Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has even more swearing than usual. If you’re in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that.

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

Craig Mazin: Oh, my God. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 662 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we will strive to answer 20 different listener questions on everything from AI to page count, manager notes to emotional investment.

Craig: Get the cocaine out. We’re going to have to get some cocaine in us, John.

John: I don’t think cocaine will really solve the issues here. The issue is that we have far too many listener questions. Every week, Drew gets a whole bunch of questions from listeners, they pile up in his mailbox. Sometimes we get a chance to answer them on the show. A lot of times we don’t. Drew, how many listener emails do you get on a weekly basis?

Drew Marquardt: I probably get 5 to 10 questions a day.

Craig: Whoa. We got to get more. Do you not even know that we don’t do cocaine? I just said we have to get cocaine in us. That’s not what cocainers say. Also, they don’t call themselves cocainers.

John: No, you’re making it up new words.

Craig: I’m clearly not a cocainer.

John: Yes, not one.

Craig: We got to go crazy here.

John: We got to go crazy. We’ve done this before, but we’ve never, I think, actually done it together. There was an episode back in 2022 where I did one with Megana, where I went through 20 questions, then you did one with Megana and went through 20 questions. Yours went on for like three hours.

Craig: Because we love each other.

John: Aw. We’ll do this together. We’re going to crank through here. Then there are bonus segment for premium members. You and I are going to talk through the new D&D Player’s Handbook. That’s why I have a whole stack of the old Player’s Handbooks here-

Craig: Oh, my goodness. I’m looking at them. Glorious.

John: -to compare and contrast, go back to the origins and updates to this fundamental text.

Craig: Foundational, really.

John: Yes. D&D Player’s goes back all the way to 1978. We’ll look at what’s changed, what not changed.

Craig: Gygax.

John: Just the value of a Player’s Handbook. I think back to how crucial of a document it was.

Craig: Yes, and how complicated and not child-friendly it was. Hard to learn.

John: Oh, for sure.

Craig: It wasn’t really designed by a teacher.

John: Yes, but in some ways, it feels like religious text. They’re not designed to be easy to follow. It’s complicated. You can spend your whole life studying them.

Craig: What we have now, and we’ll talk about this in the bonus segment, is the Bibles that they rewrite in American English, which are really weird because all the magic is gone, all the heavy-laden ye and thou is gone.

John: The esoterica is reduced greatly. They’re much more approachable.

Craig: It says things like, Noah said, “Whoa.”

John: Noah did say, “Whoa.”

Craig: Which is almost all the letters of his name.
John: Let’s get into our questions because we have so many. Drew, start us off.

Drew: Undisclosed semi-finalist writes, I just found out that I’m a semi-finalist for the Austin Film Festival. If I were to attend, do you have any advice on how I can capitalize on this opportunity without annoying the professionals?

John: You say you’re a semi-finalist. You entered into the screenwriting competition for Austin Film Festival, and a bunch of readers read your script and you made up to semi-finalists. Semi-finalist will get you nothing in the real world, but it gives you an excuse to go to Austin Film Festival. Let’s talk about what you might do there. We’re going to be there next week, Craig.

Craig: We are going to be there. I think you’re probably on the right track here, without annoying the professionals. Yes, don’t annoy the professionals. They can’t do anything for you. Even finalists are at risk of annoying the professionals only because, again, we can’t do anything for you. What Austin is for is for you guys to do things for each other. You meet other people, you meet other writers, you have good conversations, you learn about how they’re approaching things, and who knows, you might even find somebody that’s interested in working on something with you.

You might also bump into– When we say professionals, we mean the writers. We can’t do anything for you. There are managers there, there are producers there, those are the people who, in theory, you might chat up at a bar and see if they’re vaguely interested in what you have to do.

John: You are there with a semifinalist script. Hopefully, you are going to be able to talk about that thing. Be ready for the two-sentence description of your script, the one-minute longer description of it. Be ready to talk about other things. Be ready to send your script to somebody who might be curious to read it, like a manager, or a producer, but mostly go to Austin to mingle with people, to go to a bunch of panels. Go to the panels that you’re interested in, and look at it as that opportunity because it’s not going to be the moment that changes everything in your life.

Craig: There’s no opportunity to walk in there, find somebody, go, “I’m a semifinalist,” and they go, “Great. Here’s $1 million.” That’s not what’s happening. By the way, just to be clear for people, because John and I are going to Austin, it’s next week, or if you’re listening to the podcast, this week. Approach us all the time. There’s no problem. We love saying hello. If you want pictures and all that stuff, we love doing that, but we just can’t help you with your career. Not directly. Only indirectly through our words.

John: That’s the goal. Question two.

Drew: An honor to be nominated, writes, I work as a coordinator on a show that recently won an Emmy. I’m very proud of the accomplishment for the showrunners, the team, and any small part my role may have contributed to this win. My wife has been telling people that I won an Emmy. I did not. I am quick to clarify that my show won, not that I personally earned the award.”

I’m sure to list on my résumé that the production was Emmy-winning, and I certainly hope to one day have my name on a statuette. I’m unsure how to navigate the conversations around this. Should I gracefully accept the well wishes and compliments, or should I continue to clarify with the, “Thank you, but not really dance?” I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to handle this, both personally and professionally.

John: Now, we are actually going to throw this to you, Drew, because you have this lived experience.

Craig: Oh, I thought you were going to say, “Because this is your question.” “Your wife keeps telling people.”

John: Unlike me or Craig, you we went through this.

Drew: I’ve gone through this. I worked on a show that won an Emmy. I’ve worked below the line for a long time. When your show you worked on wins an Emmy, you get an honorary certificate that recognizes your contribution to the show, it’s got your name on it, it’s got gold leaf, it’s really nice.

My family also likes to pretend that I won an Emmy, even though I didn’t. My strategy tends to be to just bore people with the details of exactly what I just said.

John: And then maybe they’ll stop saying that forward.

Drew: They just nod and they’re like, “Oh, okay,” and then it honors your loved one’s excitement for you without undermining it, but still.

Craig: In this case, I think it would be fair, Mr. or Mrs. to say to your wife, “Stop it.” That’s the short answer. Tell your wife, “Stop it. It’s embarrassing because I didn’t win.” Now I have to explain it every time I’m never going to be the person that just goes, “That’s right. I won an Emmy.” Anybody that starts probing with questions, if I don’t say any of this, is going to go, “Oh, you’re a tool.” You didn’t win an Emmy, so just tell your wife to cut it out. Tell your wife the show won it. You worked on a show that won an Emmy.

John: In the show notes, we’ll put a link to this photograph of Drew’s certificate here, which is fantastic. The 2015-2016 Primetime Emmy Awards, honor Drew Marquardt operation assistant for contribution to an Emmy-winning program, Outstanding Short Form Animated Program.

Craig: Wait. Everybody on Chernobyl got a certificate? No one even told me. Ah.

John: Ah

Craig: Ah.

John: Ah. I think what’s impressive, Drew, is that you keep this with you all the time. You carry this with you all the time.

Drew: Oh, yeah. It’s in my wallet.

John: Yes, it’s nice.

Craig: So you won an Emmy?

Drew: I won an Emmy.

John: Congratulations, Drew.

Drew: Thank you so much.

John: All right. Questions three and four are related. Let’s start with question three.

Drew: Andrew writes, suppose an artificially intelligent machine, like Data from Star Trek or some other AI emerged in the real world and decided to become a writer. Would it get into the WGA? Does the WGA have a policy regarding what happens if or when a non-human entity such as that becomes real, and should it? At what point should a policy about that exist?

John: Data from Star Trek is a fantastic character. In every way, Data is an independent, conscious-living being, and so therefore, would be, in a world in which data existed, Data could join the WGA. I feel that it’s entirely defensible.

Craig: You’d have to change things though, because currently, as I believe-

John: A writer is a human being.

Craig: -AI– writer is a human being, and any material generated by AI is not considered literary material under the NBA. We would have to say, “Unless you’re awesome.”

John: Indeed.

Craig: Currently, no, is the answer Andrew.

John: Currently, no. So at some point, is it conceivable and likely, probably in our lifetime that there will be beings that we would consider conscious who are not organic? I guess. At that time, we’ll have to adjust everything about society. The tiniest thing we’ll have to address is what we’re doing about the WGA.

Craig: Although I’m not sure that those beings will require things like money, but maybe they will.

John: Maybe they will.

Craig: Currently, Andrew, we do have a policy in place. It is a result of our last contract, which we earned through canny negotiation followed by long strike, followed by some more canny negotiation. At least for now, sorry, Data.

John: A related question from Alexander.

Drew: Alexander writes, there was recently this New Yorker article by Ted Chiang. It brings up this idea of a very intricate and elaborate AI setup, where the human can give it, let’s say, 1,000 inputs to prompt and fine-tune a story idea. At this point, isn’t the human still a writer?”

John: Ted Chiang’s article got a lot of traction. This was a month or two ago. It makes some really good points. It also falls into some traps that I think people need to be aware of.

When you say that generative AI is just auto complete, it’s reductionist in a way that is not helpful. Chiang does that a bit. But on the whole, I thought he mentioned some really good points in his essay about why, and we’ve talked about this recently, last episode we talked about the difficulty of doing what we do, and that it’s 1,000 choices per word, per sentence, per project. The art is the struggle. Without that effort, without that work, you’re not making art in the same way.

Craig: I think what he is describing is an artificially intelligent producer. That’s what producers do just at a much slower level. They’re not going to give a writer a thousand inputs. They’re going to give a writer 10 inputs, and then the writer will write something, and then they will give that writer more input. That’s what producers do or development executives. No, you could do that a billion times. No, the human is not a writer. The human now, well I guess in that case the human would qualify perhaps as a producer.

John: It’s entirely possible. You’re giving us a detailed prompt that it’s elaborating on so clearly on when things are that some story credit would actually be like if you were to divvy up, like had this lit of things, at a certain point, you’re writing enough stuff that it becomes clearly that there is literary material in it.

Craig: You would have to write it down and you would have to catalog all of it. At that point, you should just write the script.

John: You probably should. It’s worth people to read Ted Chang’s article because I think it makes some nice points. There was two of the things I pulled out of here is that, “any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of an effort expended by the person who wrote it,” which feels very true to me, and that, “many novelists have had the experience of being approached by somebody, convinced they have a great idea for a novel in which they are willing to exchange for 50/50 split of the proceeds. Such a person inadvertently reveals that they think the formulating of sentences is a nuisance rather than a fundamental part of storytelling.”

Craig: You and I have gotten this. So many people are just like, “I have this amazing idea. I just need somebody to write it.” You have nothing. You don’t even have property. Go ahead tell me your idea. Now it’s my idea because it doesn’t matter because you can’t own an idea. F off.

John: Yeah. Stuff. The last thing I’ll say about this discussion that Chang brings up and just obviously people are thinking about when it comes to AI, is when AI is ingesting a bunch of material and being trained on that, is that more like a human being reading stuff or is that copying and plagiarizing? It can feel like both. Chang makes the argument that if you just took five pages out of a book and said, “This is what I think about something,” clearly you’re not doing any work.

You’re not actually processing that. When an AI generates stuff that is clearly drawn from things, to what degree is that plagiarism, and to what degree is that what human beings view in terms of processing things? That’s going to be an ongoing debate.

Craig: Yes. How we are influenced other things is the concept of homage, the plagiarism, is something that has been going on long before AI ever showed up.

John: Indeed. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were drawn from earlier material.

Craig: Most religions were drawn from earlier material.

John: Funny that. Question five. This is a bunch– we have a couple of questions about this.

Drew: We had a lot of people write in about the Stereophonic lawsuit. Let’s do Jeremy’s. Jeremy writes, I was interested to read this news story about the lawsuit filed by Fleetwood Mac engineer, Ken Callait, and his co-author, Steven Stiefel, claiming the Broadway play, Stereophonic, is plagiarized from their memoir on making of the Rumors album. Does the transformation between memoir and ripped from the headline style fiction push this into a different category than if the play had been explicitly about Fleetwood Mac rather than a fictional Fleetwoodian band?

John: Now, Craig, I haven’t seen this play yet. I’m excited to see it. People love it.

Craig: This is a very interesting question. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit. Jeremy puts his finger on the weird aspect of this. The closer you get to saying, “Oh, this is actually is a dramatization of these people,” the more protected you are. The problem is when you present something as fictional, there is that big paragraph at the end of the movie that says, “All characters within are fictional, and any resemblance to any real people is coincidental.” Unless it’s not.

Because what you can’t do is, say, take somebody’s memoir, change some names, and then just adapt it because you have essentially circumvented the rules of copyright. They wrote it down. They own that, at least in its expression in fixed form. They don’t own the facts, but they own the expression in fixed form. If you are borrowing enough things, then you’re infringing upon their copyright. That in and of itself is a difficult case to make.

I think all these things are always an uphill battle. But if you were to say, I’m going to make a show called Rumors, and it’s a dramatization of the Fleetwood Mac people, the only thing you got to do is not defame them. Defaming is a different deal. That would just be like, “I’m just going to go write a bit where Stevie Nicks bites the head of a baby.” Yes, you’re getting sued. Otherwise, you’re okay.

John: This is a play written by David Adjmi, who was sued earlier over his play 3C, which was a parody of Threes Company. I just revealed why he was able to do that because it was a parody. He was able to be a parody. This is not going to be protected by parody. The lawsuit, we’ll link to the lawsuit here, is interesting. It’s claiming plagiarism, basically that it’s an unauthorized adaptation of the copyrighted memoir by Ken Callait, entitled Making Rumors: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.

Of course, this is complicated because the actual play is not about Fleetwood Mac. They’re not saying it’s about Fleetwood Mac. It’s very Fleetwood Mac-ian. The details are in the lawsuit saying, if this is information that could have only come from his memoir, to me, feel a little bit tenuous.

Craig: They are, because if they’re facts, you can’t own them. If the lawsuit here is by Ken Callait and Steven, we’re going to call him Stiefel, but I do like the idea of Stiefel [“Shtee-ful”], I’d say. If it’s resting on, “Hey, we put a bunch of facts down of things that actually happened that nobody else knew about, and then you made those facts happen in your show,” they’re facts… Then the question is, so you acknowledge that you’re using these facts, but you’re not using them under the names of these people.

I think that’s going to be tough. I honestly think it’s going to be tough unless there’s something defamatory towards them, or there are things in the book that are said in certain ways, like people’s lines of dialog, for instance. If they say Lindsey Buckingham turned to me and said, x, y, z. Then in the show, some character named Jimmy Blingingham says x, y, z. That’s a problem.

John: This week, I saw the movie Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, screenplay by Reitman and Gil Keenan. I will be curious to learn where the boundaries were of what they could say and not say about people. Whose rights did they control or own or did anything?

Craig: You don’t need them. You just have to not defame people. The history of Saturday Night Live is so extraordinarily well-documented. The Tom Shale’s book is insanely– It’s just all his interviews. It’s first-person interviews. It’s a treasure chest if you’re interested in that stuff. My guess is they were drowning in material that they could just point to.

But I do know from having written something about real people and real events that there is a process you go through that is pretty rigorous to make sure that everything that you assert happened is documented somewhere, especially when you’re talking about the behavior of people. Is it either a reasonable inference or is it within the boundaries of what their behavior was? You want to show John Belushi being a drugged-out lunatic or show Bill Murray as a guy that punches people? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that happened. For sure. You want to show Gilda Radner punching someone? Now, we may have a problem.

John: Also, complicated and simplified by who’s alive and who’s not alive.

Craig: You know what? You’re exactly right because Gilda Radner is dead, and you cannot defame dead people in the United States. Everywhere else, you can. You got to watch out for that.

Drew: Can I ask a quick follow-up? Because I know we’ll get it. Is it the frame of the recording booth that would theoretically be the problem? Because there was also like, Daisy Jones in the Six was a show that was basically about Fleetwood Mac that didn’t seem to have these legal problems. Is it specifically because they’re taking–

John: The lawsuit claims that this is from the engineer’s point of view because we’re looking at the stage from the engineer’s point of view? I think that’s crazy. It’s on stage.

Craig: You don’t own that.

John: You don’t own geography.

Craig: A, you don’t own it. B, who knows? I don’t think it would have behooved Lindsey Buckingham or Stevie Nicks or Mick Fleetwood to sue over Daisy Jones in the Six. I think they would have looked like A-holes, and it only helps them sell records. Who doesn’t get helped when we sell a bunch of records? The engineer, because he doesn’t have royalties.

John: You can imagine a scenario. Like let’s say that you wrote a play that was about the engineer for a Fleetwood Mactite band that used all these unique insights of just that engineer. The engineer was the central character of the whole thing, I think that would be a stronger lawsuit, but that doesn’t seem to be what we’re facing here. Lawsuits. Lawsuits.

Craig: Lawsuits. As always, we beg, even though they won’t listen to us, Deadline, Hollywood Report, or Variety, don’t write about these lawsuits. Write about the results. And the results inevitably are settlement.

John: Settlement or a dismissal.

Craig: Or dismissal, exactly.

Drew: All right. Question number 6. Vance writes, I’ve always heard that script cover pages should have the basics and no drawings, graphics, maps, or cutesy stuff. On the three-page challenge, I’ve heard you not only accept but praise some illustrated artsy cover pages. Is this your personal leniency or is it now more accepted industry-wide?

Craig: “I’ve always heard/read.” I’m going to guess from Reddit, other people who aren’t professional writers, people in your writing group, school professors, websites from freaking script consultants. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Look, I’m not in favor of it. I’m not against it. If it’s cool, it’s cool. If it’s not, it’s not. Yes, the default is title, name, contact information, maybe date. But if there’s something cool that goes on the front, sure, nobody cares. Guess what? They’re going to turn the title page and if page one sucks, I don’t care what was on the title page. If page one is awesome, I don’t care what was on the title page, I really don’t.

John: My first produced script go has a logo for go rather than the word go. Because go is such an incredibly small word. The page just disappears. It was a larger thing.

Craig: John, how did you possibly get a career? You violated what?

John: A fundamental tenant.

Craig: What all the gurus say. Gurus. We’re going to Austin, you know what Austin has a lot of?

Drew: Gurus.

Craig: You got it. Tons of them. You know what? They’re there for?

Drew: Money.

Craig: Yes. Tons of it. Taking it from people who don’t have it.

John: I don’t think they’re there for money. I think they’re there for some cred, for some ego gratification.

Craig: They’re looking for clients. They talk about just a big Savannah full of gazelles and these cheetahs are out there. I don’t know about cheetahs and gazelles. Just slinking around saying, “Hey, you’re this close, you’re this close, you know what you just need to do? Give me $10,000.” That’s why I’m going to walk around Austin, just be like no gurus.

John: We were wearing you cheetah skin jacket.

Craig: Awesome. I got to get one of those.

John: I saw a cheetah take down a gazelle.

Craig: Like in person?

John: In person, yeah on safari.

Craig: Ew.

John: When you’re on safari that’s what you’re there for.

Craig: I just wish the honey badger guy were there to narrate all of it. Cheetah, ew. Look at him. He’s taking down that gazelle. He don’t care.

John: Question seven.

Drew: Kevin writes, “As I work on my next project, I’m debating whether to closely involve the original creator of the source material or maintain some creative distance. In your experience, is it better to collaborate with the creator, or can distance actually benefit the adaptation?”

Craig: I’m living this life right now.

John: I think it really depends on the project and the person. It’s what’s going to make for the best scenario for you as the person who actually has to do the adaptation. Big Fish, I kept Daniel Wallace involved in a loop all the time. I wasn’t asking his opinion on things, but I was making sure that he was up to speed on things.

There was another project, another big book adaptation where shortly after we got it set up, it was clear like, “Oh no, this is going to be a bad situation.” I bailed on it because the creator was going to be way too involved in this is just not going to make happy for anybody.

Craig: I make The Last of Us with Neil Druckmann who created the game and he, I think is probably exceptional in this regard. If you’re going to bet, you’re going to bet that the creator’s going to be a problem. They’re going to be a problem because either they work in a different medium and don’t quite understand the purpose of an adaptation or how adaptation should function sometimes, which requires turning away from the material, changing the material.

Doing things that some people would say like, Oh, you made this part “better.” Never, it’s just about different media. Some creators don’t understand that. They just were like, “Here, just take book, make movie, don’t change nothing.” Some creators want to do your job, they just haven’t been allowed to. That’s the worst one. Where like, “I wanted to write this movie, but they wouldn’t let me because I’ve never written anything or because everyone thinks I’m nuts,” and that’s never going to work.

But there are creators who understand, who are smart and flexible, and who are interested in making something that is a proper adaptation that feels different. One of the things about The Last of Us is because you’re going from a video game to a show, the immediate need for adaptation is just there. It’s not like a book where you read it passively and then you can watch the movie. You are moving people around.

We actually had a discussion yesterday about this image in our show of a building and a sign and how the sign wasn’t really entirely in view. What I remember is in the game, it wasn’t entirely in view either unless you moved your stick on your controller, and then you could see it. I’m like, “I think this is fine to not see the whole thing.”

We don’t need to move it so we can see it. These are the kinds of things that just come up all the time, but in passive to passive, creator could be a problem. Kevin, I would be very careful if you’re debating, if you’re debating, maybe just go with no, do it on your own.

John: Thinking back to my conversation with Daniel Wallace and with this other author, I basically had the same conversation with the two of them saying like, “Listen, I love your book and I’m so excited about it. I’m so excited to get into this, but I want you to understand and to know that a lot of things are necessarily going to change just because they changed the medium and I can’t even know all the things that are going to change so far. Trust me that I’m going to protect your characters, protect the spirit of what you’re trying to do, but it’s going to be a different thing just because it’s different medium.” And their response to that was what told me like, oh one is going to be a good scenario and one is going to be a really bad scenario.

Drew: Question eight. Ian writes, I know your feelings about competitions, but what are your thoughts on writer’s retreats? Is it just vacation under the guise of nurturing creativity or is there value to the process of being with others, devoting time to the process, and focusing on craft? How might your opinions differ for an emerging writer outside of industry context versus someone with ties to the industry?

John: I’ve never been on a writer’s retreat. Craig, have you?

Craig: Of course not.

John: No. I’ve been on Sundance Labs, which is like that, but you’re not actually doing the work at the time there.

Craig: That’s super focused too and selective. No, I’ve never done it. I actually don’t know any of my writer friends who work the way we do who have done it.

John: I have novelist friends who’ve done it.

Craig: Yeah maybe they need to just go somewhere to get away from the noise and stuff to write their novel because there’s so much writing for a novel. No, I feel like there’s another way to take money from people.

John: I would tell Ian that if you are curious about it, the opportunity cost isn’t so much. As long as the actual cost is not going to be–

Craig: The money cost–

John: The money cost could be, but if it’s a–

Craig: What do you think these things cost?

John: I don’t know. If it’s a one week, a two-week scenario and you want to do it and you have the resources to do it, and you think it might work for you, it’s worth experimenting because every writer’s different and maybe this is a thing that will be truly helpful for you.

Craig: Here’s one on the Tuscan countryside. That’s just a, can we curse on this one?

John: Sure if you want to.

Craig: That’s a fucking vacation. I’m sorry. That’s just a vacation that costs money. They won’t tell you how much it costs. Oh, they do. Here they do. This one costs $3,500 to $4,500 just for the workshops.

John: That’s a difference too.

Craig: Some people know John and I will occasionally get invitations from these places where they would fly us out and even pay us some stipend or something to be the person that does the work. We go to Austin. Austin doesn’t pay us a goddamn thing. We fly ourselves there and we talk for free and then we go home and just like we do this podcast for free.

We’re not saints or anything, it’s just these things are businesses. Writers’ retreats to me are unless the– I don’t know, the nunnery is doing it. It just feels like another way for you to feel like you’re making progress or getting closer to the dream, you just have to pay some money to do it. Nobody that I know who has succeeded in this came out of a writer’s retreat or talks about a writer’s retreat. Screenwriting is free.

John: There’s a version of a retreat, which is more like what novelist friends have done where they recruit you and to do it. Then it’s not like there’s a classes or anything like that. Basically, you are free all day to write and to work and then you have your dinner together and then a conversation with the other writers who are up there. That feels like that could be really productive for certain people. I don’t see that happening a lot with screenwriters, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Craig: Also, you don’t have to go anywhere to do that. Do you mean there are screenwriting groups that are free, all around LA and they’re being spitting, you’ll hit one and you want to go out to dinner with those people and chitchat. Great. If you want to write all day, get on your laptop. As John Gatins says, start clicking. Start those keys clicking.

Drew: Question nine. Anna writes, in your episode with Francesca Sloane, she said that she wrote short scripts to send in as samples for both Atlanta and Fargo. Atlanta itself has shorter episodes, but Fargo episodes run 45 to 60 minutes. Is it a good idea to send shorter samples to demonstrate tone and skill in a more digestible way for the people reading loads of other scripts? Or do people typically prefer reading a script the same length as their actual show so they can be sure you’re capable of properly structuring a 45 to 60-minute script?

John: Francesca Sloane came on to talk about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a show that had a great very specific tone. I think it’s good to have a shorter sample you could also send, but I think a lot of showrunners will want to see something that is about the length of what their show is, just so they get a sense that you can structure that larger thing.

A lot of times when I talk to folks who are staffing on shows that showrunner is really going for do they have a voice? Do they have a personality on the page? That’s more interesting. They’re not reading the whole thing. They’re basically reading the first 20 pages, like, this person feels like I want to meet them.

Craig: I don’t think there would be any benefit to writing half of an hour-long episode.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: Yes, I do think you want to deliver something that is the length to show that you have the ability to run the full length of the race. If you are reading something that’s really well structured and has great payoff at the ending and somebody understands how to pace and create rhythm and meter across those pages and make the dramatic circle and make the end feel like it was surprising, but yet inevitable, all those wonderful things we’re looking for, that’s also incredibly valuable to see.

If you have somebody that’s just writing some glittering dialogue but can’t seem to make a plot or land the ship, you go, “I might want this person for some glittering dialogue if you’re running that kind of room, but now I know who they are.” I got to be honest, there are a lot of glittering dialogue people out there. There are very few people that you can reliably get a well-structured episode from. So few that it’s upsetting.

John: What might be a choice here is like, let’s say you have the full-length episode that shows what, how good you are at structuring and telling a story over the course of 60 minutes, 60 pages, but then you have a one act play that just like can show a versatility in a different voice and a very specific thing that you can do that no one else can do, that may be a good backup thing for you to have as well.

Craig: Yeah. The more breath you can show, the more versatility the better. You, at least, want to be able to show the fundamental thing that would be required there. Don’t worry about people having some ADD and seeing a 60-page script and going, “Oh, my God.” They write 60 pages all the time.

John: As we’ve established on the show when we talk to showrunners, it’s like they will throw your script across the room after three pages if they don’t like it.

Craig: Correct. If they do like it, they’ll keep going and they may even just flip to the end. Then they might read the first 10 and the last 10. If those are great, who cares? The middle is the middle, we’ll figure it.

John: Ultimately, they’re going to want to meet with you.

Craig: Exactly. Believe me, if you read something good, then yes, you gasp.

John: Question 10.

Drew: Andy writes, I’m pulling into the final stretch of completing a screenplay, which has taken me years to write. It’s an adaptation of some private journals that were written in the mid-1700s. The author died in 1795. Naturally, I assume that the material was in the public domain. Right? Wrong. I just discovered that the owner of the manuscripts, a major university, who published them in the mid-20th century holds the copyright to them until 2045 due to a quirk in the 1976 copyright law. I’m a beginning screenwriter and I would like to submit it to a few quality contests and some managers, but I don’t want to act in bad faith. What can I do in this situation?”

John: There are two very different questions I see embedded in here. First is that like, this is a crazy scenario where something written in 1700s is somehow still under copyright. I don’t believe it, but that’s a whole separate legal question. The second is, do I need to worry about this as a person who’s showing the script around to managers and other people who can get me representation? The second one is much easier to say, show it. Listen, if there are problems down the road in actually producing it, fine. You can show anything to a manager. You can get hired off of anything so that’s not a concern.

Craig: I’m also suspicious of this. Unless this was a translation and they have the copyright to the translation or they just have the copyright to their published thing with the forward, what happens is sometimes they’ll stick a forward on. That makes it something now you can copyright that. But if there are private journals and you’re literally going back to the private journals from the mid-1700s, I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter who owns published, whatever. There is no quirk in copyright that covers that. That said, fine, talk to a lawyer, but you don’t have to worry about that. Like John said, just submit.

Do you think the university’s going to start going, “No”? They can’t because you haven’t even exploited it yet. You’re just showing people something. It doesn’t matter. Then if a company wants to buy it, believe me, they’re going to tell their lawyers, “Go over to that university and either slap them around or give them 10 grand,” and that’s that.

John: If you as a writer want to write a romcom starring Superman and Spiderman, you can do that. Absolutely fine. You don’t control any of that stuff. You can never make that movie. If it’s great and funny and people love it, it can get you hired for other things.

Craig: You’re just not allowed to make a dime off of it until you get permission from the copyright holders.

John: When we say make a dime off, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get hired to do other stuff, that material cannot be produced.

Craig: Correct. Without their permission.

John: Question 11.

Drew: Jason writes, I’m introducing a character we initially only see from the waist down, but they have a brief dialogue with another character. Since the character’s face is off-screen, is OS still appropriate or should I clarify in an action line we only see the character from the waist down? Currently, I’m using both OS and the action clarification. Overkill?”

Craig: Overkill. It’s OS, really means not there. Not VoiceOver somewhere in the space.

John: You also see off-camera.

Craig: Off camera, OC, OS, same thing. Now in this case you would say we only see them from the waist down. That’s fine. If you feel like people are going to forget, you could write their name. If their name is Henry, Henry, waist down in parentheses next to their name. I think just OS or OC would not–

John: I would actually do the OS.

Craig: Really?

John: I would have this description that we only see them for the waist down and just because as people are reading through things quickly, sometimes they’re not reading all the action lines. That OS or OC just tells something like, “Oh, there’s something going on here. Maybe I should look back to see what’s happening.”

Craig: The problem is it gets really annoying. That’s why I’m thinking just, make a custom waist down, maybe just over and over and over. Even that is going to get annoying.

John: That’s going to get annoying too.

Craig: I think you just bold it. Put it on its own line, bold it, make it a bigger font if you want, underline it. You could even do something like halfway through the scene, just write “I just want to remind you, we’re only seeing him from the waist down.”

John: Really what Craig and I are describing here is that you’re going to feel that something that’s right in the context of the page and the context of the scene. If it’s one line of dialogue versus if it’s a whole exchange, it’s going to feel different.

Craig: Just don’t worry so much Jason about like, “Oh, is there like something that’s correct?” That’s a very not in our business way of thinking. We get it all the time. It’s not your fault. It’s this pedantic thing that comes out of Reddit forms and schools and writers’ groups. You really can, just every four lines of dialogue, remember waist down only. He’s still waist down. Can’t see his face.

John: In all these cases, it’s not that there’s right or there’s wrong. It’s what’s going to feel good in this moment?

Craig: What’s effective? What do you want people to feel and if you’re nervous that they’re going to forget something, remind them. You don’t have to remind them with this special way that people are going to go, “Technically, blah blah.” That’s not how it works.

John: No. Question 12.

Drew: Leo writes, I’ve always been able to write a screenplay, go through drafts, editing, feedback, and amends without a second thought, moving on to the next project and never looking back. However, I’ve heard and seen so many people unable to relinquish control and I’m starting to feel like maybe I’m not as attached or emotionally involved as I should be. I treat every script like a rep, like you would at the gym. But I’m starting to think that maybe I should be challenging myself to be more emotionally invested with the scripts. Any advice?”

