Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/random-advice-2015).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 229 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, except not today because today is very special. Today is not like all other days.

**Craig:** No. Today we’re going to be doing this interesting thing. I think we’ve only done it once before where we answer questions not about screenwriting, per se, but about life, because you and I are wise.

**John:** Mm-hmm. And we are alive and we have experience with life.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I’ve gone through 45 years of life and I feel like I have some things to share. But I don’t know enough about certain topics. Like people wrote in with some really sophisticated questions that were beyond my level of expertise. And so we thought we needed a medical professional to help us out on —

**Craig:** A real doctor.

**John:** A real doctor. And so we searched far and wide for who is the biggest doctor we know.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the biggest, brightest, kindest doctor we know is Doc McStuffins, which is why we’re so excited to welcome to the program, Chris Nee, creator and executive producer of Doc McStuffins.

**Chris Nee:** I think we’re all hoping that everyone is taking their medical advice from Doc McStuffins these days.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. Doc McStuffins, I don’t believe, has ever been sued.

**Chris:** Not yet. No.

**Craig:** Or maybe a settlement?

**Chris:** Well, I mean if there’s a settlement, we don’t have to disclose it.

**Craig:** Got it. Got it.

**Chris:** She has a good lawyer, for god’s sakes. [laughs]

**Craig:** Doc McStuffins is constantly being dragged into court, like, oh, it was great on the show but then afterwards, my —

**John:** My teddy bear exploded.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** My stuffed limb fell off.

**Chris:** I mean, we would have a disclaimer on the show but kids can’t read it, so what’s the point in having it?

**Craig:** You should do that, by the way, like a crazy long scroll at the end of every show just like in the pharmaceutical ads. [laughs]

**Chris:** The pharmaceutical ad version of our show is perfect.

**Craig:** It would be awesome.

**Chris:** Done.

**John:** So in case you don’t have children, you may not be aware of what Doc McStuffins is. It is a phenomenon. It is one of the most popular television programs for the younger kids in the world. It is a Peabody winner. It is an NAACP Image Award winner for Best Children’s Program. It sold $500 million worth of merchandise in 2013.

**Craig:** Was that a million? 500 million?

**John:** $500 million worth of merchandise.

**Craig:** And obviously, Chris, you get —

**Chris:** And that’s what they’ve admitted. [laughs]

**Craig:** You get about what? 90% of that?

**Chris:** Oh, definitely, like a straight 90%.

**Craig:** You get a straight 90 of —

**Chris:** It doesn’t even go to Disney. It just goes straight into my bank account.

**Craig:** 90% of 9% of 0.01% of fourteenth one millionth of a percent.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah. And I mean, I think the clear thing in this episode is we’re not talking about writing, but if you want to make money in this business, animation.

**Craig:** Right. Animation for Disney in particular. [laughs]

**Chris:** Definitely. [laughs] Animation writer. I mean, right there, you are solid.

**John:** Solid.

**Chris:** Solid.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Perhaps people without the visual will not know that she’s being —

**Chris:** That I’m smirking right now? [laughs]

**John:** Totally sarcastic. So I do, at some point, want to have you on the show to talk about animation and children’s television and writing outside of a WGA contract, which is what your show would have to be written under. But today, it’s all about other things. And so I think we should just start off with a question.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because I always screw up when we try to read questions aloud, Craig, would you read this first question from Alex?

**Craig:** I will, yeah, because it’s lengthy.

**Chris:** I was going to say, it seems like an entire hour’s worth of question right there. But go.

**Craig:** Well, watch how expeditiously I mow through this. Alex writes, “I’m 29 years old. My partner and I are in a long distance relationship. He is in Central Florida, I am in Miami, about four hours for non-Floridians. We’ve been together nearly two years, and for the most part, our relationship is good. We love each other and make lots of sacrifices to make our scheduling work out and still live a seemingly normal life. Our friends constantly forget we are long distance because we make the impossible seem so possible.”

So far, I have to say, I don’t see the question. Everything is working out great.

**John:** Alex, congratulations.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** I also don’t see love or — sorry, I’m jumping ahead.

**Craig:** We’ll get there. We’ll get there.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Alex continues. “I currently work full time at an ad agency in Miami but I also attend a local university as I work toward my bachelor’s degree, first generation college student in my family. I won’t be taking classes this spring as I will be applying to out of state schools to start in the fall.” Ah-ha, and so the worm turns, out of state schools.

“My partner is in news and he just got a job in the Northeast Boston, so our long distance will become much longer distance. He wants me obviously to move there with him at some point this upcoming year. But as I’m studying film and want to write for television, I don’t feel like this is where I want or need to go. I advise that I will apply and if it makes sense, I will make the move but only if it makes sense for me career-wise. He understands that.”

Oh, okay. I don’t see the question. There was a hint of a question but then he undid the hint. Well, let’s see what happens.

“My questions are,” ah-ha, “One, I’m 29 already,” hmm, he’s getting his bachelor’s degree at 29, all right.

**John:** First generation college student.

**Craig:** Fair enough.

**John:** He took care of some things.

**Craig:** Yeah. He took care of some business before that. “I’m 29 already and still not anywhere near Hollywood or building that crucial foundation of experience from those early mid-20s that I hear so much about on your show. I wasted — ” there we go, “I wasted many years doing a lot of nothing.”

So your theory that he was busy working, apparently he’s wasted a lot of years doing nothing. [laughs]

**Chris:** I also want to say, the clear sign of a 29-year-old is thinking that 29 is old.

**Craig:** I know.

**Chris:** That is so 29. [laughs]

**Craig:** God, I wish I were that old. “So I wasted many years doing a lot of nothing and the past few years have been great regarding my school work and overall financial work stability, and most of all, my drive to succeed. What advice could you give me regarding this situation?” That’s question number one.

And question number two, “Sometimes I feel like my partner doesn’t get my goals or doesn’t quite grasp how much I want to create and write for a living. He wants as much time as possible together. But I need plenty of alone time to write and create and study, obviously. But working full time and being in a long distance relationship makes that really hard, especially when the relationship depends on that one-on-one time that we get so little of.”

Well, I think we know everything. We have all details.

**John:** We have all details. So, Chris Nee, where do we begin with Alex and advice for Alex?

**Chris:** That’s a really good question. I mean, I’m just saying there’s so much detail in this letter and I’m not seeing the reason for the relationship. If you’re going to give me that you’re a first generation college student and four hours between Miami and Central Florida, I haven’t heard anything about the partner that makes this feel like the relationship that is worth changing your life to make work. I just noticed the absence of.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Divorce McStuffins over here. [laughs]

**John:** So I also noticed that lack of like, well, what is the nature of that relationship? So that’s why I Facebook stalked them and figured out who they were.

**Craig:** Oh. Wait, hold on, hold on. I have a prediction.

**John:** I want you to predict who Alex is and what this —

**Craig:** Well, if he’s famous, I can’t predict that. But I suspect that his partner is a bit older than he is.

**John:** You are incorrect.

**Chris:** Oh.

**Craig:** His partner is what, like 16? [laughs]

**John:** His partner, they seem to be matched in age.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** They look very, very cute together.

**Craig:** Okay, all right.

**John:** So Alex has a tremendous number of tattoos and he’s sort of a big, not bearish, but sort of bear-adjacent, sort of like Miami kind of bear.

**Chris:** Interesting. Yeah, sure.

**Craig:** By the way, I got my beard now.

**Chris:** Bear-adjacent. You are a bear-adjacent.

**Craig:** Would I qualify as cub? I don’t think I’m big enough for a bear.

**Chris:** You’re like teddy bear adjacent.

**John:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** I’m teddy bear, yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m in between cub and bear. [laughs]

**John:** So I should say Alex does not look like you but his boyfriend sort of — if you were to shave your beard, he looks sort of ballpark of you.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So very handsome. Well, Alex, don’t let that guy go.

**John:** So I think just reading the question, I was sort of like, Chris, I was like, well, is it really worth, you know, trying to bank everything on this relationship? But I also feel like you’re in Miami, you don’t want to be in Miami, you want to be someplace else, Boston’s not a bad place to be. And if you’re going to jump, jump now.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** If your relationship’s going to work, you’re going to have to live together at some point. Try living together in Boston. If it doesn’t work —

**Chris:** But you know that when you live together is when you don’t have alone time. I mean, someone in a long distance relationship complaining that they don’t have alone time and that’s why they aren’t writing —

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** Seems like there are a lot of reasons why this person is not writing and is expecting someone else to understand their need to write, which is to me such a classic — that person who dreams of being a writer but isn’t actually doing the work. That’s on you.

**Craig:** I’m a little concerned here. Here’s what concerns me. What Alex professes he wants to do is be a writer and work for film or television. I think he mentioned television — no, but studying film, and wants to write for television. Then do it, right?

**Chris:** Yes.

**Craig:** So that’s number one. He says that he wants to now apply towards additional education. I’m not sure why. I don’t think additional education is required. John went to —

**Chris:** You already won with your family.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** You are the one who graduated from college.

**Craig:** Right, exactly.

**Chris:** Done. Check. So move on.

**Craig:** Move on. Exactly. And screenwriting is one of those wonderful gigs where you actually don’t need formal education. I didn’t have it. John did. I don’t know if you went to film school or —

**Chris:** I was an acting major.

**Craig:** Oh, lord.

**Chris:** [laughs] That’s a whole other story.

**Craig:** Well, that explains so much. But I think that what’s happening here is Alex is creating roadblocks that don’t need to be there. Look, unless he’s planning on moving to LA tomorrow, which doesn’t sound like he is, why not go to Boston? Why not hang out in Boston? It is an awesome city.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Yup.

**Craig:** And start writing. I feel almost like he’s asking for permission to break up with his partner.

**John:** Yeah. We have one of those questions later on and —

**Craig:** Where someone literally asks for permission.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** I think they actually want you, Craig, to be the one to do the breakup.

**Craig:** Well, we’ll get there.

**Chris:** Can you get on the phone and do that live?

**Craig:** Well, that’s I think the one straight relationship that we’re asked about in our questions, so I’ll give him my straight expertise on that one. [laughs] But I feel like Alex, he says he’s 29. The question feels a little young to me.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It feels a little young for 29 and I think that he needs to ask himself — look, he says, “We love each other. For the most part, our relationship is good. We love each other.” And they’ve already put in all this work. My feeling is, Alex, give it a shot to have a regular relationship where you’re actually living with this person —

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** And spending time with them. And I got to tell you, this whole issue of your spouse or significant other not understanding your need to write and all the rest of it, that doesn’t go away. You’re going to have to find the person that kind of gets that. And maybe, Alex, your partner will get it once you write something.

**Chris:** I was actually going to say the exact same thing. I feel like often that question of people not understanding your being a writer, means that you aren’t really writing and you aren’t getting out there and putting — it’s the dream. It’s the thing you talk about. I wish, I think, I might, wouldn’t it be great if. And they don’t believe in it because you kind of don’t believe in it in some inherent way, I think.

**John:** I think staying in Miami is a bad choice. I’m glad that you’re not staying in Miami. Whether you apply to schools and get into a great program or you move up to Boston, I think they’re both better choices than staying put. I think you do owe it to yourself and to this relationship, if you like this guy, move up there and see how it works. And no harm, no foul. If it doesn’t work out, great.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** And you’re in Boston. If this guy was moving to Topeka, and it’s like he wants me to follow him to Topeka, it’s like, well, that’s Topeka, that’s a red flag. [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s their city motto, by the way.

**Chris:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** Welcome to Topeka. We’re a red flag. [laughs]

**John:** But Boston is great. And so, try Boston. If Boston is not for you, if that relationship is not for you, you haven’t lost much.

**Chris:** And either way, it’s about moving forward. I think with both questions, you’re exactly right, there’s a roadblock and that he’s putting up and he needs to take action.

**Craig:** Also, Alex is attempting to continue his education. What a shame that his partner wants to move to Boston which is bereft of school. [laughs] I mean, it’s like the biggest college town in the world practically. I don’t know, Alex. You’ve never experienced what it means to be in a full relationship with this guy —

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** Because of the long distance issue. So I would recommend giving it a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised. And if it doesn’t work, well, pull the plug.

**John:** You have three votes for try.

**Chris:** Yup.

**John:** Annie Hayes who was our assistant in Austin —

**Craig:** Oh, Annie.

**John:** Austin Annie.

**Craig:** Austin Annie is great.

**John:** She wrote in to ask, “What tips do you have for dealing with the obnoxious black sheep member of the family who likes to stir up trouble at holiday gatherings?”

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** All right —

**Chris:** Well, the question is, are you the one? And, Craig, I’m looking at you. [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, that’s the whole thing. Like look around the table —

**Chris:** What’s your family say?

**Craig:** If you don’t know who the sucker is. It’s you.

**Chris:** Well, I mean I always think like, isn’t this the reason why all of us moved 3,000 miles away from home? I feel like so many writers —

**Craig:** Check.

**Chris:** Are far away. It’s that classic, we’re the ones who move to New York and LA and, yes, some of us, our family’s from there. But most of us are the people who don’t live at home and go home. [laughs] Take it in. Know you’re getting on your plane. And then write a scene about it.

**Craig:** But Annie, she lives in Austin? Because I know she was Austin Annie.

**John:** No, no, she lives in East Coast. I think she lives in New York.

**Craig:** Okay. So she —

**Chris:** What if the advice to every question is move? [laughs]

**Craig:** Move. I know. Just keep moving. The worst —

**John:** Never stop.

**Craig:** Why do people keep asking us these questions? We’re so broken as individuals. [laughs] Well, let’s say that Annie lives in New York year round and her family is there in New York and everybody gets along great, but it’s just that cousin Brenda shows up from out of town, so she’s the us, so Brenda’s the us.

**Chris:** Right. [laughs]

**Craig:** So she shows up out of town and is a jerk. Everyone has somebody in the family that we can all agree to roll our eyes over. And I think sometimes if you just put them in that box in your mind, then they can’t really upset you anymore. It’s sort of like, yes, you’re absolutely playing the character that you were meant to play.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** And there you go. And it’s happening, just like it always does. And I can’t get upset because it’s like you’re a wind-up automaton that must do this.

**Chris:** Yeah. First of all, alcohol. Second of all, find your person at the table that you can talk to them about —

**Craig:** Classic Irish advice.

**Chris:** Sure, exactly. [laughs] Whiskey. Whiskey and moving are my two — emigrate and drink are the two things — [laughs]

**Craig:** Sometimes people see the name Chris Nee, N-E-E, and they’re like is she Korean? No, she’s Irish.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’s leprechaun Irish.

**Chris:** Although, I was famously hired on a show for Disney because they needed an Asian male voice.

**Craig:** Chris Nee.

**Chris:** And we didn’t say anything because, frankly, why would you? Take the job. I worked for two seasons on that show.

**Craig:** And they kept waiting for you to provide that perspective. [laughs]

**Chris:** No, there was just a beautiful moment where like at some point they realized they couldn’t say anything —

**Craig:** Right. Oh, that’s amazing. [laughs]

**Chris:** In the actual room. The showrunners were friends of mine and they kind were like, “Do we say something?”

**Craig:** You didn’t look — no, I thought you would be a little taller or —

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Black hair. [laughs]

**Chris:** Or with a penis.

**John:** Or a man.

**Craig:** Or a penis.

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Or Asian.

**Chris:** Or Asian.

**Craig:** But not —

**Chris:** No. But famously did say it in a final speech, as the head of this part of Disney was leaving, said, “Chris Nee who is neither Asian, nor male,” into a microphone, and everyone just kind of — and I was like, “That is going to be my tagline for the rest of my life.”

**Craig:** Neither Asian —

**Chris:** Chris nee, neither Asian, nor male.

**Craig:** Nor male. But as a fine, proud Irish woman, your recommendation, number one, drinking. [laughs]

**Chris:** Drink. Yes.

**Craig:** Great.

**Chris:** Number two, find someone else to make fun. And number three, realize that that person is always the most unhappy person in the room.

**Craig:** It is true. It is true.

**Chris:** Just be happier than they are.

**John:** The good thing about holiday gatherings is they are, by definition, short. They’re like a once or twice a year thing. And you’ll just get through them. Craig, you probably know what the term for this test where like you stick your hand in ice water and basically how long you can stand being —

**Craig:** The cold pressor test.

**John:** Yeah. And so essentially, like it’s how long you can stand to have your hand in that ice water. And it’s like, at a certain point, you pull out your hand and you’ll be done — but you know your hand is not actually being hurt.

**Craig:** No. It’s like for the nerds out there, if you’ve read Dune, there’s the test they do where the Bene Gesserit — Chris, of course, you’re familiar with this. Bene Gesserit —

**Chris:** I’m all over it.

**Craig:** Yes. They are searching for the Kwisatz Haderach and part of the test is that he has to put his hand in this box where he experiences terrible pain. And what he repeats to himself over and over, “Fear is the mind killer.” And I think when you are stuck in these torture situations, you just remind yourself that fear is the mind killer, it will be over.

**Chris:** I like that we just took this slightly obnoxious aunt and turned her into the fear box. [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah. The pain box. That’s right.

**John:** A few other practical suggestions. Have some handy topics to switch to if the aunt goes on her crazy tirade. There’s always some neutral things you can talk about that no one ever —

**Craig:** No question. And you’re probably really good at that. I’m not good at that because I’m everything in me, all of my DNA says do the opposite of that. But what I have always made it my business to find one person that I can make secret looks with —

**Chris:** Yes. That’s my person in the room.

**Craig:** That’s your person in the room.

**Chris:** You and I would totally be the person in the room.

**Craig:** We would be the person —

**Chris:** Except we’d be so obvious. [laughs]

**Craig:** Boo-hoo.

**Chris:** Because I’d be drunk.

**Craig:** You know what? The black sheep is being really obvious, too. So I don’t care. I need to be able to look at my friend and just go, “Hmm.”

**Chris:** I just want to clarify that the black sheep and the obnoxious person are often two different people.

**John:** That’s true.

**Chris:** I say that as a black sheeper.

**Craig:** Right. Well, Annie defined it as the obnoxious black sheep in the family.

**Chris:** Oh, I understand. Yeah, she did.

**Craig:** The way I look at it because of me is I’m fine, all of my family are all black sheep.

**Chris:** You look at it like a straight white man.

**Craig:** Exactly. My privilege is that I’m fine and everybody else is broken.

**John:** So on Facebook when someone’s being obnoxious you can click the ignore button and they disappear from your feed. And I was at a holiday gathering with my husband, Mike, and I saw him sort of click the ignore button in real life, right. [laughs] It’s like he mentally like hit that big button and just like that person just no longer existed in his world. And it was just sort of amazing.

**Craig:** Amazing.

**John:** It was amazing.

**Craig:** Well, it’s like —

**Chris:** Eventually, we’ll be able to do that in —

**Craig:** Yeah. Like if they have mute on Twitter, there’ll be an implant and I can just mute you.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** And you won’t know.

**John:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** And my implant will allow me to respond pleasantly to you.

**Chris:** And then they’re going to say, “God, you’re such a good listener.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** That’s fantastic.

**Craig:** And I won’t even hear that.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**John:** The last trick, I think Chris had mentioned this at the start is, you know, when people are terrible, they’re generating material for you.

**Chris:** Yes.

**John:** So just let that little red light in the left-hand corner light up and like just record what they’re saying and use them as a character. And then it becomes useful that they were a terrible person.

**Chris:** And never piss off a writer.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** It’s a bad idea. You will see yourself one day — although, that’s the problem. The idiots never realize it’s them.

**Chris:** No, they don’t. [laughs]

**Craig:** They’re just like, “Oh, my god. I saw your movie. That person was the worst.”

**John:** Worst. Craig, our next question.

**Craig:** All right. Peter writes in, oh boy, “Our boss has spent all of our allocated Christmas party budget on ‘something else.’ Subsequently, we are the only department to have to pay for their own Christmas party this year and while I am aware of the first world problem nature of this, I am not going to take umbrage with having to spend a few of my own dollars on food and booze. But what I will take umbrage with is budget mismanagement. This isn’t a case of illegality, simply being bad at your job. Is it worth pursuing and making a fuss about?”

**John:** Chris Nee?

**Chris:** I think this is going to work out really well. [laughs]

**Craig:** I have written up the following complaint —

**John:** And I’m going to read it at the Christmas party.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** And I’m delivering it to you, my boss.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** It’s about you but —

**Craig:** The following memo policy I have —

**Chris:** That’s how it is. [laughs]

**Craig:** In triplicate, I have lodged a description of your mismanagement.

**Chris:** And you’re Jewish but I’m worried about the Christmas party. Like it just, it seems wrong all around.

**Craig:** So, wait, why was the cheap boss Jewish?

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** So much for my privilege. Shot to hell.

**Chris:** Yeah, you just became one of us.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** One of you.

**John:** Yeah. You have white privilege whenever it’s handy, but then the rest —

**Craig:** I have white privilege until people find out I’m Jewish. And then it’s like, “Nah, pick up that penny.”

**Chris:** No, but I did wonder where the Christmas party was happening, that it wasn’t a holiday party. I’m just asking the question.

**John:** Well, the Christmas party clearly was happening at Dunder Mifflin because this is very much an Office plot.

**Craig:** Yeah. It feels Dunder Mifflin-y. I mean, it does suck. I mean, look, it’s unfair I think that there was once a time in this great land where, you know, second half of December, your work place treated you like a human being.

**Chris:** Yes.

**Craig:** You had a party. People felt like, “Oh, you know what? You’re not just a cog in this machine. You’re not a human resource. I know your name. Let’s have a drink. Let’s actually know each other as people, something good might come out of this. We might even be better at our jobs.” And then it just became, you know, corporate and lame.

And this is really bad because he’s in a department. I’m already —

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I hate a job where I’m in a department. And now, everyone else’s department is like, “Tralalalala,” and I’m like stopping on every floor, looking at all their mirth. And then I get to my floor and it’s Scrooge and Marley.

**Chris:** Peter doesn’t get to make bad mistakes at the Christmas party.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** And that’s wrong.

**Craig:** It’s wrong.

**Chris:** One should be able to do inappropriate things at your Christmas party so that people can talk about it all year long.

**John:** I have a hard time believing that this Christmas party fiasco was the worst case of mismanagement from his boss.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** If this boss misallocated this money, this boss is making other mistakes and karma will catch up with this boss.

**Craig:** Or the boss was like, “Well, one of our employees, their child is incredibly sick. The health fund doesn’t cover all of it. I’m going to take the Christmas fund so that little Billy doesn’t go blind.” And Peter is like —

**Chris:** And that’s going to be really awkward.

**Craig:** Yeah. Peter’s like, “I kind of don’t care.”

**John:** I don’t care.

**Craig:** There’s nothing to see in the world for Billy. Where my champagne?

**Chris:** Here’s the thing. This is a ridiculous complaint. [laughs] That said —

**Craig:** Welcome to the Chris Nee Show, Peter.

**Chris:** Yeah. But that said, I do believe in this idea of humanizing the people you work with, parties are important, gatherings are important, meals are important. I work with a company that’s in Ireland. And in animation, we do a lot of overseas work. And a lot of those shows, you never meet them. And one of the things I love about the company that I work with is that we very regularly, things start to get a little — there’s a little friction between us and I will get a call and they’ll say, “You know what? It’s time for you to come to Dublin.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** And it is about the face-to-face. And it’s as much about being in the room as it is about being in a pub — this is all about drinking — is the point.

**Craig:** You said Ireland.

**Chris:** But it is. It’s being in a pub and getting to know people as human beings. And we’re making art and it’s hard and it’s a war. And you got to know the people that you’re with.

**Craig:** I agree.

**Chris:** That’s a department. It’s a different thing.

**Craig:** No. And look, Peter —

**Chris:** For god’s sakes, quit your job. [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah. Ultimately, Peter, you —

**Chris:** Move.

**Craig:** Certainly pursuing a different job will get you a Christmas party quicker than the memo.

**John:** So I don’t know if you guys are listening to Serial season 2. So Bowe Bergdahl —

**Craig:** Of course not. [laughs]

**John:** Bowe Bergdahl, the —

**Craig:** The traitor.

**John:** Yes. The person at the center of this thing, he leaves his apartment —

**Chris:** I’m glad you haven’t passed judgment.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** He’s a traitor.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Flat out.

**John:** He leaves his unit because he wants to create a DUSTWUN situation which is basically like create a big enough stink that like he can really report his management, people will have to pay attention to things.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I think Peter is in a DUSTWUN situation and he really wants this Christmas party to be his DUSTWUN where like essentially everyone’s going to see like this is a huge ball of chaos. [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s just not.

**Craig:** No. No one’s going to follow him.

**Chris:** Everyone’s like, “Thank God we don’t have a Christmas party this year.”

**John:** Yeah. Don’t start walking —

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Or also like, thank God that they were going to fire somebody and it’s Peter now because he DUSTWUN’d and he’s out there alone and the Taliban just picked him up. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. So it’s going to be a couple of years of sadness for him. But maybe they’ll make a podcast about him.

**Chris:** I was about to say maybe somebody will eventually make a frustrating and unending podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you for describing it that way because — ugh, I got all sorts of issues. [laughs] Never mind.

**John:** Chris Nee, how about a simple question?

**Chris:** Craig hates eggnog. Good, it’s about drinking. So I think I can do fine. “Craig hates eggnog but has he tried coquito? Puerto Rican version of eggnog will change his mind.”

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** That’s Stephen from Brooklyn Heights writing in.

**Chris:** It is.

**John:** Have you tried coquito?

**Craig:** No. I have not tried coquito. And I love this. “Puerto Rican version of eggnog will change his mind.” No, no, it won’t because it’s a version of eggnog. Unless the Puerto Ricans have managed to make a version of eggnog that does not contain any of the ingredients —

**Chris:** That’s like whiskey.

**Craig:** Of eggnog, yeah, then sure. But then it’s not a version of eggnog. This is always like, I can remember when I met my wife and I hate mayonnaise. I hate it. And she’s like, well —

**Chris:** Is it wrong to say that’s a Jewish thing?

**Craig:** Not at all, because it is.

**Chris:** It is. What is that?

**Craig:** It’s because we’re God’s chosen people and he spared us the misery of that nonsense.

**Chris:** But mayonnaise in a sandwich —

**Craig:** Ugh.

**Chris:** It’s the best thing that ever happened.

**Craig:** It’s not even a food.

**Chris:** No.

**Craig:** I don’t even know how it was invented in the first place. Terrible accident. Regardless, she said, “Well, maybe you would like Miracle Whip.” [laughs] “It’s a better version of mayonnaise.” And I was like, “You stop right there. You stop right there or this is over.”

**John:** So I think we need to be fair in like actually discuss a recipe for Coquito because maybe it’s actually a different thing.

**Craig:** All right. Run it by me.

**John:** It requires two egg yolks beaten.

**Craig:** I’m out.

**Chris:** Done. I mean I’m just going to say it is eggnog.

**Craig:** Yeah, no. I’m drinking egg yolks. Next.

**John:** One can of evaporated milk.

**Craig:** It’s okay, no.

**John:** One can cream of coconut, so there’s a coconut aspect.

**Craig:** Okay, fine. So it’s a coconut eggnog.

**John:** One can sweetened condensed milk.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh my god, it’s all — basically all of those kind of things together.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Half cup of white rum. Some water, some ground cloves, cinnamon, vanilla.

**Craig:** Yeah. There you go, there’s the spices that make it like basically, it’s a —

**Chris:** It’s drinking potpourri?

**Craig:** It’s drinking like a cup of spiced fat with — I don’t like any alcoholic drink that has fat in it. Like I don’t do the white Russians. I don’t do the — I like an old-fashioned.

**Chris:** I like an old-fashioned, too.

**Craig:** I bet you do.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You Irish —

**Chris:** And anything else.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re just basically going to be the — we’re like Don Rickles-ing each other.

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** It’s like Jew and Irish jokes the whole time.

**John:** So we’re recording this at 1:30 in the afternoon. So we’re not drinking, but it sort of feels like we’re drinking because we keep referencing alcohol.

**Chris:** You know, you guys just need to put a little like Walla in the background that has the tinkling of a glass.

**Craig:** Well, and Chris always drinks in the car on the way anywhere.

**Chris:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** So it’s fine.

**Chris:** I work in preschool television. What else am I going to do?

**Craig:** What else are you going to do?

**John:** Pam Stucky asks, which is worse, moving in the wrong direction or not moving at all?

**Craig:** Very Zen question.

**Chris:** Not moving at all.

**Craig:** I would say not moving at all is worse.

**Chris:** Inertia. Yeah, you need to have movement.

**Craig:** If you move in the wrong direction, there is a possibility that you will learn from mistakes.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And you won’t go down that path twice.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you’ve gained information.

**Chris:** And you know what it is to move.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you also know that you can survive moving in the wrong direction.

**Chris:** Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**John:** Absolutely. So I think that paralysis that comes with fear and indecision is worse than going the wrong way. Now, there’s a concept in D&D — Craig and I play D&D — of deferred action which is basically —

**Craig:** Getting hot yet?

**Chris:** Oh, this is exciting. [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Which is basically choosing not to move but it’s actually a conscious choice, where like I’m choosing not to move and keep an eye on the situation. And I will move in these circumstances. And that I think is a valid thing. Basically or at least you’re really taking stock of a situation. And, you know, you’re setting triggers for like when you’re going to do things. But otherwise, it’s just apathy and you’re —

**Chris:** I was going to say, active choice is a thing.

**Craig:** Holding your fire is a good strategy. Not doing stuff because you’re not sure how it will turn out, bad strategy.

**John:** Yeah. And that was our advice to Alex, I think.

**Chris:** Yeah. I was about to say, it all comes around.

**Craig:** That’s right. It’s exactly right. Oh, great, greatest name ever. Breton Zinger. Zing. Breton Zinger says, “What do you think of the tiny house movement?”

**John:** I’m a huge fan of the tiny house movement.

**Craig:** Of course, you are.

**John:** Of course I am. The tiny house movement is of course, that idea of building really tiny little houses, sometimes portable houses that are just big enough for your needs and nothing more than that. And I think the reason why I’m a fan of the tiny house movement is I actually grew up in a motor home. Every summer, we would spend, you know, months in a motor home. So I spent a tremendous amount of time in a very small space with my family. And it was actually kind of great. And you also recognize the things you don’t need, which is basically most stuff. And only having enough food just to fill that little refrigerator. It’s great.

**Craig:** Well, you need basically a socket to plug yourself into.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Your nutrient paste.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that’s pretty much it, I would think.

**John:** Yeah. Basically, it’s it. Every once in a while, I need, you know, a little conditioner.

**Craig:** Oil?

**John:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** You need some coolant.

**Chris:** I mean, I think that in theory, but in reality, I think I would not be able to figure out what the stuff to keep and what the stuff not to keep was. I would have a hard time putting my life into a fairly small house. That said, I lived in Manhattan until I was 30, so —

**Craig:** Like everyone in Manhattan lives in a tiny house —

**Chris:** Yeah, you are — totally. Yeah. I mean, like we act as if it’s a movement, but that’s how everyone lives in Manhattan.

**Craig:** Yeah, no. I mean I remember when I first came out to LA, I had, you know, my — I shared a tiny, tiny apartment with a friend of mine and I had my tiny, tiny room. And everything was — it was a very tiny house. But, you know, I have children. There’s no tiny house.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** My god. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s no amount of space — they are like a gas. They can fill any space. If my house were 1,000 acres, there would be crap all over the floor in every room.

**Chris:** Yeah. And they’d be in whatever room you were in.

**Craig:** Yeah, totally. And that’s the other thing. It’s like, oh my god, why are you — why did you have to come here to fart? That’s what it means to be a parent. Like you walked across my property to fart next to me. I’m not a huge house guy and I’m not a tiny, tiny house guy. I think there’s a basic decent size for things.

**John:** The Goldilocks principle.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** I’m a Venice liver, so it’s like we’re 2,000 square feet and near the ocean.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** So our backyard is the ocean. Fantastic.

**Craig:** That’s pretty good.

**Chris:** Well done.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**John:** So I would say, I’m a fan of the tiny house movement, but I feel like it’s unrealistic for certain people. And certain people will approach it with like this zeal and this passion that borders on obsession and like when it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.

**Craig:** If you’re building a home out of some sort of idealistic principle, I don’t know, did I send — or I think I tweeted this great essay somebody wrote where they were just complaining about Thoreau and how Thoreau is just a dick. And I’m totally in agreement. Thoreau is the worst. That whole nonsense is the worst, going, I went into the woods. Good. Stay there because you hate everything. You hate pleasure. You hate people. You hate progress.

**Chris:** If you went into the woods because you love the woods, fine.

**Craig:** Right. No. But it was all —

**Chris:** Don’t do things because of the negative.

**Craig:** It’s like, yeah, like oh my woods are great. And everybody else is stupid.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Tiny house. [laughs]

**John:** With your tiny house.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. Watch what I do to your tiny house?

**John:** Pam Stucky asks, Ham asked a couple of questions that were all really good, so I put a few in. W.H. Auden — is it Auden or Odin?

**Craig:** I think it’s Auden.

**Chris:** Auden.

**John:** Auden. Writes, if equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me. Is that good advice or fool’s advice?

**Chris:** That is a good one.

**Craig:** What do you think, Chris? I have an answer.

**Chris:** I think it depends on how much of a sap you are as the more loving one. [laughs]

**Craig:** Good.

**Chris:** Can you tell him that I write a loving, loving show —

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** For small children. I mean I think it depends. Be the more loving one, be the one non-vindictive one, fantastic. Keep your heart open, fantastic. But if you’re pining for someone who is not there, that’s a different thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I agree with that. I would say, if I had to choose, I would want to be the more loving one.

