Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey this is John. Today’s episode comes from a panel recorded last week in cooperation with Hollywood Health and Society. If you want to see video from the panel there’s a link in the show notes. But realistically if you’re already listening to this audio you are fine. You don’t need to see the video. There’s no slides or anything you’re going to miss.

Now, Craig was planning to cohost this panel with me, but he has had a family medical situation, so I did this one solo. But I think Craig is really going to enjoy this episode, if he listens, which I hope he listens to it because he really will like this episode. We have a remarkable showrunner, Gemma Baker, we also have a medical doctor who can talk about the science of addiction. We have a therapist who can talk about young people and mental health. And we have a journalist who writes extensively on drug policy. It’s a really great group.

We talk about writing protagonists dealing with mental health and addiction issues, their impact on other characters, the responsibility of writers addressing those topics, and what writers need to keep in mind about their own mental health.

This episode pairs really well with Episode 99 if you want to go back and listen to that one.

Today’s episode was produced by Megana Rao, with music and editing by Matthew Chilelli. Special thanks to Marty Kaplan, Kate Folb, and everyone at Hollywood Health and Society for putting together the event. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August. I host a weekly podcast with Craig Mazin called Scriptnotes and we talk a lot about writing and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And as we talk about screenwriting we’re always trying to focus on specifics, like what is the specificity of this moment, what is the reality behind this thing? Why are characters doing what they’re doing? We will talk about the words on the page, but we’ll also talk about the experience of watching the stories that we’re trying to tell. And we’ll bring on guests sometimes to talk about very specific things that they wish we as writers could do a better job at.

We had Rachel Bloom on recently to talk about how we portray sex on screen and how we can portray sex more realistically on screen.

So when I found out this panel was happening I virtually threw myself in front of Kate to say like, hey, do you need a host, because I really wanted to talk with these very smart people about addiction and mental health.

Another thing we talk about on Scriptnotes a lot is structure, so let me talk a little bit about the structure of tonight’s evening. I want to start by talking about the experience of a character facing addiction or mental health challenges. Then talk about the characters around them, sort of how that character is impacting the world around them. We’ll then step outside a little bit and talk about how the stories we tell are perceived by the world out there and what is our responsibility, what are our opportunities as we’re telling these stories. And finally as we’re talking about addiction and mental health, how do we as creators have to be mindful of our own mental health? And things we can be looking out for for ourselves.

So that’s sort of the structure for the evening. There will be questions and Q&A at the end, so if a question comes up along the way remember it because we’ll get to that at the end. But I want to start by talking about how our characters come into our stories and I want to start with you, Gemma. So, Gemma Baker is a writer and producer and the co-creator of the hit CBS comedy series, Mom, a show lauded for its portrayal of addiction. She previously wrote on Two and a Half Men. She graduated from Tisch with a degree in theater.

Gemma Baker: Hello.

John: My question for you, so the two lead characters on Mom both have addiction issues. How early in the process of coming up with Mom did you know that this was a thing that you were going to want to explore?

Gemma: In the very, very beginning. So when it was first being talked about the idea was for the character to be a mom who has addiction, active addiction and drug problem. They knew they wanted – it was Chuck Lorre and Eddie Gorodetsky – and they wanted to do a show about a mom and they thought we’re going to bring in a mom. And they asked me if I thought that could be funny. And I just thought, well, if people don’t think that the kids are safe they’re not going to feel OK laughing. And so what if the character was in recovery? And you could root for her, because you knew she was trying to change. And so that was our starting point.

John: What was the starting point for your research into this? How did you find out about what recovery would look like and sort of where the opportunities were and where the challenges were for these characters? What was that research process like for you?

Gemma: I think one of the things that was really important for us was that a lot of times when recovery is portrayed, not necessarily now, but then it felt like it was dreary and that there was no joy and light and there wasn’t a lot of hope in the portrayal of it. And I think that that is what we felt was missing, you know. And that anyone who knows and loves someone in recovery knows that that’s such a huge part of it. And also so often recovery is the end of the story. You know, you watch a whole movie about addiction and it’s so awful and painful and heart-wrenching and then at the very end it’s like and then they got sober, the end, roll credits.

John: Sometimes they’ll give you nice little title cards.

Gemma: And then they got sober and it worked out.

John: Yep.

Gemma: And I think that recovery is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the story. It is having a chance. It is where it’s the beginning. And so we wanted to tell a story that started there. That was really important to us.

John: That’s great. Well let’s talk more about recovery. So our next guest, Dr. Corey Waller, is a nationally-recognized addiction expert and currently practicing specialist in addiction, pain, and emergency medicine. Through his work with the Health Management Associates and the National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs he has developed addiction treatment methods, provider training, and educational outreach delivered by that center. Dr. Corey Waller, thank you for being here.

Dr. Corey Waller: Thanks.

John: We’re going to be talking about addiction and mental health. And because you’re the actual doctor here can you help us get our terms straight. When we say someone is dealing with addiction what does addiction mean in a medical sense? Or what’s helpful for us to be thinking about when you use the term addiction?

Corey: That’s a great question and I think a lot of people misinterpret what addiction is. Addiction is not the presence or absence of a drug in somebody’s system. It’s the way in which they behave in obtaining and using the drug. And we actually define addiction based on nine very specific behaviors. That means they’re predictable. I mean, in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual we’ve identified nine specific behaviors associated with both drugs and/or a behavior like gambling that ultimately tell us whether or not someone has addiction. And we can use those behaviors and the presence or absence of those to determine how severe it is.

And so with that, that’s how we create our interventions and have done all of our testing to identify how to appropriately treat people at the beginning because they have predictable behaviors that we identify as addiction. And unfortunately those behaviors many times are misinterpreted as frustration or anger when in actuality they’re just symptoms of a disease. And so I think that’s the big piece around addiction is that it’s definable, it’s identifiable, and it’s not because somebody is mean or it’s not because somebody got drunk at a party. And it’s not because somebody used cocaine on a Friday. It’s what does that look like in their life in general and do they have control over that drug. Do they have control over their behavior when obtaining that drug? Do they try to obtain that drug over their safety or over the safety of their kids? Or do they lose their job because of the drug? These are the ways we define it.

And so many times that term is slung around in a pretty messy way. But medically we have very specific criteria for what addiction is. And we actually know more about the neurobiology of addiction than any other chronic brain disease.

John: So as we’re talking about terms, addictions can have a pejorative context. Like someone has – and we need to get past that. That’s the stigma thing we’re trying to get past tonight. But a word like addict – is addict a useful word or not a useful word? What’s helpful for us to be saying when we’re talking with somebody who is dealing with these issues?

Corey: Well person. If we just start with that. But in general people aren’t defined by their disease. We’ve gone really far to make sure that people with diabetes and cancer and other medical illnesses aren’t defined as their disease, because they’re a person with that disease. And the disease is a part of who they are, but it’s not how we define them.

So we don’t in a perfect world call them addicts. We call them a person with addiction. And then we can get very specific in healthcare terms. They have an opioid use disorder, or a substance use disorder. Terms like clean and dirty, those are terms that are utilized that have no medical connection whatsoever. Even like a urine drug test. They dropped “dirty.” I have doctors say that. There is no clinical terminology. What does that mean? It get mud in it? I don’t really know.

What we have to start doing is not taking on how the patient’s very self-stigmatizing language is utilized. And it’s used a little bit to combat the shame and the fear of this disease and not take that language and somehow weaponize it toward them. Because as people in healthcare and even just society in general, using a term like a person with addiction is just – it is what it is. And that’s where I think we should start.

John: And thinking about this as writers, as we’re coming up with character descriptions, we’re trying to describe what a character is like, if we use a word like addict that just stops us dead it’s very hard to see anything else around that character. We’re not seeing what they’re doing and we’re not seeing the choices they’re making. It’s taken all the agency away from that character. And so finding the right words to use feels really important.

The other part of our panel tonight, our discussion, is about mental health. Where are the overlaps between people with problems with addiction and mental health things? Is there a big crossover between the two?

Corey: Yeah. And so the crossover seems to really be identified in those with what we call adverse childhood events. So early life trauma. I ran a clinic dedicated to pregnant and parenting females. So we saw hundreds of females who had addiction while they were pregnant and all but two of those hundreds had a significant early life trauma, most of that sexual trauma. And so the early life experiences that occur to someone increase the chances of them having not only addiction but a co-occurring mental health disorder.

And that mental health disorder if not treated while you’re treating addiction will make the addiction unstable. And if you’re treating the mental health disorder on one side but not addressing the addiction you’re never going to get the addiction stable. So it’s a matter of most people who have addiction also have a co-occurring identifiable mental health disorder.

It’s unclear early in treatment if that’s going to be there after we stabilize them in treatment. And so you have to go through a pretty significant process. But quite honestly as you’ll hear, one side doesn’t necessarily talk to the other. You hear, “I treat addiction,” or “I treat only psychiatric ailments.” But rarely do those ships meet in the night. I mean, honestly, it’s crazy because that one book has all of the descriptions and a third of it is about addiction but then there are psychiatrists who are like, “Eh, I just kind of ignored that part,” and moved on. And then addiction medicine providers who don’t read the other stuff. So it’s very disconnected where it really shouldn’t be.

John: All right. Let’s keep looking for that crossover. Our next guest is Dr. Holly Daniels. She is the managing director of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, supporting 32,000 clinicians. She has worked as a clinician, teacher, therapeutic consultant for over 15 years, specializing in addictions, eating disorders, and other mental health issues using her extensive knowledge with treatment programs on university and college campuses to help young adults thrive. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Sophia University. So you’re working with younger populations, what are some things that we as sort of non – older than college students – might not be aware of that are happening on campuses, college campuses and high school campuses? What do you see that we may not be aware of? What are the things that young people are facing?

Dr. Holly Daniels: Well there’s a really interesting dynamic right now in that our society as a whole has embraced talking more about mental illness in general and substance use disorder. And that’s really prevalent in the younger generation. So kids are actually talking more on campus about – even about their mental health issues, about having anxiety, about being depressed, and there’s more of a discourse. And I would say thank you to television and film, actually, for opening up a lot of that discourse. Kids feel more free to talk about it. But, you know, there is kind of that backlash of the more they’re talking about it and there isn’t really the science-based support to help them through it, right, there’s still a lot of issues with drug and alcohol abuse, you know, from age 10 up. And there really isn’t unfortunately enough support in our school systems or in our education system. And the education that they’re getting about mental health issues and substance use issues is coming from the media, right.

I mean, that is their discourse. The film and television and what they’re watching. And so sometimes it’s a really helpful education. And I don’t know if anybody has seen Eighth Grade, but I loved Eighth Grade by Bo Burnham which talked a lot about anxiety. We have shows like Euphoria which I’ll let us – maybe I’ll talk about that later. I have different ideas, I have thoughts, too.

But overall I would say the big positive is that, just like Corey was talking about, we really need to chance as a society and stop penalizing mental health issues and criminalizing substance use. And the great thing is when we can see those stories in television and film and we can see people having compassion and leaning in to support the people who are struggling that gives our young kids, our adolescents and our young adults, that model to be like, oh, if somebody is struggling I reach in and help. I don’t call them a bad person or say that they have a moral failing. I want to help.

And that’s actually really a hopeful thing that’s happening on campuses is that kids want to help each other. They want to be there for each other and that’s a beautiful thing.

John: Yeah. I definitely noticed that kids, teenagers, want to help each other but sometimes don’t have the actual skills to be helping each other.

Holly: Right.

John: And to what degree do we need to be aware of contagion or the sense of like a person with a challenge spreads to other – like how as a person who is dealing with young populations what are some things that we have to be aware of with teenagers? Are there are different things that happen with them?

Holly: Such a good question. And this is why the work that Hollywood Health and Society does is so important and being able to as film and TV writers reach out to experts to understand where that fine line is when you’re portraying heroin use, or when you’re talking about kids committing suicide. What are the things that you can do so that the visuals, right, are not more triggering than they need to be? It’s a fine line of we want to be able to talk about this, and we want to be able to portray it because that’s important. But we also don’t want to cause children out there to hurt themselves, right, or create an atmosphere in which they feel like it’s glamorized or it’s cool to self-harm.

John: So finding that balance between realism and glamorization is a challenging thing. We’ll keep talking about more of that tonight. But I want to introduce Zachary Siegel. He is a journalist who covers public health, mental health, and criminal justice. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New Republic, Slate, Wired, and Politico Magazine. He’s currently a journalism fellow at Northeastern University, the university’s Health and Justice Action Lab where he has spearheaded the “Change the Narrative” project. He cohosts Narcotica, a podcast about drugs that’s informed by science, policy, and the lives of real drug users.

I have a rival podcaster on the panel. I’m not sure I—

Zachary Siegel: That’s OK.

Kate Folb: That’s why we put them as far away as possible.

Zachary: We’re hoping to steal this audio, too, for our own podcast so we’ll talk later.

John: All right. It all crosses over. Zach, could we talk about sort of your experiences with addiction and sort of the degree to which Hollywood and the things you saw in movies and television influenced the start of that, the progress of that, the recovery from that. What did you see as you were encountering it for the first time?

Zachary: Yeah, so I’ll try to keep this brief because it’s a long story. So, full disclosure, when I was about 17 had opioid use disorder as we call it now. And it really started with friends and I exchanging pharmaceuticals and really what happened was as a young, anxious, sort of nervous Jewish teenager trying to figure out what the world was like I took an opioid and finally felt normal. Like I finally felt OK. And it’s a cliché at this point, but it is really true. When most people take opioids they get kind itchy and constipated and they don’t really like them. When I take an opioid it was like, OK, the clouds have parted and I feel very, very comfortable, which can be a very dangerous feeling for a teenager.

And so that progressed and progressed and progressed, like all the way up to heroin use, but to not like [unintelligible] with that story because really I was just like watching movies like pretty zonked out five hours a day. It was not a productive time of my life. But I did watch a lot of media. So I can talk about, for example, like how maybe the first time I ever saw injection heroin use on screen was Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio. And I think that had a huge impact on me and I wanted to be a writer and be in like sort of the beat scene in New York and that whole thing was very attractive. But, you know, the sort of delusion that has to be confronted is like people on drugs typically, you know, life is really hard and you can’t necessarily be productive.

Like I was not a successful writer when I was using heroin because I had to think basically in six-hour timetables where, OK, here’s one fix and where’s money for the next one. And to live in this sort of collapsed time where you’re very much encased by the next one and the next one. It was incredibly difficult. And so I can talk more about media, but yeah I do think the way that I consumed media and the things that I saw were very impactful.

It may sound random, but there’s a documentary called Methadonia produced on HBO. I don’t know if anyone saw this, but it was a horrific portrayal of a drug called Methadone. And just the quick facts, Methadone saves lives. It reduces someone’s risk of fatally overdosing by 50% or more. And this documentary however portrayed it so negatively and I think I was a teenager watching that before I’d ever really like thought that one day I might need this drug. But as the recovery process sort of unfolded for me and I didn’t wind up in a Methadone program I had to confront my own stigma about people who take Methadone because of that documentary.

So these things have – it’s just a huge responsibility to portray this.

John: So I thought we would start by talking about the experience of a central character in our story, so either a movie or a television show, who is dealing with an issue and sort of talk about the timeframe, the things, the challenges, what are the realities there so we can then think about how we are going to portray them and sort of what are the opportunities. And so my hypothetical character I want to introduce is a character named Jane. She’s 28. Boyfriend, not married. An alcoholic. And we can talk about where her alcoholism is. I use the term alcoholic. I probably should use a person dealing with alcoholism. But this is where the character is that we’re meeting. But we could meet her at many places along the spectrum.

So Gemma, you decided for your show to show somebody who is already in recovery. Corey, can you talk me through someone who is dealing with alcoholism where are some points along the way we might meet that character? What are the stages where we might meet a character who is grappling with it?

Corey: Well, I mean, a bar. Common location. So a couple of things—

John: The timespan. The stages of—

Corey: I know. So as we look at this, alcohol use disorder is the most prevalent addiction period. You add all the other ones together, it’s still not as many people that have alcohol use disorder in the country. So it is still the most prevalent, but it’s also the one that is more normalized. And so people can go to a bar and get barely able to stand or walk and we’ll call them an Uber and send them home, but we don’t think about that in the context of alcohol use disorder a lot. So somebody tied one on, or you’re hungover this morning, or that kind of piece.

But generally speaking the first time that we interact with them in a healthcare setting is going to be when they accidentally fall and break an ankle. Or they get picked up by police and are incoherent and show up – you know, I’m an emergency medicine doctor, I still practice – and so I’ll see people in the emergency department and that’s how I first encounter them many times is intoxicated. And just being intoxicated doesn’t mean you have an alcohol use disorder, but it starts to really add up a lot of those points that we talked about when you are intoxicated, and you fell, and you hurt yourself, and you ended up in the emergency department because of the intoxication.

So it’s not always just the homeless intoxicated person who shows up to the emergency department. The early part of the disease means that there are times in which things are stable. They’re still able to generally go to work. They’re still able to have an interaction. They’re still able to have friends and connections. And over time those things start to wane. So that first time that we get them is the best time to intervene because we generally have milder disease than if we wait this out.

And so this concept of they’ll come and get help when they’re ready, or this concept of rock bottom, basically means we’re going to see if they wash out through dying before we treat them. And so the times that we’re going to interact are going to be the times that they drunk dial mom at three o’clock in the morning. The times that their boyfriend confronts them because they’re frustrated about how they embarrassed them at these places. Or the boyfriend or significant other also has an alcohol use disorder and maybe they’re perpetuating this.

Those are the times that we’re more likely to make the biggest difference in someone are those early signs of addiction which is they’re missing work. And so I have a staff of 30 people and I was the chief of pain medicine for a health system, so if a doctor started having odd behavior I would pull them aside and have to be like, “What’s going on?” We are scared to do that in society. We’re scared to call people out because we don’t know how to do it many times. But an empathetic ear and somebody just saying I care about you, if you want to chat about this, really opens up the door for that early interaction to occur.

By the time I get them, I mean, the train has crashed at that point. This is a point where they’re either mandated by court or intervened by family or their life is in complete shambles and they have nowhere else to go. And that’s just too late. And so I think recognizing that 60% of people who at some point meet for an alcohol use disorder self-resolve.

So, I always use the anecdote of when I was in college I tried really hard to be an alcoholic. It just didn’t work. And that’s good for me, but that’s a lot of people. If you think about back in school and that the number of people who drank to the point of failing a class or missing class or failing out of college but then kind of bounced back, early in life – in adolescence and in early adulthood we have kind of resolution of an acute version of addiction. Now that is an increased risk for later that something may recur, but if you can catch them at that phase and really kind of work with them we don’t necessarily have to even label them long term.

I mean, I have a roommate who drank just as much as I did. He has a label of an alcohol use disorder. But I don’t. And we have the same trajectory in the end. So it’s just a matter of when you catch them. So I think early and it’s those little pieces where we find them the most. And that’s where they start to struggle with isolation which we find is the early form of kind of the fear and stigma they put on themselves. And from a character perspective, being able to portray that shame and isolation that occurs very early in this disease that is the path to the more severe version of the disease that leads to bad outcomes that I would see.

And so that guilt and shame keeps them – they hide. They start to drink alone. They start to separate from people. Go to different bars where they’re not going to be noticed. And it’s not a control issue. It’s a part of the brain. You know, we know exactly what part of the brain it is. It’s the default behavior for an input called cue associated relapse. And it’s not a decision like we think about. It’s not a pros and cons sheet. It’s a reflex once they’ve started using.

John: Gemma, he’s talking about self-stopping and sort of control. And we always as we write our characters we want our characters to – we’re sort of cruel gods aren’t we as writers? We’re always creating these challenges and obstacles for our characters to face. As you look at the characters you’re dealing with in your show how are you as a writer and as a writers’ room talking about characters’ awareness of the behaviors that they’re doing? Awareness of the problems that they are encountering for themselves? Because it sounds like any one of the characters we set off in our stories could end up in a very dark place. And yet you are mostly responsible for getting them back to a good place by the end of 30 minutes. So how are you talking about that in a writers’ room? How are you figuring out sort of how to get a character through these situations?

Gemma: Well, I think, you know, one of the things that sitcom characters are not known for is growth and change. So, but we have this amazing opportunity, and I think responsibility, to say that these characters, now we’re going into season seven, they have grown. They have changed because they’re sober and because they’re facing life in a new way and because they’re doing it together and because they’re using certain principles to change and grow.

And so I think that’s been really fun. When we feel like they’re starting to get stuck we’re like, oh, you know, that season two Bonnie, that’s not season seven Bonnie. Season seven Bonnie is going to handle that better. So we keep ourselves sort of accountable to that. We sometimes have the actual meeting portrayed. We have this device of people sharing. Also on a sitcom you don’t necessarily see someone just tell you where they’re at for two minutes, but we have that ability to do that because our characters literally are sharing where they’re at. And so that helps us to – they might begin their share thinking one thing and then hear something and get to another place quickly.

John: So the idea of a group meeting, a 12-step meeting, or some other place where people come in and describe what they’re going through, Holly could you speak to sort of what the role of group meetings is in Jane’s life. Let’s say that Jane is making progress. What would that meeting really be like and what are the things you don’t see that we might be showing better?

