The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.
John: You’re listening to Episode 708 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, we look at three stories in the news. Two of them from the Hollywood trades, and ask, how would this be a movie? We also follow up on audio dramas, last looks, and absolute rage bait in an article about ChatGPT 5.
Craig: Oh, that’s fantastic because there’s already rage bait in two of the How Would This Be movies. You’re setting me up. This is a setup because what? I haven’t been cranky enough lately?
John: Yes, we have a blood pressure monitor on Craig, and we will just watch the line rise as we go through–
Craig: My blood pressure goes down the angrier I get.
John: Oh, that’s nice.
Craig: That’s my secret cap.
John: Absolutely. Lie detectors never work on Craig because–
Craig: Yes. It just–
John: Lie detectors would be useful for several of the stories we’re talking about today.
Craig: Yes, for sure.
John: Plus, we’ll have a new listener questions. In our bonus segment for premium members, we often need to watch TV while we’re traveling away from home, overseas, or domestically. We’ll share our experiences and hopes for the future about best ways to watch things when you’re not in your home audio and video setup.
Craig: Oh, that sounds like a good idea. How to hack the hotel television and so forth?
John: Yes. I’ve reached behind so many hotel TVs.
Craig: Sometimes it’s very complicated. They really don’t want you to–
John: Clearly, you are just breaking everything.
Craig: Please don’t. Which I take seriously.
[laughter]
Craig: I’m a rules follower.
John: Before we get started, we have some local news and follow-up and explanation. Recently, Scriptnotes sent out 81 emails over the course of 20 minutes.
Craig: Oh, yes. That was fun.
John: That was fun.
Craig: Oh, I loved it.
John: I was in Australia for two weeks, and so I knew nothing about this. Craig, you actually knew about it before I knew about it, which is–
Craig: Can you believe it? It’s so unusual for Scriptnotes.
John: I can’t, no.
Craig: I got quite a few texts that morning saying, “Hey, has the Scriptnotes email server lost its mind?” I was like, what? Then I looked up my– I’m one of those people that I go through my emails. I don’t have the 15,000 unread emails that sometimes you see. My badge is usually good for three or four.
John: That’s impressive.
Craig: There are a bunch of read messages that are still sitting in my inbox. I try and read. That morning, it was 89. I’m like, oh. I actually saw that before I read any texts, and I honestly thought, have I been fired or something? That’s the sort of thing that happens if you get fired or a video came out of me beating my wife, which happily, I don’t think there is video of it, at least.
John: In ping pong.
Craig: Right.
John: Drew, you as producer can answer the question, were we hacked?
Drew Marquardt: We were not hacked.
John: What happened?
Craig: We just stink.
Drew: We just stink. For our premium members, we put out seasons with back episodes. I had put together– we had just crossed 700, so I did the 601 to 700 season and put that out. Our wonderful hosting service said, “Hey, do you want us to send out an email to members letting them know that there’s a new season?” I said, that would be great.
Then I went to bed and then I woke up to [onomatopoeia] because the system had, instead of sending one email, recognized each episode as a new episode, so it was sending out 101. We very quickly were just pulling plugs digitally trying to get it to stop. It stopped at 81.
Craig: Oh, so it could’ve been worse.
Drew: It could have been worse.
John: It actually could have been worse, yes.
Craig: Well, thank you for that. I apologize.
John: I apologize to our listeners. Now–
Craig: Nobody wants that. There was no easy way– I had to delete, delete, delete. It’s email, right? Tap and delete.
John: Yes, you can select a bunch, but yes.
Craig: I didn’t even know how to do that. I was on my iPad.
John: On your iPad, yes. It’s on the bottom one, top one, but yes, on the iPad, it’s yes. Again, we do apologize. We thank all of our premium members for supporting Scriptnotes. Let’s talk about why we do seasons is because when there’s 800 episodes, you want to not have to scroll through the whole list. We break it up into 100-episode chunks.
Craig: We were trying to make it easy for everyone, and we thought– What I loved about it was like, hey, Scriptnotes premium member, listen, we have news for you. What’s that? You didn’t listen? We’ll say it again. We won’t stop saying this until you send us another $5.
[laughter]
Craig: Tragic.
John: Anyway, it shouldn’t happen again. What’s tough about this error is it’s a very hard thing to troubleshoot or test for because you don’t know it’s happening until suddenly, it’s happening a million times.
Craig: You’d think that whoever runs the servers would have some sort of internal control that says, don’t send out–
Drew: Well, now they do. Because of this, they’ve built a thing–
Craig: They’ve innovated.
Drew: They’ve innovated. Now there’s a block that after two emails within quick succession, it just cuts off, so it’ll never happen again.
Craig: Well, happily, if anybody was worried that their billing info had been leaked or anything.
Drew: That was the concern of a few people.
Craig: We’re not the ones leaking your billing info. Your billing info is being leaked by literally everyone else. I got a letter in the mail, the M-mail from WestJet. They’re a commercial airline that’s affiliated with Delta. I think Delta may just own them. They’re regional. They’re the jet I would fly to Calgary back in season one.
They sent me a lovely letter explaining that they’ve been hacked. Don’t worry. Your credit card numbers weren’t compromised. Just your name and possibly your address and maybe date of birth and possibly some security number and maybe. Here, we’ve bought you two free years in this– Who gives a damn service that monitors? Oh, please.
John: I also don’t trust those services. They’re the cruel services.
Craig: No, I don’t either. They’re going to get hacked.
John: Yes.
Craig: When I signed up for that service, they’re like, “What’s your birth date?” I’m like, I think you know. I think everybody knows now. Thanks, WestJet.
John: Other bits to follow up. The scripting on this book is coming out December 2nd around the world. The hardcover copy in Australia, we’ve just learned it’s going to be January 4th instead.
Craig: Because they’re on the bottom of the planet.
John: Yes. They have to ship it all the way down there.
Craig: They have to defeat gravity to get there.
John: The e-book and audiobook will release the 4th of December in Australia, but the hardcover book will be a month later.
Craig: Well, we apologize, Australia, but you know what? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There’s a little bit of time to work up an appetite for what I believe will be the best book in anyone’s bookshelf that has a completely orange cover.
John: Yes. It’s going to be really great.
Craig: We are the best option.
John: You recognize on the spine, on the center shelf.
Craig: You don’t have to go hunting for it.
John: It’s there.
Craig: If your car breaks down at night, you wave your Scriptnotes book around, it’s like a flare.
John: It absolutely is.
Craig: No one’s hitting you.
John: It works really well. A reminder that you can pre-order the book now wherever you are. It’s scriptnotesbook.com is where you can do the pre-order. We’ve had a ton of pre-orders, which has been great. Thank you for everyone who’s pre-ordered.
Craig: Is this book going to be a success, do you think?
John: I think it’s going to be a success. I think we’re going to do well. We had one little live event for the pre-order folks. If you do pre-order the book, send your receipt to Drew and Drew will add you to the list for other little events that we’re going to do before the book comes out. We also have signed copies of the book that are going to be available through a special site. There will be a link in the show notes for if you really desperately want a signed copy of the book. Craig and I did 500 of those.
Craig: It just seemed like we signed our names forever.
John: Forever. With a combination of the WestJet-leaked information and Craig’s signature in the book, you get to take over his life.
Craig: I basically should be able to at least pay my mortgage off for me. It’d be nice. It’d just be nice.
John: Let’s just follow up on audio dramas. Back in episode 706, listener Dan wrote in asking if he should turn his screenplay into an audio drama. We had a lot of listeners who wrote in to say they had personal experience with that.