Craig: Leo, let’s start with one possibility. You might be neurodiverse. Be somebody that just doesn’t feel things the way other people feel. That doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling things. It’s tempting sometimes to look around and go, “Uh-oh, everyone is crying. I’m not crying. Something’s wrong with me.” No. Maybe just you don’t find this as sad.

I do know quite a few people that are very successful who have nowhere near the level of angst that I do, who write with a freedom and less concern. Even the way you and I write, you’ll do the vomit draft, which feels like it would be less emotionally disturbing.

John: I’ll correct that because I think I’m misunderstanding. You think I do a vomit draft and I don’t.

Craig: Oh.

John: I write out of sequence, but no, I don’t vomit.

Craig: Oh, you don’t do a vomit draft?

John: No. I know folks who do the vomit drafts.

Craig: Then somebody does a vomit draft. The whole point of that is they just write. No worries. Let’s just go get something down on the page, and then I’m going to rewrite. That’s where all the– I’m an angst writer, every line, every day when I start, I go back over the day before stuff and I redo that. Everybody has their own– Scott Frank makes me look like I have no emotions.

Everybody writes per them. This is part of what makes you you, Leo. I wouldn’t worry so much about the way other people are experiencing this, but I would listen if you say, “Hey, I should be challenging myself more emotionally.” Also, maybe your scripts aren’t emotional. Maybe they’re just what they are. Maybe they could be a little emotional or maybe this or that, but they don’t have to be super sentimental. There are a lot of people that write that sort of thing. I think you should just be you.

John: I read this as– I don’t think he’s so concerned about what is the emotional content within the scene. It’s basically what does he feel about the work that he has done and how much of himself is wrapped up into these things. How much is his self-identity is wrapped up into this individual project?

There have been projects where I have felt that a lot. I would say going over the course of my career, one of the things I’m happy about is that when a project is just dead, it’s like, “Oh, okay, I’m done.” I am able to just divorce myself and I don’t think about that anymore. That’s a useful skill.

Craig: It is. I think the big lesson here, Leo, is you are as emotionally invested as you are. If you had to choose between getting super overwrought and caught up, or being the way you are describing yourself, I’d go with the way you were describing yourself. You have a better chance of writing more, learning more. As they say, the first few scripts probably are going to be that good anyway. This keeps you writing. Nothing wrong with that.

John: Agreed. Question 13.

Drew: Zach writes, I’m 28 and I’ve been a creative producer for five years on short films in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We want to move into features. However, my BA in theater means that I don’t have much experience with the other fields an industry producer deals with, raising money at the feature level, knowing how to schmooze and making creative producing a job that pays so I can focus on my craft.

To learn those skills and still keep making films with my midwest based team, would it be best for me to move to a larger creative market to try to get a job and learn from the ground up? Should I go to undergrad or grad school for producing or creative producing? Or do I just keep flying by the seat of my pants with my team and try to do it like Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews who made two indie features in six years with Lake Michigan Monster and Hundreds of Beavers?

John: I did not know either of those movies, so I looked them up and they do look–

Craig: Hundreds of Beavers, I didn’t see it, but the trailer was awesome.

John: It’s great that you have a model for something what you want to do. It sounds like that’s what you want to do, is you want to be making their kind of stuff. For that, maybe you don’t need to get a lot more experience. You just need to grow up your ability to make a short film into bigger things and bigger things because those are very specific niche kind of things.

If you do want to really learn how producing producing works, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to apply to a program that does that and get you some experience with folks who are producing bigger stuff. Something like the Stark program would be great, but it could also be overkill if your real goal is to move back to the Midwest and just make midwestern films.

Craig: I think, Zach, this feels like you might want to come on out here. In looking what they’ve done, create a producer for five years on short films in Wisconsin, Minnesota. First of all, half the writers I know in Los Angeles are from Wisconsin and Minnesota. I don’t know what it is about that place, that part of the world, but very creative, very good writers come from there.

The thing is short films, as we’ve said many times already, a little bit of a dead-end street. Short films in the Midwest, a shorter dead-end street. It’s a bit cul-de-sac. I think you might want to come to Los Angeles. You’re 28, which is still young, but not young. It’s a little late to start taking on massive debt to go to a graduate school. That may or may not be the way to go. If you had a choice between spending the– what does Stark cost, $100,000 a year or something? You can spend $100,000 a year plus living expenses and all the rest of it, or get a job that pays you $40,000 a year if you can. That’s a low-rung thing where you’re going to get demoted for a while from what you were doing to what you’d be out here, but you start working somewhere where things are getting made and things are happening and you start climbing a ladder. That is not a dead-end street.

John: I think what we’re talking about is either you go to film school to learn creative producing in a structured program, or you find a place that you work for a producer who’s doing the job that you want to do.

Craig: You get paid to learn.

John: Yes, you get paid to learn.

Craig: You pay to learn or you get paid to learn. I pick the latter.

John: Actually, a good first step for you might be go to some of these film festivals that are showing the kind of movies that you like to do and see if you can get an internship or a job working for one of those producers and really learn from them about the nuts and bolts of it. Because honestly, making the things like Lake Michigan Monster or Hundreds of Beavers is a very specific skill set. Figuring out how they do it is going to be the way to do it.

Craig: What the future holds for that is tricky. They’re great indie bands, but it’s a tough future. You get down the road and you start to go, “Oh my God, I love that band. What’s going on?” They’re still out there touring and it’s– Honestly, Zach, if you could be an assistant to somebody doing the job that you’re doing, it sounds crazy. Like, “I’m going to be the assistant to the person who does the thing I do?” Except that out here on this level, at this scale, the people who do what you do are not doing what you do. They’re doing something else and you do need to learn and you do need to be exposed to it. The whole point of being an assistant out here is not to be a typist in the steno pool. It’s a ladder.

John: The point about raising money, I think it’s crucial because it’s a very specific skill and it really depends on the kinds of movies you’re trying to make. If your goal is to make indie horror films, that’s a very specific pile of cash that is used to do those. It’s a very specific business model. If it is these more esoteric straight Indies, then something more like a Sundance or a Slamdance kind of vibe maybe where you need to focus your attention. Be honest about what appeals to you. I think you are, looking through your description there, it feels like they know what they want to do. Question 14.

Craig: 14.

Drew: Rachel writes, I’ve spent the past year and a half writing and developing my first feature, which I also plan to direct. When my manager walked me through her latest round of notes, I had a gut feeling that she hadn’t actually read the script. Her notes were vague and abstract and it felt like I was the English teacher and she was the student who only read the spark notes and tried to BS her way through.

Craig: ChatGPT. She ChatGPTed the notes.

I’m starting to question why she isn’t more invested in a project she wanted me to write in the first place.

What do I do now? Do I make the changes just to keep her happy so she’ll finally send it out or do I hold my ground and risk stalling everything? This is the third feature we’ve developed together. I’ve put my soul into these projects and I don’t think I can handle another one falling apart. I’m honestly at the point where I might quit if this one doesn’t work out.

I’m too old to keep doing the same song and dance expecting a different result. I feel trapped in this endless feedback loop waiting for months for each round of notes and even got the suggestion to shoot something on an iPhone in the meantime while she catches up. How do I move forward without compromising my vision for someone who isn’t fully engaged? Is it too late to reconsider my rep situation?”

John: Craig, you have the advice here. What’s the advice?

Craig: Fire your manager.

John: Sometimes it’s just that easy.

Craig: It’s just that simple. That was a whole lot of reasons to fire your manager. Followed by the question, “Should I fire my manager?” Yes. It seems like, Rachel, your manager has ticked all the boxes of being fire-worthy. Probably not actually writing the notes, I honestly do. The way she described does feel like she just said, “Hey, ChatGPT, read the script and do some bad notes.” She takes months to respond. What is she doing in between there? She won’t send things out. Send it out. Just do it. If she doesn’t want to send things out, it’s because she has nobody to send them to.

Shoot something on an iPhone while she catches up? What is she catching up with? Legitimately, this just feels like a damaged fraud. Is it too late to reconsider my rep situation? Rachel, it is too late to reconsider your rep situation if you have stage four cancer. Otherwise, no. It’s not too late. In fact, it’s still not too late if you have stage four cancer. Fire them in the last breath that you have.

John: Honestly, I think if you have stage four cancer, your odds of recovering from the cancer are higher than that this manager is suddenly stepping up and doing a great job.

Craig: That’s right. It’s a miracle. She’s sent my script? No. Your bone cancer is retreated. You’re going to live another year. Rachel, for the love of God, I don’t care, I believe you mentioned that, “I’m too old for this. I’m too old to keep doing the same song and dance.” Correct. I don’t know how old you are, Rachel. If you’re 22, you’re too old for this. If you’re 82, you’re too old for this. Fire your manager.

Drew: Question 15. Enrico writes, First of all, I’m Italian, and second of all, I’m poor. I’ve also wrote a screenplay. I really like it.

Craig: Third of all.

Drew: One small company bought the option for my screenplay, so someone else likes it. The Italian market is a huge mess so I want to try different options. Is there a path for a foreign screenplay in the American market?”

John: I don’t know. This is where I think we need to throw to our listeners who might actually have some better insight here because we have a lot of international listeners. If you are an international listener or someone who works with international writers and can offer some advice to Enrico about, if you were an Italian screenwriter who’s written something, presumably in English, we don’t know, and how you get that script read by English-speaking audiences or British producers or American producers, because I just don’t really know.

Craig: Did Enrico write this question in Italian and we translated it?

Drew: No, it came in English.

Craig: All right. Enrico, first of all, just based on this, either your English is good or your translation program is good.

John: Craig, I cleaned it up.

Craig: You cleaned it?

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, okay. Look, that’s actually good to know. We can leave that in. Enrico’s English is not superb. With that in mind, is there a market? Kind of I’ve seen it. I have gotten things that are from somewhat established filmmakers overseas who are trying to break into American television. You can tell from the script that English is not their first language, but you’re doing the math of, I can look past that actually, to, “What’s the story? What are the characters? Is this fascinating?”

Obviously, they’re going to need a partner who does speak English, who can help that aspect of it. Yes, there is. There’s that beautiful show about the young Italian girls growing up on HBO. There are absolutely avenues for foreign work. Netflix is incredibly global. The Italian market is a huge mess. There’s no question about that, Enrico. The Italian entertainment industry is a bit like Italian politics. Mamma mia. It’s a mess. It really is.

John: I was just in Italy for their film and TV conference.

Craig: Did you note that it was a mess?

John: I noticed it was a challenging time for the industry.

Craig: It’s chaos, but it’s not impossible, Enrico. I think part of it may be finding representation who understands, “Hey, I’m not here just for the Italian market. How do we expand?” You may want to start a little closer to home, for instance, the UK, and work your way to do this. It’s easier to work from UK to US than from say, Italy to the US.

John: There’s this conference over this summer was all about international collaborations between the Italian market and other European markets which makes a lot of sense.

Craig: Now the UK has unfortunately withdrawn from Europe, but.

John: But they still do a lot of things with–

Craig: Of course.

John: They are there.

Craig: Like I said, it’s closer and they’re more likely to look to that market than the US is.

John: For sure. Question 16.

Drew: Tim writes, “I signed with a reputable management company in Los Angeles. We’ve been working closely together.”

Craig: Fire them.

Drew: I completed a screenplay that, after quite a lot of time refining it, we’re now at a stage where a director is attached, as well as producers, who have financial backing for offers to talent. It feels like a lot of cool stuff is happening and I’m very thankful for that. It just feels like this is trotting along forever. I’m afraid of years passing by because of the slow-moving pace of it all with no meaningful progress being made.

My question is, what else should I be doing? Is there more I could ask for my management to expedite the process or ensure my new script gets attention? Should I be asking for meetings with people around town, to show both scripts to studios in an attempt to get writing assignments? I’ve already started on my next script and have a slate of another 10 I want to develop further to see if they have legs, so the actual writing is being done on my part. I just want to rally the troops and make sure I’m not missing anything, but also not come across ignorant or too pressing.

John: Great. It sounds like your management company is doing something well, which is basically they’ve got this thing out, they’re sort of trying to get stuff in, but your concern that this is going to take forever is justified because everything just takes forever here, because it does. During the summer, they’ll say, “Oh, we’ll come back to this in the fall,” and the minute Labor Day happens, like, “Let’s get back to it after the New Year.” That’s just sort of how this town tends to work.

Craig: Until suddenly, within 24 hours, everything must get done. It is so slow and then so fast. Head whipping, really. I think the key word here is feel.

John: Feels.

Craig: He said it feels like this.

John: Your management company, in this meantime, should absolutely be sending you out on a zillion meetings. It’s good that you’re starting your next project. it’s good to have 10 things. Be ready to talk about those 10 things. Describe to your management company, “These are the projects I’m most excited about going out and pitching with people. Let’s find who these people are.” You need to manage your managers and by managing your manager, let’s say ask them, “What’s happening here? What can we be doing right now for me this week, next week? Let’s make a plan for this.”

Craig: It’s okay to say, hey, can we go get drinks to just do a little planning for 2025? In that meeting, say, “This is how I am. Here’s just me as a person. I need this and this and this. It doesn’t matter if it reflects reality or not. I just need to feel busy and to feel like stuff’s going on. You may want to over-schedule me. You may want to send me to more places.” Or, “Hey guys, tell me honestly, am I bad in the room? If I’m bad in the room and that’s why you’re not sending me out there, would be great to know. Then there are other things that maybe I can do.” Sometimes we just don’t know why things aren’t happening and we presume it’s because of other problems and maybe people are saving us from ourselves. I don’t know.

So Tim, I love your antsy-ness and I also appreciate that you understand it might just be annoying antsy-ness. Sometimes rather than saying, “Why aren’t we doing things? Shouldn’t we be doing this? Shouldn’t we be doing this?” Just say, “Here’s how my brain works. Here’s how I am, so therefore, what can we do?”

John: Something I did with my reps this year is whenever I’m sitting down with them, I have a one-pager that talks through like, “Here are all the projects. Here are where things are at and here are what my priorities are.” I can just be really clear like, “This is my number one priority. If this thing happens, everything else goes away. Here are the other open loops here.” So we can all sort of be on the same page about what it is we are trying to do, which is useful.

Craig: It would be nice if they did that.

John: I make the one-pager, which is fine.

Craig: It’s fine.

John: It’s fine.

Craig: They are who they are. They all are.

John: Question 17.

Drew: Jenny writes, “I’m a mid-level TV writer who sometimes hangs out and tries to answer questions for aspiring writers in a giant Facebook group. Whenever I post some well-known film or TV writer script, aspiring writers are convinced that the formatting is wrong. There are a thousand things that they’ve been told are verboten by so-called screenwriting gurus.”

John: Screenwriting what now?

Drew: Gurus.

John: What?

Drew: Gurus. When I point out that, no, it’s not at all against the rules or even unusual for a screenwriter to say, all caps, “A SOUND CUE” in a script, the pushback is always along two lines. A, “Well, he’s a well-known writer so he can get away with it,” or B, “Well, that’s a shooting script, not a spec script. You can’t do that in a spec script.” It creates this perfectly shitty feedback loop where they convince themselves not to learn from some of the best writing in Hollywood. I’ve given up trying to help them. Maybe you can set them straight.

Craig: John, should we–

John: I think we’ve done this for 650 episodes.

Craig: I think we’re in our second decade of saying this and you know what, Jenny? I’m going to give you some advice. Get out of the Facebook group. They’re beyond help. That’s the deal. If that group is convinced that they can’t do something, get out. If they are going to give– By the way, I just want you to know, Jenny, it’s not just you. I get this.

John: All the time.

Craig: All the time. I did an ask me anything on Reddit years ago. People do this and then I’m like, “No, just do whatever you want.” They’re like, “Well, you can get away with it.” Apparently always, from the beginning, somehow weirdly, I got away with it. “Oh, that’s a shooting script, not a spec script.” Nobody knows the difference and nobody cares. This is the problem. It’s just a barrel of crabs all pulling each other down.

A lot of people are in these groups to experience faux authority, like they know. Makes them feel better, because what they don’t have is actual authority backed up by, you know, having a career at this like you do, Jenny. So you know what? Get out. Get out and just let them sit there convincing each other that “we see” is toxic poison for a script.

John: I think your advice for her to get out is 100% accurate. I would also say that there’s this blurry line between what is common practice versus what are the rules. Understanding what common practice is like what most people are doing on the page is really useful. You get that by reading a bunch of scripts. No one wrote the rules. There are no rules.

Craig: There are no rules. There are no rules. We have said this so many, so many, so many, so many times.

John: It’s the third chapter of the Scriptnotes book, the rules.

Craig: There you go. There are no rules. It doesn’t matter how many times you say, “Hey, guess what? If something’s really good, no one cares.” They don’t believe you. They do not believe you. They think it’s either a trap or it triggers their sense of insufficiency to such an extent that they need to defend. I can’t explain to somebody why they should or shouldn’t feel sufficient. I don’t know. I do know statistically, whoever it is, they’re insufficient. That’s just facts. Same way it is for professional sports or acting or anything. Just going by the statistics. If you make it, you are an anomaly. Jenny, God bless you. Don’t go there.

John: No. Question 18.

Drew: Joe writes, “I’m writing this in one of the short windows of time that our newborn daughter allows in between feedings, diapers, and sleeping. Do you know of any reliable dictation to transcription apps for the iPhone to help a new dad get some creative thoughts down? Using the iPhone Notes app, I tried dictation but find that transcription stops after a few sentences. Outside of using the voice memo app and then transcribing later on, do you know of a reliable app that can do transcription to a better degree than the iPhone’s internal features? I’ve read about a couple that lean heavily on AI, which only brings me ethical concerns, but might be the only current solutions?”

John: I use dictation software on the iPhone for journaling, so in day one, so rather than typing stuff in day one about what’s happening, I’ll just dictate to it, because I don’t really care if it’s not exactly right. I’m getting it out and getting it down. It’s been my most of my experience with dictation software. A couple of things to think about. Any transcription software is AI, so just get over your worry about it. That’s just going to happen. I think voice memos on the iPhone now actually does transcriptions a lot better and runs longer. I think it automatically transcribes stuff.

Craig: With the new Apple intelligence?

John: Yes, I don’t think it’s– I think even pre the Apple intelligence can do that. Use whatever works for you. Just go for it.

Craig: This isn’t an area where AI actually feels great because it’s not trying to invent anything, pretending it’s doing something new. It’s just using all of its bits and bobs to move your voice into words. It’s just giving you what you do, not adding or subtracting. It’s not editing you as it goes along. Google it?

John: Google it. Open AI makes a product called Whisper that’s actually very good at transcriptions for stuff.

Craig: There’s an answer.

John: There’s a way. I’ve seen elaborate things where people will sort of take a voice memo and then they’ll create a shortcut that then sends it through to Whisper and sends back a really good transcript.

That’s directly possible. Every week there’s going to be new stuff that does this. I would say just look for the simple solution that gets the stuff done that you need to get done. Joe, if you’re trying to dictate a whole script, that’s going to be challenging. That’s going to be tough. If you’re just dictating notes to yourself, great. Go for it.

Craig: I will say also, like Joe says, creative thoughts. I have found if I’m on a walk or I’m somewhere and I don’t have my keyboard with me and I have– an exchange emerges in my head, I’ll just record it as a voice note. Then listening back is quite simple and often jogs your memory better than seeing it in a format in which it did not exist, nor did you type. Maybe just a voice note.

John: Question 19.

Drew: Gary writes, “I’ve just rewritten a script from scratch on a project that was not very good and wasn’t working in its last incarnation. None of the previous material was WGA. At the end of it all, I’m getting written-by credit, but the producer wants the story-by credit for themselves, for Byzantine reasons. I told them that I wrote the treatment for this version, so I’d share the credit. They insist that they’ve written a treatment in the past. I haven’t seen it. That the previous draft was based on, and all of the basic broad strokes in my script were their idea, and this isn’t WGA anyway. I didn’t put up a big fight as my hope is this won’t wend through the indie route and it will become a WGA script and I can let the guild drop the hammer then, but is this at all common?

I couldn’t recall seeing a story-by credit that didn’t include the written-by author in it. I figured it would have to be a super specific scenario where a lot more detail than just the broad strokes were included in the treatment, like a scene-by-scene breakdown.”

John: A lot of misassumptions there.

Craig: So much confusion. First of all, Gary, it’s extraordinarily common. In the WGA you will see screenplays where it says “story by A, screenplay by B”. It happens all the time.

John: Specifically, you wouldn’t see that- you’re not going to ever see “story by A, screenplay by A” because–

Craig: That would be written by– unless we screenplay by A and B. In the case of original screenplays, the story-by credit is irreducible. If somebody sells a spec and then somebody else comes in and rewrites it and does a lot of screenplay work, but doesn’t really change the basic essence of the plot, basic characters, et cetera-

John: They’re going to get story credit.

Craig: -then it’ll be story by A and screenplay by B. Now, in this situation, none of this is WGA. Here’s the bad news. You’re asking all these questions and the answer is, anything can happen.

John: Totally.

Craig: Obviously this producer’s a jerk. That’s clear. Like, “Oh, did you write a treatment? Where is it? No, you didn’t.” Now you’re hoping that this might end up WGA. I have bad news for you. If it does, you’re not getting WGA credit because you didn’t write this under a WGA deal. WGA credit is going to go to whoever else rewrites it under the WGA deal. Now if that’s you, good news, everything that came before would be source material credit along the lines of– based on a screenplay-by, but the real then residual-able WGA credit would be to you. At that point, the producer’s completely screwed because he didn’t write anything under a WGA contract. But currently? Wild West, buddy.

John: We’ll say that independent of where this ultimately goes, what names appear on the screenplay do kind of matter. If it says story by producer, screenplay by you, it’s going to be assumed that that is an accurate reflection of what really happened here. Maybe just don’t worry about it.

Craig: It’s not WGA. At this point, Gary, they could just say written by anyone. You have no protection whatsoever. It’s almost like maybe you shouldn’t be writing stuff for non-union companies, because guess what? This is what they do.

John: This is happens all the time.

Craig: Now I understand you need money, someone’s paying you something, but you got to know when you walk into a lawless saloon, you’re going to get shot. Like, sorry. You took the money from an entity that has every ability. If they wanted to be union, put up the money, show that they have the ability to do it. Follow the rules. They said no and now you’re like, “What’s happening?” You’re in the wrong saloon.

John: For sure. We’ve done it. Question 20.

Craig: Woo.

Drew: Casey writes, “For the past two years I’ve been writing a screenplay for a TV series. I have a pretty unique situation in that I’m quite enjoying the writing, but I don’t really want to be a full-time writer. I have no writing experience. I’m a middle-aged guy, married with two young kids and a career that I’m proud of. The only reason I’m able to write what I’m writing is because the story is about an area in which I have immediate knowledge, I’m living it, and I’m passionate about the subject.

My goal is to write this one story, pass it off to someone who can get the show made, and then return to my current job. It’s not about the money for me. My dream is just that the show would get made, although I do recognize that any show getting made is a long shot. If it takes 25 years, so be it. I was wondering if you had any advice for initial steps. I’m aware that agents and managers may not be excited about representing a one trick pony.”

John: All right. Let’s think about Casey’s goals here and why he’s approaching this project. He wants a series about the thing he does to exist in the world, and so he’s chosen to go off and write a thing, which is great. You are free as a writer to write anything you want to do. God bless. You’re hopefully enjoying the screenplay format, but you say you don’t ever want to write anything else. Then you’re not really a screenwriter. You’re a person who created this one thing, which is, hopefully a template for a series.

I think the best case scenario for what you’re able to do here is, you get something that’s really pretty good, and then you’re able to find a writer showrunner and show them this, and be honest and say, “I want someone else to make this series. I don’t want to make this series at all.” Will a reputable showrunner actually really want to do that? Unlikely, but it’s not impossible. In a weird way, the screenplay you’re writing, the script you’re writing is less important than if you’d written this as a book about what it’s really like to be a forensic pathologist. It’s almost a source material rather than a real script. Craig, what’s your feeling on this?

Craig: You’re not a writer, Casey. You’re telling us you’re writing. When you say, “I don’t really want to be a full-time writer,” what that means is, I don’t want to write. I don’t want to be a writer. Unfortunately, what you are doing is providing other people with a kit, a model kit, and saying, “Here, build something out of this. Once it’s a thing, then I get to see it.” You say, “If it takes 25 years, so be it.” It may take a million years, meaning just the thought that, “Oh, obviously, it’ll happen sometime between now and 25 years from now.” It’s not going to happen. It’s not anything that anybody will be interested in because it’s just a script from somebody that now is a burden upon the person who actually does have to write the show, that now they have to share created-by credit with somebody who literally wrote 60 pages once.

I would strongly recommend, Casey, that instead of putting this in a screenplay format for a TV show– I guess, it sounds like you’re writing a pilot. If you’ve been writing it for two years, I’m also concerned. Write the novel. Write the novel, because that is its own thing, separate and apart. Then people love adapting novels to TV shows, and then it’s fine. Michael Crichton and all that. Writing a script when you’re not a writer and you’re not going to be a writer, it’s like, “You know what? I really like blowing babies up in people. I got a great idea for a baby. I don’t want to be a dad, but I got a great idea for a baby.” Seeing as how you have two young kids, you know what I mean, Casey. It ain’t about conceiving a child, it’s about raising it. That’s what we do as writers, it’s the raising babies.

John: Raising babies. Craig, we did it. We made it through 20 questions.

Craig: Let’s do 20 more.

John: Instead let’s do one cool things.

Craig: Fair.

John: My one cool thing is Rachel Bloom’s Death, Let Me Do My Special. It’s her new special on Netflix. This has been a long time coming, so if you watch it, I don’t want to give too many spoilers for it. Essentially in 2019, she started to come together with a comedy special and had a plan for what this was going to be. The pandemic happened. She had a baby, her longtime collaborator died of COVID. The whole idea of how do I do a comedy special became fraught. She spent years developing this thing. I’ve seen many incarnations of it.

I saw it at Dynasty Typewriter where we do our live shows, I saw it at Largo, and now I got to see the filmed version. It’s terrific. She’s so smart. Her songs are, of course, phenomenal. It does some really interesting things with a form of what a comedy special should be.

Craig: I got to get on this. I’m a bad friend. I got to get on this. Now, a question for you since you’ve seen so many versions of it. Is it Death, let Me Do My Special or is it Death Let Me Do My Special? Is it let, allowed, or I’m asking permission from death?

John: You’re asking permission from death.

Craig: Got it.

John: Death is a character in the show.

Craig: Death, Let Me Do My Special.

John: Yes.

Craig: Got it. Excellent.

John: It’s on Netflix and everywhere worldwide right now.

Craig: Love Rachel. Congrats Rachel. My one cool thing is the Warner Brothers lot.

John: I love the Warner Brothers lot.

Craig: These days lots are getting less and less lotty. Paramount is an amazing lot, then no one’s there. Maybe that’ll change now that it’s being sold. Paramount was the first lot I ever stepped foot on.

John: Same.

Craig: I was like, “Oh, my God.” It was packed with cars and people and-

John: Star Trek.

Craig: -Star Trek aliens in the commissary, and bungalows full of geniuses. It’s a ghost town now. The Fox lot was the second lot I ever stepped onto, which also fascinating beehive, which I suspect is less beehivey.

John: Oh yes, it’s dead there.

Craig: It’s dead. The Warner Brothers lot is still alive. We’re doing our post-production in a building on the Warner Brothers lot. You walk around and you see production happening on the back lot, and you see all these people coming out by where the commissary is and sitting outside of the tables and there’s this togetherness. There are the trams coming through, but they’re not like the Universal, like Universal is clearly turning themselves into-

John: A theme park.

Craig: -a theme park with an office building built on top of a parking structure. Warner Brothers doesn’t have that. It’s no theme park and it just feels like, okay, there’s still some old fashioned Hollywood going on here. Disney is still a lot, but Disney is Disney.

John: Yes, Disney lot is actually fantastic but Warner–

Craig: It is, but it’s very Disney-ish.

John: At Warner you get the animaniacs acts running around all the time, coming down for the little water tower.

Craig: Because they have cocaine in them?

John: Indeed. They’re cocaine-ers.

Craig: They’re cocaine-ers. I miss it and I wish we could get back to it and it’s not — The Paramount is my great hope. The Sony lot is also a lot, but it’s weird.

John: The Sony is weird. It’s divided. It’s on two different sides.

Craig: Exactly.

John: I said that Paramount was my first lot, but I think I actually had a class with Laura Ziskin on the Sony lot first. The Sony lot is really confusing to find your way around in.

Craig: It’s isolating and it’s maze-like, and they really have just like one “street”. Warner Brothers is just beautiful.

John: It’s gorgeous.

Craig: It’s sun baked and it’s so beautiful that their logo reflects all the — It’s got all those wonderful sound stages.

John: Elon Musk can debut products there.

Craig: Anyway. My one cool thing is a good old-fashioned old-school Hollywood lot that is still functioning and I’ll bump into people I know, and we’ll have lunch and who knows? The ideas might occur. It’s a nice place. I’m hoping that David Ellison can revitalize the Paramount lot. It’s truly extraordinary.

John: It really is fantastic. We have a request from a listener. They’re one cool thing. Drew, help us out with this.
Drew: Yes, this is from our listener, Victoria. She writes, “This is a personal one that’s dear to my heart. Scarecrow Video in Seattle is so important as an institution for the preservation of film, and it would be a tragedy to lose something like this. They’re trying to raise 1.8 million before the end of the year to prevent closure. It’s an incredibly tiny sum of money given the amount of billionaire-owned corporations and arts endowments in Seattle. It seems like no one wants to step up. Paul Allen probably would have if he was still alive, but there it is. I know you all care about the disappearance of film titles, something Scarecrow actively works against. It would be a loss to Seattle and the world if this collection was shut down.” She links to the fundraising and an article from UW magazine.

John: Fantastic. Great. Yes, video stores are this interesting place right now because while we don’t need to go there to rent DVDs and videotapes, they are sometimes the last place to get these things. They’ve also become basically social places where you can throw events. Finding that balance feels crucial.

Craig: Yes. Listen, rooting for them. Always difficult to rely on a fundraiser to keep your business going.

John: Yes, because it then implies the model itself is not sustainable.

Craig: It does feel like an end stage, kind of, we can extend your life by six months. I’m hopeful and who knows, maybe this would–

John: Yes, maybe the fundraiser is to get them to a new thing–

Craig: A new thing where they can. Sure, it would be great if — It’s Seattle so, hey, Bill Gates. Why not? Right? Rooting for you.

John: Yes. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com.

That’s also the place where you can send questions. You will find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have T-shirts and hoodies and glassware. They’re all great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the Dungeons & Dragons player’s handbook. Craig and Drew, thank you for getting through these 20 questions.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

Drew: Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, bonus segment. Thank you to all our premium members. We now get to go through one of our favorite things in the world, which is the Player’s Handbook. Craig, what do you hold in your hands right now?

Craig: I’m holding the Advanced D&D Player’s Handbook. This is 1978.

John: So you had this book.

Craig: AD&D. I did and I did not understand it.

John: Yes, and that’s what’s so crucial about these books is that they’re difficult to get into. They’re full of tables, so many tables.

Craig: So many tables.

John: Then lists of spells that are duplicated for each of the different classes that could cast identical spells, which is nuts.