**Chris:** Sure.

**Craig:** I think that there is a joy in that sort of thing. And two, I don’t know, it’s also uncomfortable I think to be in a lopsided deal where someone is just way more into you than you are into them. It makes you turn into like an agent that is, oh I’m not, no, no, I’ll take that later. Yeah. Just tell them I’m out.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** I don’t like that. I find it’s more fun — I think the whole point of love is to go outwards anyway.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** I would agree.

**Craig:** So I’m a sap is basically a good deal.

**John:** Aw, Craig’s a big sap. The other thing I would want to clarify is that love isn’t just one thing. And so there’s a sort of different aspects of love. And so even if you’re not perfectly equal in certain different aspects of it, the overall quantity, the overall sort of net effective of it could be much more balanced out than it might appear on first glance. There’s a great Livingston Evans song called Let Me Be Loved which is sort of a sad plaintiff cry like let me be loved, let someone care for me.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that is the sad manifestation of that where like —

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** That pining for somebody and like you don’t get anything back.

**Craig:** Unrequited love is miserable.

**John:** It is miserable.

**Chris:** It is miserable.

**Craig:** Isn’t it the worst?

**Chris:** It is. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. I mean it can foster a lot of great art because it’s a true human emotion. I think a lot of our great love stories have sort of come from that unrequited love.

**Craig:** That ache.

**John:** That ache.

**Craig:** It’s the worst feeling. It’s the worst feeling. But we’ve all felt it. I mean that’s the thing.

**Chris:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** I don’t —

**Chris:** And you carry it with you for a lifetime.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That scar is always there.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s so true.

**Chris:** I can see it in you.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it only happened once. Most of the time when I love somebody, they’re like —

**Chris:** They love you back.

**Craig:** Thank god you’re here.

**Chris:** Hardcore, too much.

**Craig:** I’ve been waiting. Yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**John:** But it’s interesting being on the other side of that sometimes. I’ve been the one person who’s been loved much more than I loved them back.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And that is a weird burden you feel.

**Craig:** And I don’t like that because then I really do feel like, oh, yeah, you know, it’s not for us. We did really like the writing, just not terrific. It’s like you feel manipulative. You feel fake. You feel like you’re pandering someone.

**Chris:** I also think it’s harder as a friendship relationship because — I mean if you’re talking about a love relationship, if you’re not equally into each other, you end up in the breakup place. And it’s a clear delineation. What happens in the friendship world is when someone wants to be more of a friend or considers you a better friend than you consider them, that is such a — and it puts you into the horrible place of actually, you kind of at some point kind of have to be a not great person in that moment.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** To clarify where you’re at because the relationship doesn’t inherently clarify itself.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Is that why you talk to me the way you do?

**Chris:** It is why I talk to you. I mean I’m trying to hint to you.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not going to stop me.

**Chris:** That’s okay.

**Craig:** Because I —

**Chris:** You can spend all your time reading up on my issues.

**Craig:** I love you.

**Chris:** I love you too.

**John:** Dave hanging out in Fontana. Craig, you ask this question.

**Craig:** Oh. Oh sure, give me the straight one. Okay, fine. Dave — by the way, what’s straighter than hanging out in Fontana? I’m not gay. I’m hanging out in Fontana. Dave, hanging out in Fontana. How does one end a long-term relationship without leaving a scar? It’s funny. I think we just asked that.

**Chris:** Yes, I think we did.

**Craig:** Asked and answered. My girl of seven years wants marriage and kids. I want to keep my dirt bike collection. This guy really is literally on the cover of Straight Dude Magazine.

**Chris:** [laughs] He is.

**Craig:** My girl of seven years wants marriage. It doesn’t even like, wants —

**Chris:** And he’s from the 1940s.

**Craig:** And also like, she doesn’t want to get married and have kids. She wants marriage and kids. I want to keep my dirt bike collection.

**Chris:** I do think you should write, this guy.

**Craig:** I know. Thought about cheating just to give her a permission slip to leave. But I love her —

**Chris:** That was nice of you.

**Craig:** I know. But I love her too much to thermo nuke bridges. Okay, again, straightest man in history.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He doesn’t —

**Chris:** Maybe too straight.

**Craig:** He’s literally too straight for me. He thermo nukes bridges. Not enough to burn then. Nuke it from orbit.

**John:** Absolutely. He’s basically like he’s playing Call of Duty with this relationship. [laughs]

**Craig:** He literally is like, should I call an airstrike down on this or what? Then he continues, respectful side question, are gay breakups any different than straight? Oh my god, dude, you have no idea. Last random advice episode, Craig’s marriage proposal, fly to Alaska, that’s true, had a whole other vibe to John’s pickup paperwork at the courthouse. But John is a robot, you have to understand like John’s proposal has nothing to do with being gay. That was John plotted the most efficient path to proposal. [laughs] It certainly didn’t involve traveling.

**Chris:** Either that or I mean I don’t know about you, John, but we ended up considering our marriage, it was the year of forced gay marriage because like, we were already completely committed to each other. We had built our house together. We had a child together and then marriage became legal. And we were kind of like, you know, we’re already there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** We’re legally taken —

**Craig:** The window is open.

**Chris:** We’re legally taken care of. Like what difference does it make? And then it was actually a health insurance. It was —

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** Writers Guild health insurance at some point said, well, your domestic partnership isn’t going to work anymore and so by the end of the year you have to get married. What I love is like, you know, we’re sneakying, backdooring into gay marriage and then like we were forced to get married. And we were kind of like, well, I guess, we have to get married.

**Craig:** That’s a great — like how has somebody not done that movie where —

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** A gay couple is together and they’ve been like, we’re married and then someone is like, oh yeah, no, you can get married so have to or there’s no more health insurance and then one of them is like, ahhh.

**Chris:** Yes. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ahhh.

**John:** Yeah. There was a nice sort of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle where it was like, you know, or Schrödinger’s cat.

**Craig:** Schrödinger’s marriage. Yeah.

**John:** And so where it’s like, you were sort of married but not kind of married. And when you actually had to get married, I think there probably were some breakups that happened because it was like, well, are we actually going to do this thing or are we just being heteronormative by getting married?

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** All that stuff. But let’s get back to Dave’s question.

**Craig:** Okay. Dave. Straightest man ever.

**John:** Straightest man alive. Because I actually have a straight friend who did essentially what Dave suggested which like deliberately had the affair to nuke the relationship. And then it didn’t work. Because then had to sort of like —

**Craig:** Oh my god. [laughs]

**John:** Stay in the relationship like another two years after that.

**Craig:** Okay. Look, Dave, straight guy to straight guy, Dave.

**Chris:** Dave.

**Craig:** Dave, here’s the deal. This is kind of a bunch of bull, all right? First of all, you can be married and have children and also have dirt bikes, did you know that? It’s not like the license is connected to being single.

**Chris:** Apparently, she’s already let you have the dirt bikes.

**Craig:** I mean she’s already the kind of girl that lets you have dirt bikes. So I think the problem here is you just want out. You don’t want to do this.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** You say you love her too much to thermo nuke bridges. Do you know how little love that requires? That means I love her too much to not do the worst possible thing, right? So it doesn’t sound like this is working out here. You want to be a gentleman about this and not be passive. Cheating on her and hurting her doubly so that she dumps you? You think that that’s going to tickle and feel okay as opposed to you sitting down and going, listen, here’s the deal, I don’t want children. And I don’t want to get married. And just saying that right now, I’m comfortable the way things are and if you’re not, you have to make a decision. That’s what a man does, bro.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So bro up, okay? I mean, come on. And yeah, I don’t personally — I’m just guessing that gay breakups aren’t any different than straight. I mean the marriage part — you got to understand about gay marriage proposals is that — I mean when I proposed to my wife, we’d been together for five years, were fairly new in our relationship, you know, relatively speaking. But most gay couples I know that are married, that was like already after 12 years.

**Chris:** That’s right. They were already married and committed that moment had passed.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You don’t do romantic stuff like that. That seems stupid. It’s like, why would I do —

**Chris:** 15 years in. No one really wants to throw a party.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like you say to Lisa, you know what, um, a surprise trip to Italy. And she’s like, wait, what? How much did you spend on that? I don’t want to go there. Can we go somewhere else?

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you’re like, screw it. So I think that your respectful side question asked and answered. But it sounds like you just got to bro up, bro.

**John:** He’s going to bro up and breakup in the proper way. But he was to breakup. He can’t —

**Chris:** Oh yeah, you don’t want to be in this relationship. It’s clear.

**John:** There’s no question. Like you have to break up. I mean you can’t allow the status quo to continue because if she genuinely wants kids and you don’t want kids, don’t let her think like she’ll be able to convince you to have kids down the road.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, there’s a mild chance I think where you she would say, you know what, I’m okay with that. I’ll stick around with you and no marriage and no kids. I don’t buy it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. I mean, generally when one person wants —

**Chris:** And ultimately, if you love her enough to not blow it up, then you love her enough to let her be free or give her honesty or have a real relationship.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** I mean, the fact that he’s writing you two before having a conversation with her —

**Craig:** It’s kind of —

**Chris:** I’m just going to say —

**John:** I want to say that this is the crappy boyfriend in a romantic comedy. And so like where the woman is actually the lead and he is the guy who like leaves at the start of the movie and like sets her free and then she becomes a great character.

**Craig:** And then he comes back.

**John:** Yes.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** On his dirt bike —

**John:** So Dave in Fontana, we want you to go away so that she can actually become who she is supposed to be because she’s not becoming who she’s supposed to be because you’re around.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That said, this guy does sound like you’d be awesome to hang out with in Fontana. I mean, I totally would. He’s got dirt bikes —

**Chris:** Next time you’re in Fontana, look him up.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He throws thermo nuke around.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Like a general verb.

**John:** Get a 12-pack of Tecate and hang out and talk through some stuff.

**Craig:** I mean, I would bro it up with him.

**John:** One thing I will say that is different about sort of gay breakups is that obviously there’s a cliché like lesbians never really break up and that they stay friends forever. But that’s actually sort of I think more true in gay guys as well, definitely like you break up with people and like they stay friends in ways that like men and women can never really sort of stay friends that way, so —

**Craig:** That’s interesting.

**Chris:** Yeah, I agree.

**John:** There’s a person I broke up with who I still see out all the time.

**Craig:** Right. You’re like, hey, and he’s like, hey.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah, agreed.

**Craig:** You know, that’s a really interesting point because the only kind of gay break up I’ve ever had was with my former writing partner. And that’s like, that’s a marriage and a divorce.

**Chris:** Yes, it is.

**Craig:** And it was traumatic, you know. But yeah, totally cool. I guess I’m like, whatever — we hang out and he’s a great guy.

**Chris:** But don’t you think, marriage kind of played into that? I mean there is going to be a whole new generation of gay kids and gay adults and that will be a whole another story in 20 years. But I feel like there is that paradigm of straight relationships that they both have an idea that they are supposed to get married. Here’s something I never understood, I never understood the straight relationship version of I’m going to ask her to marry me, and if she says no or it’s the woman who says, if he says no, if he doesn’t want to marry me, we’re breaking up.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** And I feel like, gay relationships, we don’t have that. We were together because we wanted to be together and there’s a friendship there.

**Craig:** Isn’t that tied to the baby thing?

**Chris:** I think it is totally tied to all of that stuff.

**Craig:** I mean, there’s a lot of baby pressure on straight women.

**John:** Yeah. But I think this baby pressure obviously for women because there’s certain years you can do it.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**John:** But I think even for gay guys at a certain point, like, do you want kids or not have kids? And you have to decide about that before you’re 40.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** Well, there’s another thing with straight marriages I think. And that is for straight men, I don’t think this exists, but for straight women, there is a status issue attached to marriage. This is a common complaint you’ll see like, the mothers, why aren’t you married yet? Well, your sister is married and my younger sister just got married and all my friends are getting married. And everyone is like, you’re a loser because you’re not married. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily true in the gay community for men or women.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** I think it will be increasingly true, though. I think —

**Chris:** Yes, I agree. I think, yes.

**John:** I think they have normalized — that pressure will be normalized as well.

**Chris:** I totally agree.

**Craig:** Because I think that’s why a lot of women are like, if you say no, I’m breaking up with you, because I got to find somebody that says yes because marriage is —

**Chris:** Right. But I think what it means is that often — I think there are a lot of straight couples who end up together in a way that isn’t just about we love each other and we love hanging out with each other.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** They’re working towards this goal which is, I got to find the person who’s going to say yes, put the ring on it and all of that. And I feel like straight relationships, that’s where they differ from gay relationships and why I think often gay relationships form friendships afterwards.

**John:** There’s also this weird sort of cultural power disparity where in straight relationships, there’s an expectation that he’s going to ask and she’s going to answer.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** And then they’ll be married.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that there’s no norms yet for what that is like in gays.

**Craig:** Well, you know, I can only speak for my experience, but also in just thinking of my friends. Once people kind of got passed the whole, I’m going to ask your father, he’s going to give me permission and then you’re marrying me whole thing, it’s a formality, but, you know, like I remember that Melissa said to me, “Okay, starting on this day, it’s, you are — it’s open season. You may ask me at this point. I’m ready now. So you may ask me from this day forward.”

**John:** Oh, that’s a nice way to put it.

**Craig:** There’s no one really — I mean except for those dingbats at basketball games.

**Chris:** I was going to say, who do the basketball games.

**Craig:** Morons. Nobody really — I feel like —

**Chris:** When you ask, you know.

**Craig:** Yeah, if you’re popping the question truly without knowing, the answer is going to be no because you’re the kind of person that does that. That’s crazy.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** You got to know. I mean I think everybody does.

**Chris:** And I’m just going to say the other difference between the straight and the gay relationship is there’s no When Harry Met Sally idea that a man and a woman can’t be friends.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Two women can be friends and two men can be friends after the relationship.

**Craig:** Yeah. I will say that for straight people, it’s hard for men to be friends with women when they’re not married. When you are married, you can be friends with them. I have lots of female friends because I’m essentially — I’m a gelding, I’m neutered. I pose no threat to anyone. [laughs] I’m smooth down there like a Ken doll.

**John:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Pete in Fontana doesn’t want to hang out with you anymore, by the way.

**Craig:** I know. He’s like, bro, we’ve got to thermo nuke that. Should we give another Pam Stucky question?

**John:** Let’s have another Pam Stucky question.

**Craig:** All right.

**Chris:** Thank god for Pam.

**Craig:** I know. Pam was just lobbing them in there.

**Chris:** Pam Stucky asks, what are some of the best lessons it’s taken you until your 40s for you to learn? And were they things you should have learned in your 20s? Craig.

**Craig:** You know, as Stuart Smalley says, “I don’t shit all over myself.”

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** There’s no should. I think that, yes, there are some lessons I’ve learned. One of the big ones was this one. That when you feel things, it doesn’t mean that the feelings mean anything. When you feel scared, it doesn’t mean you’re in danger. When you feel like a loser, it doesn’t mean you’re a loser. When you feel like you’ve done great, it doesn’t mean you’ve done great. They’re just feelings. They’re very powerful things. Emotions are very powerful. But they ultimately don’t have any meaning. They are disconnected from truth more often than that. And they are really bad at predicting the future. And that’s the big one. Like I’ve learned like if I feel like things are going downhill, they’re probably not.

**John:** All right. I would say that I’ve learned some insight and sort of like some sympathy for the monsters in my life. And so when people are behaving terribly, it’s understanding that like, there’s a reason why they’re doing that and they’re probably aren’t even aware of the reasons why they’re doing that. And so what you’re actually seeing is the echo of something that happened a long time ago. And so it’s not necessarily about me, it’s about them being crazy people.

And just to take a step back and it’s sort of like an emotional patience and just like, okay, this is their process, they’re going to go through their process. And when you start to see that, then you can anticipate the future a little bit better. You can sort of anticipate like how this is all going to play out. And it’s made me much more mindful about who I’m in business with.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And sort of like, well, that is monster behavior and that’s going to keep coming back.

**Craig:** Monster behavior. [laughs]

**Chris:** I know a couple of monster behaviors.

**John:** Yeah. There’s no good reason to enter into that —

**Craig:** Who’s left, John?

**Chris:** Yeah, yeah, exactly.

**John:** Or sometimes like I see some monster behavior but I know — I have a sense of how that’s all going to play out. It’s going to be fine. And I’m like, these are the steps that I’m going to have to go through and burn through but then it will be fine.

**Craig:** I don’t even think I understand who’s the monster anymore because I worked for Bob Weinstein for so many years.

**John:** It broke your meter?

**Craig:** I literally don’t know what — is that bad? Is this a bad person? I can’t tell.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He’s not as bad as Bob.

**Chris:** Yeah, no.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, what did you — ?

**Chris:** That hole has been dug.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah. I mean I think for anyone as you get into your 40s, fear is the great block in our lives, I think. And as you get into your 40s, you start to be less afraid and less afraid of being afraid. And I think I just, in my 40s, I’m out in the world as I am in a way that I was just too fearful of my impact in the world in my 30s. And I’m not sure if there’s a way to speed that process up. It is all — I mean it’s the classic, the 29 question. When you’re 29 years old, you ask questions like a 29-year-old and you have to get to your 40s to have seen the highs and lows, to have crashed and burned, see that you’re going to come back from those things. It’s all of that experience that gets you to the place where nothing seems quite so scary anymore.

**Craig:** I’m with you.

**Chris:** You kind of know what the real shit is.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. I will say, though, I sometimes look at the incredibly successful 20-somethings. And I think part of the reason why they —

**Chris:** Oh, they have no fear.

**John:** They have no fear.

**Chris:** Yes.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s what it is. So I look at Lena Dunham, I look at the Taylor Swifts, I look at the Mark Zuckerbergs and like they just they don’t have any of the fear that was holding me back in my 20s. And because of that, they have all the energy of their 20s and none of the fear.

**Craig:** You know, I can’t compare myself to anyone. I mean, that’s the truth because this is all I got.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** So I’ve always noticed that — and this is another thing that kind of took me a while to see. I would sometimes look at other people and go, why is that person moving so much quicker than I am?

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** Why is that person moving slower than I am? Why is that person — why does everyone seem to know that person? And a lot of why, why, why, why, why. The truth is, it doesn’t matter.

**Chris:** No.

**Craig:** What you got is what you got. What people think about you is what they think about you. The way you move, your speed, I can remember when I was in my 20s, I would never go to Hollywood parties ever. And then people would always talk about them like, I think I’m screwing up. I don’t go to any of these. No one asks me to go them and I don’t want to go to them. I don’t even know where they are. Like people would talk about these hot clubs and things and like I don’t even know where that is.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** I think I was okay actually.

**John:** John and Craig, what do your spouses do for a living if anything? Moreover, how are their lives affected by your careers as screenwriters and as writers in general? Let’s talk about our spouses.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** You start, Craig.

**Craig:** Well, Melissa is actually a stay at home mom. When I say she’s a stay at home mom, she’s also on like I think three different boards of three different charities and was the president in sequence of three different community organizations in our town. And she’s kind of amazing that way. It’s funny, you know, Melissa and I met at Princeton. She’s obviously a very, very smart person. She got a —

**Chris:** She married you, didn’t she?

**Craig:** That was the first indication of her divine intelligence. But she’s got a master’s degree in Latin American studies. She’s fluent in Spanish. She’s traveled, she’s brilliant. You know, she actually — it was kind of like I learned a really important thing from her early on. She’s just, she was never ambitious about money. She was never ambitious about like working her way up some sort of corporate ladder. She just had no interest in that. What she was interested in always was community work and charity work. And so she was — she actually worked on the south side of Chicago right after college, community organizing which is like, you know, dangerous actually. And she’s been involved with an orphanage in Honduras for decades. And she worked at APLA here in Los Angeles for quite a few years. So she’s been that person, you know. And she’s kind of remarkable that way.

And how is her life affected by my career as a screenwriter? I think it’s nice that I’m around a lot, you know, because there are times when you’re a screenwriter and suddenly you’re living in Bangkok for a month, you know. But most of the time, my hours are pretty flexible so I’m around. We can kind of watch each other’s backs when we need to get stuff done. And we have a great system. I mean, we’re coming up on 20 years.

**Chris:** Wow.

**Craig:** Yeah, 20 years next summer. How about you?

**John:** So my husband, Mike, is a stay at home dad. And like Melissa, he’s on boards and sort of runs the parents board at my daughter’s school, the public school and has done a great job with that. He’s an MBA, but before that, he used to run all the movie theaters in Burbank so there’s 30 screens there. And so he comes from exhibition. So it’s been so fascinating to hear that whole side of the movie business because, you know, as we’re going into Star Wars, like he remembered he had to live through Titanic and what a nightmare Titanic was —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And so he’s like, oh, he feels so bad for all those poor theater folks and having to deal with 24-hour screenings with Star Wars.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** This could be a nightmare for them. So anyway, Mike is great and smart and very — he’s actually, on most topics is much smarter than me. Like he’s the smart one in the relationship for most sort of practical things. And I think I probably seem like a practical person, but he’s much more practical. He’s the one —

**Craig:** My god.

**Chris:** Wow. [laughs]

**Craig:** He’s the singularity, that is.

**John:** He’s the singularity.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s also fascinating and you guys may have experienced this, too, is that when you’re in a long-term relationship, you start to just, you know, abdicate certain responsibilities. And so like, all responsibilities over like the calendar are Mike’s. I just don’t even engage with it because like, whatever he says, we’re doing that.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** I’m so there with you on that one.

**John:** And so that, some budget stuff, you know. We make big decisions together, but there’s stuff about the house that he runs and rules. And sort of like Melissa, you know, because I’m here, I’m working out of the house most of the time, we can get to sort of co-parent more and sort of run the house together much more than I think most people would be able to do. So while I will be off, you know, in New York doing Big Fish for months at a time sometimes, most of the time, we’re just around. And so we have lunch together every day. And that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, we got our whole system down in terms of division of labor. And it is interesting like how the division of labor occurred. You know, there are things that she’s just in charge of. There are things I’m in charge of. That’s been a great side effect of being a writer. And it never occurred to me. But, you know, look, a typical guy is going to get out there at, you know, I don’t know, 7:30 to get on the road to commute. And then he’s back, I don’t know, at 8 pm, there’s hours on either side of school. So a lot of women are left with kids there and no father and there are a lot of dads who are staying at home and the mom is out doing that and they’re left at home with those two handle bars on either side of the school day. And those are the worst. Like it’s easy taking care of a dog when the dog is tired.

**Chris:** [laughs]

**Craig:** It’s easy taking care of a kid when the kid is tired.

**Chris:** Which is never.

**Craig:** Yeah. But when they —

**Chris:** Basically never.

**Craig:** When my kids come home between that and like, you know, 8 pm, that’s like, it’s good to be around. What about you?

**Chris:** Well, I will say that because I’m in TV versus in doing screenwriting, I am in an office —

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** All day long. Although, I made a decision really early on, I was, at this point, I’m the boss. And it is so true that you want to work for someone who has kids because we are out of our office at 6 o’clock. Every night I have dinner with my son every night because what I don’t want to do is create a show that brings joy to millions of children, while mine is in therapy.

That just seems like a terrible, terrible idea. I don’t want him to hate Doc McStuffins more than anything else on the face of the Earth. And I do find it interesting that we all have, yes, you guys are home but you have high profile careers and you have stay in home parents at home. And I do as well. Lisa has been a stay at home mom since our son was born. She had spent years as a filmmaker and a trailer editor which is a really intense lifestyle to cut trailers.

And around the time that we were having our son, she actually probably made more money than I did, but she didn’t want to be doing what she was doing anymore. And I was on the trajectory that I liked what I was doing. And so we made the decision for her to stay at home and be the stay at home mom and for me to go ahead and work. And obviously, that kind of worked out very, very well for us. It is a whole other thing when you have two working parents. And I’m very grateful for my son that he gets to have a parent at home all the time.

**Craig:** Do you guys ever — you know, because I feel like — I don’t know, I could be wrong. But in L.A. or maybe just in the circles that we move, it seems like usually both parents are working. Do you ever feel that weird like, oh, you know, and what does your wife do? Oh, she’s a stay at home mom. Do you feel like a hitch when you say it? Do you feel the weirdness in their eyes? I sometimes get that.

**John:** I do sometimes. That little sense of like, oh, that’s why you’re able to do all these things. And it’s sort of true. I mean like my life would be so much —

**Chris:** It is sort of true.

**John:** More complicated if Mike was working at a different full time job.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there’s things where like I don’t have to worry about like, who’s going to pick up our daughter after school?

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** Like Mike is going to do that.

**Chris:** Look, it’s a much better line for me than it is for you. But when people ask me, how do I do everything and juggle the whole thing? And I say, well, you know, it’s really helpful to have a wife. [laughs]

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** Which is a laugh line for me but it’s true. It’s just that it’s true.

**Craig:** Yeah, but for me, it’s just like, sometimes I feel like, oh, so you’re like, you beat her? Like it’s like they’re —

**Chris:** I think they go exactly right there.

**Craig:** It’s like literally the line from you have a stay at home wife to —

**Chris:** No, it’s from joke to — yeah.

**Craig:** So you’re a bad person and you beat her.

**Chris:** It’s because of the beard they think that you —

**Craig:** The beard is new it’s always been —

**Chris:** I know.

**Craig:** I think it’s just mostly people —

**Chris:** Now, you look like a wife-beater.

**Craig:** Now, I do look like a wife-beater. Well, good. That’s why I grew the beard because it was weird —

**Chris:** That’s why she likes it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s like well if you’re going to beat me —

**Chris:** Right, look like it.

**Craig:** Look the damn part, yeah.

**Chris:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** I think that’s really funny what you said about Doc McStuffins because there’s this class of movie where the character is a dad whose kids are like, “Dad, make sure you come home. It’s Christmas” And he’s like, “I will.” And then he doesn’t because he works too hard like Liar, Liar, the Santa Claus. There’s so many of those and it’s all about like I just got to realize that I got to be there for my kids. I’m working too hard. And every man working on that movie is that guy to their kids.

**Chris:** Oh, totally.

**Craig:** It’s like every man. They’re all doing it.

**Chris:** Yeah, that’s right.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** But I will say, one of the other things that I learned in my 40s is that my career matters. It’s part of who I am. And because I set it up right in the first place and because I actively went after the things I wanted to do in life, I do what I love and I love what I do and I do something that as it turns out, kind of matters. And I think we’re trained to want to say, “The thing I learned in my 40s is that career doesn’t matter.” It does.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yes, it matters.

**Chris:** It matters. It matters and if you did everything right leading up to it and if you moved in with your boyfriend in Boston and then followed your writing career and did all and broke up with the woman.

**Craig:** Right. Thermonuke.

**Chris:** Do all those — if you just take those actions that set you up in the right place, your career does matter and it is a part of your life.

**Craig:** I like to use — I use the word vocation. Because vocation is like it’s something you’re called to do.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** And you know, I do this because — I mean I’m lucky and that the thing that I want to do is the thing I can do —

**Chris:** Totally.

**Craig:** And that’s great. That’s a great confluence of things.

**Chris:** That’s right.

**Craig:** But this is a funny business that way. It’s not a career in a weird way. It’s kind of a vocation.

**Chris:** No. It is a huge part of — yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s like this other weird thing. It’s like a priesthood or something.

**Chris:** And you win every high school reunion and that’s the important thing for me.

**Craig:** I have yet to show up to one but I —

**Chris:** Oh, yeah. No, I won an early one because I was already at Sesame Street. And I was like, “Done.” Solid.

**Craig:** When I go back, I’m having my 25th college reunion in two years, and I will win because of the Ted Cruz thing. I’m the winner.

**Chris:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** I’m the winner. Like I should get — I should get my own parade.

**Chris:** I think you’re going to get an ambassadorship.

**Craig:** I might.

**Chris:** And where would you like to go? Do you know that the Ambassador to Ireland is an animation guy?

**Craig:** Oh, really? That’s helpful to you.

**Chris:** Yes, it is.

**Craig:** I would think that —

**Chris:** So where are you going?

**Craig:** There are a number of sensitive issues between the United States and French Polynesia.

**John:** You would actually go back to French Polynesia after your experience there?

**Craig:** No. I love it there. You’re thinking of Jeff Lowell. No, I love — I went back. Melissa and I went back for our 20th — I’m sorry, our 15th. Bora Bora, outstanding.

**Chris:** And a very difficult ambassadorship.

**Craig:** Well, just a lot of issues like —

**Chris:** I mean, yeah, there’s a lot to negotiate.

**Craig:** Import-export of coconut byproducts.

**John:** Chris Nee, where are you going to be ambassador?

**Chris:** I’m going to be the ambassador to — I’d got to go with Italy. I mean, doesn’t that seem like a fantastic place to be an ambassador to.

**Craig:** It could be. Have you spent a lot of time there though? It could be frustrating.

**Chris:** Except that I might be killed by the mafia.

**Craig:** No, no. It’s frustrating. There are no lines.

**Chris:** That’s true.

**Craig:** No one ever lines up in Italy.

**Chris:** I think I’m going to have a house out in the countryside.

**Craig:** Okay. You’ll turn like Amalfi coast or something.

**Chris:** Totally. Yeah, yeah ,yeah.

**Craig:** Well, that works. Yeah, that works.

**Chris:** On a lake eating pasta. I’m not going to do my job very well.

**Craig:** Listen, you don’t want to say that out loud.

**Chris:** Oh, right. Sorry. I said that too soon.

**John:** Yes. Let’s ask a final question from Pam Stucky. Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night absolutely certain you’re about to die? The answer for me, is yes.

**Craig:** I don’t need to wake up in the middle of the night. It’s a fact. I don’t know what the — why would I need to wake up to acknowledge a fact?

**John:** That you’re about to die?

**Craig:** Well — oh, you mean seconds away from dying?

**Chris:** Yes.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Oh, no. I’ve never woken up in the middle of the night thinking that ever.

**Chris:** I was going to say no. Why?

**Craig:** No. So sometimes you wake up and you’re like, “This is it, I’m going down.”

**Chris:** You do?

**John:** I’ve had panic attacks. And that sort of really feels like —

**Craig:** You’ve had a kernel panic.

**Chris:** But is it like the pulling out of a dream moment where you’re not quite sure —

**John:** Sometimes it is. Sometimes it just feels like, “Oh, I’m having a heart attack. This is a heart attack right now. Let me Google the symptoms. Oh, it’s a panic attack.”

**Craig:** It’s a panic attack, yeah.

**Chris:** It’s a panic attack at times.

**Craig:** Do you have sleep apnea?

**John:** No, no.

**Craig:** That’s really interesting.

**John:** So I actually know the triggers for it is if I have caffeine after like 3 p.m. it’s going to happen.

**Chris:** Then you’re going to die. Immediately?

**Craig:** Really? That’s really interesting. It’s incredible how fragile our minds are. You see, that’s the whole point, feelings are not facts.

**Chris:** Right. That’s right.

**John:** But it’s not even emotions, though. That truly is a physiological thing where like, it kicked in your fight or flight —

**Chris:** Well yeah, and panic attacks are the most horrible thing. I was just telling someone the story of getting a root canal. Oddly, my wife and I ended up having emergency root canals on the same day. We have different dentists, but we ended up at the same endodontist. How bizarre is that? So anyway, she went first and she came out and said, “It really wasn’t that bad. It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry about it.” And when I came out, she was like, “Well, how was it?” And I was like, “It was the worse thing that ever happened.” And we started talking about the dentist. And I said, you know, that horrible stutter that he has. And she said, “What stutter?” I had had such a bad panic attack. I had kicked him. I’d hit him. We had to process in the middle and he kept saying to me, like, “You have to stop fighting me.” And I said, “But the whole point of a panic attack is I can’t control it.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** He kept telling me to stop with a stutter that had come back that I brought back from childhood because it was so terrible.

**Craig:** Wow. Chris, you’re such a bully.

**Chris:** Because I was panicked. I was so panicked.

**Craig:** No, panic is —

**Chris:** It’s a terrible feeling.

**Craig:** I had one —

**Chris:** You can’t control it.

**Craig:** Years and years and years ago at the tail end of a very difficult production that I think was kind of the result of, like, being over adrenalized for so long and then the adrenaline stops and then your receptors are starved for adrenaline. So anytime you might go, “What?” And I was down for a week. And for about three days, I couldn’t leave my room.

**Chris:** That feels like a Harvey story.

**Craig:** Bob.

**Chris:** All right.

**John:** Done.

**Chris:** Done.

**Craig:** Wait. We have to ask this question because this is the best question of all.

**John:** Sure. Ask the question.

**Craig:** Clint asks, what is the deal with women and throw pillows? What is the deal with women and throw pillows?

**John:** What is the deal with women and throw pillows?

**Chris:** Ask Craig.

**Craig:** I mean honestly — yeah.

**Chris:** Ask a woman.

**Craig:** I get it. I’m the most feminine one here. They frustrate me so much. I just want to sit on my couch.

**Chris:** Because all you do is move them out of the way.

**Craig:** They’re not just pillows. They’re always scratchy. They’re the worst pillows. They’re piled up in such a way that you can’t sit on a couch. You’re literally forward as — if you were about to be jettisoned into space. I hate them, and yet every couch in my house must be stacked. My bed. What do I do when I want to go to bed?