Drew: Sounding Off writes, “I just finished a series for Audible, adapting an iteration of my work. In my experience, this was handled like most other productions. They put our scripts through several rounds of notes, hired name actors through their agencies, hired a director via the same, set up recording studio sessions, and they handle all the post-production sound along with multiple rounds of dialogue edits.
Perhaps Dan has a different way in, but having worked on this project for several years, I’d caution him against doing all the work on his own with the expectation of then selling to Audible. I suppose it could happen that way, but if you look at many of their dramatic or fictionalized podcasts, these are professionally-run projects on the Audible side from start to finish. There’s a learning curve for writing just to audio. It’s challenging and fun, but you do have to expand your skillset.”
John: That would be my expectation, too. You look at the professional productions, there’s an expectation that goes into what they’re looking for. It feels like it’d be hard. I’m thinking about the screening process. If they’re picking up stuff that’s already produced, they’re going to put on their headphones and listen to 20 minutes of it and decide, is this a thing I want to do? They’re also looking for what is the overall package? What is it going to feel like?
Craig: Yes, I can see the wisdom of what Sounding Off is saying here. I love the punny name, by the way. I like that people do that for call-in– There’s something about radio/podcast where you need to come up with Sleepless in Seattle. It’s just their thing. Sounding Off, I think, makes a great point because if you are Audible and you listen to an already produced story, you might think, okay, I like this, except this part, I wish were longer, or this part, I just don’t love that line.
I want access to, well, we didn’t do that bit, or we didn’t do this bit, or sorry, that sound effect is married to that of dialogue. Suddenly, you have to go back in the studio anyway. Since they all have– They get very fussy about standards, post-production people are very fussy about standards. It makes sense that they would probably want to control that production process.
John: I could imagine basically shooting a pilot, recording a pilot for what I’m seeing as a proof of concept. That might be the thing. To go through and do all the work ahead of time with the expectation that you’re going to sell it to Audible versus releasing it yourself feels like a reach. More listeners wrote in.
Drew: Jonathan writes, “I very much agree with what was said about not doing something unless you really want to be making it. Audio dramas may not have the industry prestige that a film does, but they do have a dedicated loyal audience who may not otherwise discover your work. I know many people who don’t watch films, but they do listen to fiction podcasts.
As a producer, you can attract a higher level of talent than on an indie film as the time commitment is less and they have the opportunity to play a role outside their on-screen type. I find it a very satisfying medium to work in.”
Craig: That’s fantastic to hear. Yes.
John: We also have some follow-up on last looks. We were talking a few episodes back about the last things you do with a script before you turn it in. We had a suggestion from Liz.
Drew: “Regarding finding the objectivity you need for that last edit on your draft, I’ve got a very dumb and very effective hack for you. A few years ago, I started to convert my script to a PDF and send it to myself with a title page. Something about the look of a PDF and the fact that I can’t fiddle with it as I’m reading tricks me into objectivity. I find I can read it and note myself as though I’m looking at someone else’s work. So dumb, and yet I swear by it.”
Craig: Two things. One, I’m not sure why we’ve decided to replace the word tip with hack. Hack is some interesting shortcut, a workaround. This is just a tip, it’s not a hack. Sorry, Liz G. What she’s suggesting here is the slightly newer version of what you and I always did, which is print it out. Something about printing it out and going through the pages one by one made it seem like somebody else had written it and you can be more objective because you’re out of the composition environment.
John: I think getting away from the scroll is really important. That’s how you’re seeing it differently and really feeling, and the page flips matter. It’s useful to do it that way. Whether it’s printing it or doing it as a PDF that you’re reading on your iPad, it’s going to help.
Craig: Printing is something that we all did. We all had printers in our little crappy apartments. I have a feeling most people don’t have a printer in their crappy apartment now. Then if you do want to actually physically print it, which I think is superior to the PDF “hack/tip”, I guess you’d have to go to work, print it out there on their printer, I guess. I mean, printers aren’t that expensive, but it’s–
Drew: $30.
Craig: Wait, what?
John: Printers are incredibly cheap right now.
Craig: Did you say $30?
Drew: Yes. You can get a basic printer at Best Buy for $30?
John: The replacement toner cartridge is $100.
Craig: Sure. You just throw the printer out and get another printer. Wait, $30?
Drew: I could be wrong, but that’s what I remember paying for the last one, I think.
Craig: That can’t be possibly right. Hold on. We’re going to do a little live– We’re doing a live price check. This is a new segment called Drew, I Don’t Believe You. Best Buy printers. Okay, we’re all looking this up. Printers for home use. It’s not looking good for you right now, buddy. I got to tell you.
Drew: I Googled printer and the first one is $49.99 at Best Buy.
John: I see a basic [unintelligible 00:13:34] printer for 130.
Craig: Okay, the lowest selling printer that I– Oh, let me take off brand. Okay, so the lowest selling printer is an HP that’s $50. That is their rock bottom, absolute crappiest. That thing is like, yikes.
Drew: Office Depot has a Canon PIXMA for $37.99.
John: Oh, damn. They’re selling that for $65 over it.
Craig: Still haven’t hit $30, by the way. Listen, you said– If it’s an exaggeration, then–
Drew: It was a maybe $7 exaggeration, but I remember it being $30. I feel like there was a deal. I feel like it was a holiday sale.
Craig: $7 off of $30, that’s a lot. That’s like 20-something percent.
Drew: I’m going to hold steady on this one. I think–
John: I think Drew was making a category statement of in a $30 range. $37–
Craig: If you had said $50, I still would’ve been like, what? Then this would’ve been a slam dunk for you. You know what? There’s a lesson here. [laughs]
Drew: It’s my hyperbole.
Craig: It does turn out that printers are stupidly cheap to the point where I would say yes. If all you used it for was just this, it’s better to me, at least, than the- PDF method.
John: All right, let’s get to our marquee topic here, which is how would this be a movie? This is where we take articles that are in the news or that people send to us and talk about the ways in which they could be converted to fictionalized entertainment for our enjoyment. It could be a movie, it could be a TV series.
What’s interesting about these three stories is two of them come from the Hollywood trades, which is not where you actually think about these stories coming from. You think that the trades are going to be reporting on these things rather than the actual stories themselves. The third is just a fun story. They all involve ambition, chicanery, in cases, misrepresentation.
Craig: Yes, con artistry. It does seem like swindling, horn-swoggling. We could do this all day.
John: Let’s start with The Many Faces of Sir Marco Robinson. This is an article by Jake Cantor writing for Deadline.
Craig: By the way, good job, Jake Cantor. Again, you’re at Deadline, we’re used to reading–
John: It’s like barely-written press releases.
Craig: Yes. The eighth banana on a procedural has changed agents, and you’re like, I don’t– Nobody cares.
John: I was so surprised when I see this because it’s a long-form investigative piece.
Craig: Sort of like an Atlantic kind of style or Vanity Fair-ish kind of investigation. I thought it was quite well done.
John: Yes. Drew, could you give us the quick summary here?
Drew: Sir Marco Robinson is a self-styled Instagram business guru. He claims to be the number two Netflix producer, a bestselling author. To have been knighted in Malaysia, a global real estate empire, he promotes movie-making master classes based on his claim to have produced the Netflix spy movie Legacy of Lies. A budding screenwriter signed up for master classes after being contacted by Robinson on Instagram, spending up to £10,000 to access his so-called expertise in script development.
Craig: You and I are idiots by the way. Do you know how much money we could be making?