Holly: Well, there’s really huge power in group share. And that’s why the Alcoholics Anonymous movement has been so successful actually in helping a lot of people get sober and get better. And it’s a place where you can feel like somebody sees you and somebody gives you space to be who you are and be going through what you’re going through. And that is huge and that actually is what television and film does for us, too, right. When there’s a representation in a television show or a film of what we’re going through and how we can identify that’s just so very powerful and empowering.

And so when we’re working with people who are dealing with mental health issues or substance use issues definitely we want to employ groups and as an individual therapist I would definitely and do definitely encourage my clients to find a group and to utilize the group and the support of the group. But that is kind of on the recovery side.

And I did want to mention, and maybe you’re going to get to this John, but what I would like to see more in film and television is the group that the person is with while they are in their addiction, while they’re really struggling, because we are systems people. Right? We’re in a system. And there are always people who are enabling or ignoring what we’re going through, or you might meet Jane at a bar but then fairly soon you’re going to meet Jane in her room drinking by herself and she’s waking up and shaking and her boyfriend is going and buying her some alcohol because he wants to help stop the shaking. But he doesn’t realize that he’s actually perpetuating her illness.

And there are some really complex dynamics that go into the system that is supporting the person who is struggling to continue to struggle unfortunately. And that’s something that I haven’t seen really deeply portrayed in all of its complexity which would be really neat to see.

John: Zach, as you watch film and television and you watch individual therapists or you watch group settings what are we getting right and what do you think we’re missing? And what is the ideal role of the expert, the therapist, the person who is there to help the person. Again, I think we idealize them so much in Hollywood, but what is the real function of that person that you see?

Zach: Well, I think to, yeah, be scientifically and medically accurate and grounded as any expert in this field treating addiction should be. And that means oftentimes not sending people to Malibu for 30 days and pet horses on a ranch. Like that is not how we treat any other addiction or any other medical condition.

Holly: I used to work at one of those places so I take offense.

Zach: Sorry. And especially in terms of opioids which it’s on my mind a lot, there’s an overdose crisis, and I think that there’s a lot of opportunity to communicate health messaging with media by having a therapist say, “You know what? Actually you’re a perfect candidate for Buprenorphine. And let’s get you to the right doctor who can prescribe this drug and, you know what, maybe when you go to a recovery meeting or group share on Buprenorphine you might be stigmatized because within this community frankly they don’t often have most science-based approach to things like medication.”

So I think to see that play out in a narrative would be very powerful.

John: Well, I should say writers, we love conflict. So if there is a conflict that can be introduced that could be a useful thing. And do you–

Zach: This one has been going on forever.

John: Yeah. But I would say that most people don’t realize it exists.

Corey: Well, I think two pieces that I would pull out is, one, for our 28-year-old female character she’s prey in these settings sometimes. If you get into the wrong meeting and you’re very unstable in your disease people that are also unstable in their disease can be a predator in that setting. And so it can be very unsettling for that person to show up to that meeting to someone to seems to get them unlike their boyfriend or maybe unlike their parents. And they use that angle to actually connect themselves in a pretty pathological way. And I’ve seen that happen a number of times for females in recovery going to some meeting. So they need to find the right one, right? It can’t just be any random place.

And I think the other portion is to understand that everybody has their path to recovery. But at this point for opioid use disorder 12-step abstinence-based treatment is only 8 to 12% effective. Now, for alcohol use disorder it has a higher rate of effectiveness. But the research was done on generally speaking doctors, pilots, and lawyers of white origin, so when we start to think about what modalities we’re looking at and what the data looks like that data looks very clearly good for doctors, pilots, and lawyers, especially those that are Caucasian. It’s about 85 to 90% effective for alcohol use disorder.

But for the population that I see when I was in Camden or when I was in Detroit or Philly, wherever that is, that’s not effective treatment for them. But it’s also about timing and dosing. So thinking about somebody who is really unstable, that’s probably not the best time for that. We do find, however, when they need to reconnect that may be the perfect time to add something like that. So just recognizing that it’s not the default treatment for everybody. Most people get treatment outpatient. Most people don’t go to residential treatment. Most people get their treatment in an outpatient setting just like they would for congestive heart failure.

So sometimes creating less conflict with it, because there’s plenty of conflict in their life otherwise, so the treatment of their addiction doesn’t have to be the conflict point. There are so many other pathways because this disease is such a socially connected disease. It creates conflict in families. Conflict at work. Conflict in just going to the store and walking past beer. I mean, those are conflicts that are there.

So creating the conflict in the treatment sometimes stigmatizes the treatment. So I think that it’s a little lazy, to be honest, because it’s not the place where drama has to be. We know how to treat it. We have effective treatments. It’s pretty matter of fact. And we know how to know where they go. I mean, so that part of it and understanding where meetings are and what role they do play, it’s not the treatment. It’s just a part of a larger normal approach to treatment that we would take.

Holly: And if I may add to that, Corey, I agree. Not only is it a place where people could be preyed upon or, you know, but it also is a place that you actually don’t want to go into a group setting – to piggyback off what Corey said – until you really are stabilized internally. Because it might be very difficult and re-traumatizing for somebody to hear everybody else’s stories about their trauma. And when we’re talking about trauma I’m not talking about getting shot with a gun or run over by a car, I’m talking about complex emotional relational trauma we call that which goes back to the adverse childhood experiences which so many of the people struggling with substance use have.

And so you have to maybe work one-on-one with medication, get yourself stabilized, before you go into a group where you’re going to hear a bunch of stories about a bunch of other people’s really difficult times because that can be very triggering and re-traumatizing.

Corey: By the way, you guys portray – it’s the only show I can actually watch with addiction, to be honest.

Holly: Love your show, Gemma.

Corey: The rest of them are triggering to me, honestly, as a practitioner, frustrates me and gets me angry so I can’t watch it. But so this one is one that does it in a way that people in recovery they do well in those situations.

Gemma: Thank you.

John: And I think it’s because you’re offering hope. There’s characters who are dealing with a thing and it’s never going to be completely resolved. It’s not like the monster is ever fully killed. But they are able to have productive lives. And that’s obviously an early decision you’ve made that you’ve been able to keep up for eight seasons.

Gemma: Yeah. To be able to watch someone’s life get bigger. To have our main character. If I could go back in time in the pilot we said that she wanted to be a psychologist and then we quickly changed her into a lawyer. If I had a time machine and I would go back and just correct that one line in the pilot to say she wanted to be a lawyer. But I can’t, so we just ignore it. And pretend that her dream was always to be a lawyer.

And it was important for us to do that. It takes a while to become a lawyer and it’s hard to write becoming a lawyer stuff. But we’re doing it – and make it funny – but we’re doing it in real time because we hope that we are going to be on long enough to see that happen and to watch that whole process. And for her the ups and downs and the doubts and just showing up for all of it sober.

John: Cool. Let’s try and experiment with a different character. Carlos, 35, depression. And so this is a character who is dealing with depression. What things will we see outwardly as we’re looking at the character of Carlos that might tell us that he’s dealing with depression and help me figure out both his inner state, so what he’s going through, but what externally we would see for Carlos. What would be the things that we would be noticing? Holly, do you have a sense of what we’d see first?

Holly: Yeah. I think that, you know, it’s not totally unlike symptoms of substance use disorder in that you’ll see changes in behavior that suddenly Carlos isn’t around very much, or he made plans and he didn’t keep them, right, that his circle will notice. That he’s just not feeling up to doing the regular activities that he might want to do. And when it really progresses he might lose his job because he can’t get into work and he can’t get out of bed and doesn’t want to return phone calls. And maybe then when is confronted is able to like buck up enough to be like, “I’m fine, I’m fine, everybody don’t worry. I just need some time alone. Don’t worry.” And it really takes a supportive person in Carlos’s circle to say, “You’re not fine. Can we help you get some support?”

Because depression is one of those things. It can be a little bit under wraps. You know, people can be really struggling with depression for a really long time and still show up to life just enough that they’re not going to get into a car accident or break their ankle or do something that’s so big because of being high or drunk that it can really go under the wire for a long time.

And that’s what is so scary about it, too. And especially if Carlos starts to become suicidal. And most people who die from suicide don’t leave a note or give any signs beforehand. And so it really takes a community, right, to be around Carlos to say, “Hey, you know, this is the fourth time you haven’t come out and you usually came out with us and ate dinner every Friday night and now you’re not doing that anymore. What’s going on? And can we help?” Because Carlos can hide it for a good deal of time.

John: Quite a few people I follow on Twitter self-identify as dealing with depression and they’ll talk about medications they’re on. They’ll talk about the struggles that they’re going through. I admire them for doing it. Is that useful for them? Is it useful for everybody else? I always wonder the degree to which self-identifying as this can become an identity of being a depressed person. What is the current science and best thinking in terms of when a person who has depression is in treatment and is improving talking about it? What is the best way to interact with that character?

Let’s say Carlos has started getting some help. What do we do with Carlos? And what changes do we see with Carlos?

Holly: That’s a really good question. It’s a personal question, right? So sometimes the diagnosis can be really empowering and it’s something that you can share and you can say, “Omg this is what’s going on with me. I have this chemical imbalance and it is a disease and it’s an illness.” And so it’s a little bit freeing. For some people having a diagnosis is very shaming and it’s very difficult for them to carry that with them. So that’s part of our job as mental health workers to kind of be there with each individual and decide is this somebody who is going to feel empowered with the diagnosis? Is this somebody who is going to feel shame with the diagnosis and to be able to talk through all of that with them?

But for the most part I think it is, for the people I’ve worked with, it’s empowering. And it’s a way to build community because mental health illness and substance use disorder they are isolating. That is one of the things that happens is people become more and more isolated. So if you can say, “Hey, I’m struggling with this thing” and find other people in the community that say, “Hey, me too.” And you can have that back and forth and connection. It can be really a powerful help. Yeah.

John: Let’s point our discussion and talk about the community around Jane and Carlos and sort of how they’re interacting with family, with friends, with the medical establishment, with the police. What do those interactions look like? So we talked about earlier that Jane would come into a medical situation because she’d broken her ankle or law enforcement if she was drunk driving. There’s natural ways to do that. How would Carlos come into a medical community? How would he come into a law enforcement community? What are the interactions that we see with these characters as they’re doing their thing and the impacts they’re having around other people. Zach, what do you see as Jane’s – the circle that she was drinking with? The social circle that was helping her stay there. How do we portray them responsibly and accurately?

I mean, the people who are in some ways helping her stay the way she is.

Zach: I mean, I think it’s super contextual. And I think there’s one very recent example of a portrayal of depression is Euphoria. And in a recent episode of Euphoria, so Rue is the main character and she is so depressed that she has watched 22 hours of Love Island straight. And there’s this sort of ongoing, very painful experience of being too depressed to walk up to go to the restroom. And so her bladder begins to hurt and so I think one thing that was really interesting and somewhat playful there was that depression hurts. It’s not just an emotional/psychological pain. It is physical. Like if you really miss someone, like it hurts when they’re not around. And I think that having different ways of portraying psychological pain manifesting as physical pain could be an interesting thing to show onscreen.

Corey: I would say that the science backs that up 100% because the two chemicals responsible for depression are norepinephrine and serotonin, these two chemicals. Dopamine can play a place in one type. But those are also really important chemicals in pain. So, in theory if you have a low serotonin level and a low norepinephrine level you’re going to have depression. We find this really commonly. Interestingly, if I decrease those in the spinal cord that also makes your pain sensor higher. Everything hurts worse, literally.

So, when somebody has depression almost always they have physical pain. And it may manifest—

Holly: Which is why they want to use drugs.

Corey: Right. No, exactly. And here’s an opioid and I’ve just wrecked your life. So the pieces, there’s really hard science to back up physical ailments that go with anxiety or depression. The place in the body with the most serotonin is not your brain, it’s your gut. So this why we see nausea and stuff in people with low serotonin states because it’s not working properly. They don’t digest food properly. It’s one of the most common complaints I would get for patients with depression. They wouldn’t complain about being sad or crying. They would complain about their belly. And then when you dig into it a little more it’s major depressive disorder.

Holly: Especially for young kids, right?

Corey: Absolutely.

Holly: When a young child is dealing with a mental health issue they’re almost always going to tell you their stomach hurts. It’s a big thing to know.

John: Great. So let’s talk about a young child. Let’s talk about a young child dealing with depression or anxiety or these issues. What are the idealized perfect Hollywood parents and what are realistic parents that we’re maybe not seeing as much onscreen? Holly, what’s your take on those parents?

Holly: The perfect parent would say to their young child, “How are you feeling? Can you talk to me about what you’re feeling? If you can’t use words can you give it a color? Can you describe it in some way? All feelings are welcome here. We want to talk about all feelings. They’re important. Your feelings are important. And if you’re having some painful feelings, or if your stomach keeps hurting well guess what? We know where we can go and find some help and find somebody who can support you and help you feel better because as your parents we’re here for you, but we don’t have all the answers either. And sometimes we hurt, too. And so let’s go to the experts and find somebody who can help us out.”

John: That’s the perfect. That’s the dream. But let’s talk about more realistic things, because in real life parents don’t know what they’re doing. They’re busy doing lots of other things. They have jobs. They have other stresses. They are going through their other issues. On your show Allison Janney’s character is dealing with addiction herself and has a daughter dealing with it. So, and yet you’re trying to be a comedy. So, how do you find the balance of talking about these things and still finding the funny in there? And dealing with the fact that she’s not a perfect mother?

Gemma: We don’t have perfect parents on our show. No. I think that’s why people like it. I think it’s a relief. I think I don’t want to after I’ve made a mistake as a parent tune in and watch a perfect parent. Like that just makes me feel worse. Really just, oh, I could have done that and I didn’t.

I like characters that are flawed. That are trying but who fall down and make mistakes. And I think that that is where we find humor is in the trying. And, you know, we deal with a lot of difficult subjects. And those are the scripts that I want to write. Those are the ones that are so much fun, because there’s something to hold onto. And those are the ones where you can go into some really deep, painful places. I’ve always loved like a lot of sadness in my comedy, which did not make me a successful standup. But I found a place where it’s working.

But I think that’s – I don’t know, I think that’s the fun stuff to write. The pain.

John: And there’s also a lot of fear. I know as a parent there’s also a tremendous amount of fear. So it’s not that you’re just ignorant to what’s going on, but you’re also afraid of what’s going on. You’re afraid is this a small thing or is this a giant thing? Where does this all lead?

And one of the other fears is the cost of things. And so if we have a character with a child who might be having these issues what is the reality of going to get help? And so would they first go to their pediatrician? Would they then go to a specialist? How much of that could be covered by whatever insurance? What are the realities of someone seeking treatment for addiction or for mental health? Where does that money come from?

And Zach you may have some sense of this, too. You’ve done reporting on the realities of this. What does it look like right now in 2019 at least in the US for someone dealing with these things?

Zach: Well so there are too many uninsured people in this country. Too many people who are underinsured in this country. And I think getting into healthcare policy and portraying that rightly in an entertainment narrative would be quite difficult. But I do think that having conversations about insurance do work and is done. In 6 Balloons, did anyone see 6 Balloons? It’s like a day in the life of a heroin user played by Dave Franco and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City is his sister and they take him to detox which is kind of the wrong thing to do. Detox for opioids is not really a thing. But they take him to detox and there’s this whole rigmarole because insurance isn’t paying for it and they don’t have the right coverage. And then someone says, “Well, go down to this clinic. They might have the right coverage.”

And so I think that’s actually a very realistic run-in with the bureaucracy of American healthcare. And I think that’s actually very realistic because I think people do have a lot of trouble what’s in their provider, what’s out of their provider. I think health insurance adds a very complex layer to this. We can also get into parity insurance. It’s forced to, but sometimes doesn’t cover mental health as it should like they do with physical health. These things are separate and I think it’s very critical that we don’t separate these things. That they’re all part of hospital treatment and primary care and that these are all treated by doctors like this guy.

Holly: And when they aren’t treated by doctors, I mean I think there’s a very common experience that I’ve even had working with young adults, even in Los Angeles which is not the poor rural area where I grew up in that people, like adolescents and young adults, want therapy but their parents can’t afford therapy. And it’s like this lament, the young adult lament of like I want therapy or you’re 26 and you’re no longer on your parents’ insurance and you want therapy and you can’t find it. And it’s really sad. But this is actually – and I don’t want to get too tangential, but this is where the social media platforms actually can be a positive.

Because I’m not saying anybody should go get therapy on a Facebook group. The kids don’t use Facebook anymore. I don’t know what I’m what I’m talking about. But there are Reddit, I don’t know, listservs somewhere. Kids are able to find support groups. And I, through some of my clients, and I also have two teenagers, have been able to look into some of these online support groups and they’re not terrible. You know, the kids are like offering each other some support and some good advice. And it’s really interesting how the support that our community is offering is changing in this way because of social media. Social media is not all bad. There’s actually some really positive things that can come from it.

Zach: So I don’t go to AA or NA meetings, but Twitter is my support group.

Holly: There you go.

Zach: No joke. A bunch of my good friends on Twitter are in this room and we are always on it. And we’re working together. We’re part of something bigger. It’s really important to me.

Corey: For young kids, I had three in my clinic that were pretty recalcitrant and very difficult to treat. And I started playing video games with them on Xbox and we would play Halo and have a closed chat. And actually they told me everything there, but when I was in front of them as an old guy in front of them they didn’t want to say a word. They were clammed up. But when I game them my gamer tag and they came on and we literally sat down and played Halo, you know, in the evening sometimes I got everything from them. And then they would come in and tell me more there.

So it’s about building a connection, which means you have to break down these preconceived barriers with kids. And I think we don’t really build – we haven’t built a system for that. We’ve built a security for adults that we somehow adapted to kids and it doesn’t really work. I mean, I use this now even with my kids. When I’m on the road we play Apex and just can chat. And they’ll tell me more things.

So I think there are some things with gaming and social media and a new path that have real potential to make big change. And just kind of throwing those out there as nuggets for what connects to kids and allowing kids to inform that because the minute that they break down those walls they’re ready to talk about stuff. They don’t like where they are. They’re frustrated. They’re scared. They’re sad. They want to be successful. They want their peers to see them in a certain way and they hate that they’re being seen as this person. But the minute they’re that person they will fully embody it because they have this need to own it. Which many times can rapidly create severe illness. And so just figuring out these other ways that we can come at it would be really important.

John: Classically we talk about our protagonist, generally our hero who is – the character is going on a journey. The character who is changing over the course of the story. And there’s an antagonist. And sometimes we think of that antagonist as being a villain, like the bad guy of the story. But it sounds like what you’re describing really is a therapist as antagonist. The person who is helping the protagonist change, is causing the change. And so there can be friction there at the start, but ultimately you’re trying to get to a relationship there so that you can help this person get to the next place. That sounds like the nature of that relationship there. Great.

We are mostly talking about characters, but we are also writers who have minds ourselves. And sometimes deal with these issues ourselves. So before we get to questions I want to ask you guys – if someone is watching this from the Facebook stream or they’re here in the audience and they’re saying like, oh, you know what, I think this has made me realize that I may have a substance use problem, that I may actually have some mental health thing that I should be doing something about. What is the thing they should do tonight? Like what is the first step that somebody who is watching this or listening to this should be doing if they have that moment of awareness?

Corey: Don’t go to Google. I mean, honestly, this is the problem because at this point in time mainstream medicine is still really crappy at this. I mean, the vast majority of people aren’t really trained. It’s not mandated in medical schools for a doctor to be trained. I mean, I’m board certified and I’ve done it for over a decade. I feel comfortable in the neuroscience of it. That’s kind of not the average person who sees a patient when they walk into a hospital and there’s still this stigma that we have to break down.

And so what I would say for a person in here, first is get my LinkedIn and call me. I’ll hook you up. I mean, I know everybody who does this work. I mean, honestly it comes down to a provider being available to help a person in need, but more importantly a friend being willing to walk with them through this. And I think that’s one of the biggest pieces, and you talked about not only the character but the people around them. The thing I’ve never seen portrayed truly effectively is a non-family member friend having a truly empathetic connection with a person with addiction to help them take that next step. What we call the trans-theoretical model of change.

And moving them from this pre-contemplative state to actually going and get help. And it’s very simple. You look at them and you say I care about you and I have your back. Because they feel so isolated that they don’t do it. And as a physician when I say that in the emergency department it’s amazing the switch that flips in people when I’m treating them in a time of crisis to actually want to get help and kind of empty themselves a little bit at that point.

And so I think the biggest thing that I would say is I could give you the one-liner of go to the SAMHSA website, Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, and type in your zip code and it will give you providers. Or I could say go to the – if you feel unsafe. But find the person you trust the most and connect with them. And ask for them to walk with you through this. And they really will. That’s the first step. And then together you can start to find the pathway for treatment because it’s not predictable yet. We’re just now building these systems appropriately and that’s why these billions of dollars from federal government are coming in because the systems don’t exist.

It’s been kind of an on-your-own pathway. And so don’t let it be on your own. The first thing is to make that strong connection with the person you trust the most. And then start the journey together. And that can be a family member. It can be a friend. Whoever doesn’t trigger you and enable you, identify them. Not the person who just says yes to whatever you want to do. But somebody who cares about you. And I think that’s the first step that I would say for anybody in here who is struggling with this.

And you know what? 10% of you are. And so this is just a reality. And so that would be it. And honestly find me, call me, I’m happy to answer those questions with you. I still have my homeless population in Camden that I see that still calls my cell phone sometimes randomly.