**Chris:** You have to put everything on the side of the bed.

**Craig:** Literally, you know what I do to get the pillows off my bed? I bitch slap them off my bed. I backhand them off.

**Chris:** Practice?

**Craig:** No. They’re the only ones I really hate. And I just, “Get off my bed.” What is the deal?

**John:** I believe a couch should have two pillows that can be adjusted for napping or for, like, putting it behind your back if you want to sit a little differently.

**Craig:** Two corner ones.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** I’ll buy that.

**John:** Two pillows in the corner that you can move and use as appropriate. But more than that, no.

**Chris:** No, there’s no need for it.

**Craig:** It’s just outrageous.

**Chris:** Women suck.

**Craig:** Look, man, sometimes I come home and I’m looking at my couch, I’m like, “Well, someone went over to T.J. Maxx and had our — what is it, Home Goods? Home Goods.

**Chris:** Does she just randomly buy more?

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes there’s just — I’m in so much trouble now for this.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because the thing is, I was doing great and then I —

**John:** You were doing great. It was all a love fest.

**Craig:** And then this pillow thing happened.

**Chris:** Yeah. And it’s all over now.

**John:** See if you can pull it out in the One Cool Things.

**Craig:** I forgot to do one.

**John:** So I specifically emailed about One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** I know. My One Cool Thing is — do you know what my One Cool Thing is? Throw pillows. Love them.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is gut bacteria.

**Craig:** That’s a cool thing.

**John:** It’s a pretty cool thing. So I’ll link to an article by Moises Velasquez-Manoff about recent findings in gut bacteria. But essentially making the case that all the stuff that exists in your gut that helps you process food and helps you — helps your ecosystem survive and thrive, has gone away to the degree that we may not even have some of those microbes left anymore. It’s an interesting challenge I think because those things probably evolved with us in order to process the foods that we are eating. And without them, we are kind of screwed. So I think it will be interesting to see over the next 10 years whether we can get some of those things back if we can start to supplement those things or find other ways just sort of regrow that inner stuff.

**Chris:** So do you take regular probiotics? Is that — ?

**John:** I don’t take regular probiotics — but I’m careful to try to eat a diversity of things and to try to get more stuff in there. And we have our own garden and so we try to eat as many as greens at our garden as possible.

**Chris:** Well done.

**Craig:** Just wonderful of you. I don’t know if you guys had been following but fecal transplants —

**Chris:** Yes. It’s fascinating.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They’re kind of like magic.

**John:** I think they’re kind of —

**Chris:** They’re kind of incredible.

**Craig:** Seed of a seal used to be this — I mean it’s called seed of a seal because it was that difficult to cure. And fecal transplant, done, fixed.

**Chris:** Yeah. And it feels like you’re going to be able to get people who want to donate, which is a perfect segue because my One Cool Thing is Be the Match because what is cooler than saving someone’s life?

**Craig:** You’re the second person that made Be the Match be a One Cool Thing on the show.

**Chris:** Oh, I did not know that.

**Craig:** But go for it.

**Chris:** But I’m going for it anyway.

**Craig:** Can’t be repeated enough.

**Chris:** It is — Be the Match is for bone marrow transplants, and it is so easy. It’s just a cheek swab. You don’t have to do anything. By the time you get to the point where you have to make a decision as to whether you’re going to deal with the needle or anything like that, there is a human being’s life in the balance that you get to save, which is the coolest thing ever. That will be your meeting story for the rest of your life. It is your guarantee on a date that they think you’re a good guy or gal. You’re going to get laid if you join Be the Match. So that’s —

**Craig:** Women don’t need that, but the men, do.

**Chris:** No, they don’t.

**Craig:** The men need that extra push.

**Chris:** The men need it, yeah, you know —

**John:** Dave hanging out in Fontana, he needs to Be the Match.

**Chris:** He needs Be the Match.

**Craig:** My God, he would kill it out there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No. Be the Match is amazing and it covers —

**Chris:** And basically in life, I think you want to be karmacly covered. You want to know that you’ve done all the things — not because you want to help other people, but because you want to make sure if you need a pair of lungs, that you’ve said yes on your driver’s license —

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Chris:** You need blood, you need platelets that you’ve put it out in the universe —

**Craig:** Do it.

**Chris:** To do it. So Be the Match. Be the Match.

**Craig:** Honestly, going to bethematch.org.

**Chris:** It’s so easy.

**Craig:** Is compulsory as far as I’m concerned. It’s that simple to do. There’s nothing else like it.

**Chris:** No.

**Craig:** As far as I’m aware.

**Chris:** And it only works by critical mass.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Chris:** And that is if you’re not — you’re never doing Be the Match for the person — don’t wait for the person who’s going to ask you and you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m totally going to donate and I’m going to give my stuff to you.”

**Craig:** Do it now.

**Chris:** It never works that way. You got to be in the system for the system to work.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s the best One Cool Thing. It really is.

**John:** Hooray. That’s our program. So thank you very much, Chris Nee, for joining us.

**Chris:** Thank you so much for having me.

**Craig:** That was great. You did a good job.

**Chris:** I’m really sorry that I didn’t swear as much as Malcolm Spellman.

**John:** We’re delighted. We don’t have to put a little E in our explicit language —

**Chris:** I know. But I kind of wanted it to be like the pre-school writer who needed the E. Like that felt like a thing. I’m going to go after it next time.

**John:** Next time.

**Craig:** Are there any porn spoofs of Doc McStuffins yet?

**Chris:** There have been from the beginning. Because frankly —

**Craig:** Because the McStuffins.

**Chris:** Yes. I —

**John:** Both words lend themselves to puns.

**Chris:** Yeah. I mean, I knew when I came up with the idea, I was like, yeah, hi. And I’m sort of proud I got that through.

**Craig:** What does doc rhyme with you guys? I don’t get it.

**Chris:** Yeah. I’m saying yes. And I also — you know, there’s a whole other show that will happen in 20 years called Doc after Dark where, you know, obviously, you follow Doc and it ends up that she fails out of medical school.

**Craig:** Oh, boy. We’re going to have Disney lawyers over here.

**Chris:** It’s all downhill. It’s all downhill from there.

**Craig:** I would watch it on Cinemax, I presume.

**Chris:** I think, yes.

**Craig:** Friday night after dark.

**John:** Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel, as always, and edited by Mathew Chilelli. Thank you, Mathew.

Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. Thank you. If you have an outro for us, write into ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you could have written into to send in your questions. But you can send in your screenwriting questions there, and we may get to those on a show. On Twitter, I am @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. Chris, you are?

**Chris:** @chrisdocnee.

**John:** chrisdocnee?

**Chris:** Yeah, because there’s a Chris Nee already.

**Craig:** What?

**Chris:** Really?

**John:** Is that an Asian man?

**Chris:** No, there’s a football guy.

**Craig:** Football? There is a football guy?

**Chris:** Well, there’s Chris Snee which is my nickname is Snee.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** But there is a guy who tweets about football, Chris Nee. He got my name.

**John:** He got your name. We have a live show on January 25th. It is starring — well, me and Craig will be there, but we’re not the stars.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Jason Bateman is a true star. And Lawrence Kasdan wrote a little movie called Star Wars.

**Craig:** Opening — so by the time this airs —

**John:** It would already be open.

**Craig:** It will have already have opened. I’m going to get — I’m just going to go out on a limb here. I think it’s going to make $15 million or $16 million this weekend.

**John:** I think that’s absolutely a guarantee.

**Craig:** Minimum.

**Chris:** Fair.

**John:** Minimum.

**Craig:** With highs up to 20 — think about it guys, $20 million in a weekend.

**John:** It’s facing some tough competition. Like the second week of In the Heart of the Sea —

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** That’s going to be tough.

**John:** Yeah. And Amy Poehler’s movie is up against it but I just want to —

**Craig:** Well, but also just like life. I mean like people love reading books for instance. So there’s that.

**John:** They do. Absolutely.

**Craig:** So there’s that.

**John:** Yeah. And the holiday hubbub.

**Craig:** There’s holiday hubbub going on. By the way, when are you — I’m seeing it on Saturday.

**John:** I’m seeing it on Friday.

**Chris:** I am waiting a week. I’m a big wait-a-weeker.

**Craig:** Okay. I’ll call you and tell you what happens.

**Chris:** Please.

**John:** We’re recording the show on a Wednesday. But already the reviews have started to come out. And so I have to, like — I’m basically out of Twitter until — I don’t want to see any —

**Chris:** No, you don’t want to see anything.

**Craig:** Reviews didn’t stop me from seeing The Phantom Menace. Reviews aren’t going to mean anything to me. I will go see this and judge for myself.

**Chris:** But did you read the entire article where a dad was trying to explain to his kid what the big deal was about Star Wars and he used Doc McStuffins coming back in 20 years as his example?

**Craig:** You mean —

**John:** Oh my God.

**Chris:** Because that was a good —

**Craig:** Doc McStuffins after dark?

**Chris:** Yes. Like, if it — yes. He totally went for the Doc McStuffins after dark example.

**Craig:** It’s really — all roads lead to McStuffins.

**Chris:** Yes, they do.

**John:** They do. You’ll find the links to that article and everything else we talked about on the show at the show notes at johnaugust.com. And Chris Nee, thank you again for —

**Chris:** Thank you.

**John:** A very fun episode.

**Craig:** Thanks, Chris.

Links:

* [Chris Nee](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1349008/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/chrisdocnee), and [Doc McStuffins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_McStuffins)
* [Serial, season 2](https://serialpodcast.org/season-two)
* [Coquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coquito)
* Throw pillows on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=throw+pillows), [Pier 1](http://www.pier1.com/pillows-cushions/pillows/pillows,default,sc.html), [Overstock](http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Throw-Pillows/2011/subcat.html), [Target](http://www.target.com/c/throw-pillows-home-decor/-/N-5xttp) and [Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=throw+pillows&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS504US504&oq=throw+pillows&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i60.1095j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8)
* [How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution](http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/how-the-western-diet-has-derailed-our-evolution)
* [Fecal Microbiota Transplants](http://thefecaltransplantfoundation.org/what-is-fecal-transplant/)
* [Sign up for Be The Match and save a life](https://bethematch.org/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/scriptnotes-holiday-show-2015).

**Malcolm Spellman:** This is Malcolm Spellman. I’m a guest on Scriptnotes this week. I swear a lot, so don’t listen to this podcast in the car with your kids, or the old folks in your family, or they’ll hate you. Craig and John August made me say this. Merry Christmas.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 228 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and…

Audience: Things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Is that right?

**John:** We have some pros. Yeah. Craig, welcome to our third holiday special I believe.

**Craig:** If you say so.

**John:** All right. So, people who are listening at home don’t have a sense of where this is. So, can you do some really great scene description so people reading at home get a sense of what this movie feels like?

**Craig:** Interior.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Generic auditorium. Stadium seating. The crowd is — the theater is packed.

**John:** Which is nice, yeah.

**Craig:** Everyone looks vaguely writerly. Not too attractive, but not horrifying, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** A lot of J.Crew and Gap.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree so.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the two hosts are at the front of the stage welcoming their audience to what’s going to be a really great night. So usually on the podcast we can have like one guest, sometimes two guests. These live shows, we can cram up to four guests into an episode, and that’s what we’re doing tonight.

We should just start with our first guest because —

**Craig:** No banter?

**John:** Well, we can banter.

**Craig:** That was it. Okay, first guest.

**John:** That was our banter. We just started. We didn’t plan this at all. But we should start with our first guest because he’s probably been our most popular single appearance guest —

**Craig:** Disturbing.

**John:** In history.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So this gentleman, he first appeared in Episode 185. He is a producer on the television program called Empire. And he’s the one and only Malcolm Spellman. Malcolm Spellman is right here.

So, Malcolm, you have your name big up on that screen right behind you. How is that? How does that feel?

**Malcolm:** I’m winning.

**John:** You’re winning? How does it feel to have your name in the credits every week on a television program like Empire, like a huge hit?

**Malcolm:** Fifteen years working, three credits, two of them on Empire is good. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It does feel good.

**Malcolm:** Yeah, it took a long time.

**John:** So, welcome to our show here. And part of why I wanted to have you here is because I have so many things I want to ask you about because I have just no sense of what your opinion is going to be. And so I have a list of like random topics. It’s like, “Ask Malcolm about this topic and it’s going to be great, is my hunch.” So this is our last episode we’ll be recording before Star Wars comes out. So I want to know, what does Malcolm Spellman think about Star Wars?

**Malcolm:** Hey, I’m really, really excited about it. And, you know, it’s one of the most important movies for me. it’s a visceral memory, you know what I’m saying? They fucked up the last three, so I’m primed up. [laughs] I’m primed to be there.

**Craig:** They did fuck up the last three. [laughs]

**Malcolm:** They did. They did.

**Craig:** They, by the way, I like that we’re saying they, like it wasn’t one guy.

**Malcolm:** So, no, I’m excited to get in there. I think it’s the most important. And similar to Marvel, it is a mythology for movies. Like it’s super specific. Everyone’s imitating whatever but it’s the most important one out there.

**Craig:** Did you see this thing in WIRED? They said something like, “We will not live to see the last Star Wars sequel. There are going to be so many of them, assuming this works,” that’s kind of incredible. Like it’s never going to stop now.

**Malcolm:** Do they know your relationship to number nine?

**Craig:** My relationship?

**Malcolm:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It was my idea. That?

**Malcolm:** With Rian, but —

**Craig:** Oh.

**Malcolm:** It was funny like when — he’s friends with Rian Johnson and when that —

**Craig:** Wait, you’re friends with Rian Johnson.

**Malcolm:** Yeah, but he’s better with you all, you know —

**Craig:** Okay.

**Malcolm:** You guys. You know how it is.

**Craig:** He’s Swedish. A little Swede.

**Malcolm:** I’m his black friend. [laughs]

**Craig:** You are. By the way, you literally are like totally —

**Malcolm:** Everybody is. Everybody. [laughs]

**Craig:** Like from top to bottom.

**Malcolm:** But I remember when it came around, I actually was with him before any of you guys. He was taking me to a Godzilla screening and he was blushing and levitating. And then you realize when you’re talking to him — again, that’s why I’m saying about, important to the mythology, there isn’t anything else out there like it, you know what I’m saying? And, yes, so they’re going to keep pimping until it’s done.

**Craig:** Don’t you think like if Star Wars had been, instead of a movie it had been written down as a story 2,000 years ago, we all would be going to Jedi church.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s actually better than the Bible. It’s more exciting, I think.

**Malcolm:** Definitely better than scientology. [laughs]

**Craig:** Scientology makes no sense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. Scientology, they literally make you pay like you want to see a sequel, you have to pay for like extra —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It is. It’s mythological.

**John:** They want you to pay for the sequels on Star Wars movies but like you get to experience it for free and like —

**Craig:** Wait, wait, we have to pay for those? [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. There’s no Netflix equivalent of scientology, I believe. You can’t just sort of like, you know, buy once and watch it forever.

**Craig:** You can’t get a subscription to jump right to Xenu. You got to really work.

**John:** Yeah, again and again.

**Craig:** Meanwhile, we’re literally in the middle of scientology world — I mean, they could, right?

**John:** Yeah. [laughs] Absolutely. Or like Stuart and his parents, like you can actually like just get their subscription to Netflix and not actually pay for it yourself. [laughs]

Can I have a show of hands here in the audience —

**Craig:** Stuart!

**John:** Who is watching Netflix or another streaming service using their parents’ login?

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Wow. See, I had a hunch. We have a connected audience.

**Malcolm:** That’s why we’re broke. [laughs]

**Craig:** Alan, we’ve got a problem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We’ll talk about that when you’re —

**John:** Yeah, indeed.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** So it’s great that people are watching these shows but they’re not —

**Craig:** They’re sponging.

**John:** They’re sponging a bit.

**Craig:** Off their parents.

**John:** Off their parents. How dare they.

**Craig:** It would mean I’d have to talk to my parents.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s totally worth the subscription.

**John:** Malcolm, I have another question if you’re ready for another question.

**Malcolm:** I’m ready.

**John:** Okay. So we were talking about the Marvel Universe and so now they’re busy getting ready to do Black Panther and they have a director on board —

**Malcolm:** Ask me the black questions, right? [laughs]

**John:** I’m going to ask you the black questions. I want to know your opinion on —

**Malcolm:** It’s going to define my career. [laughs]

**John:** I want to know your opinion on hiring a sort of targeting, you know —

**Craig:** It’s the black question. It’s happening.

**John:** Targeting minority filmmakers to make the one minority character in a franchise.

**Malcolm:** I think it’s all part of a growing narrative, you know what I’m saying? So obviously, this discussion of diversity and black folks and black filmmakers particularly has become more and more relevant and important. And because of shit like Empire and Black-ish, whatever, and we’re winning, they’re like, “Oh, fuck.” And you look at something like Creed and that’s immediately where you’re like, I hate to say this, no white people were going to think of that story, you know what I’m saying? They just wasn’t because they don’t — none of them was going to imagine what the fuck is Creed’s son doing. And that is why you need —

**Craig:** I’m sorry. That is undeniable. There isn’t one of you white people in here that would have thought of that. It’s a fact.

**Malcolm:** It didn’t happen in how many years.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. It was always like you were closer to probably like Rocky’s — like remember when he had a robot? The robot would have happened first.

**Malcolm:** Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s, I think, a great example of why Marvel doing this, whether they’re following a trend, I’m sure the reason they’re doing it is because they don’t want to get shit because, you know, they didn’t have any black filmmakers involved with the project. But the ancillary benefit of that will be that you get this perspective which is the most potent voice in pop culture.

And we forget that because we haven’t been able to do our thing in this medium. And everything else, we kill it and make it hot for everybody. And now they’re about to discover, like you look at what happened with Creed and there’s a good chance Coogler will do the same thing for Black Panther, like add something new and vital —

**Craig:** Right.

**Malcolm:** To the shit. So I was —

**Craig:** I mean, I honestly think that maybe there is a part of them that thinks we better do this to avoid some kind of pity.

**Malcolm:** I agree.

**Craig:** I think though, I mean, don’t they just smell money? I mean, isn’t that — you know.

**Malcolm:** They’re mostly scared.

**Craig:** Really?

**Malcolm:** They were just going out to all the black folks. They were like, “We just don’t want to get yelled at.”

**Craig:** Oh, because if we make Black Panther, we can’t make it with a white guy actually.

**Malcolm:** That’s right. And what they will discover is, “Oh, shit, this dude had some original ideas that no one else was going to have and gave it a freshness, you know what I’m saying, and they’re going to win with it.”

**John:** Right. So you are our TV friend. So John Landgraf who runs FX Network had a famous quote this last year. He said like, “We’ve reached peak TV. There’s too much television.” As a person who makes television, is there too much television out there?

**Malcolm:** It definitely feels like that, but it’s growing. There’s more people getting in with people more — like the real players are just emerging. Like Google wants to get involved, you know what I’m saying? [laughs] And SoundCloud and Spotify.

**Craig:** Right.

**Malcolm:** I just had this big meeting with the digital folks at the agency and there are ways like you know how we were coming up — the last five years whatever was feeling like how is anybody making money off this shit, right? They now know these people are making money. And they were saying Apple has this really detailed complex layout on how, like they know who’s going to pay this much in the first window. In the second window, who, for free, will let you feed them all kinds of ads and stuff.

I just watched a standup comedy show on YouTube and I spent $1 on it, right? I think once that gets cracked open, there’s going to be a whole — like once you can start billing a show to your cell phone bill for $1 or whatever, there might be so much more money out there than anyone can fucking imagine.

**Craig:** I think there is.

**Malcolm:** That all this shit can be supported.

**Craig:** I think there is. And what I think about sometimes when I look at the landscape now and I see, I don’t know, hundreds of channels just through the wire and then God knows how many if you include just things that are on the Internet, and the fact that people are still making money and then I think back, once there were three. How much money were those — oh, my god.

**Malcolm:** I know.

**Craig:** They must have been making so much money. It’s like the fact that they ever canceled anything is insane.

**Malcolm:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why would you even cancel it? Don’t show anything. It doesn’t even matter.

**Malcolm:** No. They were making so much money it made them stupid. They were like, “Fuck, let’s don’t keep all this money right here.”

**Craig:** It’s so true. It’s so true. It made them stupid and it also made stupid people think they were smart because they thought it was them. No, anybody, anyone, you could have shot someone and put their dead body in a chair and NBC would have made money in 1963.

**Malcolm:** That’s right. That’s right.

**John:** That’s the new primetime special. It’s called “The Dead Body in the Chair” and it’ll get good ratings.

What is TV though? So you had a meeting with these digital folks of your agency. What are they even talking about with TV? Because like the digital stuff used to be like, “Oh, that’s the extra bonus. Like it’s the webisodes for The Office.” But now, like what’s the difference? I mean, if you’re making money somehow, that’s — if these people who are in the audience who are aspiring writers, what do you tell them? Should they be trying to write for, you know, Fox like you are or should they be trying to write for, you know, YouTube?

**Malcolm:** I think, well, what it feels like is right now, most of these companies are still thinking — like Netflix and Hulu, they’re still called digital companies even though they’re doing traditional formats, right? But that shit is about to change. Like I think it’s about a year or so away. I’m working with some folks on trying to change it. And once that happens, I think it’s going to all happen organically, right? I think the big gap right now in digital that I see, I almost don’t want to say this shit because I’m like, man, fuck, I might get rich off of it but — [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, if you say it in front of me, I will absolutely get rich off of it.

**Malcolm:** I think like what hasn’t happened yet is people like us, right, who are doing well and creating — when I say high-level, whatever, right, I’m saying the shit people pay for. Whether or not you guys like the shit we work on or whatever, that’s what I mean by it, right. The people who are creating high-level content are all like, “Yeah, fuck, digital could be awesome but I’m not passing up.” I know what your quote is, you know what I’m saying, I’m — you’re like —

**Craig:** How?

**Malcolm:** Because you’ve been bragging motherfucker. You be like, “Malc, guess how much money I just made.” [laughs]

**Craig:** I forgot about that. That’s how.

**Malcolm:** So there’s no way they’re going to really get you, right? Not yet.

**Craig:** Right.

**Malcolm:** But what’s going to happen is there’s going to be people like me who aren’t quite where you’re at but make more money than the average person going there. And if I go in there and do high-level shit, and when I say high-level I mean the same level what you’re getting on FX and HBO, but it’s whatever format I want and it’s funded, that’s when you’re going to start getting to the shit where it’s like, well, what do you do with a 15-minute pilot, right? You put it on fucking YouTube and if you got hot motherfuckers in it, it gets 30 million fucking views and if you’re charging people $1, you’re like, “Oh, fuck,” you know what I’m saying?

**Craig:** We should mention that there may be some language in this podcast.

**John:** There’s a possibility, so —

**Craig:** If you’re in the car with your kids.

**John:** Yeah.

**Malcolm:** But I think that’s the new frontier. I think there’s going to be some people like me who are going to be willing to, for creative freedom and the potential for huge upside, pass up — because, you know, I’m in that weird level where it’s like I’m not getting Mazin/John August money, but I’m getting enough money that it might make me feel a little bit scared to go in here and do this shit for free.

**Craig:** Right.

**Malcolm:** But if I do it — you know what I’m saying?

**Craig:** Well, but the upside to it, I mean there’s ownership opportunities —

**Malcolm:** That’s right.

**Craig:** That happen at those levels. I mean, I think there are a lot of people that make a lot of money that it’s guaranteed money, it’s employee money, but then who do take these risks. I see it all the time. And then, you know, some people can do both. They can say, “All right, well, I’ll do a job but now I’m going to try something that’s mine.” And I think that’s really exciting. I mean, there’s more opportunities now than ever before.

I mean, for people out here thinking about television, I mean, would it be fair to say from your perspective, as somebody that’s, you know, now at the top of the heap of a network which is still a thing, that it doesn’t make any sense to write for a network or write for a not-network but rather to write something that’s exciting and see who grabs it.

**Malcolm:** By the time you get done, yes, that will be a thing. That’s going to be the big breakthrough. Like if your fucking idea had to come in at 17 minutes to be perfect and awesome, people are going to start reading that shit and there’s going to be people like me out there or whoever who are like, “Oh, I know what to do with this.”

**Craig:** It’s amazing how long the structure has lasted from —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just the fact that there’s a season that’s based on when they used to roll new cars out. That’s why we had the whole, you know, September — and then the 30-minute/hour format is back from old days.

**John:** It’s arbitrary. Malcolm, what you’re describing sounds amazing but it doesn’t sound like a thing that just a writer does. It sounds like you are going to create stuff. And so it’s not just like writing a script. It’s not writing a spec for somebody. You actually have to make the thing that’s going to be — like the reason you have ownership is because you’re going to make the final product.

**Malcolm:** That’s right.

**John:** You’re just not writing the script, so —

**Malcolm:** Yes.

**John:** It’s taking ownership of the whole process. And that’s a lot to ask of somebody. People just want to like throw Courier around on a page and that doesn’t sound like it’s enough to be that new kind of television thing.

**Malcolm:** But I think it’s going to be move so quickly that entities will exist by the time — I mean because you’re looking like how fast does it take to mount this stuff, is entities will exist that know what to do with it. Meaning, if you just write some stuff in Courier and the people I’m working with have now got four or five projects going that are proving to be lucrative or whatever, I can’t write everything, you know what I’m saying. You’re going to look around and be like, “Oh,” you know what I’m saying? I think exactly what we grew up doing is going to happen. And the digital space is just going to be way more free and open.

**John:** We’ll hope. Tonight’s theme is basically all creators who created TV shows. So we’re going to have answers to some of these questions for people who are doing the kind of stuff that you’re talking about doing. And we should get to it, I think.

**Craig:** Yeah. So we have to get rid of Malcolm is what you’re saying?

**John:** We have to get rid of Malcolm.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Malcolm, thank you very — you’re going to come back at the end.

**Craig:** All right, Malcolm.

**John:** Malcolm. Our next guests are the co-creators — well, Malcolm, he’s like family. He’s not a guest. Are the co-creators of Another Period. We’re going to show a clip from this but I want to set it up because it’s even better if you sort of know the setup on this. This is about the Bellacourt sisters. They are trying to enter high society. They have invited Helen Keller over to boost their standings on high society and they’re trying to impress the Marquis de Sainsbury who’s keeper of the social register. And so keep this all in mind as you watch this clip from Another Period.

**Natasha Leggero:** And it takes place in 1902.

**John:** Oh, 1902. You’ll see that by —

[Video Plays]

**Female:** More cocaine wine?

**Male:** Yes.

**Female:** A little bit more won’t hurt.

**Male:** Any lady in Newport society needs to know how to hold her liquor.

**Female:** Well, I can hold my liquor better than anyone.

**Female:** Me, too.

**Male:** Oh, my goodness, that sounds like a challenge. Shall we see who can drink it the fastest?

**Female:** Oh, yes. Yes. Helen, other person. Let’s race.

**Male:** One, two, three go.

**Female:** Wait. I have to tell Helen we’re doing a contest.

**Female:** Ahhh. You are all piles of trash. I am a mountain of gold. I won. I took the egg. Argh.

**Female:** I won, you dumb haybag. You don’t count.

**Female:** Second place. Why am I always second place?

**Female:** You’re not second place. Lillian’s second place. I’m first place. I won.

**Female:** No one asked you to play, whore. You’re fat. Other person? Other person? I’m the one that taught her to communicate. Without me she’d be nothing. You’re nothing without me, Keller. Nothing.

**Female:** I love you, Annie.

**Female:** That’s a Ming vase, you deaf bitch. We only have 17 of those.

**Female:** I wasn’t totally sure what was happening. But I knew I wanted to stab someone.

**Male:** Let go of my sister. You heathens. What is this, Baltimore?

**Female:** Intruder.

[Video Ends]

**John:** Can we welcome up Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome.

**Riki Lindhome:** Hi, guys.

**John:** Good lord, how did you make — this show is — oh, I love your show so, so much.

**Riki:** Thank you.

**John:** And, Craig, have you watched the show?

**John:** He doesn’t watch anything.

**Craig:** Nothing.

**Natasha:** He’s been sending us emails all week with his favorite lines.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Ah.

**Craig:** I’m like, “No, this is my favorite line.” So I don’t watch shows, as you guys know, and John said, well —

**Natasha:** That’s a thing? You just don’t watch shows? [laughs]

**Craig:** It’s not like on purpose. I’m just lazy as fuck and —

**John:** He plays Fallout 4. That’s basically —

**Craig:** I do. I play Fallout 4. Look, it started bad where I was talking about crossword puzzles with Natasha and she was like, blech. Now we’re talking about Fallout 4, it’s like —

**Natasha:** No, you were talking about crossword puzzle like chat rooms.

**Craig:** That’s cool. I don’t know why anyone’s laughing. So I started watching this show and I’m obsessed. I mean, honestly, in a fair and just world, they would be talking about the show the way they talk about Mad Men. I’m serious. I’m dead serious.

**Riki:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Because I have this thing having gone through in my life times where I was working on pure comedy. Just comedy that is completely pure. It is the hardest thing to do. In fact, I want to —

**John:** Yeah — !

**Craig:** That’s fucking pathetic. [laughs] So I want to actually start by asking you guys a question about process because — so your show is, I mean, I guess you could say it’s loosely a parody of Downton Abbey but not really. It’s kind of its own thing.

**John:** Can you tell us how you pitched the show? Because I mean, it’s so specific and the voice and the vision is so specific. What was the genesis of your show?

**Riki:** Well, we had a few glasses of wine. [laughs]

**Craig:** Cocaine wine.

**Riki:** No, just regular wine.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Riki:** Natasha and I, we decided we wanted to make something. I mean when —

**Natasha:** Yeah. You know, we had this idea for this like fake reality show about these like dumb idiots and then I had this other idea about this other thing that took place in 1902 and Riki was like, “Well, why don’t we combine them?” And so we did that. [laughs]

**Riki:** But we kind of knew the idea was too weird to pitch. And so we went out and made like a 15-minute short. We spent real money and made a real short. And there was actually a scene from the short in the pilot.

**Natasha:** And I had read a book about Newport at the turn of the century before they introduced income tax. Like 90% of the wealth in America was all in Newport, Rhode Island. So it’s like a really fascinating place. And if you go there, you can still like go to all these house museum tours and see the whole world there. And people were living like it was bananas.

**John:** Yeah.

**Natasha:** And it’s American history because everyone loves — you know, Downton Abbey, it’s not our history, so.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, I think it’s a brilliant choice actually because there’s something inherently funny about wealthy aristocratic Americans because Americans don’t really — it’s not like we deserve it, you know. We’re not nobility.

But I want to ask you guys about the relentless and exhausting nature of writing stuff like this because your show is, I guess it’s what, like 25 minutes, I mean when you take out commercial and stuff?

**Natasha:** No, it’s 20.

**Craig:** It’s 20?

**Natasha:** Yeah, it’s so short.

**Craig:** Twenty minutes is a lot.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it’s 20 minutes, every page is like five or six jokes a page. But more importantly, you never get a break because nothing can be ever taken seriously in the show, that’s the magic of it. So there’s no point where anyone can just stop and be reflexive or —

**Natasha:** Nope.

**Craig:** I mean, how do you survive the pace of it, of writing it?

**Riki:** You’re making it sound so hard.

**Craig:** Maybe it was just hard for me. [laughs]

**Riki:** No. [laughs] I mean, we work really, really hard at it. I would love to say like, “Oh, it’s just natural and we just come up with this stuff.” But we, like, kill ourselves to make this show. We think about it from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed.

**Craig:** Right.

**Natasha:** But it’s also the rhythm of a show that’s inspiring to us. So we want to be doing something fast-paced and funny and finding the funniest people we can to try to make that happen.

**Craig:** The cast is amazing.

**Riki:** We got so lucky. And that was part of it is we had all the cast, we had their pictures at the end of the writing table and we would be like, “Okay, Brett Gelman is so hilarious. What’s the funniest stuff he does?” And we’d watch clips of Brett and we would write specifically for him and then it just makes it easier and fun.

**Craig:** That’s my part, by the way, if he croaks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Riki:** You’re Hamish?

**Craig:** I’m stepping in. Yeah, for sure.

**Riki:** Hamish, the outwoodsman?

**Craig:** yeah.

**Riki:** Yeah. [laughs] Slash abortionist?

**Craig:** Yeah. Slash Jew hunter. Don’t forget that one.

**Riki:** Yes, yes, yes. [laughs]

**John:** I would love to see the show.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So you shot this sort of presentation pilot. So it’s 15 minutes and is it sort of like the first episode that we saw? Was it like the pilot or just different scenes from the show? What did it feel like?

**Natasha:** We hadn’t really done any of the downstairs. We were just doing the upstairs. And then I think Comedy Central wanted to see more downstairs. And then we all got very inspired by the downstairs people because —

**Craig:** They are amazing.

**Natasha:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Garfield.

**John:** Garfield and Chair.

**Riki:** Yeah, it’s —

**Natasha:** With Michael Ian Black and Armen Weitzman and Christina Hendricks and —

**Riki:** Yeah, Christina Hendricks is hilarious in the show.

**Craig:** She’s really funny. And you never know. Sometimes those people aren’t. Those people like dramatic actors —

**Natasha:** Those people.

**Craig:** The dramatic actors sometimes don’t fit in with that kind of comedy. And she does brilliantly.

**Riki:** She was so game to do anything. She had so much physical comedy. She was just totally fun.

**Natasha:** And I think she used to do comedy before.

**Craig:** Ah-ha.

**Natasha:** You know, or like in theater or whatever in college.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So David Wain is on your show and is also from Children’s Hospital. He’s been a guest on the podcast before. But Children’s Hospital is a show that it’s like every episode is just completely brand new and there’s no continuity episode to episode. But you guys actually have a lot of continuity. So talk to us about figuring out how to be funny in an episode but also have arcs that sort of cross episodes. What was the plan? Did you know that Chair’s back story would be revealed in episode 6? What was the plan?

