Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-the-austin-winner).

**Previously on Scriptnotes**

**Craig Mazin:** Zero.

**Amanda Morad:** Oh, that’s me.

**John August:** So, what this card says is John and Craig will read your script. If you would like to–

**Amanda:** Um, yes.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And we’ll talk about it on the show and you will come on the show.

**Amanda:** Yes!

**Craig:** Great. Or, you could have a tee-shirt.

**Amanda:** I’m going to pick C.

**John:** All right. Well done.

**Craig:** C.

[Intro bloops]

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

**Craig:** My name is Craig Mazin?

**John:** And this is Episode 250 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the program we will be talking with the winner from our live show in Austin. And looking at the script she sent in. We’ll also be answering a bunch of listener questions from the overflowing virtual mailbag.

But first we have some follow up. Craig, start us off.

**Craig:** Right. So I did another Escape Room LA. This was my last one of that company’s rooms. They have four rooms. The Alchemist. The Detective. The Cavern. And The Theater. And so I went and I did The Theater and we did escape. Felt good about that. And there were only six of us, so that was a big deal.

But, while I was with Melissa in the little waiting room area there was this big group of people all going to do The Alchemist. And they were just, you know, talking. And then one of them said, “Oh, you know what? There’s going to be something that involves smelling different scents in this one because I heard Craig talking about it on Scriptnotes.”

And then someone is like, “Oh yeah, I heard that.” And they start talking about me. But I’m just sitting right there. And Melissa turns to me and goes, “You have to say something.” And I said, “Nah, I don’t want to.” [laughs] She said, “No, you have to. It’s crazy.”

And then somebody said my name again and finally I just said, “That’s me.” And then they turned and looked and they’re like, “It is you.” And so we had a very nice conversation. It was very strange because, you know, that is fairly rare to happen, but exciting in the moment. And I did promise them that I would mention them on the show.

And they did in fact escape The Alchemist. So, good for them.

**John:** Congratulations to everybody who survived.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So back in Episode 248, we talked about the controversy over white actors being cast in Asian roles. And Kirk Shimano wrote in to say — Craig, would you read what Kirk wrote for us?

**Craig:** Sure. He said, “Thanks so much for your thoughtful discussion about the casting of Asian American actors. I also agree that star-washing should totally be thing and will use it in social media as frequently as possible.”

**John:** That’s Craig’s term. Craig made up that term.

**Craig:** I made up that term. And I want money. Kirk continues, “I wanted to add one other thought about the character of the Ancient One in Doctor Strange. I think another complicating factor in this is that original character fits into a common racist trope. That of a wise Asian master. I know for my part, whenever I see an actor of Asian descent in this kind of role, my first reaction is always, really, this kind of role? Again? So, from my part, I’m actually pleased to see this character go a different way.

“That all being said, I find the lack of Asian American actors in the Marvel universe hugely disappointing. I just wish the conversation was more about the lead characters rather than having yet another wise Asian master who helps the white people achieve their full potential.”

**John:** Yep. So thank you, Kirk, for writing in about that. And that was an aspect we didn’t really get into when we discussed it is that if you’re just casting a person of a certain race in a very stereotypical role, that’s not a great mark of progress.”

**Craig:** It’s true. I mean, I’m not sure you can claim it’s a great mark of progress to keep the racist trope role and also then deny employment to a poor Asian actor who now can’t even get the part of the racist trope.

I mean, I suppose you could say that we’ve come a long way. Because it used to be that we cast white men like Joel Grey to play the wise Asian master. No, I guess we’re still doing it. We’re still — although she’s not meant to be — at least she’s not meant to be Asian. So, that’s a minor improvement. But I think Kirk is absolutely right that that character is beyond shopworn and needs to be retired.

And the Marvel universe I think has done a very good job of being true to things that deeply meaningful and being a little more flexible with stuff that isn’t. I don’t think, for instance, Nick Fury was originally African American. So, they had no problem with that. So, I’m not really sure why this needed to be that way. But it’s a tough one.

It’s interesting. Marvel makes movies in 2016, but so many of the characters that they’re pulling up were created in the ’60s and ’70s.

**John:** Yeah. And so the way you reinvent those or sort of re-explore those can be challenging. And finding a good way through it.

It reminds me of our conversation with Alan Yang at the Christmas live show where he’s talking about Master of None, and the issues came up of like you have an actor who is going in for roles, and he’s refusing to go in for those very stereotypically South Asian roles. And like he doesn’t want to be the cab driver or the call center worker. He doesn’t want to put on the fake voice anymore. And that’s a real issue and that’s a decision every actor has to make about what kinds of things you’re willing to go in for, or not go in for.

**Craig:** Yeah. Whereas on the writing side of things, we get to do anything. I mean, acting is really hard. It’s always you out there. I feel for actors. Because I can sense how frightened they are of being embarrassed.

**John:** Yeah. It’s tough. All right, same episode we also talked about pitching open writing assignments. And Philip from Durham, North Carolina wrote in to ask, “What are your thoughts on using visuals of any kind to help convey the story you want to pitch during this open writing assignment process? Is it a good idea or bad idea to bring in visuals?”

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s either a good or bad idea. It really depends on what you’re doing. If you’re pitching something where one picture would be worth a thousand words, bring that picture. For sure. Generally speaking, I’m not pitching movies like that by the nature of the movies I do pitch. Although, on the sheep movie, I did make — I mean, this was after we already had set it up, but when I turned the script in I also included a book. I made a photo book.

So, I went on the Internet and found as many high res images of sheep that I could find that were evocative, I think, and would have made them feel something. And then I made a little Apple book out of it, and I sent it in.

**John:** Nice. Yeah, for the thing I’m writing right now, I did come in with some visuals. I had little small artboards. And it was really to sort of show what the world would look like, because it was hard to describe my specific take on what this world would be without some artboards. But, the thing that people were pitching to me, I had three different sets of writers who were pitching this project, and none of them brought in visuals and it was fine. We just focused on what they were saying. So, it can be useful. I think what can be especially useful about the visual boards is it gives you something to point at later on in the process.

So, like as you’re having the discussion, you can sort of like go back to the boards, or the producer can look through the boards and say like, “Oh, so back in this moment…” It helps anchor the thing you said to a visual, which can be useful post pitch.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, Ted Elliott used to say that he and Terry were so bad at talking, and so uncomfortable in those rooms, that they would bring visual stuff along just to distract people from them. Because they didn’t want their awkwardness to somehow make their odds worse.

Sometimes the visuals that they brought were literally just index cards, like here, look at our story points as we talk so you’re not concentrating on our stammering faces, which I thought was great.

**John:** But if you’re a highly charismatic writer, sort of performer. Like if you’re Mike Birbiglia, you probably would not bring in visuals like that because you want them focusing on your face, because that’s where the performance is.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Yep. All right, last bit of housekeeping here. A few months ago we asked you to do a quick survey about the show and what we should do with back episodes and the bonus shows. And we decided that we’re going to make more 250 drive episodes. And this is episode 250, so in about two weeks we’ll have all 250 episodes of Scriptnotes, along with the bonus episodes, on a little USB drive that you can purchase in the store. So, if that’s something you would like, they will be available soon.

Craig, I think these USB drives are going to be black.

**Craig:** Oh. Sleek.

**John:** Sleek and black. Shiny.

**Craig:** Like little dolphins? Little black dolphins?

**John:** Maybe like little black dolphins.

**Craig:** Or, no, orcas.

**John:** Yeah. I was worried you were going to go to a Sexy Craig, like Scriptnotes After Dark thing. But I think orcas is maybe a better, safer thing. Because everyone likes whales.

**Craig:** You know, John, Sexy Craig doesn’t care about that computer stuff.

**John:** Yeah, it’s going to be good. The other thing we are experimenting with is people had asked — so all of the premium episodes and all the back episodes are available through the premium feed at Scriptnotes.net. You can also use it through the Scriptnotes app.

Some people had problems with the app, or if you’re overseas it can be a challenge with your bank accounts. It didn’t PayPal. There were some real frustrations that some people had. And people asked can you buy individual tracks for like those bonus episodes. So, we’re experimenting with just two of those tracks. And so the Justin Marks Jungle Book episode and the Q&A from the session with Aline and Rachel Bloom where we talk about introducing a character in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Those two tracks are available for $0.99 each in the John August store. So, just store.johnaugust.com. And we’ll see if people like to download those individual tracks.

**Craig:** I feel like I’m like a year away from having to hire somebody to audit you.

**John:** Yeah. You would not believe the dollars and cents coming into this operation.

**Craig:** I mean, if you buy a couple of houses and a few cars, just know I’m coming for you.

**John:** Okay. I want to point out that Craig Mazin drives a Tesla, which he talks about nonstop. I drive a seven-year-old Prius and a Nissan Leaf. I don’t even get to drive the Leaf, because my husband drives the Leaf. So I get a really beat up Prius.

**Craig:** You know, you could get a new car with the massive amounts of cash coming in on this show.

**John:** I probably could.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A sensible car.

**Craig:** A sensible car. [laughs]

**John:** The tiny last bit of follow up here is I asked Matthew to record his screen while he edited episode 248, so it’s about 2.5 hours’ worth of video that I’ve shrunk down to nine minutes. So you can see sort of his process of what he goes through as he edits our show down.

Because we record basically in real time. So, one of our recordings of our show will take about an hour, but it takes about 2.5 hours for Matthew to go through and sort of get rid of all the uhs and ums and get everything synchronized right and get the music in.

So, if you’re curious what that process is like, it’s posted on YouTube and there will be a link in the show notes for that.

**Craig:** I might even watch that.

**John:** You might watch that. And my perception is that I mess up on the show a lot more than you do. And so that he has to do more work. But as you actually look through it, it’s about 50-50. You have a few ums and stuff there that go away through the magical process of editing.

**Craig:** I wouldn’t call that messing up, John. I think what you’ve done is you’ve tried to equate complete failure with innocuous pauses.

**John:** Perhaps I have. Perhaps I have.

**Craig:** This is already shaping up to be a great episode. I feel like this is an episode that we’re not drinking, but I feel a little bit like I might have had a glass of wine.

**John:** That sounds great. And our guest has been so patient, because she’s been like literally right across the table from me this entire time.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So I think we should probably introduce the winner of our sort of special Golden Tickets. We’ll set up this whole detail.

At the live show in Austin, we had put up these raffle tickets and Craig called out the number and she had the right number. She came up and we told her she could give us her script and we would read her script and talk about it on the air. She is here. We want to welcome Amanda Morad. Welcome to our show.

**Amanda:** Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

**Craig:** Welcome.

**John:** So, Amanda, you were at the live show in Austin, but you’re actually a Los Angeles person. Is that correct?

**Amanda:** Yes, that was my first time at Austin Film Festival. And it turned out pretty well for me.

**John:** Cool. So, what made you want to go to Austin?

**Amanda:** It’s a great event. And it’s a great competition. Matt D. and everybody there is just amazing. And I learned so much and got to meet a ton of people. In fact, I made friends that I will likely have for the rest of my life. And it’s definitely an event that I would do again.

**John:** Cool. So, you show up in Austin and did you know people before you go there, or was it all strangers?

**Amanda:** I had one connection from my alma mater. He was a former professor, now technically colleague, who met me there. Shawn Gaffney. And he introduced me to some people and from there things just went great.

**John:** Great. So tell us about yourself. What is your background? Did you study writing? What are you goals? Do you do anything else other than write?

**Amanda:** Uh, yes. [laughs] I’m originally from the East Coast and moved out to LA in 2014 to pursue television writing. I would love to get into scripted drama. And right now I am working in digital development with you know Murray Productions. And on the desk of two development executives there. And working on original short form content in that capacity.

I am also a big board gamer. So, I followed along with several of the episodes that you guys mentioned. Ticket to Ride and Pandemic and everything. So, that would be like the secondary hobby outside of the writing, because the writing is certainly central and the reason I came out here. So, that’s the main focus.

**John:** Let me ask. Have you applied to fellowships? Have you gone after other things?

**Amanda:** Yeah, I’ve definitely applied to a lot of contests and all the network fellowships in the past. In 2014, I got to the semifinal round with CBS, so I got to go in and meet with their diversity, Carole Kirschner and Jeanne Mayo and all of them there. And it was a wonderful meeting and they said they really enjoyed the material but I was just really green at the time. I think I’d been in LA three weeks. And so their advice to me was go get some industry experience and try again.

So, now that I’ve been working in the industry for a little while I applied again, and so we’ll see where it goes.

**John:** Cool. And when you say diversity hiring, so you’re Latina and was that your focus?

**Amanda:** Yes. Yes. For that one.

**John:** What were they reading when they brought you in that first time?

**Amanda:** The first time was an early draft of Betty Bureau, many, many drafts ago. And a spec of Homeland. Because they require both a pilot and a spec script.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** I got to tell you that I feel like we won the raffle. Because the odds of randomly picking somebody that was a good writer were very low. And I apologize to all of the people that come to Austin. I assure you I’m not talking about you, dear listener, you are great. But, of course, how many great people can there be? But I thought your script was terrific. And I’m going to I think bum your current employers out by saying that you should absolutely — you’re ready to be on a staff right now as far as I’m concerned.

**Amanda:** Craig, you’re making my day. And you’re making me blush. [laughs] Thank you.

**Craig:** Well, you’ve earned it. I mean, we read a lot here. I mean, I can’t speak for John, but I thought it was really well done. It was professional. And it showed an ability to craft a scene, to pull a story through, to surprise me. Characters were distinct. I can imagine that this is already better than the work that’s being churned out by quite a few veterans of TV staffs. And I think somebody should put you on their staff right away. I really do.

**Amanda:** Thank you, Craig. That might be the best compliment of my life.

**Craig:** You’re welcome. I mean, and you know, 250 episodes of legitimacy behind that, because nobody can question the fact that I have no problem saying to somebody’s face, “I don’t like that.” So, you can take this to the bank. I thought it was terrific.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** So I have staffed TV shows, and I’ve staffed one-hours, and so I have a little bit more experience being on the other side of the table, and I agree with Craig. I think why I’m so, so happy that it was you who got that number and showed up is that you delivered a script that is professional in the sense of like there’s no — there’s no mistakes. Nothing about it feels amateur whatsoever. You have a really good sense of being able to draw small details out. I like some of your descriptions of characters. I singled out like there’s a minor police officer who is like a well-fed husband.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like that. And then the little boy in his father’s suit.

**John:** Daddy’s suit. Yeah. Those are great sort of like small little signifiers that show like, oh, she really does kind of know what she’s doing here. I thought you made a good choice about picking a distinctive subject for this script.

So, before we even get into some of the praise here, you wrote this script — this is a one-hour drama pilot. It’s a writing sample fundamentally. It’s written in a five-act structure. Was it teaser plus five, or just true five?

**Amanda:** Teaser plus five.

**John:** Teaser plus five, which is common in sort of like ABC land for this. Which I thought was very smart, because you could have easily done this as a cable pilot or something else that didn’t have breaks, but good to sort of show that you understand that there do have to be act breaks. All really good.

Also smart choice to make this be a period show. A friend is just staffing from one show to another show, and he had to write a new pilot, and his agency told him do the period one because it won’t get outdated so quickly.

**Amanda:** It’s true.

**John:** And so you could send it out season after season and it won’t become outdated, so these are all smart reasons. And I always like the — I’m a big fan of some of the period shows. You look at like Homefront. I don’t know if you ever saw that which was a great WWII drama.

**Amanda:** Yes.

**John:** Mad Men, of course. So, there’s a lot of stuff there that’s great. They’re not reading a ton of period things and they’ll remember yours, where they won’t remember like five other sort of Sopranos shows. So, those are great things.

I was less enthusiastic about sort of the overall experience of the script. I got a little bit bored, and so some of my notes for you are going to be about places where I kind of fell off the ride. But I want my underlying message is that I’m so happy it’s you, because everyone can download your script, read along with us, and see like, oh, she does know what she’s doing, and it’s so refreshing to see somebody who is not making just dumb mistakes, so we can focus on making it better, rather than bringing it up to a baseline quality.

**Craig:** Isn’t that nice for once? I mean…

**Amanda:** That’s nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, anyone reading anything will always have some places to say, “Well what about this, or what about this?”

**Amanda:** Of course.

**Craig:** And I have some of those for you that I hope are instructive and constructive. But we’re in a different kind of note-giving here. This is sort of the note-giving that I would give to a colleague of mine. You know, I’d say, okay, what were you going for there? Didn’t quite work.

So, I will talk to you like you’re already working on a TV show and I don’t know about you, John. I don’t feel quite qualified to ever say whether or not something like this is something they would actually produce and air. All I can really talk about is the writing itself, I guess.

**John:** And I would also say that I’m not sure that should even be your goal here.

**Amanda:** Right.

**John:** Talk to us — we’re talking too much. Talk to us about why you wrote this specific script? And actually tell us the name, tell us the premise, because people listening to this in the car won’t know what we’re even talking about. Tell us your script.

**Amanda:** The script is called Betty Bureau. And it is an FBI procedural drama that takes place in 1950 when the first Top Ten Most Wanted List is first published by J. Edgar Hoover. And it follows Caty Pelayo, a new secretary to the bureau, as she is covertly helping the agents solve crimes. Of course, this is not at all sanctioned by Hoover or anyone. There were no female agents in 1950. And so this is her kind of journey to independence, but also to helping catch all the crooks.

And this story actually originated at my grandmother’s funeral. My great aunt used to be a secretary for the FBI and she was regaling the family with all kinds of stories from that time period. And she told us the story about accidentally helping catch somebody on the Top Ten Most Wanted list at a department store one day. And from there, I thought, you know, this is an idea that I can run with and I can write passionately about because it is based on two very strong independent Mexican women in my life that I have loved and respected forever.

And so that’s where the script kind of originated. And it’s been through many, many, many drafts since then. And, yeah, I do hope that it is a good, solid writing sample. Hopefully for representation. Maybe for just getting my name and myself out there as a writer, because I am fairly new to town, and with the experience that I am getting at a production company now, I’m hoping that that will kind of start segueing into actual writing–

**Craig:** I mean, look, I think your days of not having an agent are over. Because I’ll send this to my agent. [laughs]

**Amanda:** Wow. Thank you.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s stupid. Of course you should have an agent. This is a strong sample. And you should have an agent. It won’t be my agent, but it will be somebody. And I’m sure John has people that he knows as well, because that’s just crazy. Of course you should have an agent. This is good enough for that, in my opinion.

**John:** All right, and in my opinion I don’t know that you will get an agent right off the bat. And this is just me sort of talking reality is that having read a ton of these, I think it’s good and shows competence. I don’t think it was breathtaking to me. And I got kind of bored.

And I remember back to when we had Riki Lindhome on the show and she was like reading through for staffing. And if she stopped reading after page three, she stopped reading. And I worry that people are going to stop reading. And so what you described and what you pitched was more intriguing than the first sort of ten pages were for me. And as I was reading it, I felt like I was getting ahead of you at times. And some of that is the nature of what you’re trying to do. You’re doing a procedural, but it’s also a premise procedural. And those can be kind of like the two most boring kinds scripts to read.

Because in a premise show, you’re having to set up this whole world, and you’re having to introduce your character to this whole world, so the plot always ends up taking sort of a back burner. And in a procedure, well, people are just going through and doing their jobs. And so it was a lot of people walking through FBI kinds of stuff doing this.

I think you do a nice job setting up the world of things, but I — there were very few scenes where I’m like, oh holy cow, that’s amazing, like that’s going to be a really great moment. And I think as you look at doing more writing on this, and look at doing the next thing you want to write, focusing on the how do I keep it incredibly suspenseful, how do I make sure people are desperate to turn that page will be your challenge.

**Amanda:** That’s a good note.

**Craig:** I never got bored, but perhaps because the script was teaching me something different, you know. So it was teaching you one thing — and this can happen all the time. This is the great difference of opinion of the world, you know. People, they start reading something and they think, “I know what I want this to be.” And if it doesn’t become that, that’s disappointing.

Now, to be fair, John and I read scripts that are just objectively boring all the time. In this case, what this was telling me it wanted to be, and what I wanted it to be, was kind of more Mad Men-ish in a way than high capery, which is why actually in a weird way my biggest issue was the ending, which I thought was not congruent. It was sort of like the show suddenly remembered that it was supposed to have cops and robbers and Ka-boom-ies. And I didn’t want that in a way. I wanted an ending that was more about the character.

I was so much more into the soap opera of the characters than I was into the crime. I really was enjoying that. I loved the reveal that the newspaper man was this agent’s brother. And I liked their flirtation, and the fact that now she’s got two brothers kind of going after her. And I also liked the woman in a man’s world aspect which felt very Mad Men to me and really interesting.

So, that’s kind of where I — that’s where my eye was. So, I was never bored actually weirdly until the end, when it was just like, oh, now they’re just shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Shooting. So, that was a different — it’s so funny how we have these different responses to things.

**John:** Yeah. I think, Craig, you read this as being like this is like a Mad Men. I read it like, oh, this is like an FBI procedural. And it’s trying to do both things at the same time. The issue is I would love the Mad Men show, but Mad Men is not fundamentally a procedure. It’s a character-driven show where characters are going through journeys and sort of coming at each other in strange moments.

And I didn’t feel the friction, the tension, the spark in those moments in this. And I don’t feel like there quite were the scenes there that could have had those sparks. And so as we look at — as we go through pages, we may find some moments that can actually break out a little bit more.

The last thing I want to say is sort of urgency. And in any of these things, you want a sense that there’s an urgency for like why this scene is happening right now. And there were a couple moments where I felt like that was just a random other scene to go to. And there wasn’t a pressing need for like that had to be the next scene. It could have sort of arbitrary. So, that’s sort of the one the page urgency.

There’s also sort of a “why am I reading this script right now, why is this script relevant in 2016?” So, when I previously said it’s great because you could write a period thing because it doesn’t have to have a timeliness, but there’s still an underlying quality of like what is this show saying about today. And has that resonated for you at all? Is there a reason why you think this is a show about today?

**Amanda:** Yeah. Absolutely. With Caty’s position as a secretary in a man’s world, and coming into — as a writer coming into Hollywood as a woman with very little Hollywood connection, I’ve encountered it on a few occasions where my strength and independence and ability has been mitigated by what people expect of me as a woman. And I know we don’t really like to talk about the overtness of it still happening, but I think it is still relevant. And I think a lot of what Caty feels about being relegated to certain tasks and relegated to certain roles, I’ve certainly felt that through the various jobs I’ve had.

Yes, I’m still early in my career, and it’s possible it will continue to happen. But I think her emotion and her response to it and the resistance that she’s feeling toward this relegation to memos and lunch orders is something that I identify with. And I think a lot of female professionals, particularly in this city that I know, definitely feel that.

**John:** Okay. But I mean, is that a new thing that’s happened in — is that a 2016 thing? Or would the same thing happen in 2006? I’m just wondering if there’s a special thing about why this is happening now, or why this conversation is happening now.

I think her Latina heritage might be an interesting thing to bring up a little bit more, because I missed it until her mother is speaking Spanish, sort of midway through. And that might be a thing that is extra interesting. Or the degree to which Hoover and sort of like that whole movement reflects sort of modern times could be a way in. I just — I want to be intrigued about what you’re trying to say about today in this period show.

**Amanda:** Right. Yeah, absolutely. I think her heritage and the politics of that era are certainly reflected in a lot of things going on in our world today. There’s lots of talk about — even what you guys were talking about in the follow up, with whitewashing of actors in roles that belong to ethnically diverse actors. And I think that that carries over into plenty of industries. And in 1950 at that time, it was very rare to have a Latina secretary in the nation’s capital in a professional job.

You know, at the time a lot of it was southern labor for Latinas. And so I think showing that Latina heritage, I think things like Jane the Virgin have exceptionally well because Latinas are seeing themselves on TV in ways that they haven’t before. And even though this takes place 65 years ago, I think that this would serve the same way.

**Craig:** I’m with you on that one. We never ask the period pieces with a majority white casts who sort of carry the burden of the difference between then and now, or if we do, it’s because that’s that what it’s about. I think that if this were a movie, I would be much more concerned, because a movie begins, middles, and ends. And it must have some immediate relevance for you when you walk out of the theater. That is beyond just whatever you saw.

For a show, I always feels like sooner or later, no matter how hard the show is trying to be relevant, the show becomes about the show. It ultimately becomes about its own soap opera. And in this case, I think you have an interesting opportunity to combine soap opera with procedural, which has been done before. And doing it in just a different background. I love the setting. I love the setting. I think the ’50s is terrific.

And certainly the imposition on her as a woman is — I think it’s always interesting. There were spots here and there where I thought either — she almost seemed like she had arrived in a time machine. This is an interesting thing. When you’re talking about characters who live in a world that is oppressive, sometimes when they arrive on the show they seem as aware as we that this is all off. But that’s the world in which they are. It’s a very tricky thing — do you know what I — I don’t know if I’m explaining myself quite right.

**Amanda:** No, that makes sense.

**Craig:** Yeah. So occasionally she seemed almost sardonic about it, like oh well, in 50 years you’ll realize how stupid that sounds. You know what I mean? Which is a little different than being in the moment I guess.

**Amanda:** I see.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get to your actual script. And so if people want to read along with us, there will be a link in the show notes for this PDF, so you can download it and take a read through it with us. Let’s start with the teaser. It’s a two-page teaser. It’s a teaser without dialogue. It felt a little strange and forced that it had no dialogue. I felt like I was missing some little bits of dialogue, or something to help ground me in a place. I felt like some of these characters talking, basically people are not reading this. It feels kind of like a tracking shot where we’re following this young hostess/server through this club. And she’s ultimately going to end up dead at the end of this teaser.

It felt like I wanted some snippets of dialogue, or something to help anchor us in a place and a time. Because as it is, they are two well-written pages of action, but you’re making a very big ask of the reader to like, okay, read through these two pages of action and I’m not going to give you any sort of break there.

**Amanda:** Got it.

**Craig:** I have a suggestion for that, because I agree with John. Sometimes in things like this, what could work in lieu of dialogue, because I like the mystery of not knowing what people are saying, and whispers in ears and all that. Sometimes a good song does miracles. And especially when you’re in DC in 1950, you’re period, and you’re in a — you have a band right there. A really great period song. And then just pull the lyrics out. And let the lyrics — find some great lyrics that kind of feel ironic and creepy and cool. And just pepper them in. Just layer them in. And then, you know, back engineer it, reverse engineer it, so your last lyric lines are really evocative over the image of this dead woman.

**Amanda:** Yeah, that’s a great fix, because I think one of my concerns with adding dialogue was that you do lose some of that mystery of the conversation in the booth and what this guy is giving her the note for, and all of that. So, yeah, I think I’d prefer something like that over kind of, you know, peeling back and letting the audience in on some of those conversations that are happening.