Craig: Looking at this, I can understand why I was fascinated as a kid and it starts with the cover. Art has always been a huge part of these books. This is something that Wizards of the Coast is getting pretty savvy with. There’s so much art in the new one. This old one, what you had was this big, demonic, devilish creature with gems for eyes.

John: Yes, a statue of it.

Craig: Yes, a statue of some rogues trying to pull it out. You had some cool guys in the foreground and a dead snake man. All these wonderful things that made me go, “Yes.” Then you open it and the text is so tiny.

John: It’s tiny. It is like a Helvetica font.

Craig: It is dense and it is for adults. That’s the thing that really I didn’t I’d understand as a kid was, and especially AD&D, how this was not for — I was seven. Look at the tables and charts index. That’s like six-point font. Even that, and we could read it back then.

John: Yes, because we were young.

Craig: We were like, “Oh, no.” I could not crack into this.

John: Hand that to Drew because I don’t think he’s seen that. Also on the table here, we have all the different editions between them. That was the first edition. The 1989 second edition Players Handbook, 2E.

Craig: That was a very popular one for a long time.

John: It was a very popular one. 2E stayed around for a long time, and it got closer just to what we’re expecting now.

Craig: Ish.

John: Ish, but there were still fundamental changes to the rules with each new generation of this thing.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Going back to the original AD&D Player’s Handbook, the systems that it established were really taken from tabletop role-playing, tabletop combat simulation games.

Craig: Yes, it was chain mail, I think was what it was. Gygax had his initial thing.

John: There were a lot of tables. Your armor class, you wanted a negative number for your armor class, which is crazy.

Craig: Negative armor class was very confusing.

John: You would roll your twenty-sided die to see if you hit somebody, but then you had to consult a chart to see what it was. Over the years, they made some simplifications to things to make things a little more streamlined.

Craig: No more [unintelligible 01:16:36] You hit armor class zero.

John: Zero, yes, was the goal. Second edition still felt like it was a cleaned-up version of probably first edition. There were some changes but it still had the same core classes.

Craig: Yes, but you can start to see, if you look at the cover of AD&D Player’s Handbook, and the font, Advanced D&D, right? Then you look at the font for 2E, you can start to see that they’ve actually discovered, they’re starting to get closer to what becomes like the standard — It’s readable and the cover art is exciting.

John: There’s color inside.

Craig: There’s color inside. Look, it’s not as tiny-tiny and they have explanations of things. Original D&D was not meant to be as big as it was. It was really part of this mail-order, catalogy world of people who are into combat simulation. Now it catches on and you can start to see it getting closer. Fourth Edition, maybe it was a step backwards, I think, in terms of complexity. By the time you get to Fifth Edition, which is now 10 years ago, that’s when everything changed.

John: First edition, 1974. Second Edition, we played a bit, no one would talk about that. Third Edition, really 3.5, became the default standard D&D that people are thinking about. In 2014, there was this fourth edition, no one cares.

Craig: Fourth Edition.

John: Fourth Edition, they tried to systematize things in a way that felt very much like it was taken from video role-playing games. Everything was in these neat silos and it was tidy in some ways, but not interesting.

Craig: D&D just started withering. A lot of people were like, “I’m not playing that version.” What you ended up having were loads of people playing like, “No, we play 2. We play AD&D, like old-school AD&D, or we play version 2 or we play version 3, 5. We’re not doing 4.” Now you have everybody all over the place. Then 5 comes along and sweeps everybody up. It was like they fixed so much and made it so much more fun. I have to say, so far, based on the 2024. So 2024 is not version 6. We’re going to end up calling it 5.5. 2024 is too, damn– It’s 5.5 and I love it so far.

John: I think they made some really [unintelligible 01:19:08].

Craig: Really good changes.

John: Before we get into it though, Drew, this is your first time seeing any of these books. What is your reaction to them?

Drew: My reaction to the original AD&D book is: that is my hell.

Craig: Yes, terrifying, right?

Drew: Terrifying.

Craig: It’s intimidating.

Drew: The character classes, too, just the words get overwhelming. When you look at the table of contents, this is obviously, this is a manual. I can understand if you’re going to find a specific thing, it’s very helpful for that. Looking at the difference between the chapters, like chapter 8 into chapter 9, you can’t even tell where–

Craig: No, there’s zero layout. By the way, the 5th edition had no real index, no real good chaptering.

John: If you look at my copy here, I’ve added little tabs to the edge so you can find stuff.

Craig: We all added tabs, which is insane. Thankfully now they have a good index, although everything is also digital now, so it’s a little easier. Look at the difference in thickness.

We’re looking at the second edition and the original, versus 2024. ’24 has so many more pages. Why? Less information in this handbook. Bigger font. More artwork.

John: So much more artwork, all in color.

Craig: So much more fun and things are laid out carefully, so when you get into spells, like here, I’m into the spell section. Look.

Drew: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Craig: There’s five spells per page. How many spells per page in the in the D&D?

John: Oh God. 10?

Craig: More? Look at this. It’s insane. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny. Look at how long the descriptions are. Based on how long the descriptions are here, they really also just got good at–

John: Yes, summarizing or basically standardizing on how to talk about things. How to talk about the diameter of an [unintelligible 01:20:48] something like that. Let’s talk about the function, though, of a player’s handbook because it’s a manual meant to provide instructions, but it’s also a reference material. You’re constantly referring back to things in it. That’s the source of truth for everyone playing. Everyone agrees to be the same thing. Even though it’s called the player’s handbook, it’s really the handbook for everyone because all of it’s the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Craig: Dungeon Master’s Guide is optional. It just gives you optional extra stuff to learn and consider.

John: It gives you descriptions of magical items and things like that.

Craig: Some rules about cover in combat and little stuff like that, which is great. I mean, I have it. If you’re a DM, you should have it, but the handbook is all you need.

John: Yes. Then, of course, the third book in the Trinity would be a Monster manual. That was from the very start.

Craig: That’s just downloadable content. It’s extra stuff.

John: What is so different about– because you and I both started playing again with the 2014 rules. As we started playing, we were bemoaning the fact that this player’s handbook is so hard to find some stuff in. But then over the years, everything was just online. Now, as we were playing last night, we just Google a thing. If we needed to know what is the damage of a thrown trident, we’re googling that. We’re not looking up on a book.

Craig: Right. If you’re inside your VTT, like roll 20, go to the companion. You’re on D&D Beyond, just look it up. It’s all integrated in there. Yes, there are also third-party websites that have compiled everything. Finding stuff now, no problem. What I really appreciate about the– We don’t need to get to the esoteric of the rules changes. I think people will fall asleep.

But what I do love about the 5.5, the new manual, is that it spends time up front doing the one thing I wish they had done in 1978 for seven-year-old me, which is to go, “What is this actually? What is this game?” Because I was like, what I know about games is there’s a board and you move around and you get to the end, how do you win, all these things. That’s not how D&D works but they never freaking told you that. In the original book, they’re just like [unintelligible 01:22:54] Not that good.

John: Basically, it’s like, here are your attributes, like strength and intelligence.

Craig: What am I doing?

John: What are you doing? This book does a very smart job is it really talks through the little transcript of like, these are players playing the game, and this is what they’re saying and doing around the table.

Craig: This is how the game works.

John: Yes, exactly. You’re talking about the players independently of the characters that they’re playing, which is a crucial distinction there.

Craig: Yes, and teaching you how the DM interacts to provide boundaries, tests, challenges, information. All of that stuff is so important. Just having that at the beginning to say, if you have no idea how this works, it’s not like a game.

John: If you were to pick up the original player’s handbook, or really any player’s handbook up to now, and just like, “How does this work?” You would have a very hard time doing it unless someone could show you. This, I think you could actually pick up. If you actually started reading from page one, you would get something. These books were never designed to be read from page one, but this one you actually could.

Craig: Yes, this is an excellent evolution just from the point of view of clarity and then all the rules changes. Basically, the player base of D&D is expanded dramatically but at its core, there will always be a lot of people who are on the spectrum. When I talk to my daughter who loves Elden Ring, I’m like– and she’s autistic. I’m like, “This is a game made by autistic people for autistic people.” And D&D at its core, it really does appeal to people on the spectrum.

People on the spectrum are remarkably good at parsing rules, finding loopholes, exploits, what we call cheese in D&D, like ways to just easily do something that’s supposed to be hard, working various synergies. Over time, the rules-keepers, Jeremy Crawford, et cetera, start to shape things to cut off some of those loopholes, or if things seemed like they were too powerful, nerf them, as we say. Things seem too weak, buff them. They’ve done a really good job with that without breaking stuff.

John: Absolutely. The other thing I think this new version does, and it finds a good happy medium in there, is responding to how we think about things in 2024, which are different than 2014 and earlier years. Instead of races, we talk about species. There’s much less emphasis on what your species is, in terms of what special things it gives you. Classically, going back to the first one, like dwarves get plus one on strength or something.

Craig: They still have it. They’re walking a line clearly, so there is something a little weird about constantly going on– the word racial comes up a lot in D&D, like why do you have dark vision? Oh, it’s racial. There’s class attributes, racial attributes. Everybody gets a little squirmy about that now. They still have it, but they have deemphasized a lot of that, and they put way more of it into your background, which used to be a completely useless thing. It gave you two proficiencies and your skills, who cares?

John: Or loot.

Craig: Now the ability scores are connected to your background, not your race. What you end up with– your species, sorry. What you end up with your species are things like dark vision, can’t be put to sleep if you’re an elf. Look, there are no elves, there are no dwarves, there are no [unintelligible 01:26:20] or any of these things. Fantasy is fantasy and we can all– but we recognize, like when you look at the archetypes of these things going back to Tolkien, there are some tropes that work their way in. I think they handle the sensitivities here well without wandering into performative. I thought it was well managed.

John: Absolutely. It’s also a fairly public process, which is a challenging thing to do. As they were developing this new player’s handbook, they went through all these–

Craig: Testing cycles.

John: Testing cycles, basically. They would show you current state of it. You could download it and play it and see what that was like. That’s scary, but I think it was useful because there were big things they were going to try to do that they took out.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Things like they were going to combine the spell list in this different way that nobody liked.

Craig: That’s what’s great about playtesting, especially with the core D&D audience. They’ll tell you like, “I hate this,” or you’ll watch them abuse something. It’s all about balance. I think on the whole, this 5.5 version tilts things more towards the player.

John: It tilts things more towards fun, which I think is crucial.

Craig: That’s what does make fun, right? Now, you do need to challenge players and make it — There’s a little bit of a–

John: Creep. Yes.

Craig: Mission creep, where you get more stuff, so then the monsters get more stuff, or else you’re just walking over everybody and you don’t care. That’s always interesting to keep an eye on. But I also love the way that they basically give everybody a feat to start with, because feats are things that a lot of players just sort of skipped past. They’re also really smart about how they’re handling multi-classing because they have two wings. They have the casual players who really don’t dig in too deep. Then they have the real D&D nerds who will go crazy and figure out that if you become a Paladin and a Sorcerer, now you’re a Sorcadin and you can do all this cool like, “Oh,” and then it gets crazy.

John: Absolutely. I think they have to both reward the person who wants to do that kind of thing and also not make it so that it breaks the game for anybody who doesn’t want to do it.

Craig: They are aware as anyone that a game is only as good as its DM. Have they put the new DM?

John: No.

Craig: That I’m hoping does the similar thing in the beginning that this handbook does, which is to teach DMs a little bit, because the bottom line is they’ve made this amazing system. If you have a bad DM, it’s a bad game.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: Just as simple as that. If you have a good one, it’s a good one.

John: Yes. The DM is the DJ, it’s the host of the party, it’s the person who’s–

Craig: Storyteller. That’s also the person that needs to figure out how to balance things so that you are scared, and then when you succeed, you feel something as opposed to just, “Meh, next.” It’s tricky. You’ve been doing a great job. John has been our DM now for quite some time in this campaign, and Michael’s a good DM. We have great DMs.

John: We do and we have a great new player’s handbook.

Craig: We do.

John: Thank you much.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

Links:

• Scriptnotes LIVE! at Austin Film Festival
• Drew’s Emmy certificate
• Why AI Isn’t Going to Make Art by Ted Chiang for The New Yorker
• The Stereophonic Lawsuit
• Rachel Bloom’s “Death, Let Me Do My Special” on Netflix
• Warner Bros. Studios Burbank
• Save Scarecrow Video in Seattle
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is episode 661 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, why is screenwriting, both the craft and the profession, so difficult? Why are the people who were really good in school not necessarily good at screenwriting?

Craig: Nerds.

John: We’ll take a look at what’s weird about screenwriting and why skills in other areas don’t always translate well. Then it’s another round of the three-page challenge where we look at submissions from our listeners and give our honest feedback. In our bonus segment for premium members, how do you talk about movies and series without spoiling them? We’ll offer our tips and tricks and suggestions.

Craig: We are five episodes away from 666.

John: Now, Craig, let’s talk about this because Drew brought this up. We need to think of something for episode 666, the number of the beast.

Craig: It’s almost going to line up with Halloween. It won’t but it’s close.

John: It won’t. It’s close-ish.

Craig: I feel like we should have Megana on because, A, it’s spooky season, B, 666, it feels like she would have input.

John: Yeah. Should we focus on devil and possession movies?

Craig: That’s a great idea, actually. The Exorcist is one of my favorite movies.

John: Let’s do it.

Craig: Yes. I am not a horror movie aficionado. I like a good horror movie, but I’m not somebody that subscribed to Fangoria when I was a kid and saw all those slasher films like the ‘80s. So Drew, you remember the ‘80s.

Drew Marquardt: Oh, yeah.

Craig: John and I would walk into a video store, not Blockbuster, didn’t exist yet.

John: Our local video store.

Craig: Local video store. There would be a wall, just a solid wall of videotapes of nothing but movies where people slashed each other with blades. They all had great names like I Dismember Mama. There were like twelve Prom Nights. I never saw any of them. Wasn’t necessarily my thing, but The Exorcist had a profound impact on me. I do think it’s an incredible film and well worth discussing.

John: Yes, let’s do it. I haven’t seen The Exorcist probably since it came out. Honestly, I think most of my experience with The Exorcist has been while my parents were out, I would be watching it on TV and get so scared that I have to change the channel.

Craig: That’s correct. The other film that we should probably take a look at is a movie that, and I’m going to get in so much trouble, but it’s too late at this point, right, for me, is The Omen. Because The Omen came out somewhat contemporaneously with The Exorcist, not inspired by, but it existed in part because of The Exorcist. The Omen is the film that made a big deal about 666. I think The Omen is an inferior film to The Exorcist. It would be interesting to compare and contrast.

John: Sure.

Craig: There are some wonderful things in The Omen. It’s still better than most movies that try and do possession stuff now, but not as good as The Exorcist. The Exorcist also, and we’ll get there at episode 666, is a fantastic example of a film that is in a genre where almost every movie is bad and somehow they were great. That’s fascinating to me.

John: Yeah. There’s lots of examples of police procedurals or we’ve got to find the killer movies. Then there’s Silence of the Lambs, which is just like such a cut above–

Craig: Something else, right? It’s not doing anything necessarily overtly different. It’s worth digging into what they do subtly that does make it better.

John: Fantastic. This discussion of the video store we used to go to, it’s reminding me of a conversation I had this last week with my reps. We were talking about how the business was overall. We’re saying like, “Okay, well, streaming has never come back to what it was before. There’s never going to be as many deals as there were.” They were referring back to, oh, but we’re now never going to get back to the era of made-for-home video and the ability to make a zillion movies because you knew you could make a profit off of them on home video.

Craig: Unless something happens. That’s the thing.

John: Unless something happens. It totally could happen.

Craig: Yes. I don’t think anybody saw home video on the horizon in the ‘60s, for instance. Maybe some engineers at early Sony and their Betamax experiments, they were thinking, “Oh, maybe.”

I always think of that moment in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones shows Will Smith how the aliens have figured out how to make a tiny CD and that he’s going to have to buy the White Album all over again. The entertainment business is really good at figuring out ways to get us to buy the same thing we already own over and over and over. Some new format, some new thing. It’s almost inevitable. We all figured like, “Oh, streaming, I guess, one day would be–“ We just didn’t realize how fast and how intense it would be.

John: I think we all assumed that, okay, well, this is going to kill home video because you’ll just stream stuff. We didn’t realize there’d be a made-for-streaming boom that would change the industry, but then it would contract again and leave a lot of people– there’d be a musical chairs quality of it.

Craig: We had a bubble. I think that’s fair to say. What did Landgraf call peak television, peak TV? 600 and some odd, maybe 666? It was possibly 666 streaming television series. That’s obviously the work of Satan. What it’s back down to, I think a lot of people are thinking is some abnormally small number. I suspect we still have more television shows available now than we did, say, in the ‘90s. It was networks and some basic cable.

John: In addition to things that were made for streaming, we have things that were made for international audiences, made for global audiences that are available now. We’re watching series that are in English or other languages from other places too. There’s a lot more content still.

Craig: There is. There’s a ton of stuff. The contraction, I think the absolute number of television shows is it’s not something that’s going to make anyone feel better if they were employed within that bubble. I don’t think they’re going to sit there and go, “Well, but there’s still a few more than there were in the ‘90s.” It’s not exactly a relief. Contraction is difficult, even if it follows expansion.

John: Talking with my reps this week, we had a dinner. I’ve got a sampling of what they’re experiencing because you and I, we all have our own experiences and our friends we’re talking to. Reps, they’re making a bunch of deals all the time. I was asking them what’s happening? They say there are a lot of deals being made and pilots are selling, and stuff is selling, and pitches are selling, but there’s not flow. There’s a lot of one-off things that are happening and it’s busy, but not in a regular way and it’s not a predictable way. You can’t say, “Oh, this is how it’s building up to this thing.” The machine is shuddering.

Craig: It’s trying to figure itself out.

John: Which feels accurate.

Craig: That’s right. We have one predominant streaming service that is very successful at what they do, which is obviously Netflix. There’s Apple, who I don’t think care necessarily because they have more money than most nations. There’s Amazon, who I think presents their streaming service probably as some loss leader to make money off of their core business.

John: They want to make a lot of movies.

Craig: They do. I’m thinking about what your representative said about the flow.

Amazon and Apple probably aren’t going to create this rhythmic vacuum that you need to fill. Obviously, Netflix has that machinery. How Max and Peacock and Disney Plus function, am I missing one? Hulu? Hulu is Disney Plus. Paramount is Peacock?

John: No, Paramount is Paramount.

Craig: Oh, they’re their own?

John: Paramount CBS.

Craig: Paramount Plus. Paramount CBS. Right. Of course. How could I have possibly confused these? All of them, I think, are still trying to figure out how much, how frequently.

John: What’s the right number?

Craig: What’s the right number? What’s the right rhythm? That makes complete sense to me.

John: On the feature side, what I was hearing from them is that studio sides are saying the covers are bare for right now. There’s not the next thing to put into production. Summer 2026 is going to be super jam-packed, every weekend is full, which is great. Good problems to have.

Craig: The strike.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: That’s bottom line, right? It’s going to happen. It’s a really interesting thing. When I talk to people, what I often hear is, “We need stuff, but it’s hard for us–“ This is them talking about their own internal process as buyers. It’s not as easy as it used to be to get your bosses to agree to buy something.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: So you are responsible if you’re on a certain level at one of these places. I’ve talked to people, streamers and everywhere, and they’ll say, “I need to get five shows on the air next year. I don’t have them. I can’t get them to pay for the things I want. I can get them to pay an insane amount of money, but only when the algorithm says that it fits their thing. But I know that we already have those–“

It’s almost like we have a bunch of people making a lot of food on the street, and we have a bunch of hungry people driving around, and there’s somebody next to the hungry people going, “No, just keep going, or try something else, or go somewhere else.” I can see why it’s difficult. Yes, the machine is not functioning particularly efficiently right now.

John: It’s like a dating app where the algorithm is wrong and swiping one way or another way. You’re not matching up with the interested parties.

Craig: Yes. Yes. That’s actually a great idea for a dating app, where if you swipe right or left, it has to go through an intermediary who considers whether or not you’ve made the right choice.

John: Yes. I like that.

Craig: Maybe changes it.

John: Yes. Maybe you designate a friend who is actually a serious concierge there who’s like, “No, I don’t think that we want this.”

Craig: “Actually, you really should give this person a shot. It’s a bad pick, I know. Give them a shot.” I think that might be nice.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Let’s get into that.

John: You don’t do app development, but my company does do app development. This is my segue into saying that we’re actually hiring a new person. One thing I’ve learned over doing 12 years of this podcast is our audience are the best, smartest people in the world. If we need to hire somebody for somebody, this podcast is the first place to start. That’s how we found the person who fixed our WordPress plugins, the video game that we’re doing. Let’s do this.

We are hiring a person to do marketing for us, for Highland, Weekend Read, Bronson Watermarker, Writer Emergency Pack, AlphaBirds, and we need somebody who’s more of a manager than a creative. Somebody who can oversee Instagram ad campaigns, app store search optimizations, really be able to tell us what’s working and what’s not, because it’s not in our skill set. We need somebody who just does this stuff that we don’t do especially well.

Craig: Where in the world will you find somebody that knows anything about social media optimization, SEO?

John: SEO.

Craig: Yes, I’m going to guess 89% of our audience is like, “I can do that. I’m already doing that.”

John: We should stress, you probably already are doing this. We don’t want somebody who’s like, “I could learn something.” No, you need to show that you actually have done this.

Craig: Some experience here.

John: Oh, we’re pretty flexible on what the position looks like. It could be part-time or full-time. It could be fully remote. It could be a Los Angeles person. You’re probably based in the US, but if we could hire you or contract with you overseas, this may be doable. Crucially, we need somebody who already knows and is in the Mac and iOS ecosystem, because that’s what we make. You need to be part of that space. You need to know what you’re doing here in this.

Craig: You need to be good.

John: You need to be good.

Craig: Do a good job.

John: We’re going to put up a link in the show notes to a webpage that talks through what we’re looking for. If you are that person or you know that person, take a look at that. If you are the candidate, submit your stuff.

Craig: This is exciting. Does the job pay $850,000 a year?

John: It does not. It pays an amount commensurate to what the job is.

Craig: That’s fair. That sounds fair. Yes.

John: We have some follow-up. Last week, we talked about Moneyball.

Craig: Moneyball.

John: It was such a good episode. Everyone completely agreed with everything we said on the show. There was no feedback whatsoever, right?

Drew: No, my inbox has turned into an AM radio call-in show.

Craig: That’s weird. Do sports fans have any opinions?

Drew: Oh, yeah. I get stats on Johnny Damon and his–

Craig: Johnny Damon. Great. Let’s have the Johnny Damon argument. I want to.

John: Craig, you were wrong about baseball. For one thing, there is a clock because now there’s a pitch clock.

Craig: Let’s talk about the pitch clock. We actually got that note from, I believe it was a scout with the Tampa Bay Rays organization, which is awesome. I stand quasi-corrected. One of the rules changes that I referred to, I referred to a bunch of rules changes in that episode. One of them, most importantly, is the pitch clock, which makes the game go faster. The word clock there, I think would better be described as timer.

It’s a little bit like the shot clock in basketball. You have a certain amount of time to do something, or there is a, in basketball, the foul or turnover, or in baseball, it’s a strike, or it’s a ball, depending on which side of the– but the game itself has no timer. You can have an at-bat that lasts one pitch long. You can have an at-bat that lasts zero pitches long. If there’s a guy at the plate and there’s a man on first, there’s two outs, and the pitcher picks that guy off first base, inning over, man at home didn’t swing, got no pitches.
You can have an at-bat that lasts 18 pitches, all within the confines of pitch clocks.

So yes, there is a small element of a timer, but the game itself, no one can tell you at the beginning of a baseball game how long that game will last. Everyone can tell you how long a football game will be in terms of game time play, or a hockey game, or a basketball game.

John: The larger point, in terms of being a clock and not being a clock, most sports are frantic. There’s just a lot of activity suddenly all at once. Baseball, yes, there are bursts of activity, but most of it is very open and people can take their time to do a thing.

Craig: Absolutely, and innings last as long as they last, and there are nine of them. In football, a series of downs, you can have possession of a football and you keep getting a new first down, that’s great, but the clock keeps getting eaten up.

John: Yes, so unless you’re able to stop the clock by doing the thing, yes.

Craig: You can stop, but when you stop the clock, there’s no more playing, right? Then everybody talks, and then they get back and then the clock restarts. While that is a good point from the scout that there is now an element of time, where there used to be no element of time– the only element of time that there used to be in baseball was, if there’s a visit to the mound, let’s say the pitcher is in trouble or there’s a situation that requires discussion, either the pitching coach or the manager would go out to the mound, bring in the infielders, and they would all have a huddle on the mound and chat.

The umpire, at some point, will mosey on over and go, “All right guys, it’s enough. We got to go get back to playing baseball,” When? Uhh when he feels like it. Like, “Ah, it’s enough.” That’s the only thing I remember prior to the pitch clock.

John: All right, more follow-up, we talked about residuals in 658 and the fact that they are now digitally depositable.

Drew: E&A writes, “While I appreciate the greater efficiency of having residuals be direct deposit, I would like to stand up for the joys of the home-delivered paper residual. It is always a cheery surprise, a bright spot in the day, the flash of green among the mailers, the happy announcement to the household, the ritual chant of, “Big money, big money, big money,” and finally, the reveal of a quantity which may range wildly, but which is always better than nothing.

Additionally, there’s the hopefully fond memories evoked by the source of the residuals, gratitude for the achievements of the WGA in securing these residuals, and sometimes even a sense of abundance in the universe. So until paper cuts or affluence dim our delight in the little green envelopes, this house will never direct deposit our residuals.”

John: I’m completely in agreement with E&A. I loved the green envelopes, and I loved opening them and I loved having– predict how big a check would be. I would say, “Oh, it’s from Sony,” and he would nail it within 1%. He was so good at it. It’s great. It just feels like found money.

Craig: A weird carnival skill.

John: It’s like, “I don’t deserve this, but it came and it’s great.” For the last three years, four years, they’ve all been going to my business manager anyway, so I haven’t seen them.

Craig: Yeah, I completely salute this person and the love of the green envelope and the excitement of that. No question. Partly it’s also just a function of age because I started getting green envelopes, I don’t know, in 1997? Yeah, after a while, you’re like, “Here’s another green envelope again.”

John: Here’s a proposal. The green envelopes are inefficient because those checks get lost and sometimes, they did get lost. It’s a good reason not to send them to people’s houses. Maybe we still do the green envelopes and inside it says like, “This is how much we just direct deposited for you.” Then you still get the feel, the joy of it, but you don’t have to deal with the check.

Craig: Sure. If they could maybe do that, that’d be great. What if there was an email that said– the subject header was, “Green envelope.”? You’re like, “Okay, when I open this email–“ Then there’s a bunch of texts just in case your email program gives you a little– no, it skips it. Then you open it and you scroll and there’s the number. That would be fine.

John: A little joy.

Craig: Yes. Why not?

John: All right, well, I’m going to propose that to the WGA. More about capitalizing off of a short what we talked about in episode 658.

Drew: Erin writes, I want to build on the excellent advice you gave Michael in episode 658 in which he asked what’s next after a short film he wrote won an Oscar qualifying award. If he wants to capitalize on the success, I would encourage Michael to write a feature version of his short film. Even if his short wasn’t initially meant to be blown out into a feature, there will be something, a theme, a character, what have you, that will make for a compelling feature script and he already has an award-winning short as a proof of concept.

The first question I’m asked when somebody sees and likes my short is, do you have a feature script? My answer is always yes, and because I always have a draft ready before attending any festival, it’s led to my scripts being read by reps and producers. I guarantee the director and/or producers are being asked this question, so he should also reach out to them to let them know he’s getting started on the feature so when they’re inevitably asked, “Is there a feature script?” they can reply, yes, Michael is working on it right now.

Craig: If you can. Not every short is expandable into a feature. I imagine many aren’t.

John: I think it’s good advice in general. Even if you can’t take this exact concept, something that’s in that space feels right because they like the short, they want something that’s like that but is a feature. That all tracks and makes a lot of sense.

Craig: Whiplash.

John: Yes, 100%.

Craig: It’s the theory of Whiplash, worked for Damien Chazelle, could work for you at home. I think that makes sense.

John: Totally makes sense. More on how to be a script coordinator. We’ve talked a lot on the show about the value of script coordinators.

Drew: Joshua Gilbert writes, I’m a long-time listener and a mid-level TV writer. Prior to staffing, I did all the writer’s office assistant jobs, writer’s PA, showrunner’s assistant, writer’s assistant, and script coordinator, the gig I did the most. As such, it occurred to me that if a YouTube video can teach someone to fix their sink, they can learn to script coordinate the same way.

So I created a two and a half hour training video in eight sections that gives step-by-step instructions for taking a script from first draft to shooting draft.

Craig: That’s interesting. Two and a half hours? There’s really two and a half hours of stuff to say?

John: There was two and a half hours of stuff to do to explain about how to do Roll20. You and I put those videos together.

Craig: That was extraordinarily efficient. Roll20, especially the old Roll20, they’ve streamlined it, was so unuser-friendly.

Listen, it may be that he’s just very patient in his explanations. Ally Chang, who’s our script coordinator on Blast Bus, I walked her through it. It was only about 30 minutes.

John: You’re approaching script coordinating from one point of view. You’re also a single showrunner who’s doing stuff and a single writer. People who are on more complicated shows, I think it probably is more complicated stuff. You’re integrating multiple things from different writers.

Craig: Yes. I could see that. There’s a little more traffic.

John: I’ve watched through it, too. He leaves no stone unturned.

Craig: Okay, so it’s an incredibly thorough, too. Thank God. I was just hoping that you weren’t like, “I watch it and–“ No, okay, if it’s super-duper thorough, then great. Look, either way, I just like complaining about things. He put it on there for free. It’s a free class. One more reason to not go to film school.

John: Yeah, film school doesn’t teach you how to be a script writer, though, either. It’s one of those– just someone shows you.

Craig: Yes, but that’s one of the jobs that we have.

John: It’s a job. It’s a job. It’s actually a union cover job.

Craig: Film school just teaches you the job that no one has to give you. Just why? Anyway.

John: All right, last bit of follow-up here is from Lori, and she’s talking about, Craig, you use this word calculating a lot. “You need to stop calculating.” You actually use it in a Scriptnotes book. A little follow-up on this.

Drew: Yes, she says, “What exactly does Craig mean by that? Does he mean that writers shouldn’t have a strategy or pursue a set of goals other than writing good screenplays? If so, how do those good screenplays ever get into the hands of someone who can do something with them?”

Craig: Here’s what I mean. Calculating means figuring out how to game the system. What do people want? What does the market want? If I did this and this and this, then maybe this and this and this. There’s so much effort that you can put into that kind of thinking. “Everybody knows that if you write a such and such story that they want it, they don’t want these unless there’s a this in it. I’m going to do that.” That’s calculating. Not calculating is writing something that you love, that you believe in, that is personal to you, that nobody else could do, or that just expresses your unique creative talent and then putting it out in the world. Then other people work on the calculating part.

In fact, part of our jobs as individual writers in our careers is to resist all of their calculations when their calculations go against what is the beating heart of the work. Otherwise it will turn into crap, which happened to me repeatedly in my career because I didn’t understand that part of my job was to defend against their calculation. I thought in a somewhat humble way, all these calculations must have value. These people are paid for these calculations and the emperor has no clothes.