**Riki:** Yes. We map out the entire season. We have the luxury, I guess. Some people don’t like it but I think it’s a luxury to write the whole season at once before we start filming. And then we cross-board every episode. So we shoot all 10 episodes kind of at once.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Riki:** Yeah. So if we have an actor in two episodes or five episodes, we can shoot them out in two days or three days or whatever.

**Natasha:** That’s why it has to be kind of fast-paced because you have to be able to jump plot lines, if you have to. [laughs] Like figure out —

**Craig:** But it’s incredibly helpful, I would imagine, that you can — I mean, I guess part of it is you’re forced to by budget and all the rest of it, but that you know the whole season. That means you can go back. And I assume you do a lot of backwards, retrofitting, because it really does feel so well-machined. I mean, there’s so much craft in it. I’m really amazed by the show, I got to tell you.

**Natasha:** Oh, that’s so nice.

**Riki:** Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**Riki:** Thank you. We love it, too, but we’re biased, you know. [laughs]

**Craig:** Like I don’t believe your —

**Natasha:** No, it’s sweet. This is a very sincere, serious podcast. I love it.

**Riki:** But, yeah, we map out the whole season and we really think about every character and their arc and where they’re going to end up in episode 10. And then we have it, you know, just all up on our little board and then —

**Craig:** Sorry, I really love the show. That the character of Garfield is insane. Every character is either insane or so stupid as to be profoundly retarded.

**Riki:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** Or both. Your character particularly —

**Riki:** I’m both.

**Craig:** Is both profoundly retarded and insane.

**Riki:** Yes, and violent.

**Craig:** And violent.

**Riki:** Yes. [laughs]

**Craig:** And yet, I actually managed to care. Like when Garfield comes back, I cared.

**Natasha:** Well, Garfield’s nice.

**Craig:** But he’s also crazy. I mean, he’s insane.

**Natasha:** Right.

**Riki:** I mean he’s best friends with a towel.

**Craig:** He puts the potato — yeah. And then the potato is like the new thing. Like that’s his new towel.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, you don’t have to see the show. You get it now, right?

**Natasha:** He might be the only nice person in the whole show.

**Craig:** Peepers has his moments. He is a man of honor.

**Natasha:** Right. That doesn’t mean he’s nice, though.

**Riki:** Peepers has his principles.

**Craig:** Yeah, he has principles.

**Riki:** I wouldn’t say he’s nice though.

**Craig:** Actually, he’s quite mean.

**Riki:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** So can you talk to us about the music because one of the most striking things and the reason why I love the Comedy Central, the blip at the end is because you have like this sort of heavy, hardcore rap soundtrack underneath it all. So there’s obviously a Downton Abbey influence, the upstairs, the downstairs, the striving for society. But then at what point do you figure out like, oh, we’re going to have cutaways like on the Kardashians, we’re going to drip — nail drops throughout it. When did that come? Was that part of your presentation? Was it always in the script?

**Natasha:** I don’t know. We always kind of like saw it that way somehow and then we asked Snoop Dogg to do the credit.

**Riki:** Natasha did the Roast with him, so —

**Natasha:** And so he did it and so him singing the song, like it kind of made it feel this reality vibe that we wanted and —

**Riki:** It just made us laugh so much when we had the cold open and then it would go into this hardcore rap song. We were like, “That feels right.”

**John:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Riki:** And so we just kept it going. And then when we had little bumpers at the end of each act, it’s like we just — I don’t know, it’s just funny, I think more than anything. You know, there’s no deeper meaning behind it other than that it made us laugh. [laughs]

**John:** All right. It feels like an incredibly challenging show to shoot. So is this shot here in town?

**Riki:** Yeah, in Silver Lake.

**John:** In Silver Lake, great. So —

**Craig:** Oh, I live really close to Silver Lake. So I’m just saying, if the guy dies —

**John:** If you need an extra in the background or a double.

**Craig:** Or if somebody kills him.

**Natasha:** It’s this old mansion in Silver Lake.

**John:** Right. And so, you’re basing out of there and you cross-board and cross-boarding means that you have all the scripts, you figure out what scenes you need and you’re shooting all those scenes with those actors no matter what episode they’re in.

**Natasha:** Yeah.

**John:** But do you just go mental? As actresses, do you go crazy with the responsibility of like, “Here’s what I need to do,” versus also, “I’m creating the show and responsible for the writing,” how do you balance all that?

**Riki:** Well, we have to work really hard. On Sundays, I memorize my dialogue for the whole week and I have someone come over and drill it with me so that I don’t feel, you know, like the last minute trying to memorize. So I have it down by the time we start our week. And then usually like two to five minutes before each scene, I’m like, “I need some time.” Like I need to just relax. I need to like be in a free space for a second. I can’t answer any wardrobe questions. I get no fires. Like someone else has to put them out in the next, like right before the scene. And that seems to help.

**Natasha:** That’s interesting because I feel like I use the energy of the stress and maybe just lash out as my character.

**Craig:** That makes absolute sense because your character — I mean, so your character is kind of a monster.

**Natasha:** Yes. [laughs]

**Craig:** And your character is nuts and incredibly stupid. Her character can’t read.

**John:** Yeah.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So that’s like one of the basic —

**Natasha:** But that was common in the turn of the century. They thought if a woman read college level books it would shrink their ovaries.

**Craig:** There’s also the constant referral to weird like late 1800, early 19th Century or 20th Century understandings of medical science. I mean, the scene where the tension — like Chris Parnell plays Dr. Freud releasing their tension with this fucking vibrator, it’s —

**Riki:** That’s from the turn of the century. There’s so much real stuff in our show you wouldn’t believe it. Like cocaine wine was real.

**Craig:** Cocaine wine was real.

**Riki:** Like so many things are real, but yeah, Freud masturbating women to relieve hysteria happened. And so, of course, we’re like, “Oh, let’s all get masturbated together.” I don’t know if he did a group session but —

**Craig:** Like, you know, the mom’s there with her daughters and —

**Riki:** As a family. [laughs]

**Craig:** As a family, right. It wasn’t enough. She needed like a dildo machine. [laughs] This brings to mind a question.

I don’t have to tell you guys that we live in a time where people get in trouble constantly. Not for massive violations of taste but minor violations of taste at times. You guys kick the door down. You light stuff on fire. You don’t care. This show, while it’s lampooning racism and sexism and classism, it’s also like parallel with it. It’s like making fun of it and it’s with it.

Has there been a lot of backlash? Are you getting in trouble or you good?

**Riki:** I can’t believe how little backlash there’s been. We have a rape scene in episode 2 where —

**Craig:** I know.

**Riki:** One of our male characters gets raped and we were like just waiting for the, you know, backlash. We didn’t get it. You know, everyone on Twitter has got an opinion, but like it wasn’t like a mass, you know, hundreds of people. You know, there’s always one or two people who say something but —

**Craig:** A mass, by the way, is not hundreds of people. It’s like 100,000 people.

**Riki:** Sure.

**Craig:** Like if you say smoothing about like, I don’t know, a female superhero character —

**John:** As an example, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, as an example, you might get a thousand people that hate you in the news feed. But —

**Riki:** Yeah. I mean, we had a puppy hanging scene.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. The puppy hanging scene is great.

**Riki:** There’s so many —

**Natasha:** Yeah, like at least they PETA people can come after us. [laughs]

**Craig:** Somebody just —

**Riki:** I know. We have —

**Natasha:** I mean, they’re desperate for something to talk about.

**Riki:** Your character dressed in Mickface which is making fun of Irish people —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Riki:** It’s white makeup with freckles and a red wig. [laughs] And she did an anti-Irish song in her pageant.

**Craig:** It’s amazing.

**Riki:** And nothing. I don’t know. People don’t seem to get mad at us. I don’t know why.

**Craig:** I also love how the show brings in —

**Natasha:** Oh, because we’re in those fancy costumes.

**Craig:** I know. The customs basically do it, right? Like that covers everything.

A lot of times, though, in the show they’ll bring in characters that are historical of the time, roughly. So her character’s former lover is Ponzi, the guy that invented the Ponzi-scheme. And he’s basically trying to get money. He’s a total cad. He left her at the altar. And he’s back and she talks about how she spent a summer with him making love when she was 11. And there’s a picture of Ben Stiller man with 11-year-old girl and she just like — no letters, nothing. It’s amazing.

**Riki:** Nothing. [laughs]

**Craig:** And you guys are bulletproof. I love it.

**Riki:** I don’t understand it.

**John:** Maybe it’s the period that may help you though because it feels like, “Oh, well, it’s a period show.” It’s like, of course it’s different mores for that time. Yes, you’re making a joke —

**Craig:** No. [laughs]

**John:** I be if you tried to do the same joke that was meant to be set in present day times, people would be less comfortable with it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think they’re just magic.

**Natasha:** Like when I started doing standup, I realized if I wore a dress and gloves I could be meaner. And people wouldn’t get as mad. So maybe that’s kind of part of it.

**John:** Can you talk to us about the difference between writing for yourself as standup and writing for a character that you’re playing or for all these other characters? Is the process of coming up with a joke, of coming up with how you would actually get that idea across different based on who’s going to have to say that line.

**Natasha:** Yeah. Well, it’s very collaborative, our show. And we really think about every person and what they would be funniest doing.

**Riki:** Yeah, this is not a show where the leads take the — or the writers take the best lines. Like we make sure everyone is funny. We will do our best to make sure everyone is funny. [laughs]

**John:** Do you have table reads before you shoot? Or is that even possible with the block shooting you’re doing?

**Natasha:** It’s not possible, but we do have them.

**Riki:** Yeah. It really —

**John:** All right. Yes. Yes and yes.

**Riki:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah, yes.

**Riki:** But it’s also not possible, but yeah, we do have them.

**John:** And talk to us about improvisation because it feels like it would be much harder to improvise in a show that’s taking place in this period of times where and it’s also so serialized. Characters can’t go off and just do anything. Do you do those, you know, random last takes to try to get other —

**Natasha:** There are certain actors that we let do that like Tom Lennon and Mike Ian Black and David Wain and Brian Huskey are kind of made to do, you know —

**Riki:** 1902 dialogue.

**Natasha:** Yeah.

**Riki:** But most of us are not made to do that because we lose the affect. Or we’ll be like whatever or we’ll say something modern.

**Natasha:** You can’t say that. Like when she called her whore, it’s because her name is Hortense. Like you wouldn’t just call someone whore, right?

**Riki:** But Tom Lennon would be like, hot pudding, it’s a scandal. And you’re like, what does that mean? You know, you’re just like, okay.

**Craig:** Something like it was like butterscotch or scotch bucket.

**Riki:** Scotch frog hat.

**Craig:** Scotch frog, yeah, like what the fuck does that mean?

**Natasha:** He could do that for hours.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Natasha:** Just act surprised in 1902.

**Riki:** Yeah. We said some line to him and he goes, “What Christmas?” And it just sounded normal. And we’re like okay. But I personally cannot improvise like that, so I don’t.

**John:** Where are you guys at with a second season? What’s going on right now?

**Natasha:** We’re writing it.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So it’s definitely, it’s going. It’s going to happen?

**Riki:** Oh yeah, we start filming in January.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Just down the street from Craig.

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah, so —

**Craig:** And have you settled on all of the cast for the —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Settled? Settled on that?

**Riki:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No Jews? No, like a Jew character? Like a funny — okay.

**Riki:** I mean I don’t know if we’ve thought of it that way.

**Natasha:** Are you an actor?

**Riki:** We’re not like no Jews. [laughs]

**Craig:** Yes. Yes, I am. I am an actor, of course. I’ve never done any acting, but right now —

**John:** Yeah. Craig Mazin just grew this beard by the way. And he will shave his beard —

**Craig:** Why would I — no, no, this is very —

**John:** It is a period beard.

**Craig:** I just want to be in the show.

**John:** We want you to have 18 seasons of your show.

**Riki:** Thank you.

**John:** So please keep writing your show.

**Natasha:** Thank you.

**Riki:** Yeah, everybody watch it.

**Craig:** Yeah, no. You guys really should watch it.

**Riki:** Maybe we’ll get more people to be mad. It would be nice to have a controversy because then it would get more attention.

**John:** Absolutely. So reference like green female superhero and you’ll get a lot of controversy. That’s our advice to you.

**Craig:** I’ve got in so much trouble. You don’t even want to know because I don’t wear dressing gloves. And boy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Natasha:** You guys should all access your parents’ cable provider and put in the number and watch it on Comedy Central on their website.

**Craig:** Yes, you guys go home and do this.

**Natasha:** It’s not on Hulu anymore.

**Craig:** Another Period, awesome, awesome show.

**John:** Natasha and Riki, thank you so much for coming here.

**Natasha:** Thank you.

**Riki:** Thank you for having us. Thank you.

**John:** Craig has a mild crush as you can see on —

**Craig:** On the show.

**John:** He has a talent crush. We also have a bit of a crush on this next show as does a lot of America. It is a show on Netflix. It is called —

**Craig:** Oh, you don’t know?

**John:** I know what it’s called but I want to see if —

**Craig:** Master of None.

**John:** All right. And we want to show you a small clip of this program so you can see what it’s about.

[Video Plays]

**Alan:** I got to say, out of the 15 X-Men movies that I’ve seen, that was definitely top nine.

**Aziz:** Yeah, there was, like, 30 heroes and 40 villains. There are just too many people in these movies now. Text from my dad — “Please come and fix my iPad. Now it won’t stop dinging.” Does your dad always text you to fix stuff?

**Alan:** I don’t think my dad knows how to text. He also hates talking in person. He averages, like, three words a week.

**Aziz:** Our dads are so weird. I told my dad I got to call back on The Sickening.

**Alan:** Oh, the black virus movie? That’s great.

**Aziz:** Thank you. I told him. He’s like, “Uh, okay. Can you fix my iPad?” How about, “Hey, son, great work,” or, “Hey, son, I’m proud of you”?

**Alan:** I have — I have never, ever heard my dad say the word ‘proud’. It’s always like, “That’s it? So that’s all you’ve done?” Like, if I went to the moon, he would honestly be like, “When are you going to Mars?”

**Aziz:** Yeah. “Oh, Brian, you went to the moon? That’s like graduating from community college. When are you gonna graduate from Harvard, AKA, go to Pluto?”

**Alan:** I just feel like Asian parents, they don’t have the emotional reach to say they’re proud or whatever. Have you ever hung out with a white person’s parents, though? They are crazy nice.

**Aziz:** Yeah.

**Alan:** I had dinner once with my last girlfriend’s mom, and by the end of that meal, she had hugged me more times than my family has hugged me in my entire life.

**Aziz:** Yeah, dude, most white families, they’d be so psyched to adopt me.

[Video Ends]

**John:** All right. Let’s welcome the co-creator of this wonderful program, Mr. Alan Yang. Sir, congratulations.

**Alan Yang:** Thanks, man.

**John:** I remember talking to you, we were both wearing aprons. We were at this crazy meat-filled event where they were roasting things. And you’re describing the show that you’re going to make with Aziz. I was like, that sounds cool.

**Alan:** Yeah. I wear that apron everywhere, though. Yeah, so it’s been kind of a long time gestating and evolving since we came up with it, but yeah, it got made. [laughs]

**John:** It got made, congratulations. So when you described it, you said it was going to be an eight episode — sorry, 10-episode series for Netflix and it was all going to be in New York and it was going to be Aziz and sort of individualized stories. He said it was Louis-like. And it’s that but it’s also so much more. It feels like it’s such an amazingly 2015 show.

**Alan:** Yeah. You know, we put kind of a large priority on making it hopefully feel different and fresh and hopefully original too, you know. So we kind of have this rubric of, “Hey, if you could see it on another show, maybe push harder and do another topic or do it in a new way or make it stretch over a longer time period.” Just anything we could do to make it feel original. And we had this idea from a long time ago where any characters we wanted for the episode, just the ones that we needed, we would use. So we wouldn’t have the same repertory cast in every episode because you know in real life, you know, if the three of us are buddies, we still don’t spend 24 hours a day together. So like not every story I go through involves you and Craig.

**Craig:** John and I do spend 24 hours.

**John:** Yeah, it basically is that.

**Alan:** Yeah, so you can have an episode with Aziz and alt person or Aziz and his parents or whatever and you might not see Eric Wareheim or Lena or whoever.

**John:** Cool. Give us a sense of your back story because I don’t know sort of how you got — I know you’re from Parks and Rec, but I don’t know you from before then. So how did you get started in this?

**Alan:** Yeah. So I majored in biology in college and that was just a rocket ship to comedy, just like right into — [laughs]

**Craig:** I did that, too. I did that, too. Were you pre-med?

**Alan:** I wasn’t really anything. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I loved writing and I loved comedy growing up, but that didn’t really seem like a real possibility, right?

I grew up in Riverside, California which is like an hour from here. And, oh, someone from Riverside, sorry about that buddy. [laughs] But yeah, so it’s just — I read a study that said it ranked all the cities in America in terms of how Bohemian they were by sort of a metric of how many people worked in creative fields or, you know, did kind of, you know, things that we do I guess. And number one on that list was LA because there’s a lot of entertainment people so they counted that as artistic for some reason. And the last place city on the entire list was Riverside which is crazy, which is like it’s an hour from here but I guess if you wanted to do something creative, you just get the hell out of here.

**John:** So you started at the bottom and worked your way up here.

**Alan:** Yeah. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s like that Drake song. [laughs]

**John:** Your life is a Drake song.

**Alan:** Yeah. So I went to school and, you know, I was doing biology and I kind of hated everyone. And I didn’t really like — like I felt like I didn’t fit in. But I found a couple of things I liked to do. And one of them was I played in a punk rock band which is really fun. And so I got out of the campus and was able to tool around. And I started writing for this comedy magazine. And the comedy magazine was called Harvard Lampoon.

**Craig:** Did you say Haverford Lampoon?

**Alan:** Yeah, it’s called a Howard Lampoon. I went to Howard University.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Alan:** No, it’s a —

**Craig:** That’s the best way to work at Harvard ever. I was working at…Harvard Lampoon.

**John:** I was in Boston and yeah.

**Alan:** Yeah. So it’s an oftentimes horrible magazine that is not funny at all, but there’s a lot of funny people there. And basically, all I wanted to do was hang out with funny people and be funnier. So I grew up, I was watching the Simpsons, and Seinfeld, and SNL, and Mr. Show and I was like, wow — when I started working on The Lampoon I was like this maybe is a job in some way. Like I didn’t know that it was a job.

So after I graduated, I moved out to LA and just started writing scripts and was broke and unemployed and trying to get an agent. So that’s how that started.

**John:** So my perception of The Lampoon folks who move out to LA is they basically like just load in a van and everybody moves out to an apartment and just start working together. Was that the experience?

**Alan:** The van part is not accurate, but what’s great about it is you just don’t feel so alone.

**John:** Yeah.

**Alan:** So you move out. And there’s not that many people on the magazine, so my year for instance, there were probably six writers or something, five or six writers. So yeah, a few of us moved out to LA and what you do is you move out here and you just don’t – you’re all broke together, right? So you feel less like a crazy person and, you know, I respect the hell out of everyone who does it and comes out alone because that’s really scary and intense and it’s a huge risk and that’s tough. But it was cool to have like a couple of buddies who could be your roommate or you could go have a beer with or something when you’re all struggling growing up.

**Craig:** I was struck you when you were talking, you were saying you grew up with The Simpsons and Seinfeld, so I’m guessing you’re quite a bit younger than John and I are, but the show has this really interesting ’70s vibe to it. And even like the credits remind me so much of like Woody Allen. So I assume this is intentional?

**Alan:** Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. You know, again, that was another thing where we just wanted the show to feel different. And one of the things we had been doing recently while we were coming up with the show is watching a lot of these ’70s comedies, you know. Hal Ashby, you know, obviously The Graduate, Elaine May, Heartbreak Kid.

And what was really cool when watching those movies was just the realism and how they let scenes breathe and how it wasn’t necessarily, you know, 100 jokes a page, like a lot of these sort of network comedies are.

**Craig:** I like those.

**Alan:** Well, yeah, those are great. Listen, like there’s no better show than 30 Rock, right? It’s an amazing show, but we just didn’t want to necessarily do that show.

**Craig:** Right. But you like that pace?

**Alan:** Yeah. It was like, you know, we have scenes where there are no jokes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** We have scenes where there are ton of jokes. We have scenes that are a little broader. But for the most part, we were trying to do things that felt a little bit like a conversation that you might have with your friends.

**Craig:** Well, speaking of that conversation, there’s something really interesting. You know, so I’m watching, you know – I watched these episodes of your show and pulled out — like there were a lot of moments like this where I thought, I wonder if you and Aziz ever found yourselves in this weird dilemma where on the one hand, part of what the show is is presenting this perspective of what it means to be Asian-American in Hollywood and you’re sharing a unique perspective. That’s part of the unique voice. On the other hand, you don’t want to feel like, “Oh, now I’m representing four billion Indian and Chinese people and that that’s what I have to do.”

**Alan:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Like do you ever feel like, “Okay, we’re kind of ping-ponging back and forth between these two things. We want do it, we don’t want to do it.”

**Alan:** Yes and no. So that’s actually — that’s a very astute question because you do feel that way, right? You feel like, “Man, there is one show with an Indian guy as a lead like in the world right now?” [laughs]

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** Like this one, right?

**Craig:** So we can probably —

**Alan:** Yeah, so you feel responsibility be like, you know, you don’t want to — but the number one thing is we just want the show to be good, right? So you want the show to be good and this is a thing I actually talked about with my friend last night who’s half Asian and I’ve worked in really, really fun rooms and very, very open, very, very progressive like really, really fun places. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with another Asian writer. [laughs] You know, it’s like I’ve been working for 10 years, you know. So you’re always — so if it ever comes up — and you know on my last show on Parks and Rec, it was a very diverse room, you know, oftentimes majority women or at least half women which I thought was great.

But there were times where, oh, we had one black writer like my old roommate, Aisha Muharrar, was a writer there. And we had an issue where it’s like, “Okay, is this offensive and like, we have to ask Aisha?” Like you don’t want to ever put a person in that position, but you have someone who is black or someone who is Asian and you’re going to ask them. So it’s just a tricky place.

And what we ended up doing was, anytime there was this sort of interesting or controversial or an issue that might be offensive or sticky in that way, we just have the debate. We would all yell at each other in the room. And our room was, you know, some Asian people, some Indian people, some white people, too. [laughs] But oftentimes, we put that conversation in the show. We would just put it in the show.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** So, you know, there’s some literal like transcriptions of arguments we had in the writer’s room —

**Craig:** I love that.

**Alan:** And they just go in. Yeah.

**Craig:** I love that. Because there is a certain fearlessness to your — and that’s kind of what’s required especially for comedy, even when it’s comedy of this — which is very — you know, this tone is a really unique tone. I think the second you start kind of, I don’t know, crafting it and being careful about it, it feels like it’s fake.

**Alan:** Yeah. We weren’t in the business of like, “Well, we don’t want to offend people.” Like we don’t really care about that. [laughs] It was like —

**Craig:** Good for you.

**Alan:** Yeah.

**John:** But I think what’s working about your show and Another Period, even though the tones are just so vastly different, is they’re both incredibly specific. They’re not the same version of the everyone in a kitchen set kind of show. It’s a very specific way of looking at this world and characters who want things that are not the common things we’re expecting to see characters want.

**Alan:** Yeah. I think there’s a fallacy that it’s like, “Well, we have to make this character sort of as generic and relatable as possible like an everyman.” I think Aziz wrote a good piece in the New York Times or something where he was interviewed where he said the everyman isn’t always like the most common person in America. It’s not always a younger white guy or, you know, whatever. When you get relatable is when your specific emotions and motivations and characters, you felt that so strongly yourself that you know how to put it into the script. And when you do that — I think we discovered that while we were writing the show, it’s like, “Well, these characters are us.” So we know how we felt when that happened and a lot of these experiences are ours, you know. A lot of that stuff in the parents episode, that stuff all happened with my dad. You know, he killed this chicken when he was young. And I’m an ungrateful shithead.

But yeah. So that’s real. So that’s real.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alan:** And so I knew how to write that. So when you’re able to do that, the specific becomes universal and it becomes relatable.

**John:** You’re also able to write a version of yourself saying things that are like the kinds of things you would say, but specifically to that scene to what point you’re trying to get across and so it’s not an everyman because it’s you.

**Alan:** Yeah, exactly. So, you know, my white ex-girlfriend or whatever, her mom loved me. [laughs] Like, you know, that’s why that’s in there. But it’s like, you’re right, you know, when things become personal, I think that’s often times when they become really good especially in comedy.

**Craig:** I’m kind of curious. I’ve written with actors before. You’re in a really funky little situation here. I mean I’m sure it’s — I mean these two are both acting, so they can’t really — they can kind of neutralize each other if one is like this scene is about me. But your co-writer, your co-creator is the star of the show.

**Alan:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he is also not just the star of the show, his character, Dev, is basically it’s him. I mean his parents are his parents, right?

**Alan:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So have you ever looked Aziz in the eye and said, “Nah, Dev wouldn’t say that.”

**Alan:** [laughs] In those words, no.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Alan:** But, you know, in the writer’s room, he needs someone to tell him — he does need someone to tell him no.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** And he respects that. I mean we’ve known each other for so long now. You know, we met first season Parks and Rec so we’ve known each other for seven, eight years or whatever. Yeah, I’m not scared of that guy. [laughs] But, you know, and it’s good because when we have conflicts, that makes the show better generally.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** You know, and it’s like we’re such good friends. You know, we hang out so much outside of work. And we’re going on a trip to Europe tomorrow. [laughs] But that means also like I can yell at him on the set. Like if it’s like, “Hey man, like I don’t think — I think you should do it this way.” And then ultimately, usually we shoot it both ways and we see it in the edit room or whatever.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** Or in the writer’s room, I think it’s good for a person in his position who has such a strong point of view and who generally knows what his character would do. You know, I put 100% faith in that. But at the same time, there’s so many other concerns when making a show like how the story is shaped and the structure of the episode works and what the series arc is.

**Craig:** Right.

**Alan:** All those things need to be taken care of as well. And so, you know, we have conflict but we always resolve it amiably and I think it’s generally worked.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Awesome. Alan Yang, congratulations on your show yet again.

**Alan:** Thanks so much.

**Craig:** Awesome man.

**Alan:** Thanks.

**John:** And stay put. Now, can we have everybody back up here because we’re going to do our One Cool Things. All right. So traditionally on the podcast, we do the thing at the end of the show called One Cool Thing and Craig always forgets his One Cool Thing and we sort of stall for a time and I do mine first. But tonight because it’s a holiday show, I thought we would do sort of a secret Santa kind of One Cool Thing.

So what I asked everybody to do is to put their One Cool Thing on the back of a card and it’s going to have someone else’s name on the front of the card and that’s who’s going to get that gift of the One Cool Thing. So we’re going to pass these out. So hold on one second.

**Craig:** [laughs] Malcolm is so excited for this. That’s a show I would totally watch, by the way.

**Malcolm:** It’s so John August.

**Craig:** Like you and August together is going to be an amazing show.

**Malcolm:** Grand closing.

**Craig:** It would be so great.

**John:** I will read aloud what someone is giving me and then I need to figure out who is giving me this gift. My gift to John is the magical power to give everyone in America at least one Muslim friend or at least a barber or a dentist or something, so people are a little less scared. You’re welcome, John.

**Craig:** Well, you know, that wasn’t me.

**John:** No. I don’t know, Malcolm Spellman. Did you give me a Muslim friend?

**Malcolm:** No.

**Craig:** Are you kidding me? You thought that was Malcolm? Oh my god, never. Malcolm doesn’t want anyone to have anyone —

**Natasha:** That is clearly someone who went to Harvard.

**John:** Was that you, Alan?

**Alan:** Yeah, it was me.

**John:** Oh, I have a Muslim friend. Thank you very much, Alan Yang.

**Alan:** Great hand. Great hand.

**Craig:** She nailed it.

**John:** How do I get a Muslim friend? Is there like a —

**Alan:** Yeah. I don’t know, I didn’t really understand the assignment but, so I just wrote down a bunch of words.

**John:** Yeah.

**Alan:** No. But, you know, that was just a thing that I was thinking about the show a little bit because I knew I was going to talk about it. And one of the things we realized when making it was like, man, like, for all these episodes we did research like when there is an episode about old people and we had — we spent the day with a bunch of older ladies in New York and I had lunch with them and learned stories.

And it’s like, man, the more you meet people and like they become your friends or at least your acquaintances, you’re a little bit more empathetic. You just know them a little better and whatever, not to get political — I don’t really care about politics. But, you know, if they didn’t let Muslim people in America, Aziz’s parents wouldn’t have been able to come to America. And he wouldn’t have been born.

**John:** Yeah.

**Alan:** And I wouldn’t have been able to do the show with him.

**John:** Yeah.

**Alan:** And you guys wouldn’t have gotten to hear me say all this amazing shit.

**John:** Yeah.

**Alan:** So that would have been a huge tragedy. [laughs]

**Craig:** It all boils down to you.

**Alan:** Yeah. Like it’s basically about, do they get to listen to me or not.

**John:** Yeah. Well thank you for the gift of understanding.

**Alan:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Thank you very much. Riki, what did you get?

**Riki:** I got a KRUPS F23070 Egg Cooker.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** You got to know who that’s from. It sounds like a robot talking, so who could it be from?

**John:** Yeah, it’s me. [laughs]

**Craig:** That literally sounds like robot talk. KRUPS 01243 Egg Cooker.

**John:** So here is why I’m giving you this specific egg cooker, because it’s the best egg cooker. So over the summer, we were staying at an Airbnb and the person showing us around was like, oh, and there’s an egg cooker. I’m like, “Well, that’s ridiculous. Who needs something to cook hard boiled eggs? You just boil water and you have hard boiled eggs.” But it was like I woke up early one day, I was like, “I’m going to try the egg cooker.” And it’s amazing. So essentially, it cooks seven hard boiled eggs at once and like cooks them perfectly. So you don’t have to like set a timer. You don’t have to do anything. It’s just like you have hard boiled eggs.

**Natasha:** How many hard boiled eggs do you eat a day?

**John:** I eat one a day. So you do a whole bunch at once and just keep them in your fridge.

**Natasha:** I eat like one a year.

**Riki:** It would be the first egg I’ve ever cooked, so —

**Alan:** It’s been a decade.

**Riki:** I don’t cook eggs at all.

**Craig:** I eat one a year.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** It’s egg day.

**Alan:** You celebrate egg day. Yeah. Yeah, June 20, right? June 20th?

**Craig:** It’s egg day! Yay.

**Alan:** You guys don’t celebrate that?

**John:** I think you’d actually genuinely enjoy it.

**Riki:** I think I might. I mean, I think I might. I’ve never cook anything, so it would be a welcome change.

**John:** Yeah. I mean it’s easier than using a hairdryer. Like it’s how simple it is to make.

**Riki:** Wow. But then I would have to buy eggs as well.

**John:** Yeah. Or you can have —

**Riki:** It’s like another step.

**John:** Or you can have someone buy you the eggs.

**Riki:** True. [laughs]

**John:** True. All right. Natasha, what did you get?

**Natasha:** I have a question, though, do you peel it? Like you just eat it with toast or do you just like carry it around with you, the egg?

**John:** I would advise you to peel the egg before you eat it because like the shell is crunchy and —

**Natasha:** But you just bite into it like that and eat the dry yolk and just eat it?

**John:** Yeah, it’s fine. Yeah.

**Craig:** Bite into it, eat its nutrients.

**John:** Or rip it open. Yeah, it’s delicious, it’s healthy.

**Natasha:** Okay, cool.

**John:** Natasha, what did you get for your Secret Santa gift?

**Natasha:** I got Postmates. Well, I think this person probably also like me and Alan didn’t really understand the assignment. So I feel like this is maybe from Malcolm and he just discovered Postmates. And he wants me to know about it, too. But I already know about it. But thank you.

**Malcolm:** No. I’m the king of Postmates. Like —

**Natasha:** You can order from many different restaurants at once.

**Malcolm:** I’m on the level where I order that shit while I’m driving home at the same time.

**Natasha:** Yeah.

**John:** But I don’t know what this at all. So talk us through. Sell us on this.

**Malcolm:** It changes everything.

**John:** All right.

**Malcolm:** They are — it’s Uber for everything else particularly food. So any restaurants you want in LA, you just tell them, you know, you do your order, whatever, and they bring it to you and it’s not like — the difference between this and delivery is when you order food from delivery, they’re stopping at other people’s house, your food shows up cold. They order your shit for you, go pick it up, bring it straight to your house. And again, once you get really good with it, that’s when you start ordering in your car at a red light. You try to —

**Craig:** God.

**Natasha:** And also —

**John:** How did Malcolm Spellman die?

**Natasha:** We should also be clear, this is an app for rich people.

**Alan:** Yeah. It’s like $40. [laughs] No, it is good.

**Natasha:** And also, one of the other amazing things about it is you get things delivered that don’t deliver. So it’s not just like your Domino’s Pizzas is hotter. It’s like —

**Craig:** What about like say, egg cartons? Do they do the eggs?

**Natasha:** Your Mr. Chow’s crispy rice sushi.

**Craig:** So it’s like a messenger service for food basically.

**Natasha:** For restaurants.

**Craig:** Or for restaurants.

**Malcolm:** But they’ll go pick up your ink cartridge from Staples, all that shit.

**Natasha:** Oh really?

**Malcolm:** Yeah.

**Alan:** Any object. It’s great. It’s an object delivery. Yeah. Or you push the limits.

**John:** Alan, will they bring me a Muslim friend?

**Alan:** Oh yeah. [laughs]

**John:** They can do it, because that’s an object —

**Alan:** Here’s your Muslim friend and the egg cooker, John.

**John:** Fantastic, it’s all —

**Alan:** One car.

**John:** Backstage, we were talking about actors who do voiceovers for commercials. I feel Malcolm Spellman might be the right voice for this delivery service.

