.

[clip plays]

**John:** And so you will see more and more kids with glowing devices at movie theaters.

**Craig:** That is incorrect.

**John:** And it’s going to suck.

**Craig:** That is incorrect because this is especially designated as an iPad-allowed zone. I have no doubt that the Disney people will very smartly say to every kid as part of the app and part of the audience thing that this is a special thing and that this isn’t something you do in the theater normally. They’re very good about that sort of thing. And I also – and I also know that movie theaters and other audience patrons are very good about policing these things.

So, no, I don’t believe children will be bringing iPads anymore because of this into any other movie and the slippery slope argument is – it’s a fallacy.

**John:** I know slippery slope is a general fallacy and yet I will ask Stuart at this moment to flag in a follow up pile. Five years from now–

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** We will discuss whether there are more children trying to use electronic devices in movie theaters.

**Craig:** I am totally in support of that.

[clip ends]

**John:** So the Stuart I mentioned there is Stuart Friedel, the original Scriptnotes producer. Stuart Friedel sent himself some email to the future and so he emailed this past week to say it has now been five years. So, we are now living in the future. We can only imagine back then. Five years later are we seeing a preponderance of iPads in movie theaters?

**Franklin:** Thank god no. At least I haven’t.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I have not seen it either. So Craig was correct. I think every once and a while we need to point out when Craig is completely correct. The number of iPads in movie theaters has not increased. And I would say even the abuse of cell phones in movie theaters hasn’t increased at all. It’s still annoying when it happens, but–

**Franklin:** I mean, I’m aware when it happens enough because it doesn’t happen that often. And weirdly about this, thinking about it now, I actually think kids are better about this than adults are. Right. Kids just kind of want go in and take me away. Adults will be distracted every five minutes by the thought of our phone, at least I know I am. And a good movie will make me not think about that.

But, yeah, I don’t think it’s changed that much.

**Craig:** It just was never going to be a thing. Mostly I think because it’s just annoying. I mean, children in movie theaters are already annoying, to add more annoyance to their baseline annoyance level. And I just think in general Franklin is right. People are getting better about it. Everybody knows that it’s kind of the equivalent of, I don’t know, blowing your nose into your hand or something. It’s just bad etiquette and you shouldn’t do it. So, I’m glad that that hasn’t happened. It’s actually kind of amazing in a weird way that it hasn’t, I suppose, because phones in particular – forget tablets – but phones have infiltrated everywhere else. But the movie theater remains a little bit of a sacred space.

**John:** Yeah. We never let our daughter use the iPad at restaurants, but I do see so many families, which is like they prop up the iPad at a restaurant and it drives me crazy.

**Franklin:** 100%.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Franklin, you were just back from the Toronto Film Festival. I take it it was a good time. You enjoyed Toronto?

**Franklin:** Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of a high point of my year and certainly my cinematic year. Yeah, I mean, it’s a really strong year for movies, or at least it feels like it, at least that’s the big take away from me from the festival.

**John:** I was watching your coverage from it and a tweet that you sent out from the Black List had Kate Hagen who was on the show before and the hashtag “show us your room.” And so can we talk about #ShowUsYourRoom and sort of what that is?

**Franklin:** Absolutely. So, #ShowUsYourRoom actually did not start with us. It started with a writer who on the Black List last year, Amanda Idoko, who just wanted to share photos of writers’ rooms to sort of show the makeup of it. And I think some of that had to do with showing the diversity or lack of diversity in some rooms, but I think it also had to do, and the thing that I really took away from it was these are the people that are writing the things that you love. And especially in a space like Twitter if you’re a 16-year-old kid or a 21-year-old kid and you don’t think that you’re represented, like here’s a bunch of photos of people who look like you, who come from where you come from. If this is something that you ever gave a thought to wanting to do, it is possible. Not that it’s going to be easy, but like there is a path, which I always think is a good thing. So, should-out to Amanda. She does amazing writing and amazing sort of social media advocacy I suppose.

**John:** Yeah. Especially in this time where I think ten years ago we started to see showrunners who were social creatures, and so you knew who Joss Whedon was, you sort of knew J.J. Abrams. They were sort of the giant titans. And so you associated a show completely with that thing. But now in the age of social media you have accounts that are run by the writers’ room and you have the individual writers on that. And so there’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also an opportunity to really show what you look like and there really are people behind those words.

**Franklin:** Yeah. It’s one of my favorite things about social media actually. Like when you watch an episode of television that you really loved you can literally sort of say to the people who wrote like thank you. Which how often do we get that opportunity in everyday life, even if you work in Hollywood?

**John:** Craig, are you going to show us your room for the writing room on Chernobyl?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s me.

**Franklin:** Actually, you should do a photo of just you with the hashtag.

**Craig:** That would be a bit obscene. No, it’s just me. It’s the least diverse room ever because there’s only one person in it.

**Franklin:** But there’s so many Craig Mazin personalities.

**Craig:** No, I mean, they’re all of a sort really–

**Franklin:** They’re all actually the same. Fair enough.

**John:** I’ve really tamped down on the number of personalities he’s allowed to–

**Franklin:** Well just the intros alone.

**Craig:** The intros alone. That’s where I really get to spread my wings. John is a very controlling podcast daddy. But, I actually am helping out Rob McElhenney on a new show that he is doing that’s not yet been shot but it will be. And so I’ve actually had my first experience working a little bit in a writers’ room. Again, I’m not like a full time, I’m just sort of like a consulting – I don’t know what you call this. I really don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m helping my friend. That’s what it’s called for me. But I do spend time now every now and again with a room full of writers in a proper writers’ rooms. And it’s actually fascinating.

I’m learning now after whatever 24 years in this business how a writers’ room works. Finally. A quarter of a century later. And I really enjoy it. I think it’s really interesting. And I’ve met some really, really smart people in there. But I’ve also come to appreciate and understand that some people, they’re not big room talkers, they’re more writer-writers. But it’s OK. Not everybody needs to the room talker, you know.

I always thought that that was a big part of it, but I guess there’s enough flexibility for different styles. So that’s nice to see. There’s a social aspect to it that’s kind of awesome.

**John:** We had Alison McDonald and Ryan Knighton in here last week talking about being a staff writer and sort of the life inside the room. And Alison said that she will meet writers who are just genuinely great writers who just don’t fundamentally belong in a room. You have to be able to share and just play with others in a way that is just so different than other kinds of writing.

Craig, do you think if you could put the 25-year-old version of Craig Mazin out here in Los Angeles, do you think you would fit in well on a room or not?

**Craig:** Yeah. I generally do very well in those situations. I mean, again, I haven’t been in the writing room, the classic television writing room situation, until now. But over the years have been in many, many, many roundtable rooms where you spend a day with other writers trying to plus or punch up a movie and those are writing room situations. They’re not just sort of extended, you know.

And I’m very comfortable speaking in front of people, obviously. I like that. I enjoy that process. But what I wasn’t aware of and what I had no experience in was the way that things are sort of built and then unbuilt and rebuilt and unbuilt and rebuilt. And it’s fascinating. I really – I just enjoyed watching that part of it happen.

**John:** So before we get to our marquee topic there’s one bit of news for our premium subscribers, so these are the folks who pay us two bucks a month to get all of the back episodes and there are some bonus episodes we’ll be doing. But one special bonus thing we’re going to do for our premium subscribers is Craig and I are going to record an episode of the show that is answering any question, so not just writing questions, but it can be anything. So it’s a random advice episode on my take and Craig’s take on anything that is troubling you in the world that you have a question about.

But you have to be a premium subscriber to send in those questions. And so there will be a link in the show notes for where you send those questions. We’ll check your email address to make sure you really are a premium subscriber. But we’re be recording that in the next couple weeks, so if you would like to have us answer your question and to hear the answers to those questions this would be a good time to sign up for the premium version of the show at Scriptnotes.net.

**Craig:** And we have all of the answers, right?

**John:** We have all the answers. There’s literally not a question you could ask that we won’t have an opinion on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It might not be actually true.

**Craig:** I’m going to say it’s going to be true.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a true opinion is what it’s going to be.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** All right. It’s time for true opinions on movies. This was a thing that Franklin and I had sort of talked a little bit about online and so that’s why I wanted him to come in because it’s sort of a fundamental question and he’s Mr. Fundamental. What is a movie? And I think growing up I had a really clear sense of what a movie was and what a TV show was and what other things were. And it’s just gotten increasingly blurry. And you might say well does it really matter and from a writer’s perspective it really matter financially. It tremendously matters. And so I thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about classically what we think of as movies and sort of where we think we’re headed.

So I’ll start off saying growing up I thought a movie was a thing you bought a ticket for and you saw on a big screen. And after it had been on a big screen eventually it would show up on VHS, and then DVD, and sometimes it would show up on ABC. I got to watch the James Bond movies on ABC. But those were clearly movies that were just showing on TV.

And then there was a thing called a TV movie which really happened kind of during my lifetime where this sense of it’s a thing deliberately designed for network television. That was about two hours long but had a seven act structure or something. And that was a whole different beast.

But now we’re moving into a time where I don’t think those distinctions really apply. Franklin?

**Franklin:** No, I totally agree. I think we’re close enough in age that I think I have exactly the same conceptions. A movie is something that you went to the theater for, you bought a ticket, it ran somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours and 15 minutes. Yeah, a TV movie was about two hours with commercials, but it definitely had commercials. And then a TV show was something that, you know, came on every week. And it was a half hour or an hour long. And I guess the miniseries was, you know, but even miniseries though I think of that as something that came on four consecutive nights. Or, did they even do them over four weeks? I think it was just a sort of consecutive night special event.

**John:** It was like a block event. Because Roots I think was night after night. I don’t think it was a once a week.

**Franklin:** I think it was night after night. Absolutely. So, yeah, and those were very clear – it was very clearly delineated. Like the idea that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish them never even occurred to me until relatively recently, but it really does feel like all of that is collapsing. And I’ll be honest. I don’t know that I have a clear definition. It’s one of the reasons I emailed you was how are people talking about it right now. And so I sought the advice of people wiser than I.

**John:** Craig, you’re wiser than either of us. What is a movie?

**Craig:** A movie is a closed narrative story that takes place over a time span that is greater than one hour and can be viewed in one sitting, and is intended to be viewed in one sitting without interruption. That’s what a movie is. And we are no longer in a world where we can define it as that kind of story and also shown in a theater. That’s over. There are theatrical experiences of movies, no question, and there will continue to be so. But the notion that these feature films that would have otherwise been in theaters but instead are airing first on another channel, I mean, we used to call them direct-to-video movies, remember?