John: We make really good money not doing this. That’s the reality.
Craig: Think about it. If we did, I’m just saying. If we did, oh my God, this podcast could be worth trillions. Go on.
Drew: He also pledged to produce their projects through his company. It will surprise no listener to hear what happened next. He was sued by several writers for fraudulent misrepresentation, and he lost. The real producers of Legacy of Lies have sent him a cease and desist. We should note here that Robinson denies all the claims and continues to pursue all of his business ventures.
Craig: We should just continually cite that the way that at the end of Say Nothing, they kept saying, Jerry Adams denies all involvement in the IRA. Yes, Robinson denies all the claims. Let’s talk about these claims. I’ve never heard of this guy. I’ve also never heard of Legacy of Lies.
John: Legacy of Lies, it made it up to the number two slot on Netflix once.
Craig: For a day.
John: Yes. It’s being like an Amazon number one bestseller in each category.
Craig: It turns out he wasn’t a producer of that movie. He initially was. He was an investor. He failed to deliver the money he promised, and so they took away his credit. He’s not even a producer. He does have a cameo as Johnny who says a line. That’s in and of itself insane. The knighting thing is incredible. He’s British. As the alleged con artist that he is, seems like he thought, “Oh, I’ll get quite a bit of legitimacy if I put the word sir in front of my name.” Reverse engineered a vague sir from a British protectorate that turns out didn’t give it to him anyway.
John: In Malaysia.
Craig: Nor would it have mattered because the United Kingdom does not recognize titles that are given by other countries or protectorates. If you want to be sir in England, and this is going to be surprising you, they’re rather specific.
John: It’s like champagne in France.
Craig: Yes. They’re like, “Sorry, you can’t call that champagne. It’s not from– It’s sparkling wine.” He’s the sparkling wine of number two producers in Netflix. What is fascinating is the breadth of his alleged scams. It cuts across 20 different things.
John: Before we get into the meat of how this would be a movie, let’s also bring in the Scriptnotes connection because looking through the archives, Drew found that his team had actually reached out to us in 2023.
Craig: You’re kidding me.
John: Here’s the email.
Drew: I was wondering if we had anyone who was like, “Hey, I’ve been scammed by this guy.”
Craig: Turns out we have him.
Drew: We got a guest request from May 1st, 2023. “Dear Scriptnotes, we hope that got your attention.”
Craig: It’s gotten my attention. [laughs]
Drew: “We love your podcast and we also believe you should feature Sir Marco Robinson as your guest really soon. Here’s why. One, yes, he has slept with a Russian spy that was sent to kill him and survived. Two, the above is part of the true story of the making of his first feature film, Legacy of Lies, which debuted at number two on Netflix USA.
Three, he is making a musical called Legacy of Spies. Are you prepared to die to live your dream? His own life story. If that wasn’t enough, Sir Marco remains the only human to give three houses away to three homeless families on Channel 4 Primetime in the UK with his own show, Get a House for Free.”
Craig: That is so specific. On Channel 4. Other people have given away many more houses on other channels. Now, can you read the sentence again about the spy, the first thing?
Drew: Yes, “he has slept with a Russian spy that was sent to kill him and survived.”
John: The spy survived.
Craig: Thank you. What is that sentence construction? The spy was sent to kill him and survived. [laughs] She’s okay, is what I’m hearing?
John: She’s good. We could interview her. That sounds fascinating.
Craig: How are you writing those? You’re surely dead. That’s horrible. I think, this I can say factually, I find that to be idiotic. That’s a fact. I do.
John: Let’s talk about this. How would this be a movie? How would he be a character in whatever we want to do? We hear it where I need to divorce myself from like, okay, this is a person who at least three screenwriters have said has been scamming and done a lot of behaviors which we’ve condemned on this podcast for a long time, which is taking advantage of aspiring screenwriters with promises that are not being fulfilled.
Setting that aside for a moment, the idea of a charismatic, ambitious hustler producer who’s faking it until he makes it, there can be something charming about that. It’s a classic story. It’s also a reality we see all the time in this business, especially with international productions where it’s like, do you really have anything? You just have a poster with Ben Kingsley’s face on it. Is there actually a movie?
Craig: Does Ben Kingsley know about this poster, which in this article, it turns out, no. It’s tough to come at this directly because Catch Me If You Can exists. That’s sort of the top of the heap of what you could do. Also, that character of Joseph Bagnoli, I think was his name, Joseph Bagnoli, was fascinating.
This guy, at least in terms of how he’s been portrayed by this article, is just boring. He’s a boring scam artist. The only thing that’s surprising, and I suppose this isn’t really surprising, is how anybody fell for it. Even if you buy everything that he says at face value, the people that are more interesting to me are the people that– There’s a woman that sued him and won.
There’s this little thing in the article where I went, oh, that’s the thing that I hooked on. He has a master class in screenwriting. The bait on the hook is number two Netflix producer of Legacy of Lies. That’s not enough. No, but this woman, like many, bought it. Now, here’s the part that amazed me. She sued him. She won. She got her money back, and now she has started her own website called Victim to Victor, which is like an advocacy– It’s like a master class for how to get your money back. What’s happening is this is the world we live in now where everyone self-promotes.
John: It’s the idea of, it’s not even being influencers, but it’s basically getting people’s attention and being able to hold people’s attention as a way of monetizing that. I think we’ve always had this legacy of fabricators and people who would sell you stuff, like snake oil salesmen and stuff like that.
In the online world, in the Instagram world, the ability to portray yourself as something fancier, more powerful, more influential than you really are is just more directly commoditizable and because you don’t have to be there physically, in person, in front of somebody you can just get away with a lot more. Calling himself Sir Marco Robinson is more helpful than Mark Lawrence Robinson, which is his actual real name.
Craig: I’m not sure if this is a movie.
John: No, I think it’s a space.
Craig: I could see a comedy where friends are laughing at one of their friends who has spent money on this and they’re just making fun of him and reading the description of the guy and going, “This is who you gave your money to?” Because Sir Marco Robinson, look at that email he sent us. That’s not great. No, it’s not written well.
John: Listen, I think the fact that we’re discussing how this would be a movie at all, he’s won to some degree because the email he wanted, he wanted to be discussed on the show.
Craig: He did get on the show.
John: He got on the show.
Craig: He got on the show. I don’t like him.
John: Positive attention, negative attention, it’s still attention. That is actually, I think if you were to do a movie or a TV series adaptation of this space, you wouldn’t do it about him specifically. It is that sense of people who just need to be in the conversation. They don’t care why you’re talking about them.
Craig: They are the ultimate enemy. You cannot defeat them because if you agree with them, you’ve lost. If you disagree with them, you’ve lost because you’re talking about them at all. My only hope is that anybody– because he’s still out there. He’s still–
John: I suspect we’ll get an email from him.
Craig: Cool. I hope it’s written better than that last one. I hope that gets his attention. [laughs] All right. Probably not a movie, but we’ll sum up later. Maybe we’ll have better luck with this next one.
John: Absolutely. Next up, we have the sisters battling to become the Billboard Queen of Los Angeles. This was sent to me by my friend Shad. I think it’s a great story. Again, it’s in The Hollywood Reporter, which you don’t think of it– It feels like a good Vanity Fair article.
Craig: It does. Mickey Rapkin wrote this for The Hollywood Reporter. You know, by the way, that it’s one company that owns all of these things. It’s the same. They’re all in the same building. I don’t understand this. Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and I think The Wrap are all owned by one company.