**Alan:** Yeah, he’s got a great voice.

**John:** You’d buy it from him, wouldn’t you?

**Craig:** Oh yeah, this place will pick up your shit.

**Malcolm:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That was a pretty good impression.

**Malcolm:** Charges on Postmates.

**Alan:** Yeah.

**John:** Alan Yang, what did you get for a Secret Santa gift?

**Alan:** Oh yeah. I got, I would follow him on all social media as a Christmas present.

**Natasha:** I didn’t understand the assignment.

**John:** So do you follow him on any social media?

**Alan:** Do you not follow me, Natasha?

**Natasha:** Well, I thought like if you are were on some deep —

**Alan:** Oh no, no, you think I’m — you think I’m young person, I’m not that young.

**Natasha:** Oh okay, I thought you were on like Snapchat.

**Alan:** I am on Snapchat actually. [laughs] You’re right.

**Craig:** You are that young.

**Natasha:** Okay, so I’ll —

**Alan:** I should make up a bunch that don’t exist.

**Natasha:** Are you on Periscope?

**Alan:** I’m not on Periscope. I don’t do any broadcastings. You’re on like Twitter and like what do you —

**Natasha:** Of course, I follow you on Twitter.

**Alan:** Instagram, of course. Yeah.

**Natasha:** But Instagram, I don’t follow you. But I’d like to.

**Alan:** Follow me, man. Some great pics up there.

**Craig:** Christmas is getting weird.

**Natasha:** I’m going to do that tonight.

**Alan:** I can’t wait. I can’t wait for that follow. This has actually have been a good moment for me.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Alan:** I get an additional follower. Everyone follow me, AlanMYang. [laughs] No, it doesn’t matter.

**John:** Alan is going to spend half an hour on any person, trying to get each person in this audience to follow him.

**Alan:** Yeah.

**Natasha:** But Alan’s aesthetic, I bet his Instagram is good. I bet it’s kind of anal-retentive.

**Alan:** Yeah.

**Natasha:** But you have some good like, you know, visuals up there.

**Alan:** Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s not bad, though. [laughs]

**John:** Malcolm Spellman, what did you get from Santa?

**Malcolm:** Kitchen Hacks: How Clever Cooks Get Things Done. I’m going to guess Mazin.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Malcolm:** I’ll tell you why I knew it was Mazin, ‘get things done.’ If you know this dude, the authority in that.

**Craig:** Yeah, you got to get things done. Quite a great book. It’s not appropriate for you because you don’t cook anything, you order your shit from Postmates, but if you were to chop a vegetable for once in your fucking life, it’s amazing, Cook’s Illustrated is my favorite because they’re, you know —

**Riki:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Why? I mean I just feel so degraded.

**Natasha:** No, Cook’s Illustrated. I just never heard of that. Sounds cute.

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the best. They’re like the scientists of coking. And they give you all these tips of the best ways to cut things like how do I cut this. Oh, we figured out after a thousand cuts of a pepper, this is the way you do it. And the way you’re nodding —

**Natasha:** No, that’s cool. I have no talent in the kitchen, so I’m just — I’m inspired and intrigued.

**Craig:** Then it could help you if you ever did try because —

**Natasha:** Oh, no interest either, but —

**Craig:** Just making sure.

**Natasha:** But I appreciate it in others.

**Craig:** If you fuck something up, there’s a whole chapter on how to fix your fuck up.

**Natasha:** Oh, that’s cool.

**Craig:** So it’s wasted on Malcolm.

**John:** And I really think that could have been the title of the episode, Wasted on Malcolm.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think it should be the title of every episode.

**John:** Yeah. We had fantastic guests and a fantastic venue, but we did not have a fantastic recording. And we lost Craig’s gift. Craig did not get to open his gift and discuss it. And it was a pretty great gift you got.

**Craig:** Yes. So I got my gift from Riki Lindhome and it was something that I’ve already put on the show as my One Cool Thing which is the Hamilton soundtrack. And so Riki and I bonded over our obsession and memorized love for the Hamilton soundtrack and then — you see, this is why people need to come to the live show because the two of us then did an impromptu version of the opening song. We made it through a good like 30 or 40 seconds of the lyrics of the opening song. [laughs] Just together, doing a duet, it was lovely.

**John:** I have a hunch that our technical glitch was actually the Broadway League sneaking it and shutting it down so that it could not be recorded because that’s, you know, Lin-Manuel Miranda is like he’s very adamant that he’s not going to want bootleg recordings. And you guys were so magnificent singing that song.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** That he had to stop it.

**Craig:** Well, I get it. I don’t want to — look, I don’t want to mess with Mr. Miranda. It was something to see, man. It was something to see.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And unfortunately then after that, we did have some pretty good questions and answers that got eaten, so —

**John:** Yeah. And often, we tape the questions and answer and put them through as a separate episode in the premium feed, so we won’t have that for this time. But there were some interesting questions asked. So I thought we’d just summarize kind of the things we talked about and do the short version of what those were.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So the questions that came up at the microphones were about writing staffs because we had these great TV people there and they were able to answer questions that Craig or I could not normally answer.

A question about the diversity on writing staffs and sort of spring boarding off what Alan Yang had said about being like the Asian guy on the staff. And so the question was like, well, what if you are the black guy or the Muslim guy, what does it feel like to be the person who has to answer the questions of like, is that offensive?

And so Alan actually had a really interesting answer about how in Master of None, stuff would come up, there was specifically a situation where the women on the writing staff were describing what it felt like to be a woman at a restaurant who wasn’t introduced and they had a big discussion, a big argument kind of in the writer’s room and that made it into the script.

And so he was arguing in favor of diversity on staff just because you got that diversity of opinion and that diversity of opinion was what led to this some really great dialogue and scenes in the show.

**Craig:** Yes. So he was sort of saying that rather than assign or not assign the role of representative of race, gender, sexual identity, whatever category, that rather it was just, let’s have a discussion. If a discussion is a debate, let’s have a debate. Then let’s actually portray the debate which on his show, I think, is very doable. On a lot of shows, it’s not quite like that because the show maybe isn’t about relationships in that sense.

But having the debate, I think he was basically saying having the debate is worth it. It’s actually more important to have a debate than say to isolate individuals and say you are now the arbiter of what is acceptable for this topic or that topic.

**John:** Absolutely. Okay, next up. Riki Lindhome fielded a question about how she assembled her writing staff. And we actually asked all the show creators how they assembled their writing staffs. And Riki Lindhome said, well, I would read the first three pages of the script and if I didn’t like the first three pages, I would toss it aside and start reading the next one.

And to be clear, Riki Lindhome does not listen to the Scriptnotes podcast, so she has no idea about the Three Page Challenge. She was just speaking honestly of like how she put her staff together. And I thought that was actually great because it’s such a testament to this is why your first three pages are so important because if they don’t like three pages, it’s not that — they’re not going to read page four, they’re not going to read page 20. They’re just going to stop reading and they’re going to go on to next one.

So be it a TV spec or spec script you’ve written, you got to hook them so quick.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, there’s a test that you and I apply when we do our Three Page Challenges here on the show and mostly because I assume 99 percent of the people sending them in are not professional working writers yet. The test that we’re applying is basically, “Can you do this? Do you have the fundamentals down? Are you making certain rookie mistakes? Are you making blatant mistakes?” Our test isn’t, “Is this wonderful?” Our test isn’t, “Is this really great?” Our test isn’t, “Would I hire you?”

Now, for Riki and for Natasha, when they’re looking at potential people to work on their show, you’re making a show. These are the people that are your life-support system. So they’re not looking to see if you’re avoiding problems. They’re looking to be inspired.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I think specifically, Riki said something like, her test is, “Do I care?” Not just, “Is this good?” but do I care about it? Do I remember it? Do I want to tell other people about what I just read? That’s on a whole other level of existence. That’s about being inspiring.

So just be aware. I want people to be aware that when we do this, don’t think like, oh, if they can get through those guys that they’re, you know, they’ve got it made. We’re kind of only doing a very fundamental first pass look at these things. What’s waiting for you out there is Riki going “Mm-hmm.”

**John:** Mm-hmm. Doesn’t care. So it’s really, we’re setting a pretty low bar, like, “Do they clear this low bar?” Like, this person seems like they can kind of do it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And we’re also taking a lot of time to talk through various things on the page that tripped us up. Riki is not. She’s just basically like, “Did I laugh? Did this click with me? Do I want to meet this writer?” And that’s a very different kind of standard than what we’re doing when we’re doing a Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So it would be fascinating to have somebody who does a lot of staffing come on and be a guest on a Three Page Challenge because I bet it would be brutal.

**Craig:** Oh, well, because they don’t really do anything like what we do. I mean, there is that, you know, the book, Blink. I mean, everyone is using Blink when they’re doing this. There’s too many — I mean, I think Alan said they get 300 scripts, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, so staffing season is like this swarm of piranha in the water all trying, you know, to grab this one tiny little thing to eat. So everyone is getting inundated by these scripts. I think they open them up and, I mean, she says three pages, I guarantee there’s some where you don’t even make it to half a page. Because just, you have that blink moment you’re like, “Nope, not for me.”

**John:** Yeah, I don’t think we’ll ever do this but a fascinating exercise would be to take a big bucket of the scripts that come in. And sit down with somebody who does this for staffing and just all of us spend an hour just like going through and reading those first three pages and at the end of it discuss which of these scripts would we even want to read page four.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, and you could also, while you’re doing that with this person, have them take — give them a red pen and have them make a little mark on the page where they stopped reading.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Because I think that would actually be fascinating to see.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And sobering.

**John:** Yeah, after we did the Q&A we had a few announcements. And so I need to have those announcements down so that everyone who wasn’t in the audience can hear them. First off is that on Monday of last week, so a week ago, as you’re hearing this podcast, I sat down with Ice Cube and Andrea Berloff and F. Gary Gray and the filmmakers behind Straight Outta Compton. And so that was a special Q&A in Hollywood. And so I got to ask them questions. So it was about a half an hour of Q&A with those folks and it was great and it was — I loved that movie. I loved sitting down and talking with them about it. So if you are a premium subscriber, you can listen to the audio from that. It’s up in the Scriptnotes premium feed. So you can subscribe to that at Scriptnotes.net and listen to that. We should have one or two more writer interviews up there before the end of the year as well.

We also had a very big announcement about our next live show. Craig, tell us.

**Craig:** So this is something that we’re doing for a charity organization called Hollywood HEART and I admit that at the time that we did the show last night, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what the charity did. In my mind I knew it wasn’t about actual cardiac health. But there was a representative there from Hollywood HEART who came up afterward to explain that it’s about helping kids here in Los Angeles. And it’s a terrific organization.

So we have wonderful guests. This is going to be a live show on January 25th. We’re doing it downtown. And who’s coming? Well, we have Jason Bateman, star of screen and also a filmmaker in his own right now. And we also have the screenwriter of the small movie that is coming out. It’s like a prestige movie coming out in December. It’s called —

**John:** Yeah, it’s one of those sort of “remakey” kind of like, you know, some people may have heard of it.

**Craig:** Right. It’s called Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

**John:** Yeah, I think so. I think you got it right.

**Craig:** Or is it “The Force Awakens”.

**John:** Either one I think would work. It’s translated from French.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So you could try it either way.

**Craig:** Star Wars, and his name is Larry Kasdan. He also in the past, he has written another Star Wars film called The Empire Strikes Back.

**John:** I saw that one. It was really good.

**Craig:** And then he wrote a side movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

**John:** Yeah, we discussed that movie. Do you remember that, a zillion years ago, we discussed that?

**Craig:** Oh, that’s right.

**John:** We did a whole episode on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

**Craig:** Yeah, yes. And he’s also written Body Heat. And he’s also written Big Chill. And he’s also written The Bodyguard. And, and, and, and — perhaps the greatest living screenwriter. I like to call him that.

So Lawrence Kasdan, co-writer of the — what will undoubtedly be the biggest movie of all time — Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will be with us on January 25th along with the very funny, very brilliant Jason Bateman. That’s a show you definitely want to come to and the proceeds do benefit Hollywood HEART. If you want tickets and you want to learn more about Hollywood HEART, go to HollywoodHEART.org/upcoming.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And that’s how you get tickets and so forth.

**John:** So this ticket apparently includes cocktails as well. So, come on, it’s bargain.

**Craig:** It includes cocktails?

**John:** That’s what it said on the thing. I’m only going with what I saw on the website.

**Craig:** Wow. So, just to be clear because I said it was about kids, I think that’s a little vague. It’s specifically, it’s designed to nurture creativity and community through the arts and it’s targeted at at-risk kids who either have HIV or AIDS or who are homeless or who are in foster care or the judicial systems. These are kids that are definitely in trouble. They are in trouble and they’re using the arts to kind of help get them out of trouble. And I’m a big believer in effective charity. That’s my, you know, like I get very angry when I see ineffective charity because it feels like such a wasted opportunity. I know that this is a great way to get through to kids who are in trouble. It’s a great way because the arts are part of everyone’s life. It is instantly attractive especially to kids. So I think this is a great idea. There is a camp that they run. So you should totally buy tickets for this. I mean, if you don’t buy tickets for this, you’re just a bad person.

**John:** [laughs] So the carrot and a stick, the guilt, the love, all of it together.

**Craig:** Everything.

**John:** The Craig Mazin special holiday gift.

**Craig:** I just hit you with everything I could.

**John:** The last announcement was that on the previous show we talked about how an upcoming episode will have us talking about advice for things that are not screenwriting-related. So advice about anything. So we’ve gotten more than a hundred questions in about that.

**Craig:** Wow, my god.

**John:** But keep sending in those questions. And we will plow through them and we will answer as many of them as we can on a future episode. I’m really looking forward to that. Off air, I’m going to talk to Craig about a potential guest to join us to help answer those questions.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** Ah. But we should wrap up this episode with a lot of thanks. So we need to give thanks to the Writers Guild Foundation. Its wonderful volunteers who helped staff that event and Chris Kartje for putting it all together. Thank you so much. LA Film School for hosting us. Leon who did all our tech stuff. We had clips up there. We had clips on a big screen. It was like we were a real show. So thank you for that.

**Craig:** Like a real show.

**John:** Matthew Chilelli, as always, did our intros and outros and edited this episode. And Stuart Friedel, our producer, our long-serving, long-suffering producer was there along with his parents and his grandparents who got to hear Malcolm Spellman —

**Craig:** Oh, my god, that’s so great.

**John:** Swear so much. Yeah. And so —

**Craig:** Oh, my god, Bubby was there. She must have been like, “Oy”.

**John:** “Oy”. Yeah, so —

**Craig:** Even the way you say “Oy” is Christian.

**John:** I know. I can’t help it. I come from a Christian heritage.

**Craig:** You do.

**John:** I knew where they were sitting in the audience but as I looked up there I thought I still saw like the paper on the seats. So I thought like, “Oh, well, the grandparents didn’t come.” But it just turns out they were so small that the paper on the chair backs behind them was still visible.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s so cute.

**John:** So cute. So it was a cute fun night. We had amazing guests. So in the show notes at johnaugust.com you’ll see the links to their Twitter handles, their other bio information about them. You’ll also see links for most of the things we talked about on the show that we could squeeze into the links. As always, subscribe to us on iTunes if you’ve not already subscribed. That helps us a lot. Leave a comment. We were not one of the top podcasts of 2015 for some reason, so let’s make that a life goal for 2016 to be one of those top-rated podcasts on iTunes.

If you have a question for me or for Craig, write to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can write your question about, you know, non-screenwriting advice for our special episode. On Twitter I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. And thank you everyone who came out to our live show and thank you all for listening.

**Craig:** Go buy tickets for January 25th.

**John:** Cool. Thanks, guys. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* Malcolm Spellman on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1173259/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/malcolmspellman), and [Scriptnotes, 185](http://johnaugust.com/2015/malcolm-spellman-a-study-in-heat)
* [Natasha Leggero](http://www.natashaleggero.com/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1641089/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/natashaleggero)
* [Riki Lindhome](http://www.rikilindhome.com/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1641251/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rikilindhome)
* [Another Period](http://www.cc.com/shows/another-period) on Comedy Central
* Alan Yang on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1520649/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AlanMYang)
* [Master of None](http://www.netflix.com/title/80049714) on Netflix
* [Harvard Lampoon](http://harvardlampoon.com/), and [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harvard_Lampoon)
* [KRUPS F23070 Egg Cooker](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005KIRS/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Postmates](https://postmates.com/) will deliver you stuff
* [AlanMYang on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/alanmyang/)
* [Kitchen Hacks: How Clever Cooks Get Things Done](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1940352002/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Cook’s Illustrated](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/)
* Hamilton, the Original Broadway Cast Recording on [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/hamilton-original-broadway/id1025210938) and on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013JLBPGE/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Scriptnotes, Bonus: Straight Outta Compton](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-straight-outta-compton)
* [Get your tickets now for Scriptnotes, Live on January 25](http://hollywoodheart.org/upcoming/) with [Jason Bateman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Bateman) and [Lawrence Kasdan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kasdan), a benefit for [Hollywood HEART](http://hollywoodheart.org)
* [Scriptnotes, 73: Raiders of the Lost Ark](http://johnaugust.com/2013/raiders-of-the-lost-ark)
* [Email us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or tweet [John](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) or [Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for advice on things that have nothing to do with screenwriting
* Thanks to the [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/) and the [Los Angeles Film School](http://www.lafilm.edu/) for hosting us
* [Intro/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/2015/feel-the-nerd-burn).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 227 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we have a brand new Three Page Challenge where our listeners have submitted pages for us to take a look at and we will offer them our honest feedback. But before that, there’s an elephant in the room that we have to address.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Craig, I think part of the reason why our podcast is successful is that you and I have relatively equal levels of fame or sort of people don’t know who we are to equal degrees.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that all changed yesterday as we are recording this because on December 3rd, The Daily Show featured a story about your best friend —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Who is now running for president. His name is Mr. Ted Cruz. Let’s listen to what they said.

**Trevor Noah:** With a man of Cruz’s accomplishments, there’s bound to be some professional envy. [laughs] To truly know a man, you go and talk to the people close to him, from back in the day.

**Craig:** Ted Cruz was my roommate. I did not like him at all in college. And, you know, I want to be clear because, you know, Ted Cruz is a nightmare of a human being. I have plenty of problems with his politics. But truthfully, his personality is so awful that 99% of why I hate him is just his personality. [laughs] If he agreed with me on every issue, I would hate him only 1% less.

**Trevor Noah:** Ooh. 1% less. Nerd burn. [laughs] Do you know how much you have to hate someone to do the math on it? [laughs] As you can see, before I met Ted, I didn’t hate him. And after I met him, well, the data speaks for itself. [laughs]

**John:** So Craig, I mean, the data backs it up. You are now a much bigger star than I am.

**Craig:** Well, you are in there. At one point, you go, “Yeah.” [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. I have sort of like my, “Uh-huh.”

**Craig:** I think what’s so funny about this is that all of this was said by me a long time, years ago.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And there was an article that Frank Bruni did in The New York Times a couple of days ago that dredged it up. And that created this bizarro domino thing where then it went on The Daily Show where — and then he said that it was a nerd burn and —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He kind of called me a nerd, which I am. I’m a complete nerd. I just didn’t realize it was so evident in that remark. Anyway, and then, Jezebel kind of jumped on board and did a very lovely thing about it. And it turns out, if you want to be beloved in this world, just, you know, don’t like Ted Cruz. [laughs] It’s really not hard.

**John:** Absolutely. I remember when you actually spoke that one time. You just said like, “This is the last I’m ever going to say about it.” And that’s fine. So you don’t have to say anything more about sort of that person.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s so interesting that the weird way that stuff you said years ago can cycle back through and create like a new moment of a new blip. Because even like my agent said like, “Hey, did you see this thing?” Like how many people today, Craig, have said like, “Wow. I heard you on The Daily Show last night?”

**Craig:** My phone was blowing up, as the kids say, or maybe used to say and probably don’t anymore. It was bananas. And, you know, of course it’s like, every three seconds you get an email, “Did you know?” “Yeah, I know.”

**John:** Yeah. He knew.

**Craig:** But the funny thing is, you’re right, I don’t actually want to become — I have turned down requests from The Times and from CNN and from POLITICO, and from dah-dah-dah-dah-dah all week long because I don’t want to be that guy.

**John:** You’re not that guy.

**Craig:** Just like showing up to talk about something just because people are paying attention. I have things to say about stuff I truly know about and that’s this. So we do our thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t need to be that guy.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And let’s be Scriptnotes. So while you were busy being famous, I have a couple of things that came out this week. [laughs]

First off, we have Highland 1.9. Highland is the screenwriting app that I make that a lot of people love. We have a 1.9 version which is out just today, as we’re recording this, which fixes a few last little bugs and things. 1.9 will probably be the last version on that whole thread because, the other big news which I’m announcing right here, is that Highland 2 is in beta testing. And we are starting to invite new beta testers in to try out Highland 2. It is a completely new build of the app that does a lot of very new things. I sent Craig a version to test, but he’s not had a chance to test it yet.

If you are interested in testing out the new version of Highland, we are bringing in new testers every week. And so, you just go to, quoteunquoteapps.com/highland, and there’s a place there where you can register for the beta test or just follow the show notes. But, Craig, I cannot wait for you to try this because I think it will do a lot of the things that you’ve been yearning for in a screenwriting app for quite a long time.

**Craig:** Yeah. It sounds great. And I’m going to look through it. I mean, you know, the big learning curve for me for Highland is just the idea of writing in markup or markdown. I guess it’s markdown.

**John:** It’s called Fountain. It’s basically you’re writing in plain text and letting the app do the work for you. The app will do the work for you in a much more fluid way than I think you’re used to.

**Craig:** I just have to learn the — which I think I already kind of inherently know, you know, like asterisking for italicizing and stuff like that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I just got to learn those things. But I mean, I’m definitely into it. It sounds great. And I think it’s the future. I do.

**John:** Yeah. So a lot of the things that you’ve been yearning for in an app, the ability to, you know, put images in, the ability to sort of just break beyond the normal screenplay format, this is the thread that’s going to take us there, eventually, I hope. And it’s also the biggest change we made, the biggest pivot we made is while it still writes for screenplays, it writes in Fountain.

I was listening to a podcast that B.J. Novak was a guest on. And so, apparently, our guest, B.J. Novak, who was on our last Christmas show, apparently he does other podcasts too which I’m appalled by. But he was on this other podcast and he was talking about how he writes in Word. And I just found that just appalling.

**Craig:** You mean he writes screenplays in Word?

**John:** He writes screenplays in Word but he also just like writes his books in Word. He writes everything in Word.

**Craig:** Oh, is that bad?

**John:** Well, Word is kind of like, it’s way too much of a thing. It’s like trying to take the space shuttle to go to the grocery store. It’s like it’s the wrong tool for the job.

**Craig:** I know. There’s so much there. Right. And I never use it but it’s there, so I just use it.

**John:** Yeah. Something like, “Do you need to mail merge” No. You never need to mail merge. I mean, it could do it if you wanted to mail merge.

**Craig:** I never, never need to mail merge.

**John:** So, Highland, this new version of Highland and Highland 2, we are a full Markdown Editor, so we can actually do all the just normal plain text stuff you write in, so like all the stuff I wrote for NaNoWriMo, I wrote in the new Highland 2. For the last screenplay, I wrote in Highland 2, the beta versions, the bleeding, often crashing versions. But it’s been great and there’s a lot of new things that beta testers will get to explore and try that I’ve never seen in any other app. So I’m curious for you to give it a shot.

**Craig:** Okay. I will take it for a spin.

**John:** Cool. In our last episode, we did follow-up on Whiplash. And here’s more follow-up on Whiplash. So listener Brad Morticello wrote in with this link to an interview with Michael McCullough, who’s a psychology professor and director of the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory at the University of Miami. And specifically, you and I had discussed whether revenge is emotionally-driven or intellectually-driven. I had said like there’s no such thing as intellectual revenge. And you said, “No, the Jewish people have a whole version of it.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** What was so fascinating, what I liked about this article is McCullough was talking about how there’s probably an evolutionary reason for revenge because it seems wasteful to pursue revenge because you’re not actually getting anything out of it.

But McCullough makes a really interesting point. He says, “The desire for revenge goes up if there are people who have watched you mistreated, because in that case, the costs have gotten even bigger. If you don’t take revenge, there’s a chance that people will learn that you are the type of person who will put up with mistreatment. That is the kind of phenomenon that you would expect if there’s a functional logic underlying the system that produces revenge.”

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. I mean, there is a revenge which is a completely irrational Ahab versus the whale kind of thing. But I think most revenge, most pettier revenge is, “I’m not going to let that guy walk all over me.” And underlying that is because then everybody will walk all over me.

**John:** It’s kind of the common advice they give to people who go to prison the first time. It’s like, if they punch you, punch them back in a big public way even if you get really hurt. Like, don’t let everyone know that you’re a bitch.

**Craig:** I really, really have to studiously avoid going to prison.

**John:** Yeah. It’s going to turn out very poorly for you, Craig.

**Craig:** Without question.

**John:** Umbrage is not the trait that’s going to get you through that. I mean, I think you got some street smarts but I also think that you could get yourself into some real trouble.

**Craig:** Well, just the whole idea that — I don’t like it. I don’t want to go. I’m following the law as best I can. Here and there, when I bend or break it, it’s usually in the misdemeanor zone. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. I think my best strategy for prison is to be the guy who can fix the warden’s computer. And so, therefore, I’ll be an asset that people will protect because I’m the one person who can do that thing.

**Craig:** I really don’t think you’re going to prison.

**John:** I don’t think I’m going to prison. I’m trying to stay on the straight and narrow, best I can.

**Craig:** Well, that’s what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that you’re trying at the very best.

**John:** I’m doing my very best. [laughs]

Going back to the revenge thing, I guess McCullough is speaking to the public revenge. The private revenge is an interesting, different thing where you’re taking revenge on somebody and they don’t even kind of know that you’re doing it or no one else can see it. I think the plot of Munich could be argued as being a revenge plot. You’re not claiming responsibility for it. Maybe you’re making it clear enough that the people who are behind it would know that you did it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Munich, to me, is actually an example of very rational revenge-taking because it’s entirely about sending a message, “This will never work out for you. We will take forever to pay you back.”

**John:** Cool. Two last bits of follow-up for me. One Hit Kill was the game that we launched for Kickstarter. We shipped out all our backorders to Kickstarter. It’s a big card game with big fantasy monsters and cuddly rabbits. We now actually have it for sale. So it’s actually for sale at onehitkillgame.com. Eventually, it will be on Amazon but if you would like it before Christmas, the one place you can get it is onehitkillgame.com.

Also, you can buy through The John August Store, the Writer Emergency Packs. You can also find them on Amazon. In both cases, your best bet is if you’d like one of those things, get it before December 15th because just our stocks are running low. And it’s also getting very hard to ship stuff out. So, before December 15th, if you would like to order either the Writer Emergency Pack or One Hit Kill which are now available for purchase.

**Craig:** I like that pronunciation, One Hit Kill.

**John:** One Hit Kill. Writer Emergency Pack is a really strange thing because, obviously, we’re a big Kickstarter and so we shipped about 8,000 units out to our backers from Kickstarter. But we’ve had days on Amazon where we shipped 1,000 units in a day, which is just nuts to that —

**Craig:** Is it to one mass buyer or —

**John:** No. No.

**Craig:** Just randomly —

**John:** A thousand single orders.

**Craig:** And then you’ve had days where — I mean, that’s way out of the ordinary?

**John:** Yeah. And so those big blips are because Amazon will put us on a special. They’ll put us on a lightning deal.

**Craig:** Oh, got it.

**John:** And so we’ll blow through like a thousand in stock at one time. But the problem is that it also, like, we don’t have that many decks there to ship out. And so, we’ve been scrambling this week to get more boxes of those Writer Emergency Packs there, including just looking around the office, like, how many decks do we have in the office and how can we get them to Amazon.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** It’s a weird problem. In making movies, so rarely do the physical logistics become a problem, and especially now even with digital distribution. So, it used to be that you had to literally like ship prints to movie theaters. And that was a whole big thing and prints used to break. Now, it’s all “beep-beep-beep” and it gets, you know, digitally shipped off to the different projectors. And that whole logistics train is gone.

**Craig:** And we never deal with it in production. I mean, there are people who obviously handling logistics in production. There’s waves of them, but not on us.

**John:** I don’t know if you’ve seen any stories about The Hateful Eight. So Hateful Eight, some screenings are in the 70 millimeters —

**Craig:** Yeah. In glorious —

**John:** Which is fantastic.

**Craig:** Glorious 70-millimeter.

**John:** Great. And so, I think it’s wonderful that we have the opportunity to still show 70-millimeter prints. But showing prints is a science and an art. And there was one screening that a lot of people were at, including a lot of early press, that had a problem and had a physical technical problem and focus issues and other strange things because it was film and because it wasn’t handled just right. And it’s a thing we don’t think about anymore. We don’t think about damage prints. We don’t think about focus and hair in the gate and all the other stuff that used to be a real problem with film.

**Craig:** I know. It’s all gone. Gone.

**John:** All gone. From the mailbag. Olivia writes in, “I have recently been faced with a note that is an arbitrary decision made by the director, and that will make the story more predictable and the characters less consistent. I’ve carefully laid out all my arguments and suggested several alternatives but the director isn’t budging, the producers are deferring to him. Now, I either do what the director says or walk away from the job. I can’t afford to do the latter. I need the money. And more importantly, I need the relationships. So what do I do?”

**Craig:** Oh, Olivia, welcome to our world.

**John:** Yeah. Congratulations, Olivia. You’ve crossed into the place of a professional screenwriter.

**Craig:** One of us. Gooble-gobble. This happens on every movie, every movie. So when you say, “I don’t want to walk away because I need the money,” I would retort. You don’t want to walk away because you’ll never stop walking away. This happens every time.

The only comfort I can give you is this. You have the ability to do the very best you can to make this mistake as minimal as you can in terms of its impact on the quality of the movie. Sometimes, when you do it and people read it, everyone goes, “Oh, no, no, wait. Olivia was right. We just didn’t know.” See, we forget as writers because we do the math in our head so fast.

And most other people don’t. So, then they get the script. They read it and they go, “Oh, this doesn’t work.” And you’re sitting there thinking, “I told you it wouldn’t work.” But what we don’t understand is they just couldn’t see it in the way we can see it. And I get that, you know. Everybody has different skill sets.

So, sometimes that happens where by doing the work, you’ll actually make it go away. Sometimes, you do it and the movie comes out and it’s like, “Okay, the thing that was the hill I was going to die on turns out to — I mean, it’s still there. I don’t like it.” I mean, there’s something in The Huntsman I don’t like because they took it out and I wished they would put it back in because in my mind, I’m like, “Oh, you’ve ruined — ” but probably, no. [laughs] Probably people will be like, “Oh. Yeah. I wondered about that. But then, you know, I got to the stuff that I came for and not that.”

**John:** There’s a very famous Broadway director who was staging something and he’s a powerful director but not powerful enough to change the book or change — essentially, he couldn’t get rid of this one thing he wanted to get rid of, this one song, I think it was. And so, he called it his like “cocktail song.” And basically whenever that moment in the show came, he would leave the theater, have himself a cocktail, then come back in and rejoin it.

And I’m not saying that you have to live with things that you’re going to despise in the movie but I think you would probably rather have your movie made and have this one moment that’s not ideal than not have your movie made. So that’s one way to rationalize and think about it.

The other way I’d approach it is don’t do the bad version of it just to point out how bad it is.

**Craig:** Yeah, because that will backfire on you.

**John:** It will backfire. Do the best version you can do to implement the note and actually make the whole project work as well as it can. You might also write that and also on the side write, “And here’s a version that doesn’t do that that would also work,” and give them parallel drafts so they can actually see what the difference is. That extra work at least shows that you are committed to helping them make the version of the movie and to offer them alternatives. But you are going to be facing this the rest of your career. And I hope it’s a very long career.

**Craig:** By the way, Olivia, this isn’t the last time it’s going to happen on this movie.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** And you’re going to get to a place when the movie is shot and done and now you’re watching it and the producers are watching it and now people are saying, “Well, what if we do this, what if we do that?” And you’re about to face a thousand more of these. This is kind of the deal with what we do. And it’s terrible and yet also part of what we do, so you have to accept it to some extent.

Down the line, you’ll read a review where somebody will blame you for the mistake that you fought against with all of your heart and soul. An additional indignity. It’s part of what we do. All I can tell you is that we, John and I and everybody that does what we do, Olivia, we’re with you. What else can I tell you?