**John:** That sounds great. So, our out is on the dead body. And so by starting on a dead body, you’ve announced yourself this is a procedural.

**Amanda:** Right.

**John:** [Makes Law & Order sound] We’re in a procedural land. And so that’s fine, but we’re in a procedural land now. And so if at any point you say like, you know what, maybe this really wants to be more of a character study/character-driven thing, then you’re going to have to start with her. And that’s sort of your balancing act. It can’t be sort of — you sort of can’t have both in a way.

**Amanda:** Right. Okay.

**John:** I’m going to focus on little things I noticed in the writing along the way. There’s some moments you choose not to uppercase that I think could be sort of useful uppercase and can help sort of break up some of the action lines. We follow the girl’s “skirt” — like that follow feels like it’s a movement and that helps draw our eye across that.

Another place where I felt like I wanted some capitalization, page four. You do: SUPER: MARCH, 1950 Agents, analysts and secretaries buzz. Capitalize those people so we know that they are groups of folks.

**Amanda:** Got it.

**John:** Caty’s first line of dialogue is in reference to a guy, “Why are you following me?” “Slack sent me.” “ID?” “Left pocket.” It announces her as a badass in a way that is — made me feel like I was watching Agent Carter in a way. And I know if that’s actually applicable to the character we’re about to meet down the road. It made me feel like — I kept waiting for a reveal that she actually was a — she was actually special forces, or she was already well ahead of where she actually was.

And so it put me sort of on my heels about who she really was, or sort of maybe not trust my own instincts about the world she was entering into. I thought she was like a double agent going into it. It put me in a really weird place. Craig, did you feel that?

**Craig:** I did. Mostly because it didn’t quite payoff the way I was hoping. The character I probably have the biggest issue with is Slack, so we’ll talk about him later. But, yes, it did put me in a position where I was a little confused, particularly confused when she showed up and she was a secretary. This may have been sort of the time machine theorem that, you know, a woman comes in from 2016, lands in 1950. Some guy is following here. I could see her totally Krav Maga-ing the dude, right.

But this is 1950. Men follow women and catcall them. That’s the world that this woman lives in. one suggestion, something to consider perhaps, is that she’s aware that this guy is following her, and she stops, and he comes up to her maybe and lights her cigarette, and starts asking her some questions. And she’s sort of flirtatious and kind of innocent and feminine in the way he expects, you know, a little dizzy.

And then when no one is looking, then she grabs him and she says, “Why are you following me?” Like, I can see that she knows how to play a game, because there’s a little bit of a logic problem. When you’re in a busy train station and you physically assault someone, you’re probably going to get arrested, you know. So, there’s — you just have to figure out the logic of that, and figure out maybe if there’s a slightly twistier way of telling me more about her in this. Because I love the fact that she did it to this guy. I thought that was really cool and shocking. I think that he would be shocked, right, because that just doesn’t happen, so I’m shocked, too.

And I guess I wanted a little bit more of a misdirect before the shock happened.

**John:** I would also like to ask aloud the question of what if we lost this beat here and started with her doing her training at the job as a secretary. Basically like your first day as a secretary. And that way we can sort of assume that she is this person that she’s presenting herself, and then save this beat where she’s going after the guy who is following her. That can be a surprise later on.

Because it’s a challenge when you show her starting so strong, and then you have to show her being weak. We’re not quite sure what to believe. And so it’s intriguing if we see her really act out. And I think we’re more scared for her, because we’ve seen her being a milder character before this moment, and then suddenly, boom.

**Amanda:** I see.

**John:** Worth thinking about flipping those.

**Amanda:** I think my concern with having her first line, having her come in and say, “Hi, I’m Caty Pelayo,” was that it was a very weak introduction. That there was no POW to her first entrance and our first introduction to her.

**Craig:** I can see that. I mean, you do want something exciting and something very revealing about her. The issue is the way that you have it now, the POW is diminished by the fact that it’s nothing but POW.

**Amanda:** Got it. Okay.

**Craig:** It’s just an immediate Kaboosh, and you’re like, oh, okay, I guess — you know, again, we’re teaching people how to read this, right? So John is right. The teaser teaches you it’s a procedural. And this teaches you that it’s kind of action. And turns out that it’s–

**John:** It’s really not.

**Craig:** It’s more than that.

**John:** On her side, it’s not an action story. And so it sets an expectation that she’s going to be kicking ass a lot in the show, and that’s not the focus, and so–

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, so much of the show is about how smart she is. The big POW for me is smart. I want to see her smart, and then physical. That’s fine. I like that she’s both. But I need the smart.

**John:** If we could see a moment where you can watch her reading a room and figuring out something that another person would not be able to figure out, even if like she’s waiting for someone to actually come over and talk with her, and she actually is able to figure out a lot of stuff before anyone has actually come to her and then she can introduce herself in a really smart way, that could be a great moment. Another thing I think overall through the script, I was missing the other women. And so the degree to which secretaries aren’t supposed to do this, I didn’t feel the threat or sort of the group of other secretaries who were doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and the degree to which she is a threat to them for stepping outside of these lines.

And I think they’re going to be an important force. And even if they didn’t have a big role in this pilot, I think establishing them here would make it clear like in the series they’re going to be a major–

**Amanda:** Obstacle.

**John:** Obstacle here, too.

**Amanda:** I see. Okay.

**John:** Craig, let’s do a few more minutes here and look through some other things that stood out to you.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, one thing is I liked George’s move on her, where he poses as Slack and she kind of goes along. I think it pays off really nice when Slack comes in and she’s looking at this guy. And there’s some really clever writing there. Some good back and forth.

You have to help us a little bit when he first walks up to her, because I got super confused. I thought you had actually made a mistake with last names. Because you did too good of a job. You faked me out, too. It’s like in football, sometimes the play action, the camera is following a guy who is running with the ball and he doesn’t have it.

So, something just to make clear that, you know, when he walks over to her, she volunteers “I didn’t mean to interrupt Agent Slack,” a coy smile and a glimmer in George’s eyes says he’s happy to play along. It wasn’t quite enough.

And I also was a little confused why she just presumed this was Agent Slack.

**Amanda:** Okay. My thought in that was that he was the first authority figure to come up to her and give her some kind of order, some kind of task.

**Craig:** But does he want — when he does that, what’s his plan?

**Amanda:** His plan is to get her to take notes for him and pretty much — I don’t think he’s taking the bet that his coworker put out to get her number. I think he really is utilizing her and trying to get an in with her to figure out who she is, and what role she’s going to play here. I think it’s more of a curiosity thing than a game-playing thing. But, when she presented the opportunity by saying Agent Slack, he took it.

**Craig:** Got it. It’s a little bit hard for me, and I think for any reader, to read all of that into what he’s doing, because she’s a secretary. She showed up. He’s seen secretaries before. I can’t imagine why he would have a natural instinct to get to know her better already if it’s not about physical attraction.

**Amanda:** Okay.

**Craig:** And I think, frankly, that physical attraction is a great thing to be undermined almost immediately. And if he went over there and was trying to win the bet, and he was doing it by presenting himself as her new boss, because he knows that’s who it is, then he’s, you know, a charming cad. And she’s going to give it to him, you know. And I think that’s just clearer to me. I got a little confused in that zone.

**Amanda:** Okay.

**John:** Cool. Last thing I want to talk about is act outs. So, you chose to have this be a sort of broadcast spec that has act outs. Basically before you go to commercial breaks, there’s the moment of rising tension. Then we stop, and then we start again with a new act.

And when I first started writing television, I hated act outs because they were just torture and they felt really forced and artificial. And then once you sort of accept them, they actually can be kind of freeing, because you can sort of hang your story on those act outs.

And so generally in a writer’s room, as they’re breaking an episode they’ll sort of lean towards those act outs as sort of structural points which they’re going to hang the episode. I didn’t love your act outs. And I think a showrunner reading through this would probably send this back to you with notes about like, hey, we need better, stronger act outs.

And so an example would be at the top of page 18, the end of Act One, it’s an insert on a phonebook entry. There’s a lot to read. Caty find the block on the map and circles it. Three circles overlap. Off her disbelief. End of Act One.

One character alone looking at something doesn’t tend to be a great act out, unless it’s a huge revelation that’s really going to make sense for us. And at this point, I felt like I was ahead of her. The minute I see her start making circles I’m like the circles are going to overlap, and then we’re out.

And if this were episode 17, great. But this is your pilot, and so this has to be the one that is sort of like a showstopper. And so finding that moment where I can’t wait to see what happens next, and there’s nothing about three circles on a map that’s going to make me feel like I can’t wait to see what happens next.

**Craig:** I agree. The one that I loved was the one on page 40 when George reveals about Jack, “He’s my brother.” She stops walking, he keeps going. That felt good. I liked that.

**Amanda:** Yes.

**John:** Which is great. And that kind of moment is about a character and is about a change for a character and you’ve changed the dynamic of the story and the plot. That’s why that works for Craig as an act out. This just plot circling isn’t going to be sort of as fulfilling of an act out.

So, my question for you, Amanda, is if we send this to some folks who do TV staffing, would it be okay for us to do a follow up episode where we actually talk with them about sort of what they thought. Because we’re just two guys. I’d be really curious to see what other people think about this script and whether — where you would fall on the piles with this script. Is that okay?

**Amanda:** Absolutely. I think that would be incredibly helpful and way more generous than I was expecting. Thank you.

**John:** We have time for a couple questions. So why don’t you stick around, because you may answer some of these questions better than we can. Our first one is Steve from London who writes, “If you write a spec ‘inspired by’ a play or film from the ’60s that isn’t a blatant rip-off, but has echoes of the original ‘inspired by’ then what do you put on the front page?”

**Craig:** You wouldn’t put anything on the front page. I mean, if it’s an homage to other movies, it’s an homage to other movies. But unless you are, in fact, taking some of their intellectual property, you know, copyrighted material, then no. I mean, Austin Powers was referring heavily to Our Man Flynn and he didn’t have to put that on the front page at all.

Okay, so second question from RJ. He writes, “I found a true story for which I want to write a screenplay. The events took place in 1888. The subject of the story has many living descendants. Question: Is the story of his life in the public domain, or do his descendants own the rights? He died in 1963 and the last time I can find any record of his family preserving and maintaining his name was a museum that went defunct in 2003 when his grandson died.”

John, do you have any thoughts about this one?

**John:** So RJ wants to know if he needs to get anybody’s rights. No, the people are dead. And so dead people don’t have rights generally. You can use people’s lives or dead people, you’re kind of in the clear. With Amanda here, she used stories from her grandmother and she didn’t have to — I’m sorry, is your grandmother still alive?

**Amanda:** No, that was my grandmother’s funeral that we were sharing these stories.

**John:** And so you’re pretty clear. Here’s where RJ might run into a problem is that if he’s basing this story off of one specific account that he read, that is sort of only in that account, then he needs the rights to that account. There could be a book written about that thing that he’s really basing this around. That, he’s going to need the rights to that thing.

But if it’s a well-known event or just something he’s researched himself, he’s fine.

**Craig:** Indeed. I agree.

**John:** All right. Mauro writes, “I’m planning on shooting a feature this year, uber low budget, and I want to show two main characters playing Monopoly. Do I have to clear this with Hasbro? Or is a board game so utilitarian/mundane that showing it onscreen doesn’t need a clearance?”

Amanda, question for you. Do you think he needs the clearance for them playing this board game? You love board games.

**Amanda:** I do love board games. And I’m going to go with yes.

**John:** You are absolutely correct.

**Craig:** Tell her what she wins, John. [laughs]

**John:** She wins another script… — I used to work in clearances at Universal. I spent a summer doing clearances. And so clearances are anything you see onscreen in a movie that someone owns copyright to, you have to get that legally cleared. Which basically means I was calling up a bunch of people, getting them to sign these forms, saying it’s okay to put this up in the movie.

Monopoly is the kind of thing you have to clear every time, because the people who own Monopoly, they own Monopoly. And if you want to portray it onscreen, you have to get their permission to do so.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only exceptions to this are if you’re parodying something. So, if characters are playing a Monopoly-like game and the point is that it’s a parody of Monopoly, you are somewhat broadly protected there. But otherwise, yeah, you’re clearing it.

**John:** I had an interesting experience this last week. I was flying back from London and on the flight I was watching The 5th Wave, which was a movie that came out this last year. And about halfway through the movie I look and there’s a Big Fish poster on the wall behind one of the main characters.

And so I paused it, I took a screenshot, and then I put it on Twitter saying like does anyone know why there’s a Big Fish poster in The 5th Wave? And through the wonder of Twitter I found out that the director was on Twitter. He tweeted back to say there were three reasons why Big Fish was in that shot.

First reason is they were shooting in Georgia, and a lot of the crew had actually worked on Big Fish, and so it was kind of a nice thing for them. Second and probably the biggest reason is Big Fish and 5th Wave are both Sony movies, and it’s really easy to get clearance for a movie at the same studio.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But the final reason is the director is a big fan of Scriptnotes. And so he wanted to do a shout-out. So that’s why we are in, the Big Fish poster is in The 5th Wave.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for that inclusion.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. So, I think both of our One Cool Things are actually Hollywood related, just like that last story. My One Cool Thing is a GIF. And it is a GIF of superheroes jumping. And it came out this last week. And it’s basically a bunch of the Marvel superheroes doing their jumping, where they’re jumping off of apple boxes that are later going to be visual effects things. And it’s just so absurd. And I love it because it just points out how ridiculous it is, this whole process is for making movies.

And so you see Chris Evans like just jumping down off a box. The best by far is Benedict Cumberbatch, as Doctor Strange, who has to like stand up and then jump like he’s about to fly. But it’s just like sort of this skip. And I love our actors, but just imagining being on the set where like all you have to do is jump up a foot a lot. And try to maintain your cool.

**Craig:** That is this running discussion on every set now a director saying to the visual effects supervisor, “How much do you need here exactly?” And he’ll say, “I just need the first second of his coming up off the box. Everything after that falls away. It falls apart after that. I just need that bit.”

And so you’re like, okay, don’t worry if you look stupid. It’s just for the first little thing. And there’s a whole negotiation of tell me how long this lasts so I know. And then, of course, what happens? The whole damn thing ends up on the Internet. Classic.

**Amanda:** Of course.

**Craig:** Classic.

**John:** The best.

**Craig:** The best. Well, my One Cool Thing, this one doesn’t reflect well on actors. This is a real theme here. It’s called The Empty Cup awards. And I just love this.

So, this is a compilation video that was put together on Slate. The piece is done by Myles McNutt and Daniel Hubbard. And the idea here is all too frequently on television or less the case in movies, but on television characters are walking around with coffee cups. And there’s clearly nothing in the cup. And there’s all sorts of reasons for that. The least of which is water in the cup, it might spill, it might fall, whatever. But the problem is the actors simply don’t convey any weight whatsoever in the cup. So, you end up with actors effortlessly hoisting full tall lattes around or carrying two of them in one hand at one time.

In one case, one character has some kind of hot chocolate that’s got the whip cream on it. And the whip cream is definitely not whip cream either. And she’s just like wiggling that thing around. And it’s really funny actually. I think that a lot of actors are going to think twice the next time they’re handed a coffee cup.

**John:** It’s, again, a great compilation of absurd moments of acting. And I was frustrated and delighted about how many of those moments I actually had remembered seeing and they had annoyed me. And Supergirl for whatever reason, when I watched the first couple of episodes of that with my daughter, there’s a lot of coffee cups in that and I had never believed them.

Greg Berlanti, if you’re listening to this show, please spend some of the money to fix the coffee cup situation.

**Craig:** I mean, it does seem like it wouldn’t be that hard. You don’t have to put hot coffee in the cup. It’s got a lid on it. Just put water in it.

**John:** Not even water. Just put clear polymer. Just make it as heavy as the actual liquid would be.

**Craig:** Well, water is as heavy as actual coffee.

**Amanda:** But that spills.

**John:** But water could spill. Water could spill.

**Craig:** Okay, sure. I guess. Well, you know, yeah, put a weight in it.

**John:** So, while we’re ruining things for people watching stuff, I will tell you that if you ever see a paper bag in a TV show or a movie, it’s not actually a paper bag. So, because those make noise, because paper bags make noise, they use this brown cloth that they starch the hell out of it, so it looks like paper. But it doesn’t actually crinkle that way.

And they look really good, but they don’t look perfect. So now that I’ve told you that paper bags aren’t actually paper bags, you will see like, oh, that’s right, that’s not a paper bag.

**Craig:** Oh god. You know what? This is like the time the first person told me about reel change marks. And then there was the time somebody said, “By the way, you know that when people are driving in a car and you’re looking through the windshield at them, the rear view mirror isn’t there.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m like, wait, what? Oh god. Yeah, ruined. Life ruined.

**John:** Amanda, do you have a One Cool Thing for us?

**Amanda:** I do have a One Cool Thing. I know the show has been mentioned on a couple episodes before, but I just got my copy of Hamilton: The Revolution, the book.

**Craig:** Yep.

**Amanda:** And I am devouring it. I’m only like in the second chapter but I poured over every picture, every annotation, and it’s amazing.

**John:** Wow. So she came prepared with board games and Hamilton. She definitely knows her audience here.

**Amanda:** [laughs] But the great thing is this is not put on at all. Like I skipped board game night last night just to read my script again. And I got up this morning to read another chapter of Hamilton: The Revolution. Because I’m obsessed. So, it just works out. I love you guys.

**John:** Oh, fantastic.

**Craig:** We love you, too.

**John:** Thank you, again, for being so brave and for coming in and for showing up in Austin. We all lucked out having you be the person who got that ticket. So thank you very much.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** And that’s our show this week. So, our outro this week comes from Paul B. If you have an outro for the show, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com and send us a link to that. That’s also where you can write questions like the ones we answered on the show today.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. If you would like to talk to us on Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Amanda, are you on Twitter?

**Amanda:** I am. @amandamorad.

**John:** That’s fantastic. You will find links to a lot of the things we talked about on the show today, including Amanda’s script, and these wonderful One Cool Things, and other stuff we find that is useful. We will append those to the podcast that you’re listening to right now. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Amanda.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** And, Craig, I’ll talk to you next week.

**Craig:** Got it. Bye-bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Escape Room LA](http://escaperoomla.com/)
* [Scriptnotes, 248: Pitching an Open Writing Assignment](http://johnaugust.com/2016/pitching-an-open-writing-assignment)
* [Scriptnotes, 228: Scriptnotes Holiday Show 2015](http://johnaugust.com/2015/scriptnotes-holiday-show-2015)
* [Master of None, S1 E4: “Indians on TV”](https://www.netflix.com/watch/80065730?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C3%2C32842c79-3788-4f76-b086-740e1e8feaa3-16878876) on Netflix
* Individual bonus tracks are now available in the [John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Watch Matthew edit an episode of Scriptnotes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp9MDdhZ2lY)
* The [Austin Film Festival](http://austinfilmfestival.com/)
* [Betty Bureau](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BETTYBUREAUPilot316.pdf) by Amanda Morad
* [@amandamorad on Twitter](https://twitter.com/amandamorad)
* screenwriting.io on [referencing proper nouns in your screenplay](http://screenwriting.io/can-you-reference-specific-proper-noun-productssongslocationsetc-in-your-screenplay/)
* [Director J Blakeson answers John’s question about the background Big Fish poster in The 5th Wave](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/730150770922774530)
* [Hollywood jumps without CGI](http://www.avclub.com/article/gif-pre-cgi-superhero-jumps-proves-actors-are-just-236529)
* [The Empty Cup Awards](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/05/10/the_empty_cup_awards_are_here_to_raise_awareness_for_an_important_tv_issue.html)
* [Hamilton: The Revolution](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455539740/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Paul B ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/how-to-introduce-characters).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So, on April 16, 2016, I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom to talk about their amazing show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This was all part of the Writers Guild Foundation Craft Day 2016. It was a full day session. So, I did this panel in the morning with Aline and Rachel. Later in the afternoon I did the panel with Lawrence Kasdan and me and Craig. They were both great.

This one was wonderful for reasons I didn’t expect, partly because it was filthy. And so this is also my parental advisory warning. If you are in the car with your kids, it’s not appropriate probably, because specific things are discussed which are probably not things you want your kids to be hearing. But, it’s just great, and so we had a fun time talking about the show and really focusing on character introductions, which is how do you first let your audience know who these characters are, what they should be looking for. And I thought the pilot for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was incredibly useful on that front.

So, enjoy. And we’ll be back next week with a normal episode. Thanks.

[Start of live show]

Hello and welcome. I’m required to say hello and welcome whenever I greet a crowd here. So, in addition to being a screenwriter, I’m also host of a podcast called Scriptnotes. Thank you. Some people are listening to Scriptnotes. And Craig Mazin and I each week talk about the craft and business of screenwriting. And I think our very first guest ever on the show was Aline Brosh McKenna who is going to be joining us up here in a second.

Aline is fantastic. And Aline tells you exactly how things are supposed to be and what to do and what not to do. She gives us fashion tips, which I don’t ever take. Not this last Christmas, but the Christmas before she came to our holiday special and she brought a special guest. And that guest was the star of the TV show that they’ve created together. Her name was Rachel Bloom and she sang a song to the Scriptnotes thing called When Will I Be Famous. And the answer to that question was 2015 when her TV show debuted and was phenomenal and everyone loved it. And then she won the Golden Globe.

So, we are so excited to welcome as our first guests today Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom, creators of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Hi everybody. Good morning.

**Rachel Bloom:** Good morning.

**John:** Good morning. So, I’m obsessed with your show. And I think anyone who listens to the podcast knows that I’m obsessed with your show. I have seen every episode. I’ve seen some episodes multiple times. I saw the version back when it was a Showtime show and then I saw the CW show. So we can talk about all that stuff.

But because this is Craft Day, I thought we might really focus in on just really craft topics, especially I’d like to talk with you guys about how you introduce a character. Because we can look through how you guys introduced characters in the pilot, how you introduce characters later along the way. If people want to read along at home, if you go to johnaugust.com/crazy, the scene pack that we’re going to talk through is in there. It’s a PDF. So you can look through that. Also, in Weekend Read, you can see the whole script, which you guys were so generous to provide for us. The whole pilot script for what you shot. And we can talk through stuff. But, characters?

**Aline:** Well, I can give you an example. We were trying to figure out the character of Greg’s dad. And we kind of didn’t really know what to do with him and how to make him special and interesting. And it was kind of close in to when we needed him to work. It was actually we were in production already, because it was for episode six. And we just couldn’t kind of get a beat on him.

And then Rachel and I met at Starbucks and we were like, “How do we do this?” We knew we wanted him to be sort of a macho guy, and then I said maybe he was a chef. And then we went on this thing of maybe he had had a restaurant that closed. And then Rachel said — so this is I think typical of our collaboration — so I said, you know, maybe he’s a chef and the restaurant closed and we can talk about West Covina, how like all the good restaurants have been replaced by chains. But it didn’t really give us any behavior.

And then was like, well, what’s funny about him? And Rachel said, “Maybe he’s got macaws.”

**John:** So a specific bird reference there.

**Aline:** Maybe he has two macaws. And it was like we started talking about, and that gave us a lot of stuff about him being like very stubborn and collecting birds, even though it’s like not great for his son. And then that led to him like — we had always had him being somebody who is kind of sickly. And that led to him being somebody who still smokes and drinks, despite having emphysema and heart problems. So, it was like — it was a combination of really trying to find the purpose and the narrative, and then finding things that were quirky and special.

And Rachel in particular, in part I think because her background is in sketch, always approaches a character with putting some topspin on them so that there’s always something else going on that makes them kind of interesting and different and special.

**Rachel:** But, Aline, you do the same thing. We’re right in the middle of writing season two right now and I feel like we have this great pattern where one of us will ask kind of a general question, and then the other will answer with a really unexpected specific.

I remember in the original Showtime pilot, and this ended up being in the CW, we were talking about what happens when Greg and Rebecca go on this date. And then out of nowhere you were like, “What if she just like gave him a hand job?” And I was like, what, no. And then — but then it was like, okay, well what if she did that? And that ended up being really like the thing that sets up their relationship. This idea of this hand job/make out interrogation scene where this idea of from the beginning it was always about this messed up sexual power.

**Aline:** And that she’s not afraid to use her sexual — she doesn’t even understand that that might not be okay. That she’s just like — and in her mind, if you asked her, she’s just giving a guy a hand job. She doesn’t realize she’s doing an interrogation. Which is something they should do by the way. I think it would be much more effective than waterboarding.

**Rachel:** I totally agree.

**Aline:** Because you could get anything out of a man.

**Rachel:** Oh yeah. Yeah. If you just threaten like, you won’t get to cum, like, “Okay, fine! The bomb is here.” Yeah.

**John:** I saw the Showtime pilot.

**Rachel:** Saturday morning. You like my cum sounds.

**Aline:** This is what we do all day.

**Rachel:** All day.

**Aline:** This show is very much built in conversation. You know, Rachel and I spend, somebody said what are you doing to prepare for season two. I said, well what we always do, which is talking for hours, and hours, and hours. And we talk about stuff that’s not relevant to the show at all, like stuff with the characters and stories. We know things about these characters that isn’t relevant and will never be relevant.

I always say it’s like when they go into a hoarder’s apartment and he’s built like an entire universe out of like creatures he made from soda cans and, what do you call that fuzzy wire, pipe cleaners? That’s sort of what we do is we build this world and then we populate it. And it is sort of like kids playing with a dollhouse.

**Rachel:** Yeah. I mean, that’s why writing with Aline always feels like — we were just talking about this — it feels like the most effortless part. The time just flies so quickly. Because it’s building a world made up of a bunch of really fun specifics. And I learned so much, because I come from more sketch, and animation, I kind of worked in more broad strokes. Okay, so what are the ideas we want to service, and then kind of like not working in stock characters, but like how do the characters service this premise.

And when we started creating the show, I mean, I’ve learned so much about character specificity from Aline, but I remember like the first day it was like, okay, so it’s going to be a show about how love takes you over, so how is this girl a symbol. And you were like, “What’s her favorite color? What’s her favorite meal? What was her childhood like?”

And it was like going into it with an emotional specificity that I hadn’t done before, and that’s how now we approach every character. And I learned that from you. You’re so smart.

**Aline:** That’s what we do.

**Rachel:** I love you so much.

**John:** So, Aline, I know you from things like Devil Wears Prada. You’re known for long features, where you’re setting up a character and taking them through this journey, a journey that happens exactly once, versus a TV show which is we’re seeing this character again and again, and all of these characters again and again.

Rachel, I first knew you from Robot Chicken. And so Robot Chicken, those are incredibly fast sketches where the first frame we have to understand what that character is supposed to be, and then getting to the joke as quickly as possible. So, what was this first conversation between you guys about who was this character? Did it start with who is the Rebecca character, or did it start with the situation? What were those initial conversations like?