Holly: And as the therapist I’m going to say if somebody feels like they might be struggling and they don’t know, if they are and they’re wondering if they should take that step to reach out to take a really deep breath, to love yourself, to understand that we are all experiencing pain and we’re all going through something and that it’s OK to be struggling. And that you deserve a good life and happiness and allow yourself to reach out for help. Because sometimes that’s the very first step that has to happen because the self-loathing is so great that people feel like they don’t even deserve to be able to ask for help. And that’s sometimes the biggest hurdle. Love yourself. Allow it to be – we’re all human. We’re all in this together. None of us really knows why we’re here, right? And we’re doing the best we can and it’s OK to be struggling and it’s OK to need help.

John: Zach as a writer you’re often dealing with the struggle of getting stuff down on the page. Is there any special thing you want to say about sort of the writing process and how it ties into these two things and the desire to recognize when you need help? Is there anything that’s different about that?

Zach: So I work from home and I joke that I’m a stay at home dad with no kids. And so it’s really nice that I have a partner, Logan. She gets home at around five. So I try to simulate as best I can a 9 to 5 job. Because if you’re writing it’s not 9 to 5 and it’s whenever you get an email or it’s whenever someone shares the doc and you’re in it.

So, I think because things are unstable and not exactly steady I would try my best – and this is just what helps me is get structure. I think – any writer I think is very obsessive. Reading the same sentence a hundred times and it doesn’t look any different and I keep reading the same sentence. I think there’s just part of the process that for someone like me who has had addiction that I have found a way to channel some of the obsessiveness that is part of addiction into something that I think is helpful and something that I think is useful.

Like I don’t really have a big writing process because journalistically things are just moving too fast sometimes to have a cup of tea and put on the right music. It’s like, no, it’s just like–

John: The deadline.

Zach: I’ve just got to go.

John: Gemma, now you get to work – you don’t have to work all by yourself because you get to work with a staff.

Gemma: Oh thank god.

John: But there must be some aspect of the caretaking that you guys are doing of each other and sort of watching out for each other. And there’s the whole production of the crew that makes your show. As a person who is managing these people how do you look out for these folks? And how does a writer on your staff, how could she feel comfortable speaking up if she’s struggling, if she’s having an issue? What guidance could you give to somebody who is on a writing staff, not yours necessarily? But in general what should they do if they’re struggling?

Gemma: Well first of all I mean in our room we get taken care of so well. Like we are fed and watered and coffee’d. Like over our hiatus I almost starved to death because I didn’t know how to get lunch. Sort of a joke but not totally.

John: I know it.

Gemma: So I think self-care in general is so important. And I think – I don’t know necessarily about other people, but I know for myself there’s a lot of gymnastics that I have to go through to get to the point that I can, I don’t know, find the funny, you know. And I’ve had to face a lot of stuff and deal with a lot of stuff on my time and get through that. Because if I don’t get through that I’m going to bring that – I’m just going to come into work and weep. And I need to find another way.

You know, so I do things every day. I try to meditate before work. I try to get some exercise in. I try to do that book, The Artist’s Way.

John: Five minutes–

Gemma: The three pages. I’m on week one, year eight. I’ve never gotten past week one. But week one is great because she talks about the morning pages. And I do that which is like the three – and if take a moment, and a lot of moments, 30 moments in the morning to do that. To just write down the voices in my head that are like you don’t deserve anything. You know, if I can just write that down so that I don’t bring that into the room I do so much better.

And my husband and I have a deal if I meet an untimely death that he will never read my morning pages notebook because he will so worry about what I was going through. But it’s just that yammering to get that out.

And then certainly if anyone in our room is going through something I think that we give them the feeling that they can come to us and that, you know, there’s a lot of trust that has to happen in a writers’ room. And you’re sharing your personal stories and experiences and some of them are funny and a lot of them are not. And you need to be able to trust that that is sort of a sacred space where that stuff isn’t going to get shared elsewhere. And the people in my room know me really well. You know, they know a lot. And there’s something wonderful about that. It’s also difficult sometimes because they know me really well. But I don’t know, it’s a very cool relationship.

John: Now usually on the podcast we would do a One Cool Thing, but for tonight I wanted to do a new segment called Please Stop. And so I asked everyone to prepare a Please Stop for something that they see in films and television that they wish they would not see ever again, or that people would cut way back on.

So, here’s my Please Stop. Can we please stop with the actual quantity of alcohol we see characters drinking in movies and TV shows? Because it’s physically impossible. You see these characters, I mean, this is really an appeal to writers and directors, but also like the prop people. Because people will drink these massive quantities. And we all know that it’s like tea or something in there, so they’re not actually drinking bourbon. But characters drink so much that they would be dead in some of these things.

So if we could keep an extra eye out for the actual volume of alcohol we’re having our characters drink that would be my appeal and ask to Please Stop overdoing the alcohol.

Gemma, do you have a Please Stop?

Gemma: Yes. Can we Please Stop when people are, you know, identifying in a 12-step meeting and they say, “Hi. My name is Bob.” And then everyone says, “Hi Bob.” That, I just, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. It’s so depressing and it’s so – I don’t know.

John: It’s cliché. Corey, what do you have?

Corey: I’d say the biggest one is Please Stop portraying someone who is in recovery from addiction as having a weakness inherently. And on the opposite side of that just to add to it, don’t portray people who decide not to use drugs or drink as lame. Because what it does is it portrays, one, that those who did drink and it happened to be the thing that made them feel normal for the first time and they develop addiction, but then they went through all the work and frustration and pain in that to get well. Treat them like they’ve overcome cancer because this disease has the same mortality rate.

So, as we start to look at it they have fought to get there. And they should actually be as someone who has really been through a battle and won. And it should be portrayed positively as like this is a person I want on my team because I’ve seen them fight a fight and win. But on the other side don’t make the dude who’s like, “Yeah, I’m cool, I don’t want a drink,” as like the lame-o that night. Or “I don’t smoke weed” is like boo, he can’t go to White Castle. Like I still go to White Castle, I don’t smoke weed. So it’s OK.

And so I just think those two pieces go together.

John: Both in our media but also in real life. I mean, a thing I often say is if someone says they don’t drink you don’t have to ask a follow up question. They’ve said, great, so they can have something else and let’s move on and have a great night. Holly?

Holly: Please Stop portraying mental illness and substance use disorder as anomalies. Almost 25% of people have a diagnosable mental health issue. I would say millions more have maybe a sub-clinical anxiety or depression issue. So, it’s a lot of us and it shouldn’t be like that character has a mental health issue, or that character has an addiction. It’s much more ubiquitous than that and would love to see a more realistic portrayal of that.

John: Zach, what’s your Please Stop?

Zach: OK. I would say to stop glorifying DEA agents and criminalizing the US/Mexico border.

Holly: Here here!

Zach: So just one thing, obviously DEA agents, like we make them look tough. And their job is futile and they’re abysmal at doing it. So, let’s just not make them cool people.

John: Thank you, Zach. All right. Sicario [as a comedy]. Now we have time for some questions. So if you have a question – a reminder that a question is a question. It’s not a story with a question mark at the end – raise your hand and I’m happy to call on you. Right here?

Male Audience Member: Well I guess this is for all of you. I’m just curious, I read Michael Pollan’s new book How to Change Your Mind, which I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that, but they start talking about drug addiction and the use of psychedelics and other drugs. I haven’t gotten all the way through the book yet. But I’m just curious if you’ve researched any of that or could talk about that for a second.

Corey: So the psychedelic research is kind of resurgent. There was a time in the ‘60s in which it was actually done quite a bit and looked pretty promising even then. I think that the research that’s now coming out looks equally as promising. So I think it’s about dosing and timing and you have to do science. And science is you have to identify whether or not if I give somebody this versus somebody who got a placebo, like a sugar pill, does it work in that scenario? Because we develop an idea of should I use this based on if nobody knows what’s happening do they do better. And if that’s the case then game on. I mean, there’s nobody really against this in medicine. Medicine is pretty straightforward. I mean, we just like to see a randomized control trial in a population we can believe by a scientist we can trust. And we’re like, OK, cool, this is great.

So, yeah, I think it definitely has a future. And in the mental health there’s a lot of research there where I think for depression and stuff looks great.

Holly: Absolutely. Depression, trauma, PTSD. It’s very effective, ketamine treatment and LSD micro-dosing. Very effective. And it’s hopefully going to just be allowed to be used more. Unfortunately it’s over-regulated right now.

Zach: One more DEA thing. It’s because of the DEA that we cannot research these drugs.

Holly: Yes. That’s true.

Zach: So let’s de-schedule these so we can actually research and see what kind of potentials they have.

Holly: Right.

John: Another question, right here.

Female Audience Member: I’ve been researching neuro feedback that people do. I did it as a kid and I didn’t realize I was doing it. I was just brought by my mom. But I just listened to a podcast about it and they claim that there’s no such thing as a chemical imbalance. And I’m confused by that because I currently take medication and it works great. And the neuro feedback I do not remember working at all for ADHD.

Corey: I’m a neuro molecular biologist at grad school, so this stuff is really interesting to me. So sometimes we oversimplify things to the point of being wrong. And it’s not necessarily an imbalance, because neuro feedback has very little to do with the actual neuro transmitter, the chemical, and more to do with actually building certain signal pathways. Because if you do neuro feedback you’re creating a default reaction to a cue. I mean, we know the lateral habenula. We know exactly what part of the brain we’re working on because it’s the default reaction to a cue that we’re trying to change. And so neuro feedback is I’m feeling anxious but let’s focus on your heart and see if we can decrease your heart rate during that moment.

And so that cue would be to switch from being anxious to thinking about this, which would then lay down new tracks. It would then lower your heart rate and decrease your anxiety. It’s not a chemical imbalance to be depressed because I may – it’s a chemical imbalance in the sense that for your brain the chemicals are a little bit out of whack. And whether that’s structure, or chemicals, we never know. Because some people have – like schizophrenia is a structural problem, not a chemical problem. It’s what we call arborization which is where over time your brain connects a bunch of nerves. And then it trims a bunch of nerves, too, so that you don’t have too many, so that your brain can communicate. So you can have internal thoughts while you’re having external thoughts.

If you don’t trim those branches then you can have internal thoughts way too loudly while you’re having external thoughts and you get a different voice. So it’s these changes in structure. So mental illness is not a chemical imbalance, unless it is, which in that case it’s a lower or higher serotonin. It could be structural or this. So it’s an oversimplification.

The heterogeneity of mental illness has a lot to do with trauma. Has to do with is it group trauma, meaning a whole group of people experience this versus an individual. It changes the whole dynamic of the brain is wired. So, oversimplification, but they’re also wrong because they became black and white. So if anybody is black and white in this space they’re wrong. It’s all grey. Because the science we know a lot, but we don’t know everything.

So if they’re not speaking in – if they’re speaking in absolutes turn it off, because it’s just wrong.

Zach: And pharmaceutical companies wrote the copy for chemical imbalance. Like it’s not a thing.

John: All right. A hand right there. Yes?

Female Audience Member: Thank you. The thing I’ve personally experienced a lot is somebody whose friends and family think they have an addiction or mental health issue but that person either doesn’t think they do or doesn’t want treatment. What does the ideal friend or family member do in that situation and how does that fit in the timeline of issues that we’ve been talking about?

Holly: Should bug them every day. Tell them they have to go to treatment. The people around them should spend all their time worrying about whether the person is in treatment yet.

John: Just badger, badger, badger.

Holly: Yes, badger, badger, badger. That’s what works. I’m good.

No, yeah, you know, grownups make their own decisions. And if somebody is not ready to get treatment they’re not ready to get treatment. And we have to respect that and live our own lives and take care of our own selves. But you can still be there in a way to say, “Look, I’m here when you are ready to get help. I’m here if ever you want to get help.” And you might want to say that every couple of weeks, but probably not every day, right? So that they know when they are ready to get help that you’re there. You can’t force anybody to be ready to go to treatment, right? Or to get any kind of help.

What you’re talking to, and I don’t want to get too complicated, is actually though one of the systemic problems of something that might keep somebody sick. Because there might be what we call enablers, and I hate that word, but it’s a good word, who are spending their entire lives worrying about that other person. Wanting to make sure that they’re OK. Resentful that they’re spending all their time worrying about the other person being OK. And in that system the sick person almost might want to stay sick unconsciously because they’re getting all that attention around them and there are these weird payoffs. So actually the healthiest thing to do is to step back, be your own person, you know, say when my loved one is ready to get treatment he or she will. And until then I’ll live my own life. I’ll be a model of setting good boundaries and living my best life. And as long as they know I’m here that’s all I can do.

Corey: And from a provider’s standpoint we use a technique called motivational interviewing which is basically a science-based interaction technique. It’s like The Force. It’s awesome. I mean, literally these are not the droids you’re looking for. I mean, you can get someone through just appropriate empathetic questioning, but it has rigid structure in the way in which you approach it. So, if you want to know the right way to say things that might help someone move through those stages of change and get ready faster rarely can a family member do this because there’s too much emotional connection and discourse.

Holly: Can be shaming, sorry Corey. It can be a little shaming.

Corey: Yeah. It can be, if overdone. But at the same time motivational interviewing is the basis for getting someone to start to slowly move through these stages of change. And it’s the language that should be mimicked if you’re going to try to portray someone who is kind of doing the right thing. Not overdoing it. But the basics of it.

Zach: A last thing I’ll add is if someone is actively using and they are not ready to stop it’s a good time for them to learn about harm reduction. It’s a good time for them to find out where the local syringe exchange program is, where they distribute in a naloxone, where someone around them can naloxone which reverses the effects overdoses which someone who knows how to do the proper breathing in case this person isn’t breathing. So there’s ways to keep this person safe and know that they’re cared for even though treatment isn’t on the table right now.

Holly: That’s a huge important point. If you have somebody in your life who has an opioid addiction or might have an opioid addiction get some Narcan. And will you explain more what that is? And you can get it at your pharmacy. You can ask your pharmacy for Narcan to be there. If there is an overdose you can help them stay alive.

Corey: Yeah. So an overdose is when the opioid or other substance, or a combination of substances, in fact most overdoses are not just opioids. They’re an opioid plus like a benzodiazepine like Xanax or Valium or alcohol on top of it. And it suppresses the breathing in the brain stem. And so when that occurs if that’s not reversed then the patient will die because you’re not breathing.

Narcan, or naloxone, which is a nose stray or an injection. In fact, what’s out in the public right now is just a nasal spray.

Holly: It’s easy.

Corey: It gets to the brain. It blocks the receptor that the opioid goes to and reverses that. So, what it does is it wakes them up and puts them into [floored] withdrawal, but it keeps them from dying. And that’s the important part. Because I can never get somebody who is dead well. So, we need to make sure that any chance that we have this. My seven-year-old knows how to deliver this. My nine-year-old knows how to deliver. They carry it in their backpacks. And I live in Ann Arbor, which is not really a place where you’re most likely going to find as much of this in density. But it should just be that ubiquitously.

So if I asked the question how many of you have Narcan on you, it honestly should be kind of everybody, because it is the one thing that literally is a life-saving drug that anybody can give that nobody is going to steal. It has no street value other than keeping somebody alive. And if I’m walking back to my hotel tonight, you know, you need to be able to give that.

Holly: Go to your pharmacy and say I’d like some Narcan or some naloxone and your pharmacist will help you figure that out.

John: There are going to be so many scenes with Narcan in these people’s scripts and it’s going to be great.

Zach: That’s good. That’s very good. More naloxone.

John: Question right here.

Female Audience Member: So, as you know what happens to people of color who have mental health or addiction is very different from what happens to white people in this country. And I’m wondering what you would like to see be different in the program that we have around race and mental health and addiction.

John: Let’s talk about both sort of portrayals right now and also reality, so we make sure that we are addressing both things.

Corey: The data is very clear that medicine is racist. I mean, very racist. Not a little bit. This is not unconscious bias. It’s racism. And so racism is shown to be systemic in even doctors of color. And so it’s not just everybody. It’s the field of medicine that is racist. And this has been well studied and it basically shows that if you are an African American female you are going to receive the least effective care that we can deliver as compared to anybody else. And the spectrum changes. So poverty and the appearance of poverty and color also put you even below that.

So the minute you come in and you code as impoverished or you code as African American from that culture, or you code as American Indian or Latino, you’re going to get worse care. And so that’s a reality and I think quite honestly is worth beating up in TV shows. Meaning this needs to be called out.

I have this conversation with my patients, because obviously they’re going to look at me and be like well what do you know about this. I’m a white male doctor. I can walk into a room and have immediate power without having done anything, right? That’s just a reality of America.

And so I think what I would love to see is how to actually have that conversation from someone like me and someone like that to cross that bridge because it’s crossable. It really is. But you have to call out the fact that the entire system is actually built against that population. And that’s a systemic historical problematic issue that we’re going to have to deal with. And until we really beat it up in anecdote and emotion and story it’s not going to change in the bigger picture. That’s a great question.

Holly: It is a great question. And something that I wish – we all wish – was more addressed in television and film, too. Because it’s just so empowering to make sure that there is representation in our media. Mental health wise, too. It’s really unfortunate that there is a bias within the system and there are also cultural biases, some groups are more prevalent to ask for help or reach out for help. And I wish that story was told more, too, because it’s really, really important.

John: Yeah. This panel is set up to talk about stigma and I think it’s also important as we do our research on these things make sure we’re looking at cultural groups and what are the stigmas about these specific things within that group that would cause different outcomes or cause people to make different choices, be it for getting help or other things. It doesn’t stop at sort of doing the research on what is the issue, but like what is that issue within that culture is crucial. And that’s why you have to have representation in your room to figure out what’s going on there.

I think we can take one more question. I didn’t anyone in the back, so I see one hand in the back. I can’t even really see your face, but I see your hand up very, very high.

Male Audience Member: Back to screenwriting, within the 12-step programs there’s actually a tradition in not talking about the 12 steps in radio, television, and film. So as screenwriters how do you approach that because you would want to be responsible to that. And like Zach said with the doc he watched that gave him an unconscious bias on wanting to take methadone, so if as screenwriters we do the best that we can, or don’t, like what is our level of responsibility? And is there a higher level to the networks and studios to oversee how we’re portraying these 12-step programs or recovery in general?

John: I can start answering the question, but I think we have very smart people up here who can also answer it. I think as screenwriters we’re always looking for that balance of what is realism versus what is the point that we’re trying to make. And what you’re describing is that sometimes the absolutely realistic version of what that 12-step program might be like might be divulging stuff that is not helpful for the community as a whole. So you may want to make some choices that are different.

You’re always going to approach the scene from what are you trying to do for that character. What is the essence of that scene for that character? And there may be ways to use the nature of that scene or sort of what’s the arc of that scene to get at that thing without revealing things that you don’t need to be revealing. Or getting into esoterica that’s not meant to be discussed. But what do you guys think? To what degree is talking about the specifics of recovery, or sometimes the specific of a certain kind of treatment where you can’t walk somebody through the whole thing and you’re going to be doing some short-handing.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show I loved and in this final season Rachel Bloom’s character is going through a program and you can sort of squint and probably figure out what she’s going through, but they weren’t specific about the nature of the program. Is that an appropriate choice to not give it the name? Where do you guys land on this?

Gemma: Well I can speak to that. My understanding of that tradition is that it is not to break personal anonymity but not that you can’t discuss the program. So, that is a difference and we’re dealing with fictional characters. And to do it in a responsible way I think is definitely important. But I don’t think it breaks that tradition. And that’s sort of the stigma of recovery that I was sort of talking about earlier is something that is real and it gives people a sense that there isn’t hope and that if you seek recovery that your life is over and that you won’t find joy or happiness again. And I think that that is false.

Corey: It’s national security. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to divulge something that’s going to make every person with addiction suddenly worse. I think transparency is really important for all aspects of treatment. Both for addiction and mental health. And in that because the more we normalize these things the more likely it’s less stigmatizing. And I think hiding it and separating it and keeping it under the covers just continues to perpetuate that stigma about people who are in recovery and what these things mean.

And if somebody goes to a cancer support group then we talk all about that. In fact, that’s entire storylines of pathways for people in shows. So I think that with this it’s a step. It’s a pathway in their recovery. And sometimes and for some people it’s not a part at all. Some people it’s a big part. Some people it’s transient. And it just is what it is. So normalizing it as much as you can through the stories that you tell becomes really important for destigmatizing the treatment of addiction and not keeping things under wraps and scary in a sense.

Zach: Yeah. I just think anonymity, it’s important for people who want to protect their identity, obviously. But I do think we are in, like that book, The Traditions, I think it was written in the 1930s or the 1940s, and I don’t think these traditions are mapping super neatly onto where we are now as a culture in society, namely that when there was an HIV epidemic a saying was literally Science = Death. That was the slogan. And right now there’s an overdose crisis where 70,000 people are dying every single year. And I think that there’s a responsibility to not be quiet about that. And to speak up. And the more that people like me are in places like this and the more that there’s people who use drugs, people who are using drugs, we need to hear from them. And, yeah, so I don’t think they should be anonymous. But that’s just my take.

John: I want to thank our fantastic panelists for a very great night.