**John:** Emotional solidarity.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Do you want to read the next question from Curtis?

**Craig:** Well, yeah, because it’s for you. So Curtis asks, “On this week’s podcast,” when he means last week’s podcast, “you mentioned having briefly controlled the rights to The Man in the High Castle but that they were taken away from you when Ridley Scott decided he wanted them. How does that work?”

**John:** So when you are off to pitch a project to a network or a studio, something that had some underlying rights, if there’s a powerful producer involved, sometimes you’ll actually lock down and secure those rights in some meaningful way. But more often, it’s just sort of a handshake. It’s essentially like, “Yeah, okay, you can take this in to this place. And that’s fine, that’s good.” And that is how a lot of Hollywood works.

Even on like a spec script situation, you’re saying, “Okay, producer A, you can take this script to studio B.” And that is how it all works. There’s not contracts drawn. It’s just basically a handshake and nod saying like, “Hey, you have the rights to do this thing.”

In the case of The Man in the High Castle, for a period of several weeks I had that where I had conversations with the estate and the heirs about sort of how it was all going to work, what the nature of the story was I was going to tell. In my recollection at least, it was on the morning I was supposed to go into HBO I got the call saying like, “You know what, they decided they actually really would rather stay with Ridley Scott who had done Blade Runner.” And I can’t fault them. Ridley Scott is a bigger deal than I am.

**Craig:** Yeah. The thing to understand is we don’t really buy rights. You know, the companies do that. So we will go and pitch these things. John never really had the rights. He never owned the rights. Ridley didn’t take property from him. He just had an agreement that they would sell the rights to a studio that hired you to adapt it.

**John:** Yeah, exactly. So when I say I had the rights or when Ridley Scott had the rights, in both cases, there may never have been paperwork drawn. But essentially, the heirs were leaning towards one place. And so if I had gone into HBO saying like, “I had this whole big thing and blah, blah, blah,” they would have been gone to these heirs and said like, “Hey, do you want to do this thing with John August?” And they said, “No, I think we’re going to stick with Ridley Scott.”

**Craig:** Right. So at that point, why bother?

**John:** Yup. And it’s at that point you cancel the meeting with HBO.

**Craig:** Aww.

**John:** Aww. This next one has a visual component but I think we can get through it. This is a question from Joe who asks, “Do you ever adjust the line breaks in dialogue so that it wraps better?” So instead of, so imagine this is a line of dialogue, “Give me the medallion and all of this ends,” or “Give me the medallion and all of this ends.” So essentially asking, do you ever hit the character turn earlier so that in blocks of dialogue words stick together better? Craig, do you ever do that?

**Craig:** No. I call this shift-returning because that’s how you do it, you shift-return. You stay in the same element but you put in the break. I’m not that finicky. My feeling is if everything is within its own block of text, then it will be read continuously by people. And the way we read is not consistent with what Joe is thinking about here. We don’t actually read that way. We read in chunks, including the line break chunks. We kind of move ahead. So that part doesn’t bother me. I will absolutely be obsessive about how the page ends.

So if I want something, if there’s a big reveal and I want it at the bottom of the page, not “And then” and then turn the page, babababa, I will adjust that because I think page turning is a thing. But no, I don’t do this. Do you do this?

**John:** The only times I could think of doing this is when I have lyrics in scripts. And I will shift-return in order to get those lines. If a lyric is too long for the line, I will force it to break in a certain place so it’s a little bit more natural and better fits the meter of what the song is.

**Craig:** No question. Yeah, I mean, because lyrics are really poems, so I will shift-enter lyrics all day long. But for regular prose, no.

**John:** Yeah, not for regular prose. I’ll also say, if I’m doing lyrics in a screenplay, I will give myself the latitude to cheat the right-hand margin and let it go longer so that things can stay together as a line, because everyone sort of knows what you’re doing and it’s not really cheating if you’re just trying to keep one lyric together on a line.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. I mean, lyrics are a special case. But for action descriptions of the kind that Joe is describing here, I just think that that’s a level of specificity that will not be rewarded, ever.

**John:** Yeah. And you’re just going to drive yourself mad thinking about like, “Well, how should this line break?”

**Craig:** Truly nuts, yeah.

**John:** Truly nuts. And not to mention that whenever that line of dialogue goes across a page break, you may be messing up some things about that, too.

**Craig:** Good point.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** But Joe doesn’t rewrite anything. He writes, “It’s done.”

**John:** One and done. He’s a top-down world-building perfectionist. So Dustin Box, who works for me, who’s a designer but also is a big fan of the podcast and writing in general, he was listening to our world-building episode from last week. And he was thinking about how some people, that it may be related to the way that people approach screenplays sometimes is they think that it has to be once and perfect. And so they’re going to write this one screenplay and it’s never going to change. And, basically, I’m going to write it from the start to the end and then the screenplay is going to be done.

It’s not being aware of the fact that it is an iterative process, that it’s not supposed to be perfect the first time through. You’re going to keep going back to it. And by its very nature, you’re going to be, you know, rethinking things and discovering things about — writing that scene at the end is going to make you discover something new about the beginning of it.

And so he was drawing the comparison between what we do in a top-down world-building versus ground-up world-building to trying to write the whole screenplay at once versus figuring out what the screenplay is from the bottom-up. And I think what we often pitch on the show is like really looking at the screenplay from one character’s journey one time through and only building as much world as you need for this character to tell his story.

**Craig:** Yeah. The annoying thing about screenwriting is that the only way to get through it is to feel like you’re doing it right but then also hold in your mind simultaneously the knowledge that you’re not doing it right.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And you just have to manage to be split-brained in that way. Because how do you write a scene not right? There’s no way to do that. You have to convince yourself that this is it, but then have just the wisdom to know it’s not.

**John:** I was talking to Justin Marks at a screenwriters drinks this week. And he was talking about the work he’s doing on a project and he had, at a certain point, realized, “I just need to get something on paper that will give people the ability to plan for what’s going to happen next and know that I will have the opportunity to go back and make that thing better.” And finding that balance between making something absolutely perfect and making something good enough that people can do their jobs is a really tough line. And figuring out where you’re at in that process can be so tough.

Television, you’re often having to shoot things that aren’t perfect. You just know they’re not perfect.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But that’s the nature of the game because you could spend 10 years on it and make it perfect, but then you’ve been cancelled for nine years.

**Craig:** So, congratulations —

**John:** Congratulations.

**Craig:** On your perfect cancelled show. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s get to some perfect scripts. Let’s get to our Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I was very excited by all of these. But I’m going to start with Jody Russell who wrote End Times Boy. And so on this podcast, I’ve decided that we are going to make our assumptions about people as default female. So Jody could be a man or a woman but I’m going to say Jody is a woman because default female will be our guess here.

**Craig:** I now realize that, yes, there are men named Jody, some baseball players. But, no, I just presumed.

**John:** Wasn’t the kid on My Three Sons also a boy Jody?

**Craig:** Oh, I just know Fred MacMurray.

**John:** And also, Lena Dunham’s cinematographer from Tiny Furniture who also did the first seasons of Girls is also Jody. It’s like, “Oh, she’s really good.” It’s like, “No, it’s a he.” I’m like, “I’m an idiot.”

**Craig:** No, you’re not. I mean, because I think primarily by the numbers, Jody is —

**John:** By the numbers, yeah.

**Craig:** Jody is female.

**John:** Wonderful. I will summarize this one. So this is Jody Russell’s End Times Boy. So we open in an abandoned house. We’re in the hallway. We hear rhythmic breathing. We see two people in respirators, just two faces. They head into the kitchen. Glass is crunching under their feet as they survey the kitchen. They’re searching for stuff. They open up a cabinet. They find three cans of sardines inside. One of the boys pulls out his mask and you can see that it is actually a boy. This boy is Sam. He’s 10 years old, caked with grime and dirt. Eli, who he’s with, says, “We shouldn’t stop.”

Once they get outside and get away from the house, they pull off their masks and gear. So you see that Eli is older. Eli is 12 years old. Eli says, “At least there weren’t any bodies.” And so they get to a chain-link fence and they end up back at a shambled chicken coop where there’s a man named Old Ben who’s only in his 40s. So 40s is not that old, I just want to point that out.

Old Ben, voice wet and raspy, asks if they got anything. They say they got two cans of sardines. They actually got three but they say they got two. Old Ben is pissed at them. He says, you know, “You’re holding back on me. Give me that fish.” Ultimately, Sam pulls a gun on him and we exit the scene with Sam pulling the trigger on Old Ben. And that’s the end of our three pages.

**Craig:** Well, so I’ve been playing Fallout 4 lately. This felt like mother’s milk to me. [laughs] So this feels appropriately post-apocalyptic. Loved the opening image of two faces in these respirators. That’s such a great like, yeah, I’m going to just keep saying video games like Borderlands and Fallout. Such a good look. And then you have the abandoned house and people scavenging, which is classic post-apocalyptic stuff.

Love that it was a kid. I mean, that’s always exciting when you see a kid do it. You’ll probably get that sooner rather than later because of the size but it’s still always shocking when you see children in these kinds of situations. Wasn’t quite sure why Eli was marked as off-screen when the line before says that his masked face is hovering behind Sam, so he’s not off-screen. The fact that his mouth isn’t visible because he’s talking through the respirator doesn’t mean he’s off-screen.

They take the cans. I love this line, “At least there weren’t any bodies.” So lines like that are so good. They do so much work for you. They tell you what was going on before the movie began. They tell you about the way of the world. They tell you about how kids are in this world. They tell you a lot. It’s very good.

**John:** Yeah, that should have been the first line of the script. No one should have spoken before that line.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we shouldn’t stop is an unnecessary thing. Although, that also kind of tells you something, too, that there are bad people out there.

Old Ben. I like that Old Ben was 40s because I think that in this world, if you make it to 40, you’re old. He’s injured. He’s dying. There’s a pretty decent exchange here where he’s trying to get — it goes on a bit. I thought it could have been quite a bit shorter but I liked his character. I understood his character. Didn’t quite understand the characters of Sam and Eli here in terms of their voice. I mean, I understood why they were doing —

**John:** I couldn’t differentiate them. And so as I went right through it, I was trying to hear what was different about them and I really couldn’t. At the end of the script, I couldn’t remember which kid pulled the gun on him.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** I should know that.

**Craig:** Right. So there wasn’t really a differentiation there in their voices which we could have used. Now, let’s talk about these last two lines.

So Eli is nicer. Now, understand that John and I, I think, can both see that Eli is the nice one and Sam is the tough one, but it’s how they say things when we say voice. Like, how does the rhythm of their speech differentiate? That’s what’s missing. Eli says, “Just give him one, Sam.” Sam cocks his pistol. Now, it’s a little tricky. Sam stares down the barrel of a 22 pistol into Old Ben’s watering eyes. I wasn’t sure who was aiming the gun at whom at that point.

**John:** I was going to say the same thing. Stares down the barrel, to me, feels like the opposite way around.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like if I’m looking at the gun, then I’m staring down the barrel. Because actually, I see the barrel as being looking inside it, so he’s really saying like looks over the top of the barrel.

**Craig:** Correct. Correct. Exactly.

**John:** Yeah. Down the barrel means you’re looking into the hole.

**Craig:** I agree. That’s the way. And then I reread it again and went, “Okay.” Old Ben says, “You damn little monster, I’ve kept you alive.” And Sam says, “Now you’re dying too slow.” Now, this is an example of two sentences that do not go together.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There is a thing that people have to learn one way or another and it’s experience, I think. And this is dinky little craft stuff that anyone can learn. This isn’t talent. And it’s basically matching lines. If you want to do the setup and the pay-off line, they’ve got to match. They have to match tense, they have to match theme, they have to match senses.

“I’ve kept you alive.” “Now you’re dying too slow.” The second line is for somebody who’s saying that they did something quickly. This is not an appropriate response to what he says. It’s a non-sequitur, essentially.

**John:** Exactly. And matching lines, ideally, the contrast should be that last word. Like, you know, it’s alive or dead, fast or slow. That’s a natural way. But also matching verb and verb tense, I think I’ve told this on the podcast before. But I remember we were shooting Go, my very first movie, we were in a supermarket, it’s like three in the morning, and we had shot the scene with Zack and Adam. So we were shooting both sides but we shot the master and now we’re going in for coverage.

And one of them changed one of the lines slightly. And it basically changed from a past tense to a present tense and the script supervisor hadn’t noticed they changed it or hadn’t worried that they changed it. And so I heard it and I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no.” And at the time I got back to the set, I had my contacts on and I heard that they changed the line. They were shooting the other matching close-up but he was still saying his original line.

**Craig:** It didn’t match.

**John:** It wouldn’t cut together. So I had to say like, “Either have to go back through or we’re going to have to change what you’re saying because like you’re not answering the same conversation on both sides.”

**Craig:** And this is that thing where people don’t hear it but we do. And I do believe the audience senses it. So there’s tense issues and there’s word issues. “You damn little monster, I have kept you alive.” I have, in the past, kept you alive. Sam says, “Now you are,” now you’re, “Now you are dying too slow.” This is present tense gerund. [laughs This is ongoing action.

So the tenses don’t match at all. And then ‘alive’ and ‘slow’ are not complementary at all. Now, I’m not sure, I mean, you can come up with easy-peasy bad ways of answering this, “You damn little monster, I’ve kept you alive.” And Sam, I mean to me, there’s no complement to that. I would just have Sam say, “Yeah, thanks,” and then shoot him, you know. [laughs]

When you do these matchy lines, if they don’t match, they’re clunky as hell and no good. If they do match, there’s a ton of pressure on them because everyone senses how written they are. Sometimes you’ll get this note, “This line feels written.” Well, uhh, yeah, they’re all written. [laughs] But it feels written. It’s almost too well crafted.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So this one unfortunately falls into the clunk category.

**John:** Yeah, a clunk for me, too.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I enjoyed the overall setting and sort of the painting of these pages but I had a lot of problems of stuff on the page. And so I think it just, in service to Jody and to everyone else who’s actually reading the pages, and I should have prefaced this by saying if you would like to read the actual pages that we’re looking at, you can go to johnaugust.com/scriptnotes or /podcast. Look for this episode, this is episode 227, and download the PDF so you can read along with us.

Because while I enjoyed so much of Jody’s writing here, there were a lot of problems on the page that would have slowed down and stopped people from enjoying them as much as they could have. So, first line of actual action, “Breathing — almost rhythmic.” Great, that sounds wonderful. He uses a single hyphen as a dash or —

**Craig:** She.

**John:** I’m sorry. She uses a single hyphen as a dash. I apologize, Jody. Dash, dash. If you’re in Courier, use two dashes, just get it long enough because otherwise it looks like a minus.

Third paragraph. “They look towards a closed door at the end of the hall. The larger mask turns to the smaller one. The smaller one moves forward.” At this point, I’d urge you to stop thinking about just the masks and like the figure, person, whatever, because I kept thinking like, “Wait, did the mask turn?” It’s a person that’s turning. So build these people out as little bit more of bodies first.

Throughout this, there were some good sound effects but they weren’t capitalized. And going to uppercase isn’t mandatory, but it is really useful and it’s a tool that’s in your tool box as a screenwriter to capitalize things, to give us a sense of the sound that they’re going to hear.

So “Glass crunches around a pair of small hiking boots shuffling in,” that crunches would have helped that line a little bit to uppercase that. Later, “More shuffling now closer toward the cabinets,” that would have been great.

Craig, how do you feel about, “Inside the cabinet sits three puck shaped cans”?

**Craig:** Not a big fan of that what do you call, like inverted —

**John:** Yeah, the inverted sentence. Also, technically, inside sit three cans.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. Just prior to that, there’s a moment where it appears they’re trying to be quiet. And so they “Reaches and nudges open the cabinet door. The cabinet door creaks back, snaps on a busted hinge and crashes to the counter, clangs onto the floor.” Good.

**John:** React.

**Craig:** Exactly. So that of course you can see on the day, the one who opened it and made it fall is going to look over to the other one who’s staring at him like, “You idiot.” You want that.

**John:** Yeah. And there’s another moment right before we go from the hallway into the kitchen. So right now it’s written as, “The smaller one moves forward.” But rather than smaller one moves forward, like why doesn’t it like the smaller one gestures, “You first.” Like, actually have the characters make choices or do something right from the start. You have the opportunity, so like let us see what the dynamic is right from those very initial scenes.

**Craig:** Right. And you could also have it where the larger one hesitates, nervous, the smaller one moves ahead, not scared at all. As long as you give us a sense that this is meaningful character-wise, otherwise it’s just blocking.

**John:** So after they’ve first seen the sardines, “He grasps the rim of his goggles and pushes them back.” But that he isn’t connected to anything. He doesn’t refer to any one person. The last things we’ve seen that have taken action have been these objects. So you need to say like, “The smaller figure — ” remind us who it is that we’re looking at.

**Craig:** Right. The smaller scavenger grabs the rim of the goggles. It starts getting into a — [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. The larger figure pulls up his goggles.

**Craig:** His. See, his. It’s the same problem. At some point, you run into to this pronoun problem.

**John:** But it’s fine. You’re going to see it’s a boy soon enough in the next sentence.

**Craig:** Right, but starting with, “He is,” rough, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. “A young boy’s eyes but the eyes of an old soul.”

**Craig:** Whoops.

**John:** Whoops. Repeating the word ‘eyes.’

**Craig:** You don’t repeat words.

**John:** Old soul eyes, I’m not a huge fan of. But a young boy with the eyes of an older soul, I guess.

**Craig:** Correct. You can’t have a young boy’s eyes and also the eyes of an old soul. So you can be a young boy with the eyes of an old soul.

**John:** It’s a four-eyed boy. Post-apocalyptic.

**Craig:** [laughs] But you see, I have to say that Jody did a really nice job in this first page because I could hear it and I could see it.

**John:** Totally.

**Craig:** I loved the way that she broke up her actions. It was so readable, lots of good crunchy words that I love. I like words like ‘pouty.’ Just good yummy words like that. Goggles are great and respirators are great.

**John:** I thought she had a very good vision of what this was going to look like and feel like. And I’m just urging her to spend the time on the craft to get those words and periods and spaces to help her paint that picture even better. Space after Sam (10). He snatches the cans deftly. Deftly snatching is like if you’re trying to get them away from something else but like you just take them.

**Craig:** Yeah, adverbs are always — they need to fight their way into a script.

**John:** Next page. ELI (12) chubby faced, hyphen between those probably, with rubicund cheeks and a gentle gaze. Rubicund? Rubicund? I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Well, rubicund, is that a word? Yeah, doesn’t that mean —

**John:** Rosy? I guess. Rosy cheeks?

**Craig:** Rubicund I thought meant like chubby.

**John:** Chubby, but it was also, he was chubby-faced in the previous words.

**Craig:** Well, let’s see who’s right. It’s ruddy. So it’s a color thing. Rubicund is a color.

**John:** It’s a color. Ruby.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** If John August and Craig Mazin don’t know what your word means, it’s probably too fancy a word for a screenplay.

**Craig:** Ruddy.

**John:** Ruddy cheeks. They halt at a dilapidated chain-link fence. Can a chain-link fence be dilapidated?

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah for sure.

**John:** Okay. Broken down, rusted. All right. So those are the things I urge her to look at, things like not much loot tho, T-H-O. You could bother to spell that out. You’re not creating a special lingo. There’s not a reason why you’re saying the short version of word that we’re going to hear the short version of it.

**Craig:** I’m starting to get a sense that maybe Jody is British.

**John:** Possibly.

**Craig:** Because I think rubicund, and tho, that kind of spelling, I feel like it might be a Britishism or maybe an Australianism.

**John:** Could be, could be.

**Craig:** So anyway I thought, Jody, you’ve introduced your characters in two ways twice. One is that there’s a larger one and a smaller one and then later one taller and chunky, the other smaller and wiry. That stuff we will have already seen.

**John:** Yeah, we got it. So introduce them once.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So bottom page 2, Old Ben asked, “Anything?” “Some cans of fish.” “Only two of them.” So Sam is the one who says, “Only two of them.” If that’s going to be a moment, then have Eli clock this that Sam is lying because there actually are three and we saw that. It’s like let us know that he’s telling a lie or at least the other character is recognizing it because otherwise it’s just going to pass. It’s not going to be acknowledged.

The same thing with quiet. So Eli says, “Quiet, quiet. We can split it, it’s okay.” And later on he says like, you know, “Please be quiet.” But they’re not acting in a way that makes me believe that they’re trying to be quiet. They’re saying they need to be quiet but I don’t see them worried about other people coming over or that they’re going to attract things. So I think the quiet is deliberate but I just thought he’s like telling him to shut up.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that is deliberate. So the idea is let’s keep our voices down, there are bad people out there or bad monsters out there. So Eli needs to be looking around, keeping an eye on the horizon, always checking, quiet, quiet so we understand what he’s referring to. Generally speaking, when you are going to lie, you don’t volunteer a lie. You lie because you have to. “Anything?” “Some cans of fish.” How many cans of fish? Two.

**John:** Two.

**Craig:** You don’t volunteer. Only two. Because that seems clunky.

**John:** I think part of the reason my quiet got confused is on page 3 Eli raises his hands trying to quiet him. So if you’re trying to quiet somebody, are you trying to calm them down, are you trying to get them to lower their voice and that might have been a great moment to flag to me like they’re keeping their voices low. And then I would know like, “Oh, the stakes have just been raised because other people could be listening to this.”

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. I think that is about description, about painting intention. So you just have to apply that test all the time. Will people know what my intention is with these words? Is it clear? Is it not? And that’s a game we have to play every day, line by line. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and we have to go back and make it clear.

**John:** Yeah. My last little niggly thing would be, “Staring down the barrel of a twenty two pistol.” A 22 or 45, those are things that you tend to actually use the digits for and not spell out.

**Craig:** Yeah, .22.

**John:** Yup. That’s how it is.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s how it is.

**John:** I was interested reading what was going to happen next, so good job on that. I was concerned about stuff I saw on the page.

**Craig:** Yeah, but promising stuff there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right. Well, I’ll go for Celebrate & Behave by Mark S.W. & V.P. Walling. Now —

**John:** I don’t get that. What’s S.W.?

**Craig:** Okay. So his name is — well, I don’t know if he wants us to say his name. Can we? I guess so. Yeah, I’ll go ahead. Just based on his e-mail address, it’s Mark Skeele Wilson. So Mark S.W. stands for Mark Skeele Wilson. But it’s interesting. So he abbreviates his middle and last name and then the other guy abbreviates his first — or woman, because we don’t know. I’m going to assume V.P. Walling is a woman.

**John:** Yeah, the default female assumption.

**Craig:** Like however they to want to do it. Celebrate & Behave by Mark SW. and V.P. Walling. So we open on a black screen and then it’s illuminated by the spark of a cheap plastic lighter. Then blackness then spark again. And we see now a small white pill that is slowly melting and sizzling on tinfoil. And the lighter illuminates as well the youthful but weary face of Michael Walton, a 38-year-old man who is sweat, jitters, and sad eyes. And then we go to black again.

It’s now morning. Michael awakens in his tent. He’s in a tent. Very bright sunlight. Looking for pills in his pill bottles but he’s all out. He gets out of his tent into a forest clearing to go pee and he’s confronted by a brown bear with a cub. And the script tells us that this is Alaska. He falls backward and as the bear moves in on him and he tries to scare the bear off. To no avail, there’s a gunshot.

The bear leaves quickly. The cub sort of stares at him for a while and then heads off. And Michael sees Ray, a 60-year-old man, decked out like a hunter and he’s obviously the one who fired the shot. Ray says, “That was a warning shot.” Michael says, “Thanks.” And Ray says, “It wasn’t for her.” Uh-huh, they know each other. Ray then leaves.

Next, we’re at bourgeois cabin where Michael pulls up in his beat-up truck and all of his stuff has been thrown out all over the yard. And the cabin door is locked. The people inside slam the windows and curtains shut. They don’t want to talk to him. Somebody named Joey is inside but doesn’t want to talk to him. And so Michael gathers up his stuff including an urn with ashes from Danny Walton, Beloved Son & Brother who died in 1996.

Lastly, we are in downtown Sitka which is a town in Alaska. Michael drives into town, pulls up in front of a storefront that says, “Dr. Michael S. Walton, OB-GYN.” And there’s a notice on the door on orange paper saying, “Government notice – premises closed due to ongoing investigation.” And then spray-painted in fire engine red on it misspelled is the word “Faget.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that is Celebrate & Behave.

**John:** I have such tiny little niggly things that I feel silly pointing them out. I thought this was a really promising start. I greatly enjoyed starting this way in this setting I’d never seen before with a character I’d never seen before. I don’t know what’s going to happen next but I’m curious what’s going to happen next. I like that there’s a bear. I like just so much of it. I think I would happily read another 15 pages of this script. How did you take this?

**Craig:** Very similarly. So I remember Lindsay Doran paid me a compliment once and it meant so much to me. Because I was talking about pages and like, you know, “It’s feeling like it might be a little long.” She goes, “It’s not long. You have all this wonderful white space in your pages. You know, it’s like milk. There’s all this milky space.” She loves white space and I love white space, too. And so also do Mark S.W. and V.P. Walling and to their credit. So everything is nicely paced out. They’re not rushing through anything, and they’re getting a lot done here.

There’s this wonderful encounter. The bears, it’s great because there’s something really kind of curious and Coen-esque, Coen brothers-esque about that cub just like, “Hmm, I know you.” I was confused. I understand I am supposed to confused but slightly — well, there was a confusion on a confusion which made me a little annoyed. I don’t mind multiple confusions as long as they’re about different things. My one little picky thing here is I meet Ray and I don’t know who Ray is. I know that they know each other. And I know I’ll find out eventually but I don’t know what’s going on with Ray.

Then he goes to this cabin and there’s somebody named Joey. And I don’t know who Joey is and I don’t know what the story is with Joey. So that was a confusion on a confusion of the same exact kind. So I got a little, eh.

**John:** And I would say there’s a parallel kind of confusion where you both have the ashes, where like there is related to some dead person, and we’re going to go to an office which is closed but has information about some person who’s not there anymore. So there was a little more of that than I would have necessarily loved right there at the very start.

**Craig:** Yeah, especially because I think the implication here is that he is the Dr. Michael S. Walton, that his practice has been closed due to an ongoing investigation because he’s a drug addict but we don’t know his name yet. So we have a Ray who isn’t identified by name. So here are the people we meet. We meet Michael, I don’t know his name. We meet Ray, I don’t know his name. And me meaning I’m in the theater, forget reading the pages. I know Joey’s name but I don’t know who Joey is and I don’t see Joey. I know Danny Walton’s name. I know he’s dead but I don’t know who he is and I don’t know his relationship to Michael because I don’t know Michael’s last name because I don’t know his name. Then I see Michael Walton, I go okay so somebody related to Danny Walton if I know how to read and I remember that, got in trouble but I don’t know that this is him. So that stuff could be helped.

**John:** It’s entirely possible I think the very next action line is him pulling out his keys and opening up his office and then I would probably kind of think, “Oh, this is his office. This is this guy and that’s his name.” But we have to stop where we stopped and that was the bottom of this third page.

**Craig:** It is possible. I don’t think that’s what happened because he’s looking at the sign from across the street and he hasn’t gotten out of his car. It makes me feel like he’s going to just keep driving.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** But one thing that is hard to do in life, easy to do when you’re writing, hard to do when you’re shooting is have a car pull up across the street from a storefront, you have somebody stare at it and then have them read a tiny paper that they can’t possibly be able to read. So the deal is that obviously the camera can go close but if you’re implying that that guy is seeing it then we feel something is off because he can’t. I mean he can see a sign, he just can’t read the words from across the street unless it’s massive.

**John:** Unless it’s massive. And those are things you — they’re not hard fixes but I think they should be fixed. So I, like Lindsay Doran, love white space and I loved the white space in this page. I did actually yearn for one extra return and let’s see if you agree with me here. So middle of page one, Ext. Forest Clearing — Continuous. Michael crawls from the cramped tent door, confronted by the harsh summer sunlight. He starts to pee then looks up to see a huge brown bear with cub.

If you had just given me one more return, I would understand like there’s a tiny jump cut there and he’s not pissing on the very first step outside the door. I wanted a tiny bit of space and break between those two things. Because I felt like he was pissing on his tent.

**Craig:** Oh, really? Okay. [laughs] It kind of flowed for me. Just because, I don’t know, there’s that thing that happens when you walk out of a tent in the morning, the first thing you do is whip it out and pee. [laughs] It’s just natural. It just happens.

**John:** Which is, I’ve camped my whole life so I do get that but like stumbling a few steps and starts to pee and then do it. Just like it happened so fast. I thought it actually hurt the bear reveal because I wanted the pee to be like that pee moment and then like have the bear.

**Craig:** Well, but then again, we want that “A single gunshot” on the bottom of the page there, the way he has it.

**John:** It’s so good. I can’t say that it’s necessarily better. I do wanted to single out “The bear raises up, up, up on his hind legs,” and so those get more capitalized as he goes. And he parallels that structure as he tries to make himself be bigger to scare it off but the gunshot works great. Like the previous script, I’ll point out that dashes in Courier should be two hyphens, not a single hyphen. It just helps sell it a little better. So it’s not a minus sign. These are small things.

**Craig:** Yeah, the only other thing I would say is and this would get you your line return and not lose “Bam! A single gunshot” from the bottom of the page, I would delete this is Alaska because I don’t care. What I care about is that a man is peeing and there’s a bear next to him. When he pulls up in his beat-up, rust colored ’97 Ford pickup, just add with Alaska plates. Now I know where I am.

**John:** Yeah, I didn’t mind the “This is Alaska.” It gave you a breather between like holy crap there’s a bear and stumbling back but I see your point, too.

**Craig:** I would rather — if it’s important for the reader to know it’s Alaska, it’s important for the audience to know it’s Alaska. Show the audience.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But good stuff.

**John:** Good pages, really exciting.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Our final one from this batch of Three Page Challenges is by Matthew Gentile. Would you say Gentile or Gentile?

**Craig:** I would say Gentile.

**John:** Gentile. It could be Gentile. It could be Gentile. His first name is Matthew so we’re going to go default female again. [laughs] So it’s a woman named Matthew just like Ryan Reynolds’ daughter is named James.

**Craig:** Really? That’s like that model James King.

**John:** Yeah, yeah. And his wife’s name is Blake so it’s all in keeping. No, we’re going assume that Matthew is a gentleman. Our story starts in 1984, Los Angeles. The title over says exactly that, Los Angeles, 1984. On Beverly Hills Street, rain is falling as we look up at a skyscraper. We meet Jake Hughes, a young man in a fitted suit, silhouetted as he exits the skyscraper. Looks around, picks up a pay phone, puts in his two quarters. As the phone rings, we hear his heart beat and he’s kind of calming himself before about what he’s about to do. We have a cut to six months earlier. Uh-oh, cut to six months earlier.

**Craig:** Stuart!

**John:** Stuart!

**Craig:** You think that Stuart, it was just like I imagine that Stuart is reading along and then he gets that and he goes “Ah!”

**John:** His heart. [laughs]

**Craig:** His little hearts stops.

**John:** So for people who are listening for the first time, this is sort of a trope on the Three Page Challenge is like, you know, it’s half a page and suddenly it’s jumping to an earlier time cut. Essentially the opening a story was someplace later on in the script. Stuart does not deliberately pick those. What we’ve heard from Stuart is that so many of these pages that he gets have that thing that it’s just representative so.

**Craig:** I believe him.

**John:** Regardless, our time jump here takes us back to a mailroom. It’s six months earlier. The doors burst open, Jake rushes into a safe. He opens up the safe, pulls a film print from the safe, and he picks up a phone and dials a number. Then we hear at the other side of the phone call, a person named Neil with a Californian accent. They talk. Jake says he’s in the mailroom. “Stay put, don’t let that print out of your sight,” Neil says. They have conversation. Basically, Jake is doing a favor for Neil and he’s going to write him a killer evaluation for HR. Jake is very excited about all this. Neil says he’ll call back. Jake then calls Stella, his girlfriend, and says that he was roped into doing one last task for his boss and Stella at the bottom of the page three says, “But my graduation is in two hours.” That’s the bottom of page three.

**Craig:** All right. So let’s dig into this.

**John:** Take it off.

**Craig:** I don’t think that what I saw here is worth three pages by and large. Let’s begin with our cold open. It does not deserve to be here and then show us six months earlier. Generally speaking, when you do this and it is tropey and we’ve seen it a billion times, what you’re looking at is something incredibly dramatic. I’ll take like John Wick did it. So John Wick opens with a car driving into a dark parking lot and smashing into a pillar and Keanu Reeves gets out and he’s bleeding, he’s been shot, and he lies down, he prepares to die. Then we go, six months earlier, okay. How did he get into that awful, awful situation?

This opens with a guy putting quarters into a payphone. I wonder how he got into that situation. Who cares?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, it just doesn’t deserve what we’re doing here.

**John:** Well, here’s what I’ll say. I’ll say that that kind of time cut we’re doing, the audience has an expectation that like, “Okay, because we’ve seen this in so many other movies,” there has to be a big reason why that’s such an incredibly important moment and there’s nothing you’ve given us in that first moment that leads us to believe that it could be an incredibly important moment.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean we get that he’s making an important phone call but that’s not the high drama that is required to pull the old six months earlier Stuart gambit. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Similarly, the space that’s burned up here doing it is a bit overwrought. Geography-wise, I got very confused from the start. Here’s the first paragraph. “Rain falls as we look up at a skyscraper. Move down and pull back to reveal a payphone across the street, looming in the foreground.” The payphone is across the street and it’s in the foreground?