It’s hysterical, but they actually do try and scoop each other. In a way, they’re like sisters battling to become the Billboard Queen. Mickey Rapkin did a terrific job here. I really enjoyed reading this.
John: I loved just how local it was because people outside of this market are like, what is this? We see these billboards all the time. Drew, give us the summary.
Drew: Adriana Gallardo is the founder of Adriana’s Insurance, which is recognized across Los Angeles for her iconic billboards featuring her and a red convertible. She’s a formerly undocumented Mexican immigrant and a self-made millionaire. Adriana also has a younger sister, Veronica, who owns Veronica’s Insurance and also has iconic billboards across LA featuring her next to a large German shepherd.
These two sisters are bitter rivals. The article chronicles the sisters’ rise to prominence, catering to the large but underserved Hispanic community. Veronica initially worked for Adriana, building her insurance empire, but after feeling undervalued by her older sister, she strikes out on her own. Since then, the two have been fierce competitors and undermine each other however they can.
John: They undermine each other, but they also have territories and they don’t encroach on each other’s territories to some degree.
Craig: Yes, it was interesting. There was something that Adriana says in the interview that I thought was really wise. She said Hollywood always wants, I think it was sisters, women to fight. Even though they do compete, and it’s clear that there is some resentment there, Adriana paints Veronica as the little princess, the younger sister who just didn’t want to work that hard and get everything handed to her and won’t complain anyway.
Obviously, Veronica is a hard worker because her business is doing well, but then they go out of their way to make the point that they go to each other’s children’s weddings, they still talk, we’re still sisters. It’s not like Falcon Crest.
Drew: No, it’s not the cat fight.
Craig: It’s not Joan Collins and Linda Evans.
Drew: Linda Evans, yes.
Craig: You don’t know what we’re talking about.
Drew: No.
Craig: Okay, so that was Falcon Crest. Falcon Crest was a prime-time soap opera.
John: It was Dynasty.
Craig: Was that Dynasty? Okay, Dynasty. A lot of people just started screaming out there. A lot of gay men just started screaming out there. I couldn’t hear them. I’m so sorry. Dynasty was a prime-time soap opera, and at the center of it, Joan Collins, this grand, dumb English actor, and Linda Evans, who was this very dignified American actor. I think she was American.
John: Yes, I think so.
Craig: They hated each other, and they got into some massive physical cat fights, wig pulling, throwing down stairs.
John: They’re always ending up in the pool.
Craig: Yes, it’s very mommy dearest, like two mommy dearests. It was insane, and people loved it. In any case, that’s like what it could be, like the telenovela version of that, but it’s not.
John: They’re rivals, but they are fundamentally still sisters, and they’re civil about things, but it’s clear that they’re choosing their words carefully. I loved so much of this and I think there’s a movie version to make, there’s a series version to make, but one of my fundamental questions is, where do you start? Because the origin story of it is actually really fascinating. They’re coming into the United States on a tourist visa, and they’re just staying, and so they’re undocumented.
Craig: She describes herself as illegal. That’s how she categorizes herself.
John: It’s their mother who sees how long the lines are for the insurance offices, because everyone has car insurance through that changeover.
Craig: Yes, and the law change that basically said, if you get pulled over for a traffic violation, if you don’t produce insurance, they’ll take your license away. A lot of Latinos in LA were like, “Well, we don’t have any.” Which I remember being a problem when we first moved here. I don’t know if you remember, people were like, “By the way, no one has insurance. If you get into a car accident, you’re screwed. No one has insurance.” It turns out a lot of people didn’t.
John: Now they had to. It’s the mother who pushes Adriana to get a job at this insurance office. Adriana learns the trade, and basically can do it better. She strikes out on her own. Veronica ends up following her sister’s footsteps. That rags to riches story, as you often see here, mythologized, seems really true.
They were going from nothing to relatively good success. Then also the decision to put themselves on billboards and bus shelters, and stuff like that leads to a kind of fame that is unique and special. To agree with Final Destination, the most recent one, had a tie-in with Adriana.
Craig: And apparently, was incredibly effective because in that horribly dry way, the over-index with the Latino population– over-index is a terrifying phrase. By the way, side note, when I first came to LA, I needed car insurance. I got insurance from Freeway Insurance. Do you remember this? I think they’re still out there.
Freeway Insurance, they would advertise on the radio. Their slogan was, Freeway Insurance, it’s that thing you’re speeding on. I was like, you know me. I love this, too. First of all, it’s a very LA story. Los Angeles has a strange tradition of women mostly, but a few men, a few accident lawyers as well. Sweet James, he’s out there.
Accidentes is out there, who buy billboards, and because we’re all driving all the time, the people who manufacture culture through television and movies get to know the people on the billboards even if those people are not movie stars. Angeline is the most famous. She was a woman who just got dressed up like a human Barbie and put herself on billboards and no one even knew why. It just said Angeline and just showed her with her pink corvette or whatever it was. She became famous for being on a billboard.
John: Then you would see her on a talk show. She wouldn’t actually even be interviewed. Just physically–
Craig: Sometimes you would see her around town also and you’re like, oh, yes, you do not look like that billboard. You’re dressed like the billboard, but you’re like that billboard, but a thousand years older. When you saw Angeline, and I don’t even know if she’s still alive, but when you saw her in real life, it was a bit sad actually because you’re like, this is an older woman who’s– something’s going on here. This doesn’t seem well. Who’s paying for these billboards? I remember reading an article about that, too. In this case, I think if I had to make money off of this in the grand tradition of Adriana and Veronica, I’d want to do it as a reality show.
John: Apparently, there has been a reality show before. There was a– I don’t know if it was Bravo or whoever it was, but there was a behind-the-scenes.
Craig: It feels–
John: Yes. I get that, but I also just feel like we have amazing actresses who could play these parts. I think we haven’t quite seen that.
Craig: Yes, but what I don’t see in the story is an arc, per se. I see actually a fairly straight arrow. Adriana is one of those– the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. She’s the busy ant who just works. Her whole thing is, I worked really hard. I did any job. I knocked on any door. I did what needed to be done. I made all this money, and I believe anybody can do this. Very much land of opportunity, only in America kind of story. That’s sort of it. There isn’t a murder. No one stole anyone’s husband. No one’s died. It’s missing that.
John: I get that. If you were to take characters who are like these and put them in a Knives Out movie, you could see them in the backdrop of that. Characters in that rather than just their individual story. I do just think that a smart writer could find a way to succession this, essentially. Use this as the same way that the Murdock family is succession, but it’s all fictionalized and turned around. There’s ways to do that we just haven’t seen on screen before.
Craig: It could work. Succession, the stakes are built in because they’re running the media empire. They’re literally figuring out who the next President should be.
John: This isn’t quite that. Mad Men is another example. It’s a period– you could move this back into periods. It could be ’90s, 2000s, and rising up with this and these two sisters who are partners and then rivals. There’s a way to do that too. I don’t want to give out lines.
Craig: It could be. I think series, for sure. A movie, I just don’t see the movie here. Series, yes. In a world where there are– because Adriana and Veronica are both glamorous people. That’s what they’re selling. They’re selling glamour through their looks, their hair, their car, even the dog is somewhat glamorous.
They’re glamorous. They’re doing a job that’s not glamorous. They’re actually glamorous and in heels, but walking around and answering phones and dealing with invoices. It’s giving Selling Sunset, as the kids would say where real estate is the most, but I’m not going to watch a reality show about real estate. Yes, you will if it’s this. I’ll watch a few episodes of that.
