Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/five-star-podnerships).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode contains some explicit language. You might want to listen on headphones. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** Craig, you have reindeer ears. This is our live holiday Scriptnotes show. Thank you guys all so much for coming. It’s the end of 2017. Thank you for braving fires for being here. You’re awesome. Craig, what a year. It’s been just a huge year. So much has happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Something that on Twitter this producer pointed out that the movie Kong Skull Island, that came out in March. That movie is from this year. This has been the most endless year of all years.

**Craig:** I want this stop. Perfect miserable discordant.

**John:** Absolutely. But that’s actually sort of the meme of this moment because as you guys all know as we’re recording this it looks like Disney and Fox, well, Disney is going to buy Fox. That’s a huge change. So we talked about that on the–

**Craig:** Dox.

**John:** Yes. They will call it Dox. Bart Simpson and Mickey Mouse together.

**Craig:** Ooh. Wow.

**John:** Something there.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. It is fascinating to see how they are – I mean, it’s not done-done, but they are doing this very careful carving up of Fox. So they’re taking Fox Television. That’s the part that produces the TV shows, but they’re leaving the network because you can’t own two networks, because Disney owns ABC. And they’re taking the movies. They’re taking the movie library. They’re taking the television library.

Nobody knows what they’re going to do with the animation studio. Blue Sky?

**John:** Blue Sky, yeah.

**Craig:** Fox News, not taking Fox News with them. Crafty Disney. Very crafty. And also they’re leaving the sports behind because they have ESPN. So it’s very strange. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to the lot. Do you know what’s going to happen to the lot?

**John:** I have no idea. So you have these two giant powerhouse companies. You have Disney and 21st Century Fox combining and something you said on the last podcast is like, you know, other companies are going to need to figure out what their plan is to do because you don’t want to be the last person without a partner.

**Craig:** Correct. Otherwise you’re in a competitive disadvantage.

**John:** So, Craig, what I want to talk about tonight is we need to be thinking about the future of our media empire and what we’re going to do because consolidation is sort of inevitable, so we need to figure out–

**Craig:** I don’t want to lose the money I’m not getting.

**John:** Yeah, so it’s crucial. We need to find ourselves–

**Craig:** We have to protect.

**John:** We need a podnership is what we need. And so I want to talk through some options. I put together a little small deck to talk through some of the options. If we need to merge up with somebody else–

**Craig:** Is that a small deck?

**John:** This is a small deck.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So it’s only about eight slides that can talk you through my vision for what can happen down the road.

**Craig:** I’m super ready.

**John:** So we can survive.

**Craig:** Thank you, by the way, for consulting me.

**John:** Yeah. You’re welcome. First let’s talk through goals. What are the goals of this merger?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** And what do we want to get out of this?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** Well, yeah, we want to maximize shareholder value.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s crucial. So–

**Craig:** Do I have shares?

**John:** Well, you have a lot of emotional investment in this show, right? You have fans. You have people. People like Craig. You can’t buy love, Craig.

**Craig:** But you can’t eat applause either, right?

**John:** You also – we want to make sure we can exploit our library of valuable characters. And that’s where you kind of come in. Because you think about – a lot of the characters on this podcast, they’re Craig characters.

**Craig:** All of them.

**John:** A lot of them are.

**Craig:** There’s Robot, that’s you. You’ve got that.

**John:** I’ve got Robot, yeah.

**Craig:** But I got Sexy Craig.

**John:** Yeah, Sexy Craig problematic in this era. I just want to point that out.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig, actually there may be an article dropping. I don’t want to freak anybody out, but there may be an article dropping.

**John:** But there’s Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** Whole Foods Craig.

**John:** A lot of good synergies with Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** And Umbrage Craig.

**John:** But that’s just Craig.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Finally, I want to position us to be able to compete with Netflix, because that’s really the goal, because it’s clear that Netflix is going to become giant. And so we need to make sure that we’re ready when they do become giant.

**Craig:** What do we do?

**John:** Well, we need to look for another podcast we could merge with and sort of synergize with.

**Craig:** Oh, mega podcast.

**John:** And so maybe even sell ourselves out to somebody bigger so we can actually survive.

**Craig:** I just have to think of another podcast.

**John:** How about Pod Save America. So, Craig was actually a guest on Pod Save America and you were fantastic, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you. Thank you. I wasn’t really quite sure what it was until after I did it, which infuriated John by the way. Made him crazy. I love that part of it. That was a fun show. I actually did Lovett or Leave it which is the–

**John:** It’s part of the whole empire.

**Craig:** It’s part of the Pod Save America empire.

**John:** So maybe we can join their empire.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I think what would be good about it is you share a hatred of Ted Cruz. So that’s good.

**Craig:** I think that everyone qualifies on–

**John:** That’s true. They have really fun live shows.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** We have live shows, they have live shows. They do it every week. But we could do more live shows.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, we’ll step it up.

**John:** All right. Down sides.

**Craig:** Apparently they don’t want to be here every week.

**John:** There are too many Johns. So their show has Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, there’s me. So something has to go.

**Craig:** I’m honestly OK with it.

**John:** Finally, America may be done. So, that may be – the brand may be – I don’t know what the value is – what is the future of Pod Save America after America–?

**Craig:** You’re talking about the brand? You’re not talking about, like, just because Armageddon in general should be a negative for all of these.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know that America has enough future to support a podcast called Pod Save America.

**Craig:** Right. The runway is starting to get a little short for us, isn’t it?

**John:** Shorter.

**Craig:** Yeah, shorter and shorter.

**John:** So we might need to go to like a narrative podcast.

**Craig:** Oh, great idea. Is it Stone?

**John:** No, it’s S Town, or Shit Town is the other thing you can call it.

**Craig:** Well, that’s just outrageous.

**John:** So Craig does not listen to podcasts. This is a thing. By applause, who has listened to S Town?

**Craig:** Liars.

**John:** So, S Town follows this reporter who goes to visit this guy. It’s a real thing. You would love this show because here’s some things you would love about this show. It talks about a grumpy loner with opinions on everything.

**Craig:** Oh, I remember hearing about this. And making a decision to not listen to it. Yep. Yep.

**John:** And he’s really fascinating. And there would be so many opportunities for How Would This Be a Movie. Because like pretty much everything he touches. He has a maze on his property.

**Craig:** Do you think that How Would This Be a Movie deserves its own acronym, really?

**John:** Totally does.

**Craig:** It’s not like Return of the Jedi.

**John:** In the outlines it’s actually called How Would This Be a Movie. Yeah, if you read the outlines?

**Craig:** But it gets a HWTBAM?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** HWTBAM.

**Craig:** HWTBAM. Okay.

**John:** Some downsides. Can you think of any downsides for this?

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t listen to this show.

**John:** Yeah. And also it’s too acclaimed. Craig, that might scare you aware.

**Craig:** I don’t like the tinsel. I don’t truck in awards.

**John:** And the show is also about whether this main character John was hiding gold on his property and that’s a little familiar for us.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah. There’s gold hidden here.

**Craig:** He’s so rich because of this.

**John:** Dirty John. Who listened to Dirty John? So not as popular. It’s a coproduction with LA Times. Really fascinating. You know about this?

**Craig:** I read it.

**John:** So you know the history of this. So tell us a little bit about Dirty John.

**Craig:** I watched the podcast with my eyes.

**John:** So tell us about what it’s like to read a podcast.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. It’s just like you remember reading things, and that.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Dirty John, great long story of a horrendous, sociopathic, manipulative man and a woman that he cons. One of many women that he had conned in his life. And it’s about her and her family learning the truth of him and trying to get free of him. And it ends in the most spectacularly violent way. It’s remarkable.

**John:** Yeah. It was a really enjoyable listen or read. So I feel like this is a natural brand extension.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Easy. Dirty John & Craig. Just you add an ampersand. We add you to the mix.

**Craig:** Dirty John & Craig. That’s like a great ‘70s band.

**John:** Absolutely. So, the main character, the main bad guy in the show, what was his profession? Do you remember?

**Craig:** Well, he claimed to be a nurse, right?

**John:** He claimed to be a medical professional, sort of like you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So like he had a medical background, so that fits in really well with you. So those are good synergies.

**Craig:** Great point. I do know a lot.

**John:** You know a lot.

**Craig:** I know a lot.

**John:** Yeah. Some downsides of this? What do you think?

**Craig:** Somebody give me something.

**John:** I would say it’s in Orange County. We got to go to Orange County.

**Craig:** I forgot that it was in Orange County.

**John:** And if you listened to the podcast you’d hear the Orange County accents. It would drive you crazy.

**Craig:** What is the Orange County accent?

**John:** Listen to it and you’ll just claw your ears out.

**Craig:** Is anyone here from?

**John:** You agree with me guys, right?

**Craig:** Oh, there we go. Man.

**John:** That was tough.

**Craig:** You’re not going to do it?

**Audience Member:** What do you want me to say?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That was it?

**John:** That was it, yeah. Sort of curious but indignant.

**Craig:** Actually sounded like she was from London. What do you want me to say?

**John:** The last thing I’ll say is you don’t listen to podcasts but there’s these Hunt a Killer subscription boxes that were so creepy and I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want subscription boxes on our show.

**Craig:** That one just didn’t work for me.

**John:** Because you didn’t see the show.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no, the Hunt a Killer thing. I got the box.

**John:** Oh, you got the box. Great. Did you find the killer?

**Craig:** I didn’t go past the first month.

**John:** I’m sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

**Craig:** Didn’t work.

**John:** Didn’t work for you. So you’d be a bad advertiser for that because you didn’t enjoy hunting the killer.

**Craig:** Yeah, we probably should stay ad-free just because of my–

**John:** Yeah. So finally Missing Richard Simmons. Did you listen to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. It was a very popular podcast. Who listened to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** Why?

**John:** Because they like podcasts. They like our podcast.

**Craig:** I also don’t understand that.

**John:** So here’s what possibly could work about Missing Richard Simmons. Screenwriters as a whole are not necessarily the fittest bunch.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** So there’s opportunity for fitness.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Screenwriters not so healthy. He gets them–

**Craig:** He cries with us. We cry with him.

**John:** So here’s the other thing I need to tell you about this. Aline Brosh McKenna is obsessed with this show. She loved this show. So that’s a plus.

**Craig:** That’s a downside as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** It’s also a downside, too. A plus and a minus.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** And Richard Simmons, he also just wants to be left alone. That’s ultimately what you come out of the show learning.

**Craig:** Is that literally the big secret of Missing Richard Simmons is that he just wants people to F off?

**John:** Kind of yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** That’s really Craig’s secret. He basically just wants to be left alone.

**Craig:** That’s not a secret.

**John:** So let’s take a look at the numbers so we can run through and figure out what we’re worth. We have about 50,000 listeners, a solid 50,000 a week.

**Craig:** That’s pretty good.

**John:** That’s pretty good. We’ll take that. People here in the room. We make money selling t-shirts and so t-shirts we sold $1,429 is how much we made on t-shirts off of this last thing. So thank you everyone who bought a t-shirt. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, absolutely. We’re rolling in cash.

**Craig:** My share of that is?

**John:** Is what you’ve always gotten.

**Craig:** Gotten. Gotten. God.

**John:** And we have monetized through advertising, which was zero dollars in advertising. Now, the Disney/Fox deal is about $60 billion is what I heard with the Disney/Fox deal, so I’m thinking maybe – keep it a little simple – maybe $59 billion.

**Craig:** To be fair, we bought about–

**John:** We will take Apple Pay, so.

**Craig:** We bought about 100,000 bitcoin about 12 years ago.

**John:** Yes. So we’re doing this for kicks and giggles.

**Craig:** That’s really what we’re selling. We’re just selling the bitcoin.

**John:** So if anybody wants to make a bid for $59 billion for us, Megan is here. She has her Square c ash reader, too. So anyway you want to pay, Megan is here in front. But let’s get on with the show.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** We have three amazing guests for you tonight. Our first guest is Julie Plec. Julie Plec is the co-creator and showrunner of Vampire Diaries, its spinoff The Originals. Also Containment. She developed Tomorrow People. And has written for Kyle XY. Julie Plec, welcome.

**Julie Plec:** Oh hi.

**John:** And so we need to tell everybody that Julie Plec is actually taking a red eye after this show. That’s how much she is devoted to the–

**Craig:** She showed up with luggage.

**Julie:** I did. I walked in with my suitcase. My parka.

**John:** Nice. Next we have Michael Green. He is the co-creator and showrunner of American Gods and Kings. He’s also the screenwriter of every movie you saw this year. Murder on the Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, and Logan. Michael Green, welcome.

**Michael Green:** Hello. Good to be here.

**Julie:** Amazing.

**John:** Justin Marks who wrote the live action Jungle Book and its sequel. His TV series Counterpart debuts January 21 on Starz. Welcome the three of you. Thank you guys very much for coming here.

**Craig:** What a bunch of losers!

**John:** Oh, they’re fantastic. We know very little about TV, even though Craig is about to do a TV show, so I thought we’d—

**Michael:** Oh, why?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a miniseries. So I think of it as just a long movie.

**Michael:** Same.

**Craig:** No, because it ends. Isn’t that the problem with TV is that it keeps going and going and going? Justin, isn’t that the problem?

**Justin Marks:** Yes.

**Craig:** It just won’t stop.

**Justin:** Yes. That is definitely the problem with TV. It just will never leave your life.

**Michael:** In success you run till you die.

**Craig:** Till you die.

**John:** Julie Plec, your shows have run for a very long time. You’ve been on incredibly successful shows that run a long time. Originals is just about to end. I think that’s actually where you’re headed is to go to the wrap party for this. What is it like coming back season after season on a show? Is it great? Is it bad? Should Craig run away from it? Should he run towards it? What do is it like having a —

**Julie:** It’s sort of like to each their own, right? I’ve worked with writers who get two years in and they’re like, “Get me out. I can’t.” Their brain, their mind, just atrophies and they feel like nothing they do is fresh and nothing that they do has any value, et cetera, et cetera. Basic self-loathing stuff.

For me I get so much personal and emotional value out of building the community. When you make a movie you’re, you know, a few months in, six months, whatever. In and out. And you might never see any of those people again. And in television you can – year after year after year you’re working in success with the same people and you’re watching them grow from the bottom of their position all the way up the ladder till you’re partners. And there’s just something so emotionally fulfilling about that that above and beyond the storytelling it’s really – it’s a very full life. So even when it’s hard you still feel really satisfied by it.

**John:** Julie, you’re doing a traditional show where you are writing and shooting the show and editing the show all at the same time, but you guys had a more – the new wave experience where you guys – on both American Gods and on Counterpart didn’t you write everything before you started shooting? Is that correct? Justin, why don’t you start?

**Justin:** Yeah. We wrote the entire first season before we started the first season. And it has its advantages and it definitely has its disadvantages, too. But the hard thing is that you can’t, you know, you write these roles and it’s great – in TV you’re supposed to be able to see the actors and how they gel with it and how it works. And then you have these things and there are just a number of opportunities where you look at a role that you’ve written for ten episodes and then you see someone there and you’re like, oh my god, this person is in the show for the next nine episodes. And the other way around, too, sometimes people come on for two episodes and you’re like, oh my god, this person is great and you’re stuck with it. I mean, you’ve shot – everything is planned out and everything is done. So that ten-hour movie thing has, you know, some strengths. Some strengths.

**Craig:** Ten-hours is a lot.

**John:** Michael, so American Gods–

**Michael:** We were somewhere between the two for the first season of American Gods. And I should point out, so I’m the recently disgraced showrunner of American Gods.

**Craig:** What happened?

**Michael:** My partner and I on the show were let go last week. It’s in Deadline.

**Craig:** Why are we bringing this up in this show?

**Michael:** But I loved the experience. I’m very proud of it and happy to talk about it.

**Julie:** Shame!

**Michael:** Shame!

**John:** Shame!

**Michael:** I’ll answer the now boring question. We wrote about two-thirds of the season and made sure to leave the ending so that we could course correct and rewrote the hell out of the middle of it. Because it’s the best of both worlds. We were able to put in a bunch and know where we wanted to go but also say, you know what, we see the actor who we want to lean in to and can craft towards them and do the things that television does really well.

**John:** One of the things that TV did a lot of in 2017 was not just sort of like do shows that were like previous shows, but they literally just did the same show again. So we had Will and Grace come back. We have Roseanne coming back. Dynasty is back. As you guys, and Julie especially you’re writing for network, is there a pressure to just like come into them with a thing that is like exactly either – is literally the same thing they’ve done before? Do you get approached about like why don’t you reboot this series that already existed?

**Julie:** No. You know, weirdly I’ve managed to avoid the “just take that thing and make it different and preferably better” pitfalls. I think it’s because ultimately I’ve been locked in my own franchise for the last eight years, so I just keep making those again and again.

I was talking to somebody the other day and they said something like 80% of the stuff in development at the network is IP, whether it’s remake or whatever.

**Craig:** Welcome to movies. And so the golden age of television died.

**John:** Well, but there’s also just so much more TV being made. So you’re saying 80% at network, but it feels like where you guys are doing it, so on Starz or on Netflix—

**Michael:** Well, I worked on something that was IP. It was based on a book. But you had an original.

**Justin:** Yeah, it was original.

**Julie:** Hey, how was that?

**John:** That’s true. American Gods is based on a book. That’s right. I forget.

**Craig:** But it was based on a book, but there is a sense that in television now they’re starting to do this thing that they’ve been doing in movies forever where they take something that honestly really should have just been left alone, like—

**Michael:** Slinky the show.

**Craig:** Or Battleship, the movie. And Battleship. Still the best story ever told. And where is Earth? And they make a movie out of it and now they’re going and digging up these shows. Like for instance, a few years ago – you guys probably all got this call to write a Dynasty movie. I think it was at Fox. And now they’re like, ah, you know what, that’s a dumb idea. We’re not doing that anymore. For a while we were doing that. Now let’s just make the Dynasty show again.

**Julie:** But the thing that I don’t get is that like, I mean, I’m 45 and I watched Dynasty in high school. It was one of my favorite shows. But I’m not tuning in to watch younger Dynasty necessarily. Like I just–

**Craig:** You want those Dynasty people.

**Michael:** I would watch Dynasty reruns. I mean, I’m older than you. I loved – watched the shit out of it. And the more ridiculous it was, the more we loved it. Someone needs to have that experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, but like Melrose Place. I don’t need to see Melrose Place again. Like a new Melrose Place.

**Justin:** I really have to say as the resident person here, I have no idea what Dynasty is.

**Julie:** What?! Young child.

**Justin:** And I don’t know if that goes to your argument.

**Michael:** So there’s Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Colby. Look it up.

**Craig:** Dynasty was the show that came about because Dallas was popular. Have you ever heard of Dallas? Who shot JR and all of that?

**Justin:** Yeah. I know it’s in Texas.

**Craig:** Yes. Correct. So then Dynasty was like the Pepsi to Dallas’s Coke. It was not great.

**Julie:** Yeah, I mean, my point is like if you’re marketing – and by the way, all my Vampire Diaries crew ended up going to work on Dynasty. So yay Dynasty. And I hope it survives forever. But you’re building off of a franchise name or a brand or whatever, but it’s like so old that the people that remember it as being a popular viable brand are so far out of your demo that like what are you doing. That’s my question.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I will say, this is a very mild defense, but as a father of a 12-year-old daughter, there’s things – she won’t watch things that were shot before a certain time. Like she won’t watch things that are shot square, in like 4-3 format. She can just tell like, oh, this is old school, old style. And so like I tried to get her to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is brilliant, and she won’t because it looks old to her. It looks old-fashioned to her.

**Michael:** It’s like we wouldn’t watch the black and white Gilligan’s Island?

**John:** Yeah.

**Michael:** Those are the old episodes.

**Craig:** I would watch those. I was that kind of guy.

**John:** Justin, a question for you though, because Jungle Book is an example of taking an existing property and making it in a whole new way because you have new technology to do it.

**Justin:** But that’s what I don’t understand. I mean, not to pick, I don’t understand the – you know, parents who grew up on a movie like Jungle Book or something like that, it’s bring your kids. Is anyone really saying like, “I watched Dynasty, I’m going to tune in with my kids?”

**Craig:** Not a person.

**Justin:** Anyway, I interrupted the–

**John:** No, but I wanted to go back to sort of your sense of when you were doing Jungle Book, the degree to which how much are you trying to reinvent the story of Jungle Book or how much are you trying to do it with the same story with a new technology? Because I faced that with Aladdin, which was the pressure of are we trying to reinvent the whole thing and rethink everything, or are we trying to Beauty and Beast it and literally just do the cartoon? And you must have faced that same pressure?

**Justin:** I think it’s harder the better the original movie gets in that sense and the more complete the story is. In the case of Jungle Book, you know, it’s from a certain era and there’s a sort of episodic nature to it. And we just had a list of here are the things that you remember without being aided, you know, from the original movie. And you just sort of live with that. And then everything else in between you evaluate and you interrogate and you say is this as good as it could be, or can we make this better? Can we make this richer and more, you know, a little deeper, motivate the villain a little better? Anything like that.

But, you know, there was definitely a list of like half a dozen moments/images/ideas that absolutely had to be in the movie because I feel like no matter what you feel about the original you would want to see it again. That’s how you associate it.

**Craig:** And are you – this is a question for both of you guys, because you both move between movies and television. How is the balance? I mean, how do you work that out? Is it something that you are kind of edging one way or the other, or are you perfectly divided up here?

**Justin:** I think I’d like to know from the person who wrote four movies this year.

**Julie:** Four movies. Four credited movies. God knows what else you did.

**John:** It was really the year before was a lot of that, but still.

**Michael:** I can’t say there’s any balance at all. It’s like any project or when you’re balancing two or more things. It’s whatever bullet is coming at you, dodge that. Look for the next bullet. Dodge that. You know, and just get through it. I mean, look, four movies in a year is the product of five years of development, just all sort of like “fuck you it’s happening.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I think sometimes people think that you just went, like here’s a mountain of coke, and whaaa….

Yeah.

**Michael:** But there was definitely the weird summer last year when I was hopping between three sets. And I don’t recommend it. It’s not the way to do your best work. You know, if you have a family and you like them, or even better love them, you know, that’s not a good thing to do.

But it was mostly about, if I made any conscious decision it was television is getting so strange and volatile and new and unrecognizable, and features the same. So, I thought why don’t I just try to do two careers at once and maybe one will win out or be dominant at that point. And that means there are some times where you’re not doing shit in either. And then there are time when both suddenly the tinder lights.

**Craig:** And there’s neither one medium nor the other holds a greater personal or creative satisfaction for you?

**Michael:** No, I think like everything else whatever I’m doing I wish it was the other.

**Craig:** Ah. That is a Jewish Christmas.

**John:** Michael, I want to get back to the question that Justin tackled which was there’s an existing piece of thing out there that people are familiar with and then you’re going back and you’re tweaking it, you’re redoing it. So Murder on the Orient Express, there’s a book, everyone has read the book. Everyone – lots of people have seen the movie. Lots of people come into it knowing the twist. So how do you approach – like what were your first conversations about this property as you sat down to tackle it? What was your way in?

**Michael:** It was a bizarrely wonderful experience, because I went in to the studio. I had already worked with the producers on it. And it was the, “Hey, do you want to do this?” And the answer was yeah. And they said, “Well what would you do?” And I said, well, let’s do the book. Like let’s not fuck with what’s great. I don’t want to out Agatha Christie Agatha Christie. Yes, there’s an ending. I’m pretty sure Americans don’t remember it. If they do, then it’s like Bare Necessities in your – you know, these are the things we want to get to. And then they’ll look for how did you present it, can you make it emotionally resonant, can you add to it so that you do, “Yes, and?” But also like I’m just not going to try to beat out that, nor am I going to blow up the train. Nor am I going to set it in space.

But if you’re OK with that, let’s write the movie. And it was with Fox. And they were like, “That sounds great. That sounds like what we want to do.” And gave them a script and it was one of those things where everyone wanted to do the same thing. The planets aligned, so the gravitational pull was to the same direction, down to when you’re lucky enough to get Ken Branagh to direct it, and say he wants to star in it. Ok, now we know that it’s going to feel like the kind of movie we’ve been talking about.

So, it was the lucky thing of never having a moment where someone was trying to turn it into something weird or other. But that said, it’s IP. It is familiar. It’s British civil religion. They certainly remember the ending there, but they don’t mind that. They want the security of the Americans aren’t going to fuck it up. And we told them we wouldn’t by hiring–

**John:** Kenneth Branagh.

**Michael:** Their best guy.

**John:** Hire the Shakespeare guy to do it.

**Michael:** The most British man there is.

**John:** Basically they’re giant British fans for the original Agatha Christie, so they will know all that stuff.

**Michael:** Yeah, they’re rabid. That’s their baseball as I understand it.

**John:** Now, Julie, you have rabid fans from what I understand.

**Julie:** I do. Yes.

**John:** So, Nima who works for us is a rabid fan. He’s seen every episode of Vampire Diaries. And so he wrote a question which I’m going to now paraphrase for you. And you don’t even have to answer the question, but I want to sort of answer the meta question of this kind of question.

**Julie:** OK. OK.

**John:** So his question is on Vampire Diaries vampires have the ability to compel humans to obey their will. Could a vampire compel a human to not obey another vampire’s compulsion, or compelling?

**Julie:** Whoa.

**John:** See, yeah. Nima is excited that you said whoa on that.

**Julie:** Yeah. Maybe. Shoot, eight years, we never went down that road.

**Craig:** Probably because it’s the nerdiest road ever.

**Julie:** Should have gone nine.

**Craig:** Just saying.

**John:** So, my meta question is about that kind of question, because you must get that stuff all the time which is like someone who is a huge, huge fan of what you’re doing but wants to needle or poke or just ask things that either you don’t have an answer for or, you know, it just kind of doesn’t matter. How do you deal with that?

**Julie:** Most of my fan engagement and interaction has been on Twitter. And for the first four or five years I was very, very heavily involved in and invested in Twitter. And I would read all my mentions. And I would spend hours and hours. And that particular group of fans that I was engaging with heavily weren’t concerned with that kind of shit. Like literally they were like very worried about who Elena was going to end up in bed with. And it was very important. And when it didn’t go their way they were very mean.

Like if somebody had tweeted me that I would have been like, “Let’s talk man. This is great. I’m so excited.”

**Craig:** Finally something to discuss dispassionately.

**John:** Nima is here. He’s very excited to meet you. There’s Nima.

**Julie:** Oh hi!

**Craig:** But there is a certain kind of interaction now between television producers, particularly shows like yours which do have a very visceral connection for an audience. And I think a lot of the shows that I see, generally speaking sci-fi shows, horror shows, superhero shows, there’s a certain kind of fandom that gets really intense. And I watch it from the side and I will sometimes see these reactions happening on Twitter and I will get frightened just standing near it for the people that are making the show.

**Julie:** Yeah, well, you know, it got ugly. And it got sad and ugly because then I had to stop reading my mentions and I had to not engage on Twitter in that way. And for the last couple years I mean at best scroll through every now and then, just wanting to find that one person who is like asking, “Hey, how did you get into writing,” so at least to reward the good behavior, you know?

I mean, we could have a symposium on this. And I’m only really focusing right now on the negative side of it because obviously there’s a tremendous amount of positives. But the negative side of it is just this entitlement that is so toxic. Like just you are ruining the thing that I love, therefore you are terrible. And yet I’m like, but I wrote the thing that you love. You know, and it’s like, I mean, you love that. It just becomes so personal and it becomes not just about, “Oh, I’m not happy with the way this storyline is going,” it becomes about, “You’re fat. And you’re ugly. And no one is ever going to marry you. Thank god you don’t have children because they’d be ugly.”

I mean, like it’s all that stuff.

**Craig:** I should not have said any of that. I just—

**Julie:** And it’s just extraordinary. And it’s a high level, in a weird way because I noticed it all happening over the first couple years and I thought, hmm, like the world is going to a dark place and I’m seeing it happen through the sort of Twitter fandom. And then the world went to a dark place and now everybody talks to each other like that. And I saw it first.

**Craig:** It is frightening. I just wanted to say that I think that a lot of the people – I think anybody that falls in love with any television show or any movie, when we say we like it or we love it, what we’re really describing is a relationship that we have with it. That’s why people change their minds about things, right? We have changing relationships. As we grow older our attitudes towards things change. We revisit. I think people sometimes can have a very bad relationship with a show. It means something to them you did not intend. It is providing a function or serving a function for them. And then when you don’t do what they want or you kill the wrong person, because as we know sometimes that person is just wah-wah-wah, and so they’ve got to go. Right?

**Julie:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** These people lose their minds because you are disrupting this thing that they have an unhealthy relationship with.