**John:** Oh yeah. For sure.

**Craig:** They were movies, right? There was no question that those were movies. It’s just that they were direct-to-video. Well, it’s the same thing. It’s just direct-to-streaming, or direct-to-screaming if it’s really bad. But it’s a movie. And we all know. We all know. There’s no question. I mean, maybe every now and then you’ll run into something and go, uh, what’s this exactly, but most of the time I’m pretty sure we know. And so the real question is what does it matter? And there it actually weirdly matters a lot because we have – well, the thing that most people think of is awards. But, the awards are ultimately irrelevant. They are trophies as Seinfeld calls them.

The bigger issue is we have these massive and massively complicated collective bargaining agreements where the directors, the actors, and the writers have negotiated all this stuff over decades, decades, with those studios. And those are based on a division of this is what happens in theatrical, this is what happens in television. And that’s all getting blown to hell and our deals no longer reflect the reality that’s going on.

So, we have a problem where we have one set of rules for instance to determine the credit of a movie that runs in a theater for seven days and then goes to streaming and one set of rules that covers almost a similar experience except it just doesn’t do the seven days in the theater. That makes no sense. So, we’re going to have to figure all of this out.

**John:** So, there still are equivalents of movies of the week or made for television movies, so there are movies that are made for Hallmark channel that really fit kind of what we grew up with in the sense of like it’s a very limited pattern budget. It’s designed – a certain kind of story that is still a made-for-TV movie. And those still exist. And so as we see the reports going out of the WGA we see folks who write for those movies and that is still a thing that exists. The challenge is like these movies that are debuting on Netflix, are those made-for-TV movies? Not in any meaningful sense. They’re exactly the same movies – in many cases they were developed at studios to be theatrical releases.

**Franklin:** 100%.

**John:** And instead they’re showing up there. So the Cloverfield Paradox is an example.

**Franklin:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** That was going to be a giant budget studio movie.

**Franklin:** Movie release.

**John:** The same with Bright. I was talking with Liz Hannah last night who is doing a movie that’s going to be a Netflix movie and in every way it’s like an indie movie, a pretty significant budget indie movie, but it is technically, maybe a movie-of-the-week. It’s really a made-for-TV movie. It’s really hard to say what these things are. And where it matters is we have formulas for what the residuals are going to look like, how credits are going to be determined, that are vastly different based on our expectations of where movies end up.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to me because really the distinction between what we think of as a TV movie, like Hallmark Channel is a great example, and what we’re thinking of in terms of Netflix and these other platforms, it’s a quality distinction or sort of our assumption about what the quality of those are.

**John:** Assumption of quality and budget. We assume that a TV movie is going to be budgeted under $2 million and it’s going to have like a 17-day pattern. There was a way those used to work.

**Franklin:** But even, I mean, there are platforms now that are making a large quantity of those, of movies that fall into exactly that category. And maybe even made on lower budgets and sort of with more constrained production realities, and so it really is – it’s a fiction of our brain on some level this distinction. And I’m, A, glad that I don’t have to be the one to resolve it, though I mean my general attitude is tie goes to the writers. I mean, again, at the end of the day you’re creating minimum an hour and a half to two and a half hours of content. Where it screens is a separate question from what contribution you made to it and you should be compensated fairly for the contribution to the thing and where it chooses to be distributed is a different question that other people have to deal with.

**John:** So we look at this from a writing point of view because we’re so egocentric with writers, but of course it also matters for directors because directors have different deals based on where it’s going, actors have different deals. So it’s a more systemic thing. So, the Writers Guild could come and say – and Craig maybe you could help me out with your answer where we’d actually say this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig’s basic definition of this is a piece of entertainment that is between and one and three hours or something.

**Franklin:** Seems right.

**John:** That it’s designed as one piece and not a serialized piece of entertainment, that I guess is what the boundaries of what we’re going to call a movie is. So we can say like anything that’s like that has to be treated by certain rules. That still is not going to fundamentally change the nature of the industry. Netflix is an example. Because a movie that debuts on Netflix is only on Netflix there are no residuals. It’s not going to go to another place where you would earn residuals. So it’s not going to go on home video. You’re not going to get those rentals. So you’re going to get – they’ll buy you out of your hopeful residuals. And it’s just a flat fee based on how much they expect it to do. It doesn’t actually correlate to how many times the project is viewed.

**Franklin:** Right.

**John:** And that’s not just a writer’s thing. That’s a director’s thing. That’s an actor’s thing. That’s an everything.

**Franklin:** Yeah. And I think the other thing that’s interesting is, I mean, there’s indications that Netflix is going to make a move with some of their movies and put them in theaters. And how does that affect those deals? Do they just sort of fall under the sort of original deal for theatrical distribution and then Netflix is the post-theatrical distribution window? Again, lots of open questions. I don’t know what the answer is. But, again, my fundamental thing is the people who are making the thing need to be compensated fairly for it. Period. Full stop.

**John:** Craig, what do we do?

**Craig:** We may come to a day where we have to, all of us, ban together and fight Netflix. Wouldn’t be shocking to me. Depending on how things proceed. And we could also do the same with Apple if need be. We could do the same with Amazon. And we could do the same perhaps with Disney. So that’s the one that’s over the horizon but it’s coming fast is Disney’s direct competition for Netflix.

You’re right to say that at least in the short term, assuming that for the sake of argument we did change things so that movies are movies, and we take the word “theatrical” out of it and we just say, look, a movie is a movie. We all know what it is. That’s a movie. That’s not a movie. The residual thing is the residual thing and it would have to be worked out, you know, but credits would change. The way that we determine credits would change. And I think frankly putting the pressure on movies to pay residuals. We don’t have to define residuals the way we define it. You know, we can define it in all sorts of ways.

I mean, right now we all struggle. I think the entire business, frankly, the entire non-Netflix business, is struggling with the fact that Netflix is so untransparent. And it may be frankly that they are not making any money on these things. Who even knows? We don’t know. No one knows.

**John:** So let’s talk about classically what residuals are so we’re all talking about the same thing. So, a movie is released theatrically and then every other time it is released on home video or if it shows up on ABC TV or premium cable there is a fee that is paid to writers, to actors, to directors, and that ends up being very significant money. So, that could be millions of dollars of residuals. A big family movie can generate a tremendous amount of residuals.

And the equivalent Netflix movie would not make those residuals. So, with Netflix it’s even a question of are they making money? We don’t know anything about sort of how many times those movies are being watched. But I think what we’re trying to get at in residuals is that a tremendously successful movie that’s watched a lot should generate additional revenue for the creator.

**Franklin:** You would think so.

**Craig:** So, it’s important for people to understand why we even have residuals. The whole purpose was to emulate what would normally be a royalty system. If we maintained our copyright then reuse would have some sort of fee. Every time a song plays on the radio there is some reuse fee that is generated and siphoned back through ASCAP or BMI and then some portion goes to the artist. And every time a copy of a book is sold the writer receives a royalty.

Similarly, our system was based on reuse where they said, OK, look, for the movie once we put it in theaters that’s what we call primary exhibition. That’s not reuse. That’s use. And then everything after that with the exception weirdly of airplanes is reuse. And then you get paid your royalty.

Well, for Netflix I think what you end up looking at is something similar to what they have done on television where it’s a window. There is a window that we define as primary exhibition. Once you start showing something you have two or three or four weeks or whatever the normal theatrical release life would be to say that’s primary exhibition. And then after that it’s reuse. And that means every freaking time you show it some nickel goes in a box. And they may, you know, kick and scream about that. What they’ve been doing is essentially saying, look, this is roughly what you would have gotten under a system like that. We’ll just pay that to you now.

And a lot of people are taking that deal. My general philosophy in life is when somebody offers you a check you should be immediately suspicious. Why? Why are you offering me this money? Why are you telling me that this is just as good as something? If it’s just as good then do it the other way.

**John:** Sometimes Netflix they’re paying you your full rate and so like it’s the sense of like, well, you could either make this or not make this. So you’re going to take the deal to make this. But, you know, you don’t know what the back end is going to look like.

**Franklin:** Can I ask what might be a dumb question? Specifically how do they handle residuals for writers let’s say on pay cable, like HBO or Showtime?

**Craig:** There’s upset fees. It’s a similar thing. There’s a way for them to essentially buy out your residuals. That’s built into these deals. And it’s part of our agreement. And I hate it. But–

**Franklin:** Because here’s why I ask. If a bunch of people buy tickets to the movies you deserve a piece of that. If they watch it on television, they’re making greater ad revenue because more people are watching it, you deserve a piece of that. If you buy a VHS or a DVD or streaming, you deserve a piece of that.

Netflix’s model, like they’re not necessarily getting more money because more people are watching it. But they may be getting more money because they get more subscribers. Someone may stick around on the platform longer because they know your movie is coming or they know that there is the possibility of a movie like yours coming. And that feels like, A, a very difficult thing to sort of determine the value of something algorithmically in that system unless they were being hyper-transparent and they’ve made clear they have no interest in being – and in fairness, they don’t really have an interest in being, and not just for that reason alone, but it presents problems that are, I mean, it could be darn difficult.

**John:** So let’s figure out sort of why it’s different than what’s happening right now with studios. Is that when a studio ships a DVD that’s a physical thing that ships. When a studio makes a deal with somebody for this movie to show up on this pay cable place that is a deal. There’s a paper trail for all of this. When you are both the creator of a thing and the distributor of a thing–

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a closed loop and it’s self-dealing. And Franklin is right. There are many, many metrics that they use in theory to define success. And we don’t know what they are. And nor do I care. Because they can’t really monetize those specifically. At some point you simply have to create some kind of artificial structure to mimic what would normally happen in a royalty situation.

And in a pure royalty situation if Netflix didn’t have work-for-hire they would come to me and say we want you to write a movie. And I would say, great, I’m going to write this. It’s my movie. I own the copyright. I then will sign a licensing agreement with you. This licensing agreement allows you exclusive rights to air this and it’s in perpetuity. And this is the fee that you pay for that. And also this is the royalty rate for every single time someone watches. Period. The end. There’s no other way to do it.

Or you do time. Right? But there has to be some kind of system in which you are rewarded for the only thing you care about as an artist which is how many people saw it.