Links:

• Hollywood Health and Society
• 6 Balloons with Dave Franco
• Motivational Interviewing
• Narcan
• Follow Corey Waller on Twitter here.
• Follow Holly Daniels on Twitter here.
• Follow Zachary Siegel on Twitter here. Follow his project Changing the Narrative on Twitter here or using #ChangingtheNarrative.
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 410 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast it’s a variation on How Would This Be a Movie. Instead of looking at three stories in the news we’re taking three articles off Wikipedia and looking at what you get by using just those facts versus using a more detailed article.

Then we’ll be taking listener questions about real life subjects, showing your work, and applying the Mazin Method to television.

Craig: The Mazin Method. Yeah. The original Mazin Method was just helping couples conceive children. Which works great by the way. But this is a new one. So I just don’t want people to confuse them.

John: Absolutely. Because they have similar things, because there’s that thesis and antithesis in both situations.

Craig: Correct.

John: You’re trying to arrive at a middle place. But they are different.

Craig: Yeah. And one of them you do have to take your temperature each morning.

John: Yeah. The answer will surprise you.

Craig: [laughs]

John: But first some follow up.

Craig: I like this. I like the show already. I’m pleased with it.

John: We are hosting a panel on addiction and mental health that’s organized by Hollywood, Health & Society. It’s already sold out, but the good news is there will be a Facebook live stream for it. So this happens Wednesday July 31st, 2019. The live stream starts at 7:15pm Los Angeles time. There’s a link in the show notes for how you get there, but if you don’t follow the link just look up Hollywood, Health & Society on Facebook and you will join us there. I’m very excited about this.

Craig: Yeah. And this is a SAG-AFTRA production, correct?

John: This is actually Hollywood, Health & Society which is a WGA partnership with Norman Leer’s foundation and USC. So we’re doing this at SAG but these events would usually be at the WGA.

Craig: I see. I’m just really glad that we’re doing this. Obviously it’s a huge topic. You and I have both talked about this a lot on our show, but I also have talked about this in other venues as it relates to creative professionals, writers in particular, and then also our families, and our children. We are going to keep chipping away at the taboo and the shame that surrounds this stuff until people finally just relax and begin talking about it freely.

John: Yep. So our producer, Megana Rao, has been on the phone doing sort of pre-interviews with the people who are our guests so we have specialists in both mental health and addiction. We have a showrunner tackling these topics and a journalist. So we will be able to discuss not only the things that they wish they could see portrayed more and better in our film and television, but what things we could stop doing which would be helpful for everyone out there. So.

Craig: Love that. I think that’s great.

John: So we’ll get into that.

Craig: Terrific.

John: Further follow up, last week my One Cool Thing was versing, that sort of newish word called versing, which led to a discussion of words like heigth, but Bob wrote in with his experience with this. Do you want to share that?

Craig: Sure. Bob writes, “I teach screen and TV writing at Chapman and so I’m in daily contact with scores of fairly literate people.” That’s the best review of your own student body I’ve ever heard. Fairly literate people, 18 to 22 years old. “And I’ve noticed that they are slowly rewriting our language and they have no idea it’s happening. In addition to ‘on accident,’ which you’ve observed, I’ve found two others. Like on accident, they both have to do with changing prepositions. So, arrive at the building has become arrive to the building and bored with it has become bored of it.

“I think bored of it comes from tired of it and on accident comes just as you said from on purpose. And while Craig’s story about heigth is probably right on the money, these other cases might well have started by people who learn English as a second language. Although I’ve been fascinated by words my whole life, I’ve only recently learned that unwieldy isn’t unwieldly. The latter seems to me to make sense since it’s an adverb so it should end with LY. But it just doesn’t.”

Well, unwieldy isn’t an adverb. It’s an adjective.

John: Yeah. I’m trying to find ways you can force it into an adverbial role.

Craig: I’m struggling.

John: I’m trying to make it modify an adjective in a way that an adverb would.

Craig: Like I lifted this unwieldly?

John: Yeah, I mean, you could–

Craig: I mean, that’s wrong. Obviously it’s not a word.

John: It’s wrong, but yeah.

Craig: But, yeah, unwieldy in and of itself is an adjective.

John: Is a true adjective. But I agree with his basic points that younger people are going to start using words in different ways and you could try to fight that or you just accept that they’re going to be using language in different ways. And that’s actually one of the reasons why so often when you translate things from another language you have to have a native speaker doing that work because they’re going to recognize the small little subtle things that people say in real spoken language versus “proper” English.

And some of these things that you’re bringing up here would make so much sense in character dialogue but you wouldn’t necessarily do them in scene description. It’s that subtle distinction between how people speak versus how they might write.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. And, look, there is a huge part of me that is orthodox about this stuff. And I think that the instinct to want to preserve the let’s just call it the correct way of speaking or writing is that it’s not necessarily to punish the kids, but rather to honor your love of the language you were given. So I come from it from a sort of positive place of wanting to preserve.

That said, of course the language that I was given, that I received, and that I call correct in and of itself was inflected and modified by people that spoke and chopped things up and messed them up. So, you strike a balance.

John: You do. And I’ll just close up by saying to ignore that language changes by pattern matching is the heigth of stupidity.

Craig: Please don’t. It’s so awful.

John: It’s just the worst.

Craig: Heigth.

John: I don’t like heigth, but we all understand how heigth comes to be because width, length, and heigth. Of course you want things to match.

Craig: It’s pattern matching. It’s just that pattern – let’s just not do it.

John: Yeah. I get it. I get it.

Craig: Let’s fight back.

John: We will fight back. And we will still try to preserve beg the question, because beg the question has a useful meaning and so when we see it used improperly I will still always note that it’s being used improperly.

Craig: That’s not even a question of usage. That’s just being right or wrong.

John: It is being right or wrong. Let’s take a look at How Would This Be a Movie. So, to give some setup here because we do this segment fairly often. And usually what happens is people will write into us with a link to an article, or people will tweet at us with How Would This Be a Movie and some great article there in the news. And sometimes I’ll agree, sometimes I won’t agree, but if there’s something that I do that find fascinating or I find on my own that feels like it’s right for the segment I will bookmark it. And I bookmark it in a place called Pinboard. And maybe I’m mentioned this before on the show but Pinboard is a really useful bookmark storage service. So it just shows up on all your devices.

I pay for it. It’s cheap. It’s really barebones but it works really, really well. And I go through Pinboard and I tag those things How Would This Be a Movie. So HWTBAM. And as a little tag so then I can look through and see, OK, here are some articles that I flagged for this. And I noticed that in some cases I was flagging Wikipedia articles which didn’t seem like quite enough to be basing a movie around. But really in real life sometimes that is my entry point for a movie, or at least for some aspect of the movie.

And so I thought we’d talk about Wikipedia as the starting place for ideas. Because you’ve encountered this, too, haven’t you Craig?

Craig: Sure. And this is strangely an extension of the discussion we were just having about language. Because I think for orthodox researchers Wikipedia is still something that sets their teeth on edge. But the fact is that for the great majority of people who are suddenly interested in learning about something the very first stop they are going to make is Wikipedia. That’s it. That’s the first stop. It’s not the last stop, but it’s the first one.

And such was the case for me and Chernobyl. I read an article in the New York Times about the construction of this new cover over Chernobyl. I got sort of vaguely curious. So I went to Wikipedia and I started reading the Wikipedia article. That is, again, it is a decent place to start. With all the caveats, it is a user-edited encyclopedia. They actually do a pretty good job of keeping everybody accurate and honest. Sometimes the most valuable parts of Wikipedia are really the citations, where you can go down to the bottom and see where they’ve drawn information from.

But mostly if it does capture you it sends you on a journey where you start to really learn about something rather than reading a kind of Cliff Notes summary. So we should acknowledge that that’s where a lot of people are going to start if they’re considering writing something based on history or real events or real people.

John: Yeah. And so the three things I’m going to single out here, in each case I was able to find an article that went into greater detail than what was in the Wikipedia summary. But the Wikipedia summary was a useful place to be thinking about what are the possible stories you could tell here. And then the articles helped frame a more interesting story within that. So, let’s start with 8chan. And so I kind of knew what 4chan was. I didn’t really know what 8chan was. I saw a reference to it so I looked it up.

So 8chan is an online site, a website, a community in a very loose sense. 8chan can be thought of as a discussion place for topics. 8chan is particularly freewheeling and has very few sort of controls over it. And so the Wikipedia goes through its history, about the guy who created it, but mostly about its controversy. So it was heavily involved in Gamergate, swatting, child pornography, the Trump campaign QAnon, the Christ Church mosque shootings where they were singled out and called out for that. Another synagogue shooting. So it’s–

Craig: What a resume.

John: It’s notorious. I mean, I think it’s not thought of as a good part of the Internet. But it’s not the dark web. It’s not something that is strictly behind sort of proxy servers and hidden away from the rest of the world. It’s something that anybody could go to. And so Craig what did you know about 8chan going into this?

Craig: I know quite a bit. I mean, I don’t go – I’m not a member, like a community member, an active person that participates on 4chan or 8chan or anything like that. But, you know, I’m a nerd and I’m a history nerd, a computer history nerd. I love the Internet and the history of the Internet and how it evolves.

The other day I was telling somebody, they had totally forgotten, do you remember Excite? Do you remember that search engine Excite?

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: For a while Excite was the thing.

John: Yeah. Excite. Alta Vista.

Craig: Where people would be like, yeah, I use Alta Vista or I use Yahoo, and I’m like, no man, you’ve got to use Excite. It’s way better. And then Google came along and that was the end of Excite. But, no, 4chan has been around for a long time. 4chan in and of itself is an adaption of a Japanese style of – it’s essentially an image board. That’s all it is. It’s very low tech. And remarkably these chans, and there are a lot of them, there’s like probably 50 different chans, all something-chan-dot-something. They’re all basically the same very basic software that has not changed since whenever they first appeared on the Internet. And people post an image and then there’s commenting.

The thing about them is, they almost everybody is anonymous on it. And at least in the case of 4chan it became this fascinating double edged sword. So when we talk about 4chan and then 8chan, there’s a fascinating story where this guy named Fredrick Brennan founds it and he in and of himself is a fascinating character. A lot of it was about kind of for the lulz as the kids would say. I think it began with a certain kind of goofy anarchy, like a comedic anarchy. The sort of like teenagers, younger people are going to just have some fun. And sometimes their fun is at the expense of other people, but it’s mostly in the form of pranks and things. They would do raids where they would show up in some very nice forum for people that, I don’t know, enjoy macramé and they would ruin it. And then leave.

So it was kind of like that. And then it began to become much darker. But along the way the chans are where a lot of meme culture comes from, which is our culture now. Even pre-dating Reddit. So, it is an interesting place where there’s actually fascinating things that come out of those chans and funny things, brilliantly funny things.

And then unfortunately some terribly ugly things. And Fredrick Brennan, well, tell us about Fredrick Brennan because he really is a fascinating person.

John: Absolutely. So the Wikipedia article has a brief mention of him and they call him Hotwheels, and sort of a little bit about sort of why he set it up. But there’s an article called Destroyer of Worlds by Nicky Woolf, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that, which really goes into the history of 8chan from his point of view, from Fredrick Brennan’s point of view. And so this is a kid who is born with a profound disability, what’s often called brittle bone syndrome. So he’s confined to a wheelchair. Has very little access to the outside world except through computers. And so he starts going on 4chan. Is active in the videogame sites there. And sees sort of what’s there and what’s possible and ultimately decides to build his own version of it. And so his own version of it becomes 8chan and it was largely at the height of Gamergate, as Gamergate folks were getting kicked off of 4chan he’s like, “Hey, come here guys. You can do all that stuff on my place,” and it blew up and became a big thing because of Gamergate.

He ultimately then sold 8chan to somebody else and has largely disavowed it. But he’s a fascinating character because just his origin story is fascinating. And him grappling with what he’s done is fascinating.

Craig: Yeah. It seemed as if – or at least from the article that I read here – that he was lonely.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And his initial encounter with 4chan actually was that he had created a group for people that appreciated a certain videogame and then 4chan came and did what they did, which was raid it “for the lulz.” It worked. And instead of him being angry and miserable about it he thought, ooh, that looks like fun. I would have rather been on the other side of that. And so he joined up with 4chan and then I guess as moot, the founder of 4chan, started to push back a little bit against the total freewheeling anarchy which as you said was leading to a lot of illegal pornographic content and discussions of things that were starting to edge towards violent acts in real life, and doxing of people. A lot of bad stuff. He said, “OK, well, if you’re going to push back against that I’m just going to start my own thing where it’s really up to the users.” Even more freedom than 4chan offered.

And it sounds like he got what he wanted. He just didn’t expect that it would maybe go the way it went.

John: Yeah. So the stories that this is suggesting is about the questions about freedom of speech and the boundaries between freedom of speech and radicalism and hate speech and sort of what is law versus anarchy. Those tensions are natural there. So you think of movies like The People vs. Larry Flynt where it’s one guy standing up against a government, but in this case there really isn’t a government that you’re really up against. These chans are so formless because the Internet is sort of formless and you don’t really know who is behind things. It’s all anonymous. All those things are fascinating.

But you need to be able to aim the camera at something. And so that something could be Fredrick Brennan. It could be other users. But you’re going to have to find a central focus for a story that’s going to be about 8chan or any of these aspects of some of the controversies that have happened.

Craig: Yeah. And you run a terrible risk of misunderstanding certain things because there are some aspects of these places that are just as bad as they appear. I mean, talking about a community where somebody comes on and says, “I’m about to shoot some people in a mosque,” and other people say, “Well, aim for the high score,” that’s just horrible.

And there’s no way to look at that except terrible. You know, and then in another corner of that same chan on a different board there are people who are discussing their sexuality with other people safely because they can’t at home. Even look at a guy like Brennan who is severely disabled and didn’t have friends and was reaching out and making connections with people that accepted him. What’s fascinating – anyway, the point being you can be reductive about it and that in and of itself then what happens is people go, oh, well they just did a hit piece on it.

It’s tricky. It’s a tricky thing because I don’t know if I could define at all what 4chan or 8chan even is. I don’t think I could – because it’s too many things.

John: Yeah. Where I think Brennan’s story is potentially useful as a framing around it is that it sort of mirrors the central question that you’re going to have about something like 8chan which is to what degree can you think about teenage boys doing teenage boy things versus the actual consequences in the real world. And so to what degree is it important to create a place where people can blow off steam versus a place where they can plan or at least celebrate mass shootings.

Craig: Yeah.

John: That aspect is really tough. And so Brennan himself who has this condition which has confined him to a wheelchair and made his life very, very difficult starts all this because he’s really – part of the reason he starts it, he’s really interested in eugenics which seems like a weird thing for a person with a debilitating disease to be focused on, but that inherent paradox is very much at the root of – we need absolute freedom of speech, nothing can contain us. They are all part of the parcel.

Craig: Correct. And I will say that when you are reading a Wikipedia article about something and you’re wondering is this something that I can write a movie about or a series, what you’re hoping to find without trying to find it but just honestly letting it happen is something that grabs you. Some strange thing you snag on. And in this story it is without question the fact that this man who does have a severe disability has written really offensive and disturbing essays in favor of a kind of eugenics that would have eliminated him. And he’s saying that purposefully. He’s said he wished for some kind of Nazi movement to come and get rid of people like him.

And when you dig into that, I mean, you snag on that for sure. And when you dig into that you find, you know, well know he’s sort of letting that go. And it brought to mind this quote that Adam McKay posted on Twitter today that I saw that I just thought was amazing. It’s a James Baldwin quote. So James Baldwin, one of the smartest writers that ever walked the face of the earth. And the quote is this: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with pain.”

And I just thought well right there is Fredrick Brennan. If he turns the anger off then he’s got to deal with accepting something that is incredibly painful for him. And I get that. I understand that. And I have a feeling that that syndrome is powering a lot of what is going on in these places because a lot of the people who come there are young. I suspect a lot of them have some kind of mental health issue, or a learning disability, or a social disorder where they are alone, they’re bullied, they’re outcast. They feel unloved or uncared for and they’re hurt.

And so as it turns out these places are probably the worst kind of areas to get therapy. But I can also see why people are attracted to them in the first place.

John: Yeah. It also ties into like the YouTube algorithms that will keep sending people down a darker and darker spiral. So they’ll start watching one thing and it will push them to more and more extreme things because the algorithm just is looking for ways to keep them engaged with YouTube longer.

Craig: Yeah. It’s the–

John: The way that cycles perpetuate.

Craig: It’s that syndrome where they say if you’re kind of addicted to pornography you keep going further and further, like crazier and crazier porn. Because you just get used to the regular porn I guess. And it’s the same here. And I think that that’s a very trap like thing for people – particular people who are a neuro-atypical, when you’re on the spectrum. All that stuff is going to hit your buttons. And I guess you can get addicted. And at that point you go deeper down the rabbit hole.

John: Let’s go back to that James Baldwin quote because it is so fantastic. And there would be a temptation to use that as the dedication page, so your title page and then you put that quote and the script begins. You could do that. You can make a compelling case for that. But I think if you can find a way through your script to embody that quote you’re much better served.

So saying the quote is a nice thing on page zero. Actually manifesting that quote in your script, like no one says that quote but that idea comes across is much better use of that idea.

Craig: Correct. And going back to the Mazin Method, not the one for conception but the one for writing, so you can see a central dramatic argument that you can craft out of this which is it’s better to deal with your pain than to mask it with hate. Or you can turn it around and say you will never stop hating until you face your pain. Whatever it is. But it does feel like there is – that’s a very interesting way of creating a kind of synthesis/antithesis point of view about a complicated thing.

John: Sarah Silverman this last year engaged with somebody who was being a dick to her on Twitter and said like, “Oh, it sounds like you’re really hurting.” And that conversation really changed his mind.

Craig: I saw that. It’s amazing.

John: So we’ll put a link in the show notes to that, too. Sarah is a person I very much want to have on the show at some point because she’s so smart.

Craig: Let’s do it.

John: And she sings Slaughter Race from one of my favorite movies of the last year, so.

Craig: So many reasons to have her on.

John: All right. Next Wikipedia article that I dove into. In this case I was cheating a bit. I read an article first and then I went back and looked at the Wikipedia to see what else there was about this. But so often in our fiction we talk about mirror universes, parallel universes, multiverses, the thing that shows up again and again especially in our popular culture, in our comic book culture even more so. But in the real world there’s an article here by Corey S. Powell. “Scientists are searching for a mirror universe. It could be sitting right in front of you.”

It tells the story of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Eastern Tennessee and a physicist named Leah Broussard who is trying to open a portal to a parallel universe. That makes it sound like, you know, uh-uh, the catastrophic thing she’s going to try to do. In fact, her experiment is really straightforward and smart and simple. She’s shooting a big beam of neutrons at a brick wall and if some of them get through that brick wall it is because they’ve popped out of the universe and popped back in.

Craig: Yeah. What could go wrong? That doesn’t sound like Stranger Things at all.

John: No. In fact the actual opening scene of the third season of Stranger Things. Yeah.

Craig: Right. Bingo. There it is. Except she’s not Russian. That’s terrifying. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be terrified. I know that in television that’s what happens. You shoot a beam at a wall and creatures come out and infest your body and take over and kill rats. In science what happens is the beam is shot at a wall and some incredibly imperceptible thing is finally picked up and someone says in theory based on this math. But there are no creatures.

John: Three weeks later they’ll actually have studied all the data and they’ll say, “Yes, this had a 90% chance that this actually happened.”

Craig: Right.

John: Yeah. Looking at this, looking at the general Wikipedia articles about multiverses, about mirror universes, about this sense that given what we understand of the Big Bang and cosmology there’s a compelling case to be made that the circumstances that created our universe could have created other universes at the same time, or that there may be more to our universe that we’re not actually able to see at this moment. That it’s sort of like right next door.

Craig: Right.

John: And scientifically that all makes sense. But on a personal level, on a spiritual level, I think we have an innate belief that there must be something just right beyond this that explains more. We always have been searching for some mysterious force that’s just beyond our reach, be it ether that is holding everything up and together. We’re looking for explanations behind the things that we can observe that don’t quite make sense. The biggest scientifically right now we have dark matter and dark energy to help explain why the universe has a mass that doesn’t match up with our expectation.

So this is right now searching for an explanation for that phenomenon.

Craig: But I think when we’re adapting these things, again, for film and television there’s a certain narcissism involved because we always seem to want to find another universe to help reflect back who we are. That other universe is going to teach us something. It’s either going to be a warning about what we’re going to become. Or it’s going to teach us how wonderful we could be. Or it’s going to make us confront our failures. It’s, you know, it’s always about us.

John: It’s about us. And it’s about the what-ifs. Like what if we were to change this one variable? So what if the Star Trek Enterprise in a mirror universe was evil? Like what if everything was flipped around? And that’s a convention that we have but I think it’s also fun to imagine ourselves in a slightly different version of our universe.

Craig: Well Spock would have a beard, for instance.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: No question.

John: There’d be more vests.

Craig: [laughs] Did you read Flatland?

John: Of course. You have to read Flatland.

Craig: It’s a great book. Flatland was written like early 1900s maybe?

John: Sounds right.

Craig: Essentially it’s a book about math, but it’s a very sweet book and it helps explain geometry and things like that. But there’s one moment that always stuck with me. So our character is in Flatland which is two-dimensional. So he’s a two-dimensional character. And he’s visited by a sphere. Now, he has no concept of what three dimensions are. But he’s visited by a sphere. And the sphere appears to him as this tiny dot that then gets wider as a line until it’s really wide and then it goes back again to a dot, because it’s a sphere moving up and down through a plane.