**Julie:** Yeah, and I remember in early seasons them saying like, “You don’t understand this relationship.” Two and half seasons I have painstakingly laid in every little nuance and detail of the time their hands just sort of brushed, and the way that she looks at his lips before she looks in his eyes when they’re staring at each other. I like gave you that relationship that you love detail by detail. And now you’re, you know, you’re coming at me in such an aggressive way.

**Craig:** Geez Louise.

**Michael:** I liked when you touched my hand.

**Julie:** That was nice.

**Michael:** By the way, wait, to go back to your first question because Julie, who has had a brilliant career that I admire and tell everyone about because she’s one of the heroes, has gotten to work on her shows for long enough for people to have that relationship.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Michael:** That is not a miniseries relationship.

**Craig:** Right.

**Julie:** That’s true.

**Michael:** And so the exchange rate for having – to be able to steep, to be able to play that long game, to be able to have your own emotional investment be reflected back in your audience’s emotional investment, the exchange for that is your life and health in like 15 years.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, you know, Dan and Dave, we had Dan and Dave on our show – Dan Weiss and David Benioff who do Game of Thrones – and those guys don’t look at anything. They have never looked at anything. And it has been fascinating, because every now and then I’ll be like, “Hey, how you are guys – oh, yeah, you don’t even know. Never mind. You don’t know about the firestorm that just occurred because of the episode in which blah-blah-blah happened.” Nor do they know when people are like, “Oh my god…” They are just completely isolated.

And, now it works for them because they are – well, they’re weird.

**Michael:** But do you read reviews?

**Craig:** I stopped. I have stopped.

**John:** So I, generally I stopped–

**Craig:** I have good reason to stop.

**John:** But this last time with Big Fish opening in London I was not going to read reviews, and so I was putting my phone away and someone tweeted at me, “Shame about the London reviews.”

**Craig:** Oh that, ugh.

**John:** Why are you doing this? And so I had an early flight, so I had already taken a Xanax so I could fall asleep. So like, you know what? Fuck it. I’m going to read all the reviews. And so I was already pre-medicated and I read all of them. And in a weird way it was good. I’m glad I did it because there were like two-star and five-star reviews, so it was a real range. And it was actually really good to actually know what it was, because there are times where I haven’t read reviews and I’m just kind of wandering around in a fog like I don’t know what’s out there. And so for me it was good to know–

**Craig:** I suppose in the limited circumstance where I can pill myself up and be on a plane, I’ll go ahead and read a few reviews.

**John:** Justin Marks, will you read reviews of your show when it comes out, Counterpart?

**Justin:** You know, it’s really hard because with the show especially you’re much more accountable to those reviews than you are on a movie where it’s done. I mean, there’s nothing else, what can I do? Can I go back and change the movie? No. So I’m curious for the people who do television, because I’ve never been through this process before. I think I kind of have to. I think I kind of have to know what’s working and what’s not working if there’s a collective consensus about something.

**Michael:** You don’t have to. You work for Starz, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get an email every day with the headline of whatever review came in and a parenthetical that says, “Positive, negative, mixed.”

**Justin:** And so you just look through it like that?

**Michael:** That was more than I needed.

**Julie:** I will say like I’m personally one of the writers who in television believes that there’s a social contract between a storyteller and the viewer. And I could introduce you to 50 writers who completely disagree with that and say I’m telling my story the way I want to tell the story and the viewer either likes it or they don’t. I like the fluidity of understanding what people are connecting to. And then trying to absorb why, you know.

And conversely, you know, I learned a lot about even just racial representation on my show through social media. Things that I had never considered, ever considered being a problem, and then sort of confronted with that. And that was so illuminating. I mean, I was mortified. And learned a lot in a way that nobody would have stopped me on the street and been like, “Do you realize that that person of color had two lines?” You know, that kind of stuff.

And so I wouldn’t ever want to like tune out from that relationship because it is a sort of focus group feedback that I think is really valuable.

**Michael:** There was one – we did an interview with this podcast Fan Bros and it’s a black audience for genre stuff. And they were great. And they kind of took us to task and said, “Well, we really love the show, but your black lead you’re doing a terrible job.” And we’re like tell us about that. And it was very helpful and our response was we hired them. We put them on staff. Because had we not heard that – they weren’t allowed to write reviews about the show anymore.

**Craig:** That’s how you get a job is you start a podcast—

**Michael:** Tell the showrunner it stinks.

**Craig:** Tell white people they’re fucking up.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I could do that.

**John:** All right, so while we’re talking about reviews I thought we might play a little game. So, let’s move on. We’ve had some good reviews, some bad reviews, but this is Christmas, or the holidays, let’s have only five-star reviews. So underneath your seat you have some five-star reviews.

**Julie:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** So we are properly set up here.

**Craig:** So excited.

**John:** So these all come from iTunes. And so we went on iTunes and we found reviews of different projects we worked on. And we’re going to read them now and we’re going to have to figure out – titles of these things are not on here so we’re going to have to figure out among us what they are talking about in these five-star reviews.

**Craig:** And the ones that we have in our hands, could these be any of our movies?

**John:** Any of our movies.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** All right, so I’m going to start us off. So this comes from Skip Hunt.

**Craig:** That’s not real. That’s like Mike Hunt.

**John:** So, “Not sure how I found this podcast. I think I was searching for info about the fountain.io markup stuff.” A nerd. “Anyway, I’m hooked and I’ve added this podcast to my regular playlist. I have not interfaced with Mark Mazin, but John August has been very generous and helpful with his time. Thanks for putting this podcast out. I’ve found most of it very helpful. Smiley Face.”

**Craig:** Now we’re supposed to guess what that’s for?

**John:** Yeah, I think we can figure that one out. That’s a pretty easy one.

**Craig:** Fucking Mark Mazin. I’ll tell you. That guy–

**John:** So that was Scriptnotes. Craig, read us another five-star review.

**Craig:** All right. This one is titled “Impressed,” by MJ Gingsham. “Very nice directing and editing. Actors are very decent and acceptable. The music is very cool aswell. 5 stars!” Huh? Music is very cool, as well.

**John:** As well. As well. This is punctuated exactly the way it was there.

**Craig:** Hmm, what do you guys think?

**John:** What do you think? What could that be?

**Craig:** I’m kind of leaning towards—

**Julie:** Are these all movies?

**Craig:** No, it could be a TV show, right?

**John:** It could be a movie or a TV show.

**Julie:** Oh, oh, oh.

**Craig:** Is it the Vamp? Is it Vamp Di?

**Julie:** I feel like if it’s just generally across the board a mediocre five-star review, that’s probably mine.

**John:** Julie Plec, you’re correct. Julie Plec, read us a review.

**Julie:** OK, from I Am Romanov 2, “This movie was much better than the Passion of Christ.”

**Craig:** The Passion of Christ. Oof.

**Julie:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It feels like Jungle Book to me.

**John:** It could be Jungle Book. Lots of choices here.

**Craig:** Well, has anybody dabbled in a Christ movie other than Passion? No? No. No. Well, maybe Corpse Bride.

**John:** Could be Corpse Bride.

**Craig:** Because Christ.

**John:** Christ. Death. Resurrection. Yeah.

**Michael:** Frankenweenie. Same thing.

**Craig:** Frankenweenie.

**John:** Sure.

**Julie:** Who did Frankenweenie? Nice.

**John:** The answer is Michael Green for Green Lantern.

**Craig:** Why would you compare Green Lantern to Passion of Christ?

**Michael:** I don’t know. They were both hard to get through. They both hurt my soul for different reasons.

**Craig:** And the heroes did have super powers, so.

**Michael:** Also the CG suits.

**Craig:** CG suits. CG suits.

**John:** Yep. Nudity. Michael Green, read us a five-star review.

**Craig:** I would have never thought of that one. Your turn. You can read it right there.

**Michael:** OK, “Best movie of the year — This film did better than do the original justice. It’s a masterpiece!Ryan Reynolds stole the show and all the other actors did well too. Not to mention Hans Zimmers score completely fit and mixed in with this awesome epic of a film“

**Julie:** Is this the same movie?

**Craig:** That feels like Green Lantern again.

**Justin:** But Ryan Reynolds was great in–

**Michael:** Hans Zimmer did not do the score. So I’m thinking this is a Ryan flub.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** So, what are you predicting?

**Michael:** Blade Runner.

**John:** Blade Runner 2049.

**Michael:** And you’re not fat.

**Craig:** Fooled me.

**John:** Justin Marks?

**Justin:** “I love this one by Ishiro Honda would be proud.”

**Craig:** How is that a name?

**Justin:** “This is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year and I’ve only seen 2 good movies this year. Amazing special effects, great characters and I felt like a kid again watching this movie. See it if you haven’t already.”

**Craig:** Jungle Book, right? It feels like Jungle Book.

**Michael:** Jungle Book.

**John:** It’s Jungle Book. All right. Next up, Miss Shorty Rocks says, “loved it — if u ppl have nothing good to say than don’t say nothing at all cause this move was good i liked it was really good i would watch it again again why dnt u all do me a fav n put the shut to up that means shut up.”

**Craig:** That has to be one of my fans. I mean, for a bunch of reasons not the least of which is she’s clearly arguing with the majority of people who are upset. So I got to – that’s got to be one of my people.

**John:** You’d be wrong.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** That is for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Justin Marks.

**Justin:** Yeah, my mom does write under that Miss Shorty Rocks.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Ishiro Honda in Street Fighter? Wasn’t he one of the characters?

**Justin:** Was that a character? Don’t ask the writer of Street Fighter.

**John:** Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** Oh, I’ve got one here. “Wow,” by Edward Elrick Fan. “I wish I was bloating like the girl.i always wanted to bloat like that girl in the movie I wish I was her SERIOUSLY!”

OK, this has to be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**John:** It’s a movie about bloating. I love that he’s a bloat fetishist who is like you know what, I’ve got some time, I’ll leave five stars for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**Michael:** Violet, you’re carrying water, Violet.

**Julie:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** I was most just concerned with the lack of the subjective mood here.

**John:** Yes, that really is the biggest cue of that.

**Craig:** Edward, you wish you were bloating like her.

**John:** Seriously.

**Craig:** Were Edward.

**John:** Julie Plec.

**Julie:** Sponge Bob Girl 101 says, “You have your options in what movies you like. People say it was horrible and some people say it was good just give it a chance if ur not interested in cussing and comedy i recommend that u do not watch this movie. I enjoyed this movie a lot it was so funny. And i didn’t watch the trailer thats probably why i didn’t hate it”

**Craig:** Again, that feels like one of my people.

**John:** Yeah. Which movie though?

**Craig:** Notice fighting off others. Any one of them, honestly.

**Julie:** Cussing.

**Craig:** Not Winter’s War.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I’ll go with Identity Thief.

**John:** Identity Thief it is. And Michael Green, I think you have the last one.

**Michael:** Mine is not a five-star review.

**Craig:** It’s a two.

**Julie:** Ouch. That’s mine.

**John:** Go for it.

**Michael:** OK. I think things are going to get mean. “Box of Bisquick,” by Woody Wood 123. Because there were 122 other Woody Woods. “Am I the only one who deleted this podcast after three episodes because, while the information was useful,” at least you’re using that well, “I just couldn’t get past John August’s manner of speaking like he just swallowed a box of Bisquick.”

**John:** Just swallowed Bisquick. I love that.

**Michael:** “Sometimes he’s barely intelligible. Good this he’s a writer.” Good this he’s a writer should be like. Oh. “A shame. I would have liked to be a follower.”

**Craig:** I would have liked to have be a follower. We would have liked for him to have be a fan. Just, this person was hearing the best of you, by the way. I just want to point out.

**John:** Absolutely. That’s after Matthew’s edited me carefully. So.

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s Bisquick.

**John:** What would you say I have in my mouth?

**Craig:** Quikrete.

**John:** Oh yeah. Something quick that fixes.

**Craig:** Some sort of marble and cement product.

**John:** Yes. I want to ask a practical question of our TV folks here in the room which is you guys are all not just writers but you are hiring writers to work on your TV programs. If someone is – as you’re reading through scripts and trying to put together a staff, what are you looking for in writers that you’re trying to hire onto your shows?

**Julie:** For me, just a voice. You know, like a distinct voice. Somebody that can write a funny line. Something that makes me laugh, even if it’s in a drama. Has a personality. Has some kind of cool twang to it. Because I don’t have time as I’m reading material to really dissect like, oh, structurally that was really excellent and I would have slid act two later. Like I’m reading it for my own enjoyment and if it grabs me, the voice grabs me if it’s got sparkle, I tend to read the whole thing. And if there’s no sparkle, even if it’s a great script, I just put it aside.

**John:** So how many pages will you read before you detect if there’s a sparkle.

**Julie:** About ten.

**John:** Ten. OK. Michael Green, what are you looking for as you read scripts?

**Michael:** Very similar. I’m looking for someone who I see something that will make my show better and different. I remember a showrunner I worked for back in the “22 episodes a year I don’t know how we did it days,” and I don’t know how you do it. But he said when he was hiring, and this stuck with me as a bad idea, he was looking for ten little hims. And I thought that’s terrible because you can already write like you. You know, and I can write like me all the time. I can’t stop. It’s awful. So I want people who can do what I can’t do. And then I suddenly realize reading that voice that if that voice was in my show, my show would be better. So that please.

Specificity in ten pages. Sadly, that does bear out. Showrunners read about ten pages because if it isn’t excellent in ten pages it’s never better by 20. It just doesn’t. And so polish the shit out of the first ten, please.

**John:** Justin Marks. What are you looking for?

**Justin:** I really try to look for writers who make me jealous. I think that’s really the thing that I feel like if there’s something – because I completely agree. That idea, and we’ve talked about this in the room a lot, like I can do me. I can do me pretty well. Like I feel like I know me and I can write for me and understand that. But if I am reading someone who really writes from a place, a voice that I’ve never really been able to bring out of myself then that’s exactly what I want to do.

And I will also say, I mean, yes, the question is about reading. So it’s leading in that sense. But I do think from a place, for me at least, the meeting is everything. We’re not having the meeting unless that spark has happened on the script. But I find that the best collaboration with writers in the room are people who – it also brings the best part of me out when we’re having this conversation and we’re talking about our favorite movies, or our favorite TV show, or our favorite book. You know, that’s the dynamic in the writer’s room every single day.

You know, you can bring a lot of diverse voices together, but if you don’t like the same stuff and want to do the same stuff I feel like that’s where you run afoul. So, yeah, I think it’s a combination of the two. And in some ways, depending on I guess the way everyone writes their show, I think it’s that meeting. What do we bring out of each other? That’s a hugely important thing.

**Craig:** Did you ever have any problems with control issues having come from a place of, look, I write by myself. I write. This is mine. And now I have to let you do it?

**Justin:** So badly for me. I mean, like so badly. I was so bad at it at the beginning. And fortunately the writers are really good when it comes to knowing that I was a first-time showrunner. But my thing was really like I just kept using this phrase, “I have to wrap my head around this.” And the only way I can wrap my head around it is to sort of just run through it and see it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And I realized I was making so much more work for myself. Like so much more work for myself to such diminishing returns as you’re doing it. Because it’s really like maybe it seems big to you as you’re sort of going through each page and each scene and each line of dialogue, but like you’ve hired brilliant people who can write this stuff. And, I mean, you’ve all worked it through together in the room and unless something has really just run sideways on the page, like there’s no reason to do it.

So, I had a hard time with that at the very beginning. And really like the first season was a tough journey to realizing like there are people around you. Ask them for help. That was a really tough thing. I wish I had learned that. I wish I had worked on a show. They should only, only let people run shows who have worked on shows. They should not have hired me.

**Michael:** The best day on your first season show isn’t when you get picked up for the second season. It’s when one of your writers gives you a draft that you don’t have to touch. Because it means you can now have a weekend, or now you just tell that person, “I’m sorry, you’re fucked. You’re going to write a lot.” Because otherwise you’re going to have to do every page and that’s not – there’d be dragons.

**John:** We’re going to have time for about four questions. I want to ask you guys about, you’re not just reading, and you’re not meeting with folks, but you’re also managing folks. And it feels like the management of a writing staff has become a – Harvey Weinstein was two months ago. It feels like it was six months ago, but it’s only two months ago. Has anything changed in the sense of how you guys are approaching life in the room? How you guys are approaching your shows in the wake of the sexual harassment stuff that’s come up?

**Julie:** I was just talking about this today. We had our little holiday lunch and I said – I said what is it going to be like for us moving forward in a writer’s room? And I was at a table full of women, so it was a very easy conversation to have. But I said, you know, we have to be as respectful of everybody’s space as we’re asking men to be of ours. And we can’t sit around and talk about like bras and periods all day long either, you know.

**Craig:** Aw.

**Julie:** I know. I know. There has to be a sense of mutual respect for everybody in the room. But on the other hand, I mean, when you go back to what they teach you at Warner Bros. in the sexual harassment training that I’m sure will be wholly revamped before next year is about the Friends lawsuit. And the Friends lawsuit back in the day was a woman who was in the writer’s room as a writer’s assistant, I think, who basically was just like the things discussed in the room, the words used in the room, the ideas discussed in the room were unacceptable to me and made me uncomfortable. And the defense, which turned out to be a winning defense, was but we’re in a creative space in which we are supposed to be allowed to be free to express ourselves without filter and without judgment.

And I really do believe that. And I think it’s just a difference between if someone is expressing themselves freely without filter but are also an asshole, then there are lines that have to be drawn. And a woman that I was talking to said, “If we could just get more comfortable saying, ‘Oh, that’s too far for me, or that’s too much.’” Or even better, if we don’t have to say it at all, she said, “I would love nothing more than to never be the woman in the room that says, ‘You know, hold on.’ But if some guy would tap his buddy and be like, dude.” And just move on. Say that’s a little too much. Hey bro, back off. And let it go. And don’t make a woman or a man or whoever is feeling objectified, or persecuted, or just offended have to be the one to sort of raise the Debbie Downer flag and be like, come on guys.

Although we did have a bell in my last room where like a writer brought in a bell and every time somebody swore inappropriately she’d be like, “Ding.” And then we’d laugh and we’d move on.

**Craig:** That’s not a bad idea. I mean, systems that are based on the male observational power generally are doomed. But if you have a situation where someone, like OK, you know that there’s a guy. Like let’s say I’m in your room and you can look at me and be like, and I’m like, OK, got it. Dude. Right? And then we just have a thing and then I know because I do need to be told. I think a lot of men need to be told. Because we’re just a little duh.

**John:** Let’s go to a question. Sir, your question.

**Male Audience Member:** So this is a bit of a champagne problem, but I hope there’s some general advice in here. So, it’s taken me ten years to get to this moment. And I have a spec script that’s going around town. And I got an agent. We had to move very quickly with that. And I’m at this lovely moment where every manager in town wants to meet with me, take me to lovely lunches. And I don’t quite know what’s the right way to pick a person to work with, hopefully for the long term. Like what is the trait to optimize. There are bigger places. There are smaller places. There are people that function like agents. There are people that develop.

You guys have experience. I will never have the opportunity to ask people like you this again. So I’m curious–

**Craig:** Correct. We all disappear after this.

**Julie:** What do you need in your creative process? Like if you had a perfect creative relationship with someone else that was on your team, would it be sit in a room with me for eight hours and help me break this story? Would it be I need really great comprehensive notes on my material? Or would it be like I wrote this, shut up and sell it? Where in that is what you would wish for?

Male Audience Member: I think frankly my agent team can take the shut up and sell it side of stuff. I’d like someone that I could kind of work with almost like a producer. I can call, I can game plan. I can be a little bit closer with. I don’t necessarily need day-to-day notes. I don’t need – I’m a grownup. I don’t need hand-holding. I don’t want to be told what to write. But I’d love someone to read stuff and give some feedback.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Some general advice I give to anybody who is looking for new representation is pick somebody who you won’t dread getting a phone call from. Because sometimes people will be like, “Oh, he’s a shark but he’s great. He’s on my side.” But if you don’t want to answer the phone, if you don’t want to talk to him, that’s not the person for you.

Julie’s question is very smart about just in terms of like knowing what you’re actually looking for. So are you looking for a bad cop? Are you looking for a good guy? Figure out what it is you’re going after. And Justin Marks, you and I have had a lot of discussions about managers because I was down on managers for a long time and you were like, “No, no, John, you don’t understand what’s actually going on.” Talk to us about managers.

**Justin:** Yeah. I think – and it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as you get on a show and you’re just doing one job this whole time. And so my manager’s role in my life has changed significantly from the beginning. But in the beginning when I was just starting out I really think, and it’s only because I can count on less than one hand the number times a month I’ll speak to agents now. And my manager is the person who I’m always in the trenches with. He knows what I’m writing on a given day. He knows, you know, are you moving on to this? Are you getting this done? They’re calling about this. You have to get that finished. Whatever it may be, he’s the person who is really like a partner.

And I’ve had my manager since I was in college from the very beginning. We’ve been together and I have a very comfortable rapport. He’s the only person in my life who can tell me when something is truly terrible. He’s the person who calls to deliver bad news. And can do it fairly and without spin which is really important to me.

So, I feel like in this – and this is where our discussion was originally is I don’t think agents do anymore what they used to do.

**John:** I think everyone agrees with you there.

**Justin:** And maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because managers have come about. But I think it’s a very important thing especially because this is not true of all agents but I’ll just say it, I think the attention spans are very short. And if you have a good manager that’s not what it’s about. They have a very long attention span.

But you only get one shot of giving a piece of material to even your agent in that sense. You don’t want to damage that relationship. So to have a manager who you can really vet your material with and to do multiple iterations on it with I think is a really important thing.

Now my relationship with my manager is very different. I mean, he’s like my therapist more than anything. Or he’ll come to set and just sit around for a little while, and then we’ll go for walks where we just go for walks like in movies where someone is really down and going for a walk. That’s what we do.

So I guess it’s worth 10%. Right?

**Julie:** Well, I mean, I’ve always been down on managers, too, because working in television I always tell people don’t get a fucking manager, for god’s sake. That’s 10% of your income. You want to buy a house. You want to raise a child. You want to put him in college. You want to keep your money. Like for the love of god, don’t get a manager who is just going to put you on a show and then cash a paycheck for nine months out of the year.

But, what you get for that 10% is a fulfilling relationship if that’s what you need. You know? Whether it’s breaking every story with you beat for beat, or just walking around the block with you. If that’s how you want to spend your money to have that relationship, then just make sure it’s someone who is going to give it to you. Because there are way too many managers in this town who just operate like agents who will stay on the phone with you longer. And I think it’s total bullshit.

**Craig:** I agree with her 100%. And I will say you don’t have to sweat this decision. Pick one of them. And if you don’t like him or you don’t like her, fire their ass and pick another one. Because there’s a thousand of them.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great. And just in case you are a Michael Green in a couple of years and you have four movies in a year, what’s your name?

**Male Audience Member:** Jeremy Cohen.

**Julie:** Good luck, Jeremy.

**John:** Jeremy Cohen. There’s probably a few other Jeremy Cohen’s on IMDb, I think, but–

**Craig:** You can only have one Michael Green or one Jeremy Cohen. You can’t have Michael Green and Jeremy Cohen. We’ll have to figure this out.

**John:** All right, on this side. A question.

**Female Audience Member:** So Craig is always talking about how he doesn’t make any money from the podcast. So what is going on there?

**Craig:** Thank you! Oh my god! Like all this time I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask the obvious question. What is going on?

**John:** So, I can actually honestly answer you. So that number about the t-shirts, that is true.

**Craig:** Oh god. This is going to be bad.

**John:** So, a bunch of you are premium subscribers. Yes, some people in the audience here. So people who get all those back episodes, that’s $2 a month. We get a dollar of that back from Libsyn. So that ends up being – we have almost 3,000 of those, so that’s $3,000 a month that’s coming in. So that’s good.

That helps pay for Megan’s salary. It pays for Matthew. And our transcripts. And so that’s kind of what it covers. There are podcasts that make good money, like those Pod Save America podcasts, they’re making bank. And it’s a whole different world. But we just decided we didn’t want to sell Casper Mattresses.

I mean.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Julie:** They do it so well. I mean, that’s part of the novelty of Pod Save America is they–

**John:** They do a great job of that.

**Julie:** The way they do their advertising is so funny and enjoyable.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. We would crush it.

**Julie:** You guys would crush it. It would be amazing.

**Craig:** We’re professional writers.

**Julie:** I want to hear you talk about–

**Craig:** By the way, you know who we should advertise?

**John:** Who?

**Craig:** Bisquick.

**John:** Bisquick. Yeah. Bisquick would be a fantastic thing. And so I can tell you guys here tonight, I think for the first time, that I am going to be doing another podcast in the New Year and that one will have ads in it. And so that will be a very different world for me. And it’s been an incredibly different experience learning how all of that works, because it’s not just two guys talking–

**Craig:** That’s not going to last a long time though is it?

**John:** No. It’s a miniseries just like yours.

**Craig:** Oh, OK.

**John:** Yeah, it’s fine.

**Craig:** No, you go and you have your thing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s fine. We can each do our own little thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You love someone, set them free.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** The truth is I do love talking about it because it’s hysterical to me, but John really does all of the work. That’s the other thing I often repeat. And between Megan and Matthew who edits and then the hosting costs and all of the other stuff, it is – we break even.

**John:** Yeah. I should say Craig used to have to write me a check every month for the hosting and stuff. Craig used to write money out of his pocket. So that doesn’t happen anymore.

**Craig:** So like that’s how I get paid now is by not having to pay money. But if we did advertise, how much money do you think we could make?

**John:** We could make good money. We’ve gotten approached a couple times. Because you guys are obviously incredibly upwardly mobile people and–

**Craig:** That one guy is.

**John:** Yeah, that guy.

**Julie:** Jeremy Cohen.

**John:** We could advertise only to Jeremy Cohen.

**Michael:** You could advertise him.

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. Be that guy.

**Craig:** Stuff that Jeremy likes.

**John:** Cool. Great, thanks. Another question.

**Male Audience Member:** As you guys have sort of underscored throughout the evening, it’s been quite a year. And I’m wondering how the sort of world climate/political climate, the darkness of the moment has influenced the creative decisions you’re making, both on a day to day level in terms of scene work, character work on the page, but also the projects you’re taking or the stories you’re interested in telling.

**Craig:** That’s a great question. Great question.

**John:** Yeah, it’s hard whenever you have a villain to sort of not go into a place where it’s like, oh, is it this kind of villain or is it this kind of darkness. It’s hard to write dystopian story now that doesn’t feel like, oh, you see outside your window.

So I’ve definitely been mindful of that stuff. But I would say that I was in France during a lot of this and then I was also writing my book for 10 to 12 year olds. So that was great to sort of have that escape hatch and not be sort of in the thick of it all the time creatively. How about you guys?

You wrote Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. Actually great timing. Here’s a story about Russian lies. And what’s been happening over the last year has been actually very influential.

I started working on Chernobyl about four years ago. And just a week ago I rewrote the very first lines of the show. There was a time when the show was at its foundation about a thing. I mean, obviously it’s about Chernobyl but what human point is there to all of this. And as I started writing through the episodes by the time I got to the end I realized it had become something else and it’s something that is far more relevant to what is happening now in the world around me.

I think in general as a writer I have become vastly more concerned about representation of characters. It is on the forefront of my mind. I am constantly asking myself questions like just checking the pitfalls. The pitfall of default white. The pitfall of this character doesn’t deserve a name. You know, all of these things. And just constantly running that tape in my head. Whereas before, honestly, nobody ever asked you to do that. Nobody expected you to do it. And if you did, they would ask you why.

Like I remember years and years ago, my gosh, it was for the Weinsteins. There was a script and there was a discussion that a character had with a guy who was just like at a reception desk for a hospital. And the guy at the reception desk I just happened to make Southeast Asian. And they were befuddled. Why did you do that? And I’m like because there are a lot of them. And they’re people in the world. Now it’s the opposite. And that’s wonderful.

I think actually in a great way the response to the fucked-up-ness has been really good for me as a writer. I think it’s been great for our business in general, not just in terms of weeding out terrible people, but also just in the day to day business of how we approach storytelling and how we approach each other as human beings. There is a strange optimism. It’s just every time I start to feel good then some other asshole comes along. So anyway.

**Julie:** Yeah. I’ve had a two-pronged experience which has been sort of fascinating and concerning, but also really great. So the fascinating/concerning part was I write, you know, Vampire Diaries was – it’s gothic romance. And all of the origins of that kind of like the bad boy, the murderous bad boy, and the love triangle, and vampires in general, vampires throughout literature are very sexual beings. And so I use a lot of bodice-ripper kind of influence and all the Harlequin romance novels that I read growing up, and soap operas.