**Aline:** They were kind of both, but I will say, you know, we’ve always felt like we were writing a 45-hour movie. That’s always how we’ve approached it. I think the series that I love the most are the ones where you feel like the creators are in control of the whole story. Like when you’re watching Breaking Bad there’s no question in your mind that he knows where he’s going. Mad Men.

I get tense when I watch TV shows where I feel like you know that every week they’re like [makes noise of car screeching]. And so we divided it into four chapters, and every chapter has an ending, and it’s building to an ultimate ending. And that’s the only way I could approach it.

**John:** Are these chapters seasons?

**Aline:** Seasons.

**John:** So, when you guys were having this conversation, were you talking about how you were first going to meet her. What were the initial conversations about how we first meet Rebecca?

**Rachel:** Do you remember the construction site?

**Aline:** Yeah, I do.

**Rachel:** So, I think originally — because when we first met it was going to be a network show. And we weren’t even sure if I would get to play it, because like who’s going to hire this over someone famous. And so we were like, okay, so we weren’t thinking as much of like me playing the character as much as the character. And originally the pilot started with this scene of there was a construction site. It was a going to be a helicopter shot of New York City.

**Aline:** Right. We were not really up to speed on budget.

**Rachel:** No. [laughs] A construction site and she walks onto the construction site in giant stiletto heels and says–

**Aline:** Well, it was going to be a thing where there’s like a bunch of dudes on a construction site, and then this girl comes out with these heels and she kind of goes through. And then the very next thing that happened is she Instagrams a selfie of herself on this construction site, trying desperately to get everyone. So you sort of immediately contrast like she’s very capable at work, but she’s a loser, has no friends, so she Instagrams a picture of herself with a helmet. And the guys behind her–

**Rachel:** Yes. And she chews out the guys. She basically — she calls them all mentally handicapped. And she makes one of them cry. And then she’s like, “Having fun on the job.” And like hashtag Work Times. And like no one — and she keeps refreshing it and seeing if anyone likes it, and no one likes it.

**Aline:** Right. And then we very early on had this idea that she runs into this ex-boyfriend, and we spent just an inordinate amount of time figuring out if it was a high school boyfriend, or a college boyfriend. There was a whole long thing that led us to summer camp boyfriend, but there were a lot of considerations.

But, ultimately she runs into the boyfriend and then we had her having a panic attack in the script, in the outline for a long time, in the script for a while she was cutting herself in the — right now in the pilot she’s taking those pills. She used to be cutting herself.

**Rachel:** You had the really crazy idea that she would — and I kind of loved this — she would take out a pack of cigarettes, and you think she was going to smoke, and then she’d take out a needle or a razor blade and be cutting herself like below her nailbed. And this is when we were with Showtime. And they were like, “Wow.” [laughs] They were like, “That’s dark.”

**John:** They’re like, “We had Dexter on the air. Like that’s dark.”

**Aline:** But you know what, that became our litmus test when we were pitching the show. We’d pitch that, and that became our litmus test for should we do the show here, because people who blanched at that so much, it’s like cutting is super prevalent, guys. Lots and lots and lots and lots of women do this, particularly — well, men do it, too. But it’s very prevalent behavior that you almost never see, especially not in a high-functioning person. And when we pitched it that became our litmus test to like people who blanched too much at that.

And then ultimately Showtime was excited about that kind of stuff. But we ended up peeling away from that just because in that moment we had gone to this thing of trying to explore her medication and how she was medicated, so that’s how it ended up being that way.

**Rachel:** And then I just want to say one more thing, that the show then, once we settled upon the idea that I was going to play the character and we were going to pitch it to smaller cable places, who wouldn’t care as much that I wasn’t a name, that’s — we basically wrote the pilot by improvising aloud to each other. And as I started to play Rebecca more in the improvisation with Aline, the character changed.

**Aline:** It changed.

**Rachel:** Because it was like, oh, here’s how I portray her. So I think she was much more of a hard-ass, and then when I started to portray her there was this weird musical theater ingénue bubbliness, where it was like she was never necessarily going to be the person to be like, “Fuck you, you fucking ass — ” Like, that just wasn’t my portrayal of her. So it changed with that improvisation.

**Aline:** That’s right.

**John:** But from the initial instinct, it was always that she was the highly functional dysfunctional hero of this story.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** And the idea that we would get access to her inner mind by songs, was that in the very initial conception?

**Aline:** Always.

**Rachel:** Yes.

**Aline:** Always. And Rachel comes from a background of doing musicals, traditional musicals, and then also her music comedy videos. And so she knows way more than I do about when to have a song and how the song accesses emotions. And that’s all completely second nature to her.

And one thing that was interesting about working with someone who is a lot younger than me, and in certain areas was not as experienced, Rachel has like rock solid experience and convictions about the music, and the songs, and how they’re put together, and where they belong in the narrative. And it’s just — it’s that thing we’ve talked about a lot on Scriptnotes, about expertise. Rachel is — no matter where we were, how intimidating the situation was — when we’re talking about the music and the songs, Rachel has such a firm point of view. She knows every musical. And knows the background of American musicals inside and out.

So, that’s where our background. And I’m a newbie and a learner about that stuff.

**John:** Let’s take a look in the packet here. I’m going to hand these out to you guys.

**Rachel:** I haven’t seen this in a while.

**John:** Yeah. I know.

**Rachel:** It’s really cool.

**John:** It’s so weird with a TV show, like when do you ever go back to the script.

**Aline:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** You shoot a script and it’s dead to you.

**Rachel:** Last revision September 15, 2015.

**John:** And this was Golden Rod pages. This is–

**Aline:** This is what we shot–

**John:** This is what you shot for the CW when you–

**Aline:** This was our CW version, yeah.

**John:** I’d love to start with this first scene here. So this is a first time you’re going to the new offices. So, essentially for people who aren’t familiar with the show, Rebecca has bumped into her camp boyfriend in–

**Aline:** Oh, these are selected scenes. Yeah, okay.

**John:** These are selected scenes. She’s bumped into her camp boyfriend, Josh, who is now moving to West Covina. She’s like, “You know what, I hate my job here. I’m going to move to West Covina.” She’s gotten herself a job at this law firm and this is her showing up at this law firm for the first time.

So, this is our first time meeting really important characters who are going to be series regulars, so Darryl, her best friend who is going to be following her around. So, let’s read aloud.

**Aline:** Oh, okay read aloud. Great.

**John:** Do you want to be Darryl and I’ll do scene descriptions?

**Rachel:** Great. And I’ll play Rebecca.

**John:** That’s a bold choice.

**Rachel:** Did it a couple months, so.

**John:** So we start off-screen. So there’s a pre-lap voice over of Darryl here.

**Aline:** I hope you don’t mind, but I handed out copies of your resume. We’re just — oh you’re going to read scene description.

**John:** So, then we’re inside Whitefeather Law Offices, morning. The offices of Whitefeather and Associates. Everyone stands up to watch Rebecca and her new boss DARRYL WHITEFEATHER (50’S) walk through.

**Aline:** We’re just so honored… and confused, frankly… to have an attorney of your caliber here.

**Rachel:** So, Darryl WhiteFeather…That’s an interesting name.

**Aline:** Yeah, I’m what they call a full one- eighth. One-eighth Chippewa. That’s why everyone here calls me Chief.

**Rachel:** Interesting…

**Aline:** Yeah, they don’t, but I wish they–

**John:** She checks her phone. Still nothing.

**Rachel:** Hey, is there a problem with cell phone service in West Covina? Like some kind of mountains or…magnetic clouds?

**John:** No.

**Aline:** No, I have Sprint. It’s the bomb. I’m sorry, I have kids.

**Rachel:** Oh.

**Aline:** But I am getting divorced.

**Rachel:** Oh, I’m sorry.

**Aline:** I’m not! Hey-o! Let me show you around.

**John:** They walk through the office.

**Aline:** So you’re from New York? Spent some time there myself.

**Rachel:** Oh, yeah?

**Aline:** Yeah, a week after college with my buddies. We went to ALL the best places. They still have that greaaaat pizza place downtown? De– something? You know that one? The one with the pizza, that has pizza?

**Rachel:** Oh, yeah, that one…it’s great.

**Aline:** Cheese and–

**Rachel:** Yeah. That’s pizza. Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s it. We actually have some great places here in the ‘Cov. There’s a wine bar on Foothill, has a killer Riesling. And the restaurant in the Hilton, the chef there trained in…was it Tustan? Or was it…no, it was Tuscany.

**Rachel:** That’s in Italy. Cool.

**Aline:** Yeah. It was Tuscany. Have you ever heard of Branzino?

**Rachel:** Yeah.

**Aline:** It’s a fish.

**Rachel:** I know.

**Aline:** Oh, because I thought it was a sandwich.

**Rachel:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah.

**Rachel:** Well, I really look forward to everything this town has to offer. That’s why I moved here, to chillax. Live the SoCal sunny lifestyle.

**Aline:** We are only two hours away from the beach. Four in traffic, but it’s not a big deal.

**Rachel:** Exactly.

**Aline:** Feel like you and I are gonna have a lot in common. And not just the pizza and the fish.

**John:** He smiles. She reaches over to a desk, grabs a few brochures for the firm.

**Rachel:** …until my business cards come in, think I’ll just take a few of these to show I definitely work here, in case anyone asks or is curious.

**John:** ANGLE ON: Paula, who is at her desk, looking at Rebecca’s resume. Paula’s cubicle is decorated with a mix of angry cubicle art, puppy and kitten photos, sexy vampires and office-themed cartoons.

**Aline:** I don’t get it. You see this resume? Harvard, Yale, special skills: Mandarin? She get this out of a resume book? What the hell is she doing here?

**John:** Mrs. Hernandez shakes her head, shrugs.

**Aline:** Exactly. Makes no sense.

**John:** Rebecca and Darryl pass Paula’s desk. They stop.

**Aline:** Rebecca, this is Paula.

**Rachel:** Oh, great, hi. Are you my assistant? I’m gonna need a ton of help getting my computer set up, I’m a total grandma with that stuff.

**John:** She notices Paula is glaring. And Darryl is afraid.

**Aline:** Actually, Paula is our head paralegal.

**Rachel:** Oh, I’m so sorry.

**Aline:** Two years of training, six months of night school, fifteen years of experience, but never mind. Those are some good knockoff Louboutins. I know how to say it. Yep.

**Rachel:** Oh, thanks! Actually, they’re real, but I got them on sale.

**Aline:** Lindsey Lohan wears those. She’s been to jail six times and has fake hair. Did you know that? Everyone knows that. Right, Mrs. Hernandez?

**John:** Mrs. Hernandez nods. “For sure.”

**Aline:** Oh, sorry, this is Mrs. Hernandez. She is our communications director.

**Rachel:** Pleased to meet you.

**John:** She shakes hands with Mrs. Hernandez, who crushes her hand.

**Aline:** Careful there. She went to a “Women in Business” seminar a couple of years ago, came back with that death grip. So, what brings you to our lovely West Covina?

**Rachel:** Just looking for a change.

**Aline:** Oh. Know anyone in town or have any relatives? Anything?

**Rachel:** Um… nope.

**Aline:** Huh.

**Rachel:** No.

**Aline:** Huh, I see. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well welcome aboard.

**John:** They walk away. Paula turns to Mrs. Hernandez.

**Aline:** “They’re real, got them on sale.” Who is that person?

**John:** She eyes Rebecca who walks into Darryl’s office.

We can stop there. So, let’s talk about–

**Rachel:** That was weird, because I was doing an — we shot that scene in the original pilot, and then we reshot because we recast the role of Darryl. And when I reshot it, I was kind of doing an impression of myself in the original pilot, because I had watched it so much. And right now I was doing an impression of myself doing an impression of myself.

**John:** You’re a copy of a copy of a copy.

**Rachel:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** So good. So let’s talk about introducing Darryl and Paula.

**Aline:** Well this is interesting, I think, for people who are crafty folks and making things. So, Darryl went through a lot of evolutions. We wrote Darryl, he was kind of a stock character, I would say, like the dumbo boss. And we auditioned a million people, including Pete Gardner, but he didn’t get the part. Michael McDonald got the part. And the reason we hired Michael was that he brought this weird intensity to Darryl that we really loved. Darryl seemed like some really strange things had happened in his life. And we really liked that.

So, Michael is in the pilot. You saw Michael. And Michael brings a completely different thing than Pete does. Michael really brings this thing of like he hits on her a bit, and you can’t get a beat on him, and you would sort of believe that he was secretly blackmailing everyone in the office. There’s something a little nefarious about him.

So, then when Michael — so some of this dialogue is improvised by Michael McDonald in his audition and on set, right?

**Rachel:** Yes.

**Aline:** And we incorporated. So these poor actors — so then Pete came back with a bunch of other people to audition and had to read stuff that had been improvised by Michael.

**Rachel:** And Michael couldn’t do it because he had other — by the time we got ordered to series on CW, which was more episodes than Showtime, he has a ton of directing commitments. So it wasn’t like a bad–

**Aline:** He was the in-house director for Mike & Molly. And he was really sad, but it was more of a time commitment. So, we cast this wide net. We got a bunch of different people. And we found Pete. And Pete is a veteran — most of our cast are veteran Broadway people. And Pete is a veteran-veteran improviser. I mean, anyone in Los Angeles who does improv knows Pete.

So, when he was improvising with Rachel, I remember during his audition they improvised a lot. And I remember Rachel said to me after the audition, “I feel so safe with him,” because you could anywhere, take the scene anywhere. And then Pete has then kind of lovable goofiness. He’s so sweet. And so he has brought a lot of his Pete-ness to the role.

So, that role I would say of all the roles evolved the most to kind of suit the actor. And I think one of the things that’s interesting when you’re writing something is particularly sometimes if you have a character who is maybe not as strongly conceived as some of the other ones, an actor can really bring something very special to it. And we have really — our characters have flowed to the actors that we cast very frequently.

**John:** That’s the luxury of television is that you get to see who those people are and what their strengths are and play to their strengths.

So, let’s talk about how we first meet Darryl. So, from the very start, “I hope you don’t mind, but I handed out copies of your resume. We’re just so honored and confused, frankly, to have an attorney of your caliber here.” So right at the very start he’s laying out exactly sort of like — he’s like the dog who is rolling over on its back and exposing his belly, saying, “Ooh, we’re so happy that you’re here.” And it puts him in a strange place. It also gives Rebecca a lot of power in the situation, which is an unusual dynamic for somebody to be coming into an office as–

**Aline:** A beta boss.

**John:** Yeah. A beta boss is sort of a new thing. Then we’re getting into his Native American heritage, which we’ll get into a little bit later on. He leads with the fact that he’s divorced and that he’s sort of flummoxed, that he’s easily sort of overwhelmed. So it’s an interesting, exciting character. I noticed that there’s actually very little scene description here. It’s mostly just a big run of dialogue.

**Aline:** Yeah. There’s probably more — this is a production draft, so if you went back to our pilot draft, I’m sure it’s filled with lovely crafted sentences. And then when you’re in production it’s like, “Who needs all that?”

**John:** But you’re still trying to keep up Rebecca’s story. So, Rebecca has moved here and she’s trying to find — doesn’t want to make it seem strange that she’s moved here. So she’s grabbing the brochures in place of business cards in case Josh sees her. It’s like, “Oh, well this is going to be my excuse for why I moved here. And I really do have a job here. I’m not just stalking you.” Even though she’s really just stalking him.

**Rachel:** Yeah, because there was a risk of this scene just being like kind of a typical sitcom, like meet the new boss at the new firm, and throughout it she’s checking her phone, checking her phone. We never wanted to drop the plot of the pilot.

**Aline:** And this is the big lie that’s revealed in — spoiler alert — but it’s revealed in a later episode, in episode nine, that this is a bunch of — she then tells people that Darryl recruited her. And like a lot of liars, Rebecca doesn’t bother to clean up her lies. Because the clean-up of the lie is often the thing that undoes the lie. So, she just lies and just thinks–

**John:** She lies and walks away from it.

**Aline:** Hopes for the best, right. And this one comes back to bite her on the ass. She never tells Darryl that it’s a secret, because it would undermine her. But she basically just said, you know, once he got that resume. But, part of Darryl thinks, “Oh, I deserve this. I’m wonderful. And this is one of the wonderful things I deserve. And I finally am getting something good.”

**John:** Yeah. Like he did The Secret, and he visualized this moment and now it’s come true.

**Aline:** Exactly.

**John:** You are his embodiment of a secret.

**Aline:** Darryl has multiple copies of The Secret, for sure.

**Rachel:** There was always this idea of Darryl putting on an identity because he didn’t know who he was. And so hence the one-eighth Chippewa thing. He’s searching for who he is. And we’ve dropped this a little with Pete’s particular portrayal, but this idea he thinks he’s — he’s kind of falsely sophisticated. And so the idea that he would deserve a Harvard lawyer.

Originally I think Darryl had a little bit more hubris. And now Pete has brought this sweet, sad, humbleness to it, but we always knew, even though he was kind of stock, that there was a deep sadness to Darryl. We just didn’t always know what it was or what it was rooted in.

**John:** And so how early on — this is a little spoiler for people who aren’t caught up on the show — the idea that he is bisexual, or discovers he’s bisexual. Did you know that when you were writing the scene, or was that just–

**Rachel:** Yes.

**John:** Okay, you knew that. Wow.

**Aline:** We knew very early on. And it was partly because Darryl’s sort of like search for identity and the amount of upset that he had about his divorce, but he doesn’t dislike his wife, he just feels really upset about the divorce and he really misses his daughter.

And we just started talking about like who would Darryl go out with and what would Darryl’s dating life be like and would he be interested in Rebecca. And that never really made sense to us. And also the thing about being bi is like it’s the only thing that I can think of that you work up an enormous amount of courage and you say to someone, “I’m bisexual,” and they go, “No you’re not. You’re not. No.”

You know, I mean, if you tell someone you’re gay, a negative reaction might be they were upset or they’re judgmental, but bisexual people confront someone going, “No, you’re not. No.” And that seemed like a good predicament for Darryl, because Darryl is always trying to find an identity, and people are always saying, “I don’t believe you. You’re not really that.”

And so what I love about where we went with that ultimately is that when he discovers he’s bisexual, that’s the first thing in his life that has really rung true for him. It’s really like, “That’s it.” And so that’s why he embraces it so fully. But we did know that here. But there were a lot of things in the show that because of the really detailed pipe cleaner art, that Rachel and I knew that we waited to reveal until — I mean, we still have stuff that we haven’t revealed, but we just waited a long time with Darryl for the right moment. We didn’t make it part of his shtick in other words.

**John:** Let’s talk about Paula, because she’s the second most important character in the show overall, because she ends up being the confidant, the buddy, the cheerleader. Like you’re on the road to destruction and she’s the one who says, “No, go faster. Go faster.”

**Aline:** Totally.

**John:** Let’s talk about Paula here. Because when we first meet her, it seems like she’s going to be a stock villain. She’s going to be the stock person who is taking you down. If this is 9 to 5, she’d be the Roz character who is going to stop you. And what I love about how you set her up is from the start we see her cubicle decoration, even though we’re not going to really catch that in the pilot, it’s important for it to be there so we sort of inform the choices about her.

But she’s telling us about herself, which is really telling us more stuff about Rebecca. “You see this resume? Harvard. Yale. Special skills: Mandarin.” Again, it’s reminding us, oh don’t forget, she’s actually really competent, which was crucial. You’re setting up Mrs. Hernandez, a character who never speaks, and who’s sort of like–

**Rachel:** And we know why that is by the way. And we’ll–

**Aline:** We’ll get there.

**Rachel:** We’ll get there.

**John:** You’ll get there eventually.

**Rachel:** I just want to say we know why that is. It’s not just a gag.

**John:** Not just a gag. All right.

**Rachel:** Put that out for all the haters. Because this audience is clearly full of haters.

**John:** But in her dialogue choices, you’re describing she’s getting a chance to say things that she actually knows about. And she’s obsessed with popular culture. Louboutins. She wants to be — she aspires to be the person who gets to talk about these things, and yet she doesn’t. So, when you were writing this character for the first time, did you have a sense of who that person was going to be cast down the road? It wasn’t written for a person, but it was just a type?

**Aline:** She was always an antagonist — she’s the antagonist of the pilot. She doesn’t get on board until the very end. Well, we cast — the widest net we probably cast was for Paula. We saw every kind of — I mean, we weren’t restricted. We were color blind in almost all our casting except for — no, we were pretty color blind in most of our casting.

**Rachel:** Except for Josh, who was specifically Asian.

**Aline:** Except for Josh was always supposed to be Asian. So, here’s my tip for you. If you are looking for the deepest pool of talent in the world, it’s women between the ages of like 38 and 58. I’m telling you.

**Rachel:** They’re unbelievable and they can all sing.

**Aline:** Literally people you don’t know can sing, so here’s the thing. When we cast Greg, there’s a lot of dudes, especially white dudes, who think they’re amazing. And have been told they’re amazing. And we saw more bad auditions. Like guys were like kind of handsome and someone said you should be an actor. We saw millions of those.

**Rachel:** Okay, wait. I just want to clarify. I think the thing, and this is actually really good to know for any actors out there, the problem with a lot of the people we saw for Greg was because they had in their heads, okay, I’m the like hot romantic lead, everything was really small. And everything — the wine bar is over on — and they’re basically falling asleep because someone had told them this is what naturalistic acting is. This is your role. You’re the romantic heartthrob lead. And that’s why–

**Aline:** But it’s also a supply and demand thing. I mean, if you’re a handsome Caucasian gentleman, you know, 30, plus or minus five, you’re on a TV show. You have your own TV show. They’re so in demand. Middle aged ladies, who are so talented — I mean, literally, women would come in and crush the scene, and then you could click on their singing thing and it would be like, wow, that was a really good sing. And then they would sing and it would be like — it was like that commercial, your hair would be blown back, by how good they sang.

We could have cast that part — I mean, Donna is amazing, amazing, amazing, and stood out even in that group, but I’m telling you, we saw women from all different backgrounds, in a 20 age range, and they were incredible.

**John:** Let’s talk about that age range, because it’s an interesting gap between the two of you. Because she’s not quite a mother figure, I mean, she’s old for being a friend, but she’s not quite a mother figure. It’s a really fascinating gap that I don’t see a lot in television.

**Aline:** Well, it’s not that different from our age gap.

**John:** All right. Is there a degree to which the nature of that relationship was your relationship, or that gap?

**Rachel:** Yes. I mean, I actually remember when I first pitched the character of Paula to you. Do you remember this? And my thinking was — I remember I was filming a web series in Westwood and I was eating lunch. And I was like Rebecca needs a best friend.

And I was like, well what’s like a best friend character we hadn’t seen. And I’ve been watching a lot of Frasier, which I always do. I love Frasier. And I was thinking about Niles is a more Frasiery Frasier than Frasier is. And I was like, oh, what’s Rebecca’s Niles? And then instantly I was like, oh, it would be someone who buys into all the shit that we’re trying to deconstruct with the show. Buying into romantic comedies and buying into like love, destiny, destiny.

And when I think of that, I think of like — I mean, the people now who are glued to their phones and Twitter and Snapchat, arguably more than 13 year old, are like 50-year-old women.

**Aline:** So it was like Minivan Moms. It was right around that time of 50 Shades and it was like Minivan Moms who have 50 Shades, Twilight, and some good vibrator. A good vibrator stashed somewhere. That was kind of the genesis of it.

And I think there’s a — the season finale is on Monday and Paula has–

**John:** Which you directed.

**Aline:** Which I directed.

**Rachel:** Ah yeah.

**Aline:** Paula has a huge number in it. And I have been talking to Donna about like I think there’s this vesuvial rage in middle age ladies, because I always feel like there’s three genders. There’s men, women, and women over 40. And it’s sort of like — and luckily we have Jennifer Lopez working on it. But I feel like — I just feel like there’s this age where women sort of disappear and people start to look through you. And Paula is the smartest person in our office. And she’s just as sexy and sexual as Rebecca is, but the world is telling her to sit down and shut up. And she doesn’t want to.

And so she doesn’t know how to do — what she decides to do ultimately is to live vicariously through her friend.

**John:** So, ultimately we’re going to find sort of Paula’s backstory life. In the pilot she’s just sort of the foil for Rebecca, but we’re going to find out her unhappy family life and why she’s so determined to act out. How much of that did you know going into this pilot about what her home life was going to be like and what her–?

**Rachel:** We knew a lot of it. I mean, I think that Paula is very much like a symbol of what happens to a dream deferred, right? And, again, there’s still stuff we know — I don’t know, the stuff, once we started talking about Paula it really came–

**Aline:** Yeah, I mean, one of the things, their dialectic, like Rebecca is sort of a person who makes terrible decisions and does things that are not great. But worries a tremendous amount about being a good person and seeming like a good person. And Paula could give a rat’s ass about that. Paula does not care about whether people think she’s a good person. She knows what she believes in and what she thinks are the things to do, and she’s very — she’s the Henry Kissinger of sexual politics. She is realpolitik above all.

And she thinks everybody in the world is out to get some, and get theirs, and that Rebecca should be doing that, too.

**John:** Well, also, Paula is a character who didn’t do all that stuff in her time. And so she made the safe choice every time and she’s regretted making those safe choices all those times. So she sees this character who will make wildly dumb choices all the time and is like, yes, you should do more of that. And it’s a very interesting choice.

Let’s jump ahead to page 14, which is the final scene with Paula and Rebecca. This is happening at a house party. Rebecca has gone there to try to find Josh Chan, because there’s legend that Josh Chan is going to be coming to this party. So, in the Showtime pilot she’s just started to give Greg a hand job and that didn’t go well. In the CW pilot–

**Rachel:** No, no, in the Showtime pilot, she’s actively blowing him.

**John:** Oh, that’s right.

**Rachel:** And crying on his dick. By the way, and then when I did ADR for it, I had to — honest to god — I got an unpeeled banana and I put in my mouth doing ADR.

**Aline:** The sound guys were so happy.

**John:** They didn’t have Foley they could go through for that? Or have some sort of like sound effects library for that?

**Aline:** Everyone was like we don’t want to ask her. I’m like, don’t worry about it.

**Rachel:** [laughs] Oh, there’s this great — oh, the teamsters story.

**Aline:** Oh my god.

**Rachel:** Oh, there’s this great story about — real quick. This has nothing to do with anything. So the original Showtime pilot, the whole, just picture the CW pilot, but the whole scene, instead of like about to give him a hand job, I’m actively jerking him off. Like the whole conversation is like, “So what, this is a great party, this is a great party.”

And so we’re in the car on a location, we’re in the van on a location scout in West Covina.