**John:** I think it was a big crane shot that was aimed up then pulls back to reveal the building and then moves so that the payphone is in the foreground and he’s going to rush in to that payphone and do something.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So I think he was trying to create the drama of like what that moment is like he gets to the phone and puts in the quarters.

**Craig:** You don’t want your crane shot to end up on a payphone that’s just sitting there. If I’m looking up at a skyscraper and there’s a ringing and I’m coming down through the rain and pulling back across the street and now there’s this payphone that’s ringing for no one, okay.

**John:** Yeah, that’s some drama.

**Craig:** Okay, I get it. That’s why I’m looking at the payphone. There’s no reason to look at this payphone. And then he runs across the street and he puts some quarters and okay. So anyway, you get the idea there, Matthew. I just don’t think that that’s worthy of the old Stuart gambit.

Now we go back to the movie proper. Another problem. The opening showed Jake running frantically across the street to the payphone. We go back six months earlier and what’s Jake doing? Running frantically towards the safe. [laughs] This is just what Jake does. He runs frantically towards things.

**John:** Jake runs and he talks on phones.

**Craig:** And he talks on phones. So that doesn’t work. You need a contrast if you’re going to do the Stuart gambit, a big contrast. He opens up the safe and inside there’s a film print. What is a film print?

**John:** I don’t know what a film print is. Is it a film can? Is it like meant to be 16 millimeters, 35? How big is this thing? Is it a reel? Oh, my gosh, maybe he needs to take it to The Man in the High Castle.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. Is it one of those like old film, like those little film containers that you’d put 35-millimeter in for a personal camera? Is it a reel of movie film? I don’t know because I don’t know what film print is. Also frankly film prints and safes feels very just super old fashioned. I know this is a period piece but — anyway, so in 1984, I would imagine a video cassette but if it’s still pictures, if it’s still images then I could see that little film roll container. Anyway, I don’t know what it is. So that’s a problem.

He calls Neil. Now here’s what it says, “Many voices will come over the phone during this story. The first is a man in his late 20s with a Southern California accent, Neil.” Now, a couple of things, Matthew. One, when I read that I presumed this story meant the story that I’m about to hear on the phone like many voices are going to be on the phone for what’s coming right now because I haven’t read your script yet, I don’t realize and later I piece it together that there’s going to be a lot of phone stuff in the movie. So I got totally thrown. I was like, okay, I guess there’s going to be a lot of people talking on the phone. A Southern California accent, I defy you, defy you to make that a real accent that people know.

**John:** Oh, come on, it’s The Californians.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s not a real — exactly, that is not an accent. [laughs]

**John:** “I took the 405.” I can’t even do the fake California accent.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “Take 405 to…” Anyway, no one talks like that. So they have this conversation. Throughout the conversation, Neil who’s on the phone, is indicated with OS. Personally, I’ve seen this happen. It’s not a deal breaker. I like to put in parenthesis, phone.

**John:** Yeah, I put on phone, yeah.

**Craig:** Or on phone, exactly. Because OS really means they’re in the space. The camera is just not pointing at them. They are off screen.

**John:** Yeah, and it’s not just that they’re not in a single. It’s like they deliberately should not be shown on camera at this moment.

**Craig:** Exactly. So this would really be more of on phone. But in that way, right next to the character name, Neil says, “Good. Stay put. Do not let that print out of your sight.” Jake says, “I won’t let it out of my hands.” That’s like repeating. This is not real to me. That’s not a real response, “Do not let that print out of your sight.” “I won’t.” Not I won’t let it, let it, let it, okay. Then Neil says, “As soon as I get Russell’s exact address, I’ll call you back, he lives in Westwood.” “Okay, I’m right here.” “Just letting you know, I’m going to write you a killer evaluation for HR.” “Really?” “Yup. With your track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the first of your class out of that mailroom.” This doesn’t feel like it’s appropriate for what’s going on at all.

When you’re doing something wrong for personal gain, the person on the other end, it’s like this guy is talking like he’s never heard of a wiretap in his life. Nobody just spills this baloney like this so overtly. It’s got to be, “I won’t forget this. Trust me, this is going to work out really well for you.” Neil isn’t a real person right now. He’s just saying this stuff that I don’t buy. Jake says, “Thank you.” And Neil says, “Well, let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet.” That’s from Pulp Fiction. You can’t use that line. It’s from Pulp Fiction. Mr. Wolf said it. That’s that, can’t do it. “Sure.” ‘Talk soon.” Like what a casual conversation. [laughs]

And then here’s what it says, ‘Neil cuts the call. Jake dials another number. It rings.’ “Bunny, it’s me,” says Jake. And then that was the dialogue. And here’s the action line. “We hear the voice of a young woman and Jake’s girlfriend, Stella. I’m thinking, “Oh, Bunny and Stella are on the phone together.” [laughs] Like we hear the voice of a young woman and Jake’s girlfriend, Stella. No, we hear the voice of Stella, Jake’s girlfriend whom he calls Bunny so you’re going to need to say, we hear the voice of Stella. Jake’s girlfriend. His pet name for her, Bunny, is his pet name or something. Otherwise —

**John:** Or AKA Bunny.

**Craig:** AKA Bunny, exactly. Like these are the phone conversations I just don’t want to see in a movie and don’t have time to sit through. “Bunny, it’s me.” “Hey love, I’m leaving.” “I’m at the office right now.” “What? Why?” Just argh, just do it, just get into it. [laughs] “Bunny, it’s me. I got roped into making a quick drop off for my boss.” “I know, I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not happy but” — there’s no sense of sweatiness, no sense that he’s doing something wrong, there’s no urgency.

**John:** So it’s the difference between how people speak in the real world and how the slightly optimized version of how people speak in movies. And just once you sort of come to accept it, this is what Craig basically just pitched is, “Bunny, it’s me.” “Hey, love. I got roped into making a quick drop off at the bosses.” “Look I’m not happy about it either but don’t worry, we’ll be on time, all right?” And then if her first real line is, “My graduation is in two hours,” then that’s funny. That actually tells you something.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So cutting will make that just so much sharper.

**Craig:** Yeah, nobody’s speaking as if they are in possession of the facts they’re in possession of.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’s not talking like somebody whose graduation is in two hours, really, hey love, I’m leaving. If her graduation is in two hours and he’s not with her, why isn’t she like, where are you? You know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he’s certainly not talking like somebody that just committed a crime. Neil’s not talking like somebody that just roped somebody into committing a crime. So I had multiple issues here with Assist by Matthew Gentile. I think that I would say to Matthew, I wouldn’t get discouraged here. It’s not like I read these and I go, “Oh, Matthew can’t write.” I just think that you’ve made a lot of classic rookie mistakes and you just got to get them out of your system.

**John:** Yeah and you got them out here so next thing is going to be better.

**Craig:** The next one will be better.

**John:** It’ll be better. I want to thank all three of our brave writers and everyone else who writes in with their Three Page Challenge samples because they’re so useful and instructive and they give us things to talk about because it’s so hard to talk about screenwriting when you don’t have screenplays in front of you to talk about.

So if you have a screenplay, three pages of which you’d like us to take a look at, the first three pages is usually the most helpful. It can be a screenplay, it can also be a pilot. We’ve done those too. You can go to johnaugust.com/threepage and that is where you’ll find a page listing how you submit your scripts. There’s a little form you fill out. You click and say that it’s okay for us to talk about it on the air. You’ll attach a PDF and they end up in Stuart’s inbox. And Stuart sorts through them every once in a while and gives us these scripts to take a look at. So again thank you to these three people for letting us talk about their scripts on the air and to everyone else who has written in with them.

**Craig:** Absolutely. You guys are very, very brave, so thank you and hopefully we are of some help.

**John:** Yep. It’s time for One Cool Things. I have two One Cool Things. The first is Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time.

**Craig:** Time after time.

**John:** It’s a fantastic pop song from 1984.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** The Washington Post — I’m sorry, actually Wall Street Journal did an article about how they wrote that song. So she wrote it with Rob Hyman and it just charts through sort of the process of writing a song. And having written many, many songs, I found it really fascinating sort of how songs come together because this was a case of there was sort of an idea that got thrown out, it was originally a calypso number and you can see all these influences are still in that song even though they made fundamentally different choices. And things get pieced together, it’s iteration, there’s bursts of sudden inspiration but then it’s also the hard work of figuring out like what does this song actually really want to be.

So this is one example for a really good song, Time After Time.

**Craig:** Rob Hyman, Philadelphia guy, was one of the main members of a group called The Hooters.

**John:** Oh yeah, I know The Hooters.

**Craig:** Remember The Hooters? So they did, ‘And we dance like a wave on the ocean romance,’ and they also did, ‘All you zombies hide your faces.’

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** But I’m always fascinated by these guys that then just like go sideways like, you know, Someone Like You, the big Adele hit, that’s co-written by a guy who was the main songwriter for what was it called Supersonic, I can’t remember the name, but the guys that did ‘Closing Time.’

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah or Linda Perry quite famously 4 Non Blondes who is now a big singer-songwriter.

**Craig:** Right, exactly.

**John:** A big songwriter for other people. My other One Cool Thing is Secret Hitler which is a game that is on Kickstarter right now.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** It is from Max Tempkin and the Cards Against Humanity folks. He has created a game that I got to test play quite really on and it’s really fun. It’s a game for 5 to 10 to ten people. We played it with 10 people so it’s our office and the Exploding Kittens office and we all got together and played it. It’s really fun. And Craig; you would love it because it’s all about manipulation and lies and how to convince people that you are not who you clearly are.

**Craig:** I mean that’s — I wake up doing that.

**John:** Yeah, so you’re a natural at it.

**Craig:** So this is like a card —

**John:** No, so this is — it’s a game — have you ever played Mafia —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Or Werewolf?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So it’s that but it’s more sophisticated in a sense that it’s set in sort of pre-World War II fascist-leaning in Germany and so you’re either the liberals or the fascists and so you get a card saying who you are. So either you’re a liberal or fascist or Hitler and —

**Craig:** Oh you can be Hitler in this game?

**John:** Yeah, so it’s essentially the fascists are trying to elect Hitler as Chancellor and in that they win if they do that.

**Craig:** So it’s like oh we did it, we won and six million Jews are going to die. [laughs]

**John:** So what’s so fascinating about the mechanic of it is that like Mafia or Werewolf, there’s reasons why you will lie and cheat to sort of manipulate people and make people think that you are clearly on their side when you’re not on their side but it becomes so much more complicated because you’re trying to pass these policies. And there’s an element of randomness which is like you might have no choice why you had to enact this fascist policy but everyone will then think that you are fascist.

**Craig:** Right, right.

**John:** So we quite enjoyed it and yet I will say it strained some friendships so —

**Craig:** Oh really? It’s one of those type of games?

**John:** Yeah it’s not as bad as sort of the Diplomacy which of course is the game that destroys friendships.

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** So great, it’s beautiful. So it’s not that. It’s only about an hour. With 10 people, it’s a little bit more than an hour but it’s really well done so if you’re curious about the game, it’s on Kickstarter, it’s cheap and you should consider backing it.

**Craig:** Used to play Diplomacy with my friends in high school and it was — it really was — it only works when you play with people who are smart and who just acknowledge right up front that winning a game is more important than anything else. [laughs] And so you can respect it.

**John:** Yeah totally.

**Craig:** Well, my One Cool Thing is rather large and corporate but I used it today and it was like, “Oh God this is so ridiculously awesome.” [laughs] And I feel bad about it in a way because there must be abuse on the other end of it but Prime Now — have you used Prime Now?

**John:** Yeah, it’s like the same day delivery?

**Craig:** I mean it’s not even the same day delivery; it’s like delivery in an hour.

**John:** How does that even work? I’ve never done this.

**Craig:** So Prime Now — so if you’re an Amazon Prime member which, you know, lots of people are, you download an app so you can’t make your purchases through the desktop, it’s only through their app. You download their app and their selections are rather large and it’s basically items that they have in key depots in major centers. So where we live, sure. There’s a minimum purchase amount of I think $20, not that crazy but yeah you can’t have them fetch you like paper clips. But you type in like, okay, like today, I put in I want low-carb tortillas, Aquaphor skin care, and Diet Coke. [laughs]

**John:** That is so revealing and diet coke and not Dr. Pepper?

**Craig:** No, I just went for Diet Coke because I have that my son also loves that. He likes that more than Diet Dr. Pepper. I love Diet Dr. Pepper. And then boom it’s there and it’s crazy.

**John:** That’s Insane.

**Craig:** It’s crazy. And you put a tip on, you know, for the delivery guys so it’s not like Amazon Prime where there’s no tips because they’re using UPS, whatever. They’re using their own employees but it’s nuts.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And the scary part is they’re just — they’re assaulting these boundaries that we’ve come to expect between I want something I have something. They keep chipping away at it until the point where it’s like, you know what I want, oh it’s already there, I didn’t even say it. [laughs]

**John:** So my question is, what is the uniforms these people wear and can you see the little shock collars that they get zapped if they don’t actually deliver there fast enough? [laughs]

**Craig:** This is what I’m worried about like I just — I hope that they’re not — you know, because Amazon, eh, not the best rep when it comes to this stuff. [laughs]

**John:** Well, I’m the one who’s selling thousands of units of Writer Emergency Pack through Amazon so I really can’t be complaining about your low-carb tortillas.

**Craig:** You know, there was this great article about the Amazon warehouses.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And, you know, so part of the article is like this abusive internal. [laughs]] But the part that was fascinating to me other than the human misery of it, just the logistics aspect of it was that one of the great breakthroughs they made with Amazon is that typically a warehouse would be designed where you put like products all together —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which makes since right? Okay, we sell 80 vacuum cleaners, put them all in row AB12 where you go if you need a vacuum cleaner. And then some genius over there was like, no, put them nowhere near each other. It’s like the keyboard model of QWERTY like the keys will stick together. Fling them all over the place, this way when you get to an aisle and you’re looking for a vacuum cleaner, there’s only one there, you can’t mess up. You can’t pull the wrong vacuum cleaner off the shelf.

**John:** Right. Yeah, that sounds fair. I mean I’ll say Amazon did screw up when we first started selling Writer Emergency Packs and they would send 12 instead of one because they looked at the inner cartoon. [laughs] And they thought that the whole inner cartoon was one unit. So that may be a breakdown. But essentially Amazon also does things where like you don’t go to the shelf, the shelf comes to you. And so the little robots pick up the shelf and move the shelf to you and turn the shelf so you basically just reach forward and grab the thing and put it in the van.

**Craig:** At some point Amazon’s going to create a service for Amazon employees. [laughs] So that you can hire a guy to go get your things so that you have your thing as the Amazon guy so you could send the thing to me.

**John:** And the New York Time piece or was it New York Times or New Yorker or New York Magazine? One of the New York publications had a long piece about the corporate jobs at Amazon are not any better — I mean they’re better in the sense that you’re not in a terrible warehouse and risking, you know, overheating or dying.

**Craig:** Yeah, but those — like their evaluation system was, ugh.

**John:** Yeah, because we have that same kind of evaluation system here in our own office where you can anonymously talk about the other employees and sort of rate them and how they’re doing but only I see them and then I punish people.

**Craig:** I mean, don’t you know that everyone’s talking about Stuart?

**John:** It’s usually Stuart’s fault. [laughs]

**Craig:** Oh Stuart, poor Stuart. [laughs] Six months earlier…Ah!

**John:** Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Woo-hoo.

**John:** And you may see one or both of them at Scriptnotes Live which we are recording this — God, it’s tomorrow as people are listening to this, which is insane.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** There’s a link in the show notes if you follow the link in the show notes. It’s possible they’ll release more tickets on the day, who knows.

**Craig:** But currently we’re sold out.

**John:** I think we’re sold out.

**Craig:** Like Jon Bon Jovi?

**John:** Like Jon Bon Jovi. It’s one of the situations where we’ll be sold out but then because they were holding that stuff for us, sometimes they release those, who knows.

**Craig:** Oh I see. I don’t have any friends.

**John:** I don’t have any friends. But our show should be great and it should be fun and that will be next week’s episode if you are going to be listening to our show next week. I hope you are.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you would like to subscribe to our show, please join us on iTunes. Just click on subscribe in iTunes. Search for Scriptnotes first, that helps. You’ll see two things on iTunes, you’ll see the Scriptnotes app through which you can download all the back episodes and of course, Scriptnotes the Podcast, subscribe to that and leave us a comment because we love to read your comments. Maybe we’ll read comments for our Christmas episode. We’ll just read nice things people say about us. [laughs]

**Craig:** That doesn’t sound self-serving at all. [laughs]

**John:** But what we would love for you to write in with is your questions about things that are not related to screenwriting, so a very long time ago we did one random advice episode.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** I think it’s time to do another random advice episode.

**Craig:** We should totally do that.

**John:** So that’d be a fun thing to clear the cobwebs out at the end of the year. So if you would like our advice on a topic that has nothing to do with screenwriting about I don’t know, work, relationships, food, diet.

**Craig:** Don’t forget our specialty: female reproductive health.

**John:** That more than anything we want to answer your questions about female reproductive health. Write into ask@johnaugust.com. That’s the place you can write in with all your larger things. But you can even ask one of those questions on Twitter, so I’m @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. Our outro this week is composed by Roman Mittermayr. If you have an outro that you would like us to consider for our show, write to the same address, ask@johnaugust, and give us a link to where we can find the file. Craig, thank you again for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thanks, John.

**John:** All right. Bye.

Links:

* [The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, December 3, 2015](http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/95di1k/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-december-3–2015—idris-elba-season-21-ep-21032)
* Craig in [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/opinion/anyone-but-ted-cruz.html?_r=0) and on [Jezebel](http://theslot.jezebel.com/fuckin-craig-mazin-an-appreciation-of-ted-cruzs-colleg-1746278435)
* [Download Highland 1.9 now](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/) and [sign up to be a Highland 2 beta tester](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2-beta/)
* [Does Revenge Serve an Evolutionary Purpose?](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/revenge-evolution/) from Scientific American
* [One Hit Kill is now available for purchase](http://www.onehitkillgame.com/)
* [Projection Problems Plague 70mm L.A. Press Screening Of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’](http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/projection-problems-plague-70mm-la-press-screening-of-quentin-tarantinos-the-hateful-eight-20151203) from Indie Wire
* Three Pages by [Jody Russell](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JodyRussell.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Mark S.W. & V.P. Walling](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/MarkSWVPWalling.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Matthew Gentile](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/MatthewGentile.pdf)
* [Submit your Three Pages here](http://johnaugust.com/threepage)
* The Wall Street Journal on [How Cyndi Lauper Wrote Her First No. 1 Hit, ‘Time After Time’](http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-cyndi-lauper-wrote-her-first-no-1-hit-time-after-time-1448985798)
* [Secret Hitler](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maxtemkin/secret-hitler) is now on Kickstarter
* [Amazon Prime Now](https://www.amazon.com/primenow) offers one hour delivery
* [Email us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or tweet [John](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) or [Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for advice on things that have nothing to do with screenwriting
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Roman Mittermayr ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-batman-in-the-high-castle).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 226 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program, we will be discussing epic world-building, from Gotham City to Narnia, and why screenwriters need to be careful when building out whole universes. This topic was suggested by Rawson Marshall Thurber who is a friend of ours and a former guest. He was a guest on our 100th episode of the show and also on the Christmas show.

**Craig:** I just like hmph-ing him.

**John:** Yeah, absolutely. As a, “How he dare suggest something like this.” But you’ve actually found yourself doing some world-building recently. I was thinking I saw the trailer for The Huntsman which felt like it was a build-out of a fantasy world.

**Craig:** Yes, very much so.

**John:** And apparently, Charlize Theron has bitten into something very black because her mouth is very black in that trailer.

**Craig:** I got to tell you, she’s so good in the — ooh, she’s good in that movie.

**John:** Oh, that’s good.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s good in it. She’s good.

**John:** Before we get to world-building, some follow-up. On December 9th, we have our live show. There might be tickets. I think they’re releasing a few more tickets that we’d held back, so you should go check it out and see if there are still some tickets available for our live show because we’ve actually added an additional guest, Alan Yang of Parks and Recreation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And more recently the Aziz Ansari show, Master of None on Netflix. He will be joining us to talk about that show and other awesome topics. We may even have a musical guest because in previous shows we’ve had — well, Craig has sung. We’ve had Rachel Bloom sing, from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. So it wouldn’t be a Christmas show without a little bit of music. And I think we have the music guests figured out for the show.

**Craig:** I think we do. I think it’s going to be awesome.

**John:** It’s going to be great. So you should come join us for that. So in addition to Alan Yang and Craig Mazin and myself, we will have Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome from Another Period. And who else is on our show? Oh, Malcolm Spellman.

**Craig:** How can you forget?

**John:** You can never forget Malcolm Spellman. He will not let you forget that he’s there.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** Nope. Segment bit of follow-up, NaNoWriMo, the National November Novel Writing Month, is now drawn to a close. So people have asked, “Hey, John, how did you? You were going to write a book during November.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I did not finish the book but I got at about like 13,000 to 15,000 words done and I’m really, really happy with what I wrote.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So it qualified as a success for me.

**Craig:** That’s a full Derek Haas novel right there.

**John:** [laughs] Indeed. As long as I put up my font pretty big, it’s going to be a great book.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re funny. How many words is a novel? Like 100,000 words or something?

**John:** No. Actually, a 50,000 word novel is a small novel but Derek’s is probably between 50 and 60. That’s my guess, his most recent one.

**Craig:** Okay. So you got a good third of a novel there almost or fourth.

**John:** Yeah. I think I probably will finish it at some point. There’s going to be discussion about sort of when the best time is to finish it. And depending on some stuff that may or may not happen in the next week or two, people will understand why I had to sort of stop. But it was good. It was actually a really great process.

**Craig:** Good. Good.

**John:** Hooray. We have a question from the mailbag. Daniel wrote in to ask, “When it comes to an established writer, what is better for their career — a movie loved by critics that bombs at the Box Office or a Box Office smash that is ripped to shreds by critics? Which scenario helps the writer’s reputation with the studios and helps the writer be considered for more work in the future?” Craig, what’s your thought on that?

**Craig:** I have seen this question asked so many times. This is like everyone’s favorite party question for screenwriters. The answer is yes. That’s the answer. If you’re an established writer, I’m presuming that the premise of the question is you’re working. But even if you’re not, it doesn’t matter to me. If you have a Box Office smash hit, that is wonderful for you in terms of your reputation with the studios because of course their main goal is to make money. They don’t care if critics don’t like a movie. If the audience likes the movie, then they’re happy and they’re happy, so that’s always good.

If you write a movie that is beloved by critics but bombs at the Box Office, that can still also be very good for you. I think it’s more important that the people who see the movie who — I mean, because the question is framed what’s better for you at the studios. The people at the studios need to also like the movie. There are movies that critics love that I’ve talked about with people at studios and they’re all like, “We don’t think that’s a good movie at all.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But a lot of times, there’s overlap. And if there is, then, yeah, they would very much consider that person for other work at their studio. It would be different work. It wouldn’t be work that probably is of the kind of critical, darling Box Office bomb. But all of it’s good.

I think if you write a good script and the movie connects somehow, you’ve done a good job. These questions are I think more important for directors in a weird way than for writers. More often than not, the biggest thing that we’re judged on is did you write a script somebody agreed to produce? That’s the big one.

**John:** Yeah. Everything Craig said is exactly right. I think what is interesting about Daniel’s question is it supposes that the studios have the same information that someone who’s looking up stuff online has about the writer and how the movie turned out. And the studios actually have much, much more information. So the studio knows whether that movie which was a disaster was a disaster because of the writer or it was a disaster because of things that happened along the way. So the studio has information about what that process was. The studio also has a real sense of who really wrote that movie. If there were multiple writers, where the bad things came to be.

By the same token, if a movie is a huge success and this writer is the person who wrote it, that won’t necessarily guarantee them a chance down the road to write the next thing because they also know sort of like it was a success despite the writing or it’s a success despite sort of the involvement of those people. And so there are people who have, you know, $100 million movies who, as screenwriters, do not necessarily have the strongest careers because they’re not given a lot of credit for having taken that movie across the finish line to $100 million.

**Craig:** It’s a really good point. There’s so much going on that people don’t know about. And so for instance, one of the big things that determines whether a movie is a success or not is who’s in it. Simple as that. Who’s cast in it? Well, the writer is not casting the movie. When is the movie released? How was the movie marketed? What is the title of the movie? There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. Was there a similar movie that came out that sort of stole the thunder? All these things can happen.

When we write a movie and the movie is green-lit, it means we’ve done a very good job. And when I say we write a movie, yes, there may be multiple writers in the chain of things. But ultimately, one writer, sometimes two, will get the bulk of the inside baseball credit. And they’re the writers that convince the movie studio to make the movie or convince the big actor to sign on or big director to sign on.

And when that happens, you’ve won. You get the credit for doing a good job. Everything that happens after that is, to some extent, placed on the shoulders for better or worse of the director and the cast. The star and the director are the ones that take the hit or get the most uplift from the movie succeeding one way or the other.

**John:** It’s important to remember that your jobs that you get as a writer are not rewards for previous successes. They are bets on whether you can write the next movie that is going to turn out very, very well. And so they’re basing those bets on, “Well, what has that writer done beforehand?” And so, did that person write a really good script? Did that person write a script that was able to attract this kind of talent and able to make a really huge movie?

Those are the reasons why you are getting hired to do a job. So, from my own personal example, my first movie that got produced was called Go and it was successful. It wasn’t a huge Box Office hit but people really, really liked that movie. And that got me a lot of jobs on things down the road. And so Charlie’s Angels was my biggest hit sort of after that time but I had a lot of other work before then because of that first movie, Go, which people could see whatever they wanted to see in that movie. And it was very, very useful for me. And that was a case, an example of a movie that had good critical reaction, but more importantly, had good reaction in the town and people wanted to like that movie.

**Craig:** I think that when people ask this question, the unheard argument that’s going on behind the scenes is two people debating, “Should I write something that people will want to go see? Should I write a franchisee kind of movie? Should I write this little tiny movie?” Someone’s saying, “Stop wasting your time with little tiny movies,” and someone’s saying, “Stop selling out on these big, huge soulless tent poles.” And the answer to those people is, “Shut up. Shut up and write what you want to write.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nobody is going to make or break their career based on the genre choice of their first screenplay or how they’re trying to get in. Write the thing that you will write best. For a lot of people — I would argue for most people — that’s going to be genre fare, popcorn fare, mainstream studio fare because that’s the bulk of the movies we consume as human beings. And that’s a lot of what inspires us.

For some people, for fewer but a significant amount, it’s going to be quirkier fare, independent fare, or more narrow-focused fare that is perhaps a lot more meaningful to them emotionally. And that’s what those people should write. I think that people want an answer and the answer is there’s no answer, stop having that argument.

**John:** Only the corollary I put with this is that I think having a produced film is incredibly valuable. And so, you could have a script that was a Black List kudoed script, you could have a script that people really love in town but having a movie that actually shot, even if it wasn’t quite as good as that script, it will be incredibly helpful. There’s something about having your movie produced for the first time that makes it feel like, “Okay, you’re a real produced writer,” and that people have a faith and a trust in you that your words can actually be shot, that they may not if you’re an unproduced writer.

So the follow-up question for this might be, is it better to have a good script that never shot or a good script that turned out poorly? It’s better to have the good script that kind of turned up poorly because then at least you have a movie made.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know which is easier. I don’t know if it’s easier to get a mainstream studio film made or to get a smaller, narrower focused movie made. I actually suspect it might be easier to get the smaller movie made just because there are more avenues in smaller budgets and there just seems like there’s a lot of them. They just, you know, aren’t necessarily seen the way that studio films are.

It’s harder than it has ever been in the history of the planet to get a studio film made. So if your theory is, “I’m going to write a big studio movie because that’s what gets made,” that’s fine. Just be aware, they make — it’s interesting. Like I was talking to, I shall not use a name, but an individual that runs a studio.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And the individual said, “When you remove the number of films we have that are already in the pipeline because they are based on property we own or sequels to things, and then you ask how many slots left do we have here to make other movies,” this individual said, I believe for — you know, it’s all planned out ahead but for, say 2017, the number is two.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Two. That’s two movies that they don’t already have planned and know about. And there’s five studios [laughs]. The odds are very, very, very, very low and people say, “Why is that particular person writing a sequel to blah, blah, blah?” Because that’s what they’re making.

**John:** That’s what they’re making.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. That’s actually a great segue to our big topic of the day, which is world-building because the kind of movies that big studios are making are these big constructed universe things, oftentimes shared universe things. If you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you think of everything that Disney does, you think of sort of the big superhero movies, they are alternate universes. They take place in a real world that is not our real world. And so I want to talk through that process of world-building and some of the pros and the cons and things to think about if you were a screenwriter approaching that kind of scenario.

So, just defining terms. World-building is generally the process of creating fictional universes in which these stories take place. And so these stories could be novels, they could be feature films, they could be TV series, they could be video games. Increasingly, they’re sort of all of the above. And the work for who actually creates a universe is very different based on sort of how it comes into being. So we’re going to talk about both creator-driven universes and also sort of these shared universes.

The author John Harrison has a great quote. “It’s the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there,” which I think is actually very nice. It’s like world-building is you’re trying to create an atlas for a world that does not possibly exist.

So pretty much everything that a screenwriter writes is going to have some degree of world-building. And back in Episode 135, you and I talked through world-building in the context of comedies and also in the context of True Detective. And so those were scenarios where it’s pretty much the real world, you just made it a little bit more specific. You added a little bit of texture. So it’s sort of like the low-fi version of world-building.

But for today, I really want to talk about these epic big world-buildings where you’re figuring out everything, about the culture of the geography, sort of the physics of your universe, whether there’s magic in your world, and what that means from a screenwriter’s perspective. I thought we might start with talking about a place that we’ve all been but never really been, which is Gotham City.

**Craig:** Yes, the ever-changing Gotham City.

**John:** So this is a great video. This is actually what Rawson had sent through. It’s by Evan Puschak who does YouTube videos as The Nerdwriter. And he does this really good video that’s tracking the evolution of Gotham City, from its start in Detective Comics to where we see it now with the Nolan films and beyond. What did you think of the video?

**Craig:** Well, I thought it was great. I mean, if you are a fan of Batman, and I happen to be, and you’ve followed along, you and I are children of the ’70s so my introduction of Batman was in fact the campy, ridiculous television show. And you see from that through Frank Miller and Burton and Chris Nolan. To me, it’s not a particularly startling point that’s being made here. It’s actually fairly obvious. That doesn’t mean to diminish it. It’s just it’s so evidently true that Batman and Gotham City reflect each other and they change to match each other, depending on how you alter your take on the character.

**John:** What I liked about the video is it pointed out the iterative nature of Gotham City, is that like Gotham City didn’t spring into being all as one thing. Like originally, Batman took place in New York City and then it became its own specific city of Gotham City. And it changed and iterated as new people came on board. And as the needs of what the storytelling demanded, the city changed to reflect those needs.

So you have Frank Miller’s very dark version of Gotham, a city falling apart, which has definitely influenced sort of our modern understanding of it. But if you look at what Tim Burton did, I think Tim Burton, maybe I wasn’t giving him enough credit for sort of his vision that he brought to the Michael Keaton Batman films is that like it’s a city that sort of has no zoning controls. Like everything is built in like this crazy — overbuilt, just crazy degrees.

And so we think of that, “Oh, that’s Burtonesque,” but it’s also very specific and it’s very Batman-ish. It’s the city that’s out of control. And it’s a city that exists so that its hero can exist because without Gotham, there’s no Batman; without Batman, there’s no Gotham. This city has to have this beating heart of crime so that Batman can fight it. And we sort of see that reflected in sort of all the other variations of it.

And so while Gotham City was ultimately created for Batman as it originally stood, it is now this sort of shared universe. So you can sort of see like this is the kind of character that exists in a Batman world. And you could even make a TV show called Gotham which is just about the city and not about Batman itself.

**Craig:** Well, there’s something interesting in the origin story of Batman that I think drives a lot of what happens with Gotham City over time. Batman is rich. Gotham City is necessarily full of crime because it’s a superhero story about a vigilante that fights crime. So, how do you create a world in which you have a billionaire who is so wealthy that he can have both a mansion and a massive underground complex, and an arsenal that kind of rivals any first-world [laughs] power’s arsenal?

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And also, ghettos and slums and streets teeming with people who are so desperate, they’re going to shoot wealthy people for a necklace and kill Bruce Wayne’s parents. Right there, you have this piece of the puzzle which is a disparity of income.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And well long before anybody was saying 1% and that was a slogan, Tim Burton, I think, really did the biggest, the most important bit of Gotham design. You know, and I’m not sure how much of it was intentional or not. I know that when he designed Gotham, he was thinking about gothic. And so you have these huge statues, a lot of huge faces and things. But I remember watching it thinking, “So much money. It must have cost so much money to make this city and yet, everyone is so poor and miserable.” And then when I go see New York, I’m like, “It must have taken so much money [laughs] to make this city and everyone’s so poor and miserable.”

And that’s a great aspect of the world. It’s an aspect of the world that is very human and relevant to us all. And all of the iterations of Gotham have some form of that or another in different ways. Tim’s was very gothic, very art designed and very pushed, whereas Nolan’s is a little more a Blade Runner-ish feeling to it. It’s a little more retro future-y. Maybe my favorite Gotham is the Gotham of the Rocksteady video games.