And I remember hitting like Season Seven and I’m pitching, “OK, and then this happens, and she doesn’t want to go. And she’s refusing to go, and so he breaks her neck, throws her in the back of the car, and she wakes up and she’s in a hotel room against her will.” And the whole room went, “You can’t do that.” And I was like, “Why? You know, she’s a vampire. She would do it to him.” And they were like, “Because that’s rapey. It’s like rape culture shit.” And I was like, oh, god, you guys. And I’m being very glib right now to make my point. But I said “This is the show. Like the gothic romance. I’m a feminist. I’m a strong woman. I’m not advocating abuse here. I’m just – there is a quality of sort of titillating fun to this that has built the empire of the show. And now if I can’t dip into that well then what the hell are we going to do, you know?”

And I was filled with despair and it actually launched into this great conversation in which we agreed to disagree and ultimately modified the beat so she had more agency, which I outlawed that word for a year in my writer’s room. I’m like the buzz words.

**Craig:** The buzz words. Because executives have stolen them.

**Julie:** But, you know, and then you realize, OK, but there are now limits to what you really should feel comfortable representing. And so that was my sort of growing experience. And the sort of wonderful experience was after the election and our despair and coming back to the writer’s room of The Originals this year we were like, OK, what stories are we going to tell? And someone was like, “Well what if there’s this faction of vampires who think that only a certain kind of vampires are cool. And like they want to get rid of all the other kind of vampires. And they certainly hate werewolves. And they really hate witches. And they were like kind of vampire purists.”

And so just basically made our whole season about like–

**Craig:** Alt-Right Vampires.

**Julie:** Trump supporters, you know. And it has been the most liberating, wonderful, it’s just amazing. And it’s so on the nose you guys, and I’m going to apologize in advance. I was watching a playback today and I’m like, ooh, that’s really on the nose. But it felt so good all year. And we loved it. Loved it.

**Michael:** Sometimes you got to punch right on the nose.

**Julie:** Exactly.

**John:** Michael Green, how has it changed your process?

**Michael:** Largely a lot of angry writing. A lot of just channeling that. Actually I should say it’s a pendulum swing between escapist bullshit and really, really angry writing. So, Season Two of American Gods, like Season One we wrote in a progressive administration, assuming we were going into a progressive administration, before America decided to shit the bed. And it’s not funny, but we had written a lot of things about immigration, very culturally diverse. But it was kind of accidental that we were doing it. We were just writing what we thought would be positive and suddenly it became a sparkplug. Up until last week we were leaning into that with a lot more ferocity. And part of the reason we parted ways was we wanted to defend that stuff when circumstances would have prevailed that we might have had to not do it.

On the other hand, escapist bullshit. Like I was on the set of Murder on the Orient Express, or I went the next day after the election. And I was never so glad, like I walked across fake snow to a fake train. And I’m like 1930s! And all of a sudden I realized that 1930s Europe suddenly felt idealistic.

**John:** Justin, how has it changed you?

**Justin:** I will say, I’m sure it’s the same for all rooms, but so much of our time is taken up talking about this stuff now, just every single day of how bad everything has gotten. But what’s really interesting, we have a show about identity. That’s sort of the idea. It’s two worlds and it becomes a show about who would you be under a different set of circumstances and all these things. And so very often in the first season we’re exploring ideas of gender identity, of sexual identity. And then we come to this season and the conversation feels very different now.

And we have a very diverse room. It’s a very important part of what makes this show what it is. But at no point had we really had the conversation about racial identity and what that means. And it was suddenly like we’re having this conversation. It was a really interesting day when we started to talk about it because, you know, we take place in sort of Berlin and then an alternate Berlin in another world. And there’s all these kind of throwback themes to espionage in it. You know, this conversation started like, well, do we always have to have this conversation as it relates to it? And someone said, and it was the best thing, and it was just like a glass of cold water to the face for the whole room of, “We’re already having this conversation whether we want to be or not. It’s time we actually start engaging with it.”

And that changed everything for us. It suddenly became this, and you know, we tried to create I think a better way of also just talking to each other. It may be a sexual remark, but it may also be a racial remark or something like that. To sort of get a form of discourse where people are comfortable, not just criticizing but also being criticized, and not taking it personally. You know, especially I think the white male point of view immediately goes to a place of, well, hold on, but I voted for Obama. It’s like one of the good guys thing.

And it’s like, no, you really have to take a step back and listen to yourself and hear yourself in that way and feel – and ask aloud to a diverse room around you, “Is this OK? I mean, how does this make everyone feel if I say this. It’s different if I say this than if you say this, right? Is that what it is? Or, no, what is it?”

And it becomes a really interesting thing. And I’ve got to say, I can’t believe that it has taken this long for these kinds of conversations to happen so comfortably and so much in the open. So in that sense it is – I do share that feeling of optimism. I do share that feeling of – I mean, what else do we have? It’s like the stories, you read that Sebastian Younger book about a tribe where no one was happier than when they were in London during the blitz being bombed every day because at least they had a community. Like that’s kind of how I feel now with it is like—

**Julie:** Well, yeah, it goes to what we were saying about making something comfortable in the room. So, I am a very energetic room personality. And when we’re in a flow and we’re talking story and when I get onto an idea and I’m pitching a thread, I’m like oh and this, and boom, and that. And nothing – nothing ruins that more for me than someone is like, “Well, you can’t do that because that’s not – I’m going to blanket it not PC. But it’s basically that’s racist, or that’s this.” And I’m like, come on, you know. And you get so frustrated because the air is cut out of your momentum. And you’re like that’s not sexist. Or that’s not rapey. Or that’s not whatever.

But, somebody in the room thinks it is. And somebody in the room had the balls to say that to you. And especially somebody like me who is then going to have a sort of hilarious, never angry, but a hilarious meltdown of like, “Oh, the energy just got sucked out of my soul.” We have to create these environments where people, especially young staff writers, et cetera, can feel free to be like, “Um, hello, you can’t do that and here’s why.” And where I will then come off of my sort of downward spiral and say, “OK, no really, tell me.” And then I can still decide you know what I disagree or I hear you or whatever. But to make sure the conversation happens.

**John:** Cool. Thank you very much. We usually end with One Cool Things. We’re going to do something special this time. This is our new little thing called, let’s see if the slide will change, Secret Santa or Lump of Coal. So there’s no emoji for lump of coal, so we used a smiley pile of poop.

So this is something great from the last year that we want to make sure people are aware of, and something from the last year which we could do without. So, My Secret Santa would be this was the final season for both Please Like Me, which is a series I loved, and Girls, which I loved to death. And we can forget that these great things happened in this year. So, my Secret Santa are those two shows. Go check them out if you’ve not checked them out. Their last seasons were both great.

My lump of coal goes to post-credit scenes on superhero movies. Just stop. I mean, like I kind of dug it at first. It’s like, oh, it’s an Easter egg. It’s a little bonus thing for the fans. But now a movie will end and like, ugh, I’m pulling up Wikipedia, like is there a tag scene? Ugh. And by the time it actually gets to it, like ten minutes later, I’m like it was not worth it to stay. So, let’s just stop. We could all stop. We can all agree to be done. Or do it within one minute, but then it be done and say, OK, no, there’s no more. Done.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you. My Secret Santa, is that what the good one is? Secret Santa? Is something I talked about on the show before, but it’s become an integral part of my life. 1Password. You don’t have to use 1Password. There’s other things like 1Password. But here’s why I’m actually evangelizing this.

So, for those of you who don’t know it’s a password management thing on your computer. You put all of your passwords in it. It generates good passwords for you, really strong ones so that not everything is Baloney1. And it’s great.

But, here’s the best part about One Password. So now it’s like a subscription-based thing the way all software is going, which is annoying, but my wife and I now share a subscription and so we have all of it now as a family. So the point is if I croak, she has everything there. And we have to start coming to terms with this that when we die now we leave behind this minefield of digital shit behind us. And we also have these accounts and things and banks. So now your partner has access to it all.

So, be a good digital citizen and get yourself something like that.

Lump of coal. You don’t like those post-credit sequences on movies, what I cannot have any more are these stupid mini-trailers in front of the trailer. Show me the trailer. What is that fucking thing at the beginning of the – I’m already watching the trailer. You know I’m watching it. If I’m going to see your thing, that means I’m watching the trailer. The thing lasts like four seconds. It’s a mini-trailer in front of the trailer.

Go on YouTube, go to a trailer, and watch what happens. Oh, I’m going to watch this trailer. First there’s a mini-trailer. It’s four seconds long. It’s insane.

And then you watch the regular trailer. What is that? Make it stop!

**John:** Done.

**Julie:** Amazing. Amazing. OK, so my Secret Santa, we already covered Pod Save America, which has just been my absolute salvation this year. And I would like to be on it if anybody knows anybody. Honestly, Reed Morano and Susanne Bier I want to say is the last name, Byer, but it’s two female directors in television, Handmaid’s Tale and The Night Manager. And what these two women did visually was so spectacular. Just the art direction, the cinematography, the actual – the visual point of view. That’s where you really can understand a director at least kind of knows their shit a little bit. They’re not just telling a story. They’re presenting a world, a beautiful world to you. And female directors in television, the good ones are few and far between and growing by the day.

But I was so wildly impressed by their work and I think that they, along with Patty Jenkins, and of course Ava DuVernay, on the movie side have really just planted their flag this year and made us all look good.

And then my lump of coal is the six-act structure in broadcast television. It is the death of good storytelling. It is the quagmire of where formerly good writers go to die. It is – when you think about it, it’s really seven-act structure because your title card comes in there and then you’ve got to – every 3.5 minutes you have to turn something and twist something. And it’s horrible.

And somebody today said that finally networks are starting to say, good networks like cable networks, are starting to say, “Oh, we don’t care about the act out. We’ll like act out in the middle of a word if we want. Don’t worry about building to that.” And that is interesting at least to explore because it’s the worst.

**Craig:** Is this for commercial interruptions?

**Julie:** Yeah. The worst.

**Craig:** That’s bad.

**John:** Michael Green?

**Michael:** Secret Santa, The Leftovers.

**Julie:** Ah!

**Michael:** If you haven’t seen it, you do. If you’ve seen it, watch it again. Damon Lindelof, Mimi Leder, speaking of female directors, she’s an authorial voice in there that demands mention and notice. If you haven’t seen it, there was probably a reason. It felt like, oh, that’s too hard. Or maybe there’s some homework. And you know what? First couple episodes, yes. Yes. And there are 450 shows on the air. Anything that takes a couple episodes to get going, I get it. You don’t want to. Like why should I acquire a taste? It’s gross.

No. Just to get to the pleasure of seeing what real writing and what real television – I mean, what it can get to in the third season. It would be worth running a marathon and I will never run a marathon. It is gorgeous. It is liturgy. It’s beautiful. I admire it.

**Julie:** It’s a masterpiece.

**Michael:** It really is. It’s a masterpiece. And just to see how you can end a show by choice, word felt. I watched it and went, “I want to try harder, do better.” And it made me want to.

Lump of shit. This is probably not the room to say this in, but there’s this hashtag I see a lot, #amwriting.

**Craig:** Thank you. I know.

**Michael:** Like if you did that, you’re not. Secondly, writing is like, you know, if you’re a writer that’s hygiene. Like #ambrushingmyteeth. Or worse, it’s like people who declare they’re in love publicly. Then you’re not. #inlove. Like blast fuck you.

Just write and turn your wireless off and shut the fuck up.

**Craig:** That is a man after my own heart. No romance. None.

**Michael:** The romance about writing, just–

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the worst.

**Michael:** Just do your shit.

**John:** Justin Marks, bring us home.

**Justin:** My Secret Santa, and I can’t believe that I even have to say this in 2017, but I would say the thing I’m most grateful for this year is a free press. More specifically, and I want to see it around next year, and I think that especially the kind of press that values good investigative journalism and checking sources. And I think we’ve seen it both on a very high level and then in the last couple months here in this industry how much it can change things. And I really hope that we keep – in the age of the Internet when we’re just sort of pushing free journalism left and right, I hope we all have a newspaper subscription. I really, really do. Or at least the one that gives you the online version of it. That’s my earnest one.

The pile of poop, this is a thing, and I have it here. The fact that cell phones these days, they’re just getting bigger. I have the iPhone SE and this is too big still. I want a smaller phone than this. And I don’t understand why there’s not a choice. Michael has a new phone that I don’t know how it can fit in your pocket. And that’s what the thing is. We live in this age where technology is everything you can fit in a pocket, and yet it can no longer fit in your pocket.

And I just don’t understand why I cannot have a phone the size that I want it to be.

**Julie:** Right. But you’re not 40 yet are you?

**Justin:** No.

**Julie:** Because the vision starts to go and then you can’t see. And I’m like I need a bigger goddamn phone because I can’t read anything.

**Craig:** You ageist.

**John:** So for young bucks like Justin Marks, we want small phones.

**Justin:** Small things. Like really small, like the Zoolander phone. I don’t know why we don’t have that in smartphone technology.

**John:** Yeah, movies promised you the Zoolander phone and it never came.

All right. That is our show for this week. Guys, thank you so much. We have so many people to thank, so let us thank them.

We’ll start off with Chris from the Writers Guild Foundation for putting us on. Writers Guild Foundation, you’re the best. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you, Chris.

**John:** We need to thank The Los Angeles Film School for hosting us, especially Daniel who did our AV. Daniel, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Daniel.

**John:** We need to thank Dustin Bocks and Nima Yousefi for putting together all of these slides and stuff you saw.

As always, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Megan! It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who is in Japan, so cheer loudly for Matthew.

Our intro this week which truly was great, and so you’ll hear it on the real podcast, is Jon Spurney.

**Craig:** Brought to you by the devil.

**John:** Our outro is by Andy Roninson. If you have questions for us, write into ask@johnaugust.com, or find us on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is…?

**Craig:** @clmazin.

**John:** What are you guys on Twitter?

**Julie:** @julieplec.

**Michael:** @andmichaelgreen.

**Justin:** I’m really annoying. It’s @justin_marks_ because there’s a NASCAR driver named Justin Marks and it’s really bizarre.

**John:** That’s fine.

**Justin:** Don’t tweet him.

**John:** You can find the show notes for this and all episodes at johnaugust.com, or all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You guys are the best. Thank you very much and have a happy rest of your 2017.

**Craig:** Merry Christmas.

Links:

* [Show slides](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Scriptnotes-Dec7-Live-Show.zip), in case you want to follow along at home.
* [Pod Save America](https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/)
* [S Town](https://stownpodcast.org)
* Dirty John to [listen to](http://wondery.com/wondery/shows/dirtyjohn/) or [read](http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-dirty-john/)
* [Missing Richard Simmons](https://www.missingrichardsimmons.com)
* Julie Plec on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687096/)
* Michael Green on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0338169/)
* Justin Marks on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098479/) and check out his new show [Counterpart](https://www.starz.com/series/counterpart/featured)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
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**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 328 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be looking at how you pitch a television show. We’ll also wade back into the turbulent waters of sexual harassment to discuss what the responsibilities are of men, women, and labor unions to remedy it.

**Craig:** That’s not at all a minefield.

**John:** Not a bit of one. But a reminder, we have a live show coming up. That’s next week. Actually this week as you’re hearing this. This Thursday, December 7, in Hollywood we will be welcoming guests Julie Plec, Justin Marks, and Michael Green to talk about wonderful things, including television programs, so you should come. If there’s still tickets you should come.

**Craig:** That’s quite a group there. I mean, got some big movies in there and some big time writers and producers. And as always it benefits the Writers Guild Foundation, which is our favorite charity.

**John:** It is a fantastic charity. If you would like tickets go to wgfoundation.org/events and you will see us there and you can grab yourself a ticket. So, we still haven’t planned everything that’s happening, but I will have some surprises for you, Craig. Things you do not even see coming.

**Craig:** The good news is I don’t ever see anything coming. Everything is an endless surprise to me. I’m like a child.

**John:** Yeah. It’s lovely. You know, persistence of memory, you know, you cover something over with a napkin, oh my god it’s a surprise to you.

**Craig:** Right. You can play peekaboo with me and it still works.

**John:** That’s fantastic. It’s good stuff.

**Craig:** It is good stuff. Great stuff. That’s how I stay young.

**John:** It is. So, let’s get into sexual harassment because this is essentially follow up because in a previous episode we were talking about sexual harassment. Craig, you had some suggestions and guidelines you wanted to propose. And you got some feedback from that, so why don’t you take it from here.

**Craig:** Sure. I got a really interesting email from somebody that I know and I wanted to share it. And I spoke with her and so we’re going to leave her name out of it. We just agreed on the guidelines of things. And I’m editing down the email a little bit, but I think I’m hitting the important points. So I’m just going to go ahead and read this from an anonymous friend.

“Craig, you know that you’re one of my favorite humans.” You know, I wish I could I just stop there, John, honestly, because that’s amazing, right?

**John:** Like on a little thank you card, just write that. Just send it.

**Craig:** Just send it. Because I really appreciate that. Well, it goes on.

“Craig, you know that you’re one of my favorite humans but I feel compelled to disagree with some of what you guys said on the latest episode. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had a minimal amount of weird and inappropriate interactions in my work life. I happened to have worked for mostly gay men and women. I’m cautious by nature and tend to remove myself when I feel uncomfortable. I’ve worked mostly in progressive areas in well-respected organizations and none of that has stopped me from having awful moments and interactions I would like to forget.

“You said that no one will be offended if you say you’re uncomfortable and I simply cannot stress how untrue that is. Offended may look different on different people. It may come off as anger, acting dismissive, annoyed, patronizing, etc. But it will be there every single time.

“I have been told I have offended people for far less than standing up for myself after a moment of questionable behavior by a colleague. The result of offended, no matter what it looks like, is the same. You will be someone that no one wants to work with.

“You also said to remove yourself when something feels rapey. Two things. I can’t ever remember worrying that a colleague would rape me. It’s almost never that cut and dry. If someone has a rapist t-shirt then, yeah, you should leave. Short of that, it will often just feel like you’re dealing with a guy who is maybe a little too interested but not crossing any big red lines.

“Second thing. If I remove myself from every workplace where there were someone that I had a bad gut feeling about, I wouldn’t ever work again. The conversation I would much rather have is around how do we talk to men about this situation. For women, this is almost mundane. It is such a part of our lives. Rather than us twisting ourselves in knots to figure out workarounds, can we talk about how men treat women?

“Let me tell you why this matters to me. The situations I had didn’t physically scar me or even traumatize me. Again, I’ve been very lucky. What they did do is slowly chip away at my sense of self-worth. They subtly tell you that the only reason you’re in the room is because you’re young and female and that your voice or opinions are irrelevant. You don’t get attention when you succeed or when you fail, which are net positive things. You get attention when you look nice and no other time.”

So, I read this and I thought this is a very fair criticism. I mean, first of all there’s a lot of great insights in there that I think you and I probably wouldn’t be able to have access to because we’re not in the same situation that women are in, so I really appreciated that point. And I also think that the larger point that she’s making which is it’s not easy to just say I’m offended and I’m walking away is true. And they’re right about that. They meaning anyone who agrees with that.

And I also think that it is true that even though we are trying to do a service by telling people how to manage difficult situations that are imposed upon them, it is true that we – I think you and I have a responsibility if we’re going to talk about that part of it to talk about the other part which is, “OK boys, how are you supposed to behave.”

**John:** Yeah. Fair. I think what I got so much out of her letter is that how do you deal with these difficult situations without being labeled difficult. And that she wants to be in that room. She wants to be doing her work and she feels like if she calls anybody on their behavior she’s immediately sort of ostracized as that person who is like, “Oh, she can’t play. She can’t hang. She’s not one of us.”

And that is a terrible situation. And so I think you’re right. We need to look at what are the responsibilities of men, women, and everybody else in that room and in those working situations to not let that happen. Because I think your advice was well-intentioned. You said that if you feel that you’re at an unsafe place, get yourself out of that place. And that is one end of this horrible spectrum of behaviors we’re seeing where there are literal attacks and assaults happening.

But in attempting to get yourself out of those possible bad situations, she’s saying you are opening yourself up for the other kind of bad thing that we see happening on the other end of the spectrum which is just like opportunities being taken away because you’re not longer seen as cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think we heard a bit of this too from Dara Resnik and from Daley Haggar when they were on. And it’s a sense of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you don’t say anything and you just stay there, you become a victim. If say something, protest, or try and get out, you become a complainer. And so what I think we’re hearing here, and it makes total sense, is that there are certain situations where there are no behaviors that women can engage in that end in a kind of victory. That really it’s just a competition between negative outcomes and you’re trying to look for the least worst situation, which isn’t ideal, so maybe we should be coming at this from the other side which is what can we say to the people perpetrating this stuff so that women aren’t in this situation of having to pick the lesser of evils.

**John:** Yeah. So I mean a couple thoughts. First is to listen to letters like this that make it clear that these situations happen. Because I feel like a lot of times I think men aren’t aware that they’re creating these impossible situations for the women they’re working with.

**Craig:** I agree. I think that that is very much part of what happens. I also think that there are a lot of guys who know exactly what they’re doing and just don’t care. And maybe, perhaps I’m naïve, but maybe if we just codify certain things it will be a little harder for them to get away with it.

**John:** Well let’s talk about codifying things, because I had a great conversation with a writer who is on a TV show this last week and he said that they’re looking in their room as they’re sort of figuring out for next season. They want to come in with a list of like “These are going to be the house rules. This is what we’re going to be doing. This is how it’s all going to work.” And the writing staff is going to vote anonymously on those things. And any one of those rules that gets like two people voting for it is part of the rules for that room. It’s part of the rules for how that show is going to work with the writers.

Will that solve everything? No, it won’t. But at least there’s a thing you can point to saying like, “Hey, this is how we’re going to do it.” And so if someone is breaking one of those rules, everybody sees that he is breaking one of those rules. And I think that helps not only the woman who is being harassed or bullied. It helps everyone else in that room be able to point out like, “Hey, this is not right. We agreed this was not right. You’re breaking the norms of what’s happening here.”

I think with rules you can help set norms. And norms are what’s not being followed here.

**Craig:** I totally agree. I think that’s actually really important that we distinguish between norms, social mores, and laws. It is illegal to sexually assault someone. But it is not illegal to make a joke that makes someone uncomfortable. And what it is is just a violation of a social norm and a social more. And I think a lot of times what happens is people throw up their hands and say, “Well you can’t legislate behavior.”

No, you absolutely can. Here’s an example. Let’s say I work in a writer’s room. And it’s lunch time. And we all eat lunch around the table. When lunch comes, I have the soup. And I decide to eat it with my hands. I just lift up handfuls of soup and just rub them into my face. That’s not illegal. There’s no law against that. It’s weird. It’s creepy. It’s wrong. It is a violation of a social norm.

Similarly, I can’t take my socks and shoes off and put my bare feet up on the table. It’s gross. We all know this. But somehow when it comes to creating a sense of social mores around the way we respect each other and particularly the way men respect women in a room, we get – we become uber libertarians who can’t imagine the notion of any kind of restraint.

Well, I have a bunch of restraints I’d like to suggest.

**John:** Well, Craig, I will say though both your soup example and your taking off your shoes and socks and putting your feet on the table, I have not worked on a lot of TV staffs, but I will guarantee you that someone could write in saying like that exact thing happened on our TV show. And the more powerful the person is who is taking off the socks or eating soup with his hands, the harder it is for other people in the room to call him out on that behavior. And so that’s I think part of the reason why you want to have some written out thing of like these are the things we – like if it says on the wall “Don’t take off your shoes and socks and put your feel on the table,” then we know not to do that.

And that is I think what I’m asking for people to try to do is to have a little bit more codifying of what it is that’s going to be OK and what is not OK.

**Craig:** I completely agree. I mean, I only really raise that point to say as a response to people who can’t imagine that it’s even possible to create rules.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So I have some rules.

**John:** Go for it. I want to hear them.

**Craig:** I have ideas of rules. Here’s an easy one. Keep your hands to yourself.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I mean, this is a nursery school rule. This is kindergarten stuff. Apparently it’s difficult for some people. So, let’s just make it a rule. Keep your hands to yourself. I don’t need to touch anybody to do my job. We’re not massage therapists.

**John:** Josh Friedman had an interesting tweet back as all this stuff was starting to break that when he is in a work situation, like when someone is a writer on one of the shows that he’s working on, like even if that woman is a friend they’re not hugging. They’re not hugging in the room because it’s just this weird moment. And so let’s just maybe not touch each other.

**Craig:** Keep your hands to yourself. And then when it comes to things like jokes, which seems to be an area where a lot of things go wrong, here’s a general guideline and I think these are all incredibly followable. I try to follow them myself. Until you have a sense that a certain area of comedy is safe with another person, just presume that their mom or dad is there with you. Then you’re not going to say that certain kind of thing. You got to find out if someone is OK with some sort of comedy before you get there. And we all know what we’re talking about. We all understand that some humor pushes the envelope. Some humor is edgy. Some isn’t.

You know what? Hold off on the super edgy stuff until you get a sense of whether or not it’s OK with the other person. And if you think it is, and it turns out you were wrong, and the person is upset, stop. Just stop. Apologize. You misread it. That’s it. Say you’re sorry and don’t do it again. That’s that.

**John:** So when Dara and Daley were on the show they talked about you have to have a freedom in the writer’s room to sort of pitch out stuff and not censor yourself from bad ideas, bad jokes, and sort of going into dangerous territory. I get that. And also people are going to point out the Friends’ decision which I will quickly summarize by saying there was a lawsuit against the Friends TV show by someone who was working in that writer’s room and she lost. And essentially you could read it to say all is fair game in the writer’s room. That’s too broad a reading of that. That was a very specific situation.

What I would point you to is like there’s still the possibility of sexual harassment in a writer’s room if things go too far, if you create a situation where people feel unsafe.

Here’s a good tip for a joke. Pitch a joke about a character. Don’t pitch a joke about somebody in the room. Don’t aim stuff at people who are in the room in general. Just let it be about the characters and the show, not about the folks who are sitting around you.

**Craig:** I agree. And look when I talk about a sense of humor, a show has a sense of humor. If you go to work on a show that is dark, then the room will be dark, because people are trying to pitch for the dark show. If you go into The Simpsons, then you know what that sense of humor is. You should be pitching within it. This is less to me about what you’re pitching in a room to try and get comedy going. It’s more about what you’re doing when you bump into somebody by the coffee machine, or in the hallway. That’s what I’m talking about.

I think that’s where it gets particularly pernicious when you’re just invading somebody with a sense of humor that they don’t like. What is the point of a sense of humor if the other person isn’t laughing? Just stop.

**John:** Yep. Agreed.

**Craig:** Physical guidelines like — there’s certain rules that people generally follow, I’m talking to boys. You meet somebody, a woman, in professional situation. You don’t know her, or you vaguely know her. Maybe you met once a long time ago. It’s a handshake.

When you are working with women and you know each other very frequently, it is just very common in our business that people will hug. There’s nothing wrong with it. I call it the business hug. Nothing wrong with a business hug. But make it a business hug. There’s apparently a problem where people don’t understand how hugging works. It’s about a second long. And the purpose of the hug is to finish the hug as fast as you can. That’s the way I look at it. There’s no squeezing. There’s no holding on. It’s not a real hug. I mean, how did people miss this? It’s not a real hug. It’s not the way you hug your child or your spouse. It’s a quick business hug. It is a formal act.

Same with the cheek kiss. I don’t really like the cheek kiss.

**John:** I don’t like the cheek kiss either. Let’s rule out the cheek kiss. This isn’t France.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was lovely while I was living in Paris. We don’t need it here. Here’s what I’ll say about the hug is it should be the same kind of hug if you’re hugging a guy or you’re hugging a woman. And guys hug here. It’s fine. It’s natural. But it’s quick. It’s really quick. So don’t linger. It doesn’t need to linger.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, that’s a great guideline. Basically you’re hugging this person because they’re a professional and this is what we do to greet each other as professionals and that’s it. So the hug is the same for a man. It’s the same for a woman. That’s that. Real simple.

And I would also say — another guideline I would give to boys is – I like saying boys, by the way. We don’t say boys enough.

**John:** Boys.

**Craig:** Women refer to each other as girls all the time. It’s affectionate.

**John:** Craig, I would say though does boys infantilize or take away some of the sting of it. So essentially you know like, “Oh, they’re just being boys.” That’s my only worry about the “boys” term.

**Craig:** All right. They’re men. They’re people with XY chromosomes who are moving through the world and they’re adults. Men.

**John:** Men.

**Craig:** Don’t be a physical reviewer in the workspace. It’s fine every now and then if somebody changes their hair to say, “Whoa, cool. Nice haircut.” And it’s perfectly fine if somebody walks in with some awesome new shirt or some amazing new kicks to go, “Oh, I like that. I like the shirt. I like the sneakers.” But otherwise just shut up about it. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear your opinions about how people look about their hair, their makeup, their clothes, their body type, their shoes, whether or not they smile, whether or not they don’t smile, their funny eyes, their beautiful eyes, their stupid eyes. Whatever. Just shut up. Nobody cares. That’s not why people are there.