**Aline:** We’re in the van with a bunch of — I mean, we’re with the line producer, and the department heads, and the teamsters driving.

**Rachel:** Yeah. And with our director, Marc. And I said to Marc, we were talking about the hand job scene. Very earnest question. I was like, hey, so should I spit into my hand? And he was like–

**Aline:** No!

**Rachel:** He was like, “What are you talking about? What do you mean spit into your hand?” I was like, that’s how you give a hand job. And he was like, “No it isn’t.” And we had a whole argument in the car–

**Aline:** A whole argument.

**Rachel:** Of how to give a hand job. And we came to the conclusion that the way penises are, some people are like shaft tuggers, and other people — no, no, no, some people are, what is it?

**Aline:** Strokers and tuggers.

**Rachel:** Strokers and tuggers. Strokers and tuggers. Some people have excess skin where you don’t need…anyway.

**Aline:** So Rachel was about to turn to the teamster–

**Rachel:** This is for the scene. It’s really important.

**John:** Art.

**Rachel:** I need to know what Greg Serrano’s dick looks like. Like that’s really important.

**Aline:** They’re having a heated conversation. Rachel is about to turn to the teamster, who is the only other man in the van–

**Rachel:** And be like, “How do you like be jerked off?”

**Aline:** And she gets a text from our line producer saying, “You’re approaching actionable.”

**Rachel:** People have been sued for this. And we are saying it would have been the first time that an actress was sued by a teamster. [laughs] Anyways, so if you notice, I do not spit into my hand. Oh, no, you don’t know that. I don’t spit into my hand.

**Aline:** We’re going to try and put it up one day, because it’s a funny–

**Rachel:** It’s a great scene.

**Aline:** Quite funny scene with the actual hand job.

**Rachel:** And the sound effect of slapping. I don’t know where they got it. They wouldn’t tell us.

**John:** All right.

**Aline:** The CW scene is–

**John:** It’s a wet Shammy.

**Aline:** –amorous smooching. It’s amorous smooching.

**Rachel:** And at one point I’m like grabbing his nipples and stuff. I think I had my hand up his shirt.

**Aline:** Well, there was another thing, which was they finally start making out, and to do this scene, and our actor is so kind and respectful to Rachel that he’s not touching her boobs. And I turned to Marc, the director, I’m like there’s no way that anybody would be on a date with someone who looks like Rachel and the first thing they would do is get to the boobs. Like, you got to go tell him to touch her boobs.

**Rachel:** And I think you went up to Santino — this is obviously the show.

**Aline:** No, no, I didn’t. I told Marc. I said you got to go tell Santino that he needs to–

**Rachel:** Yeah, I think Marc was like, “Um, can you…can you touch her…touch her boobs?”

**Aline:** For the realism of the scene. Anyway.

**John:** Page 14. We are outside Beans’ house. Here’s a question for you, because I don’t honestly remember the pilot very well. So, Josh’s friends and Greg’s friends, are they all at this house? Did we meet them there?

**Rachel:** No. They are theoretically there. We just don’t–

**John:** We just don’t see them there. All right, so we’re at Beans’ house, front lawn, night. Rebecca and Paula walk out onto the front lawn. I’m sorry, we should say that Paula has tracked Rebecca down to this party.

**Aline:** By breaking into her computer.

**John:** Yes. And so that’s where we first learn that she is a hacker extraordinaire.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** Rebecca and Paula walk out onto the front lawn.

**Aline:** Is this far enough from the house?

**Rachel:** What are you doing here?

**Aline:** You think you are so much better than me. Harvard, Yale… I’m just as smart as you, Miss SnootyShoes…

**Rachel:** What are you TALKING about?

**Aline:** I’m talking about Josh. Chan? Joooooosh Chaaaaaaan?

**Rachel:** What? What do you know about Josh?

**Aline:** Let’s see, well, I know he lives in town, which is weird because you told me you didn’t know anyone here. And clearly you know him, you checked his Facebook 63 TIMES today. And his Instagram, 18 times.

**Rachel:** Have you been going through my computer?

**Aline:** Yes. Yes, I have.

**Rachel:** I could have you fired.

**Aline:** You lied to me–

**Rachel:** Lied to you? I didn’t lie to you! No one shoved a bible under my hand when I met you in the office.

**Aline:** –and you lied because whoever this Josh Chan is, you’re OBSESSED with him–

**Rachel:** WHAT?

**Aline:** You’re in love with him. Look at you. Look at those love eyeballs.

**Rachel:** Oh, “love eyeballs”, yeah.

**Aline:** You love him. You moved here for him. And you won’t admit it! Why?

**Rachel:** In love with him? That’s ridiculous. I barely know him. I dated him for a summer when I was 16. Okay, what are you saying? Let’s unpack it. You’re saying I uprooted my entire life, left behind a job that paid me…oh, there’s a typo. Paid me thousand dollars? I think $500,000 was it. Left behind a job that paid me $500,000. That’s right. For some random boy I haven’t seen in ten years who likes to skateboard and thinks “whatever” is two separate words? That makes no sense. Look, it’s simple.

**Aline:** Ten years?

**Rachel:** What happened was, I was in New York and I saw him and he made me feel all warm, like glitter was exploding inside me, and now I’m here. But I didn’t move here FOR him because that would be crazy. And I’m not crazy. Am I… crazy? Ohmygod. OhmyGod. Is that what I am?

**Aline:** Okay, stop. Stop it. Right now. You’re not crazy, you hear me? You’re in love. That’s different.

**Rachel:** I can’t be in love with him. That would mean I’m stupid.

**Aline:** You’re not stupid. You’re following your heart. That’s not stupid. You just shoulda told me, that’s all–

**Rachel:** No, no, I am, I’m stupid and emotional and irrational, I’m every rotten thing my mother says I am…

**Aline:** STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. Don’t you ever talk like that about my friend again, you hear me?

**Rachel:** We’re… friends?

**Aline:** I’d be proud to be your friend. Now that I know the truth? What you did for love? The sacrifices? You’re brave. Wish I’d been that brave at your age. Look, I get it, it’s a secret. I won’t tell a soul. But I’m here now. You’re not alone anymore. We are going to win this, you hear me? We won’t let what happened to Justin and Selena happen to you, I promise.

**Rachel:** You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter anymore. Josh has a girlfriend. Yeah, A GIRLFRIEND. Also, I texted him 46 hours ago and haven’t heard ANYTHING. So clearly all he cares about is his girlfriend. And not about me.

**Aline:** His Facebook status is SINGLE. If he was into her, would it say that?

**Rachel:** That’s what I said!

**Aline:** So maybe he doesn’t realize his true feelings right now, but if we play this right, one day he will. One day it’s gonna hit him like a ton of bricks and when that happens, HE WILL TEXT.

**John:** At that exact moment, a miracle. A CHIME FROM REBECCA’S PHONE. A TEXT MESSAGE.

**Rachel:** Are you a witch?

**John:** AND NOW TIME SLOWS DOWN. Slowly, Rebecca picks up the phone. Reads. Flips it around to show Paula.

**Aline:** Wanna grab dinner? Smiley face.

**Rachel:** IS THERE REALLY A SMILEY FACE???

**Aline:** THERE’S A SMILEY FACE.

**John:** HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Rebecca and Paula are blown away. Rebecca begins to sing. A reprise. The West Covina song.

**Aline:** Oh, no, no, you don’t want to hear me sing.

**John:** So, and then we get to the song, my favorite of the song of the whole series. West Covina. California.

**Rachel:** Do you want to do Paula’s part? Do you know it?

**John:** Yes, I do. But no. I don’t have all the words here. So, this is the turning point.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And honestly, if it were not for this scene, she would probably go back to New York City, don’t you think? What’s your hunch about what would happen next to Rebecca Bunch if Paula had not shown up here?

**Aline:** I think she would lock herself in her apartment for a week and go on a very deep dark dive. And then, yeah, and then just leave all her shit in the apartment, close the door, and take a flight back.

**Rachel:** Yeah. Wow.

**Aline:** We haven’t talked about that. But I think you’re right.

**Rachel:** We never talked about that.

**Aline:** Yeah. I think you’re right. But Paula is the fuel. She’s the person who tells her that this is okay. And what we love about it is it’s the mothering that Rebecca wants and needs, but it’s so wrong. It’s not right.

**John:** It’s the wrong mother.

**Aline:** It’s the wrong advice.

**Rachel:** It’s interesting reading the scene because, so this is the September — so this is hybrid. This script right now, it’s a hybrid of the original scene we had and then improvs that we did when we actually filmed it, because this was the shooting script for when we redid some stuff for the CW pilot. But the Paula and Rebecca scene, we didn’t reshoot that. So, it’s interesting, like on page 15, where it’s like “that would be crazy and I’m not crazy. Am I crazy? Ohmygod. Ohmygod.”

**Aline:** Those were improvs that we then put back into the script so that the script reflects the shooting of what we shot.

**Rachel:** And originally we were going to — it was — I mean, obviously in the scene it’s even longer, because the way that we wrote, I realized that emotionally to get to Rebecca panicking, it actually has to be a longer–

**Aline:** Ramp up.

**Rachel:** –build up. Yeah. And so we use a lot of improv on set, but especially in really heartfelt emotional scenes, because it — I don’t know, sometimes when you’re on set you feel the trajectory of a scene in a way that you can’t when it’s just on the page.

**John:** So, you’re a writer who is on set, and you are on set as well. So, when those moments happen, is it while you’re running through that you feel it first? I’m not going to be able to actually get to this moment and we need to stop and pause. And we need to ramp up?

**Aline:** No, Rachel just does — I mean, Rachel is the team leader, obviously, for the comportment of the actors, because she’s the EP and it’s her show. And so Rachel doesn’t do the scenes the same way ever. She always does something a little bit different and she always adjusts the lines and she often adds improv. And it’s super effortless. I’ve never seen her say I’m doing this or think about it. It’s just like what comes out of her. Like one of the lines here, where she says, “I like to you? Nobody shoved a bible under my hand.” That was an improv.

And what’s great about it is it’s very much on script, but it’s also improv, if that makes any sense. It’s always the intention of the scene, but it’s the sort of wonderful filigrees. And it really has freed up the other actors to do that. And we’ve just gotten wonderful, wonderful moments.

But it also keeps it very live. If you watch our dailies, they’re very live. There’s always, if we don’t have something, I mean, I have the vantage point of looking at all of Rachel’s performances in the editing room, and what’s amazing is there are some actors where like they’re so consistent, and that’s great, because you have what you have. But Rachel does so much variety and gives us so much variety that we can often make big adjustments in the performance because what she does is so flexible.

**Rachel:** And the thing, I just want to add one thing, I think that’s the biggest thing I learned as an actor watching people audition for my show, it didn’t matter if they were loyal to the commas. It didn’t matter if they got all the beats and like these reversals. The only thing that mattered was do I buy it. Do I buy them saying these words? And do I buy that these words are coming from their mouth? And so that taught me a lot going into the role. Like that’s the most important thing is to feel like these words are coming out.

And it’s actually taught me a lot about being an actor because I co-wrote this pilot, I had an ownership over the words where it was like I — it was an ownership over the words where like they were my words. And I’ve realized that that is the way that I and all actors should approach every script, as if you wrote it, so that you have a real ownership of the material, and the emotions, and you’re not doing an impression of what you think the writers want, or what you think the directors want.

**Aline:** So you’re interpreting, yeah.

**Rachel:** Yeah. You’re interpreting and you’re changing.

**John:** You’re channeling.

**Rachel:** You’re channeling in a way that feels authentic to you. And that every actor on our show does that.

**John:** So, to wrap up the discussion of character introductions, people we haven’t talked about here, Greg. We first meet him at the bar where he works, which becomes a standing set that you’re going to go back to a lot. What were the initial conversations about Greg and sort of what we need to know about him? Did you know what his plot function was going to be, or was he just this friend of Josh’s?

**Aline:** I mean, he is the guy who really knows what’s up very quickly. That’s basically his role in the pilot, was like he’s on to her very quickly. And he doesn’t care. And that’s the thing about dudes, like, some of them really like actively like women who are crazy. And men will say, “I like them crazy.” And Greg sees through her bullshit immediately, but is wildly attracted to it. And the crazier she is, the more into it he is. And because it allows her to reject him, and that’s what he wants ultimately.

He’s very comfortable in a space where he’s being rejected. Because the first thing he says to her is, “You’re beautiful, and you’re smart, and you’re not listening to me. So you’re obviously my type.” He knows right away that she doesn’t really — she’s so attracted to someone else 99% of the time, and so that was kind of the germ of his. But, again, because we saw so many people who read that scene so straight, that was the scene we were the most sick of in the auditions.

**Rachel:** Yeah. And I remember watching, because we cast a lot of our main cast out of New York. And so we were watching tapes. And I remember Santino’s audition came up. And before even watching it I was like, oh great, another white guy. Wonderful. I was just tired of white guys.

**Aline:** And she called me and said, yeah, I mean, he really took — he didn’t think he was going to get the part. He thought that we were going to cast some super uber beefcakey guy to play the part. So he kind of didn’t give a shit, and he came in and he did one audition on scene, and then he did one super riffy thing. And the riffy thing is what we used.

And then we had a funny thing. We sat down with Marc Webb when we were kind of down towards the end. And I hate to sell out Marc when I tell this story, but let’s just say Marc has insight into this character. And he gave us a couple of really great lines. I think the thing of like “you’re beautiful, and you’re smart, and you’re not paying attention to me” came from Marc.

**Rachel:** Well, that’s what happened. So we cast Santino, and part of the reason we cast him was he made these big choices with these lines. And he was actively like, “You from around here?” He really made these big, bold choices that felt fresh and unique and brought another depth, brought another dimension to Greg’s character.

And so I remember we’d already cast Santino. We were doing a final pass before the table read, and Marc happened to come by your house to hang out. And I was like, “Marc, I feel like we need to add — we need to add some sauce to this scene.” And Marc and I improvised together for like a couple minutes. And that’s where we got “You’re pretty, smart, and ignoring me. You’re obviously my type. Are you looking for an eight-year-old or an alcoholic? Because that’s what we got here.”

Marc really brought this doting bitterness.

**Aline:** Doting bitterness.

**Rachel:** Doting bitterness. In just improvising with him. So, yeah.

**John:** So the quality of Greg, that he’s like a grumpy old man who’s only 30, that’s–

**Aline:** That’s a combination of what the part was intended to be, what Santino brought to it, and that little germ of Marc that we got. But really no one is better at — if you guys don’t know, Santino who plays Greg is Hans from Frozen. And he’s really good at conveying sort of an arched eyebrow. Always.

**Rachel:** He plays high status. That’s his thing is to play high status, which was interesting because ultimately his character for most of the show is low status in that he’s on a leash by his dick when it comes to Rebecca, but doesn’t like that he’s on a leash by his dick.

**Aline:** So every line he’s ever said to Rebecca in the entire series, the parenthetical under it would be “you’re an idiot.” But he loves her, but he’s constantly telling her, “You’re an idiot,” which is how he shows love.

**John:** With future episodes, you talked a little bit about Rebecca’s dad, but can you give me an example of another character who had to be introduced over the course of the series who we first meet over the course of an episode, how do you get a beat on a character and then how do you communicate what that is supposed to be to casting so you get a sense of who that person is coming in?

I’m trying to think, over the course of the series, people you have introduced–

**Aline:** So like we have Trent, we have a character of Trent. And Trent is this guy that Rebecca doesn’t remember from college, but he remembers her really well, and he’s very in love with her. And the germ of that came about because we were bringing in this person who was like he’s Rebecca to Rebecca, and she thinks he’s horrible and creepy. And she doesn’t recognize her behavior in him.

And so he was very much — one of the things is most of the characters were conceived by Rachel and I in the pilot process. And then a lot of the other characters were conceived as the writer’s room developed. And Trent, being super weird and awkward, and wearing turtlenecks that he tucks into his pants, like anybody who’s been in a writer’s room knows he is room bait. So writing Trent was something that everybody in the room got very excited about and pitched in a lot of stuff about.

And then so we had this very weird guy, and we actually didn’t have the scene ready for casting, so we wrote a scene before we even had it in the script, and we sent it out. And then this — we saw a bunch of a people who were funny, and then we saw this guy Paul Welsh. It’s the hardest I think the writer’s room saw me laugh the entire — I wish we could put up his audition. I literally fell out of a chair.

**Rachel:** We can.

**Aline:** We should put it up. I laughed so hard. And he improvised things, like there was a line of like, “Do you want to watch a movie?” And then he said, “Do you like Tarantino? I don’t.” And I will tell you that we have enough Trent material from like the two days that he works to cut that episode 15 different ways, all of them hilarious.

**John:** It struck me as a crucial character, becomes he comes in in such a weird off angle. So, it’s a character who she’s found him on Facebook and claimed that he’s the boyfriend, never having met him. And then suddenly he shows up.

**Aline:** Right. And he knows her and he’s love in with her. And then there were other characters, like we always knew we had to do her mother. Her mother speaks in the pilot, but doesn’t have a role. So we always knew that was coming down the pike. And then Tovah is a more traditional, she’s a Broadway actor, and she’s a singer, and so we wrote this really specific thing. And she had to be Jewish. And so we looked for an actress who really was Jewish and who brought that to the part. And she looks a shocking amount like Rachel.

So Trent is sort of a room funny, but the part of the mother is a big deal. We spent a ton of time on that. That was a very important episode, because you see her incoming from the pilot, and if you’re a fan of the show and watching the show, you understand that Rebecca’s mother is the Bundt cake in which she was formed. And so–

**John:** There’s an Aline Brosh McKenna metaphor there.

**Aline:** There you go.

**John:** I was waiting for one.

**Aline:** There you go. So, it was really, that was a very important role. That was extremely important.

**Rachel:** But I just remembered, I mean I feel like, you’re talking about introducing a character, finding like what are the most important things of a character, it just — it’s like getting more and more specific. And so it’s like, well, what’s that one line in the first draft, it’s like what’s that one line that says everything that you need to know about them. And then we’ll get the actor in. And then we’ll get even more specific ideas.

And so then the dialogue will get even more specific. And with Tovah, there’s this final scene where she and Rebecca are yelling at each other in a mall, and Naomi Bunch says, “I want you to survive. Survival. Survival.” And that’s based on Tovah. Like that’s — we had these scenes written, and then I had an hour long conversation with Tovah on the phone where she talks a lot about the history of the Jewish people, and the state sponsored Pogroms, you know, of the Russian government. And her whole thing is like that’s why Jewish mothers are the way they are. It’s survival, survival, survival.

And we just wrote that in. Like what a great, she just kind of gave that to us.

**Female Audience Member:** Hi, so I’m a really big fan of the show, and you mentioned that Josh was initially supposed to be Asian, but you didn’t know what Asian specifically. And I’m Filipino and a lot of the jokes are insanely accurate. So I just wanted to know like–

**Aline:** So he was written to be Josh Chan.

**Rachel:** No, Josh Chang.

**Aline:** Josh Chang. And we saw Asian dudes of every description. And we always knew that whatever nationality he actually turned out to be, we would adjust it for that. And so Vinnie is Filipino and we liked the contrast of the name, so instead of doing the more Spanish sounding name, we were looking for a — so Chang doesn’t exist in the Philippines, but Chan is a name that some Chinese descent Filipinos have. So we changed it to Chan.

And then we just wrote to Vinnie and we have an amazing writer on staff named Rene Gube who plays Father Brah.

**Rachel:** Who plays Father Brah.

**Aline:** And he’s one of our staff writers. And he’s Filipino. And so we got so much of our specifics from Rene. I mean, about, you know, just Dinuguan, but also calling your aunt, Aunt [Ah-Tay] and we got so many specifics from him. It was a real, I have to say, real lesson for us in terms of like as we said a lot, we tend to write really specifically, so we were really specific about the bisexual thing. And we were really specific about the Filipino thing. And we really wanted it to be accurate.

And that’s something that I’ve done in my career with workplace stuff, where I’ve always done a ton of research because I want the people in that workplace to be like, “Oh my god, totally.” And with the Filipino thing we just did the same thing where we like drilled down. And now we have a whole company of the Chan Fan Bam. We have a whole company of Filipino actors. And Amy Hill, who is Filipino, but plays the mom.

**Rachel:** But it just, I mean, I think that situation especially with Rene giving us these specifics we otherwise never would have had just proves why diversity kind of starts — one of the places it starts is in the writer’s room because you don’t want to create like a false character and then just work it out in casting it.

**Aline:** Yeah, I mean, we had Vinnie. And Vinnie gave us also some things. And when the writers started, they all came in and had lunch with the writer’s room. And he and Rene right away had all these things. But the fact that his sisters are named Jayma and Jastenity, we wouldn’t have known that that’s a thing, where like they name the–

**Female Audience Member:** All the random Jay names. I was like, yes, dude, yeah.

**Rachel:** Like the made up names.

**Aline:** No matter in depth we would have done our research, we never would have gotten things that — so, one of the things I would say, I don’t know if you’re a writer, but being diverse is not a — you’re not asking people to hire you or consider you because they’re nice and they want to change the world. That’s a qualification. You know, that’s an experience of the world that most people don’t have. That’s something that’s great to have in the writer’s room people who are older and younger and female and male and gay and straight and bi and trans and, you know, from the Midwest. You’re looking for a wide variety of people.

That’s the best writing is going to come from — no, I’m not kidding. The best writing is going to come from a room where not everybody is from the same background. And so, I mean, we even like have a writer from Ohio. We have a writer who–

**Rachel:** The Midwest being the most diverse.

**Aline:** Who spent part of her life in South Africa. I mean, you’re drawing on life experiences, so for us it’s like it’s a benefit and a qualification to find people who have had diverse life experiences, because you’re trying to write about a world that has a diversity of experiences in it. And there’s even little things, like sometimes we’ll stipulate the character should be overweight, because otherwise they won’t bring you someone who is, you know. So, we kind of try and stipulate that.

But, you know, I would say I think it’s a huge qualification and asset to have an unusual background.

**Female Audience Member:** Oh, thank you.

**John:** Thanks.

**Aline:** You know, the thing I will say, it’s funny, because sometimes people say, you know, you discovered Rachel or whatever. Rachel was doing amazing work. It was just a matter of time. I mean, what she was doing so brilliant, and so funny, and so amazing. I just maybe sped up the process by a little bit, because what she was doing was such standout work.

And I have to say every day that we work on this show, it’s like such a privilege to work with somebody who is so smart, wise beyond her years, the kindest person. She’s so beloved on the show. But so sensible. I mean, we’ve been in stressful — when we started, Rachel was 26 years old. And as you guys have heard, I’m the old lady on the hill. I’ve seen it all.

And we’ve been in some situations which were very weird and stressful, where people said really weird things and acted in a strange way. And she’s just like so mature and so sensible, in addition to being so incredibly talented in sort of like a visionary way. You know, I feel like in a lot of ways she discovered me. I feel like I got a chance to do this and play in this sandbox that I never would have gotten to play in otherwise.

**John:** Aw. That’s a nice way to leave it tonight. So, Aline, Rachel, thank you so much for being on this.

**Aline:** Thank you, John.

**Rachel:** Thank you, John August.

**John:** And thank you guys. Thank you.

Links:

* The [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes), [180](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male), [200](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show), [219](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-one-where-alines-show-debuts), [231](http://johnaugust.com/2016/room-spotlight-and-the-big-short) and [242](http://johnaugust.com/2016/no-more-milk-money)
* [Rachel Bloom](http://www.racheldoesstuff.com/) and on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3417385/) and [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs8sqIPEhf8lqM2C8rTVfYg)
* Aline and Rachel on [Scriptnotes, 175: Twelve Days of Scriptnotes](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes)
* [Crazy Ex-Girlfriend](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/crazy-ex-girlfriend/?play=caa8daf4-44a2-4e03-8117-981c890386ff) on CWTV.com
* Follow along at [johnaugust.com/crazy](http://johnaugust.com/crazy) or on [Weekend Read](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/)
* [West Covina](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKnWw7ou4ik) from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/pitching-an-open-writing-assignment).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 248 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we’ll be talking about how you pitch on an open writing assignment, plus we’ll try to tackle the question of whitewashing Asian roles in feature films.

**Craig:** Mm, yeah, that does sound kind of sexy.

**John:** Oh no.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sexy Craig can’t be here for the whole episode.

**Craig:** No, Sexy Craig doesn’t last that long.

**John:** No. Let’s do some follow-up. So, last week’s episode was the Lawrence Kasdan show which was great. Thank you everyone who wrote those nice tweets about how much they enjoyed the show. We really enjoyed recording it. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation and The Academy for having us host that little Q&A session.

**Craig:** It was great. And Larry was in fine form.

**John:** He was. I would say if I had anything I would improve about that episode is Lawrence Kasdan is an incredibly talented screenwriter. He is not a good holder of microphones. And so even as we were recording the show, I wanted to grab the microphone — I wanted to have Stuart just come up and hold the microphone in front of him so he wouldn’t wrestle it around so much. If there’s you noise you hear on the track, that’s entirely Lawrence Kasdan.

**Craig:** Yeah, but it adds to his charm.

**John:** It does absolutely add to his charm. Also I thought we did a good job visually. If like this was a TV interview, we finally figured out like, oh you know what, we shouldn’t straddle the guest. We should actually both be on the same side looking at them. Because so often as we do live shows, the guest will be in the middle and we’ll get sort of like ping-ponged back and forth between us. And this time, we did the Kelly and Michael way of sitting together and talking to our guest.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t mind straddling my guest.

**John:** Oh no. I walked right into that.

**Craig:** I don’t know why you did that.

**John:** It’s going to become the “that’s what she said” of the podcast.

**Craig:** [laughs] Sexy Craig is always there. You know, the thing about Sexy Craig is he doesn’t show up a lot, but when he shows up, he really is irrepressible.

**John:** Yes, that’s true.

**Craig:** And you have no idea what to do with him. You are at a loss.

**John:** I am at a loss. I’m flummoxed when Sexy Craig shows up.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Last week was also special because it was a two episode week. We put out that little special Gold episode, the Gold Standard episode, which was really fun and random.

**Craig:** It was fun. Yeah.

**John:** So the reason we did that was because we changed something with the feed. Basically we changed the URL for the feed and things had to redirect. And it seemed to work. No one has written in with complaints saying that they lost the episodes, so hooray.

I don’t know that we’ll do more little special things, but it was kind of fun talking about like non-screenwriting things, and doing something short. So if people have suggestions of things you would like me and Craig to talk about, maybe we would do one again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was fun. It’s fun also because I feel like you and I are both eternal students. So we like learning new things, so that’s fun. I’m really glad that the redirect worked because, you know, we had a big episode coming up. I didn’t want anyone to miss the Larry episode, so that’s great.