**John:** So, theoretically, we’re going to talk about Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma later on. I know it’s your One Cool Thing. Alfonso Cuarón makes this movie for Netflix. So, Alfonso Cuarón has some deal that’s going to be a little different than what you and I would have, but ultimately we need to have collective decisions for sort of like what the overall deal is going to be. And that’s the WGA. That’s SAG. That’s DGA figuring that out.

**Franklin:** Yeah. I mean, look, I don’t claim to have the answers and I think that really the only way to come to any answers that anyone could realistically be happy with is if there was greater transparency around how many people were watching it. How much time they were spending on the platform? But again for obvious reasons Netflix is going to be loath to make that information public. Maybe there could be some sort of private information sharing between the guilds and them as an organization. But again I don’t think Netflix is going to be the only sort of platform that’s going to have to struggle with these issues. Like Craig already said, Disney is coming in hot.

**John:** So I was talking yesterday with a friend, a former Scriptnotes guest, who is writing a movie for Fox right now. And so I asked him what’s going to happen, where is your movie going to end up showing up. And is it going to be at Fox? Is it going to be on Disney? Is it going to be Disney streaming? And he has no idea. So to be in the middle of production and not knowing where your movie is going to end up is just a crazy situation to be in. And it’s not just an esoteric like you know oh what little label is going to be at the front of the movie. I don’t know what his deal is like, but theoretically if it debuts on Disney’s streaming will he get residuals in a normal sense?

**Franklin:** I think that’s another reason why these issues sort of need to be resolved in a macro sense, because I actually think we’re headed in a direction where that will become the norm for a lot of folks, like where you’re making a movie and the results of the film, like the final product determines where it is distributed. And that is just sort of – it’s untenable the idea that people would sort of go into making a movie without knowing what the business structure of the thing is.

**John:** Yeah. So, any last thoughts on movies? So we defined movies as being between one and three hours long. They’re a closed story. Yes, you can have Marvel cinematic universe movies, but they’re essentially a closed narrative that’s not supposed to have a second installment right after them. And it doesn’t matter where it shows up.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, I’ll add one additional wrinkle to it and it’s sort of on the eve of the coming Game of Thrones final season. But I actually think for example HBO is leaving money on the table by not putting those in theaters.

**John:** Agreed.

**Franklin:** And they’re coming in at like, what, 1:15, 1:20 each episode? I would go to a theater every Sunday night to watch each episode of the final season of Game of Thrones. And they’re not a closed narrative necessarily but there are certainly episodes that you could beside most movies and feel just as sort of fulfilled with a closed narrative when you leave the theater. So, all of these things are collapsing and expanding simultaneously and I think it’s all the more reason why these big questions about how people are going to be compensated for making them need to be resolved sooner rather than later.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** I think they have a little bit of a limitation, I think all these places do, in that they’re charging people money to watch their product on a television screen. If they then start to release them in theaters for money they’re kind of double-charging. Or, yeah, they’re double-charging. And that’s a problem. And then you get into like well OK if you subscribe then you can go for free. Then what’s the point at that point, right?

So, they are a little bit jammed up. The only way I think they can get away with these things is if they do like for instance a special movie event. But even then I think you start to risk danger of people wondering well what am I paying for exactly, what am I getting. Because my understanding of HBO and Netflix and Amazon and Apple is I pay you a subscription I get to see everything you do without an additional nickel spent.

**Franklin:** Oh no, 100%. But I actually think they could double charge and people would willingly double pay. Like I pay for HBO right now. I would continue to pay HBO, but I would take on an additional cost in order to see the final season of Game of Thrones in a theater. I think the same thing is true with a lot of these Netflix movies that’ll be in theaters. I’m going to continue to pay for Netflix, but will I pay to go see Roma again in a theater? I absolutely will.

**John:** So you brought up Roma. Roma is going to be one of the movies we will look forward to this award season. But I have to confess I am not looking forward to award season.

**Franklin:** Me neither.

**John:** I’m just done with award season. And so this doesn’t have anything to do with the popular Oscar. I actually enjoy watching the Oscars. I don’t think they’re too long. I’m happy to watch them.

**Franklin:** Same.

**John:** What’s way too long is the four months leading up to the Oscars, or five months, or however long it is.

**Franklin:** It’s basically six months of the year at this point.

**John:** It’s such an industry.

**Franklin:** Yeah. Look, the award season unofficially starts now with the sort of Telluride/Venice/Toronto thing which is end of August/early September and runs until the Oscars which are the end of February. I mean, the year is basically summer movies, which creeps earlier and earlier every year, and Oscar season, which is now until basically late February.

**John:** So, Craig, what should we do about award season? Or should we just ignore it? Should I learn to pretend it’s not there?

**Craig:** I think it’s over. It’s too late. Toothpaste is out of the tube. Like so many things in our world, all of this has become commoditized and turned into an orgy of list-making, odds-making, betting, gossiping, argument-causing nonsense. We can’t help it. It’s a reality show now. And it’s stupid because it has absolutely nothing to do with any of what needed to happen to make those movies exist. Quite the opposite in fact. People had to all come together and collaborate on things and love each other to make these movies exist. And then it becomes this stupid rat race of nonsense.

I don’t know what there is to do about it because basically Harvey Weinstein weaponized the process in the ‘90s and it’s just gotten worse since then. And unless you – you can’t change the constitution and outlaw 90% of what publicity people do. This is how it’s going to go for a while because people are chasing money, although I have a weird feeling that it’s not even about that money. I think it’s just about the pointless need to be at the front of a line. It’s a very Los Angeles thing.

You know, I think it was Bill Maher who once said if you put a velvet rope in front of a toxic waste dump in Los Angeles people would start lining up. And that’s kind of what I think award season has become. It’s just this weird pointless craving, like getting the best table in a restaurant, which has always confused me because I don’t know how to tell the difference between tables in a restaurant. I’ve never known that. So, that’s, you know, I think it’s too late. It’s over. It’s gone. We lose.

**Franklin:** The one thing that I will say in defense of award season, and it’s not even really in defense of award season so much as being maybe an errant consequence of award season is that they do serve as marketing for movies that might not otherwise get it. And I’ll use a movie like Moonlight as an example. And certainly it’s a rare case. But without the award season, without the Oscar race, I think a movie like – I think a lot of people don’t see a movie like Moonlight. I think a lot of people went to see it because people were talking about it as a contender for Best Picture.

I think that’s probably true of Roma for example. I think it could end up being true for If Beale Street Could Talk, although more people were anticipating Beale Street because of the Oscar success of Moonlight and Barry in particular. So I agree with you Craig in the main about the content of award season and I wish there was some other way that you could frame a showcase of the best of cinema, or sort of the things that people think of as the best of cinema that didn’t have all of the sort of toxic realities that are really just a sort of boiled down version of everything that can be terrible about Los Angeles and Hollywood in particular.

**John:** Listeners, if you have suggestions for how we could get rid of award season, or get through award season in a more sane way you can write in. But let’s make some predictions for Megan to send five years into the future. Five years in the future what’s going to become of award season and what’s going to become of movies?

**Craig:** Oh, well I’ll take the lead on this. Nothing will change. In five years movies will pretty much be as movies are. There will be more original movies running on our screens at home through the Disney service and Netflix and so on. But there will still be huge theatrical releases coming out every single week. There will be a big summer box office battle issue of Entertainment Weekly and so on and so forth. And when it comes to awards nothing is going to change at all.

**John:** But will anything have changed in terms of getting writers and other people fairly compensated for movies that are not released theatrically?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Will we figure any of that stuff out?

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** We will have essentially the same conversation five years from now you predict?

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Yep. Franklin what’s your thinking? Five years in the future.

**Franklin:** It’s really hard for me to argue against that honestly. Yeah, look, the theatrical business will still exist in five years. I think people will be going to see movies of all sorts. There will continue to be a giant summer blockbuster season and probably a six month award season. As far as how people are compensated, I certainly hope there’s a change, but you guys have much deeper knowledge on the realities of that than I do so I happily defer to your judgment.

**John:** A thing we found out as we surveyed screenwriters for the WGA is that 80% of screenwriters are also TV writers. Either they’re currently working in TV or they’re planning to work in TV. As these things get more and more combined we’re going to have to figure out ways to do what Craig describes. Basically after a certain window every new time it’s watched a nickel goes into the jar. Because it shouldn’t really kind of matter ultimately whether it was a 90-minute thing or a 30-minute thing. Just you pay that person.

**Franklin:** I totally agree.

**John:** There will be more things like Chernobyl, like Craig’s.

**Franklin:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**Franklin:** And more limited series specifically authored by Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** There will be at least one more. There will be at least one more of those.

**Franklin:** That’s my big call for 2023.

**Craig:** I do agree. I think that that is a format that is expanding and expanding rapidly. It’s a tricky one because I feel like a lot of these – here’s another award season bunch of baloney. The whole like limited series, not really limited. Like The Crown was a limited series its first season. No it wasn’t. And so a lot of these limited series become these sort of back door seasons into a multi-season show.

But I do think that that is going to – what’s happening is the television business seems to be shifting away from just pure ratings and into more of a kind of targeted depth. So they’re like, look, we don’t need to be the Super Bowl. We don’t care if 80 million people watch. What we want is these five million people to all watch.

**Franklin:** Right.

**Craig:** And if we can get those five million. And the only way to get those five million people is to show them this. So, it doesn’t matter that most people don’t see it. These five million did. And that’s going to keep them paying for all the stuff, right? Because they’re not going to watch any of the rest of this junk. They’re just going to watch this.

So, you start to get into the – you know, there’s a great article by Malcolm Gladwell many, many years ago about how Prego figured out for the first time that if you sold five different kinds of Prego you would make so much more money than if you just sold one kind of Prego. So, it’s the Prego-ization of television. That’s what’s happening. And I think that is going to drive actually a lot of wonderful new content. I think there’s going to be a lot of limited series. There’s going to be more documentaries. There’s going to be all sorts of smart stuff.

But for movies and for award stuff, I just think as the guy says in Fall Out, “War. War never changes.”

**John:** It has come time for our One Cool Things. Craig, why don’t you take it away?

**Craig:** OK, well, sometimes I have like a prospective One New Cool Thing, which I don’t know if it’s going to be cool or not. You know what? In fact, I’m going to hold that one off because I’m trying it. So I’ll be able to come back in a week or two and tell you if it was cool. This thing is cool right now. You know I’m a huge fan of these Rusty Lake games. We’ve talked about the Rusty Lake games before. They’re amazing.