It’s not about being strategy-less. You write something great, then you’re like, “I wrote this, and I need Renée Zellweger to be in it. It was designed out of my heart for Renée Zellweger. I need to get this to Renée Zellweger somehow.” That’s not calculation. That’s just makes sense. That’s creative desire. Saying, “I wrote this for Renée Zellweger, but what I’m hearing maybe is that Sabrina Carpenter is looking to do something in a movie like this. If I just change the age and change the this and make it more Sabrina Carpenter, then get it to the person that I know who knows her friend, then da-da-da–“ What have you done? No offense to Sabrina Carpenter. If you write something for Sabrina Carpenter, truly–

John: Yes, fantastic, love that. All right–

Craig: I know who Sabrina Carpenter is.

John: I was going to say, nicely done. Weirdly, a Sabrina Carpenter, Renée Zellweger axis, it’s clear. There’s a vector that connects the two.

Craig: I actually am proud of what I just did. I really am. It would have been a very old guy thing to be like, “No, instead I’m going to make it for Reese Witherspoon.” Eh, contemporary, doesn’t work. It wouldn’t have worked. It would not have been as cogent of a point.

John: I like this. This discussion of calculating actually ties in very well to our main topic today, which is about screenwriting being a poorly defined problem. This verbiage I’m taking from this blog post by Adam Mastroianni, which is about why smart people aren’t happier. I think it also really resonates with last week’s episode where we’re talking about how we measure and quantify talent.

In this blog post, he’s talking about how it’s not just physical attributes that we try to measure and quantify. We do it with intelligence too. If you Google the smartest people in the world, you’re going to find physicists, and mathematicians, computer scientists, chess masters.

Craig: Donald Trump by his own admission.

John: 100%. You’re going to do that because if accomplished things that you can point to and say like, oh, it was your intelligence that did that. You can measure that. But a couple of weeks ago, I went to this event with Hillary Clinton who spoke and, Jesus, that is a very smart woman.

Craig: Just a little.

John: Her intelligence is not quantifiable in that way. She didn’t invent a thing. She didn’t solve some mathematical problem. She ran the state department.

Craig: She ran the state department of the United States of America.

John: Not a small thing. The things that I would say, if I could point to her intelligence, she can take a question and then pull it into its parts and come up with, on the fly, this seven-minute answer that goes from the personal to the political to everything. That’s experience. And it’s honestly the difference between what we’d say in D&D terms is intelligence and wisdom. She has the ability to take this whole thing and pull it apart.

Really what it comes down to, and this is from this blog post, is that we tend to value and aim towards these well-defined problems. A well-defined problem– he defines in four things.

That there is a stable relationship between the variables. You can see how everything connects. There’s no disagreement about whether the problems are problems or if they’ve already been solved. There are clear boundaries. There’s a finite amount of relevant information and possible actions. And the problems are repeatable. So the details might change, but the process for solving the problems does not.

Craig: Science.

John: Science is exactly that. It’s the scientific method.

Craig: The results needing to be robust, repeatable. What a joy it would be to work in something where you could actually go, “The answer to this question is yes.” That would be lovely.

John: A lot of us, and I suspect you were as well, Craig, we were good at doing those well-defined problems. All standardized tests, the ACTs, the SATs, they were those things. We were rewarded for that. We’re told we are smart because we’re good at these things. Unfortunately, the career we’ve chosen to go into does not reward that thinking at all.

Craig: It does not.

John: We’re dealing with these really undefinable things. We don’t even know what the edges of this is. What do they really want from here? How am I supposed to do this thing? Am I making the right choice to go, “Should I move to Los Angeles?”? These are not questions with single answers. Many of the questions we get from our listeners are grappling with this. When we say, “Don’t be so calculating,” I feel like so often we see people trying to take these difficult situations and boil them down to well-defined problems.

Craig: Yes, because it’s comforting. You probably remember in math class, there was somebody that was sitting next to you who was struggling with a process. Let’s say quadratic equations.

John: Do you remember the first time your teacher did the quadratic formula or showed how you discover the quadratic formula? There’s no way you end up with such a messy formula. It’s so ugly.

Craig: And so beautiful.

John: Beautiful. It works but it looks so awful.

Craig: We are used to science boiling things down to elegance. E = mc² is so absurdly elegant. It seems like a joke. Most things are not that perfect. The Pythagorean theorem is so gorgeously a² + b² = c². But there was always a kid that didn’t understand the concepts and would turn to you at some point and go, “Just tell me what to do. Okay, so now what do I do? Then what do I do? Then what do I do?”

Meaning, break this down like I’m a computer, code it for me, so that I don’t have to understand what I’m doing. I just follow steps, which are certain. Therefore, I can’t get lost. It’s not actually a bad way to teach certain people certain things that they are struggling to grasp conceptually. However, if they need that, it’s probably not really worth it for them because ultimately, they’re not actually learning anything. They’re merely just obeying steps.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: What we have here in our business is a very– there’s an analytic way of doing things, and then there’s synthesizing things. We have to synthesize stuff. We have to make things out of nothing. It’s art, so it’s all objective, subjective at the same time. There are things that just we all agree on, then there are things that we cannot agree on, and then there are things that we find out most people agree on. There are things that no one agrees on, except 10 years later, they do.

Nobody can really teach this. Yes. What we’re taught is how to analyze, which is fair, and what we can test is analysis and memory. There is this concept, when we were learning about the SAT analogies, we were taught about this thing called the triangular non-relationship, which is that this– and these two things are only related because they both relate to something else, but they don’t directly relate to each other. I think that for people that are good in school and good at SATs, and also are good at screenwriting, those two things are not connected to each other, they’re connected back to one thing, which is a certain mind.

John: Yes, absolutely. Let’s think through some of the stuff that we’re dealing with as screenwriters that are these poorly defined problems and that we’re constantly grappling with.

What is this movie about? This movie I’m writing, what is it about? No, what is it really about? We know it’s not actually about the thing on the surface, it’s actually really about something else.

Who is this character? How do I show that to the audience?

What does this moment look like from the character’s point of view and from all the other characters in that scene’s point of view?

What do they say next and why?

What is the right title for this movie?

Am I using the word “being” too much?

How is this movie I’m writing different from every other movie ever made?

But how is it similar enough to a genre that people can relate to what the hell it actually is?

Then, completely independent of what’s happening on the page, the actual career of being a screenwriter is, how do I describe this thing to an executive? Who should I pitch this to? Should I be focusing on Sabrina Carpenter or Renée Zellweger? When should I send the follow-up email? Should I send the follow-up email?

I see this with my own daughter. She’s a sophomore now, and super smart, so good at so many things. She’s texting me, and it’s not about schoolwork, it’s about, what should I put in this box on this form for this internship I’m applying for? They ask me, “What is your desired hourly salary?” She says, “Should I put 15?” I’m like, “I think 20?” but there’s no answer here. I don’t even know what comes out of this. You’re nodding, because this is exactly what– you do it too.

Craig: We occasionally get these. It’s funny, Jessica is so independent and so much a force of nature. She reminds me so much of me when I was her age. Just all these things that a lot of people consider difficult that she’s just doing. But kinda had a little bit of a meltdown over figuring out how to pay the utility bill for her apartment.

John: We’re on the same page. We got a bill for power, but with some from the previous tenant, and it’s like, “What do you do?”

Craig: Actually, as it turns out, nobody likes doing that stuff. Everybody has to learn. I remember this as great, but it wasn’t great. It was stupid, but I still remember because this is one funny bit where Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live played a character maybe only once called Middle-Aged Man. He’s a superhero. He’s asked, “What are your powers?” He goes, “I can’t fly and I don’t have super strength, but I can explain what escrow is.”

These are the things that you sort of accrue. When you are in your 20s, you’re like, “What do I do with a utility–“ Those are all learnable things. That list of stuff that you put there. The other one that came to mind was, what is the tone of this? Also what is tone? What are we even talking about? These things are only defined by a strange passion and a confidence that comes from feeling good about it. It is all about feeling. When you look at people who are composing, why that note? Why not this note?

Feels wrong, feels right. For us, we have no choice but to actually find some genuine feeling. That feeling then we have to convert into some explanation to either get people to resonate with our same feeling and feel it or get them to hear a rationality that allows them to go along with it.

But for everybody else in our business, that area of what is it and I’m going to feel it and I know what’s wrong and what’s right allows for so much chicanery, charlatanism, fraud, confidence masquerading as knowledge, just bad faith, baloney, gaslighting, because it’s not science. Because I can’t just go, “Stop. Everything you just said is provably wrong and has been proven wrong.” Can’t do it.

John: Of course, we’re talking about this in a context of there’s now more data than ever and more data being used against us about the choices that we’re making. As we’re pitching to Netflix, they will say our metrics show that we need to have– we cannot show a dog in the first three minutes of the show or else, or there’s all this stuff. They have data. They can show that scientifically this is true, but of course, that doesn’t have anything to do with the actual feeling of what it is.

I love to contrast that development process to a film festival where they’re buying a film at a film festival. In that case, they’re emotionally responding to the thing they saw and it’s like, “Oh, this works for these reasons.” We want this movie and we are going to put this on our streamer.

Craig: I think our business has shifted, especially the feature business, very much in favor of that vibe in a way, there is more humility on the side of the buyers because they’ve almost finally admitted they have no idea. Therefore, instead of the old method, which is really– if you want to talk about something that changed our business, the old method of making movies was have a bunch of writers come in, hear pitches, buy scripts, have ten things in development that one of them eventually will be worthy of a green light and be made.

That’s gone away. Now it’s more like, hey, we’ve shown up with a script already, an actor, a director. Everything is here and we also have a budget. All you have to do now is just flip a lever, but all the components are in place. We basically cook the meal for you. It’s a frozen TV dinner. Just put it in the microwave, right? As opposed to, we would like to cook you a meal. We’re going to go gather ingredients. We can discuss if you want chicken or fish, right? And they like that.

John: The episode that Marielle Heller was on that you weren’t able to come for, we were talking–

Craig: Passive aggressive.

John: Sorry. It was a good episode.

Craig: I bet. Jeez.

John: We were talking through this new research study that showed that almost none of the movies that are greenlit came out of studio development.

Craig: Exactly. Which was all you and I knew. All we knew was studio development. In fact, the thing that we would complain about in the ‘90s was studio development and development hell and how we all knew we were going there and getting paid something and then we were just going to be strung out for a while and eventually it probably would just die on the vine like everything else.

John: We were getting paid during that time, which was important.

Craig: Important that we were getting paid. Now what has gone away is all of the money being spread around, but there is a little more certainty. It used to be, if you made a deal, there’s a 5% or 10% chance they would make your movie. Now it’s like we’re making a deal, it’s kind of a green light.

I remember the first time this happened to me, it was at Universal, and I think it was maybe Identity Thief where I came in to pitch the rewrite because it was a page 1 rewrite. There was a pre-existing script. There were two pre-existing scripts, I believe.

I came in with Jason Bateman and Scott Stuber and normally you would go in a pitch meeting, you would pitch to the head of the studio. Everyone was in that room, from Peter Kramer, who’s the president of production, but then Donna Langley also, and then Adam Fogelson?

John: Sure. That feels right.

Craig: Is that right?

John: Yes.

Craig: The guy that was the top of it. I’m like, “What the hell is going on?” When I walked out, I remember I was like, “Why are all these people in a pitch meeting?” He goes, “That was a green light meeting. The deal is if we’re going to pay you to write this, we’re making the movie.” That blew my mind. That was the first time I’d ever experienced that where that’s the deal now. Either no development or make movie. That in a way expresses humility on their end, I think. We don’t know. If you bring us all this stuff, fine.

John: What can we take from this is that, listen, I think there’s going to be moments where you’re going to have this instinct to reduce these difficult problems, these poorly defined problems, and you’re going to try to find edges of things that you can clean up and solve. I see people doing that with the obsession over like, “Oh, I need to get rid of all the widows and orphans in my script.”

Craig: Control.

John: Control. You’re trying to exert control over a thing that fundamentally doesn’t want control. You’re going to submit to a bunch of film festivals and screenwriting competitions so you can get scores and so you can be graded the same way you were graded when you were–

Craig: People love grades.

John: Yes. I miss them. Listen–

Craig: It’s validation.

John: I’m 30 years out of college but I miss that validation.

Craig: Absolutely. It’s validation. When I do see a lot of people on social media saying, “Congratulations to me. I was a semi-finalist,” and blah blah blah, I’m like, “I’m so sorry. It’s actually not relevant at all because there’s somebody who didn’t make it past the first round who has written something much better.” The people who judge these things don’t know either. Nobody in that world knows because the people that are at the highest level of our business also don’t know. They are constantly being surprised. Everybody agrees that this kind of movie doesn’t work until somebody makes one that does. Listen, if there was one genre we knew would not work, it would be to adapt a video game. That was the law. That’s the thing.

John: Two good series.

Craig: There you go. Superhero movies were just dead in the water forever. Musicals keep coming and going. I think Wicked is going to bring them back. Westerns disappear. Probably they’ll come back. That’s the joke. That’s the big joke. So why calculate? Just follow your heart.

John: Absolutely. All right, let’s take a look at some pages from our listeners. For folks who are new here, every once in a while we do a three-page challenge where we invite our listeners to submit three pages from something they’ve written, generally the first three pages. We give our honest feedback.

As a reminder, people want us to be reading this stuff. They’re soliciting this feedback. If we’re mean at any point or harsh, they asked for this.

Craig: That’s a weird phrase. They permitted this.

John: They permitted this. We’ll say that. If you would like to read along on these pages, you can follow the links in the show notes and click through. There’s PDFs for those. You can take a look and maybe stop this podcast, read first, and then listen to what we’re going to say about them. Let us start with Flunge-

Craig: Flunge.

John: -by J Wheeler White.

Craig: I apologize. If you guys hear a page flipping, it’s because I like a physical page.

John: Likes a physical page.

Craig: Forgive me.

John: Drew, for folks who are not able to look at the pages, can you give us a quick summary?

Drew: “In the middle of a fencing match, with seven seconds left on the clock, 17-year-old, Will Stetson, ignores all the onlookers and focuses on his opponent, Alexander. They stare each other down. We then cut to six months earlier where Will is elbowed in his high school wrestling match and starts punching his opponent in the face. Coach Vargas tries to hold him back, but when his opponent calls him a psycho, Will lunges at him and crashes into the scorer’s table. Later, in a school hallway, Coach Vargas kicks Will off the wrestling team. Will punches a locker. Outside the gym, a Mercedes pulls up in front of Will, driven by Alina, another teenager who is currently very angry.”

John: All right. Let’s start with this title page. I love this title page.

Craig: Flunge. Yes. It’s got a nice graphically designed title with negative space fencer in the middle.

John: Absolutely. Craig, do you know what a flunge is?

Craig: I absolutely do not know what a flunge is. A flying lunge?

John: Close to a flying lunge. It’s a combination of a flèche and a lunge. Flèche is where you’re racing up to your opponent, you’re running up to the opponent.

Craig: Oh.

John: The illustration in there is actually what a flunge would be.

Craig: It’s a flunge.

John: It’s a daring stab forward.

Craig: Flunge is going to be changed. That title is not going to last.

John: No.

Craig: Just going to be honest.

John: It looks great.

Craig: It’s fun for now.

John: Fun for now. Page 1 opens with, “Time left on clock, 7 seconds, score 14-14.” I think this is crucial information. I like having it here. I’m wondering how it’s going to be shown on screen. I don’t need it to be shown on screen on the page in a certain way, but I was wondering about that. I like that it’s 14-14. That you know that this match has been going on a while. You know that you’re near the end of this.

This setup reminds me of Challengers, and I don’t know how this is all going to be structured, but I feel like we’re going to be moving back and forth into this this match, which I’m excited to see. It may not be a true Stuart Special where we start at one point and then flashback in time. I think it is a back and forth.

Craig: This does feel like a Stewart Special, though.

John: Well, it’s a Stewart Special in the sense that it started at a time, and we can catch up to this.

Craig: Only because he’s a wrestler and then he becomes a fence– I doubt we’re going to go back and forth. I could be wrong. Also, it’s a television show.

John: Oh, a television show. Pilot, yes.

Craig: It’s possible, but I agree with you, the setup felt really exciting. First of all, I got excited by fencing because– listen, at this point just show me something, and fencing is fun. It’s swordplay and it’s exciting.

John: I had fencing in a movie that didn’t shoot, which I was really sad about.

Craig: Oh, you had a fencing movie?

John: I had a fencing movie.

Craig: Ugh. Do you want to sue this guy? John, that’s what people do.

John: Yes, absolutely. I had fencing in my movie.

Craig: This guy stole your idea.

John: Yes.

Craig: Jesus.

John: I’ll say that if there’s a contract lens that plays an important role in this movie, I’ve won. I’ve won the lawsuit.

Craig: You’ve won the lawsuit. It’s an interesting thing. We have a guy– this is how it opens. “William Stetson, 17, catches his breath. He’s in a full electric saber kit.” I assume that means that-

John: He’s wired up.

Craig: -fencing outfit. “Fencing mask pulled up, a single curl of light hair glued by sweat to his forehead.” Just be aware, that’s the kind of thing that they’re going to have a meeting about, and it’s going to probably look stupid. Maybe just say sweaty.

John: Yes.

Craig: “His eyes, consumed by a deep indecipherable fervor locked with his opponent’s, Alexander Sasha Su, 18.” Now, why do they both have their masks up? Is that a thing that people do?

John: Yes, between parries.

Craig: This is exciting to see on page, but just want to think ahead here. This is J Wheeler White, which is a fantastic comic book name, by the way. J Wheeler White, he owns a newspaper in Gotham, not in New York. They’re just staring at each other. If you’re staring at somebody, and they’re staring at you, the two of you are in a staring contest, that just feels a little weird.

If you’re staring at this guy, and he’s drinking some Gatorade, or doing something, and then he turns and sees you, and expresses something back, whether it’s hatred, jealousy, I’m going to get you, you lost, whatever it is, that creates a moment. I think, here, what’s happened is, they’re just staring at each other, which feels a bit odd.

John: I get that. Again, the reason why I would say Challengers is challenged. Have you seen Challengers?

Craig: I have.

John: Challengers is all stares across on that between people-

Craig: It is.

John: -doing stuff. I love it for that. In this first page, fans, teammates, former opponents, uppercase those. Those are other groups of people that we’re going to see. There’s a thing that J Wheeler White does where it’s a word then a single dash rather than a double dash. It’s consistent. It’s fine. It’s not what I would do.

Craig: I don’t do it either, but it doesn’t matter. I get it.

John: It’s consistent.

Craig: It’s consistent. As long as it’s consistent. It would be nice to know how big. It says hundreds of fans. Hundreds of people– that’s another thing you learn when you’re making stuff is, hundreds of people look like 12 people. Thousands of people look like hundreds of people.

John: I need a sense of– is this State Championships? What is this? That would tell us.

Craig: Olympics. State Championship. Is this a gymnasium? Is this Madison Square Garden? Just give me a general sense of the space. I think it would be helpful. What I really enjoyed was how this just flung us — flunged us — into a different thing, but this is way easier to do on page than it is to do– because the problem is match-cutting from eyes, especially when there’s a mask, even though it’s pulled up, it’s going to be visible. Eyes to eyes of a person that’s in motion, wrestling, it’s just not possible.

John: It’s not possible. There’ll be a sound pre-lap, there’ll be a thing, and then you just have to cut into it.

Craig: Exactly, so probably not– it’s exciting to read, but this is something that I actually think is fine, but later you’re going to have to fix it.

John: Absolutely. It’ll be on a foot and a step will go forward and you’ll realize you’re going to do a different space. There’ll be different ways to get there.

Craig: Exactly.

John: I’m loving everything on page 1 and on page 2. I thought the actual descriptions of what goes wrong in the match, and how it builds, I believed. It felt visceral and it’s funny.

Craig: Yes. I think the only thing that I would suggest here for this, because the point of this wrestling match is Will goes too far, right? He goes too far. He’s wrestling a guy, and he chokes him in a way that’s illegal, and ruins stuff.

John: He chokes him and then he starts beating him.

Craig: Well, because the guy fights back. Then he fights back again. It’s all precipitated by the fact that he’s choking this guy out, which is not legal in high school, or anywhere. That’s fine, but what I needed was something leaning into it. I think part of my issue was it just starts with this guy killing someone. That’s what he’s doing basically. How did we get to that? If you start leaning on someone’s throat– this is just logic stuff, and it’s important for tone. You’re in high school, you start choking this guy out.

Nobody says it– they’ll run in there and pull you off. You can’t kill somebody, and why would you think you could? The problem is this guy goes too far. I need to see him going too far, not already too far. Something leading into it would have been helpful.

John: Yep, agreed. Page 3, the one thing I want to scratch out here is mic drop. Vargas, the coach, says, “You smell like an f-ing litter box.” Mic drop. We don’t need the mic drop, he walks off. And at the bottom of page 3, we’re introduced to Alina Matero, 17, dark hair, clean girl aesthetic, currently very pissed off. That’s all we know about her. I liked that as the next thing we’re seeing.

Craig: I like that she seems rich. I’m guessing that he’s not. I don’t know what their relationship is, but she seems like she’s already heard about the wrestling situation. Again, tone. Page 3, Vargas, his coach says, “We were all watching Stetson,” which I think you need a comma there because it seems like we’re all watching Stetson. “We were all watching, Stetson,” that’s Will, “and good thing too, or that kid would be in an ambulance right now. Incorrect.

They watched him choke that kid out until that kid punched him to get him off of him. They didn’t do anything. And then, good thing you don’t know him.” I don’t know him either, and just because he goes to New Trier, I’m guessing that’s the school for rich kids?

John: Yes.

Craig: It doesn’t justify murder. This is so important. I need to understand why Will was trying to “kill” this kid. Why he was suddenly so vicious and so relentless that he would injure this kid and possibly render him unconscious.

John: Yeah so, thinking about that moment, if you switch it around and Will was the one who felt like he was threatened, or he was getting choked, and that he was the first person who blew up, and it was ambiguous whether the referee should have stepped in, that could have made sense.

Craig: This scene is broad. For me. This is what happens. The coach goes, “You did a dumb thing.” Will says, “No, I didn’t.” He says, “Yes, you did. You’re fired. You’re off the team.” “You can’t do that. Darn it.” Everybody deserves to be a character. Everybody deserves to be interesting. How does this really go down in life? I don’t think it’s like this. I don’t.

I think there is a possibility that as a coach you sit down with this kid– and there’s a scene where he says, “Just walk me through what happened. I want to understand why this happened.” Let Will explain. Just keep asking questions so that we start to understand Will, how his mind works, what the real problem was, and we’ll feel like maybe this coach is sympathetic, understanding, and the coach will listen to him, hear, get to the truth, and then say, “So you’re off the team. Sorry. Based on everything I understand, I appreciate it, I get it. You can’t be on a wrestling team.”

John: I hear you, and that is a version of the scene. I think there’s a way to keep the energy up the way that this scene currently does, but just with a little bit more finesse.

Craig: Actually, that was my problem.

John: That the energy was still too high?

Craig: Yes. We started with this exciting, flunging match, and then we go into an equally exciting and violent wrestling match, both of which it’s feeling like at fever pitch tempo, and then we get into this quick argument. The movie is going so fast, I felt like it’s a television show, it’s a pilot, you can breathe. If you look at Breaking Bad, everybody uses it as a great example because it is a wonderful pilot episode. It starts with, blah! And then it’s like, hmm.

John: It’s quiet. Yes.

Craig: It’s quiet.

John: There’s a description on page 3 that I did like. “Will tries to make himself big, arms out to his side, chest forward, steps to his coach, Vargas sighs.” That does a lot.

Craig: It does. Again, it’s a tone question. Will seems like an idiot here because you can’t big-guy your coach. What are you going to do? Beat him up. The coach isn’t buying it, but then I feel like, why would Will think that the coach would buy it and why is Will do–

John: I believe that’s a dumb high school character move.

Craig: To me, dumb high school characters are different to coaches that control their fate. Those are the people they don’t do this to. Those are the people that they get all solemn with because those are their father figures that they have daddy issues. Again, that’s part of what I’m saying here to J Will writers. The character right now of Will and the character of Vargas is angry coach, angry kid. I think we need to go a bit deeper in that, even in one page.

John: Great. Again, these are not well-defined problems.

Craig: No.

John: They’re all opinions and how it feels.

Craig: That’s right.

John: Before we move on, Drew, can you tell us the logline for what the actual–

Craig: For Flunge.

John: For Flunge.

Drew: “After being kicked off the team for one too many violent outbursts, a high school wrestler reluctantly joins the fencing team to keep his scholarship, unearthing a preternatural talent that may redefine the course of his life. An anime-inspired live-action sports drama series.”

John: Great. I don’t know that it’s a series. I think it’s a movie, but I’m curious–

Craig: It feels like a movie to me.

John: Feels like a movie to me. It feel like there’s a beginning, middle, and end, there’s a victory, there’s a thing.

Craig: It’s a classic. It’s like– What was that movie where Matthew Modine is a hockey player and then he becomes an ice skater? What was that one called? Look it up. It’s such a great idea. He was a hockey player who was like this, undisciplined, got kicked off, whatever personal problems, and gets stuck being paired up with an ice skater for figure skating.

John: It’s not Matthew Modine. It’s somebody who’s like Matthew Modine.

Craig: Oh, it is?

John: Yes.

Craig: It’s not Matthew Modine?

John: Oh, shoot.

Craig: Who was that?

John: He looks like Steve Gutenberg, but it’s not Steve Gutenberg. We’ll find it.

Craig: That’s why we need our search engine optimization person.

John: Hey, can you tell me about a movie where a hockey player then becomes a figure skater? He gets partnered with a woman who’s a figure skater.

AI: The movie is The Cutting Edge. It’s a romantic comedy from 1992 where a former hockey player teams up with a figure skater.

John: Who were the stars of that movie?

AI: The stars of The Cutting Edge are D.B. Sweeney, who plays the former hockey player, and Moira Kelly, who plays the figure skater.

Craig: D.B. Sweeney. D.B. Sweeney and Matthew Modine were odd– My guess is that they bumped into each other at a bunch of auditions back in the day.

John: 100%. Absolutely.

Craig: What a great idea. Anyway, this reminds me in a way of like, okay, an athlete has to transition from one thing to another. It’s actually been quite a few of these. It’s not merely The Cutting Edge. Although what a great title and D.B. Sweeney. Anyway, I agree with the feels feature. What are we doing in Season 3, episode 7 for this? That’s my question, but meh.

John: Let’s move on to our next one. This is Cows by John and Mark DiStefano.

Drew: “In a bar for cows, Callie, a black and white spotted cow, and Wade, a bro-y bull, sit drinking milk. While Wade tells her wild stories about his recent trip to Moodrid, Callie stares at the bartender Jade who is also a cow, they’re all cows. They’re joined by Astrid, a Highland cow who makes fun of Wade from making his trip to Europe with his entire personality. They give Astrid a hard time because her new boyfriend is on a reality dating show, Udderly Single. Astrid wants to throw a watch party for the show, and Wade offers to organize it.”

John: This is an animated, televised, or it’s a pilot for an animated series. Let’s get into it. For what it is, it’s a good version of what it is, but I also think it’s not the pilot episode, or it’s not the first scene of what this should be. This is a Zootopia situation where these are anthropomorphic animals doing a thing. While this conversation tracks, it basically feels like it’s maybe a Friends-like sitcom, but with a lot of cow puns thrown in. It’s probably not the best way to setting up this world for me.

Craig: Yes. What I was struck by primarily was how mundane this conversation is. If you took away the fact that they’re cows, this is a pretty boring scene, unfortunately, because it’s just banter. It’s mild banter, it’s quippy. I don’t believe any of these people. The things that they’re saying to each other feels very canned, Disney television canned conversation. It doesn’t feel real. I have no idea who I’m supposed to be following here.

John: Yes. I don’t know who the central character is. I don’t really understand what the relationship is between the three of them. They’re all there.

Craig: They’re just talking. They’re just talking about something. There’s a lot of page time dedicated to the discussion of where he went to Moodrid and they’re like, “You’ve told us already.” This is not a good use of the first three pages of anything.

John: It’s just one scene also, it’s just like one continuous scene. There’s not a lot of story is happening here.

Craig: It says “Interior bar.” Now these are cows, so we’re in a cow world. “Bulls and cows mingle, dance on two legs”– I don’t know how that works. I’m just thinking about physics. I guess they’re just animated people but they’re cows. It would be nice if they made that clear– “And swill large quantities of milk. Callie sits on a bar stool next to Wade. This bar, where is it?

John: The scale of things also would feel strange.

Craig: What is the scale? What is the decor? What is the music? It says they’re dancing. To what? Can you help me feel like I understand where I am? Because all they’ve done really is, this just feels like a scene from the middle of a middle-grade sitcom where people are talking. Not an introduction to a new world where it’s about cows.

John: Yes, exactly. Here’s where I think writing the scene is useful for you. It’s like this might be a chance to say, “What does it even feel like to have these characters talking to each other? If you just do this as an exercise, it’s like let’s have a conversation where they’re talking. You get some sense of what their voices are. I can’t tell you individually what the three different cows’ voices are. You get a sense of what their banter feels like and what the kinds of cow-related jokes and puns you’re going to be throwing in here a lot would feel like. As an exploratory, let’s crank out some pages. Great, but it’s not the first three pages of this pilot.

Craig: No. If for instance, your hero is a cow named Vanessa and Vanessa works at this bar. Vanessa has to go from the kitchen, around past the bar, past the dance floor, over to cross a few booths, get to somebody, it’s bottle service, or she’s bringing them whatever grass tenders and whatever they eat. As she’s walking by, she’s catching snippets of conversation.

These things are only valuable as background snippets. I don’t buy that we would want to focus our camera and our attention on them because it won’t hold our camera and our attention. What I would understand is, okay, I’m meeting somebody. She’s tired, she’s cranky. Oh, but she has to be nice to these people. Maybe she knows somebody who’s like, “Oh my God, when are you getting off? We have to get out of here and we need to talk about this thing.” She’s like, “Yes, I will. I promise.” Then someone’s like, “Hey, blah, blah, blah, give me a, blah–“ whatever, it didn’t make a scene. This isn’t a scene, this is just people– We’re just like, talking.

John: All that said, there’s nothing objectionable or wrong on these pages. Everything flows right, and it has the jokoid feeling that feels–

Craig: You said jokoid.

John: Jokoid.

Craig: That’s a problem.

John: Yes.

Craig: That is a problem.

John: It’s a problem, but what I’m saying is you don’t look at these pages and they’re like, “Oh, this is incompetent.” It’s not that.

Craig: No.

John: I feel like these brothers– I assume they’re brothers-

Craig: Yes.

John: -they can do this. This just wasn’t a very good example of the top of their craft.

Craig: Yes. I think they need to raise the bar a little bit on themselves because it’s in the form of. By the way, when I started, the very first stuff I wrote was exactly like this. It was exactly like this. It was in the form of, but it wasn’t. That’s part of the normal progress. Somebody needs to go, “Okay, it’s in the form of, so that’s good news.” You actually have internalized rhythm and general– like the idea of how to get information out without reading it off of note cards.

Now we have to think bigger, think better, and be more creative. Just always ask yourself, is the job to do the stuff I’ve seen, or is the job to do something that’s better, or different, or just truer to me that feels like it’s something that came out of me and not an imitation.

John: Drew, what was the logline for this?

Drew: “An ambitious cow and her cattle friends navigate careers and relationships in the cow-centric city of Bovine.”

John: Okay. So it’s either Friends or Sex in the City, and there’s actually a pretty wide range between the two of those.

Craig: Then I would love to– I actually don’t know the answer to this, but what was the first scene of Friends? What happened?