**John:** That was our real worry. Also, this last week I talked to Justin Marks, the screenwriter behind Jungle Book. I did a Q&A at the Writers Guild screening for the film. And so we did a half-hour conversation. It was really fantastic. So, Craig, I don’t think you’ve listened to that episode yet, but it’s just a half an hour that we put up in the premium feed. And I had sort of known this when I was talking to Justin while the whole process was going on, but they ended up writing it and sort of making it much more like an animated film.

So, he talks through about how — basically he was sequestered in an office at Disney for a very long time, and he would have to write and pitch, and write and pitch, and put up big art boards on the wall, and pitch Sean Bailey and Alan Horn through the whole movie for a long time before they actually said, “Okay, write a script,” or they got a director on board. And that whole process ended up being very much an animation process.

So, even though the movie is kind of live action, it’s very much how you would make an animated movie, rather than how you’d make a live action movie. It was a great conversation.

**Craig:** That is fascinating. And very interesting to me, just the creation of it, because I have a movie — the script that I’ve written for Lindsay Doran, and it’s a bit like Babe, you know, murder mystery involving sheep. And one of the questions was can you make animals now properly perform, you know, CGI animals. And whereas in Babe they used real animals and just did the old mouth movement thing which was fine, but people sort of are expecting a little bit more than that now. And it also limits your performance from the characters themselves, the animals. If they’re just real, it’s not like they can raise an eyebrow or anything, you know.

And this, I think, Jungle Book was the first movie — I think it’s historic — I think it’s the first movie where you now have what appear to be photorealistic animals that are acting. And apparently Weta handled the apes, but MPC is the company that did most of the work on the other animals. And remarkable stuff. Really amazing.

**John:** Yeah. So in our conversation, Justin talks about how it wasn’t until they really got their first test footage back from the animals that they knew what degree the animals could act. And before that point they were still debating how much of the emotion are we going to have to play on the boy’s face versus playing on the animal’s face. And once they got these tests back they’re like, oh, we can actually see reactions in the animal’s faces in ways that were just not possible before this.

**Craig:** Pretty amazing stuff.

**John:** Progress.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is real progress.

**John:** So I’ll also put a link in the show notes to this YouTube video that has Jon Favreau, the director, talking about the process of how they shot — basically in this big warehouse downtown they shot everything with motion capture. And they went back months later and shot the boy again, sort of in full costume, and sort of inserted him into scenes. So that whole process was really strange and groundbreaking, but just terrific.

So I’ll put a link in the show notes to that video as well.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Well, let’s transition to our big topic today, which is how you pitch on an open writing assignment. This is something that came up this week for me because you and I have both gone in, we’ve had these meetings where they’re looking to hire someone to adapt a certain property. And in general, an open writing assignment, just so we have sort of terms defined, an open writing assignment is something that a studio or producer, but generally a studio, is looking to hire a writer to do. So, this could be an adaptation of a book. It could be an adaptation of an existing piece of property like a TV series or a remake of a film. Or it could be a rewrite. It could be a script that they’ve already purchased and they’ve done work on, and they’re looking for someone else to come in and do more work.

We define open writing assignment differently than you going in to pitch an original idea, which is a completely different beast. So, an open writing assignment basically means there is a job out there, and we are going to hire someone to do this movie, to write this movie for us. And sometimes you’re meeting with multiple writers and figuring out which writer is the correct writer to hire.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Usually, Craig and I are the people go in and pitch on those jobs, but this last week I got to be in the room for a couple people pitching movies to me. So, I’m a producer on this film and I got to hear the pitches of these different people coming in to pitch on the same property. And that was actually fascinating, because I got to see what it looks like from the other side of the table. And they were all great.

And so I really liked sort of all the people who came in, but they were just so different. And I thought this would be great to have a conversation about what kinds of things you need to be sure you’re doing if you’re going in to pitch on an open writing assignment.

**Craig:** What a great topic. OWAs as they’re called, they land at the agencies, right. So a studio — let’s take a step back and talk about the birth of an open writing assignment. Sometimes it begins because a studio executive has a general idea or a piece of property. And it is agreed at the studio that somebody should write a screenplay, but if they can come up with an impressive take. But they don’t necessarily want to go to some big shot writer.

So, that becomes an open writing assignment. It is sent to all the agencies. At each agency, there are agents that cover a studio. So they have their own clients, of course, but they’re also responsible for fielding those general incoming calls from the studio. Sometimes an open writing assignment occurs when a writer has been let go because the project isn’t working, and they want to restart or come up with a new thing. And so the open writing assignment call goes out.

**John:** Indeed. And so also to differentiate, a lot of times the stuff that Craig and I are seeing, they are coming specifically to us, maybe exclusively to us, and that’s because we’ve made a lot of movies. Typically earlier in your career, you get out sent out for these open writing assignment to try to land these jobs. And so the writers I was meeting with are people who’ve actually gotten movies made, but they’re not sort of big, giant established writers yet. And so that’s why they’re going into these meetings.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s important to know, too, when you go out for open writing assignments, because I don’t really do that, John doesn’t do that. So, on the one hand, here’s good news, your competition is not A-list screenwriters, because they’re generally not coming in for OWAs. But also then you need to know that the net will be cast fairly widely and so you may not have star competition, but you’re going to have a great quantity of competition.

**John:** Absolutely. So, let’s talk about what things you need to do before that meeting ever happens. And so this is what I want to define as understanding the property, or like what is it that they’re trying to actually make. So, the questions you need to ask is why would the studio want to make this movie. What is it that they see in this property that they feel is a movie? What do you think they see as the movie they could actually release in theaters? Because if you don’t understand what they’re looking for, you’re very unlikely to be able to deliver it to them.

Ask yourself what are the required elements. And so, if you’re coming in to pitch on Ghostbusters, or some sort of adaptation of Ghostbusters, or an expansion of Ghostbusters, well Ghostbusters are going to have to some Ghostbusters in them. They’re going to have to have ghosts. They’re going to have to have certain minimum requirements for what is a Ghostbusters.

Same thing with Charlie’s Angles. It has to somehow involve the talent agency. It’s going to have to involve Charlie’s Angels, and probably three angels. What would you have to have in there in order for it to be Charlie’s Angels?

Or, if you pitching on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, there’s going to have to be a Mr. Toad and there’s going to have to be a ride quality. And if you have a great idea for a movie, and you think like, oh, I could maybe bend this to become Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, make sure you really are pitching something that fits the title or fits the name of — fits the idea behind what the property is.

**Craig:** All good advice. And it goes again to how the open writing assignment was created. Somebody in the studio needs you, the pitcher, to come and give them this wonderful ammunition that they can then walk down the hall and say I think we found the person who has cracked this.

In order to do that, you need to be cognizant of what it is that they want, because that’s the filter through which cracking it is going to be viewed. So, in addition to the notion of what is it that they need, the other thing that I would think about a lot when I went out for these things is what is my unique perspective on this.

Because if I don’t have one, I’m not going to get the job. Everybody can come in and give the generic version, right? So, better that I come in with a point of view. That point of view, if it’s incompatible with what they want, I’m not getting the job. But if I don’t have one, I’m also not getting the job.

**John:** I think it’s always worth asking what is sort of the minimum viable product version of this idea, or what is the bad version of this idea? And just think through what that is, because that’s what everybody else is going to probably be pitching. If you’re going to pitch the down the road middle version of that idea, and if that’s as far as you get, and that’s all you have for an idea of what to do with this property, you should probably just back out. Because it’s unlikely to get you through to the next level, and you’re going to burn a lot of time pitching this sort of like “eh” version of the movie.

You should only go after it if you have an exciting, interesting take. Something that you are excited to have the opportunity to write. And so the pros and cons. Going after one of these jobs — it gets you in the room. It gets you talking with these people. It gets them thinking about you as a person they could hire. Even if they don’t hire you for this job, they might hire you for something else. They might think you’re really interesting.

But if you’re pitching them something that is just sort of blandly generically a version of that idea, they’re unlikely to be so excited about you for the next thing.

**Craig:** You know, this is where I think — this podcast actually transcends screenwriting, and now we can just talk about life and life strategies. I don’t care what it is that you do in the world. If you do not manage to make yourself distinctive, you will be ignored. And the key to making yourself be distinctive is to actually have a point of view. To have a perspective. To have something about which you’re passionate in your field and whatever you’re going for.

That is what gets noticed. What they’re looking for — they’ll tell you what they’re looking for, but they don’t know what they’re looking for. What they’re looking for is a sense of excitement, comfort, this person has got it, they’re going to get it, they’re going to deliver something interesting or special. Understand every time you stick your neck out with your point of view, there’s a chance it will get lopped off because someone will say, “Why would I ever do that specific thing?”

But, there is no success without being specific. I do believe that. So, you roll the dice on these open writing assignments. You go in there thinking, well, if they don’t like my specific angle on this, I don’t get the job. But there’s no point in playing it safe on these things. None.

Precisely for the reason you just mentioned. Maybe you don’t get this job because they don’t like your specific take here, but they just might like you and the fact that you have specific takes.

**John:** Yeah. This is essentially a job interview. So whether you’re a feature writer going in for an open writing assignment, or you are a television writer going out for staffing, you need to be able to approach that meeting with an understanding of what they’re expecting — so it’s sort of what that minimum threshold is — and you probably already crossed that minimum threshold because you’re in that room in the first place.

So, then, look for what is unique about your take and you as a writer, something like, you know what, this is the person I should take the chance on writing this script. Because unlike sort of hiring somebody to work at Starbucks, they’re only going to hire one person. Or they’re only going to hire one person at a time, unless we’re doing some sort of crazy writer’s room. So, they want to know can I trust this person to deliver. And so they’re going to trust the person who seems prepared, who seems to have an interesting idea for how to do this thing. Who seems like a good person to work with.

Those are the qualities you’re trying to convey while you’re in this meeting while still pitching a three-act movie to them that hopefully makes sense and is engaging. So there’s a lot you’re trying to do simultaneously here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. When I talk to studio executives or producers about certain projects, sometimes I’ll just say, “Oh, what are you guys doing?” And they’ll say, “Well, we’re doing this thing, and we have a writer who came in and just really impressed us.” And when they describe what impressed them, almost always what they talk about is that person’s love for it. And their passion for it. And their enthusiasm for it. That’s what they respond to.

And you may say, “Well, if you’re going to make a movie about the Rubik’s Cube, you know, who really loves the Rubik’s Cube that much?” Well, if you don’t love it that much, don’t do the movie. Just don’t. Because, look, they’re the ones who are supposed to be cynical and money-grubbing, right? So, okay, I’ll give you an example. I’m not going to say what the title is, but there’s a children’s book that we all know that we’ve read to our very small children. Everyone.

And a studio decided — they owned it and they wanted to make it. And they wanted to make it very much because they did calculations. That’s why. They didn’t care that much about the character and the book, or the book itself, but they did their calculations, they ran their numbers, and they saw that it could be very profitable. And so one of the people they talked to about it was me. And I just have no passion whatsoever for that.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** They’re okay with that. They respect that. They move on. You can’t be matching their cynicism. That’s their job. And they are not looking for somebody to be like them. They’re looking for somebody to be actually emotionally invested.

**John:** Exactly. There was a big project years ago that it was between me and one other writer for it. And it was a big high profile thing. And we both pitched our hearts out on it and he ended up getting it. And the word I got back was that like, oh well see, ultimately they felt like he was a super fan. He was a super fan of that property. And ultimately they just felt like, you know, they kind of liked some things in your pitch better, but they thought this is the guy who will kill himself for this, and they went with him.

And I get that. I understand that. There’s definitely been things where like my being a super fan made me the right person to do that job. Charlie’s Angels was a great example. I knew every little bit of Charlie’s Angels. And I knew what that movie wanted to feel like. And I was enthusiastic about it in a way that no other writer was going to be.

**Craig:** See, that’s exactly it. The whole, I don’t know, art of matching writers to projects so often comes down to that. You know, Max Landis, just sold a big — he sold like four big screenplays or something in a week.

**John:** Yeah, we had that conversation about like, oh, is the script market dead. And then Max Landis sells four things.

**Craig:** I think the spec market is dead unless you’re Max Landis. But, it’s so evident to me when I look at him — every now and then I’ll see a video or something of him. And it’s so evident to me that the reason that he’s successful, and forget, you know, I think whatever his success is on the other side of it has to do with an ability to write well. But on the front side of it, which is convincing people to buy something, or to hire him for something, his passion for whatever he’s talking about is just so evident.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so of course they hired you to write Charlie’s Angels because you loved it. And it wasn’t like a fake love. It’s like when Dan and Dave who do Game of Thrones, when they met with George Martin to basically say, “Hey, would you let us — would you give the rights over and let us do this?” They said he had one question for them and it was, “Who do you think Jon Snow’s mother is?”

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** And they answered and they answered well, apparently. You know, he needed to know like do you love this because the worst thing you can do I think — if I were an executive, the thing that I would be the most terrified of is hiring somebody who just was looking for a check. You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You do that later when, okay, we have a movie. We need somebody to come in and kill for us on the third act, or this character, or production work. That’s, sure. But that’s far along, right? The basis of it needs to be somebody who loves it.

**John:** Yeah. And you and I have both done that work where we come in and we do that sort of craftsman work of fixing small problems, but I’ve definitely been that craftsman in movies that I never should have or would have been the first writer on because I don’t have the passion for it. I don’t have the — I’m not going to kill myself every morning waking up to try to write another draft of that movie.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly right.

And maybe that’s hard for non-writers to understand. Because the thing is it’s not like you and I don’t care about those jobs and doing the best we can when we do those jobs. That’s why we take them. But, there is — and it sort of ties back to the Huntsman. There’s an emotional difference, right? When you’re saying, “No, no, no, don’t let anyone do this. I have to do this.” Right? “I love this, I need this.” That’s a different deal.

And so that’s what they’re looking for on these things.

**John:** So let’s talk about when you actually get in the room and sort of how you are starting your pitch and sort of what the most crucial elements of that pitch process are.

I think you have to start — again, this is me watching on the other side of the table — you have to talk about what you’re going for quite early on. So like what the movie feels like for you. And this is where it’s okay to use references. I try to avoid the “it’s this meets that,” but it’s great to say, you know, “What I loved about this movie was the way they did XYZ.” Or talk about — we had the conversation with Lorene about movie touchstones, like the things you always bring up in the room.

So like The Burbs if you’re Lorene Scafaria. It’s absolutely fine to do that as sort of the early getting people comfortable with what you’re about to say, because as long as what you’re saying is going to match your pitch, it just gets them sort of seated in a comfy chair so they can actually hear what you’re about to say.

I think talking about in a general sense of like what the tone and the goal of your pitch is at the very start is really crucial, because in some of the pitches that have not gone so well I didn’t quite know what kind of movie I was signing up for. And in the case of this property, there’s a lot of different ways you could go, and if I didn’t know which way they were going like two minutes into it, I was nervous. And worried for them.

**Craig:** Yeah. No question. The way you’re talking about starting here, the big picture, also helps them key into where your passion is. Because generally speaking, your passion isn’t going to be in story structure. Your passion is going to be in the theme and the characters and the feeling of the movie. And these things are the big things that they will then convey.

You’re probably not going to sit in a room with the head of the studio and spit out your scene by scene structure. They’re going to call it a few moments that made sense and they’re going to tie them back into this part here, the big picture of why you want to write this.

**John:** Absolutely. And so to me every pitch that I’ve heard that’s worked, they started with a clear sense of who the characters are, and sort of who we’re going to be following. And so that’s obviously you’re protagonist. This is the person who most of the movie is going to be on their shoulders. But also the surrounding world, just so they’re specific.

And you don’t have to sort of necessarily cite actors, but you should describe them in a way that I can picture somebody playing that part. It’s worth spending a little time on who those people are and sort of what they’re like. And give us a moment very early on in the pitch that shows their personality and shows their unique thing, so that essentially if the plot of the movie never started, I would still find that character interesting. I would still want to be in a story with that character.

And so often pitches will start with just like plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, and I don’t know who I’m supposed to be following. I don’t know where my entry place is to this individual story.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can certainly start with a kind of cold open “wah” right, but once you get the “blah” out of the way, stop, and give me the characters. And then, as you’re going through and you’re talking about how you would approach this open writing assignment, focus all of the plot and all of the set pieces and the things you want to do through the lens of character. All of it.

People relate to character. The story parts, they’ll want. Believe me, they’ll be happy to say, “Oh good, you have a set piece. Oh good, you have this. Oh good, you have that.” But focus it through the character. It will make them appreciate it so much more.

**John:** Yeah. And as you’re crafting your pitch and you’re trying to make sure that all these points are focused through your character, you’ll start to recognize like, oh, is that really a character, or is that just a trope I’m putting in there. And so if you feel like it’s sort of a stock character who is, god forbid it’s your hero who feels like that stock character, but if it’s really that secondary person who you’ve just sort of shorthanded and you sort of used a trope for them, it’s going to feel really obvious as you’re working through your pitch. Like, oh, I don’t really have anything for that. I’m just sort of like pasting another character from some other movie into that spot.

You have to really make sure that it feels specific to the story you’re about to pitch. And that the choices that the characters are making match the overall description, overall sense of tone and what the movie feels like from the start. The worst thing that can happen in a pitch is where a bunch of stuff just happens to your protagonist, and you feel like they are just witnessing the movie happening in front of you.

**Craig:** And that would be an indication that the person pitching has not really thought this through. And behind that even, I hate to say it, but maybe doesn’t have the passion that they’re advertising they have. Because I’m not sure how to love the idea of writing something if I don’t know the beginning and the end.

And I don’t know the beginning and the end in any other way other than through the lens of character. So, I need to understand these things. And therefore I will never end up pitching something episodic because my passion won’t let me. My passion is telling me do this instead. These are the reasons why these characters must be doing this.

**John:** Yeah. And if you do find yourself pitching television, when you pitch television, you pitch a pilot, you really are pitching the characters. You’re pitching the characters and their situation. You end up pitching the episode, like sort of what happens in the pilot, but it’s mostly what you’re pitching is these are the characters, this is the world.

In the case of a feature, here you’re pitching this is the situation these great characters find them in which happens to be the perfect way to explore this property or this idea that you’re bringing me in for.

So, I think it’s also really crucial that whatever the property fundamentally is, get to that quickly. Don’t wait 15 minutes to get to the thing that is the thing. So, if you’re pitching an adaptation of that great game Star Raiders for the Atari 800, you have to attack the base pretty soon in the story, or else it’s not Star Raiders. It’s not the thing we went into.

If you’re pitching the Towering Inferno and you spend the first third of your pitch out in the desert, well, that’s not the towering inferno. That’s not — we’re basically going to be kind of discounting everything you said because that’s not the thing that you are supposed to be pitching.

**Craig:** Well, also, you’ll start boring people. You can’t be boring, right? So, obviously the primary component of boredom is a poorly thought out story that is episodic and the characters feel like they’re watching the story and it’s a lot of “and then, and then, and then, and then.”

The other component of being boring is you talking too much. It’s too long, right? I’m kind of curious, what were the lengths of pitches that you saw?

**John:** These pitches were all about 20 minutes, I would say. And some of them were writing teams and they would just sort of hand off the talking points in — actually all of the pitches I heard, they were fully written beforehand. And so they were referring back to a document and sort of going through stuff. And they were rehearsed. These pitches didn’t invite a lot of “let’s come in and stop you for a question.”

Actually, when I pitch things, I love to be able to — I plan for places where it’s very natural for them to ask a question. I can sort of anticipate what the question is going to be, so they feel engaged, so they’re actually asking questions about what’s going to happen next that the characters would want to ask. These were much more off of paper, but they were pretty good versions of off the paper.

How about you? When you’re pitching something, what’s your structure?

**Craig:** Very much like yours. I never go off of paper, in part because I never want to seem like I’m pitching. My goal when I’m pitching something is you didn’t know that you just got pitched something. We just had a conversation. And through the conversation, I demonstrated the possibility of a movie.

And the reason for that is, well, a bunch of reasons. One, if you’ve rehearsed something, it feels a little sweaty, even if the context is “come and pitch me something,” it feels a little sweaty to me. And, two, because it should be a conversation. I don’t like sitting and listening to somebody describe a movie to me. I like walking through it with somebody and having us connect on why we both want to do this, right? I’m trying to figure out also why they want to do it. And I’m trying to show them where my passion is.

The last thing I want to do is walk through a whole bunch of story if I think like, oh, they don’t really like this. So, it’s not necessarily what everyone can do, but the less rehearsed you are frankly the better. Because there’s a certain artifice to it. And subconsciously I think people are looking for writers who feel confident and the rehearsed quality can cut into that a bit.

**John:** The best thing about the conversational aspect of a pitch is that the things that you said were very important when you set out your pitch, like these are the things I really wanted to focus on, it invites circling back to what those things are that are very important. And so this project I pitched recently, I could sort of have three bullet points for like these are the things I really want to hit. These are things that really spoke to me about the property. And we get to a place and it’s like, “Oh, I see what you’re doing there. It’s because of this.” It’s like, yes, exactly. I think this is a really great way to sort of get into this thing. And it gets them involved in the process.

Now, that said, next week’s episode we’re going to have Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And they ended up having to pitch to like seven studios and it was a very rehearsed pitch. And Aline tells a story of how they were pitching one place and she just like flubbed one of the jokes. Like it was a practice joke, but she just flubbed it. And one of the guys who was in the room with her who had heard the pitch a bunch of times just goes, “Ugh.” She’s like “Audible sigh, oh, you whiffed that joke.”

And so there are situations in which really rehearsing it may make sense. The key is not to make it feel like you’re giving a performance. Make sure it feels like it really is a conversation.

**Craig:** Yeah. The nice thing is that when you allow, conversationally allow questions to be asked, the answer that you give in response to a question is so much more powerful than if it is just given. Because it implies that you’ve thought this through.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you’re sharing something with them. And you’re also picking up on some things that they’re interested in. I’m very much about that. And you can just start the conversation by asking them a question, you know.

**John:** And then it’s possible to sort of circle that back in as you’re giving your pitch, then it’s clear that you are thinking about the same things that they are thinking about.

**Craig:** You’re also not just there to recite to something. You’re actually listening to what they have to say.

**John:** The last thing I’ll say is in terms of the pitch itself, when you’re actually describing the story, make sure you stick the landing. And this is sort of from my own bad history. There have been times where I’ve come in with a really strong opening, and the first act is great, and I’m sort of getting through those middle sections, and then I just don’t — I hadn’t thought through how I was going to close up the conversation of the story. Basically what the last things of the movie are going to be or sort of how we’re leaving it. And if that last bit is bad, they sort of remember the last bit.

So, if you’re going to practice anything, practice how you think you’re going to get out of it, or at least a couple ways to get out of your story, so that you can actually put some closure on it so it just doesn’t fizzle out here. So it doesn’t just sort of fade into nothingness.

Make sure it’s clear when you’ve reached the end of your story.

**Craig:** If you finish a pitch and then there’s silence and then someone says, “Oh, was that the end,” you’re not getting the job. The easiest way I think to approach this is to look at your story like a circle and when you get to that end, close the circle. And just say, “So, the person who wants blah, blah, blah now dah, dah, dah.”

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And there’s the circle, right? Just a way for them to see like, okay, yeah, this is of a piece. It’s not an “and then, and then, and then.”

**John:** Yeah. So, you’re done pitching the story, and this is where I think the actual most crucial part of the process is, which is where you’re listening to what they’re saying and what they’re asking you. And if they’re asking you very specific questions about things that are in your pitch, that’s a really good sign, because that means there’s something that they are fascinated about or curious about in your pitch and they wanted more details. That’s amazing and that’s awesome.

If they are asking a question that speaks to your general idea of your pitch, that’s not a good sign. That means they fundamentally wonder if you’ve pitched them the wrong thing or the wrong approach, the wrong take. So be very mindful of the kinds of questions they’re asking, but then also try to answer them and try to make it clear that you can think on your feet, that you are flexible, that you actually have interesting ideas. That you are willing to defend — not defend — to explain your intention while still being open to other possibilities.

**Craig:** Well, I think it’s okay to defend certain things. I mean, remember that this is a job that it’s you don’t have. That means you also don’t — you could say no, too. Right? I mean, nobody is tied up yet. So, if there is something about your pitch that is that kind of beating heart, it’s okay to just say, “Well, if that’s not working for you, that’s probably — I may not be the right person.”

You don’t have to say that. You don’t have to give up the job in the room. You could just say, “Well, you know, that to me is where my passion comes from is that concept. But I can see what you’re saying about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And you can be flexible about other things.

When they ask questions, welcome everything. Even if you disagree, disagree in a welcoming way, because this is after all kind of pie in the sky time. Everyone can sort of chip in here and be heard.

**John:** I would say in general if the discussion after your pitch is longer than the pitch itself, that’s a really good sign. Unless your pitch was just like so amazing that they start talking about next steps immediately, which is sort of the fantasy scenario. It’s like, “Well that was fantastic. I need you to come in here and pitch that to the boss. Or we need to set up a meeting for tomorrow to go into the studio.” That’s your fantasy scenario. But if they’re asking questions that show that they’re engaged in it, you’ve done really well with whatever you’ve pitched so far.

**Craig:** Yeah, no question. [laughs] I will say that there are people who are not readable. When I went in to pitch this miniseries, my producer said, “This gentleman that we’re pitching to, you’re not going to know when you walk out of there.” And I was like, “Eh, I’ve been doing this a long time. I think I’ll know.”

I had no clue. None. None. Just didn’t know.

And some people are — it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose. They’re just sort of inherently inscrutable and you won’t know. There have been times I’ve walked out of a room and thought, well, that was a disaster. And then an hour later, got the job.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And vice versa.

**John:** That absolutely happens. And so what I take comfort in is that like I pitch just as hard on the ones I didn’t get as the ones I did get. And while I can’t properly predict which ones are going to work and which ones aren’t going to work, I can only sort of control what I’m doing. And I just try to make sure that I was as ready for each one of them as possible.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Cool. Our next topic, probably the best jumping off place for it is this Chin Lu article for Vice entitled Being An Asian Actor Is Hard Enough Without Scarlett Johansson Taking Your Roles.

**Craig:** Great title for an article.

**John:** There will be a link to this in the show notes. And it basically talks about Asian American actors frustrated that certain roles are going to white actors and actresses when they could have been going to Asian actors and actresses. Specifically in this case the flash point was Scarlett Johansson’s casting in Ghost in the Shell, and to some degree Tilda Swinton’s casting in Doctor Strange.

But there’s a long history of sort of casting white actors in roles that are either explicitly Asian or could be Asian. And a frustration about that. And I think it’s an interesting topic to sort of get into because some of those decisions are made at the writing level, but a lot of them aren’t made at the writing level. And it might be useful to discuss the degree to which a writer can be involved in that process and not be involved.