So Rusty Lake has a new one out called Paradox. For the first time they’ve incorporated video of actual people which makes their normal totally screwed up experience even more totally screwed up. I love these games. And it’s not so much about the gameplay, although I do like that. It’s their aesthetic and their weird backstory mythology which barely makes sense and yet you can tell the people doing it it makes sense to them. And their weird fetishization of certain strange objects like shrimp. They just keep showing up.

It’s so weird. It’s so weird. And so it’s just very much like if David Lynch kind of created a point and click adventure in a series that’s been going on now for years. So, Rusty Lake Paradox. Totally worth the – I guess there are two chapters in this one, so maybe the total amount is $4. Come on.

**John:** Yeah. Play it.

**Franklin:** I’m sold based on that description.

**John:** Yeah. Franklin, I think we’ve already spoiled it for you. But your One Cool Thing is?

**Franklin:** My One Cool Thing is Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma. And it’s funny I was nervous about mentioning it because I didn’t know if the One Cool Thing could be a movie. But I saw it at Toronto and it just hasn’t left me. I find myself in traffic thinking about its images, thinking about what it was trying to say about the world. And it’s just an extraordinary film. And the one thing that I will say is that you should see it in a theater. It rewards the theatrical experience. The sound design is just exceptional. The performance by the lead actress, Yalitza Aparicio – speaking of award season. But like I want her to get the notice that an actress of a different background would receive for a performance of this caliber. It is just remarkable.

So, yeah, everyone should see that movie. Go see it in a theater. It is very much unlike anything that you’ve ever seen. Bring tissues.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is, well, so every week on the show I do a One Cool Thing but I generally have like many cool things I would like to share. And so on Twitter sometimes I will link to them or sometimes I’ll put them on the blog. But I wanted sort of a repository of all the things that I kind of find interesting. So, I started a weekly newsletter just called Inneresting, the way that Aline makes fun of me for saying interesting.

And so it’s just a once a week, probably on Wednesdays, maybe on Thursdays, maybe not every week, but it’s a little short email of just like here’s a list of things that I found kind of cool that you might find cool, too. So if that sounds at all appealing there’s a link in the show notes. It just shows up in your inbox and it’s a way to sort of see what I found cool this past week.

**Franklin:** That does sound appealing. And I will be subscribing.

**John:** Very nice. That is our show for this week. As always, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is also by Matthew Chilelli. 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 or follow up.

If you want to reach us on Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Franklin you are?

**Franklin:** @franklinleonard.

**John:** Makes it very simple. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there leave us a review. That helps other people find the show. Transcripts go up on johnaugust.com about a week after the episode airs. But you’ll find the show notes up just with this episode. So the stuff we talked about you can see there.

And all the back episodes are at Scriptnotes.net. If you subscribe now you can send in a question for me and Craig to answer on our random advice episode that will be coming up soon.

Franklin Leonard, thank you so much for coming in.

**Franklin:** Thank you so much for having me. I have always enjoyed it and consider it a great honor.

**Craig:** Thanks, Franklin.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, Episode 108: Are two screens better than one?](http://johnaugust.com/2013/are-two-screens-better-than-one) addresses the fear of iPads in theaters
* Become a [premium subscriber](https://my.libsyn.com/get/scriptnotes) in time for our bonus Q&A episode. Submit your questions [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15w0Xhe3505AM4KsFRWTHCdB77814KDYXJSbHZDRz6bM/viewform?edit_requested=true).
* [Show Us Your Room](https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/show-us-your-room-social-media-initiative-1202939127/) and the [Instagram hashtag](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/showusyourroom/?hl=en)
* Rusty Lake’s new game, [Paradox](https://store.steampowered.com/app/909090/Paradox_A_Rusty_Lake_Film/), with video of actual people
* [Roma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKVYRtE-kXI), written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón
* [Inneresting](http://johnaugust.com/2018/inneresting), a new John August newsletter. You can [subscribe here](https://johnaugust.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2b0232538adf13e5b3e55b12f&id=aeb429a997).
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [Franklin Leonard](https://twitter.com/franklinleonard) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed)).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_369.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is [sings] Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 366 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to be looking at how you end things, both in a narrative and in life. Specifically, what happens to your work after you die?

Hey, Craig, in general what happens after you die?

Craig: Nothing. So I asked my dad this question when I was very young and he gave me what I still consider to be the very best answer anyone has ever come up.

John: All right.

Craig: I said what happens after you die and he said, “It’s just like it was before you were born.” And that is the correct answer.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Nothing. You’re done.

John: Yep. You do live in people’s memories until they die.

Craig: Yeah. That’s meaningless. This is a meaningless ride. It’s a great ride. I love this ride so much. I’m so sad that it will end, but it doesn’t mean anything. Like no one goes on a roller coaster ride and says, “Now, when this ride is over do we live forever in a magical place in the sky?” No. No, no, it’s over. But you enjoyed it. Simple as that.

John: So today we will talk about what happens to your work after you die and the decisions you might want to make about your work for after you are no longer on this mortal coil. But first we have some news and some follow up.

So you and I are both on a different podcast. Sometimes we cheat on each other on other podcasts, but this time we went in together. We were sort of swingers. And we went on a different podcast. We went on Jordan, Jesse, Go! which came out last week. It was a fun time. Did you have a good time?

Craig: I did have a good time. It’s so funny because as you know – as everyone knows – I don’t listen to podcasts. So I’m never quite sure what to expect with any particular podcast and I always just assume that it’s going to be exactly like the one we do and it never is. First of all, everyone has much better equipment than we do. But I feel like we sound pretty good.

John: I think we sound pretty good, too. And also they had a good soundproof room, but they were banging their microphones constantly. Did that drive you a little nuts?

Craig: No, I didn’t mind that so much. I was just – mostly – our podcast is a little bit like us. You know, you and I, even though we seem very different, I don’t actually think we are that different. I think we’re both fairly rigid in our ways. And they were much more loosey-goosey improvisational fun. Like you got the feeling that if they wanted they could just spend an hour talking about anything at all and we’re not like that. We like routine. We’re set in our ways.

John: We have an outline. We have a structure. We get back to it. Theirs is just basically pancakes and sex toys. But it was a great conversation about pancakes and sex toys and mountain cabins.

Craig: Yeah. It was nice to take a little vacation from a structured podcast and actually just go bananas. It’s the morning zoo of podcasts. But in a good way. I like morning zoos. I’ve always liked them. I like a nice drive time banter.

John: Always good. But let’s get back to our structure. Dean wrote in to say, “You mentioned on the podcast that, ‘It would probably be quicker for you to write a half-hour than to pull together a pitch for it.’” I’m not sure which one of us said that, but I believe someone said that.

He continues, “I can guess as to how that might be the case, but explicitly what takes time in prepping a pitch? How much time would you spend on a pitch versus writing up a half hour of television comedy?”

So, you and I don’t write half hour comedies, but the overall idea that sometimes it’s just quicker to write it does feel kind of true. When I talk to people who write half hours, it’s really fast. They might spend a lot of time in the room figuring all the beats out–

Craig: Well, there you go.

John: But then when you actually write it it’s quick. Here’s what it was. I bet it was when I had Mindy Kaling on the show and she was talking about pitching a show versus writing a show. And sometimes you can just actually write the show more quickly than you can sort of pull together the full pitch.”

Craig: Look, the thing is if you put a stop watch to it, I doubt that that’s true. However, there is something called ease which is different than speed. Sometimes it’s easier to write the half hour, or write even an entire feature film than it is to pitch it. Because the problem — pitching requires you to know everything ahead of time so you already have to kind of write the movie anyway in your head, or a lot of it, or a lot of the show in your head.

And then be able to, oh, trippingly convey it to somebody in a non-audio visual form and just you talking, right? There’s no show. And that can be very strenuous and very nerve-racking. And you are incredibly aware that it is entirely based on the feeling in the room and whether or not you forget something or trip up or if you use words that are slightly ambiguous because, I mean, remember a script is already an audio-visual work that has been reduced or compressed into text only. Now you’re going to take sort of oral relaying of a text-only version of a thing that’s eventually going to be audio-visual. So at that point you think to yourself, ooh, you know what, the other problem with a pitch is they view it as an act of faith to buy a pitch. Why don’t I just not even go through all that mess? Why don’t I just write the damn thing?

And certainly if you’ve gone through the work that’s required to create and deliver a pitch, you’ve done the work that’s required to write the 30 pages or the 110 pages. So, in those cases the math might work out in your favor to just write it.

John: When David Iserson and Susanna Fogel were on the program they talked about how they ended up specking The Spy Who Dumped Me because it just felt better to write the whole thing and be able to deliver the whole thing versus going in and trying to pitch that idea around town. Sometimes writing is just a process of discovery. So sometimes you really won’t know what the movie is, what the show is, until you’ve written those characters. And so that’s a good example of why you might just want to write the half hour to see what it feels like.

There have been definitely times where I’ve gone in for a pitch and I’ve written scenes that would be in that final movie just to get a sense of the character’s voices, to get a sense of like what is this actually going to feel like.

So, that’s not blanket advice. I won’t say that you should always plan on writing that half hour. And ultimately if you write that half hour and you’re trying to sell that show you’re going to have to be able to pitch it further than that. You’re going to have to be able to describe this is where the show goes, this is how it grows. They’re going to need to sit across sit across from you and understand that like you are a person who can deliver this thing. But maybe writing that 30 pages will help you understand what the show is you want to make.

Craig: The other thing to consider is that when you’re pitching you are essentially in salesman mode which means that they’re in arms-crossed suspicious mode. When you have a script, then there’s an object to discuss. Work has been done. And so it’s a little realer. You know? I mean, people get burned by pitches all the time. I mean to say the pitch buyers get burned by pitches all the time. And they are well aware that sometimes writers need money. And they’re pitching something, they’re pitching their butts off for money, but then the money is just as the writing that you’re going to do is speculative, the money giving is speculative. We don’t know what we’re going to get. And they have been burned. So when you have actual writing I think it just changes the tenor of the conversation anyway in a much better way.

It’s not to say that you shouldn’t or can’t pitch, because I have. It’s just that, I don’t know, the gun is in your hand I think when the writing is there. And the gun is in their hand when you’re dancing for your supper.

John: Yeah. So Dean’s question about how much work are you doing before you go into a pitch, it varies wildly. And so the project I’m writing right now was a pitch. And so I went and I sold the pitch and I got hired to do it. And Megan, our producer, saw me sort of working through developing the pitch. And I think she was probably surprised at sort of like how little I had actually done. How little I had actually put down on paper. But I had done sort of the internal mental work of what is the conversation about this movie and I was able to describe the feelings and sort of what the overall goals of things were. And so if I didn’t have all the plot points really figured out, that really wasn’t the crucial thing for going in to pitch this movie.