John: The first time in the scene of Friends is at Central Perk and Rachel is fleeing from her marriage. She shows up in a wedding dress.

Craig: Okay. There you go.

John: That’s a scene.

Craig: That’s a scene, there’s a situation, it’s on. That’s not happening here.

John: No, it’s not.

Craig: It’s not enough to say, “And they’re cows.” That’s the other thing. You can’t just say Friends, but they’re cows. What about cows? Look, I’ve written a movie about sheep, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: I’m obsessed with the things that make sheep sheep, but also make the individual sheep different from each other. What can sheep do that we can’t, and what can’t sheep do that we can? Why cows? What is that getting me other than, “Ha, ha, ha, they’re cows?” It’s got to be more.

Actually, that’s almost something that needs to happen in these first three pages, too. That a burden that Friends didn’t have was, why humans?

I need to know why cows.

John: The audience demands a certain amount of world-building and rule-setting in cow Friends that they’re not expecting in a friends-Friends.

Craig: And justification, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: What do we get, because they’re cows?

John: Let’s move on to our final three-page challenge. This is Never Die Alone by Yeong-Jay Lee.

Drew: A storm rolls in over a barge on Lake Superior. On the deck, men dig through their cargo of coal and pull out a gaunt young man with a neck tattoo. They chain him to an iron ball and push him overboard. We follow the body down to the bottom where the iron ball crashes through a sunken colonial boat, releasing a glowing sapphire, The Eye, which begins to float to the surface. Behind it, we see hundreds of bodies on the lake bed.

In the neighboring Sault Ste. Marie, a shabby car pulls up to a trailer home. Inside, Adam Withers, 17, asks his mom, Sarah, 37, if he can go and hang out with the new girl, Jenny. Sarah’s reluctant and sets a curfew for 12:00. Adam admits he’s lost his phone, which upsets Sarah, but she still lets him go. When he’s gone, Sarah returns to her phone call and cigarette.

Craig: You left out the fact that it’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

John: What’s this?

Craig: Gordon Lightfoot.

John: Gordon Lightfoot, right.

Craig: One of my favorites of all time. Love Gordon Lightfoot. One of my favorite Canadians. Never met him.

Drew: This is my neck of the woods.

Craig: He’s a genius, though.

John: Let’s start with the title page. I’d love to see contact information and a date. Just useful. People can find you.

Craig: Or at a minimum contact information.

John: I circled a lot of things here, and I want to talk just a little bit about stuff that got me tripped up on this first page. “I barge traversing the Stygian Lake in pouring rain.”

Craig: Stygian.

John: See, I didn’t even know how to pronounce that word. It’s a thing I’ve seen, and never actually pronounced it out loud.

Craig: The Stygian decks.

John: Yes, we’ll need the word Stygian. It’s dark.

Craig: It’s a bit ornate for this.

John: Also, because you’re saying barge, I know it’s the River Styx. Wait, so are we on a barge of the dead? I didn’t know if we were going to shore or away from shore, it’s traversing. I didn’t know where we were at, which becomes important because it’s clear that they’re headed away from shore because they’re going to dump this body.

Next two sentences, “A few men wearing raincoats pace the deck as the barge slows to a stop. Lights from a town dot the horizon. They unfasten a large tarp–“ Wait, they unfasten, the lights unfasten? It’s the men. This is one of those little small things where we’re reaching back, what is this pronoun referring to?

Craig: Yes. In the prior sense, we have a little bit of an issue here, too. Yeong-Jay, I think, you don’t have to use your full vocabulary-

John: No.

Craig: -which is impressive. When you say, “Lights from a town dot the horizon,” the way I just read that makes sense. What we read is, “Lights from a town dot the horizon.” Town dot. It just doesn’t work. You don’t need that so much. Lights dot the horizon or the distant lights of a town are seen on the horizon, if you want. Horizon isn’t a great word for night. We don’t really see the horizon at night. We just see lights in the distance. We don’t know if it’s the horizon.

More importantly, information. “Two dig through the coal.” You just want to say two– Again, what? Two? “Two dig” is not a strange one, T-W-O dig. “Two dig through the coal to reveal a face buried within. They extract a gaunt young man from the pile. He bears a neck tattoo, “Beloved.”

John: Is he already dead or not, important?

Craig: That’s my problem. I couldn’t tell if they were murdering a guy or they were just dumping a corpse. I think it’s a corpse. I hope it’s a corpse.

John: He’s unconscious, he’s not protesting.

Craig: Generally, we don’t describe corpses as gaunt young men. We say-

John: The body of a gaunt young man.

Craig: -they extract the body of a– Exactly. It’s important information because I just presume they were killing him.

John: Now, what happens after this is they are going to attach to the body, this heavyweight, it’s going to sink down, and they were going to follow this down. In an unlikely way, but in a way, that is very elaborate, it’s going to crash through the sunken thing and let loose this stuff. It felt like an opening title sequence. It felt very heightened in a way. It’s like, okay, is this whole thing super heightened? Great. If it is, but then the scene after this is not heightened. This is a very plain scene that made me wonder.

Craig: I’ve seen this transition before where you see something insane happen, and then we cut to many years later, which I assume this is many years later.

John: Oh, no, I thought it was the same time, but we don’t know. It’s end of music cue on page 2, but then we’re in a kitchen, and–

Craig: I don’t know what time. I need to know if this was earlier or later. I don’t know if this was the 1960s or ‘70s. When you play The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it implies– When was that? The ‘70s? ‘70s. It implies that’s the timeline, even though this body doesn’t crash into the Edmund Fitzgerald, he crashes into an early colonial trading vessel.

Now, I will say that what happens here is awesome. The problem is it’s overwritten. I got lost in all the words. I’m just going to read it. “The iron ball carries him, the corpse, through the sundered wooden hull and into the captain’s quarters festooned with the trappings–” Two things. “Of a wealthy and worldly trader. The ball crashes into an ornate glass cabinet, scattering the antique curiosities within. Among them, a black leather coffer–” a lot of people won’t know what that is, “Imprinted with a cross. As it tumbles through the water, it unlatches–” I’m not sure–

John: What is it? Is it the ball we’ve been following or is it this coffer?

Craig: It’s probably the coffer, but opens, I think, would be fine there. “And The Eye drifts free. It is not an impossible sapphire–“ It is not an impossible sapphire. It is a sapphire “Glowing uncannily in the darkness.” I have a problem. Until that thing comes out, how the hell am I seeing any of the rest of this? I’m in the bottom of a lake at night.

Now, you may think, “Oh, magic light.” If you then do a light trick here, that’s part of the problem. Just like, “How do we actually do this?” Then it says, “It,” meaning the sapphire, “Floats toward the surface. As it rises, pull back to reveal hundreds of bodies scattered across the lake bed.” That’s cool. That’s a cool image to see all those bodies. Do they move?

John: Yes.

Craig: Does one of them twitch? Does something happen to make me go, “This was worth watching all that?” This is actually exciting stuff. It feels very Pirates of the Caribbean or Caribbean if you will. It’s your choice, but it’s overwritten, so actually I got lost.

John: Yes, I got lost, too. Now, I was missing a cut, too, at the end of this thing because we’re about to go to Sault Ste. Marie night, but it wasn’t clear that this was that we were leaving this sequence and going to a new thing. That’s where I thought I needed a transition.

Craig: Looking at it, I think maybe it’s not. That’s why I’m so confused because it says “Exterior Lake Superior – Night,” and then you’re right, it goes “Exterior Sault Ste. Marie – Night.” Maybe it’s at the same time. I generally don’t think that in the early 2000s, guys on boats who find buried bodies in coal, which is a weird thing to have on a boat in the 2000s, would just dump the body. It feels more like something that happens in the 1800s. Something feels– I’m confused.

John: I’m confused about times, too. We have two scene headers back to back that are both exteriors Sault Ste. Marie. Don’t do that. You need to–

Craig: Yes, that’s problematic for everybody.

John: Then we’re ultimately getting into this kitchen of a trailer home. We’re meeting Adam and Sarah, who’s apparently his mother. They’re speaking with a distinctive Yooper accent.

Yooper accent, for our international listeners, is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and it is a Finnish-Canadian thing. Just imagine it has a Finnish quality to it and the oo’s are different.

Craig: That’s why it’s Sault Ste. Marie?

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s just wrong. You’re just abusing the French language. Sorry, U.P.

John: Adam asks, “Can I go out with Jenny?” He’s 17 and he’s asking a can question, which is, sure possible, but I didn’t understand the relationship based on this can–

Craig: He’s 17 years old.

John: “I’m going out with Jenny.”

Craig: Yes, thank you. You have a driver’s license. Good. What is going on here? Why are you asking your mommy if you can go out?

John: Is she on a sex line? What is she doing? We don’t know. You’re setting up that we should be curious, and I actually need to have a little bit more information because at this point, I don’t know if she’s just customer service.

Craig: I think she’s in a meeting is my guest. I like that you were like, “Is she a sex worker on the phone?”

John: It’s night, though.

Craig: Oh, it’s night. There’s also a fawn drinking from the lake at night.

John: We don’t know if this is the same night where this body was thrown over or if it’s 20 years later.

Craig: We don’t know. Also, how late at night is this?

John: Yes, no idea.

Craig: I don’t–

John: We need this information. We know it’s before midnight because he has to be back by 12:00.

Craig: Right. Oh, yes, also 17, I guess, maybe.

John: He’s lost his phone. I don’t know.

Craig: You’ve lost your phone. What year is it again?

John: We don’t know what year it is. It’s an early 2000s Fleetwood trailer home, but it could be an old– Is it a brand new– 2000?

Craig: That’s right. We don’t know what year it is. If, for instance, it was back in the Nokia days, yes, you’d lose your phone and whatever. It’s fine.

John: It doesn’t matter much.

Craig: It doesn’t matter. I need to know. That said, look, Yeong Jay, this actually feels like there’s something awesome happening here. I love stuff like this. I love the use of the Edmund Fitzgerald. You’ve given us moments that feel like they’re from the 1800s, moments that feel like they’re from the ‘70s, moments that feel like they’re from the 2000s. We don’t know what’s going on. Pull back on the adjectives, there’s just a lot. Maybe if the other things were clearer, they would be more enjoyable, but when you have something awesome happening, let it be awesome. You don’t need to put as much ketchup on it.

John: Agreed. Drew, can you tell us the summary of what happens in this?

Craig: Never Die Alone.

Drew: “A despondent boy seeking a new lease on life discovers an eye of necromancy that grants him dominion over the dead and plunges him into a battle for his soul.”

Craig: A Necromancy of Thay. Obviously, he’s going to become a red wizard. Listen, necromantic magic is very powerful, as we both know. There’s a lot of great spells to use there. A couple of interesting cantrips. Chill Touch.

John: Toll the Dead.

Craig: Toll the Dead. Classics.

John: Classic.

Craig: Nerd.

John: It’s a–

Craig: But I like stuff like this. I see it’s a movie?

Drew: It didn’t say but I’m–

Craig: The idea of a teenager becoming a zombie lord is awesome.

John: Sure.

Craig: That could be awesome but who’s the villain? We need a little bit more of a sense of just read that again. It said what happens to him after–

Drew: “A despondent boy seeking a new lease on life, discovers an eye of necromancy that grants him dominion over the dead and plunges him into a battle for his soul.”

Craig: The last bit is the problem. Plunges him with whom? That’s the most important thing to know from that logline. Plunges him into a battle with a mysterious visitor for his soul, with Satan, with the spirit of his own grandfather, whatever it is. That just sounds existential, which feels boring. I think this could be cool.

John: Yes, it could be cool.

Craig: Yeong-Jay got a good vocabulary, I’ll give you that.

John: All right. I want to thank our three entrants into the three-page challenge this week.

Craig: Brave people.

John: Brave people. Thanks to everyone else who sent in your pages. If you would like to send in your pages, you go to johnaaugust.com/threepage, all typed out. There’s a little form there that you read through and click, and then you attach your PDF to it. If you’re a premium member, we will often send out a little email saying, “Hey, we’re about to do a three-page challenge, and we’re looking for things in a certain space,” and so that’s a benefit if you’re a premium member.

We really want to thank everyone who applied because you guys are heroes and let’s talk about the actual words on the page.

All right, let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, my one cool thing is a movie I watched over the weekend called Strange Darling, and it is terrific. It is written and directed by JT Mollner. Everyone says– Which is true, that the less you know going into it, the better because it’s full of surprises, which is great.

That said, you need to know that it’s bloody because if you don’t like a bloody movie, you’re not going to want to watch that. Also, you’ll know from the very start that it’s in six chapters, but the chapters are not in order. What I think is so good about watching this as a screenwriter is you recognize, “Oh, that’s right. A story is told by the way the audience receives it and the order the audience receives it, not chronologically.”

The choice to put the chapters in this order is an incredibly important screenwriting decision, and you could not reverse it out of this. The story doesn’t work if it’s told chronologically. It’s such a great example of knowing what your audience is thinking and then being able to subvert those expectations by–

Craig: Putting things–

John: Putting things back.

Craig: Being intentional. That sounds awesome.

John: Intentionality.

Craig: I also have a movie.

John: Please.

Craig: My winkle thing. I think it’s a A24 movie, possibly, called My Old Ass.

John: Oh, yes. I think people love it.

Craig: It’s lovely. It was written and directed by Megan Park, Canadian. In my list of Canadians, it’s going to be hard again, to get past Gordon Lightfoot, but she has moved up the list. What I really like about it, it’s a comedy, but it’s like a weepy comedy. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s very simple. It is simple, short. It’s a formula without being a formula, which I love. It follows the stuff about the formula that connects to us on a deep level, which is why the formula became the formula, without just feeling like it’s walking along a similar path.

It does its own thing. It felt to me incredibly current. It was easy for us when we watched John Hughes’ movies in the ‘80s to go, “Oh, this older person gets us. He’s generally speaking, in our world.” This felt like that for 20-somethings now. It just felt correct, felt true. It stars Maisy Stella, who was fantastic. She’s opposite two people. One is Aubrey Plaza-

John: Iconic.

Craig: -who was great. One is this guy, Percy Hynes White, who I wasn’t familiar with, but I think he was in Wednesday, and I think he was briefly canceled and then got uncanceled. I thought he was spectacular. The two of them together, I just thought it was just fascinating. It was really, really well done. There’s a high concept at it that they treat as low concept as possible. There’s no spoiler here, it’s in the trailers. I guess she’s 22 or whatever she is in the movie?

Drew: She’s 19.

Craig: 19. It’s all the same to me, I’m 53, it doesn’t matter. 19 years old. She’s about to leave home. She lives in Canada, which took me a while to figure out, but Maisy Stella is from Canada. She takes mushrooms with her friends, has a psychedelic experience, but the psychedelic experience is merely that her 39-year-old self shows up and just has a conversation with her, and starts telling her things. That high concept is played as low concept as possible. It’s almost like they saw a looper and went, “We could be even less invested in the who cares how this worksness of it,” which I thought was really smart. It was just very beautifully done, well written. Really well written.

John: Yes, I love that.

Craig: Also, well directed. I really appreciate directors who don’t make me look at how they’re directing so damn much and just let the story lead us and just get out of the way. It’s like invisible directing, my favorite kind.

John: That’s great. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilleli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you’re an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting, which is lots of links to things about writing.

We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re great, you’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. Craig, thanks so much.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, so I was just describing this movie that I like so much, Strange Darling, and I didn’t want to spoil anything about it. So I wanted, in our bonus segment here, talk through how we discuss and convince people to see movies or talk about movies without ruining what’s actually in them. For example, I saw the new Joker movie, and there’s things I really liked about it, but things that I think didn’t work about it. It’s tough to discuss those things without revealing big stuff that happens in it.

Craig: For starters, I think, we overestimate our ability to convince people to do anything.

John: True.

Craig: We get excited about, I’m going to convince you to see this because I liked it. I see that you’re not leaning in hard enough. Let me give you another bit, or let me tell you that something happens that completely flips you out. When you get there, you’re going to be so happy. Then maybe you won’t because that’s how that goes. So I think we start to tread towards spoilers when we’re worried the people are going to do what we want them to do.

The easiest version would be to say, you’re describing this movie and you’re like, “You should see it. I think you would love it. If you don’t, I’m sorry. I think you’re going to love it. You just look in them like stuff happens that you will like.”

John: I also feel like anything that shows up in the trailers or shows up in the first three minutes of the movie, that’s–

Craig: Fair game.

John: Yes, it’s completely fair game.

Craig: Like My Old Ass. There’s not this moment– Obviously, in the movie, it’s like, “What? Who? You? What? What do you mean?” The characters can experience that. We all know from the trailers that’s what this thing is about, so that’s fine for us because it’s in the first, 10 minutes of the movie. It’s all the stuff that happens after. Yes, there is something big that happens that if I mentioned it or even refer to it obliquely, would be a massive spoiler. Even saying there’s a massive spoiler in a way is a spoiler.

John: That is one of the challenges, too. That’s what I was running into with Strange Darling, it’s like, if I say things about the performances or the surprising things in the performances, as you start to watch the movie, then you start looking for, “Oh, when is this surprising revelation going to happen?”

Craig: I had this wonderful experience– I think I might’ve mentioned on the show, of showing Bella Ramsey The Matrix. Not only had she not seen it, she knew nothing about it. That was so glorious. I was like, “So you’ve never–“ She’s like, “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know anything about it.” I’m like, “I’m going to tell you nothing. Let’s just watch.”

And the delight– And it was experiencing it again in the best possible way, as opposed to, ”Oh yes, The Matrix, man, it’s going to blow your mind. It’s got this mind-blowing thing in the middle, it’s going to freak you out.” Then everything’s going to be, “Don’t worry, you won’t know what’s going on, you’ll be confused, but then you won’t be–“ None of that, just go ahead.

John: My experience with this recently was showing my daughter Too Many Cooks. It was fun watching it with her, because it was like, “Oh, okay, I sot of get it.” Then in the end it was like, “I did not like that,” because it goes to this incredibly dark place.

Craig: You shouldn’t like it, you should appreciate it.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: Exactly. Sometimes you just want people to have the same experience you had, but by telling them anything about your experience, you’re ruining their chance of having that experience that you had. It’s hard.

John: There’s a movie that I’m talking about doing a remake of, and so I described it to Drew, but I had Drew watch it. I was talking through, “Oh, these are moments that I think are really good, but there’s something coming out that you haven’t hit yet that’s actually a really good version of this scene and this moment.” It’s that balance between you want to provide a framework for why it is you’re liking this thing, even if the movie is not necessarily great. What the potentials are there, and still not spoil the experience of actually getting there.

Craig: Then burdening the person with pleasing you. I just want them to watch something, I don’t need them to turn to me and go, “Oh, you were right, that is awesome.” I don’t want them thinking about me at all, just watch it. I always say to people, “Listen, I love this, you may not.” I say, “If you feel, as you’re going through, “Okay, I’ve seen enough of this, I get what’s going on.” Just stop. It’s fine, just bail out.

Drew: What do you do if, so I feel like I’m at a lot of parties or get-togethers where maybe one or two people haven’t seen a movie, but then like, you brought up My Old Ass, and there’s a thing I want to talk to you about, but John hasn’t seen it, so I don’t want to– Do you just say like, “Oh my God [beep].”

Craig: No, don’t say that.

Drew: Okay.

Craig: Also, just be patient. You’d be like, “Okay, at some point, when it’s just the two of us here,”–

John: Absolutely, when he goes off to get a beer then we’re going to talk about this.

Craig: Yes, I just want to talk real fast about this. I don’t want to pull you away from them or anything like that, but if you love it and you want to have that moment where you love something with somebody together, just be patient. If you do the thing, what happens is, I think people resent it. They resent it because they feel like, “You know what? Then I’m not going to see it, actually.” Fine, you love it so much that you need to talk about it, I don’t want it.

John: I listen to Slate Culture Gabfest, and on that show, they will often do a segment about a movie, but then if they need to, as their bonus segment, they’ll do like, “This is the spoiler part of this stuff, and then we’re going to talk about all this stuff.” That’s also another good approach. It’s just like, there’s the conversation you have going into it, and then the expectation that behind a paywall or behind a little divider curtain, “Here’s where we’ll talk about the other stuff.”

The same thing could be true for online posting. It’s like you put it in a place that is spoiler forum or you use the spoiler tag on things so that people don’t see the stuff that they don’t want to see.

Craig: So much easier in that format. Spoiler tag is great. Sometimes I’m looking for something about, let’s say, it was Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m like, “Okay, I know this thing is supposed to be here, I can’t find it. Let me go and see what the answer is.” Then it’ll go on Reddit and someone will be like, “Oh, here it is.”

Then there’s all this other discussion, and people are really actually pretty decent about spoilers. Then you’re like, “I don’t actually want to know that, so I won’t click on that. I won’t click the fog of war there and reveal it.”

John: Yes, which is crucial. And the fog of war is actually the right, I think, metaphor for that. Because in fog of war, in gaming terms, is that as you pass through a space, you expose the stuff around you, and therefore you can start to see those things. Going in, you’re not supposed to know what the geography of a place is.

Craig: Right, sometimes there are movies where I’m like, “Look, I have no interest in seeing that movie. It’s not my genre, it’s not my thing.” People are talking about it, it’s annoying. I’m just going to go see what it is so that I don’t have to be annoyed and walk away from people. As if I’m going to see that movie one day, I know I’m not.

John: Mike’s thing is he’ll just like, “I will look up the Wikipedia article on it and just read it because I know I’m never going to see that movie, but I’ll know what actually happens.”

Craig: At least, I just don’t have to walk away from people. Sometimes people say, “Do you care if I spoil it?” I’m like, “Absolutely not. Just spoil away.” Never going to see it. I think the real problem is when we’re trying to convince people to do something that maybe they don’t want to do. It’s like we make a trailer that gives away too much with our mouths.

John: Yes. And I’m sure you’re constantly grappling with that on your show. It’s like in your ideal world you would love for everyone to come in completely clean and not have a sense of what– I haven’t watched the trailer for your show because I don’t want to know anything about how it’s going to be this season.

Craig: You don’t get hard information but you definitely learn things. It’s an interesting thing, adapting something that exists.

John: Yes, that’s true.

Craig: I don’t worry so much about the spoiler stuff because, to me, if you’re not in for the journey and the interesting things we do in a different format, then if you’re just watching it to find out the– It’s not Lost, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: I don’t need to know what happens. What is the island? There is none of that for us really. It’s not about that. It is why I had the nuclear reactor blow up instantly in Chernobyl because I’m like, spoiler, it blows up. Let’s just get that out of the way. It blowed up.

John: Yes, absolutely. Cool, thanks.

Craig: Thanks.

Links:

• Quote-Unquote Marketing Director – Apply Here!
• Veteran Script Coordinator on YouTube
• Why aren’t smart people happier? by Adam Mastroianni
• Middle Aged Man – SNL
• FLUNGE by J Wheeler White, COWS by John and Mark DiStefano, and NEVER DIE ALONE by Yeong-Jay Lee
• The Cutting Edge
• Strange Darling
• My Old Ass
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome, my name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 660 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now one thing I love about our podcast is that we actively solicit suggestions on topics from our listeners. Today’s episode exists entirely because of one email we got. Craig, would you mind reading this email?

Craig: I would not. It says:

“Could you do an entire episode on why Moneyball works? A strange disease I have is watching the same movie over and over again when it affects me, and lately, it’s Moneyball. My older son has been doing this too lately, which I’m either proud of or worried about, and he was the one who landed on Moneyball, a movie I don’t even think I saw in theaters. I would very much welcome an expert understanding of why that movie, which contains so few of the traditional elements of a movie, a B-plot love story, for example, is so effective.” Side note, I challenge the premise.

John, I think we should do this.

John: I think we should. I think this is a great suggestion from any listener, but when it comes from an accomplished journalist, a best-selling novelist, she wrote Fleishman is in Trouble. She also wrote the acclaimed adaptation, the limited series adaptations of Fleishman is in Trouble, who we had her on the show to talk about that, and this summer’s new bestseller, Long Island Compromise. We had to get her on the show. Welcome back to the program, Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner: It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me again.

Craig: I love this. We have a genius on. This is great. I get to argue with her about Moneyball, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and–

Taffy: Is it?

Craig: Extra thank you, Taffy, because we get to talk about baseball on a podcast where 50% of the people on this podcast don’t talk– They don’t even discriminate between various blank balls, basketball, football, baseball, it’s just sports ball to John, and I’m a baseball fanatic. I love Moneyball. I, too, have watched it over and over and over. I think it’s brilliant for so many reasons, and I do think it has all of the traditional elements of a movie, so, huh.

John: Wow.

Taffy: On the surface, the traditional–

Craig: We’ll get into it.

Taffy: Let’s go for it, let’s go for it.

Craig: We’ll discuss.

John: I agree with both of you. I think we’ll try to find the happy middle, the dialectic between these two polar opposites here. This joins your tradition of deep dives. We’ve done it on movies before, so we’ve talked about The Little Mermaid, we’ve talked about Frozen, we’ve talked about Die Hard.

Taffy: Clueless was one of my favorite deep dives.

John: Oh my God, Clueless, incredible. We’re going to do this. Also in our bonus segment for premium members, I would like to talk about money, because, Taffy, your book, Long Island Compromise, is about the intersection of trauma and money. Moneyball is literally about calculating how much a person is worth, so I thought we would dig into our feelings about money and value and how we value ourselves as writers. Money for our bonus segment, premium members.

Taffy: So good.

Craig: Amazing.

John: All right, Craig, you and I have a little bit of housekeeping to do before we can get on with Taffy here.

Craig: All right.

John: About two weeks from now, we are going to be in Austin for the Austin Film Festival. You and I are doing a live Scriptnotes show. I’m doing a 25th-anniversary screening of Go.

Craig: Oh, nice.

John: Yeah. I see that you are on at least one or two other panels. You’re doing the– I can’t believe they drafted you into doing the Pitch Finale. I don’t know how they–

Craig: You know what, I’m there. What else? It’s either I’m drinking while judging the Pitch Finale party, or I’m drinking and not judging the Pitch Finale party. I will say the thing about the– listen, I don’t care about pitches. I don’t think they make any sense. This is like, I don’t know why they keep picking me. They all know this. But it is fun because it’s in a bar, it’s packed, it’s kind of exciting. I feel like Simon Cowell, obviously that’s my part. I play Simon Cowell on the show, and we get to make somebody very, very happy, but the crowd is like really into it. That part I think is fun.

John: That part is fun. Drew will be there. Megana will be there. Craig, I don’t think that Megana’s going to come as well.

Craig: I am now levitating.

John: Chris who does our Inneresting Newsletter will be there as well. They’re there to help support Scriptnotes, but also because we’re launching the new version of Highland and so we’re going to throw a party for that. If you’re in Austin and whether you have your badge or don’t have your badge and you’d like to join us for this launch party for Highland, that’ll be on Thursday afternoon at some point. You need to click the link on the show notes and tell us that you want to come and then we’ll send you the details about that.

It should be a good fun time to see the new version of Highland that everybody else will be using. Let us get to the marquee topic here, Moneyball. We will talk about the development and probably at the end of this because there’s actually a really interesting development history that we can talk through. Let’s talk about the movie that we’re watching on the screen. It’s based on a book by Michael Lewis, screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.

Craig: Who?

John: Two hacks, they’ve never done anything else.

Craig: Can you imagine? That’s already screenwriting Voltron. That’s incredible.

Taffy: Right.

John: It is incredible. Story credit by Stan Chervin. Drew has found this undated 166-page draft. It has omitteds in it that makes it feel like it’s a production draft, but it’s not actually a very close representation of what we see on screen right now. Drew at some point made a hop in to tell us like, “This is a thing that was different in this draft as written versus the movie that we see.” Really for our purposes, we’re going to talk about the movie that we experienced.

If you were to download it as we’ve recently watched it, this is the movie we’re seeing. This is why it works on screen the way it works. Let’s get to the premise here because Taffy, you said that this quote contains so few of the traditional elements of the movie, like a B-plot love story, yet it’s so effective. What has been your experience and exposure to Moneyball and what prompted you to actually ask this question?

Taffy: Like I said in my email, my son has started watching Moneyball over and over. My son recites full scenes from Moneyball.

Craig: Yeah, he does.

Taffy: There are a couple of words that you could say that will trigger an entire scene. He is excellent at it. I’m not allowed to disseminate video of it, but I have video of it. In case you see me, I will show it to you.

Craig: Amazing.

John: I think you sent me a clip. We’re not going to post it–

Taffy: Did I?

John: Yes, I think you did.

Taffy: We started watching it a lot together. I have been a sports reporter, but before you get excited, Craig, I do not understand baseball on a level that I have had to, in ESPN Magazine stories, write, “please insert sports stuff here,” which is how it works sometimes if you’re bad. I think of baseball as the language Mandarin. You could learn it, but if you didn’t learn it before you were 11, you will never be fluent at it.

Craig: You might be onto something there because I certainly did learn it before I was 11.

Taffy: See. And by the way, I therefore think that there is something very, very– like I watch Moneyball over and over. I can now recite it. I still don’t know how baseball work. I think one of the successful things about it is that unlike the movie, also about a thing I don’t understand, Rounders? I don’t understand. When I watch Rounders, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to think based on the hand of cards that’s presented to me. I don’t feel that I am missing anything.

I feel like maybe these luminaries who wrote it may be learned about baseball, but understood more from my point of view than theirs, that you don’t need to know anything about baseball.

Craig: I agree with you. I’m running through my mental inventory of Moneyball and it teaches you the things you need to know along the way. You get a basic sense, okay, Billy Beane is the GM. That means he’s deciding who to trade, who to engage, but he doesn’t own the team. Then you have a bunch of scouts whose job, everybody played baseball and they’re old guys and they’re supposed to find you new talent. Then there’s this kid who’s helping him figure out with statistics, how do we solve this problem we have, which is that our team sucks.

One of my favorite quotes of any movie is Billy Beane, as played by Brad Pitt, defines the problem the Oakland A’s are having. You don’t need to know anything about baseball to understand this. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. If you try to think like the Yankees in here, you will lose to the Yankees out there.” Anyone can understand that. We are dealing with an underdog.

John: Let’s talk about digging into more of Taffy’s question. There are things that she is expecting to see in a movie like this that do not appear. Part of it, I think it’s also because the presentation of the movie is not what we might expect. It is shot almost like a documentary. It feels like a documentary at times. The camera’s very loose. There’s a lot of archival footage put in there. You feel like you’re watching things happen in front of the lens, but it’s not as presentational as we might expect from other movies.

Taffy: Can I just say also on that documentary note, we looked up all of the actors in this movie. Some of them are scouts and some of them are professional actors. The professional actors are not acting like professional actors.

Craig: They’re not.

Taffy: They’re acting like people who are in a documentary.

Craig: I’m so glad you said that.

Taffy: It’s amazing.

Craig: Because the person that I’m obsessed with the most, just on a tone point of view, is this actor named Ken Medlock who plays Grady. Grady is kind of the villain scout. He’s the guy who doesn’t want to hear about the idea– the basic premise of Moneyball is baseball’s been around for 100 years. It is imbued with tradition and old ways of thinking, the Oakland A’s are a poor team and they’re losing. This kid comes along from Yale and says, “There’s a better way of thinking about how to evaluate players.”

Grady represents the old guard who’s like, “You and Google boy– as he calls them– aren’t going to change baseball.” This guy, Ken Medlock, I was convinced was an actual baseball scout. He had baseball body, gym teacher face, and just the fluidity and realism of the way he portrayed that character. People don’t talk about a great character actor enough. Ken Medlock, you’re my one cool thing this week. I don’t care. Ken Medlock. So good.