**Craig:** Yeah, my guess is almost none of them are made at the writing level. Well, first of all, let’s say you’re right, that there is a long tradition of basically let’s call it “yellow face” in Hollywood, whether it was Joel Grey and Remo Williams, or John Wayne. I mean, John Wayne, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And in our culture, we have come to understand that blackface is just incredibly socially taboo. In no small part because it’s also linked to slavery.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We haven’t had the same taboo about yellow face.

**John:** Yeah. But I think it’s a growing taboo.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** And so I think it might be helpful to differentiate between two different kinds of things that are happening. And there’s some overlap, but I think there’s also some useful distinctions. So, there’s the very classic case of like this is a role that is clearly Asian. This person has an Asian name, and we are casting a white actor in that role. So that’s Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**John:** And the controversy over Emma Stone who is playing biracial in Aloha. And that’s one of those things where it feels like, well, that feels like a really bad choice you made. And this is a role that was clearly meant to be an Asian person and you are choosing not to cast an Asian person in that role, but instead cast a white actor. And that is a certain kind of frustration that feels like it’s sort of in column A.

The column B is the situation where a role is considered Asian because of its source material, or because of something else around that character, but it’s not so clear that it has to be an Asian actor in that role. So this was Rooney Mara in Pan. And so there’s a lot of controversy over that role and sort of this fictional creation. I guess Tiger Lily is perceived to be Asian, but it’s also in a fantasy universe, so what does that mean?

I think you could say the same thing about a lot of the roles in Game of Thrones. To what degree are you casting a person who is Asian in a specific part considering it’s a fantasy universe that doesn’t necessarily match our cultural geography?

Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell might be a similar situation where the source material, that character is Asian, but she’s not identified as being Asian in this movie specifically. It’s a remake. Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange. That role was a man I think in the original comics, I believe.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And is in Tibet, so he’s Tibetan, but it’s also a drawn character.

**Craig:** Well, you’ve hit upon some factors here that need to be teased out. So, first of all, I think that the days of yellow face are happily over. I don’t see that continuing. But then you have this other issue of whitewashing. And you’ve described the two kinds.

Now, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate even between like which category it goes into. For instance, Scarlett Johansson is playing a character that in the source material is named Major Motoko Kusanagi. And the character is now named Major. [laughs] So, you know, okay, but you called out two instances where the question is, “What are the intentions?”

So, is the intention to be racist because studios don’t like Asian actors? I don’t think so, although I would argue that the result is a racist result. I think what’s really going on here is star-washing and China-appeasing.

**John:** Oh, how fascinating that is. I really like the term “star-washing.” Did you make that up?

**Craig:** I did. I just made it up.

**John:** Craig, it’s going down in the pantheon. We’re going to put that in the Scriptnotes Wikipedia immediately. I think star-washing is actually a fascinating thing, and I think it’s also a false excuse for reasons we’ll get into later on.

But so I do think that’s really interesting, that idea of you’re being very flexible on the casting of a role because you want to cast the biggest star in there and you can’t find an Asian star.

**Craig:** Right. And so obviously anyone who thinks about this for a half a second can realize the vicious cycle, right? So, it’s true, if you look at the biggest, most bankable stars, I don’t know, maybe there’s one or two Asian Americans, and my guess is they’re on the male side, and probably action. And so what they do is they go, “Well, we’re spending all this money on Ghost in the Shell. We need to make our money, so we need a star.”

Oh, there isn’t an Asian star, right. Her name is now Major. Okay.

But, of course, how do you grow Asian American or Asian stars if that’s how you approach things? You’ll never get there.

**John:** Well, the other great argument against this idea of star-washing is that in cases where we’ve just chosen to find the person of the appropriate race or background to play that role, it tends to go kind of well. So, take a look at Jungle Book. We could have cast a white actor in the part of Mowgli, but they didn’t. They found the kid, this Neel Sethi guy, and he’s really good. And he’s appropriate for it.

You look at Vincent Rodriguez in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That was a role that was specifically written to be Asian. They went out, they found a bunch of great Asian actors. When they found a guy who was Filipino, they changed his name from Chang to Chan, and they built out his whole family as being Filipino very specifically so that race could be a part of that.

And so it was never sort of backing away from the tough choices because, oh, we won’t be able to find a star for that part.

**Craig:** Right. I think that this is an area where the studios are probably — no, I’m going to say clearly — they’re being way too conservative. Way too conservative. Because, look, I understand that a big star is a big deal for a big movie. But I have to — I don’t know — I’m not familiar with Ghost in the Shell, but I have to believe that there are opportunities for star-washing in some other characters, but then, you know, there are wonderful Asian actors out there.

I mean, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, how much money did that movie make?

**John:** A zillion dollars.

**Craig:** Okay, there weren’t any people in it that we even knew the names of, because it was a good movie. The audience does not care — I really believe that. I think that the fetishism of star power is overrated when it comes to some of these bigger movies in a weird way. Especially movies that are based on properties that people really like.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Look at Doctor Strange. Okay, Doctor Strange is a Marvel film. So, right off the bat it’s going to be a huge hit because literally every single one they make is a huge hit. They have Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. Great. There’s your big star.

Now, we have this other character to cast. Now, in this case, the character I believe in the source material was Tibetan and here we have a Chinese problem. The Chinese government is locked in a dispute with Tibet, if you want to call it a dispute. I’d like to think of it more as the Chinese government is repressing Tibet. And the Chinese market is enormously important to movie studios. And they don’t think that the Chinese censors will let a movie with a Tibetan hero go through. That’s what I think is going on. I probably just cost myself every Marvel job possible. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But, you know, I don’t care.

**John:** So in this case they’ve taken a character who was described as Tibetan in the source material and made now her non-Tibetan to take that controversy away.

**Craig:** Although we can then go a step further and say, “Eh, all right, maybe that’s why that character is no longer Tibetan,” but that character could be Asian. Right? That character could be Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese.

**John:** But also that brings up the question of even if the character wasn’t that in the source material, any character in any movie could be Thai, Chinese, or any other thing. So, I guess I understand the frustration is that like this is a character who there was a pattern and a precedent for why this character should be a certain Asian background, and now it’s not. So I understand the frustration there.

**Craig:** I completely understand it. And I also think that if you look at comic books where the hero is African American, there’s no way that Marvel would cast a white guy in that part, at least not in 2016. No way. So, why is it okay to just go, “Well, let’s just ignore the fact that that character is Asian American and cast a white actor.” I’m a little surprised, I got to be honest with you, by some of the stuff.

I mean, look, the Emma Stone thing was crazy. And the Scarlett Johansson thing is star-washing. This one I just don’t get. I don’t get the Doctor Strange one at all. I mean, Tilda Swinton is amazing —

**John:** I think Tilda Swinton is amazing. I think ultimately it comes down to Tilda Swinton is amazing, and so having Tilda Swinton in your movie is kind of awesome and amazing and — not only is she great, but she’s just so wonderfully strange. That I kind of get it. And I can both understand why you make the choice to cast her in it, and I can also understand why people are frustrated and to some degree outraged over it.

I want to talk about the outrage, because I think the outrage is an interesting double-edged sword. It’s like the pros of being outraged or expressing outrage over it, or sort of letting there be a Twitter storm about it is that it gets people talking about it, it gets people noticing it, it encourages people to make their lists more diverse and inclusive, and really think about if a character is described as being Asian sort of keeping them Asian.

I think the cons of the outrage is that I know people in Hollywood and they’re so skittish. And so what they’re going to do is they’re going to back away from the controversy by just like backing away from the chance for there to be a controversy. So, a character who was described as being Asian, they’ll just get rid of that description before it ever makes it out there so that the character is no longer Asian.

**Craig:** I don’t think that will happen.

**John:** You don’t think so?

**Craig:** No. I think that that was all too often the response in the past, but you know, I encounter more and more an insistence on the studio side that the movie not end up being all white people.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** And I also think that there is somewhere some people must understand inherently that they’re not going to lose money by casting an Asian or an Asian American actor to play an Asian part. I mean, it’s hard enough for Asian American actors to get parts because of the default white syndrome, and now they can’t even get parts where the characters are Asian.

You know, I think this discussion is very, very long overdue. And I think it’s going to have a very significant impact on how things go forward. I do. I believe that.

**John:** Let’s look at what screenwriters can do and what they can’t do. So, what screenwriters can do is you can — you ultimately get the choice of what you’re going to name these characters, and so if you name a character Woo, you’re sort of describing that person who is probably Chinese, and that is an affirmative thing you can do.

You can suggest actors, you can suggest to people involved in casting the movie that let’s try to keep this role Asian. You don’t get the final decision on that, but you can always make that suggestion. But I think the most important and sort of interesting thing that writers can do is actually write about.

So there’s a great episode in this batch of Kimmy Schmidts where Titus Andromedon is putting on his one-man show about his past life as a geisha. And so he’s in sort of geisha white face for the role, and so there’s a huge outcry of Asian American actors about this sort of terrible thing, this affront he’s doing. And that show was able to really dig into it because they had the ability to have characters on both sides and really explore it.

And so one of the rare luxuries as a writer is you can actually write about these situations and these frustrations and explore it. And so one of the few gifts you actually have as a writer is the ability to create fictional scenarios in which characters are grappling with these issues.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, of course, we have enormous latitude here to describe our characters as we wish and to do so and then leave their race behind. You know, I mean, you introduce people, this one is Chinese American, this one is African American, this one is white, this one is whatever. And then that’s it, because most people, typical waiter in a restaurant works with people of every different race, and it’s not part of the daily discussion.

So, we can do that, but as you mentioned kind of at the top of this discussion, when it comes to casting we just don’t have the ability to determine these things. And we get blamed sometimes which is crazy.

**John:** And we get blamed for it and at the same time we are not particularly well positioned to defend ourselves. And so I would say if you are the screenwriter who is facing this situation, Twitter is not going to be a great place for you to sort of go out and try to defend yourself, and defend these decisions. You’re not going to win. No one wins on Twitter. It’s impossible to win on Twitter.

**Craig:** I’m currently winning on Twitter, but only because, you know, look who I’m fighting against.

**John:** Unfair advantage.

I think we’re living in a really exciting time, a really fascinating time for dealing with issues of race. And it’s because race is both an internal identity, it’s also a perceived identity. It’s something you hold inside yourself, but it’s also what someone sees you as. And that is rally challenging. It’s really interesting both on a fictional level and dealing with it on a daily basis.

A friend of mine is an actor who often gets cast as a terrorist because he looks sort of Middle Eastern, which is offensive. And also, he’s Italian, so he just happens to look like what we think a Middle Eastern person looks like, but he’s not. He’s Italian. And his wife is mixed race and gets cast as sort of like anything ambiguous she gets cast as. And that’s because no one is checking — I don’t think they actually even are allowed to check what is your actual ethnicity. They just say it’s what you came in the room looking like. Oh, well, he’s that guy, or she’s this thing. And race is a really interesting, frustrating, challenging thing we’re still trying to put our heads around.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can see people sweating as they attempt to do the right thing. You know, we are as an industry we are being asked to be more inclusive, and I think most people in our industry believe that that’s exactly what we should be.

But then, of course, to be more inclusive you have to be race aware. When you are race aware, suddenly you are beginning to traipse through a minefield, whether you know it or not. So, on the one hand you’re trying to do the right thing. On the other hand, you may end up blowing it. It’s difficult.

Regardless of the fact that it’s difficult, it is less difficult than actually being an actor of color, or a writer of color. That is harder to do. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the business to suck it up and deal with the uncomfortableness and the awkwardness and the occasional flub and make things better for these people who are honestly being treated unfairly. And there’s really no way to deny it.

**John:** Yeah. I agree. Craig, I have one last thought experiment. So, you’ve heard of this musical Hamilton?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, my question for you is what do you think happens when the first time they cast a white actor as George Washington in that show?

**Craig:** I think it will be fine.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a really interesting situation, because there you have the precedent for the show is that the cast is not color blind, I’d say it’s actually race aware. You can argue both sides, sort of where it’s falling on that. But musically it feels like that actor, there’s a tradition where that actor should be African American, or at least non-white. And yet, of course, he’s playing a character who was in fact white.

So, I find it an interesting thing to look at in terms of is the role based on sort of our perception of what that role is like in the show, or based on the real person.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that Hamilton, which will be performed 14 billion times by 14 billion casts until the end of time, will detach itself from any sense of needing to adhere to a format of casting. You’re going to see women playing Hamilton. I mean, everyone is going to play Hamilton. You know what I mean? So, over time, everyone will play it.

You already have, I mean, you can’t really point to that cast and say, “Well, it’s about being African American.” It’s not because Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican American. And Phillipa Soo is Korean American, I think. So, it’s not about being black, and it’s not about being Latino, and it’s not about being Asian. What it’s really about is not being white.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that is an interesting commentary because the founding fathers in that world was so white. So, it’s like, okay, we’re not white. But over time, white people will play those parts, too. Because, A, white privilege, what? But, B, because in the end I think the music and the story of Hamilton start to transcend some of the racial contrasts that the original cast has presented.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll read those articles when it happens and see what the discussion is.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think Washington is the right place to start, by the way, if you were going to do it. If I were going to do it —

**John:** Rather than Jefferson Lafayette?

**Craig:** Yeah, Jefferson has got to — I mean, right now, there’s something about the fact that he has got his slaves moving his staircase around as he returns from France. It’s just more delicious the fact that he’s African American. I don’t know. I think so. But —

**John:** We’ll see. I’m not going to get my shot.

**Craig:** Not going to get my shot.

**John:** Craig, it is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Yay. My One Cool Thing is so, so cool. This was sent in by a Twitter follower and they are gloves that translate ASL, American Sign Language, into verbal speech.

**John:** That sounds great.

**Craig:** How cool is this? So, it’s a couple of kids, and they’re adorable. These two boys. I can say that now, because I’m old. These two boys who work at University of Washington. I mean, they’re undergrads. Undergrads. They really are boys. At the University of Washington. Their names are Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor. And they just won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which is a national prize for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. And so they’ve invented these things called Sign Aloud Gloves, which translate American Sign Language into speech or text.

So, I assume that they figured out how to put little sensors into all the fingers, and the palms, and everything, and then all that stuff goes into a computer. The computer translates the movements into speech. And it’s awesome. And if they can get this refined and everything, wow.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** How great would that be?

**John:** Very, very cool. I like our love inventors.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** And when they make the Young Inventors movie, I really hope they don’t cast two white guys in that movie.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know if Navid Azodi is — I don’t know. I don’t know what —

**John:** I would guess, Navid sounds South Asian.

**Craig:** No…I’m going to go with Israeli or maybe Persian. I’m going to go Persian.

**John:** So, can you cast a white person as a Persian? I ask because Nima Yousefi who works in our office, whenever he sees something he doesn’t like, he’s like, “Oh, white people.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, he’s whiter than I am. I think Persians consider themselves Aryans in the old sense of the word Aryan.

**John:** It’s complicated the idea of racial identity.

**Craig:** It is, yeah.

**John:** You don’t have to write into me or Craig about that.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. Don’t yell at us. We’re just trying to figure it out. We’re stumbling through, guys.

**John:** Stumbling through life. My One Cool Thing is called Hands in Wheat. It is a Twitter feed by Andy Baker. And it’s basically a bunch of stock photos of like people running their hands through wheat. And it’s one of those great absurd Twitter feeds where it’s like, oh wow, you know what, it really is such an incredibly overused visual cliché. Because no one in real life ever does that. And you see it all the time in movies and ads and other things. Like connection with your food and with nature and all this stuff. It’s just so funny.

And I love it and he’s incredibly angry in the feed about like it’s hands in wheat, it’s not elbows and wheat. The wheat has to be at just the right height. So, I’m a fan of a lot of absurd Twitter feeds, but this is a new one that I liked a lot.

**Craig:** Have you seen Women Laughing While Eating Salad?

**John:** Yes, that is a fantastic one.

**Craig:** It’s amazing.

**John:** I also love Women Who Can’t Even Drink Water. Like Water Fails. Women pouring water on themselves as if they can’t do it.

Another good Twitter feed I’ll throw in for bonus is Baby CMO. And so he’s a Chief Marketing Officer for an Internet startup, but he’s also a baby, and so he’s talking about his sort of two conflicting needs at times. And so he uses the jargon of both, which is great.

He’s very much like Stewie Griffin.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Excellent. That is our show this week. A reminder that next week’s episode will be Aline and Rachel Bloom talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This was a live show I recorded with the Writers Guild Foundation. So it’s basically the same day we recorded the Larry Kasdan interview. That morning I spoke with Aline and Rachel and it was fantastic. It’s actually maybe our dirtiest episode ever. It may have crossed over the Rebel Wilson thing.

**Craig:** Whoa.

**John:** So, don’t listen to it with your kids, mostly because Rachel has to, or chooses to go into a lot of detail about how she did the ADR for a scene in the original Showtime pilot where rather than just making out with Greg, she is performing oral sex on him. And so she goes into quite graphic detail about the ADR session she did for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Our outro this week comes from Jonathan Mann. It is fantastic. And Jonathan Mann is sort of a legend in the podcasting world for doing music, so he did one for us, and that was awesome. So, thank you to Jonathan Mann.

If you have an outro for us, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com with a link to it. It’s also a place to send in questions or feedback on the show. On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. You can find us on iTunes. Thank you for all those people who have left new reviews on iTunes. That’s always lovely and much appreciated.

You can find bonus episodes, including the Justin Marks interview, over at Scriptnotes.net. That’s also where the Scriptnotes App finds its great content. It’s a $2 a month fee for all the back episodes, including those bonus things. And there will be bonus Q&A I think for Rachel and Aline’s episode next week as well. So, if you sign up for that, you’ll get that as well. And that’s our show.

**Craig:** Great show.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Thanks.

**Craig:** See you.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 247: The One with Lawrence Kasdan](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan)
* [Scriptnotes Bonus: Jungle Book Q+A, with screenwriter Justin Marks](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-jungle-book-qa)
* [The Making of The Jungle Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkNArCG80Bg) on YouTube
* [Being An Asian Actor Is Hard Even Without Scarlett Johansson Taking Your Roles](http://www.vice.com/read/being-an-asian-actor-is-hard-even-without-scarlett-johansson-taking-your-roles)
* [Students Invented Gloves That Can Translate Sign Language Into Speech And Text](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/navid-azodi-and-thomas-pryor-signaloud-gloves-translate-american-sign-language-into-speech-text_us_571fb38ae4b0f309baeee06d)
* [Hands In Wheat](https://twitter.com/HandsInWheat) on Twitter, and [Women laughing alone with salad](http://womenlaughingalonewithsalad.tumblr.com/), [Women struggling to drink water](http://imgur.com/a/79OsM), and [Baby CMO](https://twitter.com/babycmo)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jonathan Mann ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So, today’s episode was recorded live on April 16, 2016. This was an all-day event for the Writers Guild Foundation, and The Academy, Craft Day 2016. Craig and I got to sit down with screenwriting legend Lawrence Kasdan and talk to him about Star Wars, Han Solo, Light and Dark, all sorts of wonderful things. It was a fantastic day and we’re happy to share this interview with you today on the show.

A warning that there’s a few bad words in here. It’s not especially bad, but we didn’t want to cut around any of the great four-letter words that Lawrence Kasdan does drop in at times. So, enjoy the episode. We will back next week with a normal one. Thanks.

[live show starts]

Hello and welcome.

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

**John:** My name is John August. And we host a podcast called Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, the backstory, so this is the slow crawl over the star field. Two years ago we had a discussion about Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it was a full sort of script breakdown of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

**Craig:** And I’m lucky enough to have known Larry for some years. So I was very excited, but also a little nervous because, well, you’ll see. He’s incredibly grouchy. I said, “Would you listen to this?” That was already — that was an argument. But then he did. And he loved it. He said it was the best.

So, then I said, well, we should have you on to talk about Raiders. And he said, “No.”

**John:** Yes. But then, we said we were going to do a live show. And it was like, you know what, maybe we could get Kasdan to come for a live show. And we could talk about other things. He had this movie Star Wars come out, and we could talk about that. And so we scheduled him to come to our live show, which was going to be in Downtown Los Angeles, and we were so, so excited. And then on Saturday night I was over at Rawson Thurber’s house. This is —

**Craig:** Name drop!

**John:** Name drop. And I get this text from Craig. Or, actually, it was on my Apple Watch.

**Craig:** Tech drop!

**John:** And, Craig, what did you text me?

**Craig:** That Larry unfortunately was not feeling well. And so he wasn’t going to be able to make it. So, we freaked out. Because, you know, the way nerds are. And we are nerds, but if they want Larry Kasdan, you can’t give them like a guy, right? They’ll kill you.

So we got David Benioff and Dan Weiss from Game of Thrones. That was — thank god.

**John:** Thank god. Thank god.

**Craig:** Otherwise, we would have been dead. But, at last, today, we have the man.

**John:** So let’s introduce Lawrence Kasdan, everyone. Come on up.

**Craig:** While Larry gets himself situated, I’m just going to read this very brief thing here because you all know it, but I like saying it out loud because it’s kind of impossible. These are the movies that Larry has written.

The Empire Strikes Back.

[Audience cheers]

Don’t do that — because it’s going to take forever. The Empire Strikes Back. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Body Heat. Return of the Jedi. The Big Chill. Silverado. The Accidental Tourist. I Love You to Death. Grand Canyon. The Bodyguard. Wyatt Earp. French Kiss. Oh, and then he just did this other one called The Force Awakens. That’s not possible.

**Lawrence Kasdan:** Thank you. French Kiss was written by Adam Brooks.

**Craig:** Okay, whatever.

**Lawrence:** I Love You to Death was written by John Kostmayer.

**Craig:** Doesn’t really matter.

**Lawrence:** And they’re both great writers. And they were on the set every day and it was wonderful.

**Craig:** But you — all right. Never mind.

**John:** All right. This is why Craig doesn’t usually do the research for episodes. Just so we’re clear on this.

**Craig:** Wikipedia, you guys.

**John:** Anyone can edit Wikipedia.

**Craig:** Anyone.

**John:** Anyone.

**Craig:** Literally anyone can do it.

**John:** Anyone can do your job right now. So sorry.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But, Craig is going to step it up, because Craig has good questions.

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Thank you so much for being here. So this morning I was on a panel where we talked about character introductions. I was wondering if you could talk about story and putting together a story. Because all these are such different universes of narrative, and yet each of them we think of them for their plot, for their story, for sort of how well they piece together.

Can you talk to us about when do you know you have enough information about this story to start writing? Probably most of us have seen the Raiders story conference, where you guys are all talking through the plot of Raiders, but what has that process been like for some of the other movies? When do you know that you have enough to start writing a movie?

**Lawrence:** First of all, I want to say I listened to that Benioff and Weiss thing, and as you know I have only admiration for those guys. But you said when Larry hears this, he’s going to cry. That they were so good that I would never recover from being replaced. I did hear that.

**Craig:** Did you cry? A little bit?

**Lawrence:** I got a tear. I don’t know that I ever feel I have enough, John. You know, in Raiders, there’s a moment when Indy has to go after the Ark. You know, it’s been put in a truck. And Sallah says to him, “What are you going to do?” And he says, “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.”

And that was my favorite line I ever got to write. Because it described my life’s work. It described my life, because it’s exactly the same with my life as it is with my life’s work, which is you’re improvising all the time. You don’t know what you’re going to do next. You’re hoping it fits into some grand scheme you’ve got in the back of your head. And it usually doesn’t fit the way you thought it did. Hopefully it’s as good or better than your previous idea.

You know, I usually start with characters that I’m interested in and hope that they develop a field of force. It starts to be a story. And you bring in another character, and that character causes a spark and friction and conflict with the one you started with. And you’re on your way.

But, of course, you’re not really on your way. You’re on your way to the first dead end and roadblock and despair.

**John:** I mean, we’re so familiar with the Star Wars movies, which are so complicated, and there’s all this going back and forth. But let’s take a simpler story like The Bodyguard. You have these two characters in conflict. Was that just the central idea? You had these two characters and the situation and the story flows through that? Or was — ?

**Lawrence:** Yeah, that was. And I had been screenplays for a long time with no success. And I’d give them to my brother, who was also trying to get into the movies at that time, and he’d say, “Oh, they’re great.” He was so supportive that I always had the illusion that something was going to happen with these scripts, but nothing ever happened.

But I did get this idea — I’m a huge Steve McQueen freak. He was a great, great movie star. I worshipped him. And I wanted to write something that he could be in. You know, it was a Steve McQueen part. I didn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that he would be in it. But I wanted something that — so I wanted to write that part because I was so drawn to that kind of character. And I find that I still am drawn to that kind of character, even though I haven’t written it for a while.

It’s very interesting to me. I was very interested in bodyguards and their willingness to sacrifice their life for someone they might not even like. For a salary, you’re supposed to throw yourself in front of the bullet. And it’s not just you may not like them. You may hate them. But that’s the commitment you make. For this salary, I will do that.

And I thought, well, what kind of person does that? And what’s that like? And then what would happen if he took a job like that. He didn’t like the woman he was protecting. And then, of course, they fell in love. And I thought, that’s really a good story.

**Craig:** It is a good story.

**Lawrence:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I saw it. It was great.

**Lawrence:** I haven’t come up with many where you feel that way. And I don’t know about you guys. Maybe you have them all the time. I always feel, you know, people like our friend Scott Frank is always making you miserable because he’s like, “Oh, I’m doing ten things and I turned down four others. And it’s so great, and I’m doing this, and doing that.” And you’re like, fuck you.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. We all feel that way about Scott. That’s about right.

**Lawrence:** They don’t come often. But that was clearly a good story.

**Craig:** Well, there’s something about that story that I think is common to a lot of the stories you tell, and that’s a certain kind of character. Whether you’re looking at Han Solo, and you’re currently writing a Han Solo movie with your son. Or Indiana Jones. Or if you’re looking at The Bodyguard. A number of these, there’s this lovable jerk quality. And that is an interesting tight rope to walk. And you do it better than anyone, I think, because your lovable jerks are definitely jerks. But they are really lovable. Usually they’re lovable and almost jerky, but not really. Or they’re just jerks and we don’t love them. How do you — first of all, is this something that you realize that you do?

**Lawrence:** No, I’ve never thought about that. But it explains why I’ve kept up my relationship with you. Why I like to — you have to go back to the well.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes, of course. [laughs]

**Lawrence:** Here’s an example. The character that William Hurt plays in Body Heat, I wouldn’t call him a jerk. See, I’d never use that word. He’s not smart. He has things he’s hoping for in his life, and they haven’t really come true. But up to that point, even though he’s not smart, or canny, or anything, he has gotten by very well sort of on charm. He’s a bit of a screw up as a lawyer. He’s a small town guy.