It was basically like let me give you this take. Let me show you what this world will feel like. And that is ultimately what they were hiring me for for this movie.

Craig: Well, I will say though that Megan shouldn’t draw too much of an object lesson from that because you are in a different position. Over time the more you do it the less concerned and wary people are. They know that you deliver time and time again. They know you are a responsible professional. It’s a bit like actors when they start out they have to audition. They show up, read the lines in a scene, walk away, hope. And then later on the next step is I’ll come in and I’ll have a general discussion with you but I’m not going to actually audition by reading lines. We can just discuss the character. And then the third step is offer-only. And writers kind of follow those things, too. And we adjust it slightly as do actors depending on the part.

There are plenty of actors who, like for instance if you want to hire Jason Statham to be in your action movie, that’s offer-only. We know Jason Statham can do action. There’s no need to have Jason Statham come in to discuss the character with you. He can do it.

If, however, Jason Statham wants to spread his wings a little bit and maybe, I don’t know, Spielberg is making a movie and there’s this fascinating dramatic part and he wants to play a war surgeon, he might have to come in and meet. He might even want to read for it. You never know. And similarly with us. If there’s something that’s kind of – like if you want to write a Star Wars movie, my guess is you got to have a pretty lengthy conversation about what it is you want to do, especially if it’s their movie. And it doesn’t matter who you are. But if somebody is calling you up, John, and saying, “Listen, we have this movie. It’s going to be kind of, well, it’s family but family plus. So sort of elevated family entertainment.” You’re going to say, great, offer-only.

I mean, I’ll have a conversation with you if you want, but basically the point is if we’re having the conversation that means you want to hire me because you know I do this.

John: Absolutely. And when you and I are brought in to do weekly work, those are essentially offers only. Basically it’s just like, “Hey, we need help on this thing.” And if we go in it’s very clear we can do this job in front of us. But you doing Chernobyl, that is like Jason Statham doing a dramedy. That is not something that everyone would necessarily know is in your wheelhouse, so you do need to be able to describe your vision for what this is more fully.

Craig: Right. And that’s exactly what I did. So I went in with Carolyn Strauss to HBO and sat with [Carrie-Anne Follis] who is the head of their limited series department. And I pitched. And I pitched and I pitched. And I pitched how the series would work, who the characters were, the stories that would happen inside of it. I tried to keep it, you know, somewhat compressed. And it wasn’t kind of an overly rehearsed thing.

What helped there, in television there are so many different ways to stop people from working as they go through. All right, you’re going to write a bible and then you’re going to write an episode. And then we don’t have to do anything after that. And, of course, also in that field, too, is an understanding of and you’re not getting paid what you get paid to write movies. So that all made it kind of easy, but even so there was no question that when I went in there my track record, none of it mattered. None of it. Nor should it have.

John: I mean, your track record in terms of being able to like actually deliver something, like that you’re not going to run off and just disappear into the woods. You would actually give them something, but was it something that they actually wanted? They wouldn’t know that until they’re sitting across from you and ultimately until they’re reading the words.

Craig: Yeah. I think if my track record accomplished anything it was simply that I could get that meeting. That at the drop of a hat I can probably sit down with somebody who runs any division of anything anywhere and say, listen, I have something I want to tell you. But they’re under no obligation to buy anything. All the burden of proof is on me. If somebody wants to make an R-rated comedy where two adults are doing crazy things on the road I don’t really think I need to audition. I’m not going to. So there you go. You’re just going to have to pay me to do that. I’m not going to sit down and dance for that. That’s kind of offer-only. That’s sort of the way it works.

The only thing I think that you or I can count on track record-wise is that we can at least – you like, what’s the job, like have you written horror, like a Leigh Whannell kind of movie?

John: Yeah. I’ve written one of those and I did have to sort of like pitch more fully sort of what my take was on that because it was very off the rank and normal track for me.

Craig: Then you there you go. And so the good news is you can get that meeting no matter what.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: But then you got to work for it. So, it all depends. And obviously when you’re just starting out everybody is dancing for everything. First of all, you’ve got to convince people to even meet with you. And then you got to do a full dance. It’s pretty exhausting, but that’s what youth is for.

John: That is youth. All right, now further follow up, so on last week’s episode it came up that Craig really dislikes ventriloquism. No, no, no, I think you actually hate ventriloquism. You don’t understand ventriloquism. You find no artistic value in ventriloquism.

Craig: None.

John: And I think this is actually a call for a whole new segment on the Scriptnotes podcast so this is being inaugurated right here.

Craig: Oh, new segment.

John: New segment. Change Craig’s Mind.

Craig: Ah.

John: Yeah. So Craig has very strong opinions, but one of the things I like so much about Craig is that he also believes that other people can change their opinions about things they are obviously wrong about, such as vaccines. Like vaccines are good.

Craig: Right.

John: So, this will be an experiment to see whether we can change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the artistic merits of ventriloquism. So, I welcome all your suggestions for things we can throw at Craig that will make him see that ventriloquism is a true art form. I’m going to start. I started by Googling. I started by Googling “best ventriloquist” and the first video that came up was by a performer named Nina Conti. It is I think terrific and Craig is watching it right now.

So I will describe for people, obviously there will be a link in the show notes, but here is a woman who brings a man up on stage. She affixes a mask to him that she can control the mouth of the mask. And she basically uses him as a ventriloquist dummy. He is helpless and has no control over what he says. Craig, what is your reaction to what Google has told us is best ventriloquist?

Craig: If this is the best ventriloquist ever I can think of no better defense for my position than ventriloquism is crap. Because she’s actually figured out a way to make ventriloquism even easier than it already essentially is. I mean, the hardest part it seems to me of being a ventriloquist is manipulating the multiple things on their stupid dummy. The stupid hands and that dumb face, the eyeballs and the mouth. What she’s done here is, and she seems like a very nice person, don’t get me wrong. A very nice Scottish lady. But what she’s done is she brings somebody out of the audience and puts a little mask on that covers his nose and mouth with her hideous dummy nose/mouth. And then she has that connected to a little thing in her hand that makes the mouth go up and down. That’s it. Now she’s got the hardest part down to just pushing a button repeatedly while she does the silly talking like this.

And he just stands there while people laugh at him. This is terrible. I think it is terrible. I understand why it’s vaguely funny. I do. But it’s just – this is sort of like I never understood Gallagher. Like why are people laughing when he hits the watermelon with the thing? I don’t know. And to me it’s all in the same world of Gallagher. I don’t get it.

John: All right. So a thing I’m surprised you’re not appreciating is the fact that she is talking constantly. So, her breath control is remarkable because it seems like she’s having a conversation with this other person, but she’s actually doing both sides of the conversation. How she’s breathing, how she’s making that all work, do you see the skill involved there?

Craig: No. Ella Fitzgerald had great breath control. Patti LuPone has great breath control. I mean, I can do this because I’m talking like myself and then I’m talking like this. But if I ask you a question, yes, well I just want to know how, how, I just want to, I’m thinking that, well why don’t you just spit it out already? Anyone can do this. Literally anyone. It’s not hard. Just take breaths. And then while the audience laughs you breathe. Because they’re laughing – and listen, I have been accused of making audiences laugh with garbage. So I sympathize on that level.

I’m just saying I don’t get it. I don’t get this. Why ventriloquism is funny. Or hard.

John: All right. So this example has not changed Craig’s mind.

Craig: No. Made it worse.

John: But I remain hopeful that there is something out there that will change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the art form of ventriloquism.

Craig: I will say that it was refreshing to see a woman doing this as opposed to that weird Vegas-y, fake face, bad toupee type of dude.

John: OK.

Craig: You drive around Vegas, like impressions. I don’t understand impressions. Why is that cool? I don’t get it. It’s not that great.

John: Like Rich Little is not a person for you?

Craig: OK. You sound like those other people. But I could just – those other people are entertaining. That’s why you want to sound like them. But why don’t I just watch those other people. I get it. Anybody that does a Christopher Walken impression. Cool. You’ve made yourself like Christopher Walken. Which reminds me, I’m going to watch a Christopher Walken movie now. Impressions are also just like, meh, OK.

John: I remain hopeful that we will get you there at some point, Craig, and thank you for humoring me with the first installment of Change Craig’s Mind.

Craig: Oh, no problem. Yeah, I can’t wait for my mind to be changed. I like a good mind change. You know, my thing is all my opinions are strongly held but not firmly held.

John: Great. Good. All right. But let’s get to our feature topic, or one of our two feature topics. This is a Craig Mazin suggestion, so Craig start us off.

Craig: Well, you know, we’ve been doing all of our various segments, old and new lately, but my fondest kind of episode is the one where we talk about craft, probably mostly because I just want to put film schools out of business. So, it’s not with me as always any kind of pro-social thing. This is more vindictive.

It seemed to me that one of the things we hadn’t talked about over the course of our many, many, many episodes is the end. Not the end the way people normally talk about the end, when we say well how does the movie end. Usually people are talking about the climax and there’s all sorts of stuff to be said about the dramatic climax of a film and how it functions and why it is the way it is. But the real end of the movie comes after. The real end is the denouement, as the French call it, and this is the moment after the climax when things have settled down and there’s actually a ton of interesting things going on in there. It is the very last thing people see. And it’s an important thing.

I’ll tell you who understands the value of a good denouement. The people that test films. They’ll tell you if you have a comedy and you have one last terrific joke there it will send your scores up through the roof. If you have one last little bit of something between two characters that feels meaningful it will send your scores through the roof. The last thing we get is in a weird way the most important. So I wanted to talk through the denouement, why it is there, and what it’s supposed to be doing.

John: Great. So denouement is a French word. Denoue is to untie. To unknot something. And so it’s interesting that it’s to unknot something because we think about the tying everything up, but you also think about undoing all the tangles that your story has created. Sort of like straightening things out again so that you can leave the theater feeling the way we want you to feel.

So as we’re talking through, if we’re imagining the prototypical 120-page screenplay, these are the very last few pages, correct Craig?

Craig: Yeah. Absolutely. This is after the dust has settled. There’s going to be inevitably something, and we’ll talk through it. Like for instance sometimes it’s one single shot. Typically it’s its own scene. But there’s something to let you know this is the denouement.