The fact that they’re sisters, each one of them seems to be developing a show. One show. It’s about the two of them where you go back and forth, and then they can build up the rivalry. That would be successful. To me, that’s a slam dunk.
John: All right. Our final story is from Josh Levin writing for Slate. This is about a congratulations, you’ve got accepted to Oxford. Oh, wait, there’s something you should know.
Craig: Yes, it’s hysterical.
Drew: In 1995, a group of high-performing American students believed they’d been accepted into Oxford University through a college called Warnborough. The brochures and acceptance letters all tied the school’s identity to Oxford University’s reputation, convincing the students to pay thousands of dollars and cross the Atlantic.
When they arrived, they discovered that Warnborough was not an Oxford college at all, but an independent and unaccredited institution set up in a countryside estate way outside of the city. After hunting down answers, half of the Americans left and demanded refunds. The other half stayed and tried to make the best of the situation.
Still, Warnborough was unaccredited, so they could not grant valid degrees, and the credits were untransferable. Media coverage soon turned the episode into an international scandal. Warnborough was sued for its materials being misleading, and the fallout took a significant financial toll on the students. Its President, Brendan Tempest Mogg, still denies any wrongdoing. Warnborough collapsed soon after the suits, but later reemerged as an online university.
Craig: Brendan Tempest Mogg.
John: That’s a great name. Incredible.
Craig: That’s insane.
John: This is 1995, and that’s important context because I feel it was easier to pull this scam, at least get people to show up at a place in 1995 before the internet made it. It’s easier to search things. It’s also a uniquely weird thing that Oxford and these universities have so many different colleges that are all part of the same thing, but are not from the same thing.
Craig: They’re in the system.
John: I can understand why these students were duped to some degree, but as you read through the article, some of the students had some heebie-jeebies, even as they were headed there. I love them showing up and like, “Oh, no.”
Craig: It’s a great moment where they’re driven through Oxford campus and they’re like, “We’re here. It’s amazing.” Then the car just keeps going, and then suddenly it’s out in farmland, and they’re like, “Wait, what?” That’s an amazing moment.
John: I feel like this is a comedy. It needs to be an American Fish Out of Water comedy, and you’re struggling to figure out what it is that we’re going to do next. Is there shame involved? Do you want to report home to your parents what’s happened?
Craig: It feels like it’s potentially a basis for a high concept college comedy. We haven’t had a good college comedy in forever.
John: It’s a missing genre.
Craig: Yes, mostly because no one’s funny anymore. College campus is very serious business. The problem with this as a comedy concept is it’s unique, which sounds weird. Wouldn’t that be what you want? The problem with its unique nature is I don’t see this ever happening anywhere else ever. It can happen once.
Therefore, it’s almost like you’ve rigged your plot to create comedy instead of not rigging it. Do you know what I mean? There’s something so– It’s not science fiction or anything. You can do that. You can do a liar-liar where somebody blows out a candle, science fiction occurs, and now you can’t stop telling the truth. That’s not what this is?
John: No. To me, this feels like a British indie comedy that happens to have a much American center in it, but it’s the fish out of water of these Americans who are trying to figure out what to do. The characters have to be funny and distinct and have clear leadership roles as to what all brings them together.
It’s a Breakfast Club situation and see what happens. How do you make college out of this weird situation? The TV show Community is actually almost the same premise in a weird way. It’s this terrible, “learning institution” that we’re all just surviving inside of.
Craig: Community had that, hey, we know we’re not a four-year college material. There is this unearned, unfair stink that’s on community colleges that should not be there. It’s a little bit like, okay, we know we’re in the loser club. We’re losers and we’re here at loser club. Now let’s deal with that. In this, you get there, you’re– These kids got into Harvard and Princeton and stuff and now they’re here.
Of course, half of them, immediately, are like, “Bye.” Get on a plane and go home. A few of them try and stick it out and eventually go, bye. One poor kid, his grandmother dies, he flies back, doesn’t have the money to fly back again. They all lose their money to Brenden Tempest‑Mogg, or at least that is what he’s been accused of. He’s still out there, by the way.
John: It’s not clear from the article whether he was the person who was administering all this during the time or if he’s the new person brought in for the online university.
Craig: No, he was there. He blamed it on the guy that they had hired for US student recruitment. That guy was like, “No, that guy runs this place.” What happened to them was, as from the article, it seems like they got sanctioned by the government in the UK for being unaccredited, for representing themselves as an institution of higher learning to British people, and they got slapped. As a result of that, maybe it was just that it was an article, perhaps it was just really bad publicity, the upshot of it was their enrollment plummeted in a desperate attempt to save this place.
This is like Fawlty Towers now, where John Cleese has an idea. Well, if someone goes, “You don’t understand. We can’t run this college anymore because there’s no one in Britain who doesn’t know about how bad this is.” He goes, “No one in Britain, you say? What about America?” Then they just go on this campaign to get dumb Americans to believe it’s Oxford. I could see that. I want to now be actually–
John: On the other side.
Craig: It’s funnier. It’s funnier to be this sweaty con artist who’s constantly trying to keep the Americans from leaving and convincing them that this really is Oxford, even though there’s goats moving through the classroom. That’s funny. I would watch that.
John: There are two very different comedies out there, but I think there’s something fun to do there. Both of these are small. I think both of these are Gold Circle movies at the highest end.
Craig: Yes, which is a perfectly good movie to be, if it’s a movie. I would probably rather watch the sitcom version, the good old six-episode British sitcom version. My gut is, I want to be with Basil Fawlty on this. I want to be with Brenden Tempest‑Mogg as he desperately– or Father Ted, it’s such a great standard of sitcom work. The guy in the middle of it is a con artist who’s constantly getting hoisted to buy his own petard. That’s such a evergreen comic engine.
John: Yes, I do love that. All right, let’s recap our movies and our predictions here. Sir Marco Robinson, I don’t think we think there’s a movie to be made specifically about him as a general class of this kind of person as a character, evergreen, the fabulous. Adriana and Veronica, we think there’s multiple ways into telling this as a series. Probably not a movie.
It’s also really a question of where do you start and what is the nature of their relationship as they’re battling and finding what’s fascinating about that. We think there’s a couple movies to be made about fake Oxford. It doesn’t have to be about this one specific place, or just inspired by that general idea. Great. There’s comedy to be found there.
Craig: A comedy.
John: Cool. Let’s answer some listener questions, starting with a rage-baity one. Josh wrote in.
Drew: “Do you guys see this article in The Ankler called Run It Through a GPT-5? The phrase changing Hollywood overnight. Feels vastly overstated regarding the adoption of AI in writers’ rooms and studios, but worth discussing and guaranteed to incur some final draft-level umbrage from Craig.”
John: A little from me as well. I had a reaction to this. A couple of friends sent me this article right as it was published because it mentions AI and WGA, and so they’re always sending me stuff. I had one really visceral reaction, and then I had to modulate it a bit based on, well, what is The Ankler? We’ve been talking about it the trades. There’s Deadline and there’s Hollywood Reporter and these things.
Craig: What is The Ankler?
John: The Ankler, it’s on Substack but it’s not a one-person thing. It’s a bunch of different writers writing under it. It feels like a publication. It feels like journalism, but I’m not sure it really is journalism in the classic sense. I looked up the guy who wrote this, Eric Barmak, and he’s really a producer, not a journalist. Other things he’s written for this, it’s been about, “How I’m using GPT-5 to do these things.” When I look at it from this perspective, it’s not like fan fiction, but it’s more just talking off the top of his head.