But he has great hopes for himself. And he doesn’t know it, but someone has spotted him as a talent that will be usable. So he thinks he’s meeting a woman, but she’s actually pre-scoped him. And she knows that these very things that are his weaknesses and his greatest desires can be put to her use. And we don’t find out that she know all about it before for quite a while in the story.

But I don’t think of him as a jerk. I think of him as a guy. A guy. He’s not so different from me, because he wants things, he doesn’t want to work that hard to get them. He’s hoping for the best. And not surprised by the worst.

**Craig:** The lovable part is the explanation and the humanity behind the failures. I mean, you do that really well, I think. That when you create flawed characters, the flaws don’t feel like they’re floating on top of somebody. They feel like they’re on the other side of the things we like. They are sort of integral to why we like those characters.

**Lawrence:** Well, that’s high praise, isn’t it? I do think all things are like that. There’s a great line that I will screw up now, but where he says, “You know, every pleasure — with every pleasure is a hint of pain.” Pay for your ticket and don’t complain. Everything is a duality.

There’s us here, sitting here. You guys are loved. Your podcast is loved.

**Craig:** Oh geez, here we go. Here we go.

**Lawrence:** I am thrilled to be the subject of your podcast and this gathering. There is behind us —

**Craig:** This is what it’s like all the time, by the way.

**Lawrence:** There’s a secret life going on with everybody all the time. And it’s the one that feels like, oh, I’m a fake. I’m a sham. How am I going to get through this? Can I get through it with people thinking I know what I’m talking about? Will you guys ask questions — you’re wondering, can you ask a question he hasn’t been asked a hundred times?

**Craig:** I know. We’ve really tried hard. How are we doing so far?

**Lawrence:** So far so good.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Lawrence:** The thing that got me about that Raiders episode, which I do recommend. These guys know Raiders much better than I do. Last night I was listening to a little bit of it, and I thought, “Really?” That’s great. And they keep saying during the podcast, “This is masterful. And that’s masterful.” And I’m thinking like, masterful, me? Is that? Wow, great. Because you don’t feel masterful. You don’t.

And you don’t feel it when you’re doing it. And you hope for it to be considered that way later on. When it holds up, when you guys can deconstruct it for an hour and a half, and it not just fall apart in your hands like dust —

**Craig:** It holds up.

**Lawrence:** It’s very nice.

**John:** Well, what you’ve described is like we say it’s masterful and you had no idea that it was masterful at the time. We’ve talked about imposter syndrome where you feel like, you know, people are going to figure out that I really don’t know what I’m doing.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** And these lovable jerk characters, Indiana Jones, the Han Solo, I think there’s a quality of that where like they’re acting with sort of a bravado so that no one will pay attention to the fact that they really don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s an inner doubt there that’s coming off through some of their dialogue, some of their lines.

It strikes me that like you can’t have those characters unless there’s someone to play opposite that character. So, if you don’t have a Marion, if you don’t have a Leia, if you don’t have a Luke, someone who is not that person. If you try to stick two of those characters together, it’s going to be chaos.

**Lawrence:** Well, the whole thing that interests me about writing movies, aside from the images and the power of the images and the way you can do that has nothing to do with dialogue, but I’m always interested in you have a character but he doesn’t have any shape. There’s no molding. There’s no contrast until there’s the light of another character shown on him.

And what’s wonderful is a movie where you say, “Oh my god, that character is so right about the other one. And I hadn’t thought of that.” And the protagonist, who you started with, is thinking, “Damn, she’s right about me,” but he can’t let that out. If it’s in his eyes. And then maybe later in the story he proves himself not to be exactly what she thought. What a great surprise that is. That’s the delight of a good movie.

**Craig:** We talk about this a lot, but I think we see it in your work throughout, that your characters really are defined by the relationships that they’re having. It’s very difficult to — I think sometimes new writers think that they have to write a character. You know, you’re going to write Indiana Jones. But Indiana Jones is defined from the start, even from the very start, by the fact that he’s not the guy that he’s with. You know? I just think that you do that really well. That you understand that — you know, Lindsay Doran, I don’t know if any of you have seen the talk that she does.

There you go. I don’t know when — she does it fairly frequently at the Guild, but she’s wonderful and you should see it when you can. And what she talks about ultimately is she talks about the last scene of movies. And that we think in our minds, we remember, like what’s the last scene of the movie? It’s when the thing blows up. It’s when the plot is resolved. But that’s never the last scene. The last scene is always Luke, and Leia, and Han standing on a ridiculous platform with stupid medals, but they’re smiling at each other. It’s the relationships.

**Lawrence:** Yes. Well, all of film, and the way this thing works, whether it’s film or digital, is there’s nothing until there’s a contrast between one pixel and another, between one grain of film and another. So, right at the essence of film, it only starts to become defined when there’s light and dark.

And that same thing follows right through the story, through all the characters, and everything is illuminated by the contrast.

**John:** So, you had a unique opportunity to go back and take a look at Han Solo, a character that you worked with before, in The Force Awakens. And a number of years have passed between them. What were those conversations like as you started looking at that character and where he’d be at now, what his relationships were like, what his relationship was like with his son, with Leia? What were those discussions and how did you figure out who he was then?

**Lawrence:** You know, Harrison is a little older than me, but our careers have been oddly entwined. We’ve never been close, but he’s a lovely guy. And he’s turned into a great, great man. And something happened where, you know, he’s relaxed into —

**Craig:** I think it’s pot, from what I’ve heard. He’s high all the time. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it, but that’s what I’ve heard.

**Lawrence:** He is a prince. A god. A king. And I could see that as soon as we came into the process and J.J. and I started talking to Harrison in some way early on. And after we had a draft, we had a really funny, wonderful meeting with him. And we did a lot of the writing in various cities, because J.J. — he had to be in London. He had to be out of London for tax reasons. And we were in Paris. And London.

**Craig:** That dodge has been canceled.

**John:** High class problems?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** But we did most of it walking around Santa Monica and Manhattan, a freezing day. It was total fun. Most fun ever, really. But when we got to this stage where Harrison came, we had done a lot of work at the various Soho Houses. Now, I got to tell you, I’m sure there are wonderful people that go to the Soho House. In London, there are like five or six of them. And J.J. is a member. I’m not a member. I think I heard you guys talking about it.

**John:** Yeah, Dana Fox talks about it. And Aline goes to the Soho House. I’m not a member. I tried.

**Craig:** I’m not a member.

**Lawrence:** You’re not a member. But you’ve been taken there by wonderful patrons.

**Craig:** Douchebags usually.

**Lawrence:** But Harrison came, and so did Carrie. We had these meetings, a series of meetings at one of the Soho Houses. And it was great to — Harrison first of all was totally, he was so positive about the whole thing. And he didn’t ask for much. And you really wanted to do anything that — any problem he had, you either wanted to fix it, or you wanted to bring him over to your side.

You know, very early on in the shooting he got hurt. The door to the Falcon came down. It was a big — could have been a disastrous mistake. It was an understandable mistake, but a bad one on the part of the guy in charge of the door.

**Craig:** Where is that guy now, by the way?

**Lawrence:** Yeah. Well.

**John:** He had to leave for tax reasons.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** [laughs] He is in Paris, I’m sure.

**Craig:** Won’t see that guy no more.

**Lawrence:** Meg was visiting that day and she and I went out to get something to eat. And we came back and everything had locked down. So, it happened like — I probably should never have left the set.

**John:** Lessons learned. So, in going back to revisit Han Solo, you were presenting him with a whole set of challenges which the old Han Solo would never have to face. So, what is it like to — ?

**Lawrence:** What do you mean?

**Craig:** Reduced urine flow.

**John:** No, no, no.

**Craig:** Stuff like that.

**John:** You’re giving him responsibilities that are sort of un-Han Solo like. So, like having a relationship with —

**Lawrence:** Well, this is what I started out to say. Even though Harrison is a little older than me, but we knew each other 40 years ago practically now when I did Empire is when I met Harrison. And then we did — Actually I wrote Raiders. I didn’t meet Harrison. He didn’t know who was going to play it. That could have been Tom Selleck. Could have been anyone.

Then I did Empire. And then we got back to Raiders and that’s when I got to know Harrison. He is now — so that was around 1980. And what’s this, 1956, 1987, where are we now?

**Craig:** Right now?

**Lawrence:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is 2016.

**Lawrence:** Oh damn.

**Craig:** I’ve told you that. I said that before. Do you not remember?

**Lawrence:** So 36 years ago.

**Craig:** Right. That’s a long time.

**Lawrence:** It’s a long time. And he’s had a lot of life in between. I’ve had a lot of life in between. It’s very easy to relate to this character who has been out there doing stuff for 36 years. And that’s how we treated. And J.J. and I never had the slightest doubt that that’s what it was about. You know, it’s about what have you learned, what haven’t you learned, what mistakes will you make forever until you drop, you know, and what mistakes can you learn from. And that’s very easy to write.

**Craig:** And that span of time for you as a filmmaker gives you a certain perspective that I think is interesting to all of us. And the list of questions you’re asked a million times, how have the movies changed I’m sure is one of them.

But there’s a flip to that question that I’m really interested in, because you’ve always written movies for audiences. And that sounds like a strange thing — aren’t they all for audiences? But I feel like sometimes there are filmmakers who are writing it for, I don’t know — you’re writing them for audiences.

How have the audiences changed in the time since you started?

**Lawrence:** I’m glad you think I’m writing for audiences, because very often the audience has not shown up.

**Craig:** This occasionally happens.

**Lawrence:** Yeah. They haven’t done their part. I did my part. You know, I honestly believe that I’m not writing for audiences. I’m writing for myself. And when J.J. and I sat down to do this one, we sort of came into it under a lot of time pressure and everything, and we were sort of clearing the decks. There had been some false starts. And I said to him, “We have only one job. The job is to delight. This movie doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. It’s only entertainment.” And that’s not usual for me, because usually I want to make it as hard as possible for people to sit there.

But this clearly was going to be satisfying a lot of long-suffering fans. And I said we just want to delight. You know, Akira Kurosawa, who is my greatest hero, and is I think the greatest director that ever lived, and one of the greatest writers that ever lived, his greatest film is Seven Samurai, if you haven’t seen it, go home and see it. It’s everything.

He is the Shakespeare of movies. He does everything. He does comedy. He does drama. Historical drama. Intimate, tiny personal dramas. And swashbuckling action. He’s the greatest director that ever lived. At one point, he decided to make Yojimbo, which you can watch as an appetizer for Seven Samurai. And it is, I think, maybe the most entertaining movie ever made. Just frame-by-frame, most entertaining.

But what he said to his writers, his co-writers, as he sat down was he said, “I want to make a movie that’s so delicious you want to eat it.” That’s Akira Kurosawa. And Yojimbo is that movie. And incident to incident you say, oh my god, that’s so great. What would be the best thing that could happen next?

Well, I said that to J.J. I told him that story. And I said let’s just write what we want to see, that would delight us, and then the next thing is what’s the next great thing that could happen. And that’s not I approach everything. It’s not how I approached The Big Chill, or Accidental Tourist.

But this was clearly meant to delight. So that’s a great sort of flag to be operating in.

**Craig:** And you did. I mean, that’s the thing. What’s so fascinating is that 36 years go by, or 35 years, and whatever happened with the audience over that amount of time, the one thing that didn’t change was you wrote the Empire Strikes Back, and they were delighted. You wrote The Force Awakens, and they were delighted again. It’s a remarkable thing.

**Lawrence:** How rarely everything happens the way you want it to. In fact, that release — it was an amazingly fun time. It was really three years of my life, because I was on it before I officially came on writing it. And then the last two years were just intensely with J.J. and then on the set and production. And when you have a really great experience like that, you’re thinking — if you’re Jewish — you know, you’re thinking, okay, where’s the kick in the ass?

**Craig:** That is what I think. Yeah.

**John:** So, at our live show, we had — at the very back of the house we had paper where people could write down their questions, because they came there, they showed up that night thinking you were going to be there. And so we only had the Game of Thrones guys, so I said write your question down and we’ll ask some of your questions to Lawrence Kasdan when we see him next.

And so some of these are questions that these people wrote. So, Greg Macklin wrote, “What’s your advice to learning to enjoy writing for the sake of writing when things get demoralizing, such as your new movie gets terrible reviews, your pilot gets canceled, life goes south?”

**Craig:** Oh, I want to know the answer to this one.

**John:** Yeah. And also I think Greg is presupposing that you enjoy writing. So, do you enjoy writing?

**Lawrence:** You know, the great quote about that, and it’s been true for me my whole life, is do you enjoy writing? No. What do you like? I like having written. Well, everybody likes having written. And you say, oh, well, here — I’ll give you another copy. Want another copy?

But, writing it is rarely fun. And for me it’s a struggle every single day to start. Now, in the best cases, you get caught up in it and it’s suddenly six hours later and you say, “Shit, we didn’t get anything done, but this is kind of good.” And very often you think the next day, I do, I put it away and then I come back the next day and I’m expecting to think it’s terrible. And it often isn’t, or at least I’ve convinced myself. And that’s fun.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** But then even if I do that, even if I read yesterday’s stuff and I say, “That’s pretty good,” then I have to turn to this day’s stuff and it’s a drag.

**Craig:** And now you’re thinking how am I going to do as good of a job as yesterday guy did. Yeah. No, it never ends.

**Lawrence:** So it’s never easy.

**Craig:** Never ends.

**Lawrence:** Never ends.

**Craig:** Here’s a question from Cody in Pasadena. “Is there any movie you’ve written that has not been produced that you would still love to make someday?”

**Lawrence:** Oh, yes, not a lot, because when you go through the whole process and it doesn’t work out and you have the whole experience of defeat, very often you get alienated from that.

**Craig:** Stank on that one, yes.

**Lawrence:** But I adapted a Richard Russo book called The Risk Pool. And there was no reason in the world we shouldn’t have made it. Tom Hanks was going to do it, and then he changed his mind. And Richard Russo is a great writer. And someone had sent the book to Meg just to read it, and she said, “You’ve got to read this. I think there’s a movie here.” And I don’t even that excuse.

But what got me was it was about a character who was so much like my father. And he’s got a lot of problems and he’s scuffling through life, but there are things about him that were enormously attractive, which is how I felt about my father who I lost when I was 14. And I thought, this is amazing. Richard must have had a similar kind of experience. And if you read Richard Russo’s stuff, this father figure recurs again and again in Empire Falls and all his work.

And because that’s such an important fact of our lives, and if you lose them suddenly and abruptly, that becomes another thing to deal with for the rest of your life. I really wanted to make that movie. And when Tom decided he didn’t want to do it, it just cut all the steam out of it. And it was very hard to get it back.

And I would still like to make that movie. And I was working with a wonderful independent producer, Anthony Bregman, on something else, and I said, well you know what I really want — he asked me the same question. And I said — and I gave it to him. And he said, “Eh…who? What?” He just didn’t get it. It didn’t excite him.

You know, he thought, well how are you going to get people — and he knows, because he’s so prolific. He’s knowing that he’s going to be in a meeting with Weinstein or Sony Classics or something, and they’re going to say, “How do we sell this?”

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And it’s not obvious from The Risk Pool.

**John:** Great. Derek T. writes, “What was the favorite script you’ve ever written?” Do you have a favorite script you’ve written?

**Lawrence:** No, absolutely, honestly no. It’s corny. It’s true. No movie is your favorite, for me. You know, I have two sons, three grandchildren. Can’t pick favorites. Don’t want to pick favorites.

**Craig:** I do have a question here. It is from John Kasdan.

**Lawrence:** Really?

**Craig:** “Ask him which of his sons he prefers. I have my suspicions.” You’re still sticking with…

**Lawrence:** Talk to John. He’s moved to New York. And I don’t think it’s related. But we talked to him this morning, and he was feeling good about me. So I thought he was a wonderful son.

**Craig:** So the answer is you prefer him today.

**Lawrence:** But he and I went through the crucible. It’s never easy to — I’ve collaborated with a lot of different people. My brother, my wife, friends, people who I’ve just gotten to know, like J.J., and became friends. When you start to collaborate with your son, everyone says, “Whoa.”

**Craig:** And was it whoa? Did you have those moments?

**Lawrence:** It was a challenge. And we had great moments. And we had difficult moments. And it’s not over. We’re going to go back and do a little work probably. Chris Miller and Phil Lord are directing the movie. We’re very excited about that. And they’ve been great. They’re hilarious.

**Craig:** They’re the best.

**Lawrence:** They came to my place in Colorado and worked with us for a week. And they’re just fun to hang out with out. And they’re brilliant. You know, imaginative guys.

The whole reason that I tried to get them onto it, because it was a difficult process. Not because everybody didn’t want them, but money always, and Disney is difficult. But we did get it. But I said to Kathy Kennedy when it was just about to fall apart, I said, “Look, John and I are going to run out of ideas, probably very soon. And these guys are great writers. So, you’re getting the directors, but you’re also getting these amazing writers. And you should do everything in the world to make it happen.”

**Craig:** Yeah, but on the other side, these movies don’t make a lot of money, so they have to really be careful about what they spend on the writers.

**Lawrence:** There’s that.

**John:** Larry, could you tell us about the process of collaborating? Because most of your credits, you are the sole screenwriter. But some of these other ones, you’ve had to work with other folks. What is the process when you are coming in on a project that’s already moving? How are you getting up to speed? How are you finding common ground?

**Lawrence:** That hasn’t happened much. When I got involved with The Force Awakens, I was not going to write it, but I was going to do the Han movie. But they said to me, “We’ll make a separate deal for you where you will consult. We’re going to have a story group to talk about The Force,” we didn’t know what it was called, but the next Star Wars.

And I said, okay. But that involvement I thought would be very casual and intermittent, became very intense as it just didn’t come together. And it was only after nine months of that that they decided to change directions. And I was hesitant. Michael Arndt, an incredibly talented writer, and a great guy —

**Craig:** Yeah, great guy.

**Lawrence:** Loved working with him. And he said, you know, “I can’t do this in the amount of time.” They were under an enormous time pressure. He said, “I can’t do this.” And he stepped away. And J.J. and I took it over. And that was the first time there’s ever been anything really there, you know. I’ve had books, two books, but basically I’ve been there at the inception.

**John:** And we think of you as doing features. Are there any TV things that I’m not aware of that you’ve done? Is television interesting to you at all?

**Lawrence:** It’s very interesting to me. And I have a great agent over here and he would like me to be successful in television. Don’t know if it’s possible. It’s so different.

But, it is where all the quality stuff is happening. You know, the chances of making a really good, intelligent, adult movie — you can still do it — but the odds are a million to one. You don’t even blame them, because there’s no one going to those movies. You know, you can’t get your money back.

But there is now, Eden has opened up, which is there’s all this money to do very adult, very complicated stuff, and since The Sopranos there’s been a revolution. And it just continues. In fact, now, people are competing like crazy. Say, Craig Mazin, can we get Craig Mazin? John? What if they do it together? We’ll give them the entire network.

**John:** Never. Never.

**Craig:** Oh. So —

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, one thing that’s interesting about television, you I think are exceptionally good at what I call closed ended narrative, and that’s what movies are. They begin, they proceed, they end.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** And your endings are always great. In television, at least historically, the whole point of television was never end. But now there is this middle ground.

**Lawrence:** There is.

**Craig:** It’s interesting. People are making either short term miniseries or movies for television. I could certainly see like — I would imagine once this goes out that people are going to be calling about the movie that you were just talking about. There’s a demand for content, and specifically the kind of content that, yeah, they don’t put in theaters right now.

**Lawrence:** Yeah, which is amazing. And it’s great news for everybody here. Because five years ago you would have said, “Oh, it’s the end of the world.” Because studios are not interested in anything that isn’t slam-dunk branded. And that doesn’t mean it’s going to work, but it’s branded. And so they’re making a tiny number with big movie stars that will do some other kind of things. And then there’s independent film, which is very much alive and thriving, but you’re headed toward Netflix and Amazon and Apple anyway. I mean, that’s really where people are going to see it. They’re not going to see it in a theater.

So, the fantasy of the kind of movies that I made for 30 years, that’s sort of over. You know.

**Craig:** Even a movie like The Bodyguard.

**Lawrence:** Very hard.

**Craig:** Like The Big Chill, I could see, you know, well, that was a specific movie of its time, but you could look at it now and go, “Oh, they don’t make adult dramas like that.” But even Bodyguard —

**John:** Body Heat, they would never make as a feature now.

**Craig:** Never. Never.

**John:** Body Heat is a Netflix series, a 13-episode series.

**Craig:** Right. But it would have been a good one on Netflix.

**John:** So good. Slow burn.

**Lawrence:** But I’ve been intimidated by the length of time. And I have a couple projects that I’m working on now that would be eight hours. And that seems possible to me. I haven’t quite worked them out. But as long as someone else is writing those eight hours. I don’t want to.

**Craig:** You don’t want to write them. Of course not.

**John:** So, are both your sons involved in the film industry?

**Lawrence:** Yes. They both write and direct movies.

**Craig:** Yeah. Jake is a big comedy movie director.

**Lawrence:** Yes he is. And in TV, he’s got all these TV series.

**Craig:** You were giving me a look behind me earlier.

**Lawrence:** I didn’t know what you said.

**Craig:** Okay. It’s paranoia.

**Lawrence:** Craig didn’t used to have a beard, but part of his comic stylings is to murmur or something that you can’t quite hear. He can score on you without you ever hearing it. So everybody — is that right?

**John:** It’s absolutely true.

**Craig:** Kind of a weird defense for hearing loss, but okay.

**John:** [laughs]

**Lawrence:** Somehow I think the beard has made that even more effective. Maybe — you can’t really see your lips moving.

**Craig:** He’s the dad I always wanted.

**John:** I can tell, yeah. So, both of your sons are writing and directing. What advice do you give them? Is it things have changed obviously since when you started. What do you talk to them about if they come to you for career advice?

**Lawrence:** Well, they used to, but they don’t anymore. When they were younger, and they did care what I thought. And there was a period when I became very discouraged about movies, you know, because they just stopped making the kind of movies that I had thrived on. And I said to them, “You know, movies have gone to hell. The end of the world has arrived. It’s all crap.”

And they both said sort of, “Dad, you know, you’ve been saying the same thing for 25 years.” And I was thinking we had reached some —

**Craig:** But apparently your whole life is that?

**Lawrence:** Yes, my life is down in the valley. And the truth is it has always been hard — always. When we were moving recently and I came across the panel or discussion that I did with Marty Ritt, you know, who made Hud. A great director. And George Miller. A young George Miller. And Peter Bogdanovich. And we’re all saying — this is 30 years ago.

**Craig:** Same thing?

**Lawrence:** We’re all saying, “Oh, they just want to make comic books now. It’s all branding and super heroes. There won’t be another good movie made.” This is 30 years ago. So, somehow the movies get made. But it is a struggle. Always.

**Craig:** Should we?

**John:** Open it up for questions.

**Craig:** Yeah. And we’ll start with you, sir.

**Male Audience Member:** Okay, for Mr. Kasdan, how did you learn your craft? And I want to preface that by saying it sounds like you just started writing screenplays. But did you study acting? It seems from your work that you did. Or Shakespeare? Or write plays? Or any of that?

**Lawrence:** I did all those things. And I did want to be an actor. And people kept saying, “You’re terrible. You’re terrible.” And I actually think that’s very important, because no one — these are all good jobs if you’re working in the movies or television or everything. And people will discourage you. And if you can be discouraged, you should be discouraged. And I was discouraged about acting and I gave it up.

But when they said, when I wanted to be a writer-director, they said, “What are you thinking? You’re crazy.” And that didn’t mean anything to me. And I think that’s the natural selection process that happens.

How did I learn it? I watched movies and movies. I was studying literature in college and was knocked out by the writing that I was exposed to. I came out of West Virginia, but we had a pretty decent English program at my high school in West Virginia. But in 1961, I saw Lawrence of Arabia. And it changed my life. I knew that’s all I wanted to do. And this is before high school or anything. I thought, “I want to direct movies.”

And my brother had gone to Harvard and he came back from Boston and he said, “You know, people make movies. They don’t just happen. The actors don’t just make it up.” We didn’t know that in West Virginia. In West Virginia it was like you’d call the theater and you’d say, “What time is the showing?” And they’d say, “Well, when can you get here?”

We had no real connection. But my brother said there’s a whole job you can have doing this. And that was terribly important to me. And from the time I was 14 on, all I wanted to do was direct movies.

**John:** Larry, when did you first read a screenplay? When did you first start working on a screenplay versus writing other stuff?

**Lawrence:** Well, what year was Butch Cassidy? Butch Cassidy changed the world, because there had never been a screenplay —

**Craig:** ’73? ’69.

**Lawrence:** ’69. I had been watching movies, but I don’t know that I had seen a screenplay and what it looked like. But when Butch Cassidy came out, it changed the whole world for people who wanted to write movies. And it was published in book form as a screenplay, which almost no one out in the world had seen before.

I mean, by ’69 I had seen a lot of screenplays because I had gone to Michigan to try to become this thing. But that was a big moment where you read it and you said, “Well, why was this the highest priced screenplay of all time? And why do I love it moment to moment? And what freedom Bill has,” William Goldman. I didn’t know him as Bill then. “He seems to have such freedom about how to do this.”

And that was very liberating. I had read Lawrence by then. And it’s a very different style. And it’s I think the greatest screenplay ever written. And you should get a hold of it. Robert Bolt. And it’s just one amazing thing after another. And lucky for him, David Lean was there mentoring him and telling him what he wanted, and then going off and doing — you know, making the greatest movies of all time.

But if you just study — if you stop wasting your time on Raiders of the Lost Ark and just talk Lawrence of Arabia and look at it page by page, and then read it, and then read it again. That’s an education in screenwriting.

**Craig:** And you showed up one movie after Alec Guinness on Star Wars. He was right there. You had him —

**Lawrence:** Oh, how I wish I’d met him.

**Male Audience Member:** Hi. A quick three-part question.

**Craig:** No, no, no. A one-part question.

**Lawrence:** One-part question.

**Male Audience Member:** Okay then.

**Lawrence:** What’s your favorite part?

**Male Audience Member:** About being pigeon-holed as a writer. You talked about genres as vessels and then usually you’re telling the same stories essentially, just finding a different vessel to put it in.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Male Audience Member:** How do you experience with being pigeon-holed, or being forced to pigeon-holed. And how as new writers, you know, you’re constantly being pushed into that fear.

**Lawrence:** That’s the kind of problem you want to have, where anyone’s even thinking about you. And they say, “Oh, you know, he’s written only this kind of movie.” I’m not putting that down at all. But it is really a high class problem you have.