And in that sense you – I guess the first thing we should do is draw a line between climax and denouement and say like, OK, what is the difference here. And the climax, I think we all get the general gist there. It’s action, choices, decision, conflict, sacrifice. And all of it is designed to achieve some sort of plot impact.

In the climax you save the victim or you defeat the villain. You’ve stopped the bomb. You win the – whatever it is that the plot is doing that’s what happens there. And the climax dramatically serves as a test of the protagonist. And the test is have you or have you not become version 2.0 of yourself. You started at version 1.0. We know some sort of change needed to happen to make you better, fix you, heal you, unknot you. Have you gotten there yet? This is your test.

And at the end of the climax we have evidence that the character has in fact transformed into character 2.0. The denouement, which occurs after this, to me is about proof that this is going to last. That this isn’t just a momentary thing but rather life has begun again. And this is the new person. This is the new reality.

John: Absolutely. So, in setting up your film you sort of establish a question for this principal character. Like will they be able to accomplish this thing. Will they be able to become the person who can meet this final challenge? In that climax they have met that final challenge. They have succeeded in that final challenge generally and we’ve come out of this. But was it just a one-time fluke thing or are they always going to be this way? Have they transformed into something that is a lasting transformation. And that is what you’re trying to do in these last scene or scenes is to show this is a thing that is really resolved for them.

Craig: Yeah. And that is why so many denouements will begin with six months later, one year later, because you want to know that, OK, if the denouement here is right, I used to crash weddings like a cad, but now I’m crashing my own friend’s wedding because I need to let this woman know that I really do love her and I’ve changed. And she says OK. We need six months later, one year later, to know, yep, they did change, they’re still together. They’re now crashing weddings together as a couple. So, they have this new reality, but it is lasting and their love is real. We need it, or else we’re left wondering, oh, hmm, all right, but did they make it or not?

Now that said, sometimes your denouement can happen in an instant and then the credits roll. And it’s enough because of the nature of the instant, particularly if it’s something that is a kind of very stark, very profound reward that has been withheld for most of the movie. Karate Kid maybe has the shortest denouement in history. Climax, Daniel wins the karate fight. Denouement, Mr. Miyagi smiles at him.

John: Yep.

Craig: That’s it. But that smile is a smile that he has not earned until that moment. And when he gets that smile you know that he’s good. This is good.

John: So as we’re talking I’m thinking back through some of my movies. In Go the denouement is they’ve gone back to the car at the end and Manny’s final question is, “So, what are we doing for New Years?” So it’s establishing that like they’ve been through all of this drama but they’re back on a normal track to keep doing sort of exactly what they’ve been doing before. That the journey of the movie has gotten them back to the place where they can take the same journey the next week, which is the point of the movie.

In Big Fish, certainly the climax is getting Edward to the river. There’s a moment post-climax where they’re at the funeral and see all the real versions of folks. But the actual denouement as we’re describing it right now is sort of that six months later, probably actually six years later, where the son who is now born and saying like did all that really happen and the father says, “Yep, every word.” So essentially we see the son buying into the father’s stories in the sense that there’s a legacy that will live on.

So, they’re very short scenes. They’re probably not the scenes you remember most in the movie, but they are important for sending you out of there thinking the characters are on a trajectory I want them to be on.

Craig: Yeah. The climax of Identify Thief is that Melissa McCarthy’s character gives herself up so that Jason Bateman’s character can be free of her and the identity theft and live with his life, which is a huge deal and that’s something she does that’s a self-sacrifice she does because of what he’s kind of helped her to see and that’s what he’s now learned from her. And the denouement which is important is to see, OK, it’s a year later and she’s in prison, which was really important to say, look, it’s real. Right? She went to prison. But what’s happening? Well, Jason and Amanda, who plays his wife, they’ve had their baby and everything is OK. He’s got a great new job. He’s doing fine. She’s been working hard in prison and studying so that she can get out and come work for him. And he then has something for her which is he’s found her real name, because she doesn’t know who she is. And he found her birth certificate and found her real name.

And so you get a kind of understanding that this relationship did not just stop right there. And it could have. She was a criminal. But it didn’t and that they’re going to go on and on. And then she punches a guard in the throat because the other thing about the denouement is typically it is a full circling of your movie and it is in the denouement that you have your best chance for any kind of fun or touching full circle moment. So in Identity Thief you have both. She at one point says she doesn’t know her real name. Here we find out her real name, which is Dawn Budgie, which is just the worse name ever. And the way she met him originally was by punching him in the throat and here’s she going to go ahead and punch a guard in the throat because you change but you don’t change completely because that feels gloppy, right?

But, both of those things are full circle moments. And in the denouement if you can find those, or if you’re wondering what to do in your denouement start thinking about that and looking for that little callback full circle moment. It is incredibly satisfying in that setting.

John: Yep. And a crucial point I think you’re making here is that the denouement is not about plot. It’s about story and theme, but it’s not about sort of the A plot of your movie. Your A plot is probably all done. It’s paying off things you set up between your characters. It’s really paying off relationships generally is how you are wrapping things up. It’s showing what has changed in the relationships between these characters and giving us a sense of what those relationships are going to be like going forward.

Craig: Oh, and that’s a great point, too. You’re absolutely right that it is showing what has changed and therefore it’s also showing what hasn’t changed, which can sometimes be just as important. So, for instance, if your theme is all you need is love, then it is important to show in the denouement that, OK, our protagonist has found love. She now has fulfilled that part of her life. But the other things that maybe she had been chasing aren’t there. So, if your problem is, OK, my character is Vanessa and Vanessa thinks that it’s more important to be successful than to be loved, which is an incredibly trite movie. I apologize to Vanessa.

At the end I don’t necessarily – if she’s found love I think maybe that’s good. I don’t need also then success. Because then I start to wonder, well, OK, what was the lesson here? Sometimes you just want to show nothing has changed except one thing. At the end of Shrek he still lives in a swamp and he is still an ogre, but he’s not alone. So one thing changes and the denouement is very good for almost using the scientific method to change one variable and leave the others constant.

John: Absolutely. So you’re saying that if you did try to change a bunch of variables, if the character ended up in a completely different place, in a whole new world than how they started, then we would still have a question about sort of like what is their life going to be like. We just don’t understand how they fit into all these things. But by changing the one thing we can carry our knowledge of sort of the rest of their life and see that and just make that one change going forward.

Craig: Yeah. Exactly. It’s a chance for you to not have to worry about propelling anything forward, but rather letting people understand something is permanent. And permanent in a lovely way. Very often the denouement will dot-dot-dot off, the way that a lot of songs just fade out, right? Some songs have a big [Craig hums] and that’s your end, and you can do that. And some of them just fade out, which is also lovely. The end of Casablanca is a brilliant little fade out. You know, he says goodbye to Ilsa. She’s off on the plane. The plot of the Nazis is over. Everything is finished. And then, you know, two men just walk off and say, you know what, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And therein is a dot-dot-dot. And they just walk off into the fog. A plane takes off. And you understand more adventures are ahead, but for now everything is OK.

John: Yeah. It’s nice when you get a sense that there will be further stories, we don’t necessarily need to see the sequel, but you get a sense of where they’re generally headed and that you don’t need to be worrying about them an hour later from now.

Here’s the counter example. Imagine you’re watching this film and you’re watching Casablanca and for some reason the last ten minutes get cut off, like the film breaks. That is incredibly jarring because you’ve not been safely placed back down.

There’s a social contract that happens when a person starts watching a movie. It’s like the writer and the filmmakers say if you give me about two hours of your time I will make it worth your while. And you trust me and I will take you to a place and I will deposit you back safely where you started. And if you are not putting people back safely where they started they’re not going to have a good reception, a good reaction. And that’s what you find when you do audience testing is so often what’s not working about the movie is that they didn’t feel like they got to the place where they expected to be delivered.

Craig: Yeah. And I suspect that people, well, reasonably invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and thought into building their climaxes. And then the denouement becomes an afterthought. And for me it is the actual ending. That’s actually the ending I back up from is the denouement.

John: Well, OK, let’s talk about that literally, because I literally do write those last few pages very early on in the process. I don’t know if you do that as well. But sometime after I’ve crossed the midpoint of a script I will generally jump forward and write the last ten pages. So some of that climax but really it’s that denouement. What are the final images of the movie? What are the final moments, the final words of a movie? Because if I know that, I know where I’m going, that second half of the script is much tighter and better and cleaner for where I’m headed towards.

Also, I like to write those last couple pages while I still have enthusiasm about the movie. So often you’ll read endings of scripts and you kind of feel like people were just rushing through the end. It’s like they were on a deadline and just plowed through those last pages and they spent so much time on their first act and spent so little time on those last ten pages which are sort of loose and sloppy because of when they were written.

Craig: That just infuriates me. The very thought of it. Because I obsess over those, the way I obsess over the first ten. And I don’t write out of order the way you do. But I think I plan very stringently in a way that you don’t. I try and write the movie before I write the movie essentially. And so I definitely know what those things are. And I don’t really have spikes or dips of excitement. I’m more of a kind of – you know, I think you write the way people probably think I write, and I write probably the way people think you write.

John: Probably so.

Craig: You know what I mean? I’m very robotic about it in a certain kind of procedural way, creatively obviously inside the robot management. I go all over the place and lop the heads off of giraffes and so forth. But I’m very kind of, you know, I’m a big planner.

John: I’m very instinctual and I will not know necessarily what the next scene is as I’m writing the current scene.

Craig: You know what? I think you and I just are so surprising to each other.

John: All right. So let’s wrap up this conversation of denouement because the denouements are about wrapping things up. So, the key takeaways we want people to get from a denouement is that it is a resolution of not plot but of theme, of relationship, of sort of the promise you’ve made to the audience about these principal characters and sort of what is going to happen going forward. What else do we want people to know?

Craig: I mean, that is essentially what they’re going to do. You’re going to show them that last bit whether you’ve done a good job or a poor job. When they see the last bit of the movie they will in their minds add on the following words: And thus it shall always be. And if you have done it well, and thus it shall always be, it’ll be really comforting and wonderful for them.

By the way, sometimes it’s not comforting. Sometimes it’s sad. You know, I mean, honestly the denouement of Chernobyl is quite sad and bittersweet. No shock there. Fiddler on the Roof has one of the best denouements of all time. Fiddler on the Roof opens with a guy playing this [hums] and it’s very jaunty and he’s on a roof and it’s silly. And Tevye is talking to the audience and saying, oh you know, our life is hard and tricky. And we’re like a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a simple little tune without breaking your neck.