**John:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, because it feels the most like an actual city, but then there are these things here and there that are so creepy. That city is like a real city but with a serious mental problem.

**John:** So, I think what you’re hitting on here is that in most of these constructed universes, in most of this world-building we’re doing, we’re trying to create recognizable aspects of a world that we normally would be in, but we’re just pushing them in different directions. And you were citing, what is different about this world and what is the same?

And so, people can use their expectations of a place in a helpful way as they’re experiencing the stories we’re telling there and yet, we can also change some things. So even if we go to Game of Thrones, you go to Westeros, there’s things that definitely feel like familiar parts of our world, but they are assembled in very different ways. And so, we will travel to different countries in Westeros and recognize some cultural things that seem kind of like our world and yet, they are specific to Westeros.

**Craig:** This is going to come up over and over as we go through our various worlds that we all recognize, the notion that we are creating analogs to the world that we live in will happen over and over and over again to the point where it becomes clear that unless your world is an intentional contrast and comparison to our world now, it’s not going to do the trick for us. We need it. We need the relation. And where we find joy in the worlds that we see on screen that people have built is in the connection. Where we intend to feel something between us in it is when it feels constructed to the point that it is not recognizable or relevant.

**John:** Yeah. Well, let’s start our journey talking about another billionaire with an arsenal. Let’s talk about Tony Stark and the Marvel Universe. And so —

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** He is Batman but he’s not Batman. He comes at this universe from a very different perspective and yet he has many of the same toys, his city is an actual city. It’s New York City and it’s designed to be more recognizable. Things are not pushed quite so far, but he as a character, is pushed quite far. And he’s, you know, at least in this Marvel Cinematic Universe, is one of the sort of linchpins of this really interconnected soap opera of characters who we can recognize aspects of modern life, but they are very clearly comic book characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. The Marvel shared universe is fascinating. I was a Marvel guy as a kid. Were you a Marvel guy or a DC guy?

**John:** I was a DC kid as a —

**Craig:** Oh, that’s interesting. Interesting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, I like DC, too. I always think of DC as the more religious, mythical of the two.

**John:** The Greek gods.

**Craig:** It’s a little bit more god-ish, yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Whereas Marvel was always, to me, it’s basically a telenovela. It’s absolutely soap opera. It’s cheesy soap opera. Oh, god, I’m going to get letters now. I mean, I love it though.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But the point is, what Marvel does to create their universe is they’re ever expanding the universe but they make everything interrelated. Everybody, ultimately, ends up knowing everybody. Everybody’s sleeping with everybody. People are breaking up. They’re changing their personalities. They’re flipping sides from hero to villain and villain to hero. It’s like professional wrestling. And that’s why so much of it’s so fun. There are very basic mythological religious elements to the Marvel Universe. I mean, they have the infinity gems. I mean, they’re always like creating layers of awesomeness. [laughs] It’s what —

**John:** Yeah. And you look at Thor, you have things that are truly mythological characters.

**Craig:** Correct. You have Galactus who eats planets. And I believe Galactus’ sister is death or time [laughs] or one of them, I’m not sure. And she existed before the universe was even created. So they’re always like upping the ante. Like you have those characters, like The Watcher, all of these guys that are so — the Beyonder. That’s one of my favorite things about the Marvel Universe is that — and we’ll see, this comes up again very clearly in Tolkien in such a different way. When people build successful worlds, they never finish the map.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So if you think of the map of the Marvel Universe, you get to an edge of it and then you go, “There’s something beyond that.” There’s always something beyond it. Whether it is Dr. Strange goes into limbo and all that. There’s always something bigger. So, you never lose the sense of discovery within the characters living in that universe.

**John:** Well, even if the physical geography reaches a boundary, its temporal geography keeps changing because some people will go back in time or there will be alternate timelines, or there will be alternate whole universes in which these characters have a different experience. And so, that is another thing that is true, especially in the comic book versions. But even now in the cinematic versions, if you look at the X-Men universe and they’ve rebooted it and sort of halfway rebooted it so that the characters have some memory of what happened before and what didn’t happen before.

But I think what’s crucial as we look at the Marvel Paper Universe and the Cinematic Universe is that it is iterative. And so, they don’t build it all at once. And there wasn’t sort of one big council meeting where everyone said like, “Okay, let’s figure out everything about our universe and these are the rules and we’re going to stick to the rules.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Instead, they had to figure out what do we need to figure out to tell this story and then what else do we need to do. And as they’re working through comic books, it’s like what are we willing to bend or change or retcon in order to make this whole other thing make sense, to make this whole other thing possible?

And we’re going to be talking about the difference between sort of top-down world-building, where you figure out sort of everything at the start and sort of work your way down versus bottom-up world-building, which is where you start with a character, a story, and just build out as much as you need around that character or story for it to make sense.

**Craig:** It’s very tempting, I think, for people to consume worlds that have been built from the bottom-up and then turn around and think, “I’m going to do that from the top-down.” And it’s really, really hard. I mean, there are some wonderful worlds that have been made top-down and we’ll discuss them, but Marvel is a great example of something that has been built up a little bit like Tim Burton’s Gotham without zoning laws.

So, you start with very simple characters doing very simple things and then everything is piled up on itself until there’s this enormous complexity and inter-textuality and the soap opera is massive. Did you have that book — oh, you were a DC guy. I had the Marvel, I think it was called the —

**John:** Compendium?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was the one that listed every character [laughs].

**John:** Yes. No, it’s great.

**Craig:** It’s awesome. And I just laugh because I got that in, I want to say, 1986. That book now must be like — well, it’s not a book anymore, I’m sure.

**John:** It’s sort of a Wikipedia kind of thing.

**Craig:** I know. I’m sure somebody’s published it as a book because it must be beautiful, but it would be massive.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll put links in the show notes to both DC and Marvel have sort of encyclopedias, like illustrated encyclopedias that I found incredibly useful because a minor character will come up, it’s like, “Who is that?” And when I was doing Shazam!, I had to sort of go through it and figure out like what is this? Who is this character and how can they possibly fit into our universe?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So let’s go from this sort of top-down perspective of Marvel and sort of how everything is constructed to something that did start as being very ground-up, which is Star Wars. Obviously, most people probably listening know that the back story of Star Wars and that it was a very different script originally, but George Lucas sort of kept tweaking it and refining it until the script that became the movie that we all love is very much a sort of from the ground up kind of story. And while there are some big epic forces, not everything was built into the first Star Wars. And he didn’t actually have the answers to all the bigger questions of the Star Wars Universe. He was telling the story of Luke Skywalker and the people around him and the places around him that were important for his story.

**Craig:** Do you think, I have my answer, but do you think George Lucas knew that Luke and Leia were siblings when he made the first movie?

**John:** I do not think he knew that because I —

**Craig:** There’s no way.

**John:** There’s no way. And some people would argue that of course he knew it because I think we want to believe that the creator has the answers to everything at the very first moment. But as creators, I can guarantee you that we don’t know those things.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** The reason why I believe that is like, there are just certain things you would never do that way if you knew they were going to be brother and sister.

**Craig:** Exactly. He certainly wouldn’t have them kiss and do that whole thing. But also, I don’t think he knew that Darth Vader was Luke’s dad.

**John:** I don’t know that either.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. Here’s why I don’t think so, and this is an interesting thing about world-building. You build your initial world and you build it in a way that would make sense for you and the audience. In a galaxy where the Empire is dominating the galaxy, but then the simple farm boy is going to rise up to lead a rebellion, the odds, the bizarro coincidence that the guy running it is the dad of the kid and that he was literally over that planet when the — that just seems crazy.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** But we love the movie so much that it actually then makes complete sense for the second movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It makes utter sense. Of course, you do end up with things like [laughs] Sir Alec Guinness saying, “Well, I said that Darth Vader killed him and in a sense, he sort of did. In a sense.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] You know, it’s like that’s — to me, I always laugh at that line because it was like, “Uhm, yeah, well, you know, I changed my mind.” [laughs] That’s what happened.

**John:** But on the sense of like a creator needs to know everything about the universe and the world from the very first moment —

**Craig:** We can’t.

**John:** We know that’s not true because of Lost. And like, Lost is an incredibly complicated show that I loved, but everyone involved with it will tell you very frankly that when they shot the pilot, they didn’t know the answers to most of the questions. They were actually just like figuring out like, these are really fascinating questions and then when it came time to actually make the series, they had to figure out like, “Okay, well, what are the answers going to be?”

And so the difference between the pilot and, you know, the series is they actually had to find the answers to those questions. And that’s not a fault on the people who created the pilot, J.J. Abrams and everyone else involved, it was just that’s how you pursue interesting things is to ask a bunch of questions and then figure out what those answers could be.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that when Lucas made the first movie, although he clearly intended it obviously to be situated in a longer series because he called it Episode 4, for god’s sakes, the world-building of Star Wars is again very analogous. For me, it’s very analogous to a western. Feels very much like a western. Mos Eisley is Dodge City. That bar they go into, I mean that’s the bar scene from how many westerns, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Even the guns felt very western. I mean, lasers can be designed in a million different ways that felt western. There were bounty hunters —

**John:** Look at how Han Solo is dressed. I mean it’s all —

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. He’s dressed like saloon doors. Like his vest is saloon doors. So it feels very western to me. C-3PO and R2-D2 are classic western comedy sidekicks.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And then there are even damsels, Leia, at various points, is the damsel in the series. Han Solo was a damsel at one point. You know, like —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Both sides become damsels and have to be rescued. There are scoundrels and the rust bucket-y ship is like the old horse. Anyway, the point is, it was so new and so shocking, and yet, so not new and so familiar. The lightsaber is a sword.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It’s just a sword. And we love swords. Movies love swords.

**John:** They do just love them.

**Craig:** You know, they love fistfights and swords because that feels like the most human and intimate form of combat. So, it was all new and yet so familiar. A wonderful job of building that world in a way that we can relate to it. And then when it caught fire, a wonderful job of expanding it in such ways so that you realize there were so much more going on than you could imagine.

**John:** Absolutely. So, let’s talk more about some sort of single creator creations. And the most sort of epic of them, I can imagine, is probably J.K. Rowling with the Harry Potter Universe. And so, this is a case where — because she is writing this as a book, she can be incredibly specific about like this is exactly how everything fits together. And you read the first Harry Potter and it doesn’t mean that she has the answers to everything, but she knows exactly what the universe of her story is and it’s a case of like, she can tell you — she has a good sense in her head of what butterbeer is like and how that spell actually functions. And this is a case where novels give the chance to build out worlds in ways that I would say feature films and even television series are a little bit more limited —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Your perspective on this?

**Craig:** I mean, I am obsessed with Harry Potter. I think it’s a true work of genius. I would argue that Tolkien —

**John:** Yes, sure.

**Craig:** Is the king of the thorough single created world because he not only wrote those books, but then he wrote Silmarillion. I mean, the dude literally traced everyone back to the beginning of time. I mean, he created essentially a religion, it’s just that it’s fake, unlike the other religions that are, of course, entirely real. [laughs] But J.K. Rowling’s work certainly is impressive and I think that unlike Tolkien’s work, her work felt as if it was created whole from the start.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That she knew, and I believe this is true, I mean there’s that legend of her riding that train and coming up the whole thing all at once, that she knew essentially here’s the story I want to tell, this is the world, this is the character, this is the bad guy, this is why the bad guy’s the way he is, this is why the good guy’s way is, this is how they’re related, this is how it’s going to end, this is roughly the span of it. She had it all from the start. Whereas a guy like Tolkien began with — well, first of all, creating a language, for god’s sakes, I mean, he was a —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Linguistics professor, but then, built out from The Hobbit and then expanded and then built out from The Lord of the Rings and expanded it even more. He was more of a bottom-up guy. I feel like she top-downed that thing in a way that, honestly, I find dangerous to recommend to anyone —

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Because unless you are her and she is singular, I don’t know. I can’t imagine that working out so well. I mean, god, she just did an incredible job. Everything worked.

**John:** Yeah. So I think the reason why I share your fear that it’s incredibly dangerous to approach things that way, I think there’s a lot of unwritten books and movies that started top-down and never got finished, because once you start filling out the geography and writing the languages and doing all these other work to sort of create up this whole thing, you may never actually make the product. So, you may never actually finish that work because you’re so busy figuring out like, you know, what is the name of that little city over there on the far edge of the world? It reminds me, I’m not sure if you’ve ever encountered this guy before, Henry Darger. So Henry Darger is this sort of obscure American, I guess you’d call him a writer but he’s really was like a reclusive shut-in hermit. He did In the Realms of the Unreal. And so he built this incredibly elaborate fantasy world for these girls, the Vivian girls, and they’ve been trying to make a movie of his life for a long time because he clearly envisioned this whole other second world, but he never really — he never had an ability to write or connect this with an actual — as something that somebody would want to read.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He was never able to actually tell it in a way that became something that somebody could sit down and read. So you look at Harry Potter and yes, J.K. Rowling has built this incredibly vibrant detailed universe, but she also could tell the story about one kid going through it. And the Harry Potter universe exists and it exists to tell the story of Harry Potter. And everything else is wonderful around it but it’s meant to be sort of a one-shot through the Harry Potter granted she’s doing some other stuff in the universe right now, but the initial series was for that one character. With Middle Earth, I don’t honestly know the backstory of whether Tolkien created the universe for Bilbo Baggins as the Hobbit and then built out the rest of it or whether he built out the universe and then had to find a character to explore this universe and that’s how Bilbo came to be.

**Craig:** I think that it was a little bit of both. Tolkien’s obsession was with the disappearing English agrarian lifestyle. And particularly, post-World War II, the sense that there was a way of life that had been lost to industry and to destruction. And so, his creation was both to make a world that was the kind of world he wanted to live in, but also to then create characters that represented what he thought was the worst and characters that he thought were the best. It’s not a mistake that — although, it’s a tradition to have the smallest and weakest to be the hero, it’s not a mistake that the hobbits live in these little thatched countryside homes that are very English-ey and very comfy and cozy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And warm tea and they’re simple people, you know. They’re simple, good, English, countryside folk. There was a connection to something that was human there. When you talk about this guy that made this world, that is scary to me and I feel a tension in me because I know there are a lot of people out there who have an affinity for building a world. It’s fun to create your own language, it’s fun to create your own society and cities and maps and all that stuff is great, but that is a certain part of your brain. I think most people who have that part of the brain don’t have the other part. Which is the part where you have an instinct for what is humanity. And J.K. Rowling has both in spades.

**John:** Well, and I don’t know they’re necessarily exclusive in so many people. What I worry about is the people who are so excited about world-building are the people who sort of want everything to make sense and want everything to be logical, who want to sort of — who want to believe that there’s an alternate cosmology where everything is fixed and sensible. But that’s not necessarily the same brain that is going to be able to tell a story of a character struggling to make its way through this universe. And so I think so often, it’s so tempting and honestly so much easier to build out all of the fantasy stuff because the actual real hard work is writing the story —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That the character is taking this journey just once and that’s a challenging thing to remember. And also, the danger is, if you built out all that stuff first and then as you’re writing your story, if that character can’t experience all that stuff, well, you feel like you’ve wasted all that other work building out the rest of that stuff. And that’s the danger is sort of overbuilding for what you actually really need. And, you know, if George Lucas had built out everything in Star Wars before he was telling the story of Luke Skywalker, would Luke have gone to more planets? Would different things have happened? Would he have —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Got the reveal of Luke’s father in the first movie? It would be very tough to limit yourself down just the small things that make sense for your one story if you knew what everything else was.

**Craig:** Well, as I mentioned earlier, Tolkien have this thing about maps and part of what he did very intentionally was not finish the map. So for people that are building worlds, it is tempting to, as you said, essentially dial everything in so that it is perfectly complete. Nobody writes three quarters of software. They write the whole thing and it finishes and it works.

But when you’re creating a world, you need to unfinish it. You need to. There needs to be mystery there, because, ultimately, your characters will need to go beyond the map, at which point, you have the ability to — or people come in from off the map.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so you begin a sense of discovery. Otherwise, you’re just waiting for your characters to go visit some place that’s already there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Even in a place like, for instance, Westeros and Essos which is George R. R. Martin is, I think, right up there with J.K. Rowling in being able to both create a full believable, complicated world and also, understanding the way humans behave. Even though it seems like we have seen it, we haven’t seen everything at all. I think we’ve seen what we’ve been able to see —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And one great thing about that show and what Dan and Dave have done so brilliantly is, and you can and see it in the credits —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** As the show expands, the map expands. Go back to the first season, watch the first episode, look at the credit sequence and see how much of the map you see. It’s really important that you just don’t see the whole thing at once. You’ve got to give yourself discovery and exploration and fear.

**John:** So let’s look at how characters experience these fictional worlds that we’re creating and there’s basically two ways you can think about it. There is the situation of like Westeros, where those characters were born into that world and we as an audience are catching up with them just to recognize what’s the same about their world and what’s different about their world. So in Westeros, the fact that winter, when it comes, is incredibly long-lasting. That there was magic in their world, there’s not very much magic in the world. So we’re having to do the work of catching up with the characters who are well ahead of us.

And then, there is portal stories. And portal stories are things like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Those are the ones where they’re like they are normal humans just like us, who crossed through some magical barrier and end up in this strange other world and have to figure out the rules of that world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In some cases, those are easier because the characters can just ask the questions to catch us up on sort of what we missed out on. Harry Potter, I think, sort of splits the difference where Harry Potter is a special kid but he’s experiencing the magical world for the time along with us. And so that’s a sort of a halfway in between those two options.

**Craig:** Yeah. The live-in-it world I think is harder, because your ability to deal with exposition is very limited. Everybody is already there.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So nobody should be asking questions that are obvious. Although again, even when you are creating the I-already-live-in-it world, it’s really helpful to begin with we don’t really know everything about our own lived-in world. Again, I’ll refer to the first episode of Game of Thrones, where the White Walkers appear. Then, they don’t appear again for seasons. But the very first episode, someone goes. “I don’t believe in that stuff, that’s not real.” But we just saw it. So we know that the people living in their own world don’t know their own world as well as they should. Very useful.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The portal world is the easiest version because it’s a fish out of water story. And you’re supposed to be confused. That’s actually the fun of it. You know, Alice in Wonderland is absolutely baffling. Not only to Alice, but to us. That’s the point. It gets to be baffling and we get to be her. The Narnia world is one that we are supposed to be baffled by it at first, but then ultimately, rings a bell on us because we’ve gone to church a lot.

The Harry Potter world is, I think, it actually deserves its own category. I think you’ve got your I-live-in-it world, you’ve got your portal world and then, I think you have the world beneath our noses.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Which comes up quite a bit. It’s actually right here, right now, in our timeline, in our world, we just can’t see it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Did you ever read The Littles when you were a kid?

**John:** I did. I love The Littles.

**Craig:** The Littles were great. So The Littles were a family of tiny people that lived in the walls of a house of people that were I think The Bigs [laughs] who were normal size people. And the idea being everybody’s got those people in their walls, we just don’t know it. And that’s fun. I like that world. And you can see it sometimes it works great in comedies like Night at the Museum is basically the world beneath our noses that we don’t see.

**John:** I think we also see it in dramas and like, in a lot of crime stories. It’s that sense of just right below the surface there is a mafia-controlled universe that you’re not actually aware exists or that there is world of hackers that is just behind that door where everything is very different than sort of how you can imagine things working right now. So, there’s ways in which you’re creating a secondary world that’s existing within our worlds. Basically it’s a cultural world that you’re not aware of because it’s deliberately keeping itself hidden and secret away from us all.

**Craig:** Even when it’s not simply cultural but circumstantial, like for an instance in The Matrix, the ultimate the world beneath our noses because it turns out that the world we see isn’t real and that there’s this other world. Even then, culture is really what it’s about, that the culture of that other world, the real world, is the one that is fascinating to our hero and that’s what our hero has to struggle with and come to grips with to reconcile it with the rest of the world. The idea of a hidden world is to say, when you walk out of the movie theater, look around with maybe a clearer eye.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** At what you see. And that’s fun, too. Like, you know, even Harry Potter. I always felt that at its heart, Harry Potter was really about the world of misfits and people that didn’t fit in. That the world muggle is so useful. I mean, you know, now —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s expanded, so people — like, if you work in musical theater and you meet somebody that is a mortgage broker, well, that guy is a muggle.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] You know. I mean, even for us who work in Hollywood, even people I think that are executives in Hollywood, they can, you know, go to Thanksgiving and there’s their, you know — their friend who is a lawyer. And it’s like, well, you’re a muggle, I’m in Hollywood. That’s what to me, that’s why that movie or that series and the books really work is that it was a celebration of the oddball.

**John:** So, when you first described world-building, you said that it often has analogs in our normal, daily experience, but also, it tends to have an allegory. And there’s a reason why you’re building this alternate world because it makes it simpler to discuss some sort of theme or message that you’re trying to communicate that would be very hard to do if you’re just doing it in a normal real world setting.

So obviously, C. S. Lewis and with his Christian themes, goes through that. Harry Potter, as you described with, you know, that sense of the outsider, the nerd, the muggle conflicts. But I also think of like The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It’s like it’s looking at sort of the commoditization of women’s bodies and sort of what it’s like to be in a society where women are valued only for their ability to reproduce. And so, I think a lot of times, you see people leaning towards these alternate worlds and often it’s science fiction but sometimes it’s just, you know, very small science fiction in order to discuss themes that would be hard to really dig into if you had to have all of the normal real world trappings around it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that attraction to allegory is what makes religion so effective for so many people. I mean, if an alien came to this planet and I handed him the Bible and The Silmarillion and I said, one these people think it’s fiction and one of this people think it’s real. I think the alien would be at a loss to figure out which one’s which. I think the alien would probably pick The Silmarillion because it actually is more consistent. That’s the power of allegory. That is the power of world-building.

Ultimately, the biggest mistake I think, is to build a world pointlessly. Look at what Lucas ultimately pins all of Star Wars on. The force is your humanity, your human sense of instinct, morality, right and wrong, connection with the world around you and the intangible and spiritual. And Darth Vader and the empire are entirely about technology and yet, Darth Vader also has this dark side of the spirituality. So, it all comes down to the spiritual over the mechanical. And really, I would argue that the hero, protagonist [laughs] here come the letters —

**John:** Uh-oh.

**Craig:** Protagonist of Star Wars episode 4, 5 and 6 is Darth Vader.

**John:** All right. So it’s Darth Vader reclaiming his humanity?

**Craig:** Yeah. Darth Vader is the most at war with himself. He has both this enormous connection to humanity and, yet, has become himself almost completely technological. He is more machine than man. And, you know, Luke definitely goes through changes but, I mean, he’s basically a good guy and then he has to believe and then he believes and then he continues to believe and then he believes some more.

**John:** Yeah. Luke has a very common Joseph Campbell kind of hero story that like he has the trials. He’s the called adventure, the denial of the call, the trials —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. So he did all that stuff. But I would agree with you that it does seem to be a show about a series that tracks a man’s journey from darkness back to light from this fascist, soulless machine to humanity.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the first movie, if you just look at that one movie and that movie was made unto itself, Luke is definitely the protagonist. But if you take a look at those three movies and you think of them as one big movie, well, who in the third act climax makes a decision to sacrifice themselves in order to save the day?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And the answer is the hero. I mean, what does Luke do at the end? Nothing. He basically says, change.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then, Darth Vader changes and is redeemed.

**John:** So, all this talk of sort of dark, fascists, and their stories, gets me thinking about The Man in the High Castle. Maybe, we can wrap it up here. So The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s great, great short book that posits what would happen if the Axis powers won World War II. And so, as the book opens, the East Coast of the United States is ruled by the Greater Nazi Reich, it’s ruled by the Germans. The West Coast is ruled by the Japanese. Hey, have you read the book?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You’ve ever read the book?

**Craig:** No, I didn’t.

**John:** So, the book is fantastic. And so, true back story here, I actually controlled the rights of the book for about two weeks. And so, there was — I had a discussion with Philip K. Dick’s daughter who was controlling the rights to the book. And I got the rights to the book and I went in to have a meeting at HBO to set this up as a series at HBO and this was seven or eight years ago. And the day that I was supposed to go in to set up the series, they pulled back the rights from me because Ridley Scott wanted the rights to the book. So Ridley Scott is now the producer who has the series on Amazon. And it’s really good. Frank Spotnitz wrote it and so, I feel very lucky because I get to have this thing in the world and I didn’t have to do all the hard work of writing it. But —

**Craig:** It’s very charitable of you. [laughs]

**John:** I’m nothing if not charitable. But here is the thing that is so fascinating about Spotnitz’s version is that he had to take this book, which was really, really good and figure out how he wanted it to be told in a greater, you know, 10-episode series.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And what’s great about this for our conversation is it takes place in an imaginary world. It takes place in a constructed world in which, you know, the what-if scenario, what if the Germans and the Japanese won? But it’s also about the constructed scenario of what if Germans and Japanese won, because this is no big spoiler, the MacGuffin of the series is these films which depict an alternate scenario in which the Germans didn’t win or the Russians won. They basically keep finding these films where different things have happened. And it was just a great exploration of like what it is to construct a world that is sort of continuously being deconstructed around itself.

So, I would highly recommend people take a look at it. Not perfect, but just really, really fascinating. And what you brought up about Darth Vader, you actually see — because you had spent so much time with the Nazis, you actually see that thing kind of happening, where you have a character who seems like Darth Vader at the very start and the journey of the series looks like it will be him finding something to believe in, beyond sort of fascist machinery.

**Craig:** I think that this is where things are going. It feels very modern to me that when we build worlds now, it’s not enough to just go, look, here’s a crazy other world. I didn’t see Tomorrowland, that’s definitely a world under our noses world, or — no, I guess a portal world.

**John:** It is a portal world.

**Craig:** It’s a Portal world.

**John:** They have a little pen and they go through it.

**Craig:** Yeah, and they go through a portal. I didn’t see that. But when I saw the trailer for it, I thought, okay, I get it. But I also understand that there’s not necessarily anything more to it than that’s that other world. And I’ve read many, many screenplays — I got sent a screenplay recently to rewrite and it was a classic sort of portal thing. And it’s getting very familiar. And it’s kind of fun to see now, for instance — I mean, the kings of meta, Lord and Miller and what they did the Lego Movie —

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Was to say it’s a live-in-it world. Nope. It’s a world beneath our noses world. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that was fun. So I love the idea that you’re in this alt history world which we’ve seen versions of before and ultimately, here’s the problem with the alt history world: that the fatal flaw to any alt history world is it’s alt history. And so, it’s not real. It’s not our world. That’s the point, is that the Nazis lost here, right? So, how is this relevant to me? Because maybe, there’s more going on than just alt history. And that maybe there’s a connection between the two and a chance to perhaps set history right. Then it starts to feel relevant. It starts to feel — I start to get engaged. So I think that’s very modern. And I like that a lot.

**John:** Yeah, so I’m very excited about the series. And it does definitely have — the things that don’t work about it are I think are largely because of the challenge of world-building where you have to both incorporate the things that were so great about the book and also find your own way to tell your own new stories. And so the characters they actually created and added to it, I think are actually more successful in general than the characters who came from the book because the characters came from the book, they feel there’s a little bit handcuffed by what they needed to do in the book and they’re not necessarily the best characters — the ideal characters you’d want to explore this world, they sort of get a little bit dragged through it and plot sort of overtakes them. And so, it’s not their own inner drive to — their own inner curiosity. The Obergruppenführer — I’m going mispronounce it.

**Craig:** What kind of German are you?

**John:** I should be able to do this. I actually had German, but I can never remember how you pronounce. Basically, the Nazi commander was played really well by —

**Craig:** Obergruppenführer?

**John:** Obergruppenführer.

**Craig:** Ober.

**John:** Obergruppenführer.

**Craig:** I think it’s Obergruppenführer.

**John:** Played by Rufus Sewell is fantastic and it’s fantastic because I think he exists in order to explore certain themes that are very specific to this TV creation, not to the original book. And so, I do recommend it for people and especially, push through our friend Phil Hay, his wife Karyn Kusama directed, I think Episode 8 —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s phenomenal.

**Craig:** Well, maybe what we can do for listeners at home and in their cars is summarize some of our tips on how to be effective word builders.

**John:** And maybe when not to be effective world builders.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**John:** So I would urge screenwriters in particular, to start from the bottom-up. To look at what is it about your character that demands the world to be a certain way in order to tell them the most interesting story, because if you’re starting with a giant universe that is completely different, you’re going to end up focusing on the universe more than your character.

**Craig:** Agreed. I would also say to begin by asking yourself the question, do I want this world to exist within and of itself? Do is want to be a portal world? Do I want it to be a world under our nose? Why? It should be important and related to the story — kind of story you want to tell so that you don’t go down one path and then realize you want another one. And I would also argue that when you’re building your world, it needs to be analogous to ours. One way or another, everything needs to be somehow analogous. That’s where the fun of it is.

**John:** I would say, if possible, change one thing. So, rather than changing everything about your universe and your world, just change the one thing. So Harry Potter is a world in which magic is real and that is sort of the fundamental thing on which everything else hinges. So, don’t try to sort of change everything about your world because then people just get kind of confused. And as you’re thinking about this in terms of a project you might be pitching, it’s going to be very hard to pitch something where everything is different. But if one thing is different, that’s very, very helpful. And try to write The Matrix and try not to write Jupiter Ascending. Which is Jupiter Ascending, I felt that they tried to change so many things that you are about three quarters away through the movie before the plot kicked in.

**Craig:** Yeah, I guess my last bit of advice is if you find yourself falling in love with the detail crafting, just remind yourself that that is one part and the less important part and that you have to also be just as much in love with the humanity of your characters and the universally relevant things through which they’re going.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Or what you’ll end up with is what that guy did. [laughs]

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is this fascinating series of plans for a city that will never exist.

**John:** Indeed. All right. Time for our One Cool Things. Mine is very simple, but also very fun. It is the EcoLog 590D. And this is a machine that is designed to cut down a tree, strip off all the branches and cut it into logs. And that doesn’t sound so exciting, but when you actually look at this YouTube video of it, you will think it is the most amazing thing because it looks like some sort of construction from like one of the Terminator movies. Like, it basically this big arm that reaches in, saws off the tree and destroys the tree and cuts it into a log. But it does it so incredibly quickly and efficiently. So, it’s like 20 seconds from like this is a tree in a forest to like this is a stack of logs. It’s just remarkable.

**Craig:** [laughs] Why do they call it — the EcoLog is the most ironic name ever.

**John:** [laughs] It just makes it extra good that it’s called an EcoLog.

**Craig:** Oh, my god. You know who would really love that is J.R.R. Tolkien. He was a huge man of chopping trees down.

**John:** Absolutely. If the orcs had EcoLogs —

**Craig:** Oh, my god.

**John:** Everything would be very, very different.

**Craig:** It certainly would have been a shorter movie.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Well, my One Cool Thing is last week’s outro. Who did that? What the — what?

**John:** That was amazing. So Craig doesn’t pre-listen to most of our outros. But this one was just great. Last week’s outro was by Jon Spurney and sort of the meta theme of all of our stuff. And lord, it was just great.

**Craig:** [laughs] Our quirks.

**John:** It felt like — it was sort of our own Too Many Cooks in a way.

**Craig:** It was. It was just — it was so well-done and so thoughtful and I — it’s one of those — every now and then, I’m reminded that people listen to the show. [laughs] And that was one of the moments. I just thought it was great. It was funny and it was really well-done and so, that’s my One Cool Thing for sure. I want to play it again. I know that we have a different outro this week by Rajesh Naroth, but I want to play that one again.

**John:** All right. So let’s just play it again. So, our outro is by Jon Spurney. If you have an outro you would like to us to play on the show, you can send us a note at ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send questions like the one we had today. On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Or, you can find us on iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes and you can find us there. Leave us a rating. That’s also where you can find the app that gives you access to all those back episodes. You can find those back episodes also at scriptnotes.net. Our show is produced as always by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who’s doing hero’s work on a Sunday. So thank you, Matthew.

**Craig:** Thank you. Thank you.

**John:** Because Craig was traveling, but we are all back now. There still might be tickets for our December 9th live show with a bunch of special guests, so click right over there now. You’ll find links to the tickets and to everything we talked about in today’s show at our show notes, johnaugust.com. Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thanks, John.

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Official Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W65ndip7MM)
* [Buy your tickets now for the 2015 Scriptnotes Holiday Show on December 9th](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-with-john-august-and-craig-mazin) with guests [Riki Lindhome and Natasha Leggero](http://www.cc.com/shows/another-period), [Malcolm Spellman](http://johnaugust.com/2015/malcolm-spellman-a-study-in-heat), and [Alan Yang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Yang)
* [The Evolution of Batman’s Gotham City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-wVFTR0fg) by The Nerdwriter
* The [Marvel Encyclopedia](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1465415939/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [The DC Comics Encyclopedia](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0756641195/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [The Development of Star Wars, as seen through the scripts by George Lucas](http://hem.bredband.net/wookiee/development/)
* [Henry Darger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger) on Wikipedia
* [The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547572484/?tag=johnaugustcom-20), and [season 1 of the TV adaptation on Amazon Prime](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-World/dp/B00RSGFRY8/)
* [Middle Earth and The Perils of Worldbuilding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA6MQHNM2yE) by The Nerdwriter
* [EcoLog 590D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CnAPD39cUQ)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jon Spurney ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))