So when our friend writes in and says you get attention when you look nice and no other time, that is such a disaster. And if you are in a workplace and you are sharing your workplace with women, as I imagine you are and should be, then you just have to get it through their head that they’re there because of their minds.

I mean, we are creative people. We’re not doing physical labor. They’re there because of their minds. Comment on the quality of their minds. That’s it.

**John:** So, here’s an opportunity. If you are about to make a comment about someone’s physical appearance, you might stop and think if there’s something else you could say. I mean, you’re basically just trying to start a conversation or just like to fill an awkward silence or just do the normal social interactions of things, think of something else you can say rather than commenting on how the person looks.

**Craig:** I think that you and I have a decent starting list here, but this is by no means all-encompassing and I’m sure that different places have different call for different rules and different guidelines.

I think the important thing though is that men in this business have to start talking to each other about generally speaking how we’re supposed to be. And I do believe that if you are in a situation where you are saying things that you know would be hurtful to somebody but they’re not there and they’re never going to be there. Look, humor does as humor does. And there’s different levels of intention.

I know that people are flawed and imperfect. This isn’t about perfection. This is about when you are with people and it’s about not making life miserable for these other human beings. And I cannot promise you that you’re doing it because it’s going to make your life easier. I’m just telling you you should do it because it makes you a better person. It makes you a more honorable person. It’s just basic human decency. And I think we’re all better off for it.

**John:** Yeah. So I would say that if people have additional suggestions for things that should be on that list of like how not to be a jerk as a man, tweet at us. Send us an email. And we can certainly add to this list and maybe post this for things that people can think over as they’re moving out into the world.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We have an email from Carlton who writes, “I wonder if you could see any role for the WGA in preventing sexual harassment in your industry. Could you imagine the WGA or other unions calling for a mini-strike at a company where there are allegations of sexual harassment or assault, which are safety issues if nothing else? One thing that victims have been saying in all these stories is that there was no point going to HR or even no HR department at all these companies. I know if I had a problem at my workplace I could always go to my union.”

So, Carlton has a fair question. You know, unions are set up to help the workers of an industry. Basically we are there to provide workplace protection. And this is a situation where some of our workers are either physically not safe or they are being treated poorly on the job.

So, yes, that is that is a union concern. It is a concern for the WGA, for the DGA, for SAG, for everyone below the line. Yes, every union needs to be thinking about sexual harassment and how they can make sure that their members who are working at these places are being treated OK.

So, there’s a lot kind of going on behind the scenes. And so I would say that you’re going to see a lot of stuff in the New Year about what happens next in terms of how the unions can address this individually but also impressively together to have systems that help protect workers in these situations.

**Craig:** well that’s good to hear. I don’t think that we can pull strikes per se legally against an entire company. Like I don’t think if somebody experiences sexual harassment at CBS that the Writers Guild could strike all of CBS. I don’t think we could do that legally. But certainly the union should be involved in these things. All those unions you mentioned should be.

Interestingly and trick-ily, who are the people that are doing the sexual harassment? Sometimes it is management. Sometimes it is our own members. I mean, when we talk about some of the showrunners, we’re talking about Writers Guild members. When we’re talking about a director with an actor, we’re talking about DGA members. So it’s not quite as clear cut as it might be say for somebody who is working in food services at a plant and so you’ve got your shop steward saying, OK, management is doing something to one of the workers. It’s complicated.

**John:** It’s also complicated because sometimes if it is management or if it’s a producer or if it’s somebody else, a manager, that is a person who is not under any sort of union control. So how do you – and that same person could be harassing writers and harassing PAs and harassing actors. And so how do you keep track of all that? Well, I think there has to be an industry-wide response to these situations.

Carlton’s also question about going to HR, well in order to file some of these lawsuits to get some of these actions to take effect you do need to go to HR. But what I’d urge anyone listening to this to know is that you also need to go to your union. And so the same time you go to file an HR complaint, you go to the union and the union can come with you. I know it’s true for the WGA. I’m sure it’s true for SAG and for DGA.

So there’s people there who have your back. And so it’s important to sort of like – the union has a role to play here and so does every member of a union.

**Craig:** Do we have a specific person at the Writers Guild that people should be contacting?

**John:** Yes. And so I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. So, yes, there’s a whole plan. And you’re going to see more stuff coming out from the Guild about exactly what steps to take if you’re encountering these situations.

**Craig:** Great. That’s very useful. Good.

**John:** Cool. A follow up question from Ben in Colorado. “On a recent episode you were both talking about how the screenwriters should not end dialogue with a parenthetical under it, except in animation. Can you talk about this exception and some of the other differences between writing for live action versus animation?”

All right, I can take this. So, in animation you do sometimes leave parentheticals underneath actor’s dialogue for sound effects or for like gasps. For things like that that would just be assumed in live action, but because you’re recording audio separately you actually mark all those gasps in there or like sneezes and other little things. You put them all in dialogue to make sure they actually get recorded when they go in to do the sound recording.

**Craig:** Efforts.

**John:** Efforts. Yes. The grunts. The groans. All that stuff. You put that in the dialogue track whereas you might drop that into action in a live action feature. Otherwise, animation scripts look almost exactly the same. The numbering happens a little bit differently because they do things by kind of these sequences, these reels situations. But other than that there’s not huge differences between the script that we as screenwriters are doing and for animation and what we would be doing in live action.

There’s, of course, a second step. So it goes from the screenplay into storyboards. And storyboards are these picture versions of our scripts. And things do change in that process. And so a lot of times the screenwriter will have to come back in and tweak dialogue based on the order of shots and sort of how the scene is shaping out when they actually board it. But script-wise it doesn’t look that different.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wouldn’t get hung up on it.

**John:** Last bit of follow up, the switch from documentary to narrative film. We had several people writing in to offer examples of adapted documentaries. On a previous thing you had said like, “Oh, it’s not a common thing to do to go from a documentary to a feature.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Apparently it happens literally every day. Sometimes I’m so wrong it’s like shocking.

**John:** Yeah. So do you want to read through some of these?

**Craig:** Well sure. So some examples that people sent in. Hands on a Hard Body was a documentary that follows a competition to win a new truck which Doug Wright and Trey Anastasio turned into a Broadway musical. A Broadway musical I saw.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Hunter Foster, brother of Sutton Foster, was starring in that one.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Man on Wire becoming Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk. And Loving based in part on the documentary the Loving Story. So, those were three. But it was like a cascade of them. And someone even said like, you know, I used to work in acquisitions where all we did was try and find documentaries and turn them into movies. So, I’m an idiot basically is the point.

And it’s important to say to people, you know, you can’t just trust people because they have a stupid podcast. That doesn’t mean a damn thing. Just don’t trust me.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Not a word.

**John:** I’d also say that it’s important when you are wrong to admit that you’re wrong and to say it on subsequent episodes.

**Craig:** Oh god, yeah. Sometimes I’m not just wrong. Sometimes I’m gloriously wrong. I actually feel like that’s really the goal. It’s not very interesting to be slightly wrong. You know? Like you stumble and people don’t really notice. But if you can really trip and land with your hands to your side, so you’re catching the ground with your face, that’s fun.

**John:** That’s the way you do it.

**Craig:** That’s how you do it.

**John:** All right. Let’s see if we can be gloriously wrong in our next segment which is about pitching television.

**Craig:** Oh, no, I’m going to nail this. This one I’ve got. Yeah.

**John:** Previously on Scriptnotes we’ve done episodes about producers and pitching. That was Episode 55. And pitching an open writing assignment. That was Episode 248.

But we got an email about how do I go out and pitch a TV show. And some of our other writer friends have been chatting about that recently, too, so I thought we’d just dig into what it’s like to pitch a TV show. Because I’ve done this three times. Craig, you did it for your Chernobyl show, but have you pitched other TV shows? Or was that the only one?

**Craig:** That’s the only one.

**John:** Great. So I can go through my experiences and we can hear what Craig’s experience was with Chernobyl. But it’s a lot like a feature pitch but you’re pitching some different parameters and they’re looking for very different things as you go into that room. So, let’s talk through pitches in a very general sense because this is what happens in every pitch meeting. You go into a room. There’s five minutes of chitchat. And eventually you transition into, OK, now we’re going to start talking about the thing that you’re here for.

What’s different about television versus feature pitches is in television they’ve invited you in for a specific reason. So, either you’re going into the studio or you’re going into the network. They know in a general sense what the story area is. They want you to be in that room. They’re in theory happy to hear your pitch.

In features, previously we talked about the elevator pitches, that really tight version of a pitch which you don’t use that much. We’ll have pitches where we’ll go into pitch on an assignment that started there, so it’s like an open writing assignment or it’s based on a property.

With these TV pitches it’s this weird kind of middle form where you’re going in and they know the general area that you’re pitching but you have to really walk them through the whole idea. And so a pitch might be 15 minutes. It might be 30 minutes. But it has to be a really complete package, not just for what the pilot is going to be, but for what this series is going to be and why they need to bid right now to get this series so they can make it for their season.

**Craig:** Yes. I find it to be a very different kind of pitch than a feature pitch only because of the nature of the medium itself. I feel like it’s actually much easier to pitch television because what you’re trying to do is create a sense of ongoing interest. And in features you’re trying to create something that is whole and finished. It’s really hard to pitch something to somebody and then tell them how it evolves and then tell them how it ends. It’s hard.

And in television you’re just – I think your job is to get them as excited about the potential as you are. In features, it’s not about potential. It’s about you’ve done it.

**John:** Well, it goes back to the very nature of what is a feature versus what is a series is that a feature is about a story that can only be told once. A television show is a story that can repeat itself, or can grow and change and become a different thing. And so for a feature you’re pitching this is exactly what I’m going to give you, versus a TV show. This is the area in which this thing would go. Like you’re pointing towards a trajectory rather than one destination.

**Craig:** Right. See, in television I always feel like you’re pitching – I always feel like. I pitched one thing for television, but in my mind if I go and pitch another thing this is what I believe. You’re pitching an experience. And in features you’re pitching a product.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s natural, I think, for feature purchasers to want you to give them more of a sense of completion and more of a sense of the details having been worked out because you have one thing that you’re pitching, a beginning, middle, and end. In television, I think there’s a general relief valve. No one is expecting you to be able to pitch the beginning, middle, and end of ten episodes or 22 episodes. Not at all.

So, you can talk more about what the nature of the experience will be. I find that to be much more engaging for me. And I can only assume it’s more engaging for them.

**John:** So a writer colleague passed along this list by Peter Micelli who is an agent at CAA. I assume this is the list that he sends to his clients to send out. But it was a very good general sense of this is the flow of what a lot of TV pitches are like. You start by talking about the inspiration. Really like what the idea means to you. What you’re trying to convey is that this is, you know, something that is deeply emotionally connected to you, because remember you’re pitching not just this idea, but that you are the person to bring this idea to life. And that you are the person who is going to work 23 hours a day to get this show exactly right and perfect. That you’re passionate about it. So they want to hear that kind of from the start.

Then you’re pitching the general themes and sort of the concepts of it. This is what areas this touches on. This can also be the answer to the question why now. Why would we do this TV show in 2018 versus 2005? What is it about today’s world that makes this show especially compelling and really demands to have this kind of show be on the air? Why does it fit?

And only then are you sort of getting into kind of the show itself. You’re giving them the sense of the kinds of things that happen in the show. You’re starting to introduce the characters. But really at first you’re pitching a vision – a personal vision and then sort of a global vision. And only then are you getting into the meat of like so here are the characters, here’s how we’re seeing the characters do their thing. This is what happens in the pilot, but these are the intriguing things that are happening. These are open threads that are going to carry us through to future episodes, and ideally in the fantasy world into season two.

Was that at all your experience going into Chernobyl? Did you start with your personal connection, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. I had not seen this, but this is essentially what I did. And this is a guess, because I never sit in a room, nor have I ever sat in a room to hear a writer pitch me something to get me to give them money for it. But I have to imagine that the thing that person fears the most is somebody coming in there in order to get money from them. There are people, I mean, writing is a tough gig, and sometimes people need work. And sometimes people are desperate and sometimes people are trying. Sometimes people are trying to manipulate the system or game the system or get some employment. Whatever it is. And they come in and they just start going through the mechanics. And on the other side of the table they’re like, “But where is the heart? Where is the soul here? Why? I feel like you just want to get a job.”

And bizarrely that’s the worst way to get a job. It would never occur to me to walk into a pitch for a television show that I wanted to do and not begin with, “I want to do a crazy thing. It is going to take me a long time. It is going to be really, really hard, and I really want to do it. And here’s why.” Simple as that.

**John:** Simple as that. When we had Benioff and Weiss on to talk about Game of Thrones, their backstory on Game of Thrones was that they were just obsessed with the book. And I remember an anecdote where one of the HBO guys was at the gym and he saw – I think it was D.B. Weiss – just like going – like D.B Weiss was on the treadmill but still going through the book and marking stuff. And that’s when he saw like, oh, the passion. These guys are obsessed with making this TV show. That’s what networks and studios want is obsessed people who will work to death to try to make these shows happen.

So you have to start with that sense of like this is something I must do. I am the perfect person for this because of XYZ and this is the perfect time to do this kind of show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You become a force of nature then. See, like when I came into pitch my miniseries, I think they must have noticed that I was kind of on fire about it. And I had been thinking about it and researching it for a long time. A long, long time. And I was able to answer a lot of questions. And I was able to talk about specific moments. And really instead of trying to convince them of anything, all I was doing was sharing what had convinced me. So, that’s kind of the deal.

Nobody wants you to manipulate them into a decision. What they want from a good pitch, and I think this is true for features, too, is they want to be able to see, and feel, and experience what you saw and felt and experienced when you fell in love. And then, listen, sometimes they say, “You know what? You look at that and you see beauty, I look at it and I don’t. So, it won’t work out here.” But a lot of times they say, “Oh my god, yes, I’m seeing this through your eyes now and I’m excited.”

That’s the most important thing.

**John:** I’ve sold three TV shows as pilots. And in each case I genuinely loved it. I was genuinely obsessed with the idea and I could completely see what the vision was for the show. And I’d say – so I pitched to studios, and then I had to pitch to networks. And in every one of those meetings I was just as passionate about it. And some of them were like, “Yes, yes, we absolutely want this show.” And some of them were like, “Nah, not for us.”

And a lot of times I could feel as I left the room it was like, oh, that did not go well. That is not going to work for them. But in each time I was conveying the same excitement and the same enthusiasm because I really genuinely did want to do this. I wanted to put aside feature stuff to try to do this TV show. And they respond to that. They see that.

And even the places that didn’t pick it, they didn’t pick it because they didn’t believe in me. It just wasn’t a good fit for them. That’s still going to happen. You’re still going to have situations where they say no. But you’re going to have a much better likelihood of saying yes if they see that you are the right obsessed person for it.

**Craig:** That’s a really good distinction to make. I think for a lot of people that work regularly as screenwriters, television writers, we are being asked to come and help on things. And at that point what they’re saying is we want you. We want you for you. And there may be writers who hear, “OK, there’s an open writing assignment. A rewrite on blah-blah-blah. And so you’re going to go in and pitch on it.” And five other people are pitching on it. And what you’re pitching is you and your suitability for their needs. And when they reject you or pass on you, it is about you. And that can hurt.

When you’re pitching your own material it’s not about you at all. It’s about the material. They may love you, they just don’t want to make a movie about this. They may love you, but they have a television show already in development that’s kind of close to the one you have, or they once made a show that was a little bit like yours and it was a disaster for them so they just don’t want to deal with it. So it’s not about you. And that actually psychologically I think is a nice benefit if you are aware of it.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I would say it is about you in terms of like they want to see your passion and your excitement, but they can still see that and pass. And if they’re passing, then it’s not about you. It really is truly about sort of how it fits in their plan for what they’re going to try to make.

So when you were pitching Chernobyl, did you talk about the characters by their names? Did you talk about actor names? How were you describing the principal people who were going to be in your show?

**Craig:** Well, I narrowed it down to the three that I felt were the most important. And then a fourth that was important just so we understood what was happening with the other three. There are something like 100 speaking parts on this show. You can easily drown somebody in details. But ultimately I was able to say this is why I wanted to do this because of this person. And what this meant. Not only what they did, but what their whole connection to this whole process was. What it did to them. What it signified. And what it signifies for all of us. And their key relationships with these two other people.

And you sort of use that as a touchstone, because I do believe whether it’s features or television you should never talk about something that happens in a show or a movie without pointing out why it matters to a relationship, hopefully a relationship, but at a minimum to a character.

**John:** Absolutely. So when you are talking about these three characters, you used their – they’re based on real people – do you use their character names or do you refer to them as a Stellan Skarsgard?

**Craig:** No, I use their names. And because I don’t want to seem, I don’t know, too desperate or showy. I also feel like when you start mentioning actors you’re giving too much rope to the other side of the table with which to hang you. Because they may not like those actors for some reason. They may have worked with those actors and hated them. They may decide that your interest in those actors implies a certain poor taste.

You never know. So, what I like to do is only discuss that at the end if there seems like real interest. And then they say, “Well who do you see?” And then I’ll say, well, these are the kinds of people that I’ve been thinking about. And I never just put one down. But I have the one that I want.

And at that point I’m really kind of now – now I feel like I have them and now I’m actually kind of checking on them to see if they’re on board with me.

**John:** Absolutely. That can be a very useful thing. In a pitch I did last year, I needed to convey that it was a certain type of person. And so I ended up falling on it’s a Chris. It’s a Chris Evans, it’s a Chris Pratt. It’s a Chris Pine. It’s one of the Chris’s. Which was a useful sort of joke in terms of like there are a bunch of people who are sort of in that space who could do one of those things.

If you were in a TV show situation you could say, “Sort of like a TV Chris Pine.” That is a thing we can sort of understand. And so it provides a context for like the kind of person you should picture in your head for this role. And it was just helpful just for the pitch. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to cast a Chris Pine-type in that part, but just to get them through this 15 minutes of story it’s helpful if they have some image in their head of who this person is.

Some writers will bring in little boards with pictures on them to show different characters. I’ve done that. Sometimes it’s really helpful.

What can be helpful about having a physical thing is then when they’re going back through the pitch or they’re asking you questions they can point to the board that you were talking about then and it helps to remind them like, OK yeah, there was that moment. Tell me more about this guy again. And so having something physical they can point to can be useful.

Did you bring in anything in for Chernobyl?

**Craig:** Not a thing. And, you know, listening to you talk about the image board it strikes me that one of the mistakes that so-called gurus make, other than advertising themselves as gurus and taking people’s money, which they shouldn’t, is that they prescribe solutions as if this is the way to do things.

It seems to me that we are all very, very different. And the most important thing you can take with you into a pitch is your best move. The move that makes you most comfortable and the move that advertises your strength. And it’s not necessarily your strength as a writer you’re advertising, but your strength as an employee. So, you go in there and you show them this board and these images, because you’re comfortable – that’s your safe place. That’s a good place for you. You’re organized. You’ve thought it through. You’re planned. You have this thing here.

And for me, I find that more of an ad-libbed conversation, a back and forth, like a sense of mutual discovery of the show together is kind of – that’s how I’m happy. And while I’m doing it of course I’m leading the conversation. But I like a conversation. And whatever it is that works for you, do that. I mean, for god’s sake never let anybody tell you that you can’t do something like bring in an image board or just show up and talk if that’s what you’re best at.

**John:** Definitely. I had the opportunity to be on the other side of the table once for a project. We were going to do Tower of Terror over at Disney. And it all fell apart because it no longer exists as a ride.

**Craig:** That’s a good reason.

**John:** That’s a good reason. It no longer exists. I got the opportunity to sit across from three writers, or three writing teams, who had come in to pitch their version of it. And they were all fantastic. And I would have loved to have hired all three of them. We hired none of them because it never existed as a project.

But it was fascinating to see the different ways they were approaching the same material and the different ways they were approaching the process of pitching. And some of them were – they were all writing teams, so in some cases one person just did all the pitching and then the other person would come in for the questions and stuff.

Other times you could see it was a much rehearsed, like they’d worked through the whole thing. It was all a bit. It was funny along the way. Other times it’s just like one guy reads a paragraph, the other guy reads a paragraph. They can all work. The last one was probably the hardest to get through.

**Craig:** That’s a little rough.

**John:** But I will say that the ones that stuck with me most was not a person reading off a piece of paper. Because I can read. I don’t need you to read something to me. I need to see you describe it to me. And I need to see what your vision for this really is. And that’s especially important in television where they are making a long-term contract with you to be creating this show, running this show, to be there when everything goes horrible. So they need to see in your eyes that you really do have a vision for how this is going to work.

**Craig:** Such a great point. Because in features, in the back of their minds they’re always thinking, “Well, it’s a great idea. Let’s just—“

**John:** “Who could I have write that?”

**Craig:** Yeah. “You know what? Let’s pay this dude whatever we got to pay him, and then let’s bring her in because she’s great and we’ll pay her a lot. And she’s really going to write it.”

You can’t do that in television. I mean it’s theoretically possible. Occasionally it happens. But by and large they’re trying to avoid that.

So you’re absolutely right. For television they really are looking for long-term partners. I can only imagine they respond much more readily to confidence than to sweatiness. When you sound desperate, feel desperate, seem desperate, you are just immediately less attractive. There’s just no way around it. As an employee. There’s just no way around it. I’m not even sure that’s fair, because I think that a lot of people are not confident in that situation. But then would be remarkably confident in the room. And hopefully you have somebody on the other side of the table who can price that in. But generally speaking if you can be confident and most importantly if you can seem alive and interested.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** Then I think there’s something to hold onto. You want to be near people who have that positive passion.

**John:** Definitely. So a thing I think we should stress is that if you’re being invited in to pitch to the network, to pitch to the studio, you’re probably not a brand new writer. You’re probably a writer who has some credit under your belt. Either you were staffed on a TV show or there’s some other reason why you’re interesting or notable.

But that reason could be something really small or recent. So like when I came in to do my first TV show, D.C., my first feature Go had shot but hadn’t come out yet. I was newly hot. And so they were excited to meet with me because they liked my writing, they thought I was going to be a pretty big deal. And so I was able to convince them and convey that I’m the person who could do this show. But I was also coming in with an established producer who they had as a fallback. So they could look at my eyes and see the passion. They could look in his eyes and see that he can at least get a show on the air. And that was the combo.

So, it may seem like we’re pitching this pitching topic to the folks who are already staff writers on something or who are moving up the food chain, or the feature writers who are switching over to TV. But I really do think it’s not that far in the future for really anybody as a writer.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, sooner or later, right?

**John:** Sooner or later.

**Craig:** I think everybody is going to be in a situation where they’re pitching something and they have nothing going for them. It may not be in TV, it may be in features, but I mean you and I both had those experiences. Every writer has that experience at least once.

**John:** Yep. The Duffer Brothers were just brothers at one point.

**Craig:** They were just brothers. [laughs]

**John:** The Duffer Brothers.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I remember those days and I remember understanding, OK, so I’m being brought in as a widget. They don’t know who I am. Their expectations are incredibly low. Every other widget is a certain kind of widget. I’m going to surprise them. I’m going to be memorable. I’m going to be smart and I’m going to be passionate. I’m going to get myself out of widget category. Sometimes you can. Sometimes – I remember very early on in my career I was pitching something — I won’t say who the executive is. I don’t think he’s in the business anymore.

And he just looked so bored. And so I just stopped and I said, “You know what? I’m boring you. I don’t want to bore you. Let’s just wrap it up. Let’s wrap it up.”

And he’s like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You weren’t boring me. You weren’t boring me.”

I’m like, “It’s OK. It’s OK.”

And he goes, “Oh, you know, I’m tired.” And he had some excuses, but I got out of there. Because–

**John:** I’ve gotten out of that room, too. And I wasn’t so forthright to say like, “Oh, I’m boring you. This is done.” But you’ve ripped cords in your pitch. And we’re going to jump through and now we’re done. Clearly it’s just not going to connect.

**Craig:** Let’s just get to the end here as fast as we can.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For those of you who are yet to do this, to have this experience, there are some bad pitches in your future. And nobody – nobody – manages to avoid them. At some point they will happen. Generally speaking part of the problem is, aside from the fact that you are new, because you’re new you’re pitching to people who are also either new or even worse not new but just slowly sliding down the ladder of Hollywood.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. Just the worst. And those are just awful because now everyone seems desperate. It’s like, “Oh my god, Willy Loman has come in to pitch Willy Loman.” Ugh.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, both of you are just thinking let’s make this work. We could rub some nickels together.

**Craig:** Right. Everyone is just pathetic. It’s just like Jack Lemmon from Glengarry Glen Ross and Willy Loman. It’s the worst. And everyone is sweaty and sad and you didn’t even know what’s going on, or why. They’re coming. You can’t avoid them.

**John:** Yep. It’s gonna happen. All right, let’s do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is super simple. It is a hair brush that was recommended on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, which is another thing you should check out because it’s a really good blog. I’ll put a link to that.

But my daughter has long straight hair and it is just a disaster to try to get a hairbrush through it some mornings. And so I’m usually the person who has to do that and I get sort of elbowed for hurting her.

**Craig:** Ah yes.

**John:** This hairbrush is really good. It’s called the Tangle Teezer. It sort of looks more like something you’d use to brush a horse. It has these really thin plastic things and you think, well, this wouldn’t work. But it works remarkably well. So you just go zip-zip-zip and it’s just a great piece of technology in plastic form. So I would recommend if you have long hair or hair that is difficult to brush with normal brushes, I’d say check this out because I was skeptical and incredibly impressed.

**Craig:** Yeah, the stuff that you and I know about hair. Oh boy.

**John:** Oh my gosh. Yes.

**Craig:** I’m lucky my daughter has always liked having her hair short. She has very thick hair and very straight hair, but she likes it short and purple. I think it’s currently purple.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So I don’t have to worry about that. I do recall when she was younger and she had longer hair I remember hearing Melissa and her just having that classic argument. The ow…stop…you’re hurting…you have to…ugh.

See, oh man, your daughter is lucky she has you because if I were her dad she would just go to school with crazy hair. Real simple. Real simple.

I have a One Cool Thing this week that I just started with but I’m so far – so far so good. So far I’m impressed. It’s an app for iPhone and iPad called Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, which is a bizarrely generic name for what it does.

So, it uses the microphone on your iOS device and it essentially analyzes your sleep and your snoring. And what it’s doing is it’s listening to you and it’s gauging how frequently you’re moving around. So we’ll put the snoring aside, just the moving around. Generally speaking, the deeper our sleep the less we move. The lighter our sleep, the more we kind of turn over or toss or wiggle.

And by listening to it and doing this analysis over a few days it starts to show you, OK, here’s how your sleep cycle is working. And it also will record you if you start to snore. So you can see how frequently you might have snored during the night and how loud it was. And you can play it back.

It’s also pretty smart. It knows to ignore your partner on the other side of the bed. It also knows to ignore kind of steady noise like a white noise machine or a fan. So it’s really looking for changes closer to it. It’s very smart. So far so good. I’m kind of digging it.

Oh, and the other thing it does is after it kind of gets you down, then you say, OK, look, I want to wake up – like I need to wake up tomorrow at 7:30. So you’ll say, OK, I need to wake up around 7:30. And it will say, “OK, we’re going to wake you up between 7:15 and 7:35. And we’re basically going to try and catch you on the upswing towards lighter sleep.” Pretty smart.

**John:** That’s nice. That’s very smart. So, I’ll check back in in two weeks and see whether you’re still using it.

**Craig:** Or find that just like, “Oh my god, I’m so tired. This thing is wrong.”

**John:** It would also be great if it was transmitting all your snoring data to be analyzed by machines or like if you’re talking in your sleep they’re building up evidence against you.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s probably what’s happening.

**John:** That’s probably what’s happening.

**Craig:** Now that you’ve said it that actually does make the most sense.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe we could have a podcast that’s just Craig snoring.

**Craig:** I still wouldn’t listen to it. [laughs]

**John:** All right. That is our show for this week. It is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Phil Baker.

**Craig:** Oh, he’s new.

**John:** 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.

We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there, leave us a review. That helps people find us. Also, if you’re listening on some other platform, there are other platforms, yeah, leave us a review there. That’s always great.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. I’ll also put up the outlines I have for the three TV shows I sold. So, basically I have kind of the pitch document that I went into the room with. It’s not exactly sort of what happens in the room, but it’s a good representation of the things I was talking about.