Taffy: Is his name John Henry at the end who plays the owner of the Red Sox?

John: Arliss Howard plays him. Yes.

Taffy: Sorry, Arliss Howard plays John Henry.

Craig: The owner of the Boston Red Sox.

Taffy: The owner of the Boston Red Sox. He’s an actor, but he is acting like somebody I would have interviewed and is trying to figure out how to speak to somebody for the first time in front of a– it’s amazing.

Craig: It really is amazing.

Taffy: It’s like a third kind of movie, a thing that’s conveying itself as the thing we’re used to in a documentary from all these ESPN, 30 for 30 things, right?

Craig: Yes, this stiffness to it.

Taffy: So interesting.

Craig: Bennett Miller, who directed the film, also, a ton of credit there for just both the visual style and also keeping everything so wonderfully grittily grounded. You’re right, like an ESPN 30 for 30.

John: Well, let’s also talk about things you might expect to see in this movie. Let’s imagine that Michael Lewis’s book lands on your desk and like, okay, well, how do we adapt this book? How do we adapt this story? The very basics of the story is Billy Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A’s, has this team that is not winning, does not have the money to do what he needs to do. Ends up recruiting somebody on to help him figure out how to assemble a team in a much less expensive way that is the antithesis of how you’re supposed to be doing baseball.

We get this Michael Lewis book. The things we expect to see in a movie, like Taffy points out, is like, well, where is the B-story love interest? Where is the Brad Pitt love interest? You have Brad Pitt and he doesn’t kiss anybody in the whole movie. Now, Drew, the script that you gave us, there is a love interest in there. Talk to us about what’s different if we wanted to look at this script.

Drew: Yes, from the get-go, he has a girlfriend character who he’s bouncing things off of. A lot of those scenes get repurposed and given to Jonah Hill in the final thing. Yes, throughout, she pops up, they’ll have dinner and just little moments where he gets to talk to her and use her as a sounding board.

John: The movie is almost completely focused on his quest to make this team work under this new principle. Yet there are moments where we are able to hop off of this main ride and see some things who are not directly baseball. We have his daughter. We have Robin Wright who is his ex-wife. We had one scene with Robin Wright and Spike Jonze, who plays her husband, which is great fun.

Craig: Awesome.

John: They’re useful, but they’re not crucial. I think they’re just there to– well, let’s talk about why they’re there. Because almost this entire conversation is going to be about the main arc quest about this. Let’s talk about the little side quests we do with the daughter, with the ex-wife. Why they’re there and what function do they serve in this movie? Because you could have cut them out but they still feel crucial. Craig, I see you squinting like you couldn’t have cut them out.

Craig: I don’t think you should. There’s the right amount of them. To me, the story it’s a classic redemption tale. This character, Billy Beane, is a real person, obviously, was a first-round draft pick coming out of high school, I think, and was projected by scouts to be a star. And he was a complete flop. Ah-ha, scouts, flop, failure, and now he rolls himself into this front office gig, which is generally seen to be a bit like, “Well, you crapped out, so now this is what you can do instead.” His success and that’s what we’re invested in like, can he come back? Can he achieve?

Because in his mind, he’s a loser. His whole thing is, “I am a jinx and a loser. What I’m doing here, on the one hand, theoretically will work and it’s bold. On the other hand, simply because it’s me, it probably won’t work because I am a loser.” We need some stakes beyond whether or not the Oakland A’s succeed. We need to know that there are people at home that he is trying to also prove himself to, that he feels like a loser in context with. The most important one is his daughter.

It’s not like his daughter and his ex-wife are like, “If the Oakland A’s don’t win, then like we said, you’re a loser.” They do believe in him. That’s why it hurts more. He needs to show them, though. He needs to. Or else he goes home with his tail between his legs, again, a failure in the eyes of the people he wishes he could impress. The only people I think he’s trying to impress in this movie are his– really, the only person is his daughter, actually.

Taffy: I also think his daughter is there for a much more practical reason, which is that she is there to talk about his anxiety about being fired. Also, I want to say, I don’t know if this is even an okay thing to say. In a couple of those scenes, Brad Pitt is a different size and wearing a wig. It makes me wonder if he is returned–

John: These small things I never notice.

Taffy: -because there aren’t enough. I notice wigs all the time-

Craig: Oh, goodness.

Taffy: -but Brad Pitt, I was like, “What are those veins in his neck?” He’s bulking up for Troy 2 or whatever. He’s brought back in, and also, she’s a girl at a funny age where she could look like a child or a grown-up within a second.

I guess I think that a lot of this movie revolves around the idea that if you look at the movie in a certain way, Billy Beane is a villain who is just– he throws things. He is cruel to people underneath him. He’s a little bit abusive. He is doing something that actually puts a lot of people’s livelihoods in danger, but she is there to ask him, “Are you going to be fired?”

We have to see with him that the stakes are so, so high. He has another scene with Jonah Hill, with Peter Brand, where he says to Peter Brand, almost apropos of nothing like, “You went to Yale, this is your second job, you’re going to be fine. If I fail at this, I fail forever.” It’s like him against the world, but what is he doing? What about this world? I think the whole thing lands, and he’s saved by the one essential question of the movie, which is, what is the best way to love baseball? Is it to honor its traditions, or is it to innovate so that it becomes what it could be?

Craig: I love having this conversation. I’m fascinated, Taffy, by your view that there’s a slightly villainous aspect to him because I have a very different relationship with this character. My relationship with this character is– one of the reasons I love baseball is that it’s fairly scientific. I remember as a kid reading– I talked about it here on the show before, a book called the Microbe Hunters. There’s this old book written in the 1920s, but it basically catalogs seven or eight great scientists in history who tracked down the cause of disease and figured out a way to solve it.

Louis Pasteur, for instance. One of the things that keeps coming up over and over in these things is how much resistance each one of these people faced by the church, by commonly accepted… And the tension that I felt reading this was, there’s like this innate anger in watching somebody who is scientifically correct having to force their way past ignorance, doubt, fear, and superstition to prevail at great risk to themselves.

Watching this movie, that’s what I connect to. It’s like watching a story about Galileo or Copernicus trying to argue that, “No, the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth. The earth revolves around the sun, and I’m going to risk my life and limb to prove it because it’s correct.” I love that. I do. I love him for it, and I forgive him all of his tantrums and his stuff.

Taffy: I think that you’re right, and I think that that’s why it’s a great movie. I think his villainy is just viewed from all of these different parts. I do think he’s doing the work of innovators, and he’s very afraid. Also, there’s no winning for him. Even at the end when he wins, he didn’t win the last game of the season, so he gets to hate himself all over again. I think this is what I meant exactly when I said this doesn’t come along with the traditional, not just a love story. But with a certain kind of sympathy and a certain kind of like a dog, all of the things that you would have if we were showing you were such a great innovator but a really difficult personality.

It’s almost like it’s one of the freest movies I’ve ever seen because it just allows him to be in this story about this thing he was trying to do without– when I was learning how to write screenplays, I was told that if you have this difficult character, you should give him like a disability. The professor, I remember, always said, “Clubfoot.” I don’t know. That’s what he always said.

Craig: Worked for Shakespeare, I guess.

Taffy: Right. I felt like this was free from the constraints of that. That’s more what I mean when I say the protections around a traditional story are that he’s just allowed to do this. He’s allowed to fire people and send them home. He is allowed to have the hate of the people. Also Brad Pitt’s performance in this, his contempt for the people he’s talking to.

Craig: It’s so good.

Taffy: It’s so good.

Craig: “What is the problem? Enh. What is the problem? How can you solve it if you don’t know what it is?”

You’re absolutely right about everything you say. The counter really is just that there are elements that if– and I don’t know what the ordering was. I don’t know if Zaillian sat down and then Sorkin showed up, or Sorkin sat down and Zaillian showed up. It doesn’t matter if you have both those guys. The things that pop out when you look at the book and the story are, A, this guy was first-round draft pick and failed. That’s good character setup.

B, the Oakland A’s suffer this incredible challenge because they lose their star player. In general, they’re poor, and so the owners can never afford to keep the good players. They always leave for free agency. Then by applying this method, which no one believed in, the Oakland A’s go on to tie the record for most consecutive wins in a season by a team, and that is capped off by this insane game where they were up by an enormous amount.

It was in the bag, and then they almost blew it, and then the guy who wins it for them is the very guy that Billy Beane went out and pulled off the scrap heap even though he had unrepairable nerve damage and can’t throw, as Grady says. All of that stuff gives you really basic things. The only thing that would be missing there and then along it comes is what is the central relationship. Where is the love story?

The love story, to me, I would argue, is between Billy Beane and Peter Brand, that it’s Brad Pitt and it’s Jonah Hill. Because obviously it’s a buddy-buddy love story, but it is two guys who decide they’re going to go all in with each other and trust each other. The look when they pull off that trade for Rincón and Jonah Hill, the passion of it. You see these guys are in love with each other. They’re falling in love, and the whole thing will be on their shoulders.

To me, there are those romantic, basic storylines, and of course, the beautiful moment of Billy Beane to say, “Okay, we’re winning. I’ll show up at the 20th game. Oh God, I showed up and we immediately started to lose.” That’s the final climactic test of a character, all that stuff. I agree with you. There is all this beautiful freedom, and then you have all these great traditional elements that I think, had they not been there, this would have been a hard movie to write.

Taffy: Can I just say one more thing?

John: Please.

Taffy: I’m sorry. I agree with all that. The traditional stuff I was talking about was more like someone having sex with Brad Pitt.

Craig: Oh. Yeah, that’s pretty traditional.

Taffy: It makes me always think, by the way, which is why I love sports movies, that I really do believe you just have a freedom in these kinds of movies. I also want to say that I think that the love story– I love their relationship, but I think the love story is between Billy Beane and baseball. It is like-

Craig: Fair way to look at it.

Taffy: -it’s the only relationship that changes. He and Peter Brand are sort of like Butch and Sundance for the long haul. Billy goes from, is the best way to love baseball, to look at its statistics, or is it to just love it? He comes around to the best way I can love baseball is by trying to get to win this game. Anyway, you go on, sorry.

Craig: No, I think that’s a fair point. Look, what’s the line that people quote the most? “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Baseball, which is, if you don’t love it the way I do, is one of the more boring sports to watch on television. Baseball, without question, empirically, factually, is the best sport to turn into a movie. There are so many great movies that have baseball at their center, and so few that have football or basketball. There are some, but you don’t have a field of dreams. You can just go down the list of incredible baseball movies and how much fun they are, all the way down to Bad News Bears. There’s no–

Taffy: What is it about baseball that does that?

Craig: Well, great question. Only a theory. Baseball is one of the few games where everything stops to let one person face off against one person, even though there’s a whole team. Baseball is the only sport that doesn’t have a clock. There’s no like– baseball is full of these traditions. It is pastoral. The fields are all different. There’s this sense that it was cobbled together out of America. I think most importantly, it’s the fact that there’s no clock.

The ability to stop and pause and feel anxiety is enormous. And only baseball has a home run. Everything else, a touchdown is how you score. You score touchdowns or you kick a field goal. In basketball, football in hoop. Hockey, puck in net. Soccer, put ball in goal. Baseball, you can run around the bases. You can steal home. Then there’s the home run, which is just everything stops. Everyone has a party. It’s just dramatic. Slow, but it’s wonderful. I love it.

Taffy: It also has a moment as opposed to moves. It has a moment.

Craig: Has a moment. When we get to the moment in this film where Scott Hatteberg gets to the plate and has a chance to win this game for them, it’s the same moment that you’ve seen in The Natural with Robert Redford. You see this over and over. Everything slows down. Time slows down. Bull Durham–

Taffy: Parenthood.

Craig: Every movie with baseball, there is a moment where everything gets slow and quiet. It’s just me and the hands squeezing on the bat. Everyone almost shoots it the same way and it works every frickin’ time. Because, you put it perfectly, baseball has space for moments and other sports don’t.

John: Yes, if you try to watch a football game or soccer game–

Craig: Match.

John: -you’re trying to follow the ball. You’re trying to follow, where’s the ball? Because that’s where the action is. Versus baseball, you’re looking at the people and what the people are doing. You can follow the action much more clearly and so can the camera, so can the audience, which is fantastic.

Let’s follow the ball in this story and take a look at how it unfolds on screen. We’re going to start with, the movie opens with Billy being listening to– not really listening to this disastrous game.

He’s frustrated. This is where we wonder if he’s a villain because he smashes the radio. He’s really upset. Then, seven minutes in, we get him explaining what the problem is and what he needs. This is a scene where he’s going to talk to the owner of the team. Let’s take a listen to this clip from seven minutes into Moneyball.

Billy: We’re not going to do better next year.

Steve: Why not?

Billy: Well, you know we’re being gutted. We’re losing Giambi, Damon, Isringhausen. Done deal. We’re in trouble.

Steve: You’ll find new guys. You found Jason, you found Damon.

Billy: I need more money, Steve.

Steve: Billy.

Billy: I need more money.

Steve: We don’t have any more money, Billy.

Billy: I can’t compete against $120 million with $38 million.

Steve: We’re not going to compete with these teams that have big budgets. We’re going to work within the constraints we have, and you’re going to get out and do the best job that you can recruiting new players. We’re not going to pay $17 million to players.

Billy: I’m not asking you for 10 or 20, 30 million dollars. I’m just asking for a bit of help. Just get me a little closer and I will get you that championship team. I mean, this is why I’m here. This is why you hired me. I got to ask you, what are we doing here-

Steve: Billy, I–

Billy: -if it’s not to win a championship?

Steve: I want to win just as much–

Billy: That’s my bar. My bar is here. My bar is to take this team to the championship.

Steve: Billy, we’re a small-market team, and you’re a small-market GM. I’m asking you to be okay not spending money that I don’t have. I’m asking you to take a deep breath, shake off the loss, get back in a room with your guys, and figure out how to find replacements for the guys we lost with the money that we do have.

Billy: I’m not leaving here. I can’t leave here with that.

Steve: What else can I help you with?

John: All right, such a great scene. You guys are talking about your experience with baseball and so you were making fun of me for sports ball and not knowing anything. Here’s what I will say. I had not seen this movie in the theaters, I don’t think. Until Taffy wrote in with the email, I was like, have I seen Moneyball? I watched Moneyball and it’s of course fantastic. What I found useful is I could see the analogies to the studio system that we’re used to working in this movie.

Billy Beane is the producer. He’s not the director. He’s not the coach. He’s not the one who’s directing all the action on the field. He’s the producer putting the whole thing together, but he’s not the studio head. Right now he’s talking to the studio boss saying like, “I need more money.” They’re like, “There’s no more money. You got to figure out with what you have.” He has to figure out like, “Okay, well, I don’t know how to do this. I’m explaining very clearly what I need, and I’m not getting what I need. What am I supposed to do?”

The scene we just played is essentially I want song. If this was Moana, this is How Far I’ll Go. This is I have this thing I need to do, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to need to find a way to win because I want this team to be a competitor at the highest level. I want to win.

Craig: You nailed it there, and I love your analogy of, because it’s dead right, this guy that he’s talking to is the studio chairman. He’s the producer. The director is the manager, and the actors are the players. He is saying, “You guys want me to, and I want to win.” He’s not even saying, “If I need more money to be able to do the job, you’re asking me to do so I can keep my job.” He’s saying, “I need more money so I can win.”

“I want to win,” and what this guy is telling him is,” I don’t have more money. You’re not getting more money.” I love just how stolid he is, “And hey, I’d love to win too, but also, it’s not actually that big of a–“ really, as long as our tickets sells and I profit, he’s not in it for the same reason Billy Beane is. That’s very, very clear. What a wonderful way of establishing where Billy is in the pecking order, what he wants, and what the problem is.

John: Yes, I agree with you, establishing what is the problem so that the hero can go about trying to solve the problem. So Billy Beane goes back to his scouts because he needs to find a replacement for the players that he’s lost. The scene in the movie is terrific with all these– a mix, I think, of real scouts and some actors in there playing scouts, and as we talked about, the documentary feel of this is fantastic.

Now, the script that Drew found actually has a scene that’s different that’s really, really good, and so I thought we might do a little play acting here, and let’s read through the scene that’s actually in the script for this thing. Craig, will you play Billy Beane?

Craig: Sure.

John: Taffy, can I have you play Grady? I’ll do Poat. I don’t know whoever Poat is. This, we are in the conference room with a team talking about how to put this together, and Billy Beane has lost his patience with his scouts.

Billy: What if we’ve been wrong this whole time about what ingredients manufacture a win? What if this whole time we thought it was the chicken that made the chicken soup taste good when really it was the onions that made the chicken soup taste good? Onions are a lot cheaper than chicken. You see what I’m saying?

Poat: I don’t have the first idea of what you’re saying.

Billy: We got to go start over. We got to go rethink this thing. We got to go look where others aren’t looking.

Grady: With all due respect, we’ve been doing this for a long time.

Billy: It doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. You watch nature docs? You know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies. I’m open to any solution, as long as it’s not what the other guys are doing. Now, I’m going to Cleveland to poach an outfielder named Brandon Garcia.

John: All right, so this is a scene that’s not in the movie. At the end of this whole segment, we’re going to talk about sort of the development process of this, because this is a really weird situation. What I like about this is like, this is the feeling of the scene, but it’s not the actual words that are in the scene. You can see the scene like, oh, I get the shape of this. I get like what it is that he’s trying to do, but these words are not what we’re actually seeing on screen.

Craig: I think runt of the litter made it in, as I recall.

John: Yes.

Taffy: Runt of the litter did make it in, but it also feels like you’re doing a baseball movie and you’re writing it and you don’t know how much the person reading it knows about any of this. You just over-explain so that everyone’s on the same page and then you could take it out.

Craig: That’s a really good point. One of the things that they threaded beautifully on the page and then on the subsequent film is, they make sure that the way Billy is explaining things to these guys, and specifically the what is the problem scene, why I love that scene so much is, he’s explaining it to them, but not in a way that you would have to if you were with baseball people. He’s explaining a baseball thing to baseball people, but he explains it in a way where you go, ah, they haven’t considered doing it like this before and very specifically, he talks about how important it is to get on base.

What he says is, “I don’t care how people get on base,” because these guys do. All he care is how he gets on base. This is who we have to replace, Jason Giambi. This was his on-base percentage. We have to get three people who in the aggregate recreate Jason Giambi. That is a way of explaining things to baseball people where I go, oh, yes, whereas the chicken soup thing here feels a little bit like, oh, none of us know baseball, so let’s use a cooking analogy.

John: Yes. All right, so we zoom ahead and so he’s going to talk with the Cleveland Indians about doing a trade there. It’s in that room that he sees Jonah Hill’s character. He’s playing Peter Brand, who’s just a guy off in the background who would be a day player, except that Brad Pitt notices him and is like, “There’s something, people are listening to this kid for whatever reason.”

He goes and finds this kid in the bullpen and talks to him. There’s a scene which is like a first kind of an aggressive meet cute between them there. Then the real meat of the scene happens in a parking garage below. He’s just like, “Follow me down to the parking garage.” Let’s take a listen to that parking garage in which Peter Brand explains his theory of the case.

Peter: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. This leads people who run major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.

Billy: Go on.

Peter: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins. In order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You’re trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who’s worth $7.5 million a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy’s got a great glove. He’s a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases, but is he worth the $7.5 million a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No.

No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. If I say it to anybody, I’m ostracized. I’m a leper. That’s why I’m cagey about this with you. That’s why I respect you, Mr. Beane. If you want full disclosure, I think it’s a good thing that you got Damon off of your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.

John: Wow. I pulled that clip this morning and so I was watching it as I was playing. Now that I just listened to the audio, you realize that music cue comes in at just that moment and says like, aha, this is where we’re getting a resonance between what he wants and what I want, that the light bulb is starting to glow there.

Craig: We also start to shift to footage of Johnny Damon and what he does. Johnny Damon, it always hurts me in my heart a little bit because the Yankees eventually make the same mistake the Red Sox do with Johnny Damon, no offense to Johnny Damon, but everything that this character is saying here is correct. The most important part of this is baseball thinking is medieval. It’s hard for us now, if you are a baseball fan, to process how medieval it was all just this short time ago.

Spoiler alert, not only do the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane adopt this way of thinking, everyone does, and not just a little, an enormous amount. It hits its crescendo with a guy named Theo Epstein who becomes a very young Billy Beane-ish general manager of the Boston Red Sox. Boston Red Sox don’t, they’re not able to get Billy Beane. They end up with Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein applies all these principles and breaks the curse. The Boston Red Sox finally win the World Series after a gazillion years.

Then what does Theo Epstein do? He leaves Boston Red Sox and goes to the Chicago Cubs, the only team with a longer curse, and they win the World Series using all of this. The problem baseball deals with now is that maybe they’ve gone a little too far with this. They have a billion statistics now. It has become insane. Just a short time ago, what they had was a bunch of scouts going, “He’s got a good baseball body. He’s got good hands.”

John: Yes, it was like phrenology. Yes, it felt medieval. Now, I’m not pushing back, but I’d say like, growing up, I always heard about baseball stat. People were always obsessed with stats.

Taffy: That’s what I was going to say, that you could look in The New York Times and–

Craig: Sure, there’s a box score.

Taffy: Yes, and see what happened at every point in the game. I also just want to say, my birthday is on October 26th. I can’t tell you how many game three, four, five, like surprise dinners I’ve had with boyfriends that forced me to watch one of these games. It feels like it’s all statistics and that’s what every– people make snow angels in statistics. It’s hard for me to understand why this was such a big deal.

Craig: Here’s what statistics used to be. I, of course, collected baseball cards like every little boy baseball fan. On the back of the cards, there were statistics. A hitter has a batting average. That’s how frequently they get a hit. They have home runs, hits, stolen bases, runs batted in. Those are your five statistics.

Here are what you have now just for hitting: You have batting average on balls in play. You have isolated power, late-inning pressure situation, on-base plus slugging. You have slugging percentage, which wasn’t a thing back then at all. Pitches per plate appearance, runs created, weighted runs above average. The most important one, wins above replacement. They figured out how many wins you create above the league average of who you are at your position. There are weighted runs created plus. There are maybe, and pitching– don’t get me started, there are about 40 statistics that they have now, including things I literally don’t know what they mean, like skill, interactive, earned run average. The spreadsheets that are happening right now with these players is insane. It’s insane.

John: Now Craig, what I would say though, is the success of this movie is that we don’t need to know about any of those statistics, because the only thing that Jonah Hill is introducing is that we need to actually figure out how much they are worth. Because we, as people, understand money. It’s like we don’t have the money to do this thing, so how much money is this person worth? I think one of the things when we’ll get into the bonus segment too, but like the movie talks a little bit about assigning a value to a person and reducing them down to just their statistics and not think about them as human beings.

Craig: As people.

John: Yes.

Craig: I will say like the one thing that they did brilliantly here was, and this was an early day’s thing for this sort of stuff, sabermetrics is ultimately what it was called, is on-base percentage. Like I said, it used to be, how many hits do you get? How many walks do you get? How many home runs do you hit? How many hits do you hit? What he’s saying here, what Peter Brand says in that speech we just heard is, I see an imperfect understanding of where runs come. Your goal should be to buy wins, and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. What he boils it down to is, to get runs, you need people on base.

They have to reach base. The imperfect understanding of baseball was walks. It’s mind-blowing to think that this was revolutionary, but the big revolution at the time was saying, a guy who reaches first base by hitting singles, and a guy who reaches first base by walking a lot, are the same guy. We’re paying the singles hitter an enormous amount more. They boiled it down to just that one concept. So why do you want Jason’s little brother, Jeremy Giambi, because he gets on base? Why do you want David Justice, an old guy whose best days are behind him, gets on base? Scott Hatteberg, gets on base.

Taffy: Am I correct to think though, in baseball, that it’s more interesting to watch someone run to the base than to walk to the base?

Craig: Of course.

Taffy: Is that what it is? It’s that like betting changed this? It’s that it didn’t matter anymore if it was entertaining, it mattered what you were betting on?

Craig: The ultimate entertainment, I think, is winning. What fans want is winning.

Taffy: I feel that way.

Craig: You, as a Yankee fan, if a pitcher wants to fall apart and walk eight guys in a row, which means a bunch of guys are going to score just by being walked in, awesome. Getting on base is not as exciting as getting a hit, no question. Winning is the most exciting thing. That’s what sells out a stadium and sells out your season tickets for the next season.

John: And in baseball and other sports, if there’s a thing that is happening that is not entertaining, they will change the rules to make the more entertaining thing happen. That’s happened in baseball in the last few years, right, Craig? Where they’ve changed some of the things to speed up the play and just make-

Craig: They have.

John: -it a more interesting game.

Craig: By the way, after a century of refusing to. I just want to say, baseball has been the most rules-change-resistant sport there is. Over the last 10 years, I think they have made a few, not dramatic, but a few good rules changes. For so long, they refused to change anything. Whereas basketball is like, you know what, they love the three-point line. They love it in colleges, screw it. Let’s do it. Let’s put it in.

John: Brilliant. All right, so let’s get back to the actual movie that we’re watching on screen.

Taffy: Especially since it’s so sad that I’m not going to remember anything you said, but I understood it in the moment. So sad.

John: Getting back to the movie that we’re watching on screen. Billy Beane is implementing these changes over the resistance of his scouts. He’s making trades and changes to the lineup that his head coach hates, that everyone says is not going to work. I think according to movie logic, it doesn’t work. Luckily, the true story is that it does not work at the start. They’re not winning games. Everyone is coming down on him like this is a stupid idea and he’s doomed for failure until it starts to work.

Taffy: And they have this moment where the two of them have to really recommit to each other. Billy and Peter have to decide like, “Do we really believe in this?” That’s a very touching moment to me. I think that so many of the things we’re talking about are aided by music and showing something on the screen that is illustrating the thing that they’re saying. In that moment where they recommit to each other about it is the moment that I understand really what I’m watching.

Craig: We have to personify the resistance. The resistance was personified by this scout Grady. Grady gets himself fired by putting his hand on Billy. His very baseball-y kind of thing. Then we have a new villain. The new villain is Art Howe, the manager. Played brilliantly as always by the late greats Philip Seymour Hoffman. The problem now is, okay, I’m the producer of the movie. I’ve come up with a plan that might make this movie good with the tiny amount of money we have. The director isn’t going along with the plan. And I can’t set the lineup directly.

What I can do as a general manager though is start to trade guys that I don’t want playing to make the manager have to play the people I do want playing. This is the great tension and in the best part of it all is that in the end, you see Art Howe– by the way, this isn’t really how it worked in real life. They did not fight like this. Art Howe makes the fateful, wonderful decision when everything is on the line. They’re trying to make baseball history to send Scott Hatteberg to the plate, which is his commitment to being honorable and pursuing of truth rather than baseball medieval thinking.

John: Now, so one of the things that the story does do, they establish that Billy Beane does not watch the games. He does not want to listen to the games. He doesn’t want to have any direct interaction with the players. He doesn’t travel with them. There are moments along the way that he is actually becoming more involved in the day-to-day. He’s in the locker room more and talking with them. A scene I think really embodies this is his conversation with David Justice, who they’ve now recruited on-

Craig: So good.

John: -to play for them. This is a senior player, and they’re having tension. This is all happening at a batting practice. Let’s take a listen to this scene.

Billy: Had a few thoughts.

David: Yeah?

Billy: Yeah.

David: Can you teach me some things?

Billy: Excuse me?

David: I’ve never seen a GM talk to players like that, man.

Billy: You’ve never seen a GM who was a player.

David: Huh.

Billy: We got a problem, David?

David: Nah, It’s okay. I know your routine. It’s patter, it’s for effect, but it’s for them. All right? This shit ain’t for me.

Billy: Oh, you’re special?

David: You’re paying me seven million bucks a year, man, so, yes, maybe I am a little bit.

Billy: No, man, I ain’t paying you seven. Yankees are paying half your salary. That’s what the New York Yankees think of you. They’re paying you $3.5 million to play against them.

David: Where are you going with this, Billy?

Billy: David, you’re 37. How about you and I be honest about what each of us want out of this? I want to milk the last ounce of baseball you got in you. And you want to stay in the show. Let’s do that. Now, I’m not paying you for the player you used to be. I’m paying you for the player you are right now. You’re smart. You get what we’re trying to do here. Make an example for the younger guys. Be a leader. Can you do that?

David: All right, I got you.

Billy: We’re cool?

David: We’re cool.

Taffy: Villainy. This is such a mean scene. This is so mean.

Craig: It’s so wonderful you think that.

Taffy: I feel like his arc is like, yes, he keeps a distance from his players. There’s this point where he’s trying to give them a pep talk and it’s like an eight-word disaster. “You don’t look like a winning team, but you are one, so play like one,” is what he says. In things like that, I feel like we are being set up storytelling-wise. By the way, patter is such a showbiz word. I do not believe at all-

John: Don’t believe it.

Taffy: -anyone here [unintelligible 00:50:00] yes. I think we’re being set up for a guy who is trying his hardest to keep his distance and can’t do it without getting a little bit messy. That’s what the three-part runner about cutting players is, when he’s trying to show art and he keeps cutting players.

Again, on my 30 millionth viewing, I started to think, that’s actually pretty terrible. You are firing people and ruining their lives because you’re having an argument with this guy. It’s the same thing as a guy who throws his chair across the room. It’s like a display of something that hasn’t aged very well.

Craig: I shockingly have an entirely opposite point of view about this.

Taffy: Good good good.

Craig: One of the things about sports, and when you listen to fans discussing sports, they’re brutal. The fans are the meanest ever. A little bit like the way the audience out there on Twitter is the meanest about, we never talk about each other’s shows or movies the way people online just go, garbage, blah. People are brutal. There are entire, still functioning, listen to AM radio stations that are nothing but call-in shows for 30 to 50-year-old, 60-year-old men to yell about players sucking. There is a brutal reality to sports, which is winning is winning. Every athlete gets into it to win. It is a binary function. There’s winning and losing.

Billy’s job is to make them win. He’s not cutting those players to win an argument. He’s cutting those players because that’s their best chance to win, and there’s somebody in the way of their best chance to win. That’s the thing about sports where it gets super focused. This scene, to me, is not villainy. This is actually kindness, because when you start to lose it as a man, where you’re like I had this physical capacity as a man, and there’s a reason the scene is set where it is. It’s in the stadium, in the back area of the stadium inside, and David Justice, who was an amazing player, is in the batting cage crushing these pitches coming out of the pitching, the little machine, right?

He’s putting on this display of masculine power, and Billy is like, you need to graduate because you’re 37. If you’re hanging on to what that was, it’s leaving you. I’m telling you have to redefine the value of your masculinity, and your masculinity’s value is no longer physical prowess, it’s wisdom.

Taffy: It’s we’re all told that we can’t always play the children’s show, right? Is that what it is, the children’s game? That’s what it’s called?

Craig: Yes.

Taffy: I feel that the movie agrees with me that it’s villainy, which is why he gets the soda in the end. I think that you’re right. I also think that when he restores the soda after David Justice is like, why am I paying for my own soda? It is an admission of villainy.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s an admission of maybe imperfection, but I want to point out how fantastic the beginning of this scene is. This is where there’s this formalized romantic way of portraying men talking to each other, and Mamet is the king of it, right? Sorkin and Zalian both excellent at it. The beginning of this: I got a few thoughts. Yeah? Yeah. Teach me some things? Excuse me? Never seen a GM talk to players like that, man. You never seen a GM who was a player. We got a problem, David? Now, there’s so much being said there in this blah way. You got a few thoughts? Get out of here. Yes. You have no validity with me. Teach me some things.