And I just thought, wow, that’s a great example of how blind someone can be if they’re missing a certain aspect. And then the sphere tells a story about how he was visited by a creature from the fourth dimension. And as I recall it’s something like the fourth dimensional creature appeared as sort of links, but the links could come apart without breaking. Because it was going through a fourth dimension that we don’t understand.

And I thought that was really cool. That part is cool. I like the idea of the promise that there’s more than we see with our eyes. That there’s something greater to aspire to that maybe one day we’ll taste.

John: Yeah. That sense that there’s an extra dimension that you could sort of walk through that extra dimension to get around a thing. And so Arlo Finch has a lot of that in it. So the Long Woods are essentially an extra dimension so you can move things through that dimension–

Craig: Spoiler.

John: It’s early on in the book.

Craig: OK.

John: But you can move through things by going there. So I can get from point A to point B by stepping through the Long Woods and coming out the other side.

Craig: Well, it makes hiking a lot more pleasant.

John: It really does. Good views. So, in looking at the Wikipedia starting place for multiverse, for parallel universes, mirror universes, it’s just too broad of a category. You could start there, but you would need to go down many, many links to get to very specific sort of implementations of that idea to get you to either a real life scientific thing that would be interesting to pursue which could be something like this physicist who seems like she’s an interesting character, especially if she’s able to prove this thing that she’s been doing the experiment on. Or some phenomenon that is a good jumping off place for a high concept/high premise science fiction story.

Craig: Yeah. When I think about the movie that did the best I think with just making this the deal, it’s probably Contact, which wasn’t necessarily another universe, but they did do some weird like interdimensional kind of crap. And even that movie ultimately what does it come down to? A father and a daughter. And that’s the thing about all these stories is there is no relationship inherent in the notion of a multiverse. So when Chris and Phil and Rodney make the Spider-Verse movie that is really just a delivery system for them to create new relationships. And in that movie this crucial relationship between this Miles Morales, young new Spider-Man, and this other dimensional Peter Parker, old, grumpy Spider-Man. And that’s it. Right? That’s why that exists to create and then service relationships.

So, you’re always going to be looking for that kind of thing. I think the multiverse will always be an instrument.

John: Yes. An instrument rather than being the actual plot or story itself. Largely because it has no characters. It has no characters that come with it for free.

Craig: Right.

John: So you’re going to have to use it as a background for who are the characters that are having an interesting time in this world that you’ve created.

Craig: Spock with a beard.

John: Spock with a beard. All right, so the last Wikipedia article is the exact opposite of this where you have a character, you have a person, and then it’s a question of what story do you tell with this person. So, this is the story of Lisa Ben, which is an anagram of Lesbian. She is one of the first lesbian journalists. So her real name is Edythe D. Eyde. She was born in 1921. She was basically a zine writer back before there were zines. So she created the first known lesbian publication in the world, Vice Versa, and she distributed it locally around Los Angeles.

She looks to be kind of a fascinating character in a very fascinating time. I’m not even sure why I ended up bookmarking this. I think someone had said that name so I looked it up and was like, oh, well that is actually an important person in LGBT history that I did not know of, so I bookmarked it.

But, there’s something fascinating about her. And one of the things that was kind of nice about her story is it reminded me of times before I was a fulltime screenwriter where I was an assistant with not quite enough to do. And so she was working at a record company. She had a typewriter, which was a big thing to have, and so she just started writing and typing this magazine. So she put in like 12 carbon copies and that’s how she did her first zines was just like typing them and then distributing them to people she knew.

Craig: It is a fascinating story. First of all, I’m grabbed by her name which is nearly palindromic. It’s so close. We’ll talk about the snaggy things, right. There were two things that snagged me. One was that she for her whole life – and it was a long life up until she retired – but for many, many years she worked as a secretary. She worked as a secretary for lots of different places, lots of different people. And this is during the ‘40s, and ‘50s, and ‘60s, which were not the most socially progressive time in America. So I’m already thinking to myself that’s interesting. I wonder what that was like. I wonder who the people were that hired her. I wonder how she maneuvered that. I wonder if it was sort of something that people knew. Did they like the idea of it? Were there men who thought, oh, this is good because there won’t be a husband to steal her away or reduce her hours here?

I’m fascinated by how that functioned. So that’s interesting. And then the other thing that snagged me was that she died utterly alone and her death wasn’t even noticed. And it was only until later that people started to really understand the impact she had. Those things are very dramatizable. And so I think there’s a very cool story here, whether it’s a movie or a short series. But what we’re talking about is one of the more invisible people in 1940s America. And the fact that she was so invisible she was able to kind of be visible. You know, so she’s sitting there, and I love the way she does this, to make her zine – she’s also basically the first, like somebody who started a zine before zines were things. She’s so cool. She would do like quadruple carbon paper and so she would type up her little zine and that was four copies. And then she would do it again. And that was four more copies, which is incredible.

And then she would circulate it at the one or two lesbian bars that were around and people knew about. And then she moved on and started writing articles in sort of a more, I guess, a real lesbian publication – a real publication for lesbians, like a real magazine. And that’s where she adopted – she wanted to be I’m a Spinster. That was the name she wanted. But they were like, no, so she went with Lisa Ben. And so there she was kind of just living her life. She had a relationship with a woman for a while until that woman spent all their money gambling.

Oh, I love that, too. You know, there’s a tendency sometimes when we’re telling stories of marginalized groups to sanctify everyone. But people are not saints.

John: No, not a bit.

Craig: Like that’s why I love – one of the great cable movies of the last ten years I think was the one that Richie LaGravenese wrote, Behind the Candelabra, about Liberace. Because he’s not a saint. In any way, shape, or form. He’s not. He’s actually a jerk. You know, I mean, he’s not a murderer, but he’s a cad. And in part, right. And I love that because that’s human.

And so here her partner spends all their money because she’s a degenerate gambler. So she ends that relationship. And just continues on living her life in the open and yet somehow not noticed. And I think that’s really interesting. I’ve never seen something like that before.

John: I think the setting of 1940s California, 1940s Los Angeles, is terrific. Just because it’s familiar but it’s also different. We’ve never seen it from this character’s point of view. Something about her reminded me a bit of Selina Kyle from Tim Burton’s Batman movie. Where it’s like she just is overlooked and she’s just kind of invisible. And she’s actually probably the most fascinating person in the room. And that is a great line to walk.

She doesn’t arc in this giant way where she’s like, you know, she created this thing and then she becomes a huge success. So it’s not joy where she becomes this huge entrepreneur who is self-made. It’s a small thing. And so the challenge of this movie would be to find how do you – what path do you actually show? What years do you show? What does victory or at least a conclusion look like for this two-hour story or four-hour story, however long you want this if it’s a short series to be? What are you trying to chart? And so even having a fascinating character like this at the start, you still have to do the work of figuring out where do you want to take her.

Craig: 100%. You would need to dig much deeper and ideally uncover one thing that’s a real event that you can work towards. That is essentially the climactic moment of your story. Because right now there isn’t one.

But if you had one, you might have something there.

John: So an interesting situation to talk about the Wikipedia of this all is that the Wikipedia article on this is actually really good. And really detailed. And kind of more detailed than most of the articles that it links out to. So whoever put together most of this Wikipedia page deserves a lot of props because it’s actually really well done.

Craig: Nice work.

John: So it’s linking out to books on queer history and stuff. So you will find her in other people’s books but it doesn’t seem like there’s one definitive book out there to option or buy to be like this is the Lisa Ben book.

But, Craig, let’s talk about this for a moment because let’s say you wanted to write the Lisa Ben movie or maybe many people out there will now want to write this, it’s a real question of like what would you buy to cordon off a certain point of view or entry into her story? I’m not sure there is going to be one thing.

Craig: I would buy nothing. There’s no reason to buy anything. If she were alive then life rights would be interesting because you could then sit with her and she could give you unique information. But she is not alive, nor has she left behind relatives as far as we know. She had no children. So at that point you’re dealing with just basically reportorial material that is available to everybody. They’re facts.

You could find people that she used to work for. You could talk to people at the magazine. You know, I assume the magazine is no longer functioning. But you could find people that were there. I think you would probably want to do quite a bit of research about what lesbian Hollywood in 1940-something looked like. Because that’s probably fascinating. For instance, there’s a bar that they call out. And you’d want to find out, OK, where was that bar. Who owned it? Is anyone still alive that remembers it? That’s interesting.

You would have to become a little bit of a detective, but no, I don’t think there’s anything to buy.

John: So, I had a good conversation with Guinevere Turner about Charlie Says which is her story of the women involved in the Manson murders. And in that case there was a book they ended up buying which was sort of to cordon off some rights. And yet she felt like it wasn’t really the right book to be using. So it’s a situation where she was given a piece of material that she didn’t necessarily really want and had to sort of find her own research to do the way into it.

And that can be a situation where with the Manson murders there’s so much out there that you wouldn’t necessarily need to buy any specific thing, but this producer came in with a book and so no matter what Guinevere is going to do that book is part of the chain-of-title to the project.

Craig: Right. And that’s something that happens a lot in these situations. Producers want to do something. They want to feel like they own something. And so they will buy a book. I cannot tell you in the wake of Chernobyl how many people have called me up and said, “We have the exclusive rights to a book that details the history of such and such.” And I think you have the exclusive rights to that book but I can read that book and use everything in it. Because it’s facts. I don’t know what to say to these people. I don’t know why you’re buying these things. I really don’t.

John: The only reason to buy a book about history if you are running a company or something like that is to have access to more of what the author has and also to get the book before it gets published. That I get. Because then you get a head start on all those facts that the author has found that aren’t necessarily going to be accessible to other people. But if the book has been around for seven years, the rights don’t matter. As far as I can tell it’s just facts.

So I suspect there are going to be cases where it’s not just the facts but it is a framing, there’s a storytelling aspect to how the book is put together that brings it beyond just the facts. I think of some of those books on famous murders which are very much told from a specific point of view. And in those cases I can see why adapting that book is different than adapting some other set of rights to things.

Craig: Sure.

John: But what Craig says is really the crucial takeaway is that facts you can find anywhere else. They’re free to go. So to make the Lisa Ben movie or to make a movie about 8chan you do not need to go after some specific book.

Now, if you were trying to make the 8chan movie and you’re trying to use this specific article or you’re trying use Fredrick Brennan’s story as the centerpiece, he’s a living person.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And so you can do it without his permission and his involvement, but it’s going to be challenging. And so there can be reasons why you want to get his cooperation.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, that’s a circumstance where you’d want life rights because you can then sort of say, listen, I want to know how this really happened. Just walk me through it and tell me things that you haven’t said in an article.

John: Another reason why you want to get some life rights is as part of the discussion you will have some language that makes it clear that they will not come after you for libel. And so libel is when you are deliberately falsely misrepresenting something about that person. Basically when you’re lying about that person–

Craig: It’s going to be defamation is probably what it would amount to. And that’s the thing that they’re all concerned about and they should be. You don’t want to defame people. And so when you do write things that are touchy you need to support them. And, man, I’ll tell you the lawyers on Chernobyl sometimes – I got some winners, man. I got some winners. Like someone said I was using the name of an actual KGB person and I eventually decided I would not, I’ll just sort of create a stand-in for the KBG. That’s fine.

The lawyer said do you have evidence to support your suggestion that this high ranking KGB official would have ordered false imprisonments of people. [laughs] I just thought, because he was in the KBG? Isn’t that enough? Right? We all agree KGB falsely imprisoned a lot? No, anyone?

So, sometimes in the burden of caution you make changes to protect yourself. And I get that. I understand that.

John: Yeah. So, some takeaway from our Wikipedia discussion. It seems like Wikipedia, we should just acknowledge, it’s a very useful place just thinking through the broad strokes of an idea as a jumping off place for exploring topics in the real world and people in the real world. It should not be your ultimate destination for the crucial facts you need.

Craig: Agreed. It’s a great entry hall. It’s a primer as they say. But it is not – you’re going to want to get down to the bottom of those Wikipedia pages, look at some of those sources, and then do your own work as well.

John: We always make predictions about which of these ideas will become movies. Craig, which of these will become a movie?

Craig: Well, the multiverse doesn’t count, right? Because it’s in 70% of the movies they make right now. So, I’m going to say that there will – somebody is going to tackle a chan movie, a 4chan, 8chan movie. Someone is going to do it.

John: I think so. I think it feels like a made-for-HBO the same way that Brexit was. Someone is going to do it.

Craig: Yeah. It seems–

John: That would be a smart person.

Craig: It wouldn’t be me. I don’t – it’s too big. I don’t know how to wrap my arms around the multitudes that those places contain. You know, it’s very strange. They’re very strange places.

John: So the Deadline article is “Chernobyl writer scared of 8chan.”

Craig: [laughs] Well, yes, by the way, I am. Everyone should be terrified of them. They can do stuff. No, from a creative point of view I just don’t know how to – I don’t know how to tackle it. Yeah. I’m saying don’t choose me for the job.

John: No. All right, let’s get to some listener questions. And this first one is related to what we’ve been talking about. Gregory writes to ask, “Can you explain the legal process on a movie like the 2016 Black List script Blonde Ambition. Madonna has said on her own Twitter page that she does not agree with the movie and that she will disown it if it comes out. Does this mean you can write a script about a famous person/celebrity even without their consent?”

Craig: Well you can.

John: You can.

Craig: You can. She said disown it. She didn’t say sue it.

John: Disown it/disavow it.

Craig: Disavow it.

John: She’s anti.

Craig: She’s going to crap on it in the press is what she’s going to do. And that’s fine. That’s their right. They can say that it’s a bunch of crap and I don’t like it. Your challenge when you’re making an unauthorized biopic is to not get into a place where you are defaming the subject of your story. And if they can prove defamation meaning they can show that you said something for which there is no basis then they’ll get you.

My suspicion is that if someone is going to make an unauthorized biography of Madonna that she finds offensive that a thousand lawyers will have picked through it very carefully first.

John: Yeah. So I’ve not read Blonde Ambition. People liked the script, so obviously it scored well on the Black List and people are enjoying it. So if that movie gets made the same kinds of people who are going to be going through Craig’s Chernobyl scripts will be going through that script to make sure that they are documenting all the stuff that has to be documented. Music rights are going to be really complicated because obviously Madonna doesn’t own everything she ever sang, but there could be situations where that is problematic.

And, of course, it’s not – in any biopic it’s not just Madonna. It’s all the other people who are in her life. They can have rights, too. And so it’s making sure that the movie is protected against all the forces that could come after it. So it’s a challenge.

Craig: The point you raise about the music is a really good one actually because whatever the songwriting credits are you have to go the artist for the right to reproduce the mechanical recording itself. And she’s not going to do that, of course.

So what you would have to do in that instance is only take Madonna songs where she did not have any writing credit and then re-perform and re-record them with a sound-a-like. Which is, you know, not ideal.

John: Doable but not ideal. Do you want to take the next question?

Craig: Sure. Michael asks, “Craig’s recent solo podcast How to Write a Movie was super insightful. Thank you. And his methodology is obviously applicable to narratives beyond just features, but I’m curious what kind of specific differences you might both employ when applying the Mazin Method to either the conception of a child or an episodic series? In particular how might you apply his method to breaking a pilot, season, or entire series? What would be different?”

John, do you know how to do that?

John: So, I’m going to take the easiest case. And so let’s say you are doing a six-episode series. I think you can do largely what Craig is describing in his sort of two-hour Pixar thing. Those same kind of lessons could apply to six hours. Where you really are – it’ll take a character from point A to point B and see them wrestling with all of those challenges, those thematic challenges along the path.

And so you’ll figure out what your stopping places are along the way, but you can look at a six-hour television project as being a long movie. And so some of the same logic can apply.

Where it’s tougher is when you’re trying to do a series where you don’t know where the end is, where you don’t know how many seasons this is going to go. You don’t know where it stops. Because what Craig is describing really does need to end because if you’re just stuck in this middle place the whole time it is not going to be satisfactory.

Craig: I agree. And even in a short form series like the one I just did, it’s not as applicable as it is in a movie. Because a movie you really do have to just have this very clear, crisp story from beginning, middle, and end if you’re making that sort of movie. Whereas over the course of five episodes you are in a much more elliptical narrative path. And so, yes, in the beginning, in the end you want to see some sort of closed loop and you want to feel like people grew and changed and you want to feel like there’s something that they’re all pushing against.

And I think that is something that I did to an extent. But it’s not quite as helpful. The truth is I – look, I’ve done one thing in television. I can’t formula-ize it yet.

John: But Craig we’ve gotten this far in the podcast, I haven’t congratulated you on your 19 nominations for Chernobyl. Congratulations Craig.

Craig: Oh boy. [laughs]

John: What got me thinking about it though was another show that got a bunch of nominations which is Russian Doll which I think probably much more so than your own show showed the kind of Mazin Method to it.

Craig: Yes.

John: Because that is a show that she makes some progress every episode but there’s clearly – Natasha Lyonne’s character is clearly on a very deliberate arc. And it felt like there was real closure at the end of that story. The character who arrives at the end of that series is not the same character who begins the show.

Craig: That’s a great point. In fact, I’ll take back what I said. Because I think in part I’m a little skewed by the nature of the thing that I wrote which was based in history. But when you are dealing with something that is purely fictional like Russian Doll and you’re telling that story over five or six episodes, or I think in the case of Russian Doll it was seven, and you have to create something out of whole cloth it is useful.

And I think you can see that she is doing something like that very clearly. There’s a very clear character problem that she has that she has to overcome. So, yes. And congratulations to Natasha Lyonne who, by the way, we’ve not had on the show?

John: No, she’s never been on the show.

Craig: That’s crazy.

John: We’ve shared stages with her, but she’s never been on the show.

Craig: I feel like she’s got to be on the show.

John: She and that whole team are remarkable.

Craig: Can we get them all on the show?

John: Let’s get them all on the show at some point.

Craig: Let’s get them all on the show, because I’m obsessed.

John: Yeah. Nice.

Craig: Oh, and thank you for saying that nice thing about me.

John: Oh, of course.

Craig: I just get – because, you know, I’m definitely not used to this!

John: Do you want to take the question from Paul?

Craig: OK, why not? Paul from the UK asks, “I’m a first-time screenwriter based in the UK. Through a random discussion with a friend in LA who has a production company with a released film I’ve had a request to send my script across. I keep thinking of your No Work Left Behind episode. And whilst this person is a friend I’m naturally cautious about sending a script 5,437 miles where I then have no control.

“Registering the script with the WGA is impossible if you’re not physically based in the USA. And the script vault in the UK seems to act as equivalent but doesn’t answer the geography problem. I am very aware that this is an opening, but I need to be sure that my derriere is suitably covered in the very possible event the content ripped off. Can you please help?”

John, we can definitely help.

John: We can definitely help. So, Paul from the UK, send your script. Send your script to this person. To anyone listening, stop worrying about someone stealing your script and stop worrying about theft. So the very possible event the content is ripped off, it won’t be. That doesn’t happen.

You need to be like whoever wrote Blonde Ambition and actually share your script with people so that people can read it. Because it is doing you no good sitting in England where no one is reading it. What will also not do really any good is registering it with the WGA office or with Script Vault or any of those services. Those are kind of proxies for – they’re not copyright protection in a real meaningful way. I don’t even know what the laws are in the UK, but you basically have copyright when you wrote the thing. If there’s a real copyright office you can send it off to in the UK, fine, do that, whatever. But real people don’t do that very often. What they do is they send scripts to people who want to read them and so those people who read the scripts say, “You’re a good writer. I want to make this thing or hire you to write something else.” That is why you wrote that script and that’s why you need to send it.

Craig: Yeah. And let’s also draw a little bit of a line in the sand between your circumstance and what No Work Left Behind covers. Because No Work Left Behind is when producers or executives are soliciting writers to come and write something for them. And then ask those writers perhaps to be prepared to talk about a first act or second act or the whole story. And you may come and you may be reading off of a document you’ve written to help you get that job. Don’t leave that document behind because they haven’t paid you for it. That’s a different situation. That’s a solicitation of work.

Or if, for instance, someone says I would love to hire you to write such and such part three, but can you write the first ten pages so I could see how you would approach it? No. You can’t do that either. So that’s called writing on spec and all of that is unacceptable. You cannot write at an employer’s request something new that is derived from their stuff without getting paid.

In your circumstance, you’ve written a script. You own it. They have no rights to it in any way, shape, or form. Absolutely send it. Send it freely. Send it without concern. And hope that they love it enough to either buy it from you or perhaps hire you to do something else.

John: Absolutely right. I understand why people get confused by No Work Left Behind in a sense of like, oh, then it means I can’t ever give people documents. No, no, no, that’s not true. It’s only if they are asking you to write up something for them, work that should be paid work that they’re asking you to do for free. Don’t do that. That’s not a good thing to do. And that hurts everyone when you do that.

Craig: Right. Exactly.

John: All right. Let’s get to our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an Instagram account by Sam Marshall called Breezeblockhead. And so I came across this from Austin Kleon. Craig, if I say Breezeblock do you know what that is off the top of your head?

Craig: I do not.

John: So click on the link and you’ll see like, oh, it’s that thing I didn’t know what the word for that is.

Craig: Oh, cinderblocks.