At the end of the show, they have been driven from their town of Anatevka by pogroms and they’re trudging off to a new home. And the fiddler is the last person to go and he plays that same little tune, but it’s so sad this time. And the denouement is there to say and thus it shall always be, meaning we know based on the timeframe that what follows the people who leave Anatevka in whenever that takes place, let’s just call it 1910, is going to be worse. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better and thus it shall always be.

So, it doesn’t always have to be “and happily ever after.” Sometimes it can be and sadly ever after. But the point is it will be thus. And it shall thus always be. So, if you think about it that way the denouement becomes incredibly important because that’s where you’re sealing the fate of every single character in your film.

John: Yeah. Everyone is sort of going to be frozen in that little capsule that you created there and that can be placed up on the shelf. That is the resolution for this world that you’ve built to contain this story. So, that’s why it’s so crucial that it feel rewarding. So whether it was a happy ending or a sad ending that it feels like an ending.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right. Let’s transition to our real endings, which is basically our short time on this earth and at some point we will not be on this earth, but some of our work will still be around. And so I think this was a question from Pam Stucky on Twitter. I couldn’t find the actual tweet that sort of led to it. So if it’s not Pam, if it was somebody else, I’m sorry. But someone asked a smart question about like, well, have you guys ever talked about what happens to our work after we die? Or how stuff gets inherited? And I don’t think we really have.

So I wanted to dig into this a little bit and talk about two things. What happens legally to our work? And what happens creatively? What are the creative choices we might make about how we want to see our work passed down in the future? So some of the stuff is really straightforward and some of the stuff is a bigger discussion.

But legally you own copyright to the things you write. And that copyright is a real thing. It is an asset that can be passed along to your heirs. And if you don’t lay it out in your wills and other documents to describe where you want that copyright asset to go to, it will get passed along just like your comic book collection or your couch. So, it’s worth thinking about who you would like to own the rights to – the copyright to the stuff you make.

Copyright is worth a lot potentially for certain properties because it’s reproduction rights, it’s the ability to make more copies of that thing, so for a book. It’s distribution rights, who can sell and distribute your work. Performance rights, which is incredibly important for playwrights in particular. And adaptation rights. So, for authors it’s the ability to take that book you’ve written and turn it into a movie or turn into a TV show, or to remake it.

So, these are crucial things for the original works that you are creating. But, of course, as screenwriters so much of what we’re actually doing as our job isn’t original works. They are works for hire.

Craig: Right. And interestingly the term length is much different for individuals or for people commissioning works for hire. So in general we’re talking about anything that’s made since 1978, if you – John, you’ve written Arlo Finch. You are the copyright holder of Arlo Finch. The copyright protection lasts you how long?

John: My life plus a certain number of years, 75 years?

Craig: 70, yes, correct.

John: 70 years.

Craig: So, as long as you live and then the day you die a clock starts ticking and there are 70 more years for your daughter to gather up those delicious Arlo Finch royalties. At which point after that theoretically it goes into public domain the way that say the works of Arthur Conan Doyle are in public domain. And anybody can do anything they want with Sherlock Holmes.

But if there is a work-for-hire and that covers every time say Warner Bros. employs you or me to write a screenplay, the length of term there is 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of its creation. Now you can say well life of the author plus 70 could be more than that, but you know, typically people aren’t getting copyright to important works when they’re 10. So right now as you and I both approach 50 and maybe we’ve got another let’s say 30 years in there, they’re starting to even up.

And that number is going to get longer and longer because every time Mickey Mouse almost becomes public domain they seem to get an extension.

John: Yep. And so this will not be the episode where we actually talk about copyright systems and the weird ways it has been perverted to benefit – to really do the opposite of what copyright was supposed to do which was to get ideas out there in the public. But you could say, well, it doesn’t matter the things that I’m writing for Warner Bros. because I will never control copyright, therefore my heirs will get nothing. That is not true.

Craig: That is not true.

John: So, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which was a movie I made for Warner Bros. that pays me residuals. Residuals are collected by the Writers Guild of America. And those residuals are based on every time they sell the movie through iTunes or license it to Netflix. I get checks. I get checks every quarter for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it’s quite valuable. Those checks will keep coming after I die. And that is a very good thing. And those checks will keep coming as long as that movie is worth something and it is being licensed under copyright. So as long as Warner Bros. has copyright on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie I’ve made, residuals will keep coming. And that is a good asset down the road.

Craig: Yeah. That’s basically the long and short of it right there. We do have a kind of perpetuous income source with the residuals. And that’s why we have residuals essentially to simulate royalties, to overcome the absurd fiction of the work-for-hire, which I guess is sometimes is not a fiction but a lot of times it is. So, yeah, that’s basically what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with 90 or 120 years following creation of or first publication, or first publication or creation of. That’s how long it lasts. So when we die it kind of doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t really care, in our case, because our death is not actually triggering any time constraint.

For you it will matter on Arlo Finch. Or interestingly for you and I have both written music for movies, so we’re in ASCAP and we get ASCAP royalties. Those I think will be tied to death and copyright and all that, the publishing.

John: They should be. Yeah. That’ll be interesting to see. And also it’s complicated because it’s comingled with people who did the music for it, so it’s me and Danny Elfman and I don’t really know how that all sorts out. I’ve choose not to worry about it. But, Craig, while I have you on this call I have a question about separated rights.

So, separated rights would also pass to an heir, correct?

Craig: I believe so. They pass to your estate.

John: Yes. So if you are a person who writes a work for which you receive separated rights, which is a complicated topic but essentially it’s the ability to derive money from sequels and other things based upon your original work that should pass along to your heirs. Sometimes there are even creative choices that come along with that. So that’s another useful thing.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, separated rights are at times tricky to invoke because the companies hate that they exist. But for instance if you write an original screenplay and sold the original screenplay you will maintain a separated right for dramatic exploitation under certain circumstances. In other words, you have the rights for a play to be done of the original script you wrote. And when you die that doesn’t go away. That stays with the family.

John: Yep. So quite famously J.F. Lawton who wrote Pretty Woman controlled the separated rights for Pretty Woman and did not want there to be a Broadway musical for a very, very long time. And could stop it. That separated rights is giving him that ability.

But let’s talk about sort of the creative aspect of this. Not the legal, but just sort of creatively what you might think about down the road. And so you may have specific intentions for how you want to see your work used in the future. A zillion years ago I worked on an adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time which was not the same thread of the current Wrinkle in Time. But Madeleine L’Engle had already passed away, but her estate had tremendous controls over what could be done with that property. So not just who could do it, but like specific things that had to be in the script or could not be in the script. They had creative controls. And that was given to her estate.

Edward Albee’s estate has sort of famously tangled with people who wanted to make casting changes to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

And I was talking to Andrew Lippa, my friend, about stuff he’s doing with the Dramatist Guild for playwrights and musical writers who want to be able to think about their works after they’ve passed away. And so there’s some things like basically a council of playwrights that will look at people’s intentions with plays at the time they were written and sort of how they should change down the road, so that after playwrights pass away there can be some consistency about sort of what kinds of things are done with a play. So it’s a fascinating topic creatively.

Craig: Again, for those of us in movies and television, not particularly applicable in that regard, other than the minor separated rights. But that ultimately comes down to your family or whomever you have assigned the executorship of your estate. Yeah, you know, I – it’s funny, I just don’t think much about this sort of thing. Probably because I don’t have any concern that I’m going to be watching either from heaven or from hell as people make bad decisions with the things I’ve done. I don’t think I’m going to be around.

John: A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently though, and it probably started with Morrissey and Morrissey being a crank on Twitter. And I loved Morrissey’s songs, but now it’s like I don’t want – ugh, Morrissey shut up. And it got me thinking about whether I want to put some system in place where I would deputize three people of different generations and if they agreed that I needed to retire or basically move out of public view that I would have to take their decision. Basically a council of advisors who would say, no John, you need to stop. Because you look at people who have decided to step away and like maybe that was a great choice that they stepped away.

So Robert Redford recently announced that he’s retiring from acting. He’s not retiring as a public person, but he’s retired from acting. Daniel Day Lewis did it. Gene Hackman did it. And maybe there could be good cause for someone to give advice to somebody about this is the time to stop. Craig, what do you think about that?

Craig: I don’t think – the problem is if you become a crank then you’ll just say I’m not listening to these people anymore. Look, everybody has a moment where they should probably put it down, but then some people don’t. Some people go all the way to the end and you’re thankful for it, you know.

Look, it’s a personal decision. Sometimes these actors announce that they’re retiring from acting and I just think or just maybe retire from acting and not announce it. You know, stop. Just stop. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything to retire. That’s the beauty of retiring. An announcement that I’m no longer going to be doing – oh, do you need one last round of attention here? I think it’s more interesting when you discover that like people go, by the way, did you know that Gene Hackman apparently retired? That’s the best way to do it I think.

So when I finally retire – no one will care anyway.

John: Craig, do you think you will retire?

Craig: I think I will be retired. In other words, I hope that when I look at my own work and my mind and I have an assessment that it is of diminishing value that that will come either simultaneous with or slightly ahead of everybody else’s similar determination. The bummer is when everybody else figures out that you’ve lost it before you do. You don’t want to be that pitcher who is still going out there and getting shelled and guys are like, dude, you can’t throw a 95 anymore. You’re barely touching 90 and your stuff is flat. Maybe it’s time to hang up the spikes. No, I got one more season in me.

I don’t want to be that guy. But, you know, I keep a fairly careful eye on myself and I have a tendency towards self-loathing anyway, so I think I’ll be OK. I think if anything I will constantly try to retire and if people don’t want me to, or they need me to do something they’ll say, “No, no, no, not yet,” and then I’ll feel bad and do it. That’ll be the ideal situation.

John: You and I both know writers who sort of functionally got retired and they basically kind of stopped working. Like people stopped hiring them. And it is sad when they want to keep working and no one is hiring them. Ageism is a real thing in Hollywood. And this is the kind of insight in which if I actually went to therapy I probably could have had ten years ago, but a thing the last few weeks I’ve realized is that I think part of the reason I keep pursuing new things or stuff that I kind of don’t know anything about, like writing a book, writing a musical, software stuff, is that it’s nice to be the new person in something. It’s nice to feel like I am actually a beginner. That I’m a younger person in that field rather than sort of like the person who has been a screenwriter for 25 years.

Craig: Yeah.

John: There’s something nice about that. So I don’t know that I will ever retire, but I can also envision some point where I’m basically not writing movies anymore because I’m just doing other stuff, where I haven’t been doing it for 25 years.