**Craig:** That’s good. You know, after Chernobyl airs, so we’re about–

**John:** [laughs] Three years away.

**Craig:** Well, a year and a half. About a year and a half away. But once it airs I will put all of that – I’ll put the scripts, the pitch documents, the bible. Everything. I’ll put it all up on your site.

**John:** Fantastic. You can find the transcripts for this episode and back episodes at johnaugust.com as well. Come join us on Thursday so we can talk to you and Julie Plec and Michael Green and Justin Marks about television and features and other great things. We’ll see you there at the live holiday show. Go to wgafoundation.org to get your tickets.

And if you want any of the back episodes, go to Scriptnotes.net. That is your best source. We also have a few of the USB drives left. They are $30 I want to say. They’re at store.johnaugust.com. They have the first 300 episodes of the program.

**Craig:** Doesn’t matter to me how much they cost because I don’t get any of the money.

**John:** You get none of the money Craig.

**Craig:** Go ahead. Charge $1,000. I don’t care.

**John:** Absolutely. The more we charge for them, the more we have to pay Megan and Matthew.

**Craig:** And to steal from me.

**John:** Yes. That’s the goal. Have a great week.

**Craig:** You too, John. See you soon.

**John:** See you, bye.

Links:

* Holiday Live Show [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) are available.
* A sexual harrassment [resource guide](https://www.wgaeast.org/resources/sexual-harassment-resource-guide/) from the WGA.
* The [Tangle Teezer](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001S261Q6/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) hair brush as recommended on Kevin Kelly’s [Cool Tools](http://kk.org/cooltools/)
* [Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-clock/id320606217?mt=8)
* Initial write ups/pitch documents for [DC](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/dc-what-it-is.pdf), [The Circle (a.k.a. Alaska)](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/alaska_writeup.pdf), and [Ops](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/ops_writeup.pdf).
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
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* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Phil Baker ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_328.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/mergers-and-breakups).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 327 of Scriptnotes, of podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll be discussing mergers, such as the proposed union of Fox and Disney. Then we’ll transition to breakups. It’s a new installment of This Kind of Scene, this time looking at how characters say goodbye for the last time.

**Craig:** Oh. This isn’t like a weird way for you to be breaking up with me, is it?

**John:** We’ll see if we get to the end of the episode.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** Yeah. But we should warn our listeners that there will be some bad words in this episode because some of the clips have some foul language. So if you are driving in the car with your kids, this is the standard warning about that.

**Craig:** Earmuffs.

**John:** Earmuffs. We have some follow up and news, exciting stuff. So, our live show, which we talked about last week on the episode, it is December 7, here in Hollywood. It is another event proposed and thrown by the Writers Guild Foundation. But we have guests now. It’s not just me and Craig. We have a bunch of showrunners joining us up on stage. So excited to announce that Julie Plec from Vampire Diaries and The Originals will be with us, along with Michael Green. He did American Gods and The Ripper. He also wrote some movies, Murder on the Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, Logan.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Yeah, busy guy.

**Craig:** Heard of a few of them. You know what? He’s not lazy. That’s as far as I’ll go.

**John:** Absolutely. I think maybe his not laziness is one of the reasons why he’s somewhat successful.

**Craig:** Possibly.

**John:** Finally, Justin Marks. Justin Marks has a new show coming out called Counterpart. The trailer is great. I’m so excited to see his show. He also wrote this little movie called Jungle Book. And so the last time he was on the show we talked about Jungle Book, so now we will be talking about his television program which he filmed in Germany.

**Craig:** We get the best guests.

**John:** We do consistently get the best guests.

**Craig:** And the tickets are available now.

**John:** They are.

**Craig:** And I assume we’re going to be selling out, as we usually do, because we are the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts.

**John:** I would hope we would sell out. But if you want to make sure you can get your ticket right now, don’t even look for the link in the show notes. You could look for that, but you could also just go to wgafoundation.org. Go to events and we are there for you to buy your tickets.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the Christmas show – I like to call it a Christmas show.

**John:** Yeah. No war on Christmas show.

**Craig:** Yeah. We don’t do that. Because you know, as a Jew, I have the privileged position of being able to declare that Chanukah is silly. It’s a silly holiday and it’s not an important holiday religiously. So, I appreciate Christmas. I think a lot of American Jews secretly appreciate Christmas because it’s so much better than Chanukah. And I don’t mind getting in trouble for this, by the way, not even in the slightest. Go ahead. Go ahead. Send emails about how great Chanukah is. I prefer Christmas as a secular Jew.

So our Christmas shows generally are a lot of fun. Everybody is in – you know what everyone is in? The holiday spirit.

**John:** The holiday spirit is a mighty good place to start any podcast and hopefully spirits are even more raised by the end of this show.

**Craig:** When you dump me? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] On our last show, we had Scott Frank on to talk about his show Godless. Godless is now available to the whole world on Netflix.

**Craig:** That’s right. Have you started yet?

**John:** I have not. So I have only seen trailers. And so this is a thing which will make Scott sad, but he should also be happy. So I’m going to put it all on my iPad to take with me on my Christmas holiday travels because Mike will not watch it with me. I want to watch it. I will have ample time on planes over the holidays. So I’ll watch it with my good Bose headphones and I will enjoy it so much.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s what Scott was hoping that you would watch it on your iPad. That’s his greatest – hey, by the way, how do you watch Netflix things on your iPad? Is there an app? A Netflix app?

**John:** There’s a Netflix app and you just click and download them. And it’s fantastic.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** This past week I was traveling. I went to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York to do Arlo Finch book events, and so I had Stranger Things on my iPad saved. And so I could watch it on my iPad. It was delicious.

**Craig:** So you finished Stranger Things season two?

**John:** I have finished Stranger Things season two.

**Craig:** As have I. That was my London show. Pretty good, except that one episode. I just didn’t understand. And I don’t like saying bad things about shows, so I really enjoyed the series. I loved season one and I really enjoyed season two.

**John:** I really enjoyed season two also.

**Craig:** I was puzzled by Episode Seven. Just puzzled.

**John:** I was puzzled as well. And I thought you were subtweeting me when you said like I don’t say negative things about shows, because someone asked me about Episode Seven.

**Craig:** Oh, no. No, no. I think it’s fair to say that Episode Seven is – because look, if you like a show and the Duffer Brothers have done a tremendous job and once again the cast for Stranger Things is fantastic. And I watched all the way through, Episodes One through Nine. So they had me.

I like their show. But I feel then you’re allowed to say, “But, I’m also just puzzled by this one piece of it.” I think they are aware that it’s a polarizing episode.

**John:** For sure. Absolutely. I feel the same way as you do. I in many ways respected the effort and the attempt. It was like, oh, that was probably a fascinating idea on the whiteboard. I just didn’t think it actually became as good an hour as the rest of the hours.

**Craig:** We should get these guys on the show. This is a question I have. Because I’m really curious about it. And for those of you who have watched this show, you’ll understand. And if you haven’t, no spoilers here.

**John:** None.

**Craig:** Whatsoever. Do you think that part of the deal with Episode Seven was that they were essentially intentionally mimicking those kinds of movies from the ‘80s, in other words the tone of the characters, and that place, and the setting and all that stuff was essentially designed to be that way? Or were they just not hitting the mark of reality?

**John:** That is an absolutely fair and valid question. I feel like the overall style of those characters, I can see that as being you’re trying to pull from those other movie references. Great. I love that. But I didn’t believe them within the context of the world.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because once you bring in a character that you’re meant to believe is real, like Eleven, then it doesn’t quite connect up does it?

**John:** It does not quite connect up.

**Craig:** Doesn’t quite connect up. All right.

**John:** But I would love to ask the Duffer Brothers that question, because I think they made a remarkable run of terrific shows.

**Craig:** As do I. Yeah, come on the show guys.

**John:** That would be great. Lastly, I will say that if you would like to read the first five chapters of Arlo Finch, they are now up. That happened over the Thanksgiving holiday.

**Craig:** For free?

**John:** For free. So, just go to arlofinchbooks.com and you can look at the first five chapters there. There’s preorder links for the North American copy. But if you just want to read it, read it. And if you do take a look at it, it may be helpful to know essentially what you’re reading is kind of what I sold. Like that was what sold the book to Macmillan. Plus one additional chapter which is not included which is from later on in the book. But just a glimpse in to sort of what the book looked like before the whole book was written.

**Craig:** All right. Well, good luck with the sales. I expect this thing to be number one.

**John:** Well I hope to be somewhere on some list at some point and not of like the Most Disappointing Books of 2018.

**Craig:** Or Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of.

**John:** Yeah. Your daughter actually read it. Your daughter read an early–

**Craig:** Yep. She was a big fan. Big fan. She’ll show up for Arlo Finch 2.

**John:** Fantastic. So down the road I will be doing a book tour, so on future podcasts I’ll let you know. If you want to see me in some city near you, you can come out and see me as I sign books and talk to folks.

**Craig:** Yeah. Although anybody that comes out to see you will no doubt miss me.

**John:** That’s pretty much what it is. I’m going to travel around with a cardboard standee of Craig and maybe we’ll just record little bits of select umbrage. So people walk up and you just say something to them about them. That might be it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just so they can get their fix.

**John:** Yeah. You just say “specificity” a lot.

**Craig:** And “intentionality.”

**John:** Intentionality is very good. There was a moment of intentionality–

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** — the past two weeks. We sort of missed it on this last episode because it was a rerun, but Disney was in talks to buy 20th Century Fox.

**Craig:** And still are, right?

**John:** And still are. And also Comcast/Universal is apparently kicking the tires of Fox as well. So, I thought we’d start by talking about what this is and what it means. Because on previous episodes we’ve talked about integrations. We’ve talked about vertical integrations where because of consent decrees, like studios are not allowed to own exhibitors. They’re not allowed to own national movie houses. But this is an example of horizontal integration, where two competitors are merging and becoming like one bigger thing. And while there’s some fascinating things that could happen in terms of fandom unification and cinematic universes being combined, I don’t think it would be a great outcome for writers. I’m curious what you think.

**Craig:** Well, jury is out on that, I think. What they’re talking about buying is Fox’s movie production studio, 20th Century Fox films, or I guess 21st Century Fox films. And they’re also talking about buying Fox’s television production arm, which is Fox Television, but not Fox the network, not Fox News, not Fox Sports, and for reasons we’ll get into.

The question is what happens if one of the major movie studios seemingly disappears. And so two of this dwindling number of movie studios becomes one movie studio. One way of looking at it is, well, that’s that many fewer jobs for screenwriters. Another way of looking at is probably – I mean, unless a studio is considering buying Fox just for the library, the odds are that they’re still going to continue to put movies out and that in fact it’s not writers, producers, directors, and actors who will lose jobs, it’s studio employees who will ultimately be laid off. Because you don’t need – there is a certain economy of scale. You don’t need two full marketing departments to run Disney Fox. You need one slightly larger marketing department to run Disney Fox.

So, that’s where I think jobs will be lost. Now, it’s possible that they’re just buying it for the library sake and for certain rights, in which case then that’s a problem.

**John:** So when the news first broke I went back and looked at the 2016 box office. And if you add Fox and Disney together they control 39% of the US box office. That’s a huge figure. And so I think we have to be approaching this thinking like not only will this change the nature of Marvel things all coming together, or Disney would control The Simpsons which is a huge thing, too. It would really be a huge game changer just in terms of the overall industry.

If you are Paramount, or Sony, or Warners, suddenly you’re competing against this thing which is three times your size.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you’re absolutely right about that. Now, one thing that may come into play to sort of help out a little bit is that Disney has a certain brand contract with its customers that no other studio has. Everyone understands that Disney puts out a certain kind of movie. Now, back when we started in the business Disney had an arm that could put out Rated R films, and they did.

**John:** Hollywood Pictures.

**Craig:** Hollywood Pictures. If it’s the sphinx it stinks. And Touchstone also was able to put out Rated R movies. And some of them were really Rated R. And at that time Disney didn’t quite have the same sort of all row in one direction philosophy. They don’t make Rated R movies at all. They don’t make films for grownups per se. They make all-audiences movies.

So, one thing that may happen is they may say, look, we don’t want this company to be called Disney Fox. We’ll be Disney, you’ll be Fox, obviously everybody is owned by the same parent corporation, but Fox can still make Fox movies, because that is a different brand. And that the purchase here, aside from the library, is about pulling in some of the properties that they wish they had that Fox has the rights to like X-Men, and so on and so forth. And also I would say probably limiting competition in the animation space, which is disconcerting for animation writers.

But I could see a version of this where actually the individual control on a day to day basis maybe is kind of separate. And so the person that runs the Walt Disney Pictures slate is not also overseeing the Fox slate. But, I’ll tell you one area where this is very disturbing and disconcerting, and that’s when it comes time every three years for the companies to negotiate with the unions. Because if you have one company that is responsible for as you say essentially 40% of the box office, they become the biggest voice in the room. And that can be a real issue.

**John:** Definitely. I think my concern even if you do keep Fox as a whole separate label and a whole separate brand, that only goes to a certain distance. I know from times where we’ve been trying to sell a spec script for a feature screenplay or to sell a TV series, ultimately they may say they’re separate buyers. They talk about things individually. But if you have a feature project going into Fox it may be going to big Fox, it might be going to Fox 2000 or Fox Animation. But they’re not going to compete against each other for a property. And I think the same thing would happen between Disney and Fox. If they both want something, ultimately some big person at Disney will decide, OK, this is where it’s going to go. They’re not going to get into a bidding war with each other.

**Craig:** Yeah. In all likelihood that is correct. There are provisions for those things and they do occasionally happen. Actually happened weirdly in a way with our sheep movie. But generally speaking you’re right. And Disney I think is probably less inclined to do that than any other studio would be. So, generally speaking this is going to be a terrific deal for Disney. I guess for the larger Fox Corporation this is about getting a premium on their library and so forth and just retreating to their core businesses which is “news” and actual sports.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t fully understand it from Fox’s point of view. I can understand if Fox decided like, you know what, we’re going to sell off all this stuff. Disney is the best buyer for it because you know Disney will pay a premium because Disney can get the most value out of it. I guess I just don’t see the benefit for the Murdoch Company to get rid of Fox. I think Fox feels profitable. It feels like a business you want to be in because people are still going to need these things.

I’ve heard it said that they are concerned that they’re not going to have the power to be able to stand up against a Netflix, against Amazon, as streaming becomes more dominant as we sort of move to a post-cable universe. But I just don’t fully get it. I don’t fully see that it’s a better idea just to sell off what I perceive to be a tremendous amount of value in these titles and in the things you’re going to be making down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a little bit of a sign that they know something we don’t. You know what I mean? Because we can’t quite tell why they’re steering their boat to the shore. Perhaps we can’t see the waterfall ahead that they can. It may be that everyone at the corporate level has looked ahead and decided that if they can’t compete with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc. as their own streaming entity controlling their own material that they will suffer. And then that ultimately reduces their value and reduces their leverage. So, maybe Fox is saying, look, we can’t get there on our own. But we can get top dollar right now if we sell to Disney. Disney can get there on their own. And it will be even easier for them to get there this way. Because Disney is essentially going to create a competitor with Netflix.

**John:** Let’s take a look at the roadblocks in the way to making this kind of deal happen. So, theoretically the government could step in and say no-no that’s a monopoly situation or near monopoly situation. You already have sort of an oligopoly situation in terms of the limited number of buyers for certain kinds of properties.

The US government hasn’t seemed to be very interested in enforcing anti-trust rules or sort of going into new territory. They seem to perceive anti-trust as being anything that would hurt consumers. And it’s not clear that this deal would necessarily hurt consumers. There’s no evidence here that there’s any reason why prices would go up for consumers which seems to be the litmus test for a lot of anti-trust decisions.

Do you see any reason why the government would get involved?

**Craig:** I don’t. I mean, they’ll get involved to the extent that they have to vet the deal. But Disney apparently has removed the roadblocks prospectively. There was never going to be a chance where they could own two studios like Fox and ABC, for instance. There was never going to be a situation where they could control two major news sources like ABC News and Fox News. Nor would I think would Disney want to go anywhere near Fox News right now.

And then sports-wise, the biggest monopolistic or market control concern would be if ESPN and Fox Sports were the same company. Those are the two largest sports broadcasters, I believe.

So, no, I don’t think that there is anything in the way in terms of monopolies. Even monopolies technically can survive if they don’t appear to be harming consumers. There doesn’t appear to be any ability to squash competition here. There is still plenty of vibrant competition. No, I don’t see any reason that this wouldn’t go through.

**John:** So the other obstacles along the way would be someone else coming in and saying, “You know what? If you’re going to sell, we’re going to buy and we’re going to pay a premium that Disney isn’t willing to pay.” And it would have to be probably a huge company and a huge amount of money. But Apple could pay for it. Netflix maybe could pay for it. Amazon might be able to pay for it. Because especially Netflix and Amazon, they have a really good interest in sort of making sure that Disney doesn’t get too huge and keep them from getting access to some of the content that they want.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s absolutely possible. Maybe the problem with Amazon and Netflix or Apple purchasing Fox is they wouldn’t really know what to do with it. They don’t want it. In other words the only reason to buy it would be to keep Disney from having it.

So, I don’t know. It’s a fascinating thing to watch. If I’m going to be pessimistic, my big concern isn’t that these two companies might be combining. My concern is that this is the beginning of the great combine of 2020 where suddenly we end up with three movie studios.

**John:** Do you ever play those simulations where you have little planets and you have other little planets circling and eventually they get too close and they glob together and gravity kicks in? That is also the vision I sort of see here. These two things combined become so big that the gravity sucks in Paramount. It sucks in maybe Warners, certainly Sony. I feel like lots of those little things could just become – you know, just three giant companies.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You know, in talking with booksellers this last week it’s fascinating to look at sort of the consolidation that is happening in publishing. And so you have to say Penguin Random House which just seems like too long of a name for something. But these giant entities are merged. And that’s challenging for everybody involved.

**Craig:** And generally speaking when two big companies merge, everybody that is remaining starts to look at each other saying, ‘Oh, apparently we’re pairing up for a big dance here so you/me, how about you and me?” Because you don’t want to become an also ran. And there’s a long history of studios that were once powerful and then sort of disappeared. MGM was once a real studio.

**John:** Oh yeah. RKO. Yeah.

**Craig:** RKO was once a real studio. United Artists. Orion. They existed. And then they stopped existing in part because it wasn’t that they maybe failed or got super small relative to where they began. It’s that they got super small relative to the size that everybody else was growing at. And so I could see where this leads to Warners/Universal, which would be really complicated. I’m not sure how any of that works.

**John:** Yeah. It would be very, very complicated. They would have a lot of land but what would their future be?

**Craig:** I was wondering how this would work out with the Fox lot in Century City, whether Disney would also be purchasing that lot or if the lot would be owned – I would imagine it would still be owned by Fox but then they would be renting space back to – or does Disney not even care about that lot?

**John:** Yeah. The real estate history of Hollywood and the film industry is fascinating. So I’ll try to find a good article we can put in the show notes for basically Los Angeles was in some ways shaped by where these studios set up their different home bases. And so Century City is called Century City because it was 20th Century Fox. And after I think it was Cleopatra, 20th Century Fox had to sell off a lot of their land because of their losses and that became Century City. Disney still has a big footprint. Paramount used to have a bigger footprint in Hollywood. It’s fascinating the degree to which these big sections of Los Angeles were all just film studios.

**Craig:** And at some point the land starts to become more valuable than the studio. I mean, Paramount for instance right now, I would imagine their greatest asset is their land.

**John:** It’s got to be. And I was reading an article recently, I’ll put a link in the show notes to this as well, that CBS Television Studios on Fairfax is looking at selling because that land now is incredibly valuable.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** So, right now they film soap operas out of there and they film soap operas out of there and they film The Survivor finale – hi Jeff Probst, if you’re listening.

**Craig:** Hey Jeff.

**John:** You know, that land is worth so much right now. It’s right next to the Grove. That’s prime LA real estate. And so–

**Craig:** And they can shoot those things anywhere. They can shoot The Price is Right in Pacoima. They don’t need to be right there at the corner, you know, right next to Fairfax High and the Grove. So you’re right. And similarly when you look at – in particular you look at Fox. I mean, that real estate, even though it’s smaller than the Paramount Lot, I believe–

**John:** Yeah, still great real estate.

**Craig:** The location, I would assume that real estate is on an aggregate basis worth even more than Paramount. So, I don’t know what’s going to – this is all fascinating.

But you know what, John? This is what the money people do and think about. We – we don’t have to think about this.

**John:** No. Because we think of the creative decisions. We think about what’s happening in the movies. And so let’s make our big transition the feature topic for today which is Breakups. So, last time we did a segment on This Kind of Scene, people afterwards suggested other things. And I think it was Alex Blagg in my Twitter feed who suggested, oh, you should do one on breakups, which is a great idea. Because so many movies have breakups. They’re kind of a crucial way of either putting a character out on a path or forcing a character to confront sort of a worst of a worst at the end of the second act as they go into the next phase of their life.

There’s a tremendous way of just revealing what’s going on inside a character and the choices the character has to make going forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it is an interesting kind of scene because unlike a lot of them it really can serve two wildly different purposes. And you’ve basically put your finger on it, right? If you have a movie about somebody that is recovering from a wound you want to start them with the breakup. And if it’s a movie where somebody is outgrowing a relationship or the relationship needs to be tested and either succeed or fail, or somebody is moving past something to go onto something bigger then the breakup can come later on in the movie. But they’re two completely different purposes. And also tonally breakups are incredibly flexible. You can do a really funny one. You can do a really sad one. You can do one that’s quiet. You could do one that’s screaming.

Think of a breakup really as a set piece. I mean, it’s as flexible as the notion of stopping your movie to do an event. Like a car chase or physical comedy scene or a fist fight or a montage.

**John:** Absolutely. And once that moment happens, the rest of the movie is different. By definition, you’ve changed the trajectory of the movie greatly once that breakup has occurred.

So on Twitter I asked people for their suggestions for breakup scenes. Once again, we have the best listeners in the entire universe. People suggested six or seven movies we’re going to take a listen to today. But let’s start with our first clip. Any discussion of film I think it’s required to include Casablanca at some point and we’ve never done that. So this–

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**John:** This is from Casablanca, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, Directed by Michael Curtis. Let’s take a listen.

[Casablanca clip plays]

And scene. Craig Mazin, not only classic lines in this little piece, but also a character is speaking his truth. Tell me about the scene.

**Craig:** Well, first of all just aside from the writing and the story, it always makes me wistful when I see this because there is something that we have lost. There’s just a look of these people, you know, just Bergman and Bogie and just their faces and the way the black and white works. It’s just remarkable.

This is a breakup scene you can’t do anymore. It’s very much a scene where someone is dumping somebody else but for noble reasons, even when he says it’s not noble. But then he explains why it is noble and we understand it. And really what it comes down to is one person is telling another one why he has figured out what is best for the two of them.

From a story point of view, there are times when you need two people to break up, and you don’t want to feel bad about it. You want the audience to feel wistful, but you want them to feel like, you know what, this is what needs to happen here. Let’s be sad about it but accept it. It’s a tricky thing to do because of course in reality that’s nearly impossible to break up with somebody so cleanly, so romantically.

I mean, the thing about this scene is somehow my feminine side is even more in love with Bogie after he’s dumped me. [laughs] Which is remarkable. But, you know, look, there’s an enormous amount of old school patriarchy here. “I did the thinking for both of us.” And even the line, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” I mean, it’s so infantilizing. But he really is just laying it out for her.

You know, she is an international person who has been involved in politics and intrigue and now he’s explaining to her why their love story doesn’t matter because there’s more important things in the world. You know, “the problems of three people don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Look, in a modern analysis it’s incredibly patronizing. But, inside of it it is a little bit of a masterclass on how to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, because you do end up understanding on an emotional level, putting all the politics aside, when Ilsa looks at him at the end there you know that she loves him for what is happening right there in the moment. And that’s an achievement.

**John:** Yeah. It struck me listening to this scene and then going through some of the ones we’re about to approach that breakups tend to be monologues, or essentially sort of slightly interrupted monologues, where one person basically lays out the case for why this breakup is happening. And the other person just has to respond. And there are a couple of cases we’re going to get to where it’s a little bit more even split between the two of them, but a lot of times it’s one character is driving the decision for why this has to end. Why this is the best choice or the only choice going forward.

And this is a very classic – this is – often you’ll see the breakup in the first act, really more the first ten pages, or going into the third act. But this is we’re walking off into the sunset. This is it’s all going to be over. This is the final parting. So it has a very different feeling. And I think you’re right, you’ve made this contract with your audience about what’s going to happen, and so part of that contract has to be respecting the investment they’ve made into this relationship and that you’re ending it in a way that leaves them hopeful for the characters. I think a crueler breakup, a crueler just like get out of here would not satisfy that contract you’ve made with the audience.

**Craig:** Yeah. Especially in the time. I mean, look, happy endings were the name of the game. And we’ll see an older film soon enough in our list here where it is the typical happy ending. So you can almost imagine the discussions that were happening when they were talking to the Epsteins. “OK, well, guys, we get that you don’t want them to have the happy ending, but you have to make us feel happy about it.” And they were like, “well, what if he sort of underlines how they have more important things to do?” And they’re like, “OK, yeah, but it’s not very romantic.”

“Well, what if he says to her that they once had a great love and that has now been rekindled in a way that they can carry with them in their own hearts separately?” “OK, that’s better.” Right? So this whole bit, “We’ll always have Paris,” we had it once and then we lost it, but now we have it again.

Look, there is a way to read this scene where it’s just a masterful sociopath manipulating this woman. I mean, because, look what is screenwriting after all but the manipulation of people. We’re using our left brain in combination with our right brain to create emotional feelings in the audience that we’re designing. It is definitionally manipulative. But we have to believe it and then believe that it feels OK. And certainly for the time I think they did a masterful job in making us feel OK about it.

**John:** Agreed. Let’s take a listen to another clip, this one almost completely the opposite in every way from Casablanca. This is from Forgetting Sarah Marshall by Jason Segel. Directed by Nick Stoller. And this one, it’s a little bit strange of a clip for us to be playing in a podcast because it’s really quiet. But I should give you some context if you haven’t seen the scene or don’t remember the movie.

As Kristen Bell enters the scene, Jason Segel is walking out of the bathroom just wearing a towel. He then drops a towel and flings his penis side to side, so that is the flapping you hear is his penis hitting on his–

**Craig:** Thighs.

**John:** His thighs basically. Let’s take a listen.

[Forgetting Sarah Marshall clip plays]

What I love so much about this clip is that it is so quiet. That it’s not – there’s no big talking. There’s no big explanation. He catches on just as we sort of catch on just by the vibe of the room. Like, oh no, this is terrible, this is going to end. And the notion of “if I put some clothes on then this is really over,” he wants to hang out in this really uncomfortable moment because at least he’s in this uncomfortable moment with her. And whenever this transition comes where he’s not in this horrible moment with her, he’s not with her at all.

So, it’s such a great notion that this is awful, but I’d rather stay in this awful than get on to the next thing.

**Craig:** Did I ever talk about David Zucker’s comedy term “driving instructor?”

**John:** No, tell me about that.

**Craig:** So, they were making Naked Gun and at one point they needed a car chase. And they wanted it to be funny, but they were struggling because they were just putting funny things that he was doing into the car chase. Like he would mistakenly hit something that he shouldn’t hit, or you know, stop at a light when he shouldn’t be stopping. Whatever it was. And it was just not working.

And then they landed on this idea that he was going to take over somebody else’s car. And that that car was in fact – there was a driving instructor – John Houseman, the great John Houseman – sitting in the passenger seat. And then a typical teenage girl sitting behind the wheel petrified because she’s never driven before. And he gets in the back and says, “Follow that car.”

So, John Houseman says, “All right.” He never changes his tone. He goes, “Put the car in drive. Proceed forward.” And so the driving instructor was the comic engine that allowed them to be funny throughout. It was the thing that gave a spine to this piece and gave them the ability to do multiple jokes.

And here it’s so smart that the driving instructor here is “I am hanging on, I don’t want you to leave me. I don’t want to break up. And I feel,” as you said, “if I put my pants on then our typical boyfriend/girlfriend intimacy is gone and it will be gone permanently. So, I have to keep doing stuff while I have not pants on.”

**John:** Yeah, John Houseman is basically Jason Segel’s penis.

**Craig:** That’s right. Which, you know, listen, that’s not an original observation. It’s been said many times. But that’s absolutely correct.