John: Yeah, the cinderblocks that are designed with patterns so that when they’re stacked up neatly they form walls but that air passes through. We associate them largely with midcentury modern design. I think about them a lot in Palm Springs. But they’re actually global and you see them in a lot of places. And they’re just really cool. So they’re probably one of those things that you kind of like but never really knew what they were called or why you liked them.

So this Instagram account is a good collection of what you might see there. And it will probably inspire you to just notice them more when you see them out in the world.

Craig: Breezeblocks.

John: Breezeblocks.

Craig: This reminds me, I believe in the second season of Westworld when we see the real world house. I think there’s a Breezeblock wall.

John: Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, anything that is sort of cast concrete sort of gets you into that sort of Frank Gehry kind of space.

Craig: Cool. Excellent. My One Cool Thing comes from the puzzle world. You know I’m a puzzler. And there’s a great guy named Eric Berlin. I’ve had the joy and pleasure of puzzling with him on some of the more advanced puzzle hunt things that happen, like the MIT puzzle hunt. Or, no, it’s the Galactic Puzzle Hunt. I can’t remember the name. Honestly, I’m the dumbest person on the team. That’s the important thing for you to know. And Eric is not one of the dumbest people on the team. He’s one of the smartest. And he also creates daily puzzles on Twitter.

And he has a book called Puzzle Snacks which is great which is available. And he has a whole site for Puzzle Snacks which is at puzzlesnacks.com. And what I like about them is that they are a great variety of word puzzles, different kinds of puzzles, mostly centering on words. But they’re not too hard. They’re not too easy. They’re not too hard. And he also has specific ones for kids which I think is great. And he even breaks them out by age, so for instance your daughter/my daughter are both 14. So, they can kind of do the adult ones with as he puts it the occasional nudge. But if you have a kid who is 12 or 10 or eight then you can kind of gauge for that as well.

So, anyway, very cool. And he’s a great guy. Eric Berlin. So check it out. And you can subscribe at like $3 a month and you get bonus puzzles and things. So, yeah, if you’re a nerd like me, and I hope you are, check out Eric Berlin’s Puzzle Snacks.

John: Great. I have follow up on two of your previous One Cool Things. And so you had recommended Dig It, a puzzler for iOS. I ploughed through all the levels. I got the additional levels. I am waiting for the next level pack. It has become my go to sort of time-waster game. So thank you for that.

Craig: Love that. I’m still not done with it. Good job.

John: Also thank you/curse you for that. Also a previous one of your One Cool Thing recommendations was Lab Rat, a terrific escape room that we did yesterday.

Craig: Yay.

John: And it is genuinely great. And so I like that it uses the mechanics of escape rooms and pushes the form in a slightly new direction. And it was just very, very well done. So, good recommendation. And I actually got to meet one of the writer-founders-creators of that thing at a WGA event. He’s a new WGA member which is exciting.

Craig: Great. And how many people just out of curiosity did you take into Lab Rat?

John: We took in seven people to Lab Rat which was a good number.

Craig: Good number.

John: Including Scriptnotes producer Megana Rao was there. So we had a good team.

Craig: Fantastic. It’s wonderful. I actually went with another group and just watched them.

John: Aw.

Craig: Occasionally if they needed a hint I’d give them a little mini hint. But it was just so much fun to watch them do it. It was great. Loved it.

John: So I don’t think this is a spoiler in any meaningful way but in terms of the form of escape rooms evolving in talking with the person who was running the room I said what’s the escape percentage. And he’s like, “Oh, we don’t actually think about that anymore.” We want people to experience the whole story. So we will provide hints if we need to provide hints so they can actually find their way out. And so we didn’t end up needing that many hints, but I thought that was an interesting way of approaching it is not approaching it as a pass/fail but sort of how you get through the experience.

Craig: Yes. It is – I’m seeing it more and more. Because there are rooms where it really is, look, you need to be smart and power through these things or you’re going to run out of time. And that’s fine. Because there’s not a huge narrative to them per se. But in some of the rooms where they’ve really invested in the narrative elements, they want you to see the ending. So, they’ll definitely kind of nudge you along. And they’re really good about it. Especially not like nudging you too soon.

John: Yeah. Great. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Alex Winder. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. That’s also a place where you can send links to How Would This Be a Movie.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. Or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, John.

John: And congratulations again, sir.

Craig: Thank you so much.

Links:

• Addiction & Mental Health Panel organized by Hollywood, Health & Society Wed, July 31, 2019. Follow along with the live-stream here at 7:15pm PDT.
• Pinboard for bookmarks
• Wikipedia 8chan
• Destroyer of Worlds by Nicky Woolf
• Multiverse, Mirror Universe on Wikipedia
• Scientists are searching for a mirror universe. It could be sitting right in front of you. by Corey S. Powell
• Lisa Ben on Wikipedia
• The First Lesbian Magazine by Erica Davies
• Breezelblockhead on Instagram by Sam Marshall
• Eric Berlin’s Puzzle Snacks
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Alex Winder (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 411 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now in the past few weeks we’ve been talking a lot about the journey of a single hero. Today on the program we’re going to be focusing on two-handers, movies with two central characters. To do so we’re joined by writer Katie Silberman whose credits include Set it Up, Isn’t It Romantic, Booksmart.

Katie Silberman, welcome to the show.

Katie Silberman: You guys, I’m so excited to be here. This is a real thrill for me. This is like the Universal Theme Park of me. [laughs]

Craig: So we can get in a tram and experience what you’re experiencing right now?

Katie: I’m going to spend at least $250. I’m going to take a lot of photos.

Craig: This is so great. I’m always mystified by why people – because it’s just us. I mean–

John: It’s just us talking.

Katie: I still feel that way about scripts. Like if someone tells me that they liked a script my first instinct is how did you get it? Where did I leave my computer?

Craig: Why would you read a script?

Katie: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

John: Now, you’ve also just sold a pitch to a new movie, so I want to talk to you about that whole process of selling a pitch in 2019. Because that’s a thing that used to happen a lot.

Craig: Daily.

Katie: Yeah.

John: Daily. And it doesn’t happen so much anymore. So you are the person we can ask about sort of what that’s all like.

Katie: It was so much fun. And I feel really lucky. I have experienced pitching when it’s just an idea, you know, to producers when it’s a script you want to write. I’ve been able to pitch with a bigger package. I find them both so fun. When it’s just you in a room trying to sell a story that to me is the greatest challenge of trying to convince someone to like something as much as you like it. It’s fun, too, because you get to present ideally what your job will be in the context of all these other people.

This was particularly fun because it was an idea that Olivia and I came up with on the set of Booksmart. We enjoyed working together so much that we wanted to do something else together. And so it’s been a very collaborative process getting it to the place where we were ready to take it out into the world. And then it was really fun to be able to do that.

John: Great. So we’ll get into concrete details about sort of how you figure that out, so that will be our third segment probably of the show. But first we always have some follow up. And so first bit of news, next week we are doing our first live show on the Internet. We are going to be doing this special panel on mental health and addiction organized by Hollywood Health and Society. We are excited to do this. This is next Wednesday at 7:15pm. You can see it streaming on Facebook. Ultimately this will be an episode that we will air in the feed, but if you want to see it happening live–

Craig: Live.

John: Live.

Craig: There’s video.

John: There’s video, too. You can see what Craig looks like, and what I look like. Which is always jarring for people.

Craig: What you look like or what I look like?

John: Just that we actually have faces.

Craig: Oh yeah, that we have faces. Well I remember when I was a kid I would listen to Dr. Ruth. That’s how I learned about sex. And I would listen to Imus in the Morning. This was before Howard Stern.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: And I had ideas of what they looked like. And then I saw pictures and I’m like what? What? That’s not what they look like. But they do. And this is what we look like.

John: This is what we look like.

Craig: I know. People have these weird feelings. Well, they get to see us doing it.

Katie: You could hire someone.

Craig: Ooh.

Katie: To be on the video.

Craig: Oh.

Katie: Whomever you wanted.

Craig: Oh?

John: Yeah, I have a voice double, so maybe he could be my voice double.

Craig: You have a voice double?

John: Yeah. It was a One Cool Thing earlier. Maybe an episode you weren’t around for. But I heard a guy on the radio I was like that’s actually my voice.

Craig: And a lot of people said that Charlie Booker sounded like a British me. And I listened to it because I wasn’t there for that one and he does.

John: Yes. He sounds like a British you.

Craig: Or I sound like an American him.

John: People thought that it was just Craig doing a British accent pretending to be Charlie Booker.

Craig: Some people legitimately thought it was just a long con of an episode. My British accent, not great.

John: We have some more follow up. So, in a previous episode I talked about Midsommar and Rodrigo wrote in. Craig, can you read us what Rodrigo wrote in about?

Craig: Yes. Rodrigo writes, “This may sound petty, but in your last episode John referenced Midsommar and may have done damage to an industry we are all trying to keep relevant. I planned on seeing this film but after hearing you say that you ‘liked it but didn’t love it’ I became less enthusiastic to purchase a ticket. We all want audiences to buy tickets to movies showcasing new and original content and so many from this audience listen to your show and are influenced by what you say, myself included. I only ask that you guys keep aware of your power to elevate or dilute a frenzy for audiences to go watch and support films.

“Your point you made about the film was spot on and super productive. But I think the brief one-thumb- up review may have done more harm than good. And for the record I have absolutely no affiliation with Midsommar. I just know how fickle influence can be when getting people motivated to go see movies in the theater.”

John, Rodrigo has got a bone to pick with you.

John: He does have a bone to pick with me and I think, he’s actually right. So, even as I said it I remember hearing myself say that I liked it and didn’t love it, and why did I add that ‘didn’t love it’? And I hear myself doing this in real life when I’m not being recorded. I’m going to stop doing it. I want people to call me out when I do it next time because it’s such a weird hedging. I don’t want to fully commit to loving something so I’m going to say I liked it/didn’t love it. I could have just said I liked it. And it’s fine to have reservations about a thing or things not working fully, but that liked it but didn’t love it is such a 2019 sort of like I’m not going to be fully invested in a thing.

Katie, do you find yourself doing that like it but not love it, or hearing it and being frustrated?

Katie: Yes, I mean, I’m someone who on average uses about seven exclamation points in every text message, so in general if I say I like it if people know me well enough they’re like she hated it. Because I speak in such hyperbole. I would give a slight counterpoint to Rodrigo who I respect that opinion totally, but I also – this is such a collaborative business. I really like when someone says I didn’t love it. That makes me want to see it more to see if I think they’re right. Or if I can come back at them and say I did love it and here’s why.

Craig: That’s interesting. I’m such a Pollyanna about this honestly on Twitter and all that stuff, anything that’s public, on this show. I just never say anything bad about – and not because of what Rodrigo is saying, interestingly. So Rodrigo is making a point like, look – and I think he may be overstating our influence, honestly. But regardless he’s saying you can actually drive people away from a movie. That’s not why – I’m less worried about that. My emotional connection to people who make things and who are suffering is so intense, and it’s so empathetic, that I never want to be an additional cause of problems.

It’s so hard to make things. It’s so hard to make things. And I am often struck how intensely we feel our own pain and then miss that other people are feeling it, too. So, you know, I try and avoid that. I think Rodrigo makes, at least it’s a good idea to avoid that. And I will say John that saying that you love something actually is an act of vulnerability.

John: Of course.

Craig: Because, yeah, if you say you hate something then you’re cool. And if you say you love something you’re admitting that you were touched, you were impacted or affected. And a critic, I can’t remember who it was, it was a critic writing basically saying it’s so much harder to write a good review than a bad review because you’re vulnerable.

Katie: Yeah. Especially in comedy I feel.

Craig: Oh man. Can we talk?

John: Well, especially, with any comedy it’s your immediate reaction to that time that you saw it, but also hedged by saying like will this hold up five years from now, or is it too timely of its moment. You kind of can’t do any of that. It’s just what is your reaction in the moment? And I think in the case of Midsommar it’s a movie that stuck with me for a long time so whether it’s a 10 out of 10 for me is less relevant to it actually had an impact on me which is kind of rare sometimes.

Craig: Yeah. Well, you know what? Thank you Rodrigo. You’ve inspired a good self-examination.

John: Now, for these next two segments I need your help Katie because we’re going to talk about some WGA stuff and we could go on for an hour. And we should not go on for an hour.

Craig: God no.

John: So if you can help us out by limiting us to one-minute per topic. And then we will plow through this and not speak of it more in this podcast.

Katie: Yes sir. Do you want like a 15-second warning to wrap up?

Craig: I think it would be fun to be just surprised.

Katie: OK. Mid-word.

Craig: Literally mid-word. Just slap the word right out of our mouths.

Katie: OK.

John: And go. Now on a previous episode we talked about the upcoming WGA West elections and the news that Craig will be running for the board. That is now incorrect. Craig is running for Vice President. And it’s a change. It’s a different.

Craig: Yeah. It’s different. I wish I weren’t running for Vice President, but I am. And so I guess the big deal is I actually agree with everything that the union is doing in terms of its fight with the agencies. I support that fight. I just don’t love the way they’re going about prosecuting the fight. And I want more of a voice to see if we can get it resolved quicker. That’s basically what I’m going after.

But there’s less daylight between me and those folks than people might think.

John: Now, Craig is no longer running for the board, but 21 other people are running for the board, for those eight seats that are available. So we will figure out some way to talk about this on the podcast coming up. But there will be a candidate’s night August 28 at the Writers Guild Theater. So that’s a chance for people to ask questions of all these people running for the board.

Craig: Yeah. And it’s good to see a contest back at the Writers Guild again.

John: I agree. Having multiple people running for things is a good thing.

Katie: And that’s time.

Craig: Nice.

John: We did a good job there.

Craig: Boom.

John: Boom. Fist bump.

Craig: Fist bump. It turns out actually there’s not that much to say.

John: All right, and go. On Monday of last week Kaplan-Stahler Agency became the first midsize lit agency to break ranks with the ATA and sign a new agreement with the WGA. Then on Wednesday three lit agents broke off from Abrams to form a new signatory agency called Ultra Creative. Those are some changes on the smaller side of the WGA.

Craig: And that’s where we’re seeing the changes and that’s to be expected. We know that in terms of the big four agencies it’s increasingly unlikely that we’re going to see any sort of spontaneous change like that without some sort of negotiated deal. And we also know that there are thousands of writers represented by those agencies that cannot be absorbed by the smaller ones. So this is nice to see. I encourage it. But it’s in no way indicative of a kind of permanent resolution.

John: That’s fair to say. There are going to be member meetings for all the WGA West folks August 7, 8, and 10. So two of those are at the Writers Guild. One of them is in Burbank, I believe. But that will be your next chance to sort of gather with a big group of people to ask questions of negotiating committee, the board, and everybody else about what’s going on.

Katie: And that’s time.

Craig: Nicely done. I had nothing else to say.

John: It’s the equivalent of our podcast ads. Like they have to be a certain length but not longer than a certain length.

Craig: I wish we did do podcast ads, but for fake things. Because I think it would be fun to do ads, I just don’t like prostituting myself for Squarespace which by the way did not give us money.

John: They have not given us money yet, so we need to follow up with them. We sent them a nice email, but I think some public shaming may be the next step.

Craig: Well the fact that I just described ads for Squarespace as prostituting myself may have limited us somewhat. But, yeah, I think it would be fun.

Katie: Make up a fake mattress name.

John: Ooh yeah.

Craig: Ooh.

Katie: There’s like 50 of those.

Craig: Every week we do an ad for a fake product that doesn’t exist. I think we should start doing it.

Katie: Create the fake website.

Craig: Yep. Do the whole thing. Maybe start selling some mattresses.

John: Katie, let’s get into it. So tell us a little bit about your origin story, because I first knew you through Dana Fox. So you were an assistant to Dana Fox, but I don’t know how you came to Hollywood overall.

Katie: I feel so lucky about my origin story. I think it’s incredibly serendipitous and I mostly feel lucky because I just came into all the greatest people and I feel like I benefited from that. After college I – I should say during college I decided I wanted to be a writer. The first script I ever read was Juno.

John: Holy cow.

Katie: By Diablo Cody. I know. Because my roommate had a connection and she put herself on tape to play Juno’s friend. So I read off-camera with her the screenplay. And it was the first time I’d ever seen anything in script format. And I fell totally in love with it.

John: So the first script you ever read was–?

Craig: Oscar Award winning Juno.

John: A fantastic game-changing script.

Katie: Quite literally. And a genre-builder in my opinion in terms of kind of stories about those kinds of young women. And I was so in love with it I came out during my off term from college and interned at 20th Century Fox Television during their pilot season. My job was to digitize their script library. They had an enormous closet full of physical scripts of writing samples of writers they might want to hire for shows. And they were in the process of trying to turn them into PDFs. And so my job was literally–

Craig: Scanning.

Katie: File it into a PDF maker which was extraordinary. I just read all day. And while I was there I wrote down the names of writers that I loved and scripts that I loved so that when I went back to college I decided I was not quite brave enough to come out to LA and just start trying to find an assistant job. So I ended up going to Columbia Film School to study for a little bit longer. But while I was there I cold emailed almost all the people I had found in that closet and two of the people I emailed were Dana Fox and Lorene Scafaria.

Craig: Wow, how about that?

Katie: The two nicest, most talented people in Los Angeles.

Craig: Legitimately.

Katie: And they wrote back. And they said that they didn’t need assistants at the time but they offered to be essentially pen pals and answer any questions I had which was so extraordinary.

Craig: Those two.

Katie: I know. They’re the greatest.

Craig: They make me feel bad about myself. I mean, honestly.

Katie: And then when I was at Columbia I wrote a script that found its way to Mason Novak and Michelle Newson, two really extraordinary managers who knew them socially because Mason represented Diablo. And when I signed with them that’s kind of when I followed up with Dana and Lorene and I was less a crazy person from the Internet and I felt a little more established.

John: But is it weird that – they were all friends. And so separately you’d written out to them and you had no idea that they’re all talking.

Katie: It was a crazy coincidence. I mean, I say it’s a coincidence. I was desperate to work with anyone associated with the writers that I loved. So I did kind of send things specifically to–

Craig: You sort of independently picked out members of the Fempire.

Katie: Yes. One by one.

Craig: One by one.

Katie: I tried to pick them off one by one.

Craig: I like this person, I like this person, I like this person. And then later on realized, oh, they’re part of the Fempire.

Katie: Yes. Well I knew that they were part of the Fempire. I mean, I had that New York Times article cut out in my binder. I was kind of excited about it.

Craig: Got it. You were very aware of the Fempire.

Katie: Yes. But so then I’m emailing with them. I met with them a few times when I came out to LA. And I graduated from Columbia in the fall of 2011. And the day that I landed was the day that Dana’s television show Ben and Kate was picked up by Fox. And so she had my old email asking if she ever needed an assistant to please call me. And she emailed me and said I need an assistant. It was literally the day I landed.

Craig: Wow. Oh, come on.

Katie: It was crazy. I know. And so I started working for her a few days later. And it was extraordinary, not only because as you guys know more than anyone Dana is the most generous and intelligent and just kind of inspiring person to be around. But also because the year of making that television show was condensed film school. It went from casting, to choosing the director, to shooting the pilot, to filling the writers’ room, to then following Dana as a fly on the wall all day from set, to the writers’ room, to the edit, and then watching them create those 13 hours of television. I mean, it was extraordinary. And I just loved spending time with her. And when you’re making a TV show you’re spending, as you know, 100 hours a day with whoever you’re with.

Craig: She’s amazing. I mean, ugh, I hope she listens to this.

John: I hope she does. And so people may not know that she is the basis for the Lucy Liu character in Set it Up, the monstrous boss.

Katie: It’s just so extraordinary to be able to turn those stories into art and share it with the world. It was funny though because to go – anytime talking to the press about Set it Up I was like I need everyone to write down that Dana is the greatest boss that’s ever lived. Because she’s kind of the only boss I’ve had outside of camp counselors and, you know, summer jobs at Urban Outfitters and stuff like that. I mean, I knew enough people with terrible stories but it’s kind of how they say that only really smart people can play dumb people. I feel like only if you’ve had the greatest boss in the world could you write a story–

Craig: Can you know what–

John: You recognize the tyranny.

Craig: The anti-Dana.

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: I mean, she is an endless ray of sunshine.

John: So Dana Fox works really hard and writes a ton. And so how much of your daily life was involved in writing and sort of getting – on a show like Ben and Kate she is going through and she might be rewriting scripts. She’s doing stuff. How much are you touching the words versus how much are you just getting life to work properly for Dana?

Katie: I felt very lucky because it felt very equal. It felt about 50/50. In any assistant job your job is to make sure that they are living their happiest and most productive life. And so a lot of that is the day to day jobs that they don’t have time to do, they can’t do, and making sure that life is running smoothly for them. But from the get Dana was so generous with allowing me into that process and the words process and sitting with her and talking things out and beating out episodes occasionally, scenes occasionally. The time that I was most grateful for was – because we would have a very long day. We would get to set at six and we would be there until about three and then we’d go to the writers’ room and then we would go to the edit when everyone else went home.

But sitting in the edit with her was probably the most I’ve learned in a condensed period of time. Because she’s not only a great writer, she’s an extraordinary producer. She’s now a wonderful director. And she has such a sense of story and such a sense of what the audience will be feeling. And not only watching her translate the episode, you know, the script to the episode, but seeing how you need to be able to give up what was on the page into what you’re creating, what you’re actually giving to the world. That was really, really invaluable for me.