Craig: No question. I mean, it’s just like video games are very difficult in the beginning when you’re weak and you’re confused and you’re not quite sure how the controls work and they’re a little scary. And then there’s that wonderful process of slowly and steadily mastering what’s happening, until you get to a point where you’re so powerful it’s boring. And the more you do something, even if it’s not in terms of power it’s just in terms of mastery, it can get – like I don’t really want necessarily to write rated-R comedies anymore, because I feel like I’ve done it a lot. And I’m a little bit bored.

And it’s not even to say that I’ve done it well, or that I couldn’t do it better. But there’s been a lot of it. And there’s been a lot that people haven’t seen, also, where my name is not there, but there’s more work than people know. And so I agree with you that changing things up and trying new things is delightful. I’m 100% in that place with you.

I think sometimes with some of the people who get retired, forcibly retired, ageism, yes, I think truly is a thing. However, Ted Eliot did point out something many years ago that had the ring of strong truth to it, which was that there are people that kind of happen in Hollywood. They make a big splash with a thing. And it’s a shiny thing and people get excited and they begin hiring that person. And slowly but surely as they go from project to project to project the word spreads that maybe they’re actually just not that good. And that some of these people aren’t aging out, they’re just being found out.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And they just weren’t as good as people thought. And there’s been a bunch of those. Also some people behave poorly and they get retired out because all things being equal people would rather work with somebody that’s nice than not nice. Especially these days I think that’s more of a consideration than it used to be.

But, yeah, it’s a tough thing because the market is cruel, but not irrational necessarily. Racist though. It’s definitely racist. See that one there’s no question about.

John: Yeah, there’s a little of that. So a thing I found is at a certain point you become – when you first start in this business you are younger than the people hiring you, and then you end up becoming about the same age as the people hiring you, and then you become older than some of the people hiring you. And at a certain point it becomes challenging to take instructions from people who have less experience than you do. And that I think is probably true in all industries across the board. It is weird to be working for somebody younger than you. That is naturally a part of it.

But I think another thing that happens is that sometimes if this executive is used to working with young writers who will do 50,000 drafts and keep smiling and will try to incorporate all the bad ideas because they’re hungry and desperate for a job, the fact that the more experienced writer isn’t so hungry will change the nature of that relationship. You know, if a writer says, you know what, I’m not going to try to implement that ridiculous note that won’t conceivably work because it’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

That’s a thing that the older writer might say that the younger writer wouldn’t say and ultimately that older writer I think gets hired less and less.

Craig: Yeah, you know, I have found that there’s been a nice shift in a weird way. I was – I think it’s different for everybody. Honestly it’s just the way you carry yourself and how you are. I think some people as they get older they just don’t refresh their minds about the world around them and I try and do that as best I can.

Having children helps. You know, having a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old makes it so that I have a certain amount of awareness of what’s going on around me. Also there’s a little bit of a sweet spot which I think you and I are probably in right now. It’s as you’re approaching 50. My guess is it’s your 50s where you’re not too old, but you are old enough where it seems like you’re kind of the vet. Like you know, like you’re a reliable vet who is going to get the job done. Thank god you’re here. I want somebody slightly older than me who I feel like I can listen to. And you’re not too old so you’re not grandpa.

That’s a real thing. I think that you and I have the best possible insurance against ageism ever which is this show. Since by the time we’re in our 60s every single person running every studio I believe will have grown up listening to this podcast. Therefore we should be fine. You and I will be OK forever.

John: As long as the council that we’ve appointed to tell us that we need to stop doing the show doesn’t tell us we need to stop doing the show.

Craig: I’m already saying no to them. I defy them.

John: I refuse!

Craig: I refuse.

John: Let’s wrap this segment up with just a little bit of practical advice. If you are thinking about sort of who should control your work after you pass away, at a certain point you’re going to need to make a will. So every screenwriter at a certain point wakes up in panic and says like, oh crap, I have no will, I have no estate, I have nothing planned. You go to a lawyer and do it.

I think if you’re young and starting out without a lot of assets you can probably do one of those online things or get a book or do something that way and just write the will, do whatever you’re supposed to do in the State of California. File it wherever you’re supposed to file it so it’s found after your death. And make those choices about where those things are supposed to go.

If you are a person with some substantial assets you do need to go find a person who can figure out how you should structure all the stuff, because at a certain point you’re going to put stuff into a trust and there’s reasons why you do things the way you do them. But it’s worth everyone thinking about so you have some sense of where you would like your work to go.

Craig: 100%. I believe you and I use the same guy.

John: Yep. He’s the guy. All of our friends do use the same guy.

Craig: There you go. Boy, I hope that guy is good or else we’re all–

John: Just toast. It turns out he’s just awful and made fundamental misassumptions.

All right, let us go to our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing are actually two awesome women who both write and perform. The first is my friend Erin Gibson. So Erin Gibson, she’s the host or cohost of Throwing Shade podcast which is fantastic. Co-creator, writer, and director of Gay of Thrones, which I’m sure you’ve watched. Jonathan Martin sort of recaps of Game of Thrones. They are fantastic.

But she has a book out which is also great. I went to the party. The book came out today but it’s already gotten great reviews. Called Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death. And it’s great. And Erin is fantastic. But she’s one of those people who – this is how I first met Erin Gibson.

She and Bryan Safi, who are cohosts on Throwing Shade, were both correspondents on this show called Infomania on the Current Network. And I stumbled across this show. I thought they were singularly fantastic. This is pre-Twitter I guess, so I emailed them and said like you guys are both fantastic and we ended up having coffee and they’ve been friends since then. So, Erin Gibson, a fantastic writer and performer.

The second one is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And sometimes in life you find little individual things you like and then later on realize they were all the same thing. And that was Phoebe Waller-Bridge for me. So, she is the writer-creator of Killing Eve, which is remarkable. It’s so good. You should watch it. But before that she did Fleabag, which I hadn’t seen, but now I’m watching and it’s great. And she stars in and wrote that. And then she was also L3-37, the robot in Solo, which was one of my favorite things about that movie. And so she was all of these things and is all one person. And so I’m so happy that there’s a Phoebe Waller-Bridge out there. So, Erin Gibson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge are my two great One Cool Things.

Craig: Wow. That is pretty cool. I love it when that happens. And that is a bit of a sign from the universe that you should be friends with somebody, isn’t it?

John: Probably so. So, she should probably come on the show next time she’s in Los Angeles.

Craig: Yeah. Seems like that should happen.

Well, just like your two things, my third thing is also a video game DLC. What? OK. So, I’ve been playing The Witcher 3.

John: I don’t like The Witcher. So tell me why you love it.

Craig: Well, I don’t love it. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t love it. I like it. I did not like it to start with. It took a little bit of time to get into. And then once I got into it I was like, OK, OK, it’s pretty cool in that it’s massive. It’s sort of like do you like Skyrim? Well, what if it was Skyrim but not as good but bigger, like there was more stuff to do.

So many quests, you’ll never finish them. But, you know, not bad. Terrible video game sex in it. I don’t think I’ve seen good video game sex.

John: Terrible in what way?

Craig: The mouths don’t touch. And the hips are moving incorrectly, so it is a hideous simulacrum of sex. It’s just incredibly not arousing. The breasts do not move. They will show bare female breasts but they have no jiggle, so it’s like that’s not right. That’s really not right at all. Yeah, video game sex not sexy.

Also, this game, Witcher, from 2015 just absurdly sexist in a way that I think like I can only assume that the people over there in Poland at Project Red who are no doubt hard at work on Witcher 4 have noticed the world has changed. I hope they have. And maybe some of their women could have shirts that close. You know, that would be nice if all the buttons went up to the neck. Just a thought.

Yeah, anyway.

John: So, I mean, Witcher 3 is really, I mean, I played it back when I was in Paris. And it is beautiful. It really does look terrific and looks better than Skyrim kind of does. But you’re always playing the one guy and I felt like I was on rails the entire time. So I probably only played like two hours into it and just gave up.

Craig: The first two hours you are on rails. And when they take you off the rails, that’s the weird part, is that the first part of the game is absurdly railed and then once that’s over they’re like, no rails. Also, you have 4,000 quests to do. Good luck, bye. And then it really is fun. And never-ending. So you probably quit just a little too early. But I will say that in terms of the beauty aspect of it I got this DLC Blood and Wine where you go this new region which is essentially French wine countryside.

John: Nice.

Craig: And it is gorgeous. Oh, it’s so great to look at. I mean, the gameplay is the same damn thing, but it is beautiful. And you get your own vineyard estate to renovate. You have your own major domo who is very nice. You have nice chats with him.

You know, I’m not a big craft your own home guy, but when I did, like in Fallout 4 I’m like, OK, I better sort of spiff up my little homestead here you know. But the guess you can do is use terrible post-apocalyptic materials to build your weird creepy hut. Here you’re living in this gorgeous French, you know, countryside manor with fields and Bougainvillea and it’s quite lovely.

So, anyway, Witcher 3: Blood and Wine if you feel like escaping slightly to your French countryside estate while you are slaughtering Necrophages with your silver sword. There you go.

John: All right. And that is our show for this week. As always our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. And special thanks to Luke Davis for sending us that cool intro bit with Craig.

Craig: Oh yeah.

John: If you have an outro or intro thing you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions and bits of follow up like we discussed today.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, anywhere where podcasts are found. Leave us a review. That’s always great. Links to stuff we talked about in today’s episode will be in the show notes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can find transcripts. They go up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We have nearly 3,000 of you premium subscribers. And so I think after we wrap here I’m going to talk to Craig about a special little thing I kind of want to do for those premium subscribers, because that’s pretty cool.

Craig: That’s amazing.

John: All right, Craig, thank you so much for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John. I will see you next week.

Links:

• You can listen to John & Craig on another podcast: Jordan, Jesse, Go!
• You can check out our episode with Mindy Kaling, or our episode with Susanna Fogel and David Iserson for some context in this week’s follow-up.
• John’s attempt at “Changing Craig’s Mind” about ventriloquism: Nina Conti
• Edward Albee’s estate has special rules about casting for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
• Erin Gibson: Throwing Shade podcast, Gay of Thrones, and her new book, Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death.
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Killing Eve, Fleabag, and she’s the robot, L3-37, in Solo
• The Witcher 3: Blood And Wine DLC
• The USB drives!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Find past episodes
• Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!). And thank you, Luke Davis, for Craig’s musical intro!

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.