What you want is you want how can you be considered a writer that they will give money to. That’s the first step. That you’re doing work that they want to pay you for. And pigeon-holing comes with great success and it’s not to worry. Don’t worry about it.

**Female Audience Member:** Or one thing I’ve always heard about in development is the point of view of the story. When it comes to film, is this different from having a narrator?

**John:** Oh, talk to us about point of view. What does point of view mean to you?

**Lawrence:** Point of view. Yes. You know, the point of view can change 50 times during the movie. Development is a word that generally is accompanied with locusts and drought. Development is a horrible thing. Once I hear the word development, I’m already gone. You have to bring me back.

Things that people say in development. These are very smart people, because those jobs are hard to get, too, you know. So, there’s a lot of competition and you practically have to go to Harvard. You meet an unbelievable number of Harvard people out here. You say, why? There’s no connection.

**Craig:** They’re dicks.

**Lawrence:** No connection. But, some went to Princeton. But, development is not a place to be edified or to have your life get good. So, the thing is what you really want is that when you’re doing your work alone you say, “Well, what is the point of view of this story? Who is experiencing the things I want the audience to experience? How am I going to convey that as a writer so that they know?” And as I said, it can change from one moment to the next.

But, I’m working on a project and the woman who is the protagonist is thrown into a situation that she’s excited about being in, but has never been in before, and everything is coming at her. And she’s trying to figure it out on the fly. And that’s perfect for movies. You know, it’s her point of view. And then when that scene is over, we get the point of view of someone who was watching her and evaluating her and comes up to give her his praise or comments, you know.

So, I think it’s very fluid. Fluid is actually not a bad word to keep in mind all the time.

**John:** So talk about point of view. Some movies, like Body Heat, are going to have a clearly limited point of view because we don’t want the audience to have more information than our protagonist does. But you look at The Force Awakens, it seems like, oh, this is from Rey’s point of view, but then you realize there’s many characters who have sort of storytelling power. And as long as we’re with one of those characters, you can have a seen driven by one of those characters.

**Lawrence:** Because if it were just Rey, you would be very limited. You know, you would not know all of these things that are going on with Kylo Ren and you wouldn’t — but it happens that Han comes to Rey and Chewie comes to Rey. And Boyega comes to Rey. The secret sauce of that movie is Daisy Ridley. She’s wonderful.

You know, we got lucky. What was good was we all agreed right from the start this was going to be a young woman who was going to be the protagonist. But we got really lucky when we got Daisy, because she’s more than that. And every frame she’s in glows. And her presence in the movie, you know, ripples out from every scene. So even if she’s not in, you’re sort of feeling Rey.

**John:** And point of view also can be affected by when you’re introducing characters to an audience. And so I think in an earlier version didn’t we meet Leia earlier on in the story and then you ended up sliding that back —

**Lawrence:** Yes, but how do you know that? Have you been in my house?

**John:** Sorry. But it’s a lovely house. I know you were doing construction. It was fine. Good choices you made. I like the paint colors.

**Craig:** This is what — I have this all the time.

**John:** All the time. But that was an example of you probably made one choice originally, and then you saw how the audience is experiencing the movie.

**Lawrence:** J.J. shot it that way. And Leia came into the movie much earlier. And we discussed it at the time. When is the right time for her to come in? And I always think put off everybody — you know, anything you can put off, you should put off. And then maybe it will fall out of the end of the movie and never have in the movie. Because the fewer things that are in the movie, the better, almost always.

So, you’re trying to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. But, no, we didn’t know exactly the right place. And we weren’t set when J.J. shot it that way, and he started cutting it that way. And then one day he called me and he said, “We’ve taken her out. And she comes in at the scene that you’ve always said is a great scene for her to see Han for the first time. That’s her entrance in the movie. Isn’t that when you want to see her come into the movie, when she and Han lay eyes on each other for the first time?”

And I said, “I’m so happy.”

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**Female Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Female Audience Member:** This question is for my 15-year-old son and his buddies that are haunting my house today. Did you play, Mr. Kasdan, did you play Dungeons & Dragons or chess when you were a kid. If not, how did you learn to move the characters around so cool?

**Craig:** That is a good question.

**Lawrence:** Great question.

**John:** Great question.

**Lawrence:** Great question.

**John:** Also a very good mom there. So thank you for that.

**Craig:** And a good mom.

**Lawrence:** You know, I didn’t play Dungeons & Dragons and I wasn’t smart enough to play chess. But you don’t have to tell them that. But what you should do is show them the great movies that have stirred you and stirred your parents. And live without any explanation. You know, you don’t have to explain these great movies. You can sit any —

A few years ago we were at a vacation home and there were a bunch of kids, like from 10 to 18. And I said, “Oh, let’s watch Casablanca.” And everybody is like, “What?” And it was a Blu-ray. A B&W Blu-ray, because it’s a B&W movie, which is gorgeous. I recommend getting it. And they didn’t fuss that much to start.

And then it started and they didn’t say anything. They were silent for the entire length of the movie. They were riveted. Because once the lights go down and that title is — the title of one of Pauline Kael’s books that my brother actually gave her, When the Lights Go Down — but it’s the key moment in all of this kind of entertainment. Which is the lights go down and everybody focuses on that frame. And all bets are off. All the prejudices are off. If the movie works, they’re in. They can be five years old. They can be 85 years old. If it works, they’re in.

And that’s a beautiful thing to know. That if you’re doing your job, and you haven’t let them go, which we sometimes drive them out. We tell them shit they don’t need to know. We make it longer than — I’ve done this — make it way longer than it has to be. And you’re driving out. But the instinct is to stay in. And it doesn’t matter how old they are. Show them the best movie you think, and they will learn all these things about, “Gee, that character did that. And that character did that.” It’s almost as good as Dungeons & Dragons.

**Craig:** But not quite. Ma’am?

**Female Audience Member:** My question is about writing credible characters of the opposite gender. So when I think about Marion in Raiders of if I’m thinking about Rachel, I see strong, beautiful women who are in peril and need to be saved. And yet even though they’re being commoditized, they know that they still have dignity and they move through that story with a sense of themselves. And sometimes even save the man that came to save them. Was that a natural tendency of yours? Did you have to work harder at writing credibly authentic women? And can you tell other men writers how to do the same thing, please? Thank you.

**Lawrence:** I think I — what saved me is I didn’t make that distinction much in mind. I thought every character had to be interesting. Every character had to be as complicated as the people I knew. And the women I knew were even more mysterious to me, so they were very complicated.

And if you are making a person, you know, they’ll probably be interesting. If it’s true.

The great safety net under everything you ever do is ask yourself as things are bouncing around down there, is it true? Does this feel true? And it doesn’t mean that it had to happen. And it doesn’t mean that it ever will happen. It means that in the world we’ve created, does this seem real? Does it honor the reality you’ve created up till then? If it’s true, you’re half the way there. So, that would be man, woman, child, whatever.

**John:** Larry, that seems to go back to your acting. You said you weren’t a good actor, but that’s very much an acting kind of question. Does this moment ring true? Could I play this? Could I actually believe that I’m in this moment as it’s happening.

**Lawrence:** Yes. And you know, I like to think of myself as a director. I’ve spent years of my life directing actors. I love actors. And when they have a problem, it’s sometimes about the script. But sometimes it’s about the wardrobe. Sometimes it’s about the other actor is doing something that’s driving them crazy. And you have to suss out without making villains anywhere and not alienating anybody else, you have to say how can I make them more comfortable. How can we get through this?

And I sometimes use the example that if they say, “These lines. I just can’t say these lines.” I say, okay, well, it’s possible they’re no good. First of all, would you like to write some new ones? That usually slows the process down. But, I say, what if you pick up the glass in the middle of the scene and then don’t drink from it. You put it down. And that says something about where your state of mind is. And they go, “Mm.” And you have a conversation started.

And maybe the thing is there are lines that shouldn’t be in there. That’s usually what it is. There’s too many lines. And you say, “Well what if you don’t say it at all, and you never have to say it, you’ll never say it in this movie, and you’ll never have to say it in your life.” And they say, “Okay, I like that.” That’s very possible.

So, you’re looking for a strategy that gets people who are stuck over the part they’re stuck about. That’s true of cameramen, and production designers, and costume designers. If they have a problem, you’ve got to say, “What is the real problem,” and not let your own sense of pressure or being a fake overcome your ability to open up that conversation.

**John:** Do you think it’s easier being the writer-director to tell them like, “Oh, just do whatever you want,” because you’re the writer and you know how it’s all going to fit together? Have you directed things that you’ve not written?

**Lawrence:** Just a couple.

**John:** And so is it a different experience to tell an actor to go off and do their own thing when you’re not the writer there as well?

**Lawrence:** Being a writer-director is a place of enormous power. Everybody wants to please the director, but the security — if you’ve written it, too, there’s enormous credibility you have. And you can sometimes get things that a director could not get.

And they’ll ask you, “Well, why is this like this?” And you say, well, you know, it’s not about this. It’s about 40 pages later this has to happen. And sometimes they have not made that connection. And no matter how committed they are, no matter how great they are as actors, they just don’t think the way you do. And sometimes if you say, “Well, you know, 40 pages later when he does this, that’s because he said that earlier.” And they go, “Oh my god, that’s great.”

And it helps everything for the next 40 pages.

**Craig:** That’s our frustration sometimes as writers. We go into meetings. The studio executives or the producers have missed things that we don’t understand they’ve missed. Actors miss things we don’t understand they miss. But the truth is, their minds don’t work like ours, and thank god.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** Because, A, that means we have something worthy and not replicable. And also I don’t want my actors to be screenwriters. I’ve seen screenwriters act. I want actors to be actors. And it’s a different way of approaching material. I completely understand that point of view.

Sir?

**Male Audience Member:** Craig and John, thanks for doing this. You’re doing a great job. Do you need a water or anything? Mr. Kasdan, my name is Nathan Scoggins, and I’ve been fortunate to get a few things made. And I remember when I was 11 and my parents asked me what I wanted to do, and I talked about movies, and they went out and rented two movies on VHS back in those days. One was The Accidental Tourist and the other was Grand Canyon.

**Lawrence:** Great parents.

**Male Audience Member:** They had good taste. They had good taste. And Grand Canyon is one of those movies that —

**Craig:** There’s a question coming, right?

**Male Audience Member:** There is.

**Craig:** Good.

**Male Audience Member:** And it feels like one of those movies that is kind of a forgotten film of the early ’90s, and yet it feels as current now in terms of the themes that it deals with as it did then. And I’m curious, because it feels kind of like a movie out of time, could you talk a little bit about what went into crafting that film?

**Lawrence:** Absolutely. I wrote Grand Canyon with my wife, Meg, who is here. And we had raised two jobs in Los Angeles. And things were happening in the city and I found we were both trying to figure it out. You know, we weren’t in despair, but we wanted to figure out why is there all this energy that’s so negative, so dangerous, and there’s also all this thriving, throbbing life in the city.

And we were just trying to figure out if we could make some sense of it. And public discourse has become so politically charged, and Grand Canyon may have difficulties in this time because it dares to talk about some things that you’re not supposed to talk about anymore. You’re not allowed to.

And I liked the movie a lot and in the privacy of my home I can look at it and say I know why I did — that was a great experience by the way. It was total, total great experience. And I wish that there were more freedom now to talk about these kind of things, but they’re really hot button issues. Every single one of them.

**Craig:** Well, there’s a certain expectation now that if you do talk about things, you have to talk about them perfectly. Because there are a million ways to go wrong. I would argue that it’s literally impossible for a film to not fall down some — because it isn’t real life. It’s some simulation of life.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Mr. Kasdan, you’re such an integral part to two of the biggest and most popular franchises of like movie history. I was wondering since franchise and universe building is such like key words in the industry today, what are some of the touchstones that keep rooted to a really good story even within a franchise? And what are some of the pitfalls that you can see writers falling into when they’re trying to create the perfect franchise movie?

**Lawrence:** Yeah. I don’t think you can create the perfect franchise movie. These guys did an interesting analysis of the top 100 movies, and there were 14 standalone movies of the top 100. The other 86 were all related to franchises. That was so discouraging.

**Craig:** Well, and you provided most of them, by the way. I’m not sure what the discouragement is about.

**John:** How’s that next Han Solo movie going? Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. As you remodel your 12th house. We could do this forever.

**John:** We could do this forever. And actually, that’s the thing, we may be making Star Wars movies forever. Star Wars may outlast us.

**Craig:** We’re going to. Yeah.

**John:** So it’s a different thing that’s happening.

**Lawrence:** That’s not the issue. That’s the outside looking in. What we’re talking about, what your challenge is — your challenge is to find — I don’t know, maybe you want to write the perfect franchise movie. That means you need a franchise to work on and you need to say, “I want to do a really good job on this.” Okay, this will be a nice entry in that.

But if you’re interested in other things, that is entirely on you. And you have the freedom of your computer. When we’re done here today, go home, sit at your computer, and say, “What is the story I most want to tell? And I know that it’s going to be really hard to get it made. And everyone is going to tell me I’m crazy because it’s not a franchise and it’s not a brand. But I really want to tell this story.”

And then work as hard as you can to tell that story. That’s actually how you do good work. And it’s also how if you are charged with creating a franchise movie, it’s the same process. What’s the best way we can do this? Without cynicism. Without presumption that people already like it when they don’t. How can I make this particular movie honorable? How can I make it true? How can I make it worth people’s time and money?

**John:** Going back to Raiders of the Lost Ark and the story conference, which people have seen the transcript of that, that was the first movie. That was the original template for this thing that’s going to keep going on. Looking at that discussion you had, everyone is referencing the things that are so important to that, and the things they love. The serials are important to them. What if this character did this? I want a character who can do these kind of things.

That was you guys forming the template in real time for what this whole thing was going to be. And it started with what do I love. What do I wish existed as a movie? And that’s, I think, what we are urging him to write is that thing that he wishes existed.

**Lawrence:** That’s exactly right. And George and Steven are very strong that way. And you can see it all through their work. And Steven continues to make movies at an unbelievable rate. And it’s always for that reason, because he always wanted to make a movie like this, or he always wanted to make a movie like that.

And just forward movement. And it’s from a love. A love of saying I want to do a scene like that. I want to direct a scene like that.

**Craig:** And that’s also how you end up getting to work on a franchise. You worked on that because of your work on Continental Divide, which is as far from a franchise film as it gets.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** The second half of his question I thought was really fascinating, too. Let’s speculate. If one of these franchises goes south, what will have happened that caused it to go south? What will be the film or the series of choices — ?

**Craig:** Rian Johnson basically.

**John:** Well, Rian Johnson, obviously. Death and disaster.

**Craig:** Yeah. He blows it.

**John:** So, hiring the wrong director like Rian Johnson. [laughs] We love Rian.

**Craig:** We love Rian Johnson. He’s our guy.

**John:** He’s a good friend. He’s our guy.

**Lawrence:** He’s part of the inner circle.

**John:** But I would speculate that if these franchises go south, it’s because either we go back to the well too many times. We sort of keep making the same movie too many times, or we sort of make desperate choices to sort of — we sort of kowtow to sort of desperate choices for things.

**Craig:** Well, you see, sometimes as things start to fall apart, I remember watching the evolution of ’80s/’90s era Batman movies. It started with this fascinating Tim Burton take that was so wildly different than what we knew from the campy show on TV, although I love that show.

And what happened was each successive seemed to look backwards and say, “What was the stuff people liked about that? More of that.”

**John:** That’s Charlie’s Angels 2, by the way. I can tell you what a franchise looks like as it is falling apart.

**Craig:** I may be involved in one right now as we’re speaking. But they lose sight, I think, of what you were talking about. The essential nature of contrast. That the big and the loud needs the quiet and the soft. The thoughtful must be there for the explosions to be interesting. So by the time you get to Batman with a Nipple, it’s just noise. There’s no contrast at all. Sometimes I feel like that’s where — and I suspect that this iteration of Star Wars, that lesson seems to have been learned thoroughly, until you blow it with Han Solo.

**Lawrence:** What’s mystifying is that the people who are getting these jobs are really talented people. You’re knocked out by how sharp they are. And it’s not just technically. They love the form. They love the genre. And the weak link is — and you know, effects, you just can’t get any better. Effects are just getting better, and better, and better. But the weak link is always in the writing. And it’s always in what they leave in the movie. Which is the movies are always 20 minutes too long and they always have explosions you don’t have any emotional connection to.

And it’s mystifying, because these are not dumb people. But there’s some culture of making these movies that they just feel they have to be bigger and louder than the last one. And that’s never the answer to anything.

**Craig:** Agreed. Ma’am?

**Female Audience Member:** In the nature of contrast, across the span of your very impressive career, what do you think has been your greatest evolution as a writer and what has remained a core truth for you as a writer?

**Lawrence:** That’s a great question. I don’t think I’ve evolved at all. As you get older, and you can’t believe how old you are, you say, “Why am I not wise?” I’m not wise. I honestly believe. But it turns out that you don’t get wise. You get experienced. And you have more experiences to reference. And, of course, you start forgetting them, so —

But, it’s only experience. So that when a new problem arises, you say, “Wait, this is very familiar to me.” And I remember panicking and acting like an idiot back then. Is there another approach? And you know that you’re going to get through it. And the movie will come out and maybe forgotten. That’s what’s really incredible.

But, you know, about ten years ago there was an ad, it was for a telephone company or something. And a guy, maybe you remember this. A guy walks into a desert motel and there’s like a stoned young woman behind — punk woman behind the thing. And she says, you know, “$25.” And he says, “What movies do you have?” It’s in the Mohave.

And she says, “We have every movie ever made.” This was ten years ago. And he says, “What?” And that is the situation now. You can go home right now if you’ve paid your bill, and you can access almost any movie that’s ever been made.

**Craig:** I don’t think you even need to pay a bill anymore, frankly. There’s ways to just watch.

**Lawrence:** Oh, well I don’t encourage that.

**John:** You get a young person with the Internet, yeah.

**Craig:** Of course not, no.

**Lawrence:** But everything is available to you. It’s all there. And so you can access the great art. You can also get the great books, but that’s so much harder work. But that is only of so much use, because you don’t get that much brighter or anything. So you know — I was pretty sharp when I was younger. And so I dealt with problems the best way I could think at that moment.

If I had that same problem now, it will be maybe 5% better because I’ve had these experiences. You know, it’s a big surprise of age that you get there very quickly and the benefits aren’t that great. But you are very thankful every morning when you wake up. You say, “Oh, I get to have another day.”

**Female Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**Male Audience Member:** First of all, of course, thank you very much. This has been very illuminating. A little left field question, Larry. What are your favorite TV shows and why?

**Lawrence:** Well, there’s so much great TV now that you can’t — actually, it’s become kind of a burden.

**Male Audience Member:** That’s why I asked. There’s so much.

**Lawrence:** Everybody says, “Have you seen this? Have you seen that?” And you’re 10, 12, 30 episodes behind. And you have to think am I going back to the beginning? But they’re just endless. It’s The Wire, and Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. And now it’s Better Call Saul, which is one of the weirdest wonderful shows ever made. And Silicon Valley. I mean, there’s just so many great things. You can’t watch them all. And you can’t say that about movies.

I mean, it used to be that in a year there would be five, or six, or seven movies that you’ve got to see that movie. That doesn’t happen anymore.

**Craig:** What are we down to?

**Lawrence:** I’d rather not say.

**Craig:** Sir?

**Male Audience Member:** Well, first off, I wanted to thank you for ending the Star Wars drought. It had been a while since I’d been that entertained. But I wanted to ask, when I watched it it felt like I was reliving being ten again, right down to seeing a Death Star blow up again. Was there a conscious —

**Lawrence:** Everything in it you mean.

**Craig:** I think he’s getting to the question, isn’t he?

**Lawrence:** What you say?

**Male Audience Member:** Was that the plan when you — ?

**Lawrence:** No, in fact, I said to J.J. when we started, you know, let’s not have anything blow up at the end, you know.

**Craig:** Cut to.

**Lawrence:** But that’s a perfect example. My collaboration with J.J. which was pure — it was heavenly. He’s so funny. And so smart and good. And he’s a good writer. It was a manifestation of something that I have resisted for years accepting, which is sometimes your collaborator is better than you. Sometimes the thing you’re fighting with them about, they’re right. And sometimes you’re right. And if you have a good collaborator, they sometimes see that, too.

But you’re really lucky when you get to work with someone like that. So, now you say, “Did it need to end with something blowing up?” Well, no. But it seems to work for a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean that was the only ending. There was another way to go, and we discussed other ways to go. And there was a point at which we talked about it having a much quieter ending. And I think that would have been interesting, too.

You know, these things are not one way or the other. You know, what happens is, if a movie is successful and it’s good, the waters seal. And you never think about them any other way. That’s why if you ever get a DVD and it says “the deleted scenes, the director’s cut,” those scenes are always crap. Even Lawrence of Arabia, the second greatest movie ever made, when David Lean added back the scenes that had bothered him for 40 years, they’re not as good as the others.

Now, I don’t know if that’s truly the fact, or that when the waters closed, I fell in love with that movie. And when there was something added to it, it never seemed necessary or right or helpful.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Sir?

**Male Audience Member:** Hi. Thank you. I can you pacing around the room before writing a big scene. And I was wondering, because I’m a fan, how was it on the day that you wrote Han Solo’s death?

**Lawrence:** He dies?

**Craig:** Spoiler! You haven’t seen it, yeah.

**Lawrence:** My five-year-old grandson learned Spoiler Alert last week.

**Male Audience Member:** Oh, I’m sorry.

**Lawrence:** And now he says it about everything. Dinner, Spoiler Alert! That was a very emotionally charged — we’re talking about Han Solo’s death. I didn’t get to finish because these guys interpreted me.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**Lawrence:** After Harrison was hurt, luckily not too bad, he went away and eventually they ran out of things to shoot and they closed down for a while. And during that time, there was some rewriting done. But none of that explains what happened which is that Harrison came back and there was a kind of golden glow about him. He was totally comfortable. It was the most positive thing I’ve ever seen in an actor. And he made every moment — we reshot most of what little had been done before that, and he made everything perfect. He was so great to the young actors. And he was so great to everyone on the crew.

It was magnificent. And so when we got to him dying, and this was true when we had written it, it was very emotional for everybody. Everybody. And it’s a big decision. And we talked about it a long time in the writing stages, you know.

I had wanted to kill somebody in Empire. And George didn’t want to do that. But I thought that would raise the stakes, and that we would know that you can’t get away with everything in this universe. But that didn’t happen.

And at the time of Jedi, Harrison was ready to get out. He had an incredible career going and he had had enough Star Wars. And he said, “Kill me.” But George didn’t want to do that. And I didn’t even want to do it then. I thought the time was in Empire.

And when we told Harrison about this, he was 100% cool. Now, after this charmed experience, I think he had some feeling of like this was kind of great.

**Craig:** Unkill me.

**Lawrence:** Yeah. [laughs] But he never protested and he did it with great grace. And it was emotional. I’m talking about for the prop guys, and for the grips, it was emotional. Because Harrison is a unique personality.

**Craig:** We have time for one more question. One more person. Perfect.

**Male Audience Member:** It’s a question for each of you. When you look back, especially at the early parts of your careers, and if we take your writing ability out of the equation, we ignore that.

**Craig:** Thank god.

**Male Audience Member:** What is it that you think set you apart from other writers that made you the types of people that studio execs wanted to work with, that directors wanted to work with, that actors wanted to work with?

**John:** I would say it was probably the therapist quality. The ability to really listen to what a person was saying, be able to echo back what they’re saying in different words that were constructive, and not seem like a — not seem like a difficult person. I can actually be a kind of difficult person as a writer, but I can seem really convivial in the room. And so to be able to make people feel confident, like okay, hiring you is a good choice because I think you can actually deliver. So, independent of my ability to actually put those words on the paper, I think that helped me get the jobs and helped me also be comfortable in rooms that would otherwise be very difficult.

So, a lot of my sort of my sort of early work was being thrust in rooms with really challenging people, or really fraught situations, and being able to diffuse those and get people moving forward in terms of making a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not far off from — I guess I would say I’ve always been a puzzle solver. I like solving puzzles. I won’t leave a puzzle until it’s solved. When I started, I think a lot of what I was doing was being handed distressed properties that were puzzles and that other people couldn’t quite put together, and perhaps maybe shouldn’t have been put together. But I did.

You know, and I wouldn’t stop. And I was sort of relentless about it. There is something to that narrative puzzle-making that’s valuable, but you know, it’s interesting, over time the thing that I think — whatever my value was at the time, I think it has changed over time because I’m more and more trying to do and write things that I think should be written as opposed to writing something so that it is written. Those are very different things. But slowly but surely.

And now the real answer.

**Lawrence:** Can I give a two-part answer?

**Craig:** No. Yes.

**Lawrence:** The rules are tough here. I think that it’s a combination of what these guys have said. First of all, what John said to me, you can say it about all of life. That if you want to be appealing, if you want to be the person that people want to go to, it helps if you actually see people and hear people. That’s so rare in the world. You know, where a person feels seen and heard and understood. It’s kind of magical when it happens and people are drawn back to that all the time. And so I’m sure John did that for people and they thought not only do we have a problem, but this is the guy that’s going to solve it for us.

And Craig talks about relentlessness. Well, that happens to be the key to all careers in Hollywood which is you will not stop. You will not stop.

I never had any alternative plan. I had to become a movie director. And that crazy obsession, whether it’s to solve a problem in a script, or to run your career, it’s the only thing you’ve got really, because no one else has an interest in you succeeding. Only you do.

And so if you both are a person that people get in the room and they say, “My god, he sees, he hears, he understands. And he won’t stop until there’s an answer of some kind.” It’s pretty irresistible.

**Craig:** With that, Larry Kasdan.

**John:** Larry Kasdan everyone. Thank you very much.

Links:

* The [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/)
* Lawrence Kasdan on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001410/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kasdan)
* [Scriptnotes, 73: Raiders of the Lost Ark](http://johnaugust.com/2013/raiders-of-the-lost-ark)
* The [Raiders story conference transcripts](http://moedred.livejournal.com/2009/03/04/)
* [Scriptnotes, 235: The one with Jason Bateman and the Game of Thrones guys](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-jason-bateman-and-the-game-of-thrones-guys)
* Akira Kurosawa’s [Yojimbo](http://www.hulu.com/watch/215826) and [Seven Samurai](http://www.hulu.com/watch/215816) on Hulu
* [William Goldman: Four Screenplays with Essays](http://www.amazon.com/dp/155783265X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) on Amazon
* [Lawrence of Arabia](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Lawerence_of_Arabia.pdf) by Robert Bolt
* [Casablanca](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007XF4J70/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) Blu-ray on Amazon
* [Grand Canyon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005Z9MF4U/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))