But this breakup scene is a fantastic example of a breakup scene that is designed to draw us to a character and make us love them. This scene is designed to evoke terrible empathy/pity. We now have an immediate rooting interest in this character getting happy again.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think what’s also crucial is we don’t hate Sarah Marshall. There’s a thousand versions where she’s the worst person on earth and we do not want him to pursue her at all, because we hate her. But because she still remains sympathetic through the scene, we are invested in like “maybe he has a shot. Maybe it’s not complete folly for him to go after her again.” And that’s what you need. That’s the driving engine of this whole plot. This is the premise scene of because of the nature of this scene he’s going to go on this journey to try to get her back.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would actually ruin the moment and drive us away from Jason’s character if she were somehow antagonistic. Because then we would think you’re better off without her, so I guess we’re just waiting around for you to figure that out. That’s unsatisfying. We don’t like to be ahead of our characters. I think probably every human has felt this at some point or another unfortunately. And it’s the feeling of rejection.

And we don’t feel that feeling when somebody we don’t like rejects us. We feel it when somebody we really, really love rejects us. And I think for us to identify with Jason’s character we need to also be able to look at Sarah Marshall, at Kristen’s character, and say “yeah I could see why he’s so in love with you.”

**John:** Yeah. Completely. All right, let’s take a listen to our next movie which is 500 Days of Summer by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, directed by Marc Webb. So, in the clip you’re about to hear we hear both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in sort of real time having a conversation, but we also hear Joseph Gordon-Levitt recapping what happened in the scene to I think it’s his sister, Chloe Grace Moretz. So that’s the cross-cutting you hear.

[500 Days of Summer clip plays]

All right, Craig, so this scene is sort of doing both things. It’s talking about the end of a relationship but it’s structurally at the start of the movie because things are happening out of sequence in the film.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it’s a real shot across the bow. I mean, we just said you can open your movie with this breakup scene the way that Sarah Marshall does and we understand the movie is about you somehow healing that wound. You can end a movie like they did in Casablanca with a break, which is about two characters ascending to some higher plane separately without each other.

Here, right off the bat, Scott and Michael and Marc say to us, hey, we’re not doing the normal story. We are going to be telling a romance story. These people are going to meet. They’re going to fall in love. We’re going to show you that they broke up right off the bat. You’re never going to have to worry that you’re ahead of us. We’re just going to lay it all out there because that’s not what this movie is about. This movie is about the spaces in between. It’s not about the story, or the what. It’s about the why.

That said, it’s a terrific breakup scene. Even if it had been in sequence. Because it’s so cruel.

**John:** Yeah. It’s cruel with a smile in a way that’s really sort of important. And what I find so fascinating is because it’s recognizing that the audience is catching up with these characters, it has to be very methodical and very clever in how it’s letting you know who these characters are at different points in the relationship. It needs to know what you are thinking, what the characters are thinking.

I have to imagine even on the set as they were shooting these scenes they had to be just really careful with not only where the characters were at, but where the audience was at based on what the audience already knew about the characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. But it’s very brave. They are not really holding your hand too much. They are right on the edge of confusion. And the important thing for us watching it is we may not quite understand how he so quickly gets that she’s dumping him because we haven’t seen the relationship yet.

Once you get through the movie, you go back and watch it again, you’re like, “oh yeah, I completely get it now. I, too, would also know what she’s doing here.” But it was enough for us to know that he knew.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And when he walks out, Scott and Michael give us a little gift. So, congratulations, you’re not puzzled. She’s going to say, “But we can still be friends.” Yes, we knew what was going on. We got it right.

**John:** Yeah. For sure. All right, next let’s take a listen to Love & Basketball. It’s written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. This is a scene between Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps. And in the longer clip you’ll see that she actually is talking about how busy she is before it gets into the section that we’re going to listen to. But let’s take a listen to their breakup scene. This is happening in the second act.

[Love & Basketball clip plays]

Craig, Omar Epps would still like to be friends.

**Craig:** So, we can still be friends is the universal oh-god-no statement. And, again, I believe everyone at some point or another has heard another person say that to them, completely sincerely, or insincerely, but unironically. I love this scene. This is my kind of breakup scene.

So, this is traditional. I think of this scene as a traditional breakup scene where two people who are in a relationship have a fight. So there’s a back and forth. There is a parrying and I think far truer to the way real breakups work where there is a back and forth and essentially a blame game. And both people are trying to kind of get the perspective advantage on the other person. I’m seeing this from a bigger point of view. No I am. No I am, no I am. Back and forth. Back and forth.

What I love about this scene is that there’s a shape to it. A lot of times fights will be flabby. They just sort of run along. As they do in real life. They go in circles and things are repeated and they run along. This is very well structured. And there’s a surprise. The breakup part is a surprise. And I think this is the challenge we have as writers when we’re doing traditional scenes. And Gina Prince-Bythewood does exactly what you need to do, which is figure out a way to be fresh. She decides what I’m going to do is I’m going to do a breakup scene but I’m going to make it seem like the point of the breakup scene is “how do we stay together.” And then at the end he reveals, “no-no-no, you think that’s what this argument is. What I’m building up to is I’m dumping you.” And that’s really smart.

**John:** Absolutely. So she’s trying like how do we save this relationship because he’s already pulling the rip cord.

Another crucial thing which I think we need to talk about is this scene is semi-public. And by semi-public means they are having a conversation just between the two of them, but at a certain point people cross through the scene. And so they have to stop arguing so that people can get past them. And it forms a very natural break in the scene. So it’s useful writing wise because it gives a chance to pivot. But it’s also a thing that happens in the real world. It makes it feel more grounded and real. Suddenly not everyone has left the college campus just so these two people can have this argument.

Like letting some other people drift through the argument gives these characters a little more ground and a little more reality and makes the scene feel appropriately real for this kind of movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I really liked the reactions that were going on because there isn’t tears. There isn’t sobbing. There isn’t screaming or yelling. It actually operates in a way that I think again most breakups do operate. They are spoken. The tears come after. The screaming, and the crying, and the sobbing comes after, unless you’re trying to be comedic like Forgetting Sarah Marshall where you should go over the top. That’s the point.

But here it’s really more of a sense of being stunned. That is what you’re kind of getting to is that shock of having the rug pulled out from under you. And that’s why it’s so important when you’re writing a scene like this to shock the audience as well as the character, otherwise when she’s shocked we’re not.

**John:** Yeah. So once again she’s the Jason Segel character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This has come as a surprise to her. The difference is it’s not clear that Omar Epps walked into the scene knowing that he was going to say what he was going to say. It just sort of happened in the course of the scene. It’s a longer scene and as the fight began it got to this point, versus Sarah Marshall where she shows up with an agenda. I’m going to end this thing.

**Craig:** Right. And you can believe that he may have thought in the back of his mind, “All right. I’m going to give this one more shot here.” And it just quickly goes south.

When these things happen, when you tell somebody that you don’t want to be with them anymore, I think oftentimes they are the result of an emotional snap. It’s rarely planned out ahead of time. I think a lot of people are trying to kind of keep it going. And then finally you just go, “oh god, I have to listen to myself at last. The pain of this confrontation, of guilt, of having to absorb the burdens of the feelings I’m about to create in another person are no longer as burdensome to me as my need to stop this.”

So, I believed it.

**John:** Yeah. It’s also fascinating when you see quiet people having fights. Because this isn’t a big loud shouting fight. Last year when we were in Paris, we were waiting to pick my daughter up at school and we were crossing this bridge and there was this couple that was having the loudest fight I’ve ever seen. Screaming at the top of their lungs. And to the point where we kind of interceded because we were trying to make sure that the woman felt safe and stuff. And both these people fighting turned on us and said like, “Stay out of our business.” And then they proceeded to keep yelling at each other.

It was such a weird moment, but I realized that as a basically quiet person I could not even perceive that you could have a fight at that level. And this is a thing that could happen in the real world. I kept looking around for cameras, like who has this kind of fight.

**Craig:** This cartoon fight?

**John:** But they kept walking and shouting at each other until they finally faded in the distance. These characters in Love & Basketball are not those big loud shouters. And so they have the same feelings, but they’re quieter feelings. And when they come out this is what they sound like. So I was impressed by the reality of this.

**Craig:** I like that somewhere there is a French couple that talks about this nosy American.

**John:** Totally, yeah.

**Craig:** Who took it upon himself to solve their – they weren’t even having a real – it wasn’t like one of their real fights where they burn each other with cigarettes. It was just one of their average fights where they scream at the top of their lungs.

**John:** They were throwing trash at each other. Like they would go through trash cans and pull stuff out and throw it at each other.

**Craig:** Those two people actually sound amazing. Like I wish – Melissa and I have never loved each other enough to throw trash at each other, you know. We have a more subdued love.

**John:** You know who had a really subdued love?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It’s those two guys in Brokeback Mountain. So that’s our next clip.

**Craig:** Very subdued.

**John:** So a screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. This movie is directed by Ang Lee. It is delightful but I’d not watched it since it came out and I had not listened to it. So let’s take a listen to this clip. This is the one that has the most bad language, so warning on that. Let’s take a listen.

[Brokeback Mountain clip plays]

Oh, Jack and Ennis. Craig Mazin, did you wince a little bit when they said Brokeback Mountain?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. It’s just one of those things where when you say the title of the film you’re like, oh no, no you didn’t just do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. They did it. They did it. But, you know, the thing is we all know the name now. I guess when I saw the movie it was still a term that hadn’t been said a billion times. Also, this is one of those lines like that we always misremember. So I always remembered it as, “I can’t quit you.” But it’s actually, “I wish I could quit you,” right?

**John:** “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

**Craig:** “I wish I knew how to quit you.” It’s such a great line. So, here’s an example where people are shouting at each other and it’s incredibly high drama. Like super high drama. Everything is pitched at a nine or a ten, including a full breakdown and everything. But, it is in fact the culmination of a very long, quiet, repressed, volcano of a romance. So it makes sense.

And really this breakup scene isn’t so much about them breaking up as it is about Ennis turning his back on himself and the man he loves.

**John:** Yeah. I think so many breakup scenes though are really about a character’s sense of their own identity. Do they see themselves as existing independently of this other person? Who do they want to be beyond this point?

And you have two characters here who want different things out of each other. And they cannot come to terms with that and that’s the nature of the conflict between them.

But, I mean, in many cases every relationship is about each person wants some different things. And in this case it’s just the most extreme version of that.

**Craig:** It is an example though of how you need to identify with one of the sparring partners. So when we look at Love & Basketball for instance, I’m identifying with Sanaa Lathan because she’s the one who is about to be surprised, so I get surprised with her. And also she’s trying to explain herself. It just feels more like her scene. And similarly here I identify with Heath Ledger because I feel like he’s the one who is going through this other thing. And in a weird way they’re having this argument and I think that Jack is right. You know, I mean, they’re screaming at each other but Jack is correct. Because Ennis is going to pull this baloney on him and basically say “if you’re sleeping around with other guys, if I were to know that I might kill you.”

And Jack basically reads him the riot act and he’s totally right. And this is where Ennis, Heath Ledger’s character, just cannot – ultimately can’t handle it. He just cannot let the lie go. And they both know at that point it’s over. That’s it. He’s made his choice.

So, there’s a perspective there that I think is really important to keep in mind when we write these scenes. It should be a good argument, but sometimes it’s OK if the argument is out of whack in the sense that we’re like, “no-no-no, that person is absolutely correct. They win the argument.” Because the person who loses the argument, there is information in why they lost that could be very valuable.

**John:** Well, always be mindful of the audience’s expectations and the audience’s hopes. And so I think the audience’s hope at this point is that Jack will convince Ennis that, you know what, we really do belong together. Let’s make this all work out. And that is sort of why we’re on Jack’s side. That’s why we’re rooting for Jack to succeed here.

But I think this is an interesting scene in that so often in breakups all of our energy is with one character. Like we can only really see one character’s perspective. And the other character is a monster. Here I am very sympathetic to Heath Ledger’s plight. And because we spent quite a bit of time with him as well.

So often in these stories you really have your protagonist and you have the love interest who is attached to the protagonist but you’re not seeing their point of view independently. And in this case we are seeing what their lives are like separately and we understand a lot more what’s going on with Heath Ledger. And so it’s a tragedy because we know why they’re not together, but we still are hoping somehow they will get together.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I think that this scene is a great guideline for the sort of character and story meat that needs to be there to warrant this level of drama.

**John:** For sure.

**Craig:** Which is bordering on melodrama. You basically have to have somebody not just breaking up with someone. They have to be torpedoing their entire life. Otherwise it just feels like soap opera. And soap operas get a bad rep in part because they just indulge in this sort of melodrama without these kind of enormous upheavals going on underneath. But when you’re writing a movie you can do it. You just need to earn it. And in this case they earn it because of what happens with Heath Ledger. If it didn’t end that way, then that scene would have been a bit ridiculous I think.

**John:** Yeah. We always say that movies are about stories that can only happen once. And this is a scene that can only happen once between these two characters. If it happened more than once then you’re annoyed with these people because you can only have this fight once.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re just like, I was totally into you emotionally, and now I realize you’re just annoying, screamy me-mes who like to just yell at each other all the time. And you don’t have any real – like you’re just nuts. That’s the problem with you two. You guys are just crazy.

So, you’re right. You can only do this once.

**John:** Yeah. I won’t single out any one picture for it, but a lot of times in biopics I will see basically they go to the same scene like three times. It’s like, no I’m done. This scene, this happened once. We’re done. Let’s move on. But because they’re biopics, in real life people do kind of linger around each other, or they fight and they make up and they stay together. But in a movie I want it once. I don’t want it again and again.

**Craig:** No question. It just loses its impact if it happens more than once.

**John:** All right. For our final scene let’s take a listen to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Truman Capote. This movie directed by Blake Edwards. I always forgot that Blake Edwards directed this movie. Let’s take a listen.

[Breakfast at Tiffany’s clip plays]

So, a thing you may not have caught from the audio clip is she has her cat and she puts her cat out in the rain. And then we see this single shot of this cat, just like drenched in rain, staring back at the car as it drives off. I have never been so angry as I’m seeing this cat just sitting there in the rain.

Craig, talk me off my ledge.

**Craig:** Someone left their cat out in the rain. That’s the most melodramatic song ever written. MacArthur Park. Not about a cat, but a cake.

Well, this is dated.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You know, Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie that is beloved for all sorts of good reasons. It is also remarkably dated for so many reasons, most notably perhaps the single most racist performance in film history. And that’s saying something when film history includes Birth of a Nation. So it’s dated.

This is a very operatic sort of thing. And they’re making this point. We would do this so differently now, because I just think we’re more sophisticated now. The idea is that this is going to be a breakup that unbreaks-up. And it unbreaks-up because this man delivers a kind of stinging rebuke of this woman’s problem. He states her problem. He summarizes her problem. It’s all incredibly written. I mean, nobody talks like this. Nobody has the presence of mind to deliver this. We would say now that feels written.

But the whole point is you’re afraid of being in love, which is a very shopworn problem that movie characters have far more than real people. I’m still waiting to meet a real person that is afraid of being in love. Yes, she realizes that he’s right, of course, and then runs after him. But the cat becomes a symbol of their love, and she threw it out of the cab. And then about two minutes later she desperately wants it back. Finds it. Is super happy. And then they’re together and they kiss.

It’s very simplistic. And I think this is sort of an example of what to no longer do.

**John:** Yeah, it’s interesting that we’re bookending this with Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany’s because they’re both classic movies and loved for reasons they should be loved. But in both situations the female characters are not being well-served by their male screenwriters. Casablanca, you get sort of why it is this way. But to have the man explain to the woman what’s really going on and what she should want is a frustrating trope.

**Craig:** It is. And they’ve also stacked the deck. They’ve made it so that she has this glaring problem that he can just summarize before stepping away from a cab. This also, in general I think when characters do things like unceremoniously get rid of a symbol of their love, like the cat, we’d like a little bit more time to pass before they go looking for the cat again. I think in today’s world the cat would be gotten rid of. She would go home. He would go home. She would be alone. She would miss the cat. She would go out at night to try and find the cat. It would take some time, you know.

It’s all so compressed. And I think fake. And I don’t mean to beat up Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Again, there’s a classic romantic aspect to it. And we generally are able to put these films in their time period and emotionally adjust on the fly. But the ending never struck me as particularly compelling. I never felt it, you know? Whereas the ending of Casablanca I absolutely feel because Ingrid Bergman sells me 100% that she feels in that moment. And that’s the key, you know, is that she feels through that thing, even though the screenplay completely robs her of agency at the very end, which is a disaster. But at least emotionally she feels true.

And here I actually don’t feel that Audrey Hepburn is emotionally true. It seems like it’s all being acted.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree with you here. So what lessons can we take overall from these breakup scenes? I guess I would look for breakups are this opportunity to really have characters talk about their feelings or expose their feelings that would be hard to get out in normal scenes. We’ve used the term operatic a few times here. But operas have songs. They have the ability to give introspection and let people sing things they wouldn’t otherwise say. And I think sometimes these heightened moments let characters kind of speak their subtext more, where we’re comfortable with them saying things that would be weird to say in other scenes because they are pitched up a little bit.

Even this Love & Basketball scene, which was overall pretty quiet, they are talking more about their inner wants than characters would normally be able to do in a scene.

**Craig:** That’s a great observation. It is a chance for you to maybe not be so concerned about burying everything under layers of subtext. Although in the case of 500 Days of Summer they did a pretty good job there burying things, maybe as a function of where it was in the movie. But I agree with you. I think that it is an opportunity to have characters state these things in an on-the-nose way. And in that opportunity one finds tremendous potential for danger.

So, things to watch out for when you’re writing breakup scenes. If you’re going big and melodramatic, the result of that breakup has to be more than just a breakup. There needs to be something bigger happening. Some larger relevance so we understand that something is being permanently damaged.

We want to keep that as sort of the high point emotionally, not in terms of positivity but just intensity. That is the most intense scene you want I think in your movie if you’re going in that direction. And also when you’re structuring a breakup scene, particularly if it’s a traditional breakup scene, you want to maintain some sense of surprise. If it starts out like a breakup scene and then an argument ensues and then it ends with a breakup that is going to feel very weak. Whereas if it starts one way and then it reveals itself to be a breakup scene, then you have the potential for a character to experience shock and the audience to feel something with them.

**John:** All the scenes we looked at today were romantic partners who were breaking up, but I think the same general lessons about breakups could apply to any kind of two character – sometimes even three character – situations where you have this tight group, this tight bond, that is being split. And so it could be best friends. It could be people on a mission together. It could be – there are other kinds of relationships which can break apart and really function in much the same way as these breakups. So we picked sort of all romantic relationships here.

But I think the same general rules apply. And you should look at, you know, whenever you have your protagonist and another character who are this tight couple, is there a reason why you need to split them apart. There’s something that could come between them. And is that an interesting thing for your story?

You know, if you’re making a romantic tragedy or a romantic comedy that’s probably going to be more likely to happen, but I love to see breakups that are part of stories that aren’t all about romance.

**Craig:** I agree. And whether you’re looking at a non-romantic breakup, like for instance we just had our Thanksgiving here in the United States, so Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Classic non-romantic breakup. But whether you’re doing the non-romantic or the romantic breakup, one thing to be aware of is if the breakup happens in a moment because one character says this incredibly cutting thing to the other person, which is exactly what happens by the way at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whether the audience knows it or not consciously, they will have an expectation that if that cutting truth is true, and if it weren’t why else would be so cutting, the person to whom it is said will come around to recognize the truth of it. And in recognizing the truth of it that relationship will be healed.

So just know when you fire that particular missile you are setting up an expectation that the breakup is not permanent.

**John:** Very good point. So, thank you again for suggesting all these movies for this breakup episode. If you would like to suggest another This Kind of Scene for a future episode, hit us on Twitter and let us know what you think we should do for a future installment of This Kind of Scene.

All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is the Merriam-Webster Time Traveler. And so it is a website you can go to and you can look at the year you were born, or any year that you care to look at, and see what words were new that year. So basically the first known occurrences of these words on that year.

And so for the year I was born, 1970, first appearances of dorky, micro-aggression, op-ed, survivalist, herstory, Tourette’s Syndrome, and viewshed, which I didn’t even know what viewshed was. I had to look it up.

**Craig:** What’s viewshed?

**John:** Viewshed is the area you can see from a place. And so it’s basically what’s visible from where you’re standing. I think it’s important for sight lines and for protecting one’s view from a building.

**Craig:** Hmm. Interesting. OK.

**John:** But I love this kind of stuff. I would have assumed that dorky was older than that. I would have assumed micro-aggression was much newer than that. Op-ed feels like it should have always been around.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. I’m looking at my year. 1971. Sexual assault and sexual harassment.

**John:** All right. So they started with you.

**Craig:** They started with me. Also sadly post-racial. Not yet, 1971. Not even close. Still haven’t gotten there as far as I can tell. But there are some nice ones like minibar. We all love a minibar. HMO, not so good. Homophobe, 1971.

**John:** Yeah. There wasn’t even such a thing.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, there were definitely homophobes but now they knew what to call themselves. [laughs]

**John:** And wiseass.

**Craig:** Wiseass. You’re right.

**John:** So this is the Merriam-Webster version of this. But I’ll say another really good thing to take a look at is Google’s n-gram viewer. I think this is a previous One Cool Thing for me, but I used this a lot with Arlo Finch to figure out whether certain words existed at a time, or like which of two variants of a word was more popular.

So, if you go to books.google.com/n-grams, basically all the books that Google has digitized, you can look through and figure out when the first occurrences of a word were in books overall in print. And that’s a fascinating time hole to be falling into.

**Craig:** One movie word that came into use in 1971, high-concept.

**John:** Oh, very nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, before that everything was high-concept.

**John:** Yes. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

**Craig:** I sure don’t.

**John:** You’ve got nothing?

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ve got nothing. You know what? It was Thanksgiving. A lot of confusion going on in my head. And I just thought, you know, is there One Cool Thing in the world right now? No. No Cool Things.

**John:** You just didn’t do your minimum amount of work required.

**Craig:** That is an alternative explanation for what I just said.

**John:** So while Megan and I were going through these clips and figuring out what movies we should be doing, you didn’t do any of this work whatsoever.

**Craig:** No, that’s right.

**John:** All right, so I understand that’s your prerogative. You want to do that, that’s fine. So you don’t want to do it, that’s fine.

**Craig:** So we’re breaking up? [laughs]

**John:** I mean, I hope we can still be friends.

**Craig:** This is, by the way, a bad way to end the breakup scene. Well, maybe it’s a good way for somebody to say, “Wait, are we breaking up? Is it happening? It’s happening right now.”

**John:** I’m sure there’s a scene that’s done this where like you as the audience are way ahead of the other character and you know they’re breaking up and the character has no idea that they’re being broken up with.

**Craig:** No question. There’s definitely a bunch of those. No, you can’t quit me.

**John:** I can’t quit you, at least not before the live show. So people should come to see that.

**Craig:** That doesn’t sound positive.

**John:** Live show tickets are available right now. They are December 7 here in Hollywood. It is at the LA Film School across from ArcLight. You should come see us, along with our terrific guests. If you would like to read the first five chapters of Arlo Finch, that is at arlofinchbooks.com.

Our outro this week is by Jukebox Experiment. It is a great one. It turns out we had more outros than I thought. They had just been put in a folder I did not expect them to be in. So, we have some great ones, but we would always love more great outros. So, just write in to ask@johnaugust.com with a link to your outro. Here’s a reminder. I’ve listened to a couple recently where it’s like that’s lovely music. It has nothing to do with our theme. So, all of our outros use the five notes of our theme. So, [hums]. Or, [hums]. Something like that. Minor is also OK. But I have to be able to hear that it actually has the Scriptnotes theme in it, otherwise it’s just lovely music.

**Craig:** Hmm. And John is rigorous about these things.

**John:** I’m very rigorous. I’m a rule follower. I’m a rule maker and a rule follower. But not as much as Megan McDonnell who is our producer. Thank you Megan for getting together our clips this week.

Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Apologies to Matthew because we just messed up a ton this week. Probably a new record for how much we messed up this week.

**Craig:** I don’t know if I would say “we.”

**John:** Well, you had a few yourself.

**Craig:** I had a few. For me relatively speaking it was a bad week.

**John:** If you have a question for us, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com. But on Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. So, tweet at us and tell us what you’d like for the next installment of This Kind of Scene.

You can find us on Facebook and on Apple Podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes while you’re there. That’s always lovely.

The notes for this episode, including the PDFs for all the scenes we talked about, is at johnaugust.com. Just search for this episode. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts for the back episodes.

You can find all those back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It’s $2 a month. And we have more of the USB drives which have the first 300 episodes, plus all the bonus episodes available at store.johnaugust.com. Delightful Christmas shopping if you’d like to stick on in your friend’s stocking. That sounds so disturbing.

**Craig:** [laughs] If you’d like to stick one in your friend’s stocking.

**John:** No, that’s never a good thing to do.

**Craig:** Go to store.johnaugust.com.

**John:** Yeah. That’s where we have them.

**Craig:** Stick it in.

**John:** I hope we can still be friends.

**Craig:** You know, I think Stick It In is a fantastic holiday motto for us, John.

**John:** Yeah. Stick It In.

**Craig:** Stick It In. Great show. And for all of you out there listening, please do get your tickets now because they’re going fast. Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts.

**John:** See you.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* Holiday Live Show [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) are available.
* [Godless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godless_(TV_series)) on [Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/80097141)
* The first 5 chapters of [Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire](http://read.macmillan.com/mcpg/arlo-finch/) are online.
* Hollywood studio real estate-related articles about [Studio City](https://la.curbed.com/2017/8/9/15975172/studio-city-valley-cbs-studios-history), [Century City](https://la.curbed.com/2013/9/26/10193620/the-secret-cowboycleopatratin-foil-origins-of-century-city), the [history of the Disney Studio](https://www.mouseplanet.com/10903/Walt_Disneys_Hollywood_Studios) and CBS’ possible move to sell [Television City](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cbs-television-city-20170928-story.html).
* Casablanca [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWaqUVac3M&feature=youtu.be) and [script](http://www.vincasa.com/casabla.pdf), with the scene starting on page 119.
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJd5U3FsQw), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Forgetting-Sarah-Marshall-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://www.joblo.com/scripts/forgetting-sarah-marshall.pdf).
* (500) Days of Summer [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUVgAwLr1GQ), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/500-Days-of-Summer-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://readwatchwrite.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/500DaysofSummer.pdf).
* Love and Basketball [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvv5qjmF2nM), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Love_and_Basketball_Scene.pdf), and [script](http://nldslab.soe.ucsc.edu/charactercreator/film_corpus/film_2012xxxx/imsdb.com/Love-and-Basketball.html).
* Brokeback Mountain [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVK6yLqY54w), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Brokeback-Mountain-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/brokeback_mountain.pdf).
* Breakfast at Tiffany’s [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOfomPgETs), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Breakfast-at-Tiffanys-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/BreakfastatTiffany’s.pdf).
* [Merriam-Webster Time Traveler](https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1969) will show you the words that were added in any given year.
* If you like that, you might like the [Google n-gram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/) which graphs frequency of word use.
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Arbitrary Jukebox ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_327.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/austin-2017-three-page-challenge).

**John August:** Hey, this is John.

**Craig Mazin:** And this is Craig.

**John:** So we are both traveling this week, but today’s episode is one we recorded at the Austin Film Festival. It is a Three Page Challenge live with the people who actually wrote the scripts, who come up on stage and talk with us.

**Craig:** Yeah. And we had some pretty good guests as well helping us out.

**John:** We had an agent and a manager, so we’ll introduce them as the episode goes along. But we should be back next week with a normal episode which will be our Thanksgiving Week episode, so join us then.

So today’s episode of Scriptnotes has a few bad words. So if you’re driving in the car with your kids, this is the warning.

We’re also going to be doing a live show in Hollywood on December 7. So by the time this episode airs, we’ll hopefully have details up, so check the show notes for this episode and come see us live in Hollywood.

**Craig:** Enjoy.

**John:** Yes. On with the show.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** We host a podcast called Scriptnotes. What is Scriptnotes about, Craig?

**Craig:** Oh, it’s…

**Audience:** A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** That’s really well done.

**Craig:** I don’t ever listen to that part so it’s the first time I’ve ever – I haven’t really heard that before.

**John:** So one of our favorite little segments we do on the show is called the Three Page Challenge where we take a look at three pages that our listeners send in. And we talk about what we see, what we notice, what’s fantastic, what could use some work, and try to offer some useful suggestions.

So one of the nice things about being here at the Austin Film Festival is we get to sometimes talk to those actual writers and bring them up and ask all the questions that we can’t ask when they’re just PDFs.

**Craig:** Right. Plus we get to see their faces. You know?

**John:** It’s nice to see that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** One of the other things we’ve been doing when we have these live Three Page Challenges is to invite up some special guests to read through these pages with us. And so today we’re very excited to welcome two really amazing people. Daniela Garcia Brcek – I did it – is a literally manager at Circle of Confusion. Come on up here.