Craig: That’s the real stuff, right? I mean, I think a lot of writers, Ted Elliott always used to say that screenwriting is one of the only jobs in the world where you can get paid for years and only do half the job.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: Because a lot of people, particularly in features, they write and they write and they write but they don’t go through the process of production which is when you learn so much kind of retroactively. And in comedy, which you write, you know that editing is kind of – that’s the music. That’s the final playing of the tune. And it all comes down to that. I’ve learned more about comedy in an editing room I think than anywhere else.

Katie: Absolutely. I mean, it’s like designing the most beautiful blueprint and you can frame that somewhere but you still have to build a house. And Dana actually taught me this, that when you finish a script, when you’re happy with a script, you take a beat and you celebrate it. Because the script is great. And now it’s the script. But then you’re going to make a movie. And you have to have celebrated what the script was and now be ready to turn it into something that’s a totally different medium.

John: You’re working really hard for Dana Fox, but how are you finding time to write for yourself and what is the process of getting your own scripts written while you’re working with Dana?

Katie: Yes. Well, I was lucky because Dana really did bring me into a lot of things that she was working on. Not just Ben and Kate, not in an official capacity, but it felt like stretching that muscle over and over in terms of talking out scenes and pitching dialogue and what not. And then when that show was over, you know, at the same time every night I was going home and noodling on my own ideas and sketching things on a legal pad.

But when Ben and Kate ended she had other jobs she needed to work on, to complete. Other feature jobs. And so she and I actually started writing those together as a writing team. And so then it felt like just a wonderful halfway house towards really doing it on my own in terms of splitting up the work in real ways and working together in a tangible way where I felt like I was really contributing as a partner as opposed to someone who is there who got to contribute every once and a while.

So, that led to more time to be able to work on my own stuff as well at home, so that was kind of the transition period where I would wake up early in the morning and write before I went in to work with her.

Craig: Ah, youth.

Katie: I know. [laughs]

Craig: Youth. Do you have children by the way?

Katie: No.

Craig: OK. John and I have talked many times on the show about how children basically suck the life out of you. I think it’s one of our common themes.

John: It is.

Craig: And, yeah–

John: It makes it impossible to do that sort of stuff that’s outside of work hours.

Craig: Yeah. But I do remember that there was that time where I could do that. And good for you to kind of capitalize on it.

Katie: It’s crazy. I feel really lucky. Even now I’m married and I have a dog, and I know it’s incomparable in terms of the time they suck–

Craig: Depends on the dog.

Katie: But to think that there was a time where writing was the priority, kind of before you have a partner, before you have anything to take care. It’s such a luxury. And I’m glad that – I think Dana helped me be aware of that at the time because she had other responsibilities.

Craig: She has 200 children.

Katie: Yeah. She has 789 kids. And 40 dogs.

Craig: [laughs] She does. I’ve seen them all.

Katie: Yes. But so that was another thing, I mean, among everything else that she taught me was to really take advantage of when you’re able to give it your full self because that’s when you’re kind of creating the muscle and the framework to then be able to hopefully continue it when you have the time.

Craig: I wish she had been my boss. First of all, I want Dana to be my mom.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: And then if I can’t have her to be my mom, then I would definitely have her be my boss. Because I mean talk about somebody that just coasts on positivity and gets it done.

Katie: Truly. It’s like someone asked Mike Nichols what the secret to a long marriage is and he said marry Diane Sawyer. And people say what’s the secret to working in Hollywood, I say work for Dana Fox.

Craig: Work for Dana Fox.

John: Dana Fox was my assistant before she went off–

Katie: Yes. So it all comes from this.

John: It does all come from me.

Craig: No question.

John: But I will say that Dana was my assistant, and Rawson Thurber was my assistant, Megan McDonnell who just left the show is now writing. I never did that thing where I invited them so directly into the process. And so that kind of apprenticeship that you’re talking about is a thing that happens in TV all the time. Whether it’s the newest staff writer on a show or the writer’s assistant, they’re always there for part of that process and it’s really hard to get that experience in features. And so you had a unique opportunity with Dana to be able to do that stuff.

Katie: It really does feel very singular. Because you’re right, in a television show, even just by osmosis people are sitting in a room and watching how it happens so often. I mean, that’s why – not to kind of butter you guys up, but the website and the podcast is so invaluable. I remember how ravenous I was for any information as to how the process went. Whether it was pitching, or writing, or finding an agent, and wanting as many details as possible. And I’m so excited for young writers coming up now that there is such a wealth of information and places to access that information in terms of just trying to understand what it looks like before you show up.

Craig: You know what? I remember when I first came to Los Angeles I was an intern also at Fox Network. It was through the Television Academy. So this is 1991. And when I got there I realized I really didn’t understand anything. I had grown up and watched networks. I knew there were networks. But now people are talking about Fox Television, but there’s also Fox Broadcasting. And I realized I actually didn’t understand anything.

Well, what do you do at that point? There is no Internet. There’s no Wikipedia. There’s no podcast. Nothing. So, I went to a bookstore and I bought – Ken Auletta wrote a book called Three Blind Mice which was kind of a history of the three networks. And I read that mostly just to learn like, oh, OK, they weren’t allowed back then to produce their own stuff so that’s a production company. They deficit finance. I learned what syndication was. I literally didn’t know that there was a difference. I didn’t know why one channel had reruns and the other one–

Katie: Why does a channel get to air four and this channel only airs one?

Craig: Right. And I learned it all from a book because that was the only way you could learn in 1840.

Katie: I mean, I’ve never admitted this, but when I came out here for that internship I heard from someone that the writers from the Office, because this was 2007, right in the height of their popularity, although I guess it lasted for a decade, but that they used to hang out at Molly Malone’s on Fairfax. I don’t even know if that’s true. I just heard it. And I used to go there almost every night.

Craig: Aw.

Katie: Hoping to see them.

Craig: Oh my god.

Katie: I guess assuming maybe they’d be writing at 9pm at a bar. Like maybe I’d see them in the middle of their process. But I was like just to be in the same city where all these people who are doing the thing that I wanted to do were actively at it was so exciting to me.

Craig: There’s a wonderful romance of the writer. Then you become one, you meet them all, and you’re like, ah.

John: Maybe not so much.

Craig: No.

John: Let’s talk about the movies you actually got made though. So the first thing I saw that had just your credit on it was Set it Up on Netflix which was delightful. So congratulations on that. So it was a big hit for Netflix. We have no idea what that actually means in terms of numbers, because they will never tell us that.

Craig: Between one and everyone watched it.

John: Yeah. But everyone was talking about it and that’s when you define a hit on Netflix is it’s a watercooler conversation moment. It was just a delightfully well-done romantic comedy. And talk us through that script. And had you written that script trying to do it in another way and Netflix ended up being the buyer? What was the process of getting Set it Up set up?

Katie: First of all, that’s a really lovely thing to say. Thank you so much. Set it Up was so much fun from beginning to end. A very good friend of mine named Juliette Berman who is also a really wonderful producer, she and I met as assistants and at that time we’re working for two women and met on a film set. And then a few years later she was a lower level executive at a company. And I had just started writing with Dana. And she reached out to me and said she wanted to make a movie about assistants setting up their bosses. She had that log line.

And I said I love that idea. I think that’s great. So I went off and spent a few weeks breaking the story and went back to her and said this is how I would like to do it. I would like to make a real throwback kind of screwball romantic comedy. And to her immense credit didn’t say no one is buying those anymore so don’t do that. And she said, OK, that’s the movie I’d want to watch, too, so write that one and then we’ll take it out.

So, I just wrote the movie that I wanted to see and didn’t really worry about where it would end up. I was–

Craig: Let’s pause for a moment so that people can really hear what you just said. Because I think a lot of times they don’t quite get it. Because they think that they’re supposed to write what supposedly the marketplace is demanding or their agent or their manager or their lawyers or their friends are telling them nobody wants that, write this.

Don’t do that. Do what Katie did. Write the movie you want to see.

Katie: And also that’s fun. Because then you’re writing what you would want to be watching. And then your day is fun and you know you can lean into that strike zone. And if it’s a genre you love – I love the genre. I love the classics. And so it was a wonderful excuse to investigate why I loved it and the things that worked and the things that would have to change in a modern setting. And it was just a really fun experiment in addition to a fun job to take on.

I had wonderful support in Juliette and Justin Nappi who runs that production company, Treehouse. And when the script went out it was exciting because a lot of places said that they wanted to make movies like this again. A lot of places also said we love these movies but we can’t make them because no one will see them. But it was exciting at the time that it felt like studios wanted to try and take that risk. And we were set up at MGM and briefly Fox 2000 for a little while. And it was a great college try from both of those places in terms of trying to figure out a way to make the movie in a way that would make sense to them. And then everyone kind of amicably realized that was not going to happen.

And that is when Netflix stepped in. And they said the same thing that we said. Matt Brodlie who at the time was running that program said this is a movie I want to watch and so I want the opportunity to make it. And they were so supportive and so extraordinary. I mean, we described it a little bit like the inmates running the asylum in that we had so much creative control. We almost weren’t ready for it.

Craig: I’m kind of curious for older writers I think they still look at the theatrical release as this magical thing as opposed to being released over a streaming service like Netflix. But my daughter I don’t think really cares. I don’t think she notices much of a difference except that for one you have to drive a little bit and park.

Did you feel any difference yourself or were you like, yeah, no, it actually doesn’t matter?

Katie: I certainly didn’t feel any difference in the making of the movie. They feel the same wherever it’s going to end up I would say. And you know we tested Set it Up in theaters. We took it to the traditional kind of testing process. So I had seen it in theaters a few times before it was going. So even that process felt very similar. It was interesting, in the mix it’s different, in the sound mix, because you’re never worrying about the theatrical Dolby experience. That was the first time I realized, oh, this will only ever be watched—

And it was interesting too because at one point Matt reminded us, he was like, you know, you’re not in a comedy – you’re not spacing out for the laughs. This is usually going to be someone alone in their room or in a living room with two other people and you don’t have to wait for the person behind you to stop laughing to hear the next joke.

Little things like that were interesting. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have experienced both versions, kind of back to back in a way where it really is comparable. And there are huge benefits to both, and things you miss from both I think. I also feel lucky, I think romantic comedies are a genre that are really aligned with that kind of experience, which is where everyone wants to watch them anyway.

There is a thrill to seeing it in the theater with a lot of people. I mean, we premiered Booksmart at South by Southwest and that theatrical experience will probably be the highlight of my life. It was extraordinary. But there’s also a thrill in being able to tell people you’ve already paid for it. It’s at home this Friday.

Craig: It’s at home. No pressure.

Katie: Yeah, no pressure at all. And to watch it grow in ways like that as well. And, you know, internationally it’s fun I think for Glen and Zoey especially to feel like it has the equivalent of an international release that essentially only Mission: Impossible gets, but that they can travel globally.

John: Day and date worldwide, yeah.

Katie: Absolutely. And so the reach of it is really extraordinary. So, I feel lucky. There were things that while experiencing both I was like, oh, it’s maybe a little better over on the other side of the fence. But I think there are movies and there are experiences for both kind of at all times.

John: Set it Up is a romantic comedy and every romantic comedy is going to have those sort of two co-equal leads, or those two characters are going to be so central to everything. But I want to segue into Booksmart which also has two characters who are driving the story, who are at the centerpiece of the whole thing rather than a single protagonist.

And for folks who haven’t seen the movie, what is your short version of what the movie is about? How do you describe it to people?

Katie: I would describe it as it’s a high school comedy about two unapologetically brilliant best friends, girls who have been best friends for ten years in high school, who have prioritized school work, have prioritized their future, taken themselves seriously, and the last day of school realize that all the kids that they thought prioritized fun and didn’t take anything seriously were just as smart as them and got into schools just as great as they did.

And so they’re rocked by this knowledge that they were the only ones who chose, and everybody else got to do everything. And so they only have one night to prove that they also can do everything. And the night before graduation they try and fit in as much fun as possible to kind of prove to everybody that they’re just as multi-dimensional as they are.

John: Now, this was a script that was loved for a long time.

Katie: Yes, for a decade.

John: This was a Black List script. Emily Halpern, Sarah, Haskins, Susanna Fogel had been on this. And when you came on board what was it that made you want to do this movie?

Katie: Well, I think as you said the original draft that Emily and Sarah wrote was about two smart girls and a buddy comedy of two smart girls. And that was a dynamic that I was so excited about. Even when it came out. I remember when, because I used to be obsessed with the Black List, I still am, and when it came out in 2009 in college you had to pay to print every page. It was like ten cents to print a page at these public printers. And I printed out the script of Booksmart I was so excited about it, because I wanted to read it.

John: Holy cow. So this is 2009,

Katie: Yeah. So I was like tossing money towards the Dartmouth paper collection or whatever it was.

Craig: I hope it wasn’t very long.

Katie: It’s a comedy, so it’s OK.

Craig: Yeah, it’s 95 pages.

Katie: Like 115.

Craig: Well, 115.

Katie: The librarian was like what is this?

Craig: That’s $11.50.

Katie: I know. I was committed.

Craig: That’s real.

Katie: And so I was incredibly excited about that. And Susanna Fogel, who is so talented, had done a big update a few years later and it was the same core idea but kind of a different context. But I was excited to both I think try and tell a story about smart girls that I hadn’t seen before, because I do think that in most movies if there’s a smart girl that’s 90% of her personality is that she’s intelligent. And I feel really lucky in that the women in my life are all really smart and no one would list that the first thing about them.

And I was excited about the potential to explore that. I was also excited to try – the high school movie is such an established structure and framework. And I felt like there was a really unique opportunity to take the archetypes that we’re used to and reveal all of them to be something more than that. Because I knew that, much like high school, when you start watching that movie you’re able to label everybody as a certain thing. And in so many great ways in high school movies they play either a comedic relief or a tertiary role that way, but I was excited to try and flip all the preexisting notions you have about these movies on their heads and reveal all that.

And mostly honestly I was excited to work with Olivia because she was attached at the time and had made this extraordinary deck and had such an undeniable and clear vision and tone for what she wanted the movie to be. She said she wanted it to be Training Day for high school girls.

John: Ha.

Craig: Ha.

Katie: And I was like that, I would work the craft table for. I’ll do anything for that movie. So I was really excited to be able to tackle that. And we talked a lot, too. We started developing this script right at the time of the Parkland students becoming so political and outward and so many young women, teenage girls of this age showing up in huge public ways so courageously and so bravely, both on the political spectrum, kind of throughout every spectrum. And we were really excited to try and tell a story to honor how brave and cool and tough girls of this age – what it’s like to be a young woman in 2019 which in the last three years had changed so astronomically.

And what it’s like to kind of be burying the burden of society as of now at that age and what it means. And so we wanted to celebrate how inspired we were by the women of that generation.

Craig: Here’s a writer-y question for you based on what you just said, because I think a lot of times when you are writing movies that are two-handers and you have two people you do start with this question of who are they/what do they represent/how are they connected with society of large/what’s their relevance? All the things you were just saying.

But at some point while you’re writing you realize, OK, but to each other they’re none of those things.

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: To each other they’re just people, so how do you – as you dig into the relationship do you start to feel like you’re shedding a little bit of the kind of concern over what they represent to an audience and start delving into what they mean for each other?

Katie: Completely. I mean, that’s the nail on the head in terms of how we wanted to structure it which is we talked a lot about how intense high school girl best friends are. And it’s an incredibly codependent borderline unhealthy relationship. It’s your first soulmate in a real way. But we were talking about how they’re the only person who sees all your dimensions. So that friendship gave us an opportunity to quite early on and kind of throughout the movie and the story show what the rest of the world saw these girls as. And most of the time it’s how they’re presenting themselves. You know, a character like Molly who is played by Beanie Feldstein so beautifully, she projects this intensity and this seriousness and this kind of no nonsense. And when she’s with her best friend she’s warm and goofy and funny and that’s the only person who sees that side of her. And so depicting a friendship like that in a buddy comedy you’ve got to show the interior and the exterior almost at the same time.

And that was such a fun opportunity to also right away establish this is who they present to the world and this is who they are when they’re gooey at home.

Craig: Right. Exactly. And you start to see them as people-people.

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: Which is fun.

John: Well let’s talk about the Amy character then. So Molly’s character is the prototypical if Amy didn’t exist you could still make a movie that was essentially the Molly movie.

Craig: This force of nature.

John: This ocean liner that’s going to be ploughing through here. And if this were Election then she would be Reese Witherspoon’s character. She’s the one who is just in charge of everything and clearly has stuff together. But to see the Amy character who is as smart and has very specific other things, came out as a lesbian in the 10th grade, and has no experience, in your writing process and figuring out how you were going to structure the story what were you thinking about the beats between the two characters and sort of the journey of their relationship? Sort of like what was that stake for the two of them over the course of that night? And decisions about how far to carry that out?

Because you describe it as codependence and it really is. It’s uncomfortable to watch at moments, sort of how deeply into each other’s lives they are. And you recognize that they have to find some space between each other, and yet you don’t want them to break out. So, as you’re plotting this out how are you trying to tie this into the actual events of the evening?

Katie: Yeah, well from the beginning Olivia and I decided we wanted to structure it almost like a romantic comedy knowing that it was a breakup movie. That as you’re saying what they really needed from each other was some freedom to figure out who they were. And so we went through and structured the story as if it were a romance but as you’re saying essentially at the beginning of the movie Amy knows that they need to be independent and Molly does not.

And so the structure throughout is Amy trying to make that happen in a way that doesn’t feel like an explosion, until Molly forces her to blow it up basically. You know, I’ll give maybe a slight spoiler alert because we’ll start to talk of some of the real plot.

Craig: Spoiler!

Katie: Spoiler alert! But over the course of the story Amy is trying to live her own life, even in small ways, saying I’m not going to go out, you go do it by yourself. I’ve gone out to one party. You keep going out to the other parties. It’s not until Molly really makes herself vulnerable at one point in the midpoint and admits that there’s something she hadn’t been sharing with Amy that Amy puts herself in the driver’s seat and decides that for Molly she’s going to continue this night out.

But I think what’s been fun is to listen to people talk about their own friendships in terms of the person who pushes and the person who maybe needs to be pushed. Because I think they both have a valid argument. I think Molly would say without me Amy wouldn’t do anything. She wouldn’t try things. She wouldn’t be brave. She wouldn’t experience things. And Amy would say you force me do everything and I would get there on my own if you gave me the time to do it.

So, that back and forth and making sure that structurally the arcs are lined up with each other in that one person realizes something before the other because the second can’t catch up in time, it’s going to come to blows almost.

Craig: Conflict.

John: Conflict.

Craig: Right? We talk about this. Conflict.

John: You need two characters who want different things. So let’s try to step back and generalize for movies with two central characters and the questions you need to ask yourself if you’re trying to write one of these stories. So you have two characters who need something from the other person. And they may already be getting that at the start of the movie, or they may meet over the course of the story and discover they’re getting this thing from each other, but they each have their own journey they need to be on and you need to find ways to structure your story so that each of them is challenged to grow into the next person they need to be and that it’s not just about the two of them going through a bunch of stuff.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a great two-hander.

Katie: Yes.

John: Where those two characters, they needed to be together and they provide specific things to each other, but by going on this trip together they’ve both grown and changed. And in some ways it is just a single hero’s story with two heroes. You really have to think through each of them are kind of driving their own story and making sure that it really is meaningful. That you’re getting all the way through with this character’s – what they need at the start of the story and where they got to by the end of this, especially in a movie setting where it should be a one-time transformational event.

And that’s why being structured around this last night before graduation makes so much sense. That this is the only chance they’re going to get to do this thing while they’re still in high school.

Katie: Yeah. And I would even say, too, because I love Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I love Tommy Boy, I think is structurally like an–

Craig: It’s the best.

Katie: –an ideal buddy comedy. Sometimes it’s that one person needs something from the other and the other needs to realize they don’t need something from the other. That’s kind of the Amy – Amy needs Molly to give her some space, and Molly needs to realize that she can’t have Amy around all the time in that same way. So I think as you’re saying break it so that each individual arc would live on its own. And ideally it’s a character that’s interesting enough that you would watch a whole movie about them without the other. But the secondary buddy is forcing them to become the best version of themselves.

Craig: Yeah. I think of it, when I was working on Identity Thief and I had to balance out Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, it seemed to me that, well like from a classic point of view clearly they’re each missing a piece that the other one can provide. And they can each illuminate each other’s condition and all that.

But underneath all that, even when you’re saying, OK, well it’s a two-hander, it seems to me that of the two people one will be fundamentally different by the end of the movie and the other one will have learned something but generally is going to be the same again. Like if there is a sequel, you know that one of them will be quite different and one of them has learned but is still – like Melissa McCarthy’s character is never going to be like normal. You know, whereas Jason’s character learns something.

Katie: Yeah. And that’s, I mean, it’s so fun to look at – it’s the same way. Tommy is never not going to be Tommy. But he’ll have learned something and David Spade’s character will have been transformed by–

Craig: Spade’s character is transformed. Like he gets it. You know what, just because the outer thing looks idiotic and stupid there is some magic in there.

Katie: And that there’s usually someone whose worldview has been so dependent on thinking they understand that and then realizing that it’s going to shift their entire worldview.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Here’s a difference between a two-hander versus a classic protagonist/antagonist setup is that in a two-hander generally we have POV from both characters’ point of view. We can watch scenes from either character’s point of view and it makes sense. And a good example of this in Booksmart is literally their big fight which is staged as a single tracking shot that just angles on one and angles on the other as one long take. And it’s an example of why we are seeing this from both character’s point of views.