Craig: This is an advertisement. That’s what this is because when you look at it, it’s got a headline that’s rage-baity. Then it suggests that something is true without citing anyone. Then it transitions very quickly to, “Here’s what I’ll tell paid subscribers.” Then a nine-point or eight-point bullet point list of all the pro-tip hack benefits that you’d get from reading this. The implication being, this is how you’re going to beat the robots.
John: What’s frustrating is there’s a lead to it. It’s basically, you get a paragraph for free and a bunch of bullet points, and then you click through the full thing to see it. Fortunately, a friend had a subscription and sent through the whole thing, so we have a PDF to look at. One of the bullet points is, “Why did the WGA’s ‘AI protections’ from the 2023 strike are already outflanked, and what the guild can’t actually stop this time.” Nothing in the article gets to that point at all.
Craig: Oh, you mean you’ve read the paid subscriber?
John: I’ve read the paid subscriber.
Craig: Oh, did you pay him?
John: No, people sent me the PDF of the whole thing.
Craig: Oh, we stole it.
John: No, we didn’t steal it.
[laughter]
John: An actual subscriber who was concerned about stuff sent it through to me for my PDF.
Craig: We should ask ChatGPT to summarize it for us.
John: Absolutely.
Craig: Of course, because this is just like all the things that you see at the bottom of a local newspaper. There’s all these suggested articles that are clearly from an ad mill, and they’re all full of things like this. How many times have you seen this stupid doctor that’s warning you not to eat blueberries for breakfast? Do you see this?
John: All the time.
Drew: I don’t get that one.
Craig: Okay, because you’re not old. We must have let them know that we’re in our 50s because there’s something about this doctor.
John: They know.
Craig: They know. This doctor is like, “I have a warning for Americans over 50. Do not eat this for breakfast.” It always shows a bowl of blueberries. I’m like, “A, okay. B, what?” It’s this. That’s all this is. It’s crap.
John: What I don’t understand about the whole process is, did Barmack write the meat of the article, and then someone else writes the leads for things? They don’t seem to match very well together.
Craig: It’s almost like maybe a person didn’t write all of it at all.
John: I don’t want to go into that level of speculation, rather than focus on the article itself, which I don’t think– it’s all filler. What I do want to say is that there’s a class of article that is just designed to be like a grenade you throw into a room and rage bait. We just have to recognize this and not overreact to it.
Craig: This is so poorly done as rage bait. I feel nothing. This didn’t even get the tiniest bit of red mist in me.
John: Here’s where I think it’s dangerous is that a person reads this and says, “Well, God, if all the writers’ rooms are just using ChatGPT to do everything,” and if, “Oh, do a GPT-5 pass on things,” because it’s a standard thing, no, it’s not.
Craig: No, it’s not.
John: No one is saying that at all.
Craig: Never. Nobody says that.
John: As we have conversations with the actual people who are creating film and television every day, this is just not a thing that is actually happening.
Craig: It’s not.
John: I think it’s distracting from the real concerns we should have about AI and how it’s going to impact writing and every other part of the industry to just hand away and assume this stuff is already happening, and it’s not actually happening. That’s my great frustration.
Craig: I love this bullet point. The quiet gold rush in studio marketing and post teams. By the way, I’m going to get back to– this is rage baiting to me, is how bad it is actually. The quiet gold rush in studio marketing and post teams, where a GPT-5 can cut 20 trailers before lunch and nobody’s sure whose job that is anymore. Okay, the second part of that sentence undermines the first part. If GPT-5 can do that, how is there a gold rush?
Second of all, everyone’s sure whose job that is. It’s the guys who edit the trailers. It’s still their job. This is so poorly done. In any case, I’m not falling for it. More importantly to me to answer, I guess, Josh, who wrote this in. He was saying, did you guys see this? He said, “Feels vastly overstated, but well worth discussing.” Josh, I think you’re exactly correct. This is vastly overstated. Nobody talks like this. Are there writers’ assistants who use ChatGPT to summarize? Perhaps, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a writer’s assistant.
John: Yes. As an industry, there are a lot of conversations happening about how as an industry are we going to address what these technologies do and how it’s going to change things because it’s going to change things. It’s important for the industry to be smart and proactive about making the choices now about what we use these things for and what do we not use them for. This just stirs up anger.
Craig: Also, there are not that many people reading this. That’s the other thing.
John: My concern is that it’s because people who are tangentially in the industry, they see this kind of thing and they assume that this must be true because it’s in print.
Craig: 98% of what is written about our business is nonsense. This fits right in with everything going all the way back to the 20s. It’s just baloney. I love saying baloney. It’s baloney.
John: Let’s get to a happier letter from one of our listeners. This is Paneque, who writes in about some producers.
Drew: All right. “I’ve been out here about 10 years. I’ve worked my way from assistant to writer during that time, but I’ve never really had something hit or get hot. That changed this past week. My new script went out and got an immediate response. I was bombarded with meetings, all of which my reps handled beautifully while trying to build a competitive situation for me. I feel incredibly blessed. However, one of my most enthusiastic meetings has now really turned up the pressure.
It was a company I’d met previously and to whom I’d sent the script directly, and it’s a place I think really loves and understands my intentions. I’ve met with other folks who have similar enthusiasm. Now, this company’s executives have started to contact me directly, reaching out to tell me how much they want to work with me and how they’d be heartbroken if they don’t. While I’d be lucky to work with them, I also feel awkward since I do want to continue with my reps’ plan to keep everything competitive and keep momentum going, and give this thing its best shot at being made.
At the same time, I also want to remain cognizant and grateful that I have smart people passionate about a project so dear to me. How do I navigate this? If the project does land elsewhere, how do I salvage that relationship with people I really do respect?”
Craig: This one’s easy because this happened to me. I’m sure it happened to you. I remember talking about this with my agents way back when. I said, “I don’t know what to do because they’re not calling me, and I feel bad.” They were like, “Oh, we’re going to call them and yell at them. We’re going to call them and say, ‘Hey, our client is incredibly nice. He loves you. He’s so worried about upsetting you. Because you’re contacting him directly, he feels you. Our job is to tell you you can’t do that. We’re his agents. That’s our job. Our job is to do this. You have to go through us. If you don’t go through us, we have a problem.'”
It’s just as simple as that. The agents become the heavies. By the way, everybody knows. What they’re doing is they’re just trying to get what they want. They’re just end-running the system. The agents who are the system are like, “Stop end-running the system,” because they can all speak to each other in the fully cynical language of people who know what we’re doing, as opposed to us who are like, “Oh my God, they care so much.” No, they don’t. Hard for us to be cynical. Probably shouldn’t be. Let the agents do it.
John: What can happen here is that the people who sent this thing to you directly, it may make sense to give it to them to take to one place or to places where they have relationships, but other producers will take it other places too. I agree with Craig. Your reps need to call them and say, “Hey, our client loves you, but also you need to back off because there’s lots of people he needs to be talking with.”
Craig: Also, you can’t. It’s as simple as that. You can’t do it anymore. It’s not because he’s asking you or she’s asking you to stop. We’re telling you, we don’t want you doing it. You have to go through us. It will hurt you to go around us because guess what? We’re this kid’s agents, not you. We have our thumb on the scale.
John: Here’s the balance is that as a writer working, you’re going to have personal relationships and direct relationships with some producers and some stuff that is only moderated through your reps. The ones who you do have specific personal relationships with, they need to also be in contact with your reps so that it’s not all on you.