**Daniela Garcia-Brcek:** Hi everyone.

**John:** Hello. Welcome Daniela. And Cullen Conly is an agent at ICM, but I actually knew him from Sundance Labs. And so he worked at Sundance Labs and was instrumental in their feature film program working with really talented filmmakers on their screenplays. He was fantastic at that. I’m sure he’s a fantastic agent. Cullen Conly, please come on up.

So we put out the call on the show for people who were going to be coming to the Austin Film Festival who had three pages for us to look at. And we got 73 entries, which was great. Of those, 38 were written by women. So that’s also great. That’s the highest percentage we’ve ever gotten. So I don’t know why it happened that way, but fantastic that it happened.

**Craig:** The world is changing.

**John:** The world is lovely.

**Craig:** I wouldn’t say that.

**John:** No, but the world could be lovelier. We’ve all read these pages, but if you out there want to read these pages with us you can. Go to johnaugust.com/aff2017 on your phone and they’re there. So you can find the PDFs, but also we made it so you can just scroll through and read along with us if you want to. So, the PDFs are always the best sort of way to read them. But that’s available to you. They’ll also be in Weekend Read, either now or by the time this show posts. And we’ll give a recap for folks who have no idea what we’re talking about so you have some sense of what this is.

But first I want to talk to you guys about what you guys – how many scripts you’re reading and sort of what you’re finding in scripts. So, tell me, how many screenplays are you reading in a week?

**Daniela:** I’d like to think that I read 15 a week, at least. That’s the goal. But it’s usually between five and ten, like full scripts.

**John:** So five and ten full scripts, and are there other scripts that you’re not finishing?

**Daniela:** Oh yeah. That’s what I mean by the – the other five to ten–

**Craig:** You gauge five to 15.

**Daniela:** Yeah. So.

**John:** And so when you say you’re reading these scripts, are they from represented writers, unrepresented writers? Are they clients?

**Daniela:** It’s all across the board. So there will be scripts people are talking about that I’m like “I need to know what these scripts are.’ Potential clients. And then actual clients. And then some projects that I’m just like, ooh, this is – I’m a fan of this writer, or I’m a fan of this genre, and I just want to know what it’s about.

**John:** Cullen, how many scripts are you reading in a week these days?

**Cullen Conly:** I would say I look at 15 to 20. And, again, for different purposes, if it’s a client’s script I will read it cover to cover. I tend to work more with writer-directors and specifically writer-directors and then some playwrights that are transitioning. So I also have to read a lot of open directing assignments. And with those, you know, I can sometimes read the first 20 and the last 20, fully get what it is, and figure out who the clients that should read it are.

**John:** Wow. So, OK, first off I want to go back to “look at,” which is such a fascinating euphemism for like not really reading, but you’re sort of like – so how much do you need to look at a script to say that you’ve looked at it? How many pages does that mean?

**Cullen:** I would say like 15 pages I can get a good sense – especially for potential clients. Like is this a voice? Is this something that’s gripping me? And do I want to read more? I can get a good sense from 15.

**John:** Daniela, do you look at scripts the same way?

**Daniela:** I do “look at” them. Yeah, I would say if I’m being generous, 15. But sometimes even first 10, depending on what it is, as an assessment of can this person write, can this person engage, and also does this not feel too familiar.

**Craig:** That’s pretty much why we started doing this. I mean, the purpose was to, I guess, hold writers accountable but also inform them that this is how the world works. I mean, the amount of screenplays that you guys have to read, or just are obligated to read, is massive. And therefore the only ones that are going to be read-read, right, are the ones that actually, I don’t know, keep you going.

I mean, there is this thing you can do where you can – do you ever do the skimmy thing? Like the skim through?

**Daniela:** No, not the skimmy. But I heard about this thing that I don’t particularly like where it’s just you read the first 15, the middle 20, and then the last 15 for features.

**Craig:** Well at that point you’re reading the damn script. Just finish it.

**Daniela:** And why would you enter a movie like halfway through and be like I know exactly what’s happening because there are some characters that are there and the conflict and all that stuff. So I don’t subscribe to that. Because if it doesn’t engage me in the first 15 then that exercise is just futile.

**Craig:** Pointless. Yeah.

**John:** Is there such a thing as coverage for what you guys are doing? Like are you reading coverage on scripts ever? So, Cullen, you’re nodding.

**Cullen:** yeah, especially at an agency, our policy is usually if it’s set up at a studio, get it covered, because agents do have a lot to read. We have the reputation for being lazy when it comes to reading. And so, yeah, I mean, I would say most scripts at the studio are covered. And it is helpful. My taste isn’t massive tent pole films, so if I’m covering that project I probably don’t want to sit and read the whole thing, so I’ll read a little bit, read the coverage, have a good sense of what the movie is, and be able to do what I need to do for it.

**John:** A question we get often on the podcast is “How important are loglines?” Do loglines matter for you guys? Does a well-written logline intrigue you and make you read the script or not read the script? Do you see loglines?

**Daniela:** I mean, loglines are helpful to be like, OK, how is this person framing their story, but I’m still going to want to read how they’re setting it up. Because loglines can be deceiving. It’s like, “Girl gets kidnapped. Father seeks out revenge.” And, you know, I’m describing Taken. And so I love Liam Neeson and I love Taken as sort of a popcorn fare thing, but the logline would be really disinteresting to me. So, I think loglines are important, but it’s really about what’s on the page. Don’t spend too much time on the logline.

**John:** Cullen?

**Cullen:** Yeah, I mean, I think just being able to describe your movie in a way that feels fresh and original is important at an agency. I think, management companies are a little bit different, but in terms of blind queries I’m not really supposed to look at them anyway, so I just hit delete for better or worse.

**Daniela:** We look at them all the time. Yes. Circle of Confusion was essentially started off of a query letter. A letter written by two house painters in Chicago to our company saying we love the name of your company and those people were the Wachowskis. So, as a company policy we accept queries and in that sense loglines are important, but it’s also about personalizing the letter to the company and personalizing the letter to the person you’re sending it to to make sure that it’s not just, “I’m just sending this to the void hoping I get discovered.” It’s like, “This is why I want to be represented by this company and by this person at that company.”

**Cullen:** Yeah. I do actually enjoy when I get a query that’s addressed to a different name. I’m like this is – I love this.

**John:** Last sort of question about framing here. So let’s say there’s a script that either came through a query or someone recommended it and it’s about maybe a client you want to represent. What are you looking for as you start to read that says like, “Oh, this is a person I want to meet. This is a person I want to continue on a discussion with.” What is it that gets you to a place where you’re excited about a script or a writer?

**Daniela:** I think it’s like oftentimes style and having fun on the page, regardless of what the genre is. There was recently a script that I was like let’s do a con-tage. And I was like, yes, this is a movie about being a con artist and we’re going to do a montage and it’s called a con-tage. And I was having a fun experience reading the script. And so I think that the voice and the style and feeling personality on the page and not being bogged down by details and just, you know, having fun with the story.

**John:** Cullen, what are you looking for as you’re starting to read for a client?

**Cullen:** I mean, as I read scripts, what I’m so craving and I think what most of us are craving is please god surprise me and please god – like god forbid – move me. Whether that’s making me laugh, making me cry. Some sort of sensory experience as I’m reading something.

You know, and then otherwise it’s just a very subjective experience. I mean, there are scripts where the whole town seems obsessed with and I read it and I’m like, uh, I don’t really respond to this. So, a lot of it is you can’t really quite put your finger on it, but you know it when you see it.

**John:** Cool. All right, let’s get into our four Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Let’s begin.

**John:** I’ll read the first synopsis, but maybe Craig can take another one. We’ll start with Baptiste by Jenny Deiker. Jenny, am I saying your name right?

**Jenny Deiker:** Yes sir.

**John:** Fantastic. Jenny right there. Thank you. A synopsis. A Minnesota business man, Jonathan Parks, ambles with his fishing rod to the edge of a lush Louisiana bayou. He is followed at a distance by Richard Devilliers, 50s, who speaks with the soft accent of an important Louisiana family. Richard encourages Jonathan to catch a catfish and Jonathan admires the landscape.

As Jonathan casts his line, Richard draws a circle on the dock with powder from a small pouch. When Jonathan asks about it, Richard describes that it’s a voodoo ritual for the union of predator and prey. Jonathan is impressed by the Louisiana touch. Richard’s wife, Marie, 50s, approaches and shares a knowing glance with her husband.

Richard draws a slash through the circle before kicking Jonathan into the swamp. Jonathan struggles. Marie watches dispassionately. Jonathan is promptly sucked under water, gone. Richard and Marie’s son, Kevin, 29, joins them, sweeps the powder away with his foot, and tells them they’ll be late for mass. And that’s the end of our three pages.

Daniela, will you start. So if you just read these three pages, what is your first impression? What are you taking from these?

**Daniela:** I have to say like by the very end of those three pages I was like “what is this about?” which is a great question to have. But at the same time I did feel that there were a lot of characters for the three page sequences that I was like maybe there needed to be a little bit of mystery. Like the son coming and delivering that line, while it’s a little bit of a mic drop, I felt that I wanted to breathe in the moment of this guy just got sucked into the space and let that breathe a little bit more. So, that’s how I felt.

**John:** Cullen, you’re very first impressions?

**Cullen:** Yeah, I mean, I have to say – I’m assuming – is this a pilot? given that it’s a teaser. Absolutely wanted to read more. I’m from Louisiana, too, so I loved the setting of it. My biggest question mark was about the powder and what is the significance. That was the one thing that I was like is this a total red herring. Does that actually have significance? But I loved it. I was pretty hooked.

I think my critique of it is probably in the first paragraph. It felt very adjective-heavy and, you know, I sort of circled what is a “stagnant, breathy morning.” It felt like slightly writing for writing sake.

**John:** Craig?

**Craig:** Yes. So, by and large I did enjoy this. I liked where it went and I liked what’s happening. And I think substantively we’re in a good place. But let’s talk about how this begins. Have you ever heard of purple prose? Right? So this is green purple prose. “Spanish moss melts from bald cypresses in the sweaty, sickly sweet soup of Louisiana air. Live oaks and palmettos line a wide, dead-calm river, dotted with fallen branches and blankets of algae.” That’s a lot of – just a biome. That’s a biome full of adjectives. There’s some alliteration going on in there which weirdly – the thing about alliteration is even though it’s not intentional, I know, these are the kinds of things that start to literally lull people. Which I know in a sense is not so bad, but I think you could actually get a lot of the sense quicker and easier.

I also think that it’s important, when you get to “Camera PANS to find a sturdy, wooden DOCK,” camera pans to me implies that we’re sort of static and then we move. But this all feels like it should be in motion anyway, like whatever eats Jonathan, maybe we’re that. Right? Just moving through. So there’s a sense of discovery.

Your first line is Exposition Theater. “I think you’ll find the biggest catfish in Bayou Baptiste right here off our dock.” Oh, do you? Right? So I think we don’t need that, right? I think that’s a line that can just go. I think you can start with, “It really is beautiful here. You’re a lucky man.”

And so there’s a little bit of – you can see you’re trying to get some of this information in. I wouldn’t panic about it. The thing about the opening of a pilot like this is it’s all about surprise and mood. We will find out who that dude was, where he was from. Don’t care. He’s got eaten. I assume he’s dead. Gone. So, I don’t care if he’s from Wisconsin. I really don’t.

And I think there’s a question of perspective. I want to know that the perspective here is with Richard. I would love for this to be a little bit more from his point of view because he is the one in charge here. I mean, the powder to me was good mystery. I assume the powder is either meaningful or just a side bit that he does, because the great catfish monster doesn’t need – whatever it is, I was fine with the mystery of it. It’s really just about I think writing less and creating perspective. Before anyone talks, the perspective as you move through. And then trying to root out some of the unnecessary exposition. But it was very – I like that he got eaten by an invisible fish. I assume it’s an invisible fish. It might be something else.

**John:** So, I’m going to disagree with Craig and so I think–

**Craig:** But I’m right though. I mean, you know that, right?

**John:** So, what I wrote here was that this is the upper limit of scenery setting, but I think it hadn’t crossed too far. And so it was skating right there at the very edge, but I though the alliteration helps. It helps put me into a place and to a certain mood. And so the sweaty, sickly sweet swamp of Louisiana air. Great. I had the same note about I don’t know what a breathy morning is. So it pushed a little too far. But I dug what you were going for and I could feel it, I could see it. There was a tactile quality to it which is great.

I’m also going to disagree with Craig a little bit about Jonathan. So, Jonathan, the Wisconsinite, I sort of knew he was chum from the start because I was only given the Wisconsin thing. And so some bit of specificity or something that gives Richard something to play off of, or something – a response that’s not just about “let’s push him into the lake.” There could be something more there so it’s a little bit more of a misdirect. Because I felt I was a little ahead of you because I could see what the setup is. Once there was a glance to the wife I’m like, OK, he’s going to die for some reason.

Daniela, often we talk about the difference between mystery and confusion. And you work for a company called Circle of Confusion. How often—

**Daniela:** It’s a cinematography term.

**John:** Yeah. Is this a thing – were you confused in these pages or were you intrigued? What was the line for you?

**Daniela:** I was intrigued more than I was confused. I think the beginning with names like Jonathan and Richard, at times I felt I had to revisit who was who. And that might be a byproduct of me not being from the States, so those names are foreign to me. And so, yeah–

**John:** Daniela, you’re from Venezuela?

**Daniela:** I’m from Venezuela. And I grew up in Southeast Asia. So, you know, names like Yosuke and Mohammed were very much my Jonathan and Richards, or Jorge and Fabian. So, yeah, and I think that creating a little bit more of distinction between the two of them and also using terminology like having an “upper class accent of someone from a very old and very important Louisiana family,” I don’t know what that sounds like.

**Craig:** I’m from the United States and I also don’t know what that sounds like.

**Cullen:** I did.

**Craig:** Well, yeah.

**John:** So Cullen, talk to us. What does that sound like?

**Cullen:** I think it’s a sort of self-important, heightened southern accent.

**Craig:** But you do acknowledge that unless we’re from Louisiana like you, we would not know that.

**Cullen:** I guess I would have replaced – you could replace the word Louisiana with southern is how I kind of read it.

**Craig:** Like a gentile, aristocratic southern accent? I would know what that is.

**Cullen:** Like I grew up in Lafayette which is a sort of Coonass/Cajun accent. There’s a different New Orleans yachty accent. So maybe you do have to be a little more specific.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t know what any of those things are.

**John:** I want to talk to you about on page two, so midway down the page Jonathan turns and watches Richard. Bewildered. And then Richard says, “Voodoo ritual. For the union of predator and prey.” Those were moments where I felt like it was just too leading. Like I just knew something terrible was about to happen here. And so to back off from that, or to at least keep us in a little bit of a question could really help us out there. Because by that point I sort of knew like, OK, a dark thing is about to happen. And especially because it said teaser from the very start. Like, OK, someone is going in the lake. I was a little ahead of you there.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, the other thing about Richard, because he survives this teaser and Jonathan does not. I really can’t tell you anything about Richard. It would be good if there were something intriguing about Richard beyond simply the actions of what he is doing here. If I got a sense of something. A history to him. A sadness. An excitement. Is he nuts? Is he murderous? Is this really depressing to him?

I just need something there to fascinate me with the human beyond the ritual itself.

**Daniela:** Yeah. And just to add onto that, especially since this is a pilot, like we need to be very invested in the character. And the narrative engine isn’t just plot. So having an opportunity to be really invested in this person. Is he an anti-hero or a hero? And creating that central dilemma within even the teaser itself.

**John:** Cool. Can we have you come up and so we will ask you these questions in person. So let’s all give a round of applause. Jenny, where are you from and what else have you written? Talk to us about–

**Craig:** Louisiana.

**Jenny:** Pretty sure you could have guessed that. Yeah.

**John:** And have you written the full pilot? Or just the teaser?

**Jenny:** Yes. This is written.

**John:** Tell us about Kevin who appears on page three and doesn’t do anything.

**Jenny:** Well, the funny thing about, you know, y’all were saying make sure Richard has some distinguishing things and some more character development stuff. The funny thing is on the next page that you don’t have, all those folks die.

**Craig:** You mean Richard and–?

**Jenny:** Richard and his wife and his son.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a lot of death in four pages.

**Jenny:** All die. Yeah. It’s to set up, our hero is going to be the grown daughter of that family, who is going to come back to Louisiana to take over the family business. The family business is a very quaint, beautiful bed and breakfast, but the real family business is doing this.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Jenny:** So, yeah, it’s about the daughter. But I wanted to set up that this is a normal thing for this family. They all know about it. This happens on the somewhat regular.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**John:** Great. And so good about the bed and breakfast, because that was one of my questions for you, too, is I thought your landscape was beautiful but I didn’t know what it was connected to.

**Jenny:** Right, OK.

**John:** And so I guess that this guy was probably a guest at something like a bed and breakfast, but it was a little too disconnected. And I think if I had felt something about something to indicate that this guy was a guest here or that there was something in the distance, the plantation house in the distance. Something there that would connect this to a place.

**Jenny:** OK, yeah, totally. I understand that.

**Cullen:** Yeah, I thought it was maybe a work conference of some kind.

**Daniela:** A film festival.

**John:** So, talk to us about this pilot. So it’s a one-hour pilot. Is it written with act breaks or as a straight-through like a cable?

**Jenny:** It has act breaks.

**John:** Great. Tell us what your first act break is.

**Jenny:** Let me think. Let me think. My first act break. Holy cow. I’m completely blanking. You guys make me nervous.

**Craig:** I know. This is the worst feeling, isn’t it?

**Jenny:** It’s so terrifying.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because your mind goes blank.

**Jenny:** My mind is blank. And it’s really good, you guys. It’s a super good act break.

**Craig:** It happens to me all the time. It’s the worst feeling. I assume that when your first act break happens there’s probably some revelation about what’s happening in the water. Or maybe the daughter kills somebody. I’m just guessing. I’m trying to help you now.

**John:** Let’s all speculate. It’s OK.

**Jenny:** Holy cow.

**Daniela:** Is it the daughter like taking on the responsibility of like this is me now entering this world, like accepting her fate?

**Jenny:** She’s the last in a very old bloodline and, because everybody else has died, this is now her responsibility.

**Craig:** But she knows what they do, right?

**Jenny:** She knows what they do but she has had the luxury of like moving away and forgetting about it.

**Craig:** She doesn’t necessarily like that they do it?

**Jenny:** No. She doesn’t like it and she doesn’t think she wants to be a part of it.

**Craig:** Can I just ask you a question? Because I’m so fascinated by the fact that she comes back to do this. It’s really, really interesting. I’m not saying do this, but from the perspective of a girl coming home and like doesn’t want to see her parents. We think it’s just this regular grown woman coming home for her parents and the whole thing. And there’s the dad out in the – where’s your father? Oh, he’s taken somebody fishing. And she’s like, “Oh, god.” And she goes out there and she walks out. And then we see him with this guy, chit-chatting. And he kicks him in the water and she’s like, “Ugh, I’ll be inside.”

You know what I mean? Like “whoaaaaaaaa.” Anyway, I just love the idea of this woman knowing this and having this creepy family and then – now I’ve just changed everything. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. But that would be exciting to me because there would be a relationship that I cared about that lasted.

**Jenny:** Right. OK. I could do that.

**John:** I think you raise an interesting point though. What is the tone of this overall? And so from this, this could be a dark comedy, or it could be Breaking Bad. There’s a whole range. It could be True Blood. What does it feel like to you? Is there an analogous thing out there?

**Jenny:** It’s a southern gothic horror story. So it’s very much like Fall of the House of Usher. We’re going to go into some deep family shit.

**Craig:** Fall of the House of Usher certainly has that.

**Jenny:** And I just listened to Craig’s talk, so I’m fully prepared to talk about theme.

**Craig:** Oh, good good. Good.

**Jenny:** But it’s sort of the theme of the sins of the father visited upon the children. So this is an old Louisiana family, named after my family, who–

**Craig:** Did they do this?

**Jenny:** This is their curse. I am a swamp monster. This is their curse for the legacy of slavery in the south is having to do this.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** Great. Jenny, thank you so much for these three pages.

**Jenny:** Thank you guys. Thank you.

**Craig:** All right. Are we moving on to the next one? All right. So our next Three Page Challenge comes from Andrew Cosdon Messer, and it is entitled Seaworthy.

A derelict sailboat floats in the open ocean. A catamaran carrying dad, 50, and the girl, 14, approaches. Dad jumps into the sailboat and when he confirms that it is safe to board he beckons the girl. Upon seeing the starved bodies of a family in there, the girl points out these people did not eat the others when dead. I guess it means didn’t eat each other when dead.

The girl removes the corpse boy’s clothes. Corpse boy.

**John:** Yeah, corpse boy. The unpopular sequel to Corpse Bride, yeah.

**Craig:** Sequels are hard. The girl removes the corpse boy’s clothes and thanks him. Dad and the girl bury him at sea. The girl, holding the family’s bible, wonders if they should say something. Dad says, no, it clearly didn’t help them. A storm is approaching and the girl asks if they can outrun it. Dad thinks not. When the girl notices a spot of blood on her seat, she reaches into her shorts to check for more. Panicked, she calls to her dad. He finds a rag, but he is not equipped for this. Probably not.

And so that is Seaworthy. So, maybe we’ll start with Cullen. What did you think about this and how did it strike you?

**Cullen:** I was intrigued. I sort of – I liked the world. I had, you know, to John’s point, I think it was slightly over the line of mystery versus confusion. On a personal level, and to be hard on you, I felt like the writing was very self-conscious. And I had some questions about, you know, for instance what is a “faded man” and what does “an extension of the boat mean.”

There’s a line, “Names will come later; they have little use for them now.” As a reader, it’s like, well tell me their names. I get that – it felt sort of effort-heavy in that regard. And yet at the end of the three pages I wanted to know are we – I guess my questions, which were good questions, are we going to be at sea the whole time? What is this sort of ritual and this world? Who are these people? That was sort of my initial reaction.

**Craig:** All right. Daniela?

**Daniela:** Yeah, just to echo that, I felt that there were a lot of interesting like movements in this, but there were too many details, or too many – I was like, OK, did this girl just get her period? And now we have this relationship with her dad. OK. And then there are corpses. And then there’s also this biblical element. And I just felt like taking a step back and being like “Let’s explore these characters within this scene, but not have these elements weigh down it.” Because I kept trying to like sift through everything to be like what am I sinking my teeth into? The fact that there are dead bodies in this boat? The fact that this girl has this relationship with her father? Or where they are?

So there were more questions, but they weren’t story questions. They were more just about the world itself.

**Craig:** John?

**John:** So, we’ve seen a version of this scene a lot, which is basically it’s scavengers in a post-apocalyptic world. So oftentimes they’re in the desert. I think I’ve seen boat versions of this before. But it’s a good version of that. And so I was happy to see these are people who are going through their ordinary life even though it’s a really hellish, something terrible has happened.

And I was curious for the natural reasons of like, well, what happened to this family out here. Something terrible has happened.

There were moments where — I don’t know that there was too much detail, but I had a hard time locking into some of the details. An example would be they find these bodies. And so the girl ducks inside to see the abandoned interior and the starved bodies, a family. But what does that look like? And I was trying to figure out whether that means are they bloated, are they mummified, are they skeletons? Where are we at? How much time has passed?

And that feels important for this kind of story. It describes the visual world we’re in and sort of what this is going to feel like. So that texture felt really important to me.

I shared Cullen’s frustration of these characters not having names. Because even if they’re going to be dead on page four, you know, like Jenny would do, I want to know their names because that makes me invested in them, even just for these three pages. And because they have enough lines of dialogue, I felt like they needed some names.

There’s also, in a slug line we have – or sort of intermediary slug line – “The girl, 14, she can drive better than that.” I like that as an idea. But then we go to, “The lanky teenager stands at the stern of the catamaran, wearing a SHELL PENDANT and a bemused smile.” I just got confused of like – we have a reaction about her before we’ve ever seen her or sort of know what she’s like. So, just the order of events and the order of descriptions I think could be optimized a little bit better here.

Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that there’s a really interesting scenario and I think you are probably – I agree with Cullen, you’re one notch a little too far on the mannered side of things. You don’t have to actually impress anybody with action. And you never need to be clever. The weirdest thing about screenplays, you never actually need to be clever. We sometimes find clever things in screenplays and that have turned into wonderful movies and we think that’s why. But I assure you by the time those pages were being handed around to grips and electricians, nobody gave a shit about the clever. It’s really what’s underneath. It’s the performances, the actions, and the intention.

So, “Faded man, steady on the deck, extension of the boat,” is clever. I’m not really sure what it means. And also I just think it’s ultimately bric-a-brac here.

I think you may have a dramatic ordering issue. There’s something fascinating about seeing a father and a daughter on a boat. I would describe maybe a little bit more about them. Have they been out there for a long time? Are they weathered, sun-beaten? Did they look hungry? Chapped lips? Like what’s going on? Right?

And then I would start with her getting – if you want to do a girl getting her period and not knowing what a period is, which is really informative about the world we’re in, I would do that first. And like deal with that weirdness. And then they bump into a boat and they’re like, oh, let’s check it out. Now that we’ve handled the trauma of the period that she didn’t know was a period, then when she goes into a boat and finds a dead family and she doesn’t really react strongly to that, we go, oh, well that’s interesting. We’re starting to get more of a sense – there’s a dramatic ordering I think that would help you there.

I have no idea what starving bodies look like. All bodies are starving. Because they can’t eat. Right? I mean, all bodies. Starved people look exactly like well-fed dead people after a week. They are all sort of the same. So I kind of got caught on that as well.

And I agree with John completely – some of the ordering – I think you have a lot of ordering issues. So when you say, “The girl, she can drive better than that,” I liked that concept.

Take a look at the way – you’re doing a lot of that kind of break up stuff. Normally I love lots of white space and everything. But, “ANGLE ON a healthy boat, bobbing alongside. THE CATAMARAN.” That’s all in caps. Then, “A faded name is engraved on the once-futuristic twin hulls.” By the way, I have no idea what once-futuristic twin hulls means at all. And then it says, “Seaworthy.” But I thought it was named the Catamaran because it was all in caps there. So I’m starting to get a little – and all those things are – so I think just weeding out some of the stuff, ordering it a little bit better.

I really did like these moments where you’re indicating attitudes in sparse ways. She sees a family of dead people and she says, “They didn’t eat him.” And he says, “No, they didn’t.” So I really like that. And I was interested in their relationship. The most important thing I think that can come out of three pages is a sense of a relationship that matters, even if it’s between one person and an environment. And here you have two people.

And so I think there’s really promising stuff here. I just think you’ve got some ordering and some reduction to work on.

**Cullen:** Their dialogue together helped sort of establish this relationship that I was very intrigued by. For me, the very end of the three pages went to a very basic thing with writing, at least for me personally. I’d be curious what you guys thought. But show don’t tell us. So, dad doesn’t know what to use. They’re not equipped for this. He’s not equipped for this. I would rather see that in his actions than be told that.

**Daniela:** Yeah, I agree. Like what is that frantic father looking for something and that realization—

**Cullen:** It’s a really interesting moment and dynamic, but you’re just telling me that as opposed to—

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. I think in a moment like that I would probably just write, “He stares for a moment, blankly. Then turns, goes inside, rummages for a rag.” We’ll get it. You know, like we understand. There’s some things you do need to tell people because the circumstance doesn’t clearly lead to a certain kind of reaction, but in this case I think we would be able to do the math. And it’s always more fun to do the math.

**John:** I want to look at a moment on page two. So there’s a new slugline for “EXT. THE DERELICT. LATER.” Later can be anything. And so I don’t know if later if five minutes later or if it’s three hours later. So I would just call out a specific amount of time because it feels like the kind of story where the time is important.

Then it cuts to “EXT. SEAWORTHY – DAY THUNDER echoes. Dad scans the clouds.” So that’s a time cut. Like time has sort of passed. That felt like a good moment for a transition to or something else to cue us into we’ve moved on, we are no longer dealing with the abandoned derelict.

Lastly, I would like to – I actually really liked the period being the last thing we saw in these three pages.

**Craig:** I’m so right about that.

**John:** Here’s why I think it’s good and why it’s interesting. As I said at the start, we’ve seen this kind of setup a lot of other times, and usually there’s a monster. There’s going to be a zombie. There’s going to be something else terrible that’s going to happen. And so for the surprise at the bottom of these three pages to be like a normal, natural human thing was really interesting to me. So that actually made me want to read what happening next a lot.