If this were a classic protagonist/antagonist situation we’d be focused on our protagonist learning this lesson or taking this in or winning this fight. Instead we’re focused on these two as sort of co-equals trying to find their space in this place.

Katie: Yeah. And fight scenes are in my opinion so fun to write because you get to – it’s like a debate. You get to fully embody both arguments. And I think Molly and Amy have equally understandable arguments. I think they both – even when they make up at the end know that they’re right and that’s the most fun fight to write in my opinion.

Craig: I love a good fight between characters. If we care about both characters then what’s interesting is they can both cut each other to the bone and we will not hate them for it. We will feel bad for each of them. Because they get hurt. And then we also see that the person who hurt them feels bad about hurting them. Because, in fact, in reality most arguments are between people that like each other. It’s very rare that you end up in some sort of Burr/Hamilton duel on the street, right?

It’s like you have a friend and then something goes wrong and you guys get into it. And the cost of those things are people that actually are good and care for each other hurting each other.

So, I like that kind of concept of what a two-hander can get you as opposed to when you are dealing with the protagonist/antagonist, the antagonist is hurting the protagonist and we hate them for it.

John: Exactly.

Craig: We don’t feel bad for them. Nor do we believe that they could be hurt. They don’t have feelings.

Katie: You’re right, though. I think the best fights are the ones where the thing that’s most devastating is the fact that they said it. Not that you hear it, but that they said it.

Craig: Right. That you put it in the air. And my ears heard it. And you can’t take it back. And you can see somebody wants to take it back. I love those moments. They always work.

John: So let’s talk about this new project you just set up. We won’t get into details of what the actual story of it is.

Katie: I will say it is a buddy comedy, which is why, I mean, we’ve been talking about What About Bob and Tommy Boy and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and even stuff like Elf. They’re the most fun movies – we talked about Identity Thief a lot.

Craig: I don’t think so. [laughs]

Katie: We did. Dana and I watched – I was there when she emailed you about it because we watched it together at their old house in the Hollywood Hills. And it might have been the hardest we’ve ever laughed in our lives. We had so much fun. So it’s a buddy comedy.

Craig: All right. You can stay.

John: So it’s a buddy comedy. Same director, Olivia Wilde, who directed Booksmart. But you did the thing where you pitched to a whole bunch of buyers and a bunch of studios over the course of a day, a few days?

Katie: It was three days.

Craig: Three crazy days.

John: So you’re going into the room and how long does the pitch take. Clearly you know what you’re going to say. It’s been practiced. What was the process of beating out story and the pitch and then figuring out, OK, you’re now ready to go take this to places? What was the lead up that got you into those three days of pitching?

Katie: It was really interesting. I have done this before where it’s just the script. And that’s just you alone pacing around in a room and getting it to the point where – I mean, in general I think you get it to the point where you would write it anyway. Like that’s when I like to pitch. Because then you’re going in with the energy of I’m going to do this either way and if you’d like to be a part of it that’s wonderful. But also if it doesn’t work out you know enough about it and you’re still excited enough about it that you’ll go right in and it’s not wasted time up until then.

So, usually it’s kind of – once I feel like I have the story broken to the point where I would be ready to go write that’s when I will feel good taking it to other places. Which was the case here as well, but because I was pitching with Olivia, with a director attached, and we were both going to be producing it, it was really about pitching the movie we were going to make as opposed to the script I was going to write.

And so that was a different, equally exciting, but a different process in terms of how we were presenting it to the room as opposed to me just getting to like snap my fingers and talk about sequences.

Craig: Which feels a little more modern to our time. You know, when John and I were starting out you would go around and pitch an idea. And you could talk about it without anything attached, no directors, no actors, and you’d give your 15-minute or 10-minute description of the movie. And then somebody might buy it or two people might fight over it.

But the idea of going on, well first of all, you’re not just going in with a director. You’re going with a director that is part of a team that worked. So now they know there’s a team that worked. They know what you guys are going to do. It’s a movie. Now the question for them, and this is a question I think they ask all the time, they used to ask, “Well, how much money of our development fund should we spend guessing?” Now the question they have is, “Hmm, when can we put this on our schedule?” That’s kind of the question they ask, right?

Katie: Yeah.

Craig: So they’re not really buying a pitch. They’re green-lighting a movie. And that’s the consideration that I guess you make a lot easier when you’re pitching what feels like the beginning of an actual process as opposed to sort of a big guess.

Katie: Yes. And that was – and Olivia being able to talk about casting, about locations. She made a gorgeous visual deck that they got to look at while we were pitching the story itself.

John: Pause for a second. So was the visual deck something you were showing on a screen, or you had cards that showed?

Katie: We did not. We were very analog. Every meeting we went into there was a person waiting to hook up our AV and we were like we don’t need it, we’re so sorry. And instead I just went to Kinko’s every morning at 7am and went to their color printer–

Craig: 10 cents a page.

Katie: Yeah. It’s much worse than Dartmouth. The color printer at Kinko’s I was like now we really have to sell this. Yes, so we handed them something that they could look at in that concept. But it was so much fun because we, you know, we love each other and we had so much fun breaking the story. And we took it out to pitch as previously when we were ready to do it. We were ready to make the movie. And so the experience was, even though it was a long experience, it was getting to go into rooms and tell them about something that we were just giddy excited about. And we knew we were going to do regardless.

And so then it also felt a little bit like figuring out what vibe felt best for us.

Craig: Well, right. So at that point you’re not pitching them, they’re pitching you. And I think they can smell that. I mean, look, there’s a lot of things that they, meaning studio executives, can’t do, like write scripts. But there are also things that they can do really well, like sense in the air what their position is in terms of power and potential. And I think sometimes they just know, right, so they’re coming in, this is what they just pitched. This is who is pitching it. I know they’re pitching it at other places. This is definitely going to be a thing. And now I have to convince them.

And that’s when you know you’ve got them.

Katie: That’s, again, very kind to say. But I do think 98% of it, too, is just how much we loved it. Because if everyone had said no thank you, here’s your valet ticket, please don’t take the water bottles, we would have gone home and just done what we’d been doing every day which is beating through scenes and making each other laugh and talking it out that way. So it’s like how you end up playing hard to get best when you actually are too busy to go on a date.

Craig: When you’re actually hard to get.

Katie: Exactly. Exactly. So it was fun. And, you know, Dana gave me some wonderful advice, too, in terms of pitching. Because the previous times I’d taken scripts around to pitch I had not made any movies. And so it really is a song and dance of you pitch everything. I would throw in lines of dialogue. There was so much tonal stuff I added to try and get them to understand the kind of comedy it would be. And I was ready to do that again this time. And Dana was the one who kind of had to remind me that you’ve established a tone and you don’t need to pitch every line of dialogue in that same way. You can just tell them what the movie is going to be in a more macro sense and they’ll be able to fill in the blanks.

Craig: Exactly.

John: Did you practice pitch to Dana or anybody else?

Katie: We practice pitched with each other. I think we both practice pitched to a few people maybe on the side when we had time to kill, like over the phone I practice pitched to my mom, I practice pitched to my husband. But not in any official sense I think because we knew that because we’re such good friends and because we have a conversational manner the more we practiced the more it would feel formal. And we wanted to come in and say like, OK, this is what we’re excited about, here’s the movie.

Craig: Totally. Even the act of feeling rehearsed will indicate to them that you’re scared. Because that meant you worked on this really carefully. And you’re right. The best way is to walk in and go, “So, anyway, check this out. Oh, did you not understand it? Did you not like it? Cool we’ve got somewhere else to go. We can go grab a coffee before we go sell this to a competitor.” That’s kind of the attitude.

Katie: It’s also I think – someone, I forget, I wish I could remember who said this. But someone said the best way to pitch is to act like you’re trying to convince your friend to see a movie that you saw last night.

Craig: Exactly.

Katie: Maybe you guys said it actually.

Craig: I think we might have.

Katie: You can cut that out and give me full credit.

John: [laughs]

Katie: Those geniuses. What geniuses said it? And that’s how we thought about it the whole time. But to do that you have to know the movie well enough.

Craig: You have to have seen the movie in your head.

Katie: Exactly. So it has to seem casual but it can’t be casual. And I think a lot of my confidence came from knowing that it would be maybe a more broad strokes pitch, but any question that they asked I would have the answer to.

Craig: You’d have the answer. Right.

Katie: Because I think if I had only had the broad strokes and then had to in the room scramble to figure out what the answers were it would have been like an Albert Brooks flop sweat.

Craig: Exactly.

John: And so the process of going into that room and describing the story is the same for any kind of pitch, but it is a little bit different when it’s your own original thing where there’s multiple places you could go versus coming in to pitch on a piece of property that somebody owns. Because then I’m just like, OK, here’s a thing that you already have and I need to convince you that I’m the right person to adapt that thing that you have.

It is exciting when it’s like and I’ve got another meeting in an hour so I’ve got to go. And I’ve not enjoyed my TV experience all that much, but one of the things I kind of did enjoy was going out and pitching to the three networks in a day because it’s like–

Craig: Those days are great. I mean, I remember going around with Lindsay Doran when we were pitching the adaptation of the book Three Bags Full which ended up at Universal. And it was just magic because it was that kind of deal where you knew like, look, we’re doing it anyway and we’ve got this. So jump onboard or don’t jump onboard. But you feel like for once you’re driving.

The thing about coming and pitching on their stuff, it’s actually just auditioning.

John: It is. It is.

Craig: You know, it’s just a totally different thing. You’re already there wanting. You know, and really when you have something terrific that you’re bringing out you’re kind of saying you’re going to be wanting.

Katie: Yeah. And when you’re pitching on property they own they’re the ones with three dates lined up after this.

Craig: Correct.

Katie: And you’re the girl coming out of the limo trying to impress them on the first night so you don’t go home. And this way you get to–

Craig: I feel like that all the time. I do.

John: Let’s see if we can answer some listener questions. Frederico wrote in with a question asking, “What are some of your suggestions to make a protagonist who is in a situation he or she can’t control feel more active? It’s not an uncommon note to get. Sometimes a series of unfathomable events drive the narrative forward rather than the realization of a personal arc as in 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Katie: That’s such an interesting question. I would say I feel the most active sometimes when things are out of my control because I’m trying to find a way to respond to it. So, I think a character making decisions responding to something out of their control, how they respond to it, as long as they’re not letting things happening to them and then waiting for the next thing, something out of their control can instigate numerous different responses in terms of, are they fighting against it. Are they trying to find a way out? How many versions of a way out are they trying to find? So I think it’s an exciting opportunity to show what they do in those times of crisis and very rarely are people sitting around waiting for the next thing out of their control.

So I think kind of like a rat in a maze, whatever they do when they get to that end that’s blocked off and how they figure out how to back out of it can be I think as interesting as if someone is in the driver’s seat.

Craig: Yeah, I agree. I’m not really sure what Frederico is hung up on here, because that’s most everything. Most stories, things happen to you. I mean, nobody was controlling whether or not the Titanic was going to hit the iceberg. It’s how you deal with them. Your action is how you respond to changes in the world around you. And it’s almost necessary for some things to be out of your control, otherwise you’re not really in any kind of crisis. You’re determining everything. So–

John: I would say there’s going to be some macro events that are way out of the character’s control, but as a writer you’re trying to establish story drives that are within their control as well. So their interpersonal goals. What they’re trying to do on a smaller level, making sure that you’re setting those things up well enough that you can see progress and you can see them making choices that are hopefully fulfilling those smaller things.

Because Titanic, you know, boat hits an iceberg, but the actual movie is about all the characters doing the things that they’re doing and the choices they’re making in that time.

Craig: Making plans is always good.

Katie: Yeah.

Craig: If a character makes a plan you can screw the plan up as the writer, and you probably should screw the plan up, but it’s a sign that they have a goal. And humans are planning creatures. I always just go back to what’s normal. Like Frederico just ask yourself what would you do? When we are in trouble we immediately start planning, so yeah.

Katie: I mean, Titanic is a great example because you not only can’t control the iceberg but you can’t control that you’re down on the lower decks and the person you love is up with her fiancé and he’s trying to put her on a boat. All of that is out of your control. What do you do about that scenario?

Craig: With that guy with a gun.

Katie: Ugh, Billy Zane.

Craig: Billy Zane.

John: Billy Zane.

Craig: I make my own luck.

John: Let’s try one more. Craig, do you want to ask Cameron’s question?

Craig: Sure. Cameron asks, “I’d like to know how you go about the character prep and research? That is to say knowing who your protagonist is, their background, the people around them, and how that will play out in plot? I’m curious how much you plan and how much you like to discover on the fly?”

John: You’re a perfect person to ask this question of. So, let’s go back to Set it Up. And so how much did you know about each of those four central characters right at the very start of this? How much was discovered in the writing process or while you were in scenes?

Katie: I really like to over-plan. I like to have more information than necessary times a thousand. So I made pretty long and detailed character biographies for most of the main characters. For Harper and Charlie, the two assistants, for the two bosses. And for most of their friends. I also think tonally it’s helpful sometimes to put even little jokes for yourself in there. When they lost their virginity, what their worst breakup was, their worst vacation. Little things like that so you have in memory for when other things come up.

Then I think once it’s cast you redo all of that. Or you redo as much as you need to and you refine it to the person who is actually playing the character. So some of those background stories will occasionally pop up, whether it’s if you need an alt or dialogue or when you’re talking with the actor for me. And some are just for you.

Occasionally I use things I came up for one character in dialogue in a whole other script if it’s just a story I like or something came up. But I always like to overdo it and let it inform the tone of how they’re talking about everything else later.

John: So that’s helpful for you and it’s not busy work. Because I think sometimes I worry about people who do extensive character write-ups. They’re trying to stall and get themselves out of writing. And clearly that isn’t for you. For you it’s part of the process of discovering the character.

Katie: Yes. My busy work is like going to Staples and finding a better pen than the one I’m using now and a better notebook and which notecards will best–

Craig: Notecards!

Katie: Kind of infuse me with – that’s my version of busy work. But, yeah, I mean, I find it helpful in terms of letting it infuse everything going forward. Because I think also if you give yourself a day to say, OK, I’m just going to spend all day working on one character and their background and practice their dialogue, then maybe you will come up with something that makes you laugh unexpectedly that you’ll end up wanting to put in later. So I tend to do it – once I know I think in general what I’d like the arc to be then I go back and figure out, OK, who do I want it to be.

John: You just said the phrase “practice their dialogue.” More on that. What do you mean by that?

Katie: I love to – once I kind of feel, this sounds very writerly in a way I don’t usually identify myself with, but I feel like once you’ve written maybe five or ten pages of dialogue that’s when you know who someone is. And so before I start writing I’ll practice things, whether it’s them calling Time-Warner and trying to change their service. Them calling their grandmother on their birthday and checking in on that. Them interacting not necessarily with characters I know I want to have in the story but how they would deal with all these – with my friends who I know what they sound like and how this person would talk to my friends.

I’ll do that maybe ten, 15, 20 pages of dialogue. And once I feel like I get a sense of what makes me the happiest or what makes me laugh the most about the way they speak then I’ll feel like I know the core of who they are, the way they’ll react to everything else.

Craig: That’s great. You know what? I do this, too. And I think actually, Cameron, there’s two different things you’re asking about. You’re asking about character prep and research. Research is where I think people can start to hide. It depends on what you’re writing. I mean, if you’re writing something that’s historical obviously there’s a lot of research to do. But even then that research is very – it’s about facts and context. It’s term paper stuff, right?

But character prep is different. So, Katie, you write it out. And the movement of fingers on keyboard is really – you’re helping your mind write a person. You’re starting to build a human being. You can do this taking a walk around your neighborhood. You can do it daydreaming in the shower. But the practicing of dialogue, the talking like that person, you begin to become a person and you find their rhythms and what they sound like and what they would and wouldn’t say.

All of that is essential to preparing for the moment you then do it for real.

Katie: Yeah.

Craig: Otherwise, because I know, when he says how much do you like to discover on the fly? As little as possible.

Katie: Totally.

Craig: I’m open to it. Always. But I don’t want to rely on the fly revealing anything.

Katie: Yeah. It’s a treat if something pops up but you can’t be depending on it.

Craig: Correct.

Katie: Another trick that is really fun that I do sometimes is if there’s a movie that I love as a comp for what I’m working on or something similar I’ll practice writing by inserting a new character into that scene and the way they would react to that.

John: Oh wow.

Katie: So like for example something like What About Bob or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, those are very specific tonally and it might not even work if you’re doing a buddy comedy because those are so kind of nailed and in the world that they’ve created, but figuring out how they would interact with other characters you really like just because anyone – that’s why I use my friends, too. I know their voices better than anyone. So I know how they’d always react to something and then it’s a matter of figuring out how someone new would.

But sometimes a character is so well-established that it can be a good litmus test. You know that voice well enough to then see how it would interact with other things.

John: Great.

Craig: Great.

John: It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Los Angeles which just opened this past week. That’s where I saw your movie. It is a great place to see your movie.

Katie: I’m so excited.

John: And see other movies, too. So for folks who don’t have a Drafthouse near them, they have food in the theaters. They have beers. They have cool things that run before the shows. This one in Downtown Los Angeles also has a video store where you can check stuff out for free. There’s games you can buy. It’s just a really good space.

Craig: So hip.

John: So hip.

Craig: So hip.

John: So if you are in the mood to see a movie and you live in Los Angeles it’s worth it to take one trip down there at least see the Alamo Drafthouse. It’s really nice. And if you’re someplace else that has them, like this is old news John. Why are you bragging about this one?

Craig: Well, it’s good that we have one because I only knew about the one in Austin. So, great. I’ll check it out. My One Cool Thing this week is a One Cool Person. And I would like to just acknowledge Jennifer Burt. So for people who don’t know Jennifer Burt works at the Writers Guild. She has been working at the Writers Guild for, well, at least since 2004, because I remember meeting her then when I was on the board then.

And Jennifer Burt is in charge with coordinating all of the election stuff. So especially in an election like this one with how many people are running?

John: 21 board candidates.

Craig: 21 board candidates and whatever seven officer candidates. Everyone’s statements. Everyone’s photos. Everyone’s list of service. All of it has to be in on time. It all has to be prepared and go into the booklet. It is all governed by these rules. And then there’s election laws and labor laws. And she does it all.

And so I just wanted to acknowledge Jennifer Burt because she is like an unsung hero of the guild that keeps the machinery of our democracy spinning smoothly.

Katie: I can’t wait for one of the elections in my life to be down to single digit candidates.

Craig: Wouldn’t that be fun?

John: It would be so nice. Katie, what’s your One Cool Thing?

Katie: This is so exciting. My One Cool Thing is technically Two Cool Things, but it’s really One Cool Thing. There’s a restaurant that is relatively in the arts district called Lupetti which is a delicious pizza restaurant. And this place has a secret vinyl listening bar in the back that I have recently discovered. And you knock on a little secret door and you walk in and the entire place is designed for the best olfactory – is that the word I’m looking for?

Craig: Olfactory would be smell.

Katie: Yeah. Well it smells great, too.

Craig: I would go auditory.

Katie: Auditory experience. Please don’t cut that. I want everyone to know.

Craig: People need to know what happened here.

Katie: People need to know both definitions.

John: People need to know.

Craig: People need to know.

John: What is the cost of lies?

[They all laugh]

Katie: The vinyl listening bar is called In Sheep’s Clothing and during the day it’s a beautiful bright coffee shop essentially that’s terrific for writing and the entire space is designed for the best listening experience. So the walls, and the ceilings, and everything. They play great records. And it’s a wonderful place to write. And then at night it becomes a cool little bar.

Because the two things that keep going while writing are usually pizza and music.

Craig: Pizza music.

Katie: And so this is a full combination of both of them.

Craig: Love it.

John: Love it. Katie Silberman, thank you so much for joining us on this show.

Craig: Thank you.

Katie: You guys, this was so much fun. Thank you for having me. It’s going to be like Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. You’re going to come back and I’m going to be living in this studio for the next two weeks.

Craig: I’m OK with that because we’re at John’s house. So it’s perfectly fine.

John: Scriptnotes is produced Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Mackey Landy. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Are you on Twitter? Are you a Twitter person?

Katie: I am. I don’t use it very often. But it’s @katiesilberman.

John: All right. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts.

Folks do recaps on Reddit so you can check out the recap there. And back episodes of the show are at Scriptnotes.net or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

Katie, come back any time.

Katie: I’m so excited. Thank you guys for having me. I’m a big fan. So this will be the only one I don’t listen to.

Links:

• We’re hosting a panel on Addiction & Mental Health organized by Hollywood, Health & Society Wed, July 31, 2019, 6:30 PM – 9:30 PM PDT. Watch the Facebook livestream starting at 7:15pm PDT.
• WGA West Unveils Officer Board Candidates
• Wednesday, Aug. 28 Candidates Night at the Writers Guild Theater
• Member meetings August 7th, 8th and 10th
• Booksmart Reunion Olivia Wilde Katie Silberman New Project Universal Pictures
• The Alamo Drafthouse Downtown LA
• Lupetti Pizzeria and In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi Record Bar and Cafew
• Katie Silberman on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Mackey Landy (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.