It doesn’t mean you have to blow off these producers. It’s great that they love you because it seems like they’re good legitimate producers, but you need to communicate with your reps and then communicate after the reps have communicated through them. Make sure that you have a positive relationship going forward, but it’s not all just directed straight to you.
Craig: Perfectly fine to reply back and say, “This means so much to me. I think the world of you guys.”
John: “We’re so excited to see what happens with this, and we cannot wait to work with you on things.”
Craig: “I’ve let my agents know how passionate you guys are. I’m sure they’ll be reaching out.” Then your agents, when they read that, they’re like, “Oh, we’re about to get the call.” Then they’re going to get the call. They’re like, “I know.” That’s how they’re going to answer the phone. “I know.” The agents will be like, “Can you stop?” “Yes.” “Look, I love this script. I just don’t want to lose this script with so-and-so.”
John: Which is great.
Craig: Exactly. No one’s going to be like, “Wow, your client really hurt my feelings.”
John: They don’t have feelings. All right, let’s get to our one cool thing. I am just back from two weeks in Australia. My one cool thing is, the whole continent is fantastic, but my one cool thing for this week is Sydney. The city of Sydney is terrific. It’s always reductionist to compare one city to another city and do this. Sydney was great in a lot of ways. I find Vancouver to be great in that it’s just the right size city.
Craig: Not too big, not too small.
John: Sydney has fantastic public transportation. If you need to take an Uber someplace, they show up really quick. So many restaurants. I have no idea how–
Craig: So many.
John: So many.
Craig: So many restaurants.
John: I have no idea how the city can support as many restaurants as it does, but fantastic. Great.
Craig: Australians love eating.
John: I was lucky to be there for great weather. You can hike anywhere. There’s a zillion beach walks.
Craig: What about the spiders?
John: I saw no spiders.
Craig: You saw no spiders?
John: Well, there were no poisonous snakes.
Craig: They were there-
John: No animals came after me.
Craig: -stalking you.
John: A lot of cockatoos.
Craig: Oh, well, those are nice.
John: They’re nice. They’re gorgeous.
Craig: They’re not poisonous.
John: No.
Craig: It’s the only non-poisonous animal in Australia.
John: There are bats. The Sydney Opera House. We saw Rent at the Sydney Opera House.
Craig: Rent?
John: Rent.
Craig: You saw a Rent?
John: Rent. Sydney Opera House is great. We did the bridge climb again. We did all the touristy things.
Craig: Lovely.
John: I loved it.
Craig: I was so bummed out, too. I was supposed to go on the promotional tour for our second season, but I had to finish the show because our post-production people were like, “You can’t leave.”
John: Can’t leave.
Craig: “You can’t leave,” and so I couldn’t go. I was bummed out.
John: You’ve never been to Sydney?
Craig: No, that was my chance.
John: When you get there, it’ll be great. Everyone will try to marry visiting Australia and New Zealand at the same time. I get it.
Craig: It’s not a short little trip there. Quite a bit of ocean between them.
John: No, I will just say enjoy Australia for itself.
Craig: I honestly want to go see New Zealand because I want to be in Middle-earth. Straight up. I’m not going to lie to the people of Christchurch I’m not that interested in the town center. I want to go to Hobbiton. Straight up. I will. One day, I will. Maybe go visit my friends at Wētā. Well, I’m glad you had a great trip. Fantastic. The moment you left, there were 5,000 emails sent to people. Just be mindful.
John: I picked my time.
Craig: Just be mindful. Well, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on an island in the Pacific as well, playing Ghost of Yōtei-
John: I know nothing about it.
Craig: -which is the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, which I’m sure was my one cool thing back when Ghost of Tsushima came out. Now, I will say Ghost of Yōtei, which is a PlayStation Exclusive, has all the things that I really enjoyed about the first game and all the things that I were annoyed by in the first game. The combat is wonderful. It’s fluid combat, lots of fun options. In the first game, you had different stances you would use depending on the foes and the weapons.
John: Is this set in medieval Japan?
Craig: In medieval Japan. Exactly. In feudal Japan. This, you have different weapons, lots of stealth and parkour, minor parkour. It’s the characters and the dialogue. It’s just–
John: It’s wooden. No, I’m sorry.
Craig: It was wooden the first time. It’s made of the same wood this time. When you wander around a world and you meet people, like we play D&D, we meet NPCs all the time. One thing that’s really important is that NPCs, some of them can be boring, some of them can be earnest, serious, speak in platitudes and homilies and deep thoughts, but you want a bunch of them to be a little nuts or really funny or lusty or just really angry.
There’s only a couple. You meet so many people. There’s one character I’ve met so far who’s funny slightly, and nobody knows what to do with him. Everyone’s like, “Ugh, this guy. I can’t believe they let somebody with a sense of humor into feudal Japan.” They’re going to make another one. There’s going to be a Ghost of– pick another area of Japan. When they do, I would just urge them, give these characters a little more zip. A little more edge. Boy, is it fun running around killing. I got to tell you. I got my katana. I got my kusarigama. Oh, so much fun.
John: Love it. We talked before about how great Baldur’s Gate was on Baldur’s Gate 3 on so many levels.
Craig: So many.
John: The writing was terrific. Every character you ran into was so specific.
Craig: So many. They were funny. They were pathetic. They were funny to laugh at. They weren’t funny themselves, but you could laugh at them and how ridiculous they were. A lot of them, like the character of Auntie Ethel, spoiler alert for a while, she’s a hag. When you meet her, she just is this kindly old Irish lady trying to sell you potions. Then you find out she’s a hag who’s trying to basically devour a child to turn into a new hag. She’s hysterical. She’s so funny.
John: Even when you run into a bunch of goblins who are guarding a bridge, each of the goblins is specific.
Craig: They got their own thing. They fell into the thing of, all right, goblins are Cockney. I was like, “Bad monsters always have Cockney accents.” “Oh, can we have a little meet?”
John: Ghost of Yotai.
Craig: Ghost of Yōtei.
John: Yotei.
Craig: Ghost of Yōtei. Lots of fun if you like feudal Japan. I will say, having played Assassin’s Creed Shadows– honestly, see, I can’t even remember the subtitles. Is that the last Assassin’s Creed, which was also set in feudal Japan? I think this is better. Also, visually, there are times where you’re like, “Whoa, it’s so beautiful.” Thumbs up for me. Room for improvement, Ghost Squad, but the gameplay aspects are fantastic.
John: A friend of mine, a writer friend, is working on a big AAA game that’s not announced yet, and so he’s under so many NDAs. Just hearing the description of how hard the work is on that, it’s just incredible.
Craig: It’s so many people work so long and so hard, and sometimes the games don’t work. This one, I assume it’s selling well.
John: I hope so. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week comes from Jeff Ross. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. I don’t think it’s that Jeff Ross. It’s a different Jeff Ross. Is that on a roast?
Craig: It’s not roastmaster Jeff Ross?
John: Could be. If you have an outro, you can send a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with the sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting. There’s lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You will find us on Instagram @scriptnotespodcast.
We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find all this at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. You’ll just get the one email.
Craig: Just one.
John: Not 80, just one.
Craig: Just the one.
John: Thank you again to our premium subscribers for your kind attention. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on watching things when you’re away from home. Craig, Drew, thanks for a fun show.
Craig: Thank you, John.
[Bonus Segment]
John: Craig, we were traveling for two weeks in Australia. There are things we wanted to watch that were on streaming services. There are things that we wanted to watch which were on broadcast. It’s always the question of how best to do this. Our classic technique for traveling is we just pack an Apple TV with us. We put in a little box with HDMI cable, its power cord. 55% of the time, we can make it work.