He’s just going basically, dude, you suck. You’re not a player. Then Mr. Sensitive/Villain goes, yes, I was. David Justice goes, not like me. Not even close. What are you doing down here, man? Then this thing about the money. I’m sorry, he’s right. The Yankees were paying $3.5 million dollars for David Justice to play against them. It’s hard truth and that’s why at the end, I think David Justice says we’re cool because he knows it’s true.

Taffy: Right, he can’t win.

John: My previous analogy, like this is actually a story about show business. You can map everything into the equivalent show business thing. I think about Amy Pascal running Sony Pictures while this is happening and she was the owner of everything and she had to make this decision. The three of us have all been the person in charge on set or we’ve had to make tough calls. I remember going to the first AD saying like, “I never want to see that extra again.” Just like, “Make them disappear.” That’s villainy but it’s also like this is standing in the way of what I need to do my job.

This conversation is really, it’s having the conversation with your lead actor, the top of the ticket. I need you to be a leader here. We had Ryan Reynolds on the show. We were talking about that, about when you’re number one on the call sheet, I need you to do a certain thing. Act like the number one on the ticket and be the example here. Having that honest conversation is just so crucial. I can’t imagine the back half of this movie working without this scene.

Taffy: I agree. I will say that the second AD having the conversation with the background person is the villainy. You were incredibly passive in that as you were supposed to be, right? You were supposed to not, you’re not supposed to fire them yourself. That’s the thing is that all the more so, this is him doing it in a way that we understand, but is brutal.

Craig: Yeah, and effective.

Taffy: Very effective. It pokes at every masculine little point. He just punctures everything.

Craig: But then builds them back. Yes, that’s the thing. I think the reason it works is he’s not saying you shouldn’t play or you should quit. What he’s saying is the implication of the movie was David Justice shows up and he’s just like, this team sucks. I’m just going to take my money, go out there, dog it, not try that hard, whatever. If the stuff works great, if it doesn’t, I don’t care, right?

Then he’s coming and saying, no, no. Actually, you do have a role here that could matter. It won’t be by occasionally hitting a home run. It’s going to be by teaching, mentoring, and leading by example. That’s your new value. You can feel in the scene– who’s the actor that played? He did such a good job.

Taffy: He did such a good job.

Craig: Playing David Justice. You can see him actually like, yes, actually, there is a competitive spirit in me that resented the fact that I have to give up and not care. Billy’s given him a reason to play.

Taffy: It’s so interesting because maybe the whole runner about cutting people is about how the most direct conversation is actually the kindest. That you don’t sit there and you don’t sit– maybe the movie is trying to explain that to you, this scene.

John: Yes. Brad Pitt’s character explains to Jonah Hill, this is how you cut a person. We actually see Jonah Hill having to do it and how to have the grown-up conversation about how to be the second AD who’s telling the extra that I don’t ever want to see on set that goodbye, you’re being paid for the day and see ya without a reason, why you were so annoying in that shot.

Craig: Or over apologizing or dragging it out or making it, there is– and Billy Bean’s character is brutally direct. You can also see from that very beginning scene that you cited, John, the problem that he has is also brutal. There’s no way to win if you pussyfoot around it. You have to just go straight at it. When you see the, my favorite scenes in the movie are the two scenes where he’s with the scouts because he’s so brutally direct. It’s wonderful. Watching again, that greatest character actor.

Taffy: My son Ezra is available to act that out for you right now.

Craig: Ezra may just do it all day long. One day I’ll be Billy, he’ll be Grady, then he’ll be– and then we can do the Fabio.

Taffy: Oh, he’ll do both sides.

John: Who’s Fabio?

Craig: He’s a shortstop.

Taffy: Who’s Fabio? I think he’s a shortstop.

Craig: He’s a shortstop. Yes, no, you got to go carry the one. There’s so many great little moments in there that are incredible. He walks a lot. Do I care if it’s a hit or a walk? Then he points, you do not. Do you want me to talk when I point at you, yes.

Taffy: When you point at him.

Craig: So many great things in those scenes.

Taffy: Yes, oh my God.

Craig: Anyway, this movie, and can we just talk for a second about the beautiful thing at the end? This is why I love baseball. They have this incredible moment where it does all work. Billy seemingly is able to overcome the curse of him even being near the team and they win and they win because of Scott Hatterberg and a home run. It’s tremendous, but they don’t win. They don’t, ultimately they don’t win the World Series. There’s this lovely, it’s a metaphor, Stone Hill over in the Plains-

Taffy: I know what it is.

Craig: -of this guy in their farm system who hits a ball and because he’s a big guy and he’s slow, he thinks it could be a double. He rounds first, gets scared that he’s going to get thrown out, tries to get back to first, falls. Then it turns out he hit a home run.

This is true. The Billy Bean didn’t think he did it and he did. He changed baseball permanently. By the way, the Oakland A’s winning 20 games in a row that season, that is insane. That is bigger than winning the World Series. It’s so special. The tragedy, of course, is that the Oakland A’s are no longer in existence as of right now.

Taffy: Last week.

Craig: That’s correct. The Oakland A’s played their last games as the Oakland A’s. The entire franchise is leaving Oakland and is being reconstituted as the Las Vegas Aces. This is not the first time this has happened in baseball. This has happened a lot in baseball and in all sports. There’s a reason that the basketball team in Utah is called the Utah Jazz. It’s because they used to be in New Orleans.

John: Because jazz is what I associate with Utah, yes.

Craig: Of course, the Los Angeles Lakers, because of all the lakes in Los Angeles.

Taffy: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Craig: Yes. These teams come from elsewhere and keep the names sometimes. In this case, they do not. The A’s became the Aces. It’s clever but it’s sad. The Oakland couldn’t survive. They just couldn’t survive. One of the reasons, ironically, they couldn’t survive is because everybody else picked up on it. The big market teams that do have a better fan base and do sell more tickets and can spend more money, they all follow the Billy Bean model. All of them.

John: Let’s now close up this discussion and talk about Brad Pitt’s character. Billy Bean and the decision he has to make at the end. The end of the movie finds him going to Boston. He’s talking with John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox. It’s a really interesting scene. It’s raining. There are umbrellas. They’re in this semi-outdoor space. We’re going to hear some rain in the background here. This is that discussion and ultimately a job offer for Billy Bean.

John Henry: Steve told me he’s offering you a new contract.

Billy: Yes.

John Henry: Why did you return my call?

Billy: Because it’s the Red Sox. Because I believe science might offer an answer to the curse of the Bambino because I hear you hired Bill James.

John Henry: Yes. Why someone took so long to hire that guy is beyond me.

Billy: Baseball hates him.

John Henry: Baseball can hate him, you know. One of the great things about money is that it buys a lot of things. One of which is the luxury to disregard what baseball likes, doesn’t like, what baseball thinks, doesn’t think.

Billy: Sounds nice. Well. I was grateful for the call.

John Henry: You were grateful?

Billy: Yes.

John Henry: For 41 million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena, and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent 1.4 million per win, and you paid 260,000. I know you’re taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always.

This is threatening, not just a way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. Really what it’s threatening is their livelihood. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s threatening the way that they do things. Every time that happens, whether it’s a government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins, they have their hands on the switch, they go bat shit crazy. Anybody who’s not tearing their team down right now and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

John: There he slides a piece of paper across the table.
[movie scene playing]

Billy: What’s this?

John Henry: I want you to be my general manager. That’s my offer.

John: All right. What’s crucial to me about this scene is that he’s done it. He went out with this goal and someone is finally saying, yes, Copernicus, you were right. The solar system is the way that you described it, not the way that everyone always described it. It’s so nice to have an outside person come in and say, you did this.

It’s important for us to have the people who we’ve established in the movie, who he loves, who love him, provide that support, but to have an outside person that he’s always been pushing against come say, no, kid, you were right, is crucial.

Craig: Absolutely. Even more so, give our hero, I still think he’s a hero, give our hero a chance to do one last heroic thing which is to stay loyal to the sloppy mess that he helped improve. It’s like listen, I inherited a broken down trailer home and I worked really hard to make it look like a mansion. And I’m going to stay with it. And Even though I know I’m going to be losing to you probably, because now you now, Bill James was the guy that invented sabermetrics, which leads into the whole thing that Peter Brown was talking about. Now you got Bill James, now everything I know, I’m going to lose.

I’m going to lose over and over and over because now I’m not, because the trick is out, but I’m not leaving because I’m loyal. Literally, that’s exactly what happened. He stayed with the A’s and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.

Taffy: I also think all sports movies have a stoic guy. In a romantic comedy, the equivalent would be a “you complete me” or a big sweeping kiss. In a sports movie, it’s the stoic guy cracking a smile. It’s Kurt Russell in the tunnel in Miracle. I think in this movie, I know, I know. You’re like, everything in your body just needs them to be happy for a minute.

Craig: For one moment.

Taffy: I think when he turns to Peter Brandt and says, “You’re a good egg.” That is our sweeping kiss. That is everything I need, which sets me up for that car scene that murders me dead every single time. I just need three notes from that song and I’ll need a minute. It’s really beautiful.

Craig: Yes. In the end, you have to boil all the sports away and get down to who am I as a person? What is my value? Have I performed up to the level of expectation that my loved ones should have of me? It doesn’t matter if their love was unconditional. It wasn’t to me. I needed to fulfill conditions for their love. Did I? The answer is yes, I did.

That’s why everyone who sees a movie like this can connect to it. Everyone. It doesn’t matter. This is where I do think this is different than Mamet when you talk about movies about men being all men-ish.

Mamet movies are brutal and Mamet stories are brutal and they’re wonderful and I love them. Glengarry Glen Ross I’ve gone all day about it. The sentiment of Sorkin and Zaillian, and they are sentimental to me, is why I love these movies. Love them. I get transported by them. They’re just wonderful.

Taffy: You didn’t have to learn about sports. I leave with as much knowledge as I came in with and it’s fine.

Craig: True. That’s absolutely true.

John: I want to go back to something you said quite early on about shame. We were talking about, and I think Craig, you also mentioned that Billy Beane is a character who was recruited and was going to be a superstar and was not. He feels shame. He feels this thing that was supposed to happen didn’t happen. It was his fault and he just did not live up to promised potential. The journey of the story is like how do you get past that shame? How do you get past the fact that you were seen as an underachiever, that you didn’t do this thing?

He’s actually able to finally do it. Having this outside force and everybody else say, yes, you did it. You changed baseball. You are worthy in baseball. For a movie that is so much about what is a person worth? What is a person in baseball worth? He’s proven his worth. That’s ultimately what he seems to be going for here. Like most movie protagonists, he couldn’t explain at the start of the movie what he actually needs inside. We as an audience see at the end like, oh, he got that missing piece that he was so hungry for the whole time through.

Taffy: That’s so interesting because the thing I always think with this is one of the plots is changing baseball, but it’s actually about a man processing his failures. If you look at the structure of it, it’s exactly at a third that you see the first flashback. The question is like, how long are you allowed to play? We’re all told we have to leave the children’s game and we don’t know when it is. The question that looms throughout this, is this when I’m leaving? Even as the GM, I’m playing the children’s game. Is this when I’m leaving? Is this when I’m leaving?

Craig: Wrapping this up, we talked a bit about how the screenplay that we have that we can look at is not a very good reflection of the actual movie that’s in front of us. Some of that is, I think, related to the development of the movie. Here’s what we know. This writer Stan Chervin pitches and sells the idea to Sony in 2004.

We’re going to talk about Amy Pascal. Amy Pascal was running Sony Pictures at that time. Brad Pitt was attached to a draft by Steve Zaillian in 2008. Chervin apparently wrote something, but Steve Zaillian came in and wrote a draft, and that is the draft that got Brad Pitt attached.

Steven Soderbergh attached himself to the project in February 2009. There’s a quote we have from him saying, “I think we have a way in making it visual and making it funny. I want it to be really funny and entertaining, and I want you to not realize how much information is being thrown at you because you’re having fun. We found a couple of ideas how to bust the form a bit in order for all that information to reach you in a way that’s a little oblique.” Former athletics players and manager Art Howe were set to play themselves. Dimitri Martin was cast as Paul DePodesta, who was the actual real person in real life who became later the Jonah Hill character.

The Jonah Hill character is not the person in the book. It’s a composite of other things and stuff put together. DePodesta ultimately asked, “Can you change the name of my character?” Because, it’s not me. The movie was given a green light with a $58 million budget.

Then five days before it was supposed to shoot in July 8th, 2009, Sony canceled it. They stopped production on it, and Soderbergh left. Bennett Miller was brought in December 2009, and Amy Pascal brought in Sorkin for a rewrite. We don’t know where stuff was at quite with this, and so we don’t know, I’ve never seen the Zaillian draft. I don’t know what stuff is what. I think we always can reach for and feel what feels like a Sorkin-y bit, but I’m not sure we really know.

My speculation is that there’s a draft, but the way scenes were actually shot, it feels like in going for that documentary feel, they probably did it a bunch, and they weren’t as text-obsessed as you would expect in a Sorkin movie.

Taffy: The thing I heard was that maybe the previous version was more literal documentary, real players, people looking at the camera and interspersed. I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s true, I don’t know that apocryphal, I just–

Craig: I think that’s what Soderbergh was going for, from what I understand.

Taffy: Yes, which is its own great way to go.

Craig: Could have been great, that’s the thing.

Taffy: You never know.

Craig: You could have three different versions of this movie that are all great. I am just thrilled that we got what we did get, which was very romantic, sentimental.

Taffy: It’s a very sentimental movie.

Craig: It’s very sentimental, it’s very dramatic at times. It clearly is, like the score is borrowing from those, the score for The Natural, like one of the great movie scores of all time. Ba-bam, ba-bam bum bum. It has that when Hattenberg hits the home run, that, whoa, that dramatic swell. I love the tone.

John: The movie was given a July 2010 start date, so about a year after it had been stopped, it got started again. Brad Pitt’s still attached, budget reduced to $47 million, and they went ahead. Amy Pascal coming in there and saying, “We got to go change some stuff, and you don’t have as much money,” feels very much like the owner of the ASA, no, this is how much money you have to do it, and figure out a way to do that.

Craig: What else can I help you with?

John: On the first Charlie’s Angels, I remember a meeting on a Friday afternoon going in, and Amy Pascal’s going through the script, and she’s like, and she just ripped out five pages and she’s like, “These are gone, figure it out. Basically, got to go save some money,” and that’s how we did it.

Craig: Figure it out is one of the great lines. Robert Weiss, who I worked with, he’s a producer, go all the way back to Kentucky Fried Movie and Naked Gun. He produced one of the great bad movies of all time called Nothing but Trouble, starring Chevy Chase.

Taffy: I love Nothing but Trouble.

Craig: Yes, it’s insane. It’s terrible, but it’s also so crazy that it’s worth watching. In the development of it Chevy Chase, the characters start in Manhattan and then they drive into Pennsylvania, and Chevy Chase, Bob Weiss was like, “We’ll do the New York stuff in Toronto. We can’t afford to shoot in New York.” Chevy Chase is like, “No way, no. If it’s New York, we’re shooting in New York. In fact, I’m going to call–“ the head of the studio was Mark Canton. “I’m calling Mark Canton right now.”

He picks up the phone, “Mark, Chevy Chase, I’m hearing that we can’t shoot this in New York. I demand we shoot in New York.” “Thanks.” Click. “We’re shooting in New York” and then he walks out, and then Bob Weiss picks up the phone and calls Mark Canton and goes, “Did you just tell Chevy Chase we’re shooting this in New York?” “Yes.” “Are we?” “No. Figure it out.” I always love figure it out is like-

Taffy: I love it.

Craig: -that’s amazing. Yes, no.

Taffy: Oh my gosh.

John: All right, that wraps up Moneyball.

Taffy: Thank you.

John: Quickly, let’s go through some one cool things. Taffy, do you have one cool thing you want to share with the audience?

Taffy: I do. I went to a Yeshiva high school, so I always feel that I am behind in my education.

Craig: My dad would teach, he worked at Grady High School in Brighton Beach, and then after that day was over, he would go to Mirror Yeshiva.

Taffy: That’s serious stuff. To teach what?

Craig: To teach the Yeshiva book, his history-

Taffy: How to read.

Craig: -because they had to pass the Regents exam.

Taffy: I know, it’s because of the Regents exam.

Craig: The Regents exam.

Taffy: Everything we know is because of the Regents exam.

Craig: The Regents exam. Everything is secular that you know.

Taffy: Right. I did not read great books but I read the Scarlet Letter four times.

Craig: Because you had to.

Taffy: That’s like cheating on your husband. Also because it was kosher. It punishes women for infidelity. It’s good, it’s good.

Craig: It’s good.

Taffy: I always feel that I am behind in my education, and I found this app recently called Imprint, and it is teaching me philosophy. It’s teaching me step-by-step. Also, I feel that I have several undiagnosed learning disabilities. It is teaching me exactly how I would like to be taught, short sentences and cartoons. I think that is my-

Craig: Imprint.

Taffy: It’s called Imprint. I think it’s like $25. It’s so good, and I am learning all about Stoicism. Right now learning about Stoicism. We’re moving on to Kant.

Craig: Oh, Immanuel Kant. Boy, you’re about to get into synthetic apriority and posteriority.

Taffy: Someone didn’t go to yeshiva.

Craig: Correct. Also, Kant, as it turns out was wrong. If you can avoid reading his massive super boring book, then you’re–

Taffy: I’m just going to see a cartoon about it. I think I win this.

Craig: The best way to learn Kant. The best way.

Taffy: All right.

Craig: Amazing.

John: I have two uncool things that are very closely related. These last two weeks I was traveling. I was first in London, then in Paris. I was in London in large part, to see ABBA Voyage, which is the ABBA show outside of London. It is incredible.

This is a sanctioned ABBA thing that uses, I thought it was holograms, but it turns out it’s not holograms. It is just done with really good visual effects and ILM and a real band that’s playing and just a purpose-built space. It was really incredible. The illusion that, I am somehow back in 1970 and I’m watching ABBA do these songs was great.

Really, I just thought ABBA Voyage was fantastic. If you like ABBA, even to some medium degree and you’re in London, see it, because I thought it was really good. Relatedly, weirdly, the apartment we were staying in, we got there and it had one of those narrow, stripped fireplaces that was lit when we went in. I’m like, this is really wasteful. Let me figure out how to turn this off. Then I realized, as I got very closer it’s like, oh, this is actually not a fire at all. This is some sort of virtual screen thing that’s incredibly compelling and looks like a fire.

It turns out it was actually the same basic technology as what I was seeing in ABBA Voyage in that there are foreground elements which are actually up above in the enclosure and there’s a split glass thing like how we do teleprompters that is making it look like it’s at the base and then there’s a video screen that’s really compelling. We ended up leaving it on the whole time, and I genuinely miss that fireplace in the apartment.

I was just astonished that both in the ABBA Voyage show and in this fireplace, synthetic things that felt so real and compelling are possible in 2024 through recording this. I applaud the technology behind them and encourage people to check out both of these things. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this Opti-V fireplace, which is the European version, but there’s many other ones out there.

Craig: The Dimplex Opti-V Duet. Well as promised, my one cool thing has to be Ken Medlock. I was looking Ken Medlock up as we were talking here because if you look at his resume, it’s classic character actor resume. He’s happily still alive. He’s 74 years old, but he hasn’t done much in movies since Moneyball. Really, it seems like he might be like possibly semi-retired because he really hasn’t done much since those years. Here’s something not surprising at all to find out. He played baseball. He played in minor leagues. He was a pitcher for the Decatur Commodores in the 1970s.

That’s a team that I don’t believe exists anymore. Then later worked as a coach for the St. Paul Saints. He was like most people that have ever had any experience in professional baseball, he never made it to the major leagues but he’s a player. You could just tell. That’s the thing. I’m so not surprised. I would have been so much more surprised if he had not played baseball just because he has that thing. He’s got baseball face, baseball voice, baseball– it’s hard to describe. Anyway, brilliant, absolutely brilliant job. I’m obsessed.

I think he’s only in three scenes. He’s in the two scenes with the scouts and then he’s in one scene where he confronts Brad Pitt. By the way, you’re going toe-to-toe with Brad Pitt and he just ate him up. He ate him up. Yes.

John: I want to congratulate Ken Medlock, Bennett Miller for directing him so well, but also let’s shout out the casting director who found him and found that this is the person who can do this role. Whenever we see those moments where that one actor was in one scene and killed it, that’s some great casting directing there probably.

Craig: Let’s find out who the casting director was, shall we? Casting director. Casting by Francine Maisler, who’s-

John: Oh, Francine Maisler–

Craig: -just a legend.

John: Indeed.

Craig: Legend.

Taffy: I’m sad that we didn’t get to talk about Brad Pitt’s stress eating in the movie.

John: Oh my God. The greatest.

Taffy: The Twinkie.

John: Constantly eating.

Taffy: Yes, the Twinkie that he jams angrily into his mouth. It’s not in the script.

Craig: It’s so great. I think it was a thing, he was like, I want my character to always be eating.

Taffy: Same.

Craig: It’s a real challenge when you’re directing because of continuity. It’s just the sandwich is too big, too small. You have to have a bucket. You have to spit the thing out or otherwise you’re going to be barfing after take seven. They committed and just pulled it off. It’s great stuff.

Taffy: Because he shoves everything in his mouth. There’s no continuity problem. You just need 30 Twinkies.

Craig: That’s true. That is also such a guy thing. Like oh, screw you food. I win.

Taffy: We do that. Just so you know we do that too.

Craig: We do it in front of everyone and you guys are like, there’s no one watching.

John: That is our discussion on Moneyball. Scriptedness is produced by Drew Marquardt. Drew, thanks for all your research and help here. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on money. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, thank you so much for joining us.

Taffy: Thank you for having me. I just want to say thank you to my assistant Chris Logan, who is wearing a Mets jersey right now and is so excited about this. Don’t spit on him right now. He’s having the best day of his life.

Craig: It’s going to be over real soon. If they make it to the Yankees, if you’re so lucky to make it to the Yankees, we will destroy you.

Taffy: I still don’t know what that means, but thanks, everyone.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. We are here for the bonus segment. We’re going to talk about money. Listener note here: Craig had to disappear at a certain point. If he vanishes for a bit in this conversation, it’s because he had to give up the room that he was recording in. Taffy and I are going to be talking a little bit in the middle part without Craig there, but you’ll hear him at the end because of editing magic.

All right. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, I just finished reading your book, Long Island Compromise, last night. I was reading it on the flight on the way back, and then I stayed up and read the final chapters. Such an accomplishment. So well done.

Taffy: Thank you.

John: I want you to go out and read it. Taffy, your book is about the intersection of trauma and money. Do you feel any resonance between the things we were talking about in that and Moneyball?

Taffy: Yes. If we’re talking about worth, and thank you so much for saying such nice things about my book, which is about how money makes you crazy. I want to say that people ask me very often, what was making a television show like? I answer with actually what is a good answer to your question, which is this:

I work at the New York Times. I work at the New York Times Magazine. I’ve worked there for many years. Before that, I was a freelancer. I know how much you get paid and I know how hard things are. I think very often about this story I wrote about sexual harassment at Kay Jewelers. Remember every kiss begins with Kay?

Craig: Yeah, mall jewelers.

Taffy: Oh my God, terrible stuff. Two and a half years it took to write that story. Maybe 14 cities, thousands and thousands of New York Times dollars. It was dangerous. There were threats. There was crying. There was protection ordered for people. It was hard. It was scary. And it came out and the money I got paid for it was the same amount of money that I got paid per scale to write a six-page outline for an episode of a television show based on a novel I’d already written.

Craig: Voila.

Taffy: I couldn’t get over it. I would say, I’m writing paragraphs that are true, that are out there in the world and people took a risk in talking to me. I couldn’t get over it. I still can’t get over it because I think what does this mean?

Also, maybe we know what it means because we see how news is being treated. We see how entertainment is treated, although it’s starting to happen in entertainment too, this lessening. But it made me understand that it’s just crazy what we value in this system. To assign money as an assignation of what is valued, that way lies madness.

John: Yes. I’m thinking about the times often on this podcast, we talk about why are screenwriters paid the way that we’re paid, which is arguably too much. It’s interesting we’re talking about Moneyball because there are fewer professional screenwriters than there are professional baseball players. It is, in the end, a unique skill, a thing that we’re able to do and that gets us paid the way that we’re paid. And that I’ve also been in the same situation you’re fine. It’s like, I feel like I’ve been paid too much for the amount of work that I’m doing here or that I’ve had to play tricks on myself saying like, I just do not want to write this. If I actually break down the amount I’m being paid per page, I’m of course I’m going to write this. It’s crazy.

Taffy: Right.

Craig: What we get paid doesn’t necessarily make sense from day to day. The same talent that we have earns us X. Then two years later, for some reason, it earns us twice X. Then for two years later, it’s half X. There’s no real rhyme or reason when you focus on it. Overall, one of the things I’ve come to understand is, and it’s hard to process, no one would ever suggest that what we do is as valuable as, say, somebody that’s working on a vaccine.

John: Right.

Craig: Those people get paid less, probably, than the people working at the New York Times Magazine. Then there are people who get paid even less than that, who are doing other things that are just beautiful work. Then there are people who don’t get paid at all, the unpaid labor of the world, particularly among women. Then the question is, how do I morally reconcile all this? Kant will have some stuff to say about this as you go through your course. One of the things that I’ve come to just understand is that entertainment which we think of as frivolous, while it certainly doesn’t save anyone’s life, seems to be one of the reasons people like to live.

It’s one of the things we’re here for at all. If we took it all away, including watching sports or playing video games or movies or television or reading great fiction, then at that point, people may not care as much about having their lives saved. Because what’s the point? People’s value of entertainment is so profound — way more than I value it, by the way. I love the creation aspect of it but sometimes I do I can feel guilty about these things. The bottom line is, the demand for what we do, particularly if it works for people, is so high that this is how the market functions.

Taffy: Right. I don’t think I feel bad about it because now I’m both people. I’m making that for an outline. It’s just astounding to me. It makes sense to me that athletes and actors get paid an inordinate amount. They have at least the perception of an expiration date of their prime, whereas you and I can imagine that the older and older and older we get, eventually we’ll keep. You’re right. I don’t know. We may be dwindling already. I don’t know.

John: We also have an opportunity cost. Part of why I’m getting paid this thing is so that I’m not doing something else.

Taffy: I think these are all these questions about how we value a person. I think the answer is, I was always this person and then I got an amazing agent who suddenly had access to things like this. But I was always like this. If you go back to when I was being ridiculed at my first job at Soap Opera Weekly, I was writing the same things that I am now highly valued at the New York Times for writing. It makes no sense. What are we supposed to do with that?

Craig: Let’s go back to your book here. One of the characters in Long Island Compromise, Beamer, is a screenwriter. He’s a screenwriter who’s written with a writing partner. It’s really clear that Beamer’s not the talent there. Beamer has some soft skills but he’s not the writing superstar here.

Now that the partnership is broken up, he is questioning his own worth because he was getting paid good money to do this as a writing team. It’s a real question, can he do it himself? Is he worth anything by himself? He comes from a family where he didn’t necessarily need to make money. This was all a game for him to start with.

Taffy: Right. He, by the way, when you’re as wealthy as Beamer Fletcher is, the money isn’t meaningful. The question is when we meet him is my value dwindling? My agent hasn’t called me back in two days. That is what he knows. That is what I live in fear of, is I haven’t heard from you. Oh, it’s been Sunday, okay. You still love me, my agent? Thank you.

John: Our sense of self-worth is like a price tag on it. There’s the number of likes we get on a post. There’s the number of people who show up to a book signing. There’s all these little ways in which we determine our value based on outside forces coming in to tell us things. None of that actually reflects our own internal sense of valuation.

I think you’re going to be looking at in your Imprint app probably, is really where is the sense of self, the degree to which our self-perception is internally generated versus externally put upon us. That balance is tough. The dollar figure people are paying you is one of the ways in which you calculate your own self-worth.

Taffy: It’s one of the ways they calculate my self-worth. Can I ask you, what do you think? What do you think about all this? Your quote, it goes up and it goes up. Do you feel better about yourself? Or is there a point at which you’re like, I’ve made it. Is it success or is it money or is it money defined as success?

John: There was a point early in my career, like project after project, my quote was going up. I remember at one point, my agent, my lawyer, were pushing really hard on the studio to pay me more than this, or basically better, or John won’t do it. I was upset with them because I felt like they were pushing too hard. Basically, ah, I’m not worth that much, you’re asking for too much.

Then we moved into a period which was supposed to be technically post-quote, where they’re not supposed to be asking for quotes, but people still supply them. You’ll wait to get an offer. Then they’ll say like, “Oh, no, let me send you these last few things so you can say this is how much he’s actually worth.”

You can also as a writer, get to a place where your quote is so high they won’t even consider you for certain projects. That’s a situation that people will run into, where it’s like, I was at a lunch with a producer and she was talking about this project that they were looking to do. She said, “Oh, no, we’re looking for a younger writer for that.” I heard younger writers, like babies really, she meant a less expensive writer. I was 30 at that point. I was like, “How much younger do you want?” But they meant less expensive. There are certain things which you’re just not on the list for because they just know you’re too expensive.

Taffy: Which is where money backfires, because the more they’re spending also in this business, the closer they’re watching and the more their ability to make a decision is jostled by the immense amount of money. There’s a sweet spot, it seems, where you stay under the radar of anybody being up at night worried about the money that’s being spent.

John: Yeah, it’s crazy. Then I would say like over the course of my career, a lot of the places where you really feel your value because it’s just so direct is when you get paid on a weekly to come in and do on a project, it’s like my weekly quote got really high. It’s like, that was exciting, but also I felt like you’re on a tightrope. It’s like, Jesus, am I really worth this amount of money for this one week’s work? You quickly realize, yes, they want your writing, but they mostly need you to be able to survive in a room with some of these people because these are sometimes monstrous, sometimes just really talented, but also very demanding people.

And there’s very few people that, there’s a scarcity problem. There’s very few people they can put into that room who can survive in there and then also still deliver the project that comes out of there. That was really what I was going to be paid for was not necessarily the words I was writing, but the words I was able to say in those rooms.

Taffy: That’s so interesting. Also, that is the true opportunity cost because every time you’re doing one of those weeklies, you’re not doing something that is the product of your brain, the product of your creativity. It is maybe the least gratifying thing. What if the way you can define your self-worth in this business monetarily is the amount of money someone like John August is paid to fix your terrible screenplay? I would like to think that they don’t pay more than $150,000 a week to fix my crap. If they do, I quit because I should be doing something else.

John: I’ve actually heard that rationalization not applied to me directly, but someone saying, no, yes, they’re replacing you. They’re bringing on this big writer, but it means they really love the project because look how much they’re paying that person. Which is absurd, but also true because it means if they’re willing to spend six figures on something or seven figures on something, they really are planning to make it. So it’s good news that you’re being replaced by this big giant, expensive writer because it means they really want to make it a thing. It’s crazy.

Taffy: You go home that night and you share the same blanket that David Justice had to say, well, Billy Bean thinks I’m a good leader. That’s all you have to keep you warm that night. I guess I’ll be a good leader.

John: You’ll be a good leader. You are a fantastic guest on the program. Thank you again, Taffy for doing this.

Taffy: You guys are the best. I had such a good time.

Craig: Bye, guys. Thank you.