**Daniela:** I have to be really honest though. I had to reread it several times.

**John:** Ah.

**Daniela:** Did this girl just get her period? Because I think it’s the way it’s written. You can be – kind of make people uncomfortable with the fact that here’s a girl that just bled on the seat and now how is she checking if she doesn’t know what exactly is happening. Because otherwise I was like, did she just – like there are dead bodies in the boat, so is it something else that’s causing it? And it’s the world that can cause that confusion. And it’s only until it says he’s not equipped for this I was like, “Oh, Daniela, you’re so foolish.”

So, you can make it very clear.

**John:** A question for the two of you guys. This is on your desk. You’ve read these three pages. How many more pages do you think you would have kept reading?

**Craig:** He’s right there.

**John:** I know. He’s right there.

**Daniela:** This is an honest exercise.

**John:** Just based on what you read, how intrigued were you to read page four, page five, page six?

**Cullen:** To your credit, I was. If I wasn’t gripped by their relationship and also had answers to the questions I had by 15 I would have put it down.

**Daniela:** Yeah. I would say I would want to know what’s going to be the inciting incident of like this is the world that they’re in, so what’s their call to action. I’m sure when you come up to the stage we’ll know more about it. But if I don’t get to that, even by page 10 of that, “OK, what’s the story going to be,” I’d put it down.

**John:** Cool. Andrew, come on up here. Andrew, thank you for sending this in.

**Andrew Cosdon Messer:** Thank you for helping me out.

**John:** So tell us what this is. First off, is this a feature or a pilot?

**Andrew:** It’s a feature. Feature drama.

**John:** And our dad and daughter the main characters?

**Andrew:** Yes.

**John:** Great. At what point do you give them names? Or do they never get names?

**Andrew:** She gets a name right around the first act turn. And he gets a name right in the middle of the second act.

**John:** And why that choice?

**Andrew:** I wanted to leave them as their relationship, which was dad and his daughter. And they don’t have anybody for the first act. It’s just them. And then they have to sort of rejoin civilization and society. And that’s where names come into play was how do we identify you. And I ran into trouble – the reason that line is in there is because so many readers said just give them names. Well, they don’t have the names because when he’s referring to her as her name, it sounds clunky when they’re talking to each other.

**Craig:** But he could call out to her.

**Andrew:** Which is exactly how it happens. He does call out to her.

**Craig:** But in the middle of the movie?

**Andrew:** At about 27 pages in.

**John:** He could do it on page one there when he says, “Jenny—“

**Daniela:** “Jenny, you just got your period.”

**Craig:** He could do it when he does it and you could just tell us what their names are. Because the thing is it doesn’t actually impact the movie. It only impacts the read.

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Andrew:** And now I understand, that’s what I’m doing. It’s impacting the reading as opposed to what’s onscreen.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** What is the nature of this world? Obviously you’re saying they’re not meeting other people, at least for this first act, what has happened? Basically you’ve answered my question. How long are the people that we see in the derelict boat, how long have they been dead? And will we know what killed them in the course of this movie?

**Andrew:** We won’t know what killed them. Just the starvation was the idea. They ran out of food. But mummified was the answer. They sort of dissected and dried out.

I like to think in my mind when I wrote it this is what happens when the world ends out of food and people have to sort of get – the land can’t support life anymore. So that’s what has driven people to survive wherever they can. Our story happens to be on a boat, which is the easiest way to survive.

**Cullen:** Which I feel like it’s going to be food wars, next, depressingly enough.

**Andrew:** And also water wars, eventually, sort of in this.

**John:** More questions?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Andrew, thank you so much. This was awesome. Thank you. All right. Our next one is called Finding Mason. It is by Amy Leland.

**Craig:** Mason.

**John:** Finding Mazin. That would be a tragic comedy.

**Craig:** You found me.

**John:** Yes. A woman in her 30s, Mary Richards, hangs up her wall phone, takes a deep breath, and goes to wake a young girl, Sam, 10, who is asleep next to her dog. She tells Sam that they will have to go pick up Mason. Sam resists saying she’ll just take the bus to school. It sounds like this happens a lot.

Mary insists that they go. At the police station, an angry Mary leads Mason, 14 and innocent-looking, out to the car. Sam and the dog scramble to catch up.

As they drive, Mary seethes. Mason takes a sip from his mom’s travel mug, but the coffee is cold. He pours it out the window, but then accidentally drops the mug. He timidly alerts his mom, who throws the car in reverse to make Mason pick it up. But he can’t, because she has run over it.

Mary and Mason reluctantly burst into laughter, but Sam remains annoyed in the backseat. And that is how far we’ve gotten at the bottom of page three.

Craig, why don’t you start us off? What was your first impression reading these pages?

**Craig:** They were very nice. You know, they were nice. These are hard to evaluate in terms of projecting out where this goes. I think this is probably a movie, right? Thank you, oh, there you are. Because there are some movies that are very much a family study and the first three pages aren’t going to have killer swamps and boats of corpses and stuff.

And so what I’m then looking for on pages like this is a sense of verisimilitude and reality and a consistent tone and that was all there. I’m just going to give you one little thought that’s sort of a general creative, and then I want to talk just about how you’re writing this stuff out, which is a little bit of a problem.

We find Mason, her son, right, and he’s 14. And we’re sort of fascinated because this kid apparently has been arrested. Again. And what happens after didn’t make me feel what I think you would want me to feel. I’m not sure what you wanted me to feel. But certainly there’s this interesting turn that you’re intending where this kid is a juvenile delinquent and a recidivist criminal and her son. And but what he does is kind of cutesy – there’s nothing really interesting about it to me. Where I kind of fell down on these was the mug bit. Because on that page what I wanted – if this mother is going to start laughing, then I want something else that’s just fascinating to happen there. And it wasn’t quite fascinating. It was just sort of mundane. And I’m OK to live with mundane for page one and page two as long as this moment of getting out of jail gives me a little bit something more. Or, there is no laughing, it’s just drive home.

The other thing to just take a look at is your formatting. I’m not a formatting Nazi by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re costing yourself a lot of page space here. There are these big gaps between the end of your scene and the beginning of a next scene. I don’t know how to count paragraph breaks here, but I like a nice double space before INT. something. But you’ve got like a triple space going on.

**Amy Leland:** I swear to god Scrivener just did that.

**Craig:** Scrivener.

**John:** Oh Scrivener.

**Craig:** Oh Scrivener.

**John:** All right. Are they sponsors or something?

**Craig:** It wouldn’t stop me, as you know. When we’re in parentheticals we don’t capitalize. It’s a little jarring to see that. And you really never want to end a dialogue break with a parenthetical under it.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a thing you do in animation but you never do in live action.

**Craig:** Correct. And again we’ve got some random capitalizations sticking up in there. So, stuff like that – you’re kind of going a little crazy on the parentheticals, which I don’t think you need. But, you know, by and large I was with you here until that third page when I wanted more. I wanted to care more.

**John:** Daniela, what was your first read on these?

**Daniela:** So, I really like the intimacy of the characters and the story and sort of this mom’s struggle. But it was kind of unclear to me whose perspective I need to sympathize with until the very end of the three pages, where it’s like this is Sam’s perspective on her family dynamic. And so looking back and like is it then from her perspective whether it’s a phone call that interrupts her sleep, and then her mother waking her up. And I don’t want to put words in your mouth of just whose perspective are we following throughout the story.

I would agree that there’s a lot of heavy detail that I don’t think is necessary, because it sort of distracts me as to – I don’t really care where Cinco’s head is when they’re sleeping, or when they’re in the car. I think that that can all be condensed and made more precise. I think I wanted more from Mason coming out of jail and just, you know, like their attitude. Once his character is introduced, I felt then that every character had the same like dimension to them until Sam’s reaction to their laughter. So just adding a little bit more of a dimension I guess is the word that I’m going to use again.

**John:** Cullen, your first impressions?

**Cullen:** I will probably be a little repetitive. I think similarly I had a point of view question in terms of is this Sam’s movie. And, like Daniela, had the thought, OK, then we probably shouldn’t start on the mom and see her enter the bedroom. It should be either like the first moment is her being woken up.

I was really compelled and intrigued by that dynamic of clearly this has happened before. She’s waking her daughter up in the middle of the night to go pick up her son. The daughter is saying I need to go to school tomorrow and the mom is like, “Well, so what, you’re coming with me.” Like that to me is a really sort of fresh interesting dynamic, so I was intrigued by that. And then like Craig, it was sort of – I was really confused and baffled by that last scene. And it also felt a little clunky of like so we dropped a mug, she rolls in reverse. Like was it a paper mug? Was it a glass mug? Like it just didn’t feel real to me, whereas up until this point it had a pretty – to your point – intimate, real family dynamic. And that scene left me really confused.

**John:** Cullen, I thought of you as I was reading these pages because it reminded of some Sundance scripts that we’ve read in that sometimes their story space is small, and intimate, and sort of like stories that get overlooked. And yet sometimes when we read these Sundance scripts, these writers are newer at the craft and so I would see things – I would see craft issues that I wouldn’t see in other writers’ scripts. And so I’d have to blur my eyes to not see those things and really see what was underneath that.

And that’s kind of what I felt like here. Another example would be like you have headers on your pages and you don’t need those headers. You just need page numbers. It felt like your screenwriting software, Scrivener we can single out, was doing some things that were sort of fighting you on some stuff. And I think just through writing more and through reading a lot more scripts, you sort of get a sense of vibe of what works on the page and what you don’t need to put on the page.

There’s a lot of very specific direction for actors in terms of looking this way, you know, basically where everybody is in a space. And you find an economy where you don’t need to do so much of that. So when you do call it out we really pay attention. Because sometimes when there’s longer blocks where it’s just where everyone is looking we don’t pay as much attention.

I thought the coffee mug moment could work. What I liked is that bump where he drops the coffee mug. It’s just unexpected. And so I think there’s a version of that scene that I think could be really effective. But I wonder if it’s really going to work if we don’t know anything about Mason’s voice or know anything about Mason. It feels like if it had come after a fight or an argument, and like then it happens, then if I’m invested in him as a character that coffee mug moment could play better.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s something just missing in the purpose of that moment, I think. Because if I have a mother who is dragging her daughter out of bed to drive to jail, once again, to get the kid out. And she puts him in the car and I’m sort of marveling at her patience, and her emotional restraint. And then the kid drops this coffee mug and she flips out about the coffee mug I think, OK, I understand. The coffee mug is there really just to sort of show that she was hanging on by a thread and anything could kind of make her go. But that’s not what happens here.

And so I’m not quite sure – in the end it sort of just feels like a little bit of a contrived moment to have a family laugh in a strange situation. So I think it’s probably not the right choice there to pay off what you want to pay off. I completely agree that if we’re talking about this from Sam’s point of view we want to start on a sleeping face of a kid being jostled by a hand – like when the Peanuts teacher is sort of like into frame. Just to let us know. And then I would try and keep it all within her perspective.

Like the mom is going into the jail. She’s sitting in the car. Is she looking out the window? Or is she in the waiting room? Everything should be from her point of view. Her noticing – all of it – it will be so much more interesting I think.

**Cullen:** Yeah. To add on to what you’re saying, I think if you showed at the jail a little bit more specificity of the dynamic between Mason and the mom from her point of view, then maybe that coffee mug moment could work.

**Craig:** Right.

**Cullen:** But we don’t get anything. It’s sort of like they sort of march out all silently and you don’t know – I think you could hint at what the mother’s head space there is pretty subtly and effectively that then would allow that next moment to work more effectively.

**John:** Yeah. You can envision the scenario where you’re setting up the coffee mug as an important prop from the start. Basically they’re getting in the car and she leaves the coffee mug up on top and as an audience we’re thinking, OK, she’s going to drive off with the coffee mug up top. And she remembers and she brings it in. Then you’ve shined a spotlight on that coffee mug so we’re looking for it down the road. That may help you.

And getting back to Sam’s POV, it comes down to even sort of scene geography. So on page one, she hangs up the phone, she walks down a hallway, she opens the bedroom door. We cut to inside the children’s bedroom. Really practically that can be just inside the children’s bedroom looking out, and that tells us that it’s Sam is the important one and the mom is looking in. And so it’s a simplification on the page but also helps us focus on what’s going to be most important here.

**Daniela:** Did you guys crave description of the bedroom for the child’s bedroom? Because that was something that I was like what kind of family is this. Because then when it’s this phone call of “My kid is in jail,” I’m like “OK where are they socioeconomically.” And you can get that from description of the bedroom, or even of the car. Because otherwise I’m projecting a lot of things onto this, and I don’t think that as the writer you want that, because then you’re going to get different kinds of reads from other people.

**Craig:** That’s a great point. I completely agree. You know, like my whole obsession about hair and makeup and wardrobe. But it really does help people to see – in this case also set dec. I mean, we’re really talking about the department heads who will eventually be asking these questions if they don’t know the answers from the page. And so you’re always balancing too much versus not enough, but certainly it seems purposeful that they have a certain socioeconomic status.

This is I assume a single mom in 1981. The boy is dirty, right? He’s like physically dirty. He’s bedraggled, I believe. And he’s in jail, again. This feels lower socioeconomic. And so you do want to kind of just set it. You want to feel it, you know.

**Cullen:** Even as much like do they share a room? Is this her own room?

**Craig:** Correct.

**Cullen:** There’s a bed on the other side of the room that’s completely made up, so you know the kid snuck out. There’s just little details that I think would add so much.

**Craig:** I agree.

**Cullen:** And even I had a question for you guys, because I wrote it down “Where are we?” And then you tease out like Texas Oklahoma drives by, which was helpful, but I did have the question like should we know that sooner. And maybe the bedroom would even hint at that’s where we are.

**Craig:** A good old license plate will tell you a lot. And also because you’re a period piece, showing these little things, you know, what does a poor kid in 1981, a little girl in 1981, have on her bed stand? What is that 1981 thing? My sister, because we didn’t have money, and so my sister had like stickers. Definitely had stickers. You know, the rainbow unicorn stickers, the puffy ones. And then posters from like Scholastic Book stuff, you know, because they would give you those for free.

So there are just things that you can do to help give us a sense of time and place and make us feel – you actually, it’s so weird how you begin to feel more for a human being when you believe them and they’re not just as a prop for a moment of action. You know?

**John:** Last little sort of craft thing. On page three, we use the word seething or seethes three times. And so seethe is like a special word. Any word that sort of stands out you don’t get to use it very often. So, use – one seethe is plenty.

Also, multiple punctuation can be useful when you really, really, have to single out something as being a giant question or a giant exclamation. But it happens twice here, so I think dialing back on that will help you out as well.

But let’s bring you up here, because we want to hear the rest of this.

**Craig:** All right. Amy Leland.

**John:** Amy, thank you so much for submitting these pages.

**Amy:** Thank you.

**John:** So tell us about – is the whole script written?

**Amy:** It is a feature. The whole script is written. I actually submitted the first draft to this conference two years ago, because I use this conference as my deadline, so I submitted a first draft I knew would never go anywhere, but I made myself do it.

**Craig:** There you go.

**Amy:** And it did not get to the second round and I got some feedback that really helped me understand why. And I’ve gone through several rewrites and a reading with some wonderful actors in New York. And you all have actually also answered a huge question for me that nobody has ever had before. I now really get the three page thing. He wasn’t in jail. He was at a police station. He’s a runaway, not a criminal. And so now I’m like, “Oh, I need to make that more clear.”

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, because I was thinking about like the police station has the jail in it, like the rural police station always has the jail. Oh, he’s a runaway.

**Amy:** The first six pages of this screenplay are autobiographical and then I completely fictionalize it from there. But the coffee mug moment was actually an ashtray and in one of our first readings somebody said, “Your lead mother is letting her 14-year-old smoke and isn’t making him stop and now we hate her.” And I was like, “OK, great, it’s a coffee mug then.”

**Craig:** No, actually, that is so cool. And I would go back to it. I swear to god. It’s really interesting. Because that’s real. It’s 1981. So my first year of high school was 1984. And in New Jersey in 1984 in like shitty – well, I grew up in Bruce Springsteen’s home town, which if you’ve heard the song you know how shitty it is. And I went to the high school he went to. And we – I mean, I didn’t start smoking until I was 17 I think, which is still a dirt-baggy age to start smoking. But 14 year olds, 15 year olds would stand outside underneath this overhang and that was the smoking area.

People – kids smoked in 1981.

**Amy:** Yeah, my brother gave me my first cigarette.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s real.

**Cullen:** Also, how telling of that relationship, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Cullen:** The fact that she is letting him and the daughter feels like the outsider. Go back to that for sure.

**Craig:** There’s so many ways to actually make her sympathetic. If he’s like, “Can I have a cigarette?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but you got to quit, man.” And he’s like, “Well you got to quit.” Or Samantha is like, “You both got to quit,” and they’re like, “Shut up.” Whatever. There’s so many interesting ways to see they’re tortured and they’re struggling. That’s so much more interesting. And now it’s just a coffee mug. No, you find that person—

**Daniela:** Yeah, find that person. And I also think too often writers are so fixated on, “Oh, my character needs to be likeable.” Your character needs to be relatable.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Daniela:** So, a mother who is a single mom who is sort of exhausted by having the same conversation over and over again, we can all relate to that. And so having that moment, you know, that’s totally fine.

**Amy:** Thank you.

**Daniela:** And just adding—

**Amy:** No, my mother actually like reminded me of that story when I told her I was writing this. She’s like, “Oh my god, you have to put that story in. I love that story.”

**Cullen:** You guys must talk about that frequently, about the word likeable.

**Craig:** The worst note in the world.

**John:** Tell us your thoughts.

**Cullen:** I just loathe it so much, because what does that even mean? And I don’t want to like someone. I want to understand them and be interested in them. And for me, and maybe it’s a taste thing, but I would so much rather someone who is dark and twisted and deplorable because I understand where their actions are coming from than someone who is likeable. Like it drives me insane.

**Craig:** I believe that we on our show have called it the worst note in Hollywood. Because it is. It’s not only wrong, it’s damaging. And, in fact, if you take even a moment to look at movies and television that not only a lot of us individually like, but have been incredibly successful. Just factually financially successful. They have characters, they feature characters that are loathsome, and then you kind of like them and it’s fascinating to see your relationship with them.

It’s the stupidest note. So never. No, never. Never I say.

**John:** Amy, thank you so much for submitting these. Thank you so much.

**Amy:** Thank you.

**Craig:** All right. Well, we’ve got one more. So, our last Three Page Challenge comes from writer Jess Burkle. And it is entitled American Fruit.

In Costa Rica 1904, Charles Keston poses in an explorer outfit for a portrait. He insists that it look dignified and the fresh-faced photographer gives direction. Satisfied with the photos, Keston suggests that they stop there. He conspicuously name drops his girl back home. When asked about her, he quickly asks the photographer to forget he’s heard that. Heaven forbid that rumors start swirling.

The photographer points out that they should see Keston’s railroad in the photos. He’s right. Maybe Keston hasn’t been doing enough pointing. Keston spots a bunch of bananas and runs to collect it for a prop, but he doesn’t see the snake that gets shaken out of it.

While posing again, Keston spots the snake approaching the photographer but is unable to speak. He points furiously, but the photographer mistakes it for posing. The snake bites the photographer, who collapses. It seems that he is dead and that Keston is now alone in the jungle. And that is American Fruit by Jess Burkle. John, kick it off.

**John:** So, I understand that you actually have a history with Jess Burkle. So this is not a stranger to you.

**Craig:** We lived together for four years. Where is Jess Burkle? Hey! How are you doing? I was a judge, I was a judge in the final pitch contest here last year. And I remember your pitch for this. I remember you were hysterical. And you got a pretty good placement in there, right?

**Jess Burkle:** Second.

**Craig:** Second. And I remember, I may have been – anyway, you did a really, really, really good job. It was a very funny pitch and you had terrific energy. And so now here we have some evidence.

**John:** Yeah. And to be clear, Megan was the one who picked it, so you had no idea that this was–

**Craig:** Yeah. No, I did not have my–

**John:** And now everyone knows where Jess Burkle lives because his address is on the cover page. Brave choice. I thought these were delightful. Here’s what I thought was so delightful about it. It had a very clear voice. I completely heard who this character was, what this universe was, what this world was. And I was very curious to see more. I mean, it felt like The Office but sort of in a banana republic. And that is a delightful idea. And it worked really well for me.

I have a bunch of little exclamation points down my pages where it’s like, “Oh, that is a delightful line and a really nice choice.”

There were some awkward moments on page two, where the photographer tries to set up like shouldn’t we see the railroad from here. I had a hard time getting between those lines. It felt like there was kind of a time cut that you’re slicing over in the top of page two where the photographer starts packing up.

In general I felt like the photographer is just there to set up the volleyball for the other guy to spike. And I get that, but I just wanted to have a little sense of who he was. Is he a BJ Novak character who is like really smarter than all of this but is just putting up with it? Some sense of who that guy was, even though he’s going to die at the end of page three, which seems to be a recurring theme among our guests here.

But I was delighted to read them.

**Daniela:** Yeah, I mean, I thought that this was a really fun and there’s a clear juxtaposition between the photograph and the reality. And kind of getting into those thematics of projection versus reality.

I agree with the note of making the photographer like an essential character, because at the very end you end on a note of Keston is all alone and it’s only because the photographer is dead, but I was like the photographer has just been taking photos, so that feeling of doom should have always existed there because that guy didn’t really serve a purpose. So if it’s beyond that of the photographer knows more than everyone else, or the photographer is essentially the guide for Keston and now has died, then the question of now what, we’re invested in it.

So, trying to weave in those details in the teaser would make it much more stronger and then make that note land of the hilarity of like, “Oh shit.”

**Cullen:** Probably just on a personal taste thing, it didn’t give me as much glee, although I did get a very specific voice which I appreciated. I guess on a macro level, if I’m reading this and thinking, “Oh my god, I can’t wait for the rest of the pilot,” I didn’t have that gut feeling. And maybe because it’s a period piece, it did have that sort of Buster Keaton quality which I liked. And almost silly. But that also made me have more of a tonal question at the very end, because now he’s all alone in the jungle, and is this supposed to be comical or is it actually kind of dangerous?

That was my personal question. And then I also had the note what is a “rancid tire” and how does that look like when it deflates.

**Craig:** Well, we’re going to discuss tone in a second for sure. But I have a question for you. Keston is American or British?

**Jess:** American.

**Craig:** American. I’d love to know that, because unless you’ve told me here – I don’t think you have. No. Because this first page is kind of – I love the first page. I love everything about the first page. I love the way it’s laid out. I love Keston’s dialogue. I love the photographer. I love the photographer’s reaction to him. All this dialogue is fun. It’s funny. You’re intelligent. People don’t necessarily need to know what a fauteuil is to understand that this is funny. Because the photographer is like, “Like that rock.” “Ah, yes. More Antony, less Cleopatra.” What the fuck is this guy talking about?

You get it. You get that banter and that back and forth. You get that this guy is pompous and pretentious and is trying really, really hard. So page one, wonderful.

But at the bottom, he slips and falls backward with very little grace, landing as if he’s never touched soil before. So a physical gag like that I don’t want to be interrupted with a photo. It’s going to be tough to pull that off. If he’s, “Thusly?” and then he slips and falls and smashes his face on the rock, that’s funny. You know, I mean, connect it to his attitude. The interruption of it was a little—

Now, page two, he has this thing where he drops this bit about his girl on purpose and then says, “Oh, I don’t want rumors to start.” What is his intention there? You don’t have to answer it now. You can answer it when you get up. But my point is I wasn’t quite sure. I wasn’t sure if Keston knew this photographer, or if Keston was trying to – maybe there are rumors that Keston is gay and he’s trying to puncture that balloon. What is he exactly up to in that bit? I was kind of confused about what you wanted me to feel.

“Shouldn’t we see your railroad from here, Mr. Keston?” It surprised me that this goof has a railroad. I was actually kind of shocked by that. Then the snakes.

Now, here’s the thing. If you’re going to go broad, and this is suddenly very, very broad, then I think it’s funny to have Keston get bit by the snake himself. That’s funny. The photographer gets bit. I don’t know that guy, so it’s not that funny. Plus he is dying, which is super not funny. And the foaming from his mouth and the convulsions, and then the urine, is super not funny. Right?

And at that point I’m so confused about what movie I’m in. I want to be in the movie on page one. I mean, to me, I read page one, I’m like, oh, Paul Rudnick wrote a movie about a banana tycoon and I’m having such a great time.

If you want to do page three movie, then I think page one and two have to be different. So those were all the things that were running through my mind.

Now, all that said, I just want to say great job. Everything was just nice and crisp, clean. I liked the descriptions. I liked the way things were laid out. I felt safe. Except for the moments where I didn’t feel safe. It was axiomatic, wasn’t it?

**John:** I want to talk a little bit about Keston’s character and sort of the foppish, dandy kind of quality. Because on page three is the first time we say effeminate, so “Terrified and effeminate, Keston URGENTLY POINTS to the ground.” In a period piece, to single out somebody as being effeminate reads a little bit differently, but we’re also reading it in 2017. So I would just be mindful that it doesn’t come off as homophobic, which it can come off a little bit homophobic when you single the thing out.

So watch the words you’re using to describe him, because let his actions sort of do that work for you. Be careful not to put too much of a label on him, because it’s going to read a certain way reading this right now in 2017.

One other thing I wanted to single out is it alternates between what the photographer sees and sort of the black and white and the color. And so the black and white could either be the finished image or it could be literally what the photographer is seeing through the lens. If it’s what the photographer sees through the lens, that’s not black and white because it’s still color. But it might be upside down, it might be flipped in an interesting way. So, if it’s meant to be his point of view I think you’re going to need to make a different choice for what that actually looks like from his side.

Anything more before we bring him up? Come on up here. Let’s talk more.

**Craig:** All right, come on up.

**Jess:** Thank you. And I recently moved, so it’s OK. Different address.

**John:** So don’t hunt him down at the address that’s listed here, which was 104 8th Avenue.

**Jess:** 8th Avenue. Six years there. It was great.

**John:** All right. So this is a pilot. It’s a half-hour or an hour?

**Jess:** It started as a half-hour, but it ended up being an hour. Yeah.

**John:** And where are you out with it now? Have you done any readings? Have you done any stuff like that?

**Jess:** I’ve taken it around. And I’ve gotten management and an agent from it.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool.

**Jess:** And so now it’s starting to–

**Craig:** Is it them? Is it these two?

**Jess:** You know, open these doors, because – not yet. Nothing’s signed yet, so.

**Cullen:** Just the client we want.

**Jess:** Yeah, exactly. And so it’s getting some good feedback because people say they haven’t seen something about Oscar Wilde running the banana industry in Central America which is what it’s about.

**Craig:** Exactly. Oscar Wilde running the banana industry.

**John:** I suspect this is all really quite good. But I’m curious what else you’re writing right now based – what else are you trying to do and what are you aiming to do?

**Jess:** What I’m aiming to do is be a TV writer that I recently learned more does drama with funny moments. Like a Fargo level comedy inside of really tight stories. So I recently finished a project actually about Johnny Russo who was a recent How Would This Be a Movie. I just wrote a pilot about that and two other French women who are double agents in different time periods. That one is very serious. And now I’m writing a comedy about a lesbian couple having a known donor IVF in Park Slope.

So, I like going after kind of these human stories, but trying to make funny things happen out of them.

**Craig:** Tell me, what was going on with the name drop here?

**Jess:** So, the backstory, or what we come to learn later on is Charles is on the run after he’s been discovered as a homosexual at Harvard University. And so his family essentially says why don’t you go down to Costa Rica and run our railroad, which normally they never have anything to do with, that’s why the railroad isn’t there. And what he finds out at the end of act one is that the company was actually an elaborate Ponzi scheme. There is no money. And now he is alone in the jungle with no money. But he has to still pretend to society and to Boston that he is a winner. And he came here to start an empire and all these kind of things. So that new world hubris that we had at the top of the century.

**Craig:** Great. That works.

**John:** That works.

**Craig:** That totally works.

**John:** Jess, thank you so much for submitting your three pages.

**Craig:** Awesome. Thanks.

**Jess:** Thank you.

**John:** So, to wrap up here, I want to thank our four very brave people for not only submitting their pages but coming up and talking to us.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Thank you guys.

**John:** I also need to thank our producer, Megan McDonnell, who is over there.

**Craig:** Megan!

**John:** I want to thank the Austin Film Festival for having us, especially our room manager, Katie. Katie, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Katie.

**John:** And a reminder that there is a live show tonight, so come to that if you want to come to that.

**Craig:** Yeah, we will be pretty lit up for that one.

**John:** Uh, Craig will be.

**Craig:** Definitely show up.

**John:** But I especially want to thank Daniela and Cullen for joining us up here. You guys were so, so helpful and generous.

**Daniela:** Thanks for having us.

**John:** Thank you guys very much.

**Craig:** Thanks everyone.

Links:

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