It’s a hassle in that getting that box connected to the hotel’s WiFi is challenging. It’s improved over time, but it’s still challenging. There’s ways it pairs with your phone to do it. Getting an HDMI port that actually works can be a challenge. Getting a plug that’s close enough to the Apple TV, so you’re not reaching across the whole room, can be a challenge. It’s just a frustrating experience.
This last time, we did take the Apple TV, but did not end up plugging it in. Instead, we used Google Cast, which was on all the hotel TVs, to do it. It was rolling dice to see, oh, is it going to work this time? Is it not going to work this time? Why did it stop working suddenly midway through watching Survivor?
Craig: Hotels have this legacy problem of wanting to charge you to watch stuff on their television. I guess you could buy movies. They have their in-hotel rental system. You can buy a movie and show it to your kids to shut them up while you go have dinner in the bad hotel restaurant. They seem to think that’s still a thing, and maybe it is still a thing.
John: At certain price points, it probably is.
Craig: Possibly, but I do feel like we’re past it. A reasonable hotel chain at this point should just go, “Hey, here’s how you can watch whatever you want.” There are some security issues. What they don’t want is for somebody to log into their account on a TV, check out, have it still be there, and the next person starts buying stuff on your account. There’s concerns that I’m sure they have. They also don’t want people uploading crap into their system through the television somehow, I suppose. That could be a thing.
First thing I do when I walk into a hotel room, if it’s one of those hotels that has the TV on when you walk in, which drives me crazy because they’ve set it to the hotel welcome channel, first thing you do is turn it off.
John: It’s so bright, also.
Craig: It’s so bright and it’s so annoying, and it’s always playing bad music. Then I just watch stuff on my iPad. I don’t even bother with the TV.
John: When it’s just you, it’s great, but sharing, me and Mike together–
Craig: I don’t share.
John: A couple of times, we just end up watching off my computer. It was close enough, and it was easy enough. A couple of hotels I’ve been at in Norway, there’s an HDMI port you could just plug in. I was like, “Oh, that’s-”
Craig: Lovely
John: “-lovely and nice.” I feel like Google Cast is attempting to be that same basic technology, where basically, on the menu, you go to Google Cast and just like, here’s the QR code, scan this thing and do it. If it all worked consistently, fantastic, but it’s buried in other stuff.
Craig: Hotel internet is horrible. It’s firewalled up the wazoo, and it’s slow. It’s also incredibly fragmented. Your speeds are-
John: They’re shifty, yes
Craig: -relative to whatever anybody else is doing. If five people on the floor are all Google Casting, you’re screwed.
John: There are times where we end up tethering to our phones because-
Craig: Oh, geez.
John: -our data plan was so big for Australia that we were never going to be able to burn through all of it.
Craig: Can we talk about data plans for a second? Do you know what drives me crazy?
John: Please.
Craig: I had to do this for my older kid. She needed a new phone. I had to go on where Verizon meets Verizon. I had to go on to put the new device on the old phone line. I never go there. They’re like, “Oh, by the way, here’s the tab, review your plans.” The crazy thing is, every other business is constantly upselling you. These people, I don’t know if this is true for AT&T or other service providers., they quietly are like, “Oh, your plan is you pay $40 a month for X. Well, we have a new plan where you pay 10 cents a month for 1,000X.” You’re like, “Why didn’t you tell me? This whole time I could have had this?”
John: Our broadband at our house was the same situation where we were actually like, “Wait, no, the new plans are so much more for so much less.”
Craig: Quietly, they’re like, “Okay, we roll these new plans out to get the new people, but let’s not tell the old people. Let’s just have them keep spending money.” Somebody out there is still spending money on a pager. Anyway, that’s a side gripe.
John: We were getting back to the story of the internet at these hotels can be really challenging too. Also, if I’m trying to watch stuff off my American YouTube TV, I use my VPN, ExpressVPN. Mostly works.
Craig: Mostly works. There are so many VPNs.
Drew: Do you guys not watch linear TV in the hotel rooms?
Craig: No?
John: Occasionally. We were in Egypt earlier this year, and it was fun to actually just watch linear TV in Egypt because you’re just like, “Oh, this is actually a very charming, Ted Lasso-y kind of show that it’s all in Cairo.” That’s great. No, mostly I’m not doing that.
Craig: I have never. I don’t watch linear TV here. Why am I going to watch it there?
Drew: For me, that’s the joy of it. It’s being part of the culture in that way by just watching whatever–
Craig: I have to say, I have watched television overseas. Let me just annoy an entire continent.
John: Please.
Craig: I find European television to be obnoxious. Our television is ridiculous. I find their ads are obnoxious. I want Europe to be more dignified. They’re the old country. I want them to have a little bit more restraint. Instead, less when it comes to advertising, it’s all quite garish and loud. Anyway, right in Europe. Let’s go on, or I’m going to get a summons from The Hague.
John: Finally, this week, Apple TV+ is now just Apple TV.
Craig: Oh, thank God. Now I know what to do.
John: Now you can watch Apple TV-
Craig: On your Apple TV.
John: -on Apple TV through Apple TV.
Craig: Which is where your iMovies is and iTunes.
John: Which is the best thing. I do hope that we’ll get an Apple TV stick because, honestly, the box does not need to be this big. This is my new phone. All of the phone is this tiny little bump at the very top of the phone.
Craig: I am confused by the size of the Apple TVs myself.
John: They have storage. Storage for what exactly?
Craig: That’s the thing. They were designed to store a lot. You don’t really need to store that much anymore.
John: It just needs to connect.
Craig: Yes. Also, I was about to say, they’re annoying because sometimes you just have to restart them because they just crash. Then again, they’re running all the time. If they crash once every six months–
John: They’re really solid. They’re really good. Once they finally figured out how to make a non-terrible remote– I like the remote now.
Craig: I have the universal remote. I can’t deal with that. Then people are like, “Use your phone.” No, I will not. Yes, Apple TV’s pretty solid. Yes, Apple TV+, Hulu, gone. Plus, gone. HBO Max. Max, gone. HBO Max, back. Netflix sits there like, “We’re still Netflix, by the way.” FYI, they’re so cool. They’re just smoking a cigarette, like, “That’s nice.” Oh, you don’t have a Plus anymore?
John: No. Listening back to this bonus segment in 5 years or 10 years, what things will be like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe they were still talking about this as a thing.”
Craig: Oh, Apple TV’s been around for a long time now. Wasn’t it Chromecast? Now it’s Google Cast. Wasn’t it Chromecast?
John: Yes, it’s now called Google Cast.
Craig: Then what was Slingbox?
John: Slingbox was a separate service, Slingbox.tv, which was basically, I think, a unit that you had on your own personal TV, and then you could basically log into it from any computer anywhere in the world. YouTube TV has taken the place of that for us.
Craig: YouTube TV-
John: That’s how you’re getting your local channels in the US.
Craig: -is how I get my local channels, yes. I think the cable companies have given up on that one, mostly. They’re like, “We know. Just take the internet. How about that? If you check on the new plan, we pay you $80.”
[laughter]
John: It’s how it works.
Craig: “You have 14 trillion gigabytes instead of your current plan, $100 for one megabyte.” Why do they do that? Well, I know why they do that. I know the answer to my question. It’s as obnoxious as a European ad. I’m going to get so many ad complaints. Well, I’ve spent time in America, and I think your ads are obnoxious. Fine.
John: Fine. Craig, Drew, thanks.
Craig: Thank you.
John: Thanks.
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