John: Bye. Thanks, Craig.

Links:

• Moneyball on IMDb
• Moneyball screenplay
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Scriptnotes LIVE! at the Austin Film Festival
• Highland Pro Austin launch party – sign up here!
• ABBA Voyage
• Opti-V fireplace
• Ken Medlock
• Imprint App
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August and you’re listening to Episode 659 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Often, in film and television, our protagonists are facing economic hardship. Today on the show, what if your hero’s problem is too much money? We’ll look at three stories in the news about excessive fame and fortune and ask, how would this be a movie? This week, we have a ringer to help us answer this question. Mari Heller is a writer and director whose credits include Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Her new film is Nightbitch, which just debuted at Toronto. Welcome back, Mari.

Mari Heller: Yay, thanks, John. I’m so glad to be here.

John: In addition to all of your writing and directing credits, you also played MacGruber’s mom. Craig would be really upset if we did not acknowledge that you are officially canonically MacGruber’s mom.

Mari: I was expecting you were going to say Queen’s Gambit, but I like that it went to MacGruber’s mom. I appreciate it.

John: Queen’s Gambit, sure, a meaningful, dramatic role, but come on.

Mari: The most important role of my lifetime. Not the mother to my own children, but the mother to MacGruber on the MacGruber TV show on Peacock.

John: Yes, everyone can see that there today. We’re going to talk through, probably not very much MacGruber, but we’re going to talk through Nightbitch. We’re going to talk through, how would these be movies? In a bonus segment for premium members, I would love to talk film festivals because I think maybe all of your movies have gone through film festivals. Is that right?

Mari: Yes, all of them have.

John: I want to talk about film festivals, both for when you’re trying to sell a movie originally, but when you’re also trying to launch a movie into the world and what writers and directors need to think about when their movies are playing at film festivals.

Mari: That’s a good topic. I like that.

John: Yes, great. I try.

Before we get to any of that, Drew, we have actual Scriptnotes news.

Drew Marquardt: That’s right, we do. You, Craig, and I will be headed to Austin for the Austin Film Festival at the end of October. We’re going to be really busy.

John: We are going to be so, so busy. Currently, on the books, we have four official events. We have a live Scriptnotes show and a separate three-page challenge. I’m going to be doing a panel on video games and graphic novels with Jordan Mechner. Plus, there’ll be a special 25th anniversary screening of Go with a Q&A afterwards led by Matt Selman of The Simpsons fame.

Drew: Oh, that sounds great.

John: Yes, I’m really excited for all of those. If you’re going to go to Austin and you already have your festival pass, you should be able to attend all of these for free just with your pass. There’s one more thing. We are planning an afternoon event in Austin, probably on Thursday the 24th, for the launch of the next version of Highland. This one is open to everybody, but we do need you to RSVP so we can figure out the logistics and how big a space we need and other stuff. So if you are interested in coming to that, Drew, how should they get on a list?

Drew: I will put a link in the show notes for the RSVP and you can just go through there.

John: Thank you, Drew. Now, let’s get on to the other news. We’ll start with this article by Matt Belloni and Puck about Hollywood’s 10% problem. He’s referring to a study that came out a couple of weeks ago that only one-tenth of the 500-plus movies that were either released or scheduled for release by the major studios and streamers between ’22 and 2026 actually came from an internal development slate.

The movies that development executives are theoretically working on at studios, very few of those actually are the movies that they’re releasing. Often, as screenwriters, we’re thinking like, “Oh, I’m going to go off with this open writing assignment that’s at a studio,” or they have this internal idea or they’re buying a spec script. And really, very few of those movies are actually getting made.

Mari: Yes.

John: It’s funny that Disney has not created an original live-action movie franchise since National Treasure 20 years ago, so two decades for that. It feels like so much of the theoretical work that we’re doing as writers does not ever actually make it to the big screen. Did this feel true to you, Mari?

Mari: Feels true to me in my limited experience. I’m sure it does for you too. When I was starting out and had first gotten an agent based on a spec script that I wrote with a writing partner, we were constantly going out for assignment jobs. We were constantly answering every call and getting– our first paid jobs were all things that never got made. I started to see a journey where I was an employed screenwriter with nothing ever getting made, where I wrote a made-for-TV movie for Disney for YA audience.

I wrote a number of pilots that sold for the networks when it was still more of the pilot game. I was like, “Okay, this is great. I’m getting health insurance and I’m making enough money to live.” But at some point, I want actors to say these words. The purpose of writing these scripts is that I want somebody to say them out loud and for it to get recorded and maybe even somebody sees it. I started to see a situation where development hell just becomes your experience of Hollywood. That’s all you get to do is just develop, develop, develop, but nothing actually gets made.

John: Absolutely. To slice apart these numbers a little bit more. Obviously, some open writing assignments are based on studio IP. That’s probably not quite what this is here, but that it’s sense of, “I have this original idea that I’m going to take out on the town and sell as a pitch or sell as a spec script.” Very few of those are getting made, at least at the majors. Now, this study omitted A24 and Neon. Some places are also making more originals. That also probably is undercounting genre movies that are getting made. There are horror things that are at certain price points.

Mari: Horror, it’s like the exception to every rule, right?

John: Yes.

Mari: In terms of theater audiences and how they get made and how much money they make.

John: Yes. You and I were both in the same situation where, listen, I was lucky to get some movies made, but I had a lot of movies that did not get made. I know so many writers who were in the guild for years and had no credits to show for all the hard work they’ve done. I think that partially pushes people towards television where at least like, “Hey, my name is on a screen at least. The work I’m doing is being said by actors,” like you’re saying, and it’s actually out there in the world.

The other part of this study, which I thought was interesting, is there’s charts. Listen, I don’t know that we can actually verify all the data that’s in there, but they talk about how many of these movies that are greenlit really came with so many elements attached. It was almost greenlit by the time the studio bought them. They had director attachments. They had progress to production built into the thing. The studio couldn’t help but make these movies. It wasn’t that the hard work of development executives brought this thing to fruition. That’s frustrating. It also feels like it was always true in this industry that most stuff has some other aspect to it. Increasingly, everything has to be completely safe before they’ll even consider greenlighting it.

Mari: Well, I think it’s a minor miracle when anything gets made. I think it takes so many things coming together at the right time and so many pieces have to line up. Sometimes having a lot of different attachments to something, I know I do that as a filmmaker, is I try to make sure that by the time I’m trying to get something greenlit, it’s an impossible thing to say no to because everything’s already moving.

The train is already going and all of these actors have slated this into their schedule or we got this tax incentive or whatever it may be. It’s putting enough pieces together so that you feel like you can push the thing over the finish line and actually get it shot because it’s just so easy for– particularly movies is what I know more, but it’s so easy for a movie to fall apart. There’s eight million ways that it can fall apart and there’s only one way it can get made.

John: Well, let’s jump ahead, though, and talk about Nightbitch because I want to talk about this as a movie and how this came to be because this is your fourth feature film as a director?

Mari: Yes.

John: Great. You’re a known quantity. Everyone knows you know what you’re doing here, but my understanding is like this wasn’t a thing where you went to them. Instead, they came to you. Is that accurate?

Mari: Sort of. This movie is based on an incredible novel called Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. It was her first novel, but it was a splashy-enough novel that it got on the radar of a lot of people. It was acquired by Annapurna, Sue Naegle, who was working at Annapurna at the time. Amy Adams and her company and Stacy O’Neil together both read the book and decided to option it.

John: That’s great.

Mari: So the book was optioned before I came on board, but it hadn’t even been published yet. It was one of those situations where it was an early manuscript and it had enough buzz to it that people started reading it. Amy Adams and Sue were the ones who said, “Let’s try and send this to Mari.” I hadn’t worked with Amy before, but she knew my work. She sent it to me.

Really, nothing had been done. All that had been done is it had been optioned. It was like, “Who knows if this is a movie? If anyone could make it into a movie, we think you could.” She sent me the book and I read it and came on board really early.

John: Let’s break down some of the parts of that because I think some people outside of the industry might not know who these players are and how they all fit together. Annapurna is an independent motion picture-producing entity and Sue Naegle was running it at that point. Sue Naegle was my former TV agent. Sue Naegle is fantastic. I love her to death. And it’s not surprising that they read this book when it was in manuscript because most books that sell in Hollywood sell very early on, way before they come out. Every Friday, I get this email that has summaries of all the different agencies that are covering all the different books like, “These are the books that people are talking about.”

Mari: There’s whole departments at the agencies, literary departments who cover all the books that are coming out, especially the ones that have a lot of buzz.

John: Beyond that, there are book scouts out of New York who are looking for those things. Individual producers might have their own book scouts who are hunting those things. They have bandits who try to find, “These are the areas of literature that we’re most focused on.”

Mari: Right.

John: When Yoder’s book came out and got the buzz and attention it did, it’s maybe not so surprising because the people who are the early barometers of what’s going to be cool had already read it and said, “This is going to be interesting.”

Mari: Right. I think what’s surprising about it is that it was her first novel. I think often, it’s a novel from a known entity that comes out that gets bought up quite so early. I think it was very exciting.

John: Amy Adams had read this book. Annapurna read this book. They decided together to work together to option this book. Then they need to find a filmmaker, a writer. Ideally, a writer-director. They came to you. What are those initial conversations like? Are you both feeling each other out in terms of like, “Is this a movie?” What are those conversations like?

Mari: My first initial conversations, and I can say this in this type of situation and podcast and I wouldn’t say it necessarily to everybody, but is I’m often looking for– I don’t want to get involved in projects that are so far along that I’m just being brought on as a director for hire. I really want to be able to make something my own. I want to be able to come with a vision and make something from the ground up. The fact that the first conversation I had with Amy after I read the book and I was totally moved by the book, I found it really impressive. It spoke to me in a really emotional way. I was postpartum. I was about six months postpartum on having my second kid. It was very personal in the moment that I read it.

John: What year would this have been? Is this 2020? When is this?

Mari: 2021. My daughter was born in 2020 and it was post-pandemic-ish, but still pandemic vibes around town. I was very isolated. I had moved out of the city. I was living in the woods, raising two kids. This book really spoke to me.

John: Actually, we know that you were isolated, living in the woods, because there was an episode we did of Scriptnotes where we asked a bunch of our previous guests, “Hey, during the pandemic, what the hell are you doing?” You were generous enough to tell us about moving out of the city and being in the woods and homeschooling your kids in New York with a group of other people. You’re just making it work.

Mari: You have such a good memory. Maybe you are a robot. You remember something from so many years ago on Scriptnotes. Yes, we were in a pod with another family. We were splitting up the homeschooling duties. We were each trying to get time for our creative work, which was so difficult at the time. That’s when this book got sent to me, not too long after that, once my daughter was born, and I was really home with her. Actually, Jorma was off prepping the MacGruber TV show.

He was away and I was home alone with two kids for the first time. The book, it spoke to me on an emotional level. Then when I spoke to Amy about it, it was great that she basically said to me, “I have no idea if this can be a movie or not and I don’t really know what it should be, but I would trust you to figure it out.” That was exactly what I needed to hear to also know, “Okay, this isn’t a train that’s already moving that already has everything figured out.” I get a lot of creative latitude to make my decisions.

John: Let’s talk about the decisions you’re making here because I haven’t read the book, so I’ve just seen your movie, which is fantastic, and everyone should see. Just so we don’t forget, when does it come out?

Mari: It doesn’t come out till December 6th. We’re doing the festival circuit right now. We just did TIFF. We’ll be at festivals all over, from the Hamptons to London to Middleburg and throughout the fall, and then it’ll come out in theaters on December 6th.

John: You said the book speaks to you, but what is your initial instinct about how to adapt this thing and to find your way into it?

Mari: It’s like a big internal monologue of somebody who is living as a newly stay-at-home mom and is isolated, has moved out of the city, is living in the suburbs with her son. Her husband travels for work a lot and she’s losing her mind. It wasn’t immediately clear how I would adapt it or what the form would be exactly, but I knew that the themes were something I had been wanting to explore for a while.

I’d been wanting to write a movie about motherhood and bodies and women’s aging bodies for a while. I had been toying with a number of ideas along those same themes. This just gave me enough excitement. I don’t know. I was so excited about what the book made me feel that I just was like, “I’ll figure it out.” I embarked on my adaptation without having a totally clear plan of how I was going to adapt it.

One of the first things that I realized was the central question of the book, or at least when I read the book, in my mind was, “Oh, God, have I made a horrible decision by becoming a mother? Did I screw my whole life up?” That felt like it was the central question that I was going to explore, and then that gave me some framework for what I wanted to focus on because the book has a lot more storylines and plot that happen where there’s a pyramid scheme with all the other mothers.

There’s a number of other storylines, but it became clear like, “No, this is a story about long-term relationships and parenthood and motherhood.” My central question that I want to be exploring and thinking about is, has this woman made a huge mistake by becoming a mother? Then really early on, that gave me the ending of the movie, which is not too much of a spoiler, but there’s a birth at the ending of the movie. I thought that’s the way to answer the central question is by seeing a birth. That’s something that wasn’t in the book.

John: The character’s journey gets her to a place where the idea of being a mother is not an affront to her. She comes to embrace both what she needs as a person and motherhood and able to find a unification of these two different sides of herself.

Mari: Exactly, a unification of the rage and all of the untethered parts of her that have felt like motherhood broke her apart and is able to bring them back together. If you think about that time in the world coming right out of the pandemic and I was pregnant during the pandemic and I remember I had one of my really good friends said to me, “Having a baby is the ultimate act of optimism,” and I thought, “God, that’s true.” I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about the world in that moment, and yet I was embarking on this journey of optimism by having another child. Yes, the end of the movie speaks to that choice and how you make that choice even when it doesn’t always feel like the clearest answer.

John: I want to go back to the question of, “Is this even a movie?” Because if you think about the internal monologue aspect of the book and you’re able to stage some of this as voiceover that’s directed to the audience, it could be a stage monologue. It could be what the Constitution means to me. It could be a thing where it’s ready to deliver to the audience, except that then you wouldn’t have the actual child in front of you.

I think one of the things I need to ask you a question about is, “How the hell did you get this performance out of the twins, I guess?” I’ve never seen young people on screen so much like such young people who have to actually do the thing you need them to do so that the scene could happen. As a writer who knew that they needed to direct this movie, I would never have put such young people in so many scenes, and you did. Talk to me about both the decision as a writer to, “I’m going to try this,” and as the director who actually had to pull this off. What was that process?

Mari: Well, first, I’ll say, thinking about whether this should just be a stage monologue or whether this was something that I wanted to be more of an experiential film where you get to put yourself in the shoes of a parent of a very young child and really feel what it feels like to be that person, I thought a lot about Diary and that this piece feels like a companion piece to The Diary of a Teenage Girl because it is a very subjective movie.

The attempt is to really place you squarely in the shoes of a person who’s in the middle of a major life transformation and she’s sleep-deprived. Every day feels like the same as the day before. Things are blending into each other. She doesn’t remember when she last changed her shirt or when she last took a shower or when she ate anything but Mac and cheese and fried hash browns.

That got exciting for me to think about creating a totally subjective world, where we’re trying to give an audience an experience of what it feels like because I realized, “Oh, friends of mine who haven’t had kids or family members who haven’t had kids, they have no idea how insane I felt and how this experience of being a first-time parent with a very little kid stuck at home, how much you do lose your mind.”

That became the fun thing about thinking about it as a film and why it is more than just a monologue. Then, yes, I have a big pet peeve about kids in movies who look like little Hollywood actor kids who don’t act like kids because I feel like it’s so deceiving. I don’t know about your kid, but my kids are wild. I had a little boy first. He always had so much energy.

He was up at 5:00 in the morning running crazy right away, even from the time he was really little. Just not a kid that you would have seen on screen. Not a kid who’s just quietly sitting in the corner while the grownups have conversations. Somebody who’s climbing on your head and it’s a very interactive physical life that I embarked on with him. So I really wanted to find kids who weren’t really actors and were really kids who would play.

John: Well, how old are these twins? Because when you say they’re not really actors, to what degree are they even aware of what they’re doing or they’re just having fun?

Mari: They were two when I cast them. They turned three on our camera test day. We found them through a twin forum on Facebook. We were out plastering with twin forums to find twins who could come. Then the way that I cast them was I just hung out for days at parks. I had twins come in batches basically to come and meet with me and I just played with them for hours on end until I found the twins who I felt really could play and pretend and were down to play these different games with me, and yet were also good listeners in their own way even if they had a lot of energy and wildness and spunk and humor, but also could listen and take direction and understand pretend.

These two boys, Arleigh and Emmett, they were just the perfect twins. I feel so lucky that I cast them because it could have gone really poorly. They gave one of the best toddler performances in a movie, as you said. They really are very realistic. We made the environment really fun for them, I think. They loved coming to set. They knew everybody’s names. They knew where to put the microphone. They got really into the mechanics of filmmaking. We let them check out the camera. We let them check out the props. They understood everything about what we were doing and what everyone’s job was. We made everything a game. So I think they had a really good time.

John: I’m doing this animated movie right now. One of the first conversations I had with the director was, “To what degree is this camera looking into a world versus the world that’s being projected onto the screen?” They’re really fundamentally different aspects. One of the things I think you do so nicely is that balance between the camera feels like it’s just documenting a thing that’s happening in front of you.

You feel like the kid is just actually a natural kid and Amy Adams is a good actor. She’s just rolling with it, which totally works. Also, the subjective reality is you’re pushing things at the screen that are not necessarily just the camera documenting a moment. When we’re in her point of view, it is a subjective experience. We’re shoving things at the audience rather than we’re supposed to believe that this is really what’s happening in front of the lens.

Mari: Right. It’s that tricky balance of having it feel not staged. You do want to feel like the kid is just a kid who’s acting like a kid. Between the editing and the framing and the ways in which there’s repetition, you realize it’s actually all very carefully planned. There was the trick of needing the kid to be able to say certain lines that scenes needed in order for the scene to actually progress the way I had written it.

There were certain scenes I wrote very much knowing we will improv whatever the kid ends up saying. They’re walking down the street hand-in-hand. “What do you want to talk about? That leaf up there or a truck rolling by or whatever it is? It doesn’t matter what you say. We’ll find something great in whatever your conversation is as long as it’s not about the cameraman.”

Then there were other scenes where I knew, “No, I need a really specific thing. I need you to ride on your mom’s back, tell her to play horsey with you, and then tell her that she’s got fuzzy hair coming out of her back.” We figured out games for how to do this. A lot of times, it was call and response. I would do a game of like, “Ready. Repeat after me. Say poo.” “Poo.” “Go.” “Go.” “Moo.” “Moo.” “Ruff.” “Ruff.” “Ah.” “Ah,” or get rhythmic games going, and then you say, “Mama fuzzy.” “Mama fuzzy.” “Louder. Mama fuzzy,” or whatever.

However it was, it was getting this to be something that was fun and playful for them, but sometimes it was trickier than others. I’d have a plan for how we were going to make something into a game for the kid. They would not be in the mood to do that thing that I was thinking of, or I’m thinking of this one scene where Amy thinks she’s lost her son at the playground. When she finds him, she runs for him. We had him sitting on this grass. I think this was day one or two, so he had just met Amy.

I had him sitting on the grass and I said, “Okay, and then she’s going to run up to you.” Well, he didn’t know as soon as I said action, she was going to be screaming, crying, running up to him. He turned around and saw this woman who he had just met really the day before screaming at him. He stood up and started running away, a very natural response. We realized, “Oh right, we need to figure out a way to make this game. Okay, you’re playing hide-and-go-seek. You count to 10. Even when she screams and runs for you, you can’t get up until you get to 10,” something like that.

John: In addition to all the challenges of these very young actors, you put a bunch of dogs in your movie. These are another classic rookie mistake, putting dogs in your movie. Dogs at this point, there are trainers. There’s ways to do it. How much of the dog action we’re seeing are, “This is what the lens saw,” versus you had to go in and post and move dogs around to make this all work?

Mari: Most of it is totally practical. There’s a tiny bit of adjustment in post when it comes to, “Oh, this one dog was misbehaving,” so we moved them over here or whatever. Actually, what we really did was we worked with really great trainers who spent a lot of time casting and training the dogs for the very specific behavior that we wanted in the movie. I wrote scenes and action for dogs having no real basis on how dogs behave.

Because the dogs are supposed to be a little bit magical and non-realistic in the movie, the things that I needed them to do were not necessarily things that dogs would do. Things like bowing to another dog. I had read things about wolves and how they’ll sometimes show their neck to another dog, so I would take things from research like that and put them into the script, but then we had to actually get dogs to do those things. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t work.

John: In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we had to train hundreds of squirrels to pick up nuts and shake them and then put them in the right places. Each time you see a squirrel, they’re trained for that one specific thing, and then you’ll never see that squirrel again. It’s all unique stuff.

Mari: We needed a squirrel to just run up a tree for this. I remember as I was going through my budget at one point, it was going to be $13,000 to train a squirrel. I was like, “But the squirrel doesn’t do something that a squirrel wouldn’t do. It just needs to run up a tree.” I was like, “No, we’re not doing this. I can’t pay $13,000 to train a squirrel.” We took that out of the budget and we just wandered around the park until we found a squirrel and filmed a squirrel.

John: I want to wrap up by talking about tone because you mentioned that the dogs were somewhat magical. One of the things that is so fascinating about your film but also unsettling is it always feels like it’s just about to tip into a different genre. Music-wise, we’re often getting close to horror moments at times. It feels like it’s a horror movie that doesn’t ever fully get to the horror thing.

Obviously, there’s a whole tradition of body horror that’s part of this. The experience of being a woman of that age and motherhood is a body horror story, and yet it’s also a comedy. There’s funny moments. There’s moments of marital strife that are appropriate in other movies. How did you think about the tonal shifts and how did you communicate them? Were there discussions both on the script stage and on the set about, “Where are we at here?”

Mari: Well, a lot of what I thought about was when reading the book, the mother does turn into a dog, but it’s not like The Fly or other transformation movies where that metamorphosis is painful or horrifying. If anything, it’s cathartic and euphoric. There was this whole element of body horror and the metaphor being as you enter into perimenopause and you go to look in the mirror and, “Oh, God, what’s that weird hair sprouting out here? What new wrinkles do I have?” and all the ways in which we look at our own bodies as we age and we think, “Who is that? I don’t even recognize myself,” taking that to a sort of extreme level.

That has a level of horror to it and just gore and grossness. We get some really great groans when we see this movie in big theaters as you can imagine. There’s some really nasty stuff. When it came to the actual transformation, it was really important that the transformation itself didn’t feel painful or horrible, but it felt euphoric. That was our guiding force. We did always want to be dancing on that edge.

I definitely think there’s a misconception if anybody goes into this movie thinking it’s a horror movie. I think it’s more of a psychological drama with a lot of comedy, more than anything in the horror realm. We played with horror tricks. We played with visual styles that tip their hat to the more horror genre, whether it’s like she’s walking down a hallway and we’re doing the push-pull visual styles or music as well. Ultimately, it’s really a story about motherhood and transformation. I don’t know. The things I got more interested in were less of the full horror parts of it and the more parts that made me laugh.

John: Well, let’s put Nightbitch to the side for a second because everyone will get a chance to see that and they should and think about some other movies down the road. Someone might be coming to you, Mari Heller, to say, “Hey, how about this article to adapt into your next thing?”

You have three choices here. We’re going to start with one that’s not even an article. This is the first time on Scriptnotes where we’re actually just going to a Threads post. Not even a Twitter post, a Threads post.

This is a post by Bo Predko. I have no idea who Bo Predko is, if it’s a real person or if it’s some other corporate entity. This is so short. We’ll actually just read this all aloud. Let me read the setup and then you can read the bullet points here.

All right, so it starts, “You’re 23 years old dating Leonardo DiCaprio in LA. Private parties, yachts, jets, signing NDAs every month. You’re 100% sure Leo loves you because he let you touch his Oscar. Let’s be real. You’ll be forgotten in two years. Here’s what to do when you’re dating a celebrity.” All right, help us out.

Mari: Number one, keep the contacts you make in a separate list. Number two, network like a shark at high-end parties. Number three, leverage the relationship to collaborate with luxury brands. Number four, save and invest the money from the lifestyle perks. Number five, eyes will be on you. Grow your social media following. Number six, read every paper you sign. Number seven, learn from Leo’s work ethic and use it to fuel your own goals. Number eight, stay out of unnecessary drama and keep things private.

John: All right. Mari, you and I both know famous people. This is not unfamiliar territory to us and it’s not unfamiliar as a setup for a movie in a way. We’ve seen other stories like a normie dating a celebrity and what that looks like and feels like, and yet I like that it’s an inversion of what we normally expect where the wide-eyed, young, doe-eyed girl falls in love with this guy and has her heart broken and learns a valuable lesson. Assuming that you know this going in and here’s how you’re going to plan for it.

Mari: Right, and not just plan for it, here’s how you’re going to abuse the system that would abuse you.

John: Yes, which I thought was exciting. Let’s think about this as, how would this be a movie? If this came towards you, what is your instinct? Where do you start? Are you thinking about who this young woman is? Are you thinking about the situation? What’s interesting about this to you?

Mari: I guess what’s interesting is the way that younger generations are approaching everything with a savviness that maybe I didn’t grow up with and playing the game. Everything about this scares me a little bit, to be honest. The idea of using a romantic relationship for your personal gain, it’s just so dirty and gross, but I also see the humor in it, especially using somebody like Leonardo DiCaprio because he so famously dates young women and drops them quickly.

I think in all of the comments below, so many people were commenting on how young this person would be, who he’s dating. It’s a funny subverting, I guess, a subversion of the expectation, like you’re saying, especially if it could be a misdirect, maybe. Maybe there’s a way that you start off really believing that this person is a bit of a dupe and that they’re in this situation having no idea what they’re doing. Then you start to realize, you could uncover it like The Usual Suspects or whatever and realize that they’ve been manipulating it the entire way.

John: Absolutely.

Mari: Everything’s been a plan.

John: There’s a Taylor Swift song, Mastermind, where she reveals like, “Oh no, you thought this was an accidental thing, but actually, I planned this whole thing the whole time through.” It also made me think about All About Eve because in that, you have the young assistant who, of course, takes over the role. What’s different is that in something like All About Eve, the assumption is like, “Oh, I want to be an actress. I want to be you. I have this other skill, which I’m going to be able to manifest by getting close to you.”

Here, and I think this is a generational difference that you’re pointing to, is that it’s not just about, “This is how I’m going to become the famous actor or whatever.” It’s like because we have this role of influencer and just like a person who’s able to monetize their fame, the goal is, “I need to become famous and get the brand deals, and that’s what I’m going to do. I want to become like Kylie Jenner. I don’t need to be Charlize Theron.”

Mari: Right. It could be fun if you did a movie like this that has the Being John Malkovich thing where the celebrity is in on it, in on the joke of it all, enough that they’re willing to use their own real name like if Leonardo DiCaprio would do this movie, let’s say it was a movie, as himself, right? It could be poking fun at his own celebrity and expectations of him as a celebrity. There could be something fun about that.

John: Well, if you think about Seth Rogen’s This Is the End, and you look at that as an example. They’re all playing themselves like highly characterized versions of themselves. There’s something really interesting and clever about that.

Let’s talk about the inversions of this because right now, this is a young woman dating Leonardo DiCaprio. What is the version of this where she’s famous and he’s the guy who gets swept up in there?

Mari: It’s not as fun.

John: It’s not as fun.

Mari: It’s just not as fun.

John: No.

Mari: It’s the person you always assume is going to be the victim, which in a scenario like this where the man has all the power and the age and all the influence and the fame and all the money and the woman is in the more subversive role and then she turns out to be the one who’s actually controlling everything, that could be really fun.

John: I guess because of the setup and because it’s supposed to be Leonardo DiCaprio and there’s this history of him dating for two years at most and then discarding, the idea that there’s an expiration date on the relationship is built in, but it doesn’t always happen that way. Matt Damon’s wife was a normie and I think that’s still going fine. There are famous people who marry normal people and it’s not always a Ben Affleck or a J.Lo.

Mari: I just love how comfortable you are with saying “normie.” That’s really making me laugh.

John: We know other people who aren’t Leonardo DiCaprio level but who work in the industry and who are comparatively famous, who are married to non-famous people. That can work. It’s just it has to be–

Mari: In fact, I think I see those relationships and I tend to believe in them the most, especially people who’ve been together since before they got anything. Often, if somebody has a really cool spouse, it can make me like them more.

John: 100%. Someone who does have a cool spouse, at least a very devoted spouse, is Palmer Luckey. This is an article by Jeremy Stern writing for Tablet Magazine. He’s talking about Palmer Luckey, who is an inventor, clearly brilliant, clearly some things about him that are challenging for people around him. He created Oculus Rift. He sold that to Facebook for $2.7 billion, then got fired by Mark Zuckerberg after he made this $10,000 donation to this pro-Trump troll group that was dedicated to “shitposting” in real life.

He tried to build this nonprofit that was about prisons. Ultimately, he founded Anduril Industries, this defense technology startup. It makes autonomous weapon systems. It’s now valued at $14 billion. It’s not just Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook. There’s a two-step thing here. He’s able to rise and fall and rise again in ways that are really interesting. He’s married to or still with his high school sweetheart.

Mari: Except for they didn’t go to high school, they were both homeschooled.

John: Exactly right. The homeschool of it all feels relevant and appropriate. This comes in your direction. What parts of this are interesting to you? Where do you think a movie exists here? What are even the boundaries or the edges of the story you might want to tell on this?

Mari: Well, that’s the issue. The story is fascinating. Fascinating and overwhelming. I got tired just reading this story because there are so many twists and turns. I think the question comes down to, what type of story are we telling? What are we meant to feel about this person? Are they a hero in this story? Are they a tragic character? Are they somebody that we’re rooting for or are they somebody who we’re vilifying? Also, what are you saying? I couldn’t even feel through reading this article what the takeaway is.

What am I meant to feel about this person and what he’s done in the world? Yes, his brain is impressive. Yes, what he’s accomplished is impressive. I love somebody who’s been in this long relationship with somebody for so long through all these ups and downs. He has a thing in the article where he talks about how other people in the tech industry are all trying to keep all options open at the same time. He likes to pick a path and stick with it. There’s something about that ethos, which is really fascinating. But god, I would not know where to begin with this. What did you feel?

John: Listen, you could do the cradle to present day with him and rise up through the homeschool, but that’s going to be too much. It’s not going to be interesting. I think the instinct of, do a Social Network, where you’re focusing on one aspect of that person’s career and take that and you’re fictionalizing and fudging what you need to fudge to create the version of the character who makes sense for the course of your two-hour movie feels right, but it actually just misses so much.

Because if you’re talking about the sale of Oculus to Facebook, eh, that’s actually not– he’s getting fired is interesting. Maybe he’s getting fired from Facebook is the starting point and then having to build back up. It feels like that second founder story and the revenge story. Again, like you, I don’t know if he’s the hero of the story or if he’s an anti-hero that we’re following through the story. I don’t know where we want the audience to sit with our relationship with him.

Mari: No, and I don’t know what the ending is. I don’t know where you’re taking it to because Social Network, it’s all around the court case, right?

John: Yes.

Mari: What would be the framework that you were taking this person’s life through? It feels like the story is not over yet.

John: That’s really a part of the problem is that because of the court case, you could have a resolution of the court case. Even though Zuckerberg is still making a new story, it feels like that’s the resolution here. I don’t know what the resolution is at this point. We also need to talk about how challenging it is to make a movie about a living person. You’ve made two biopics.

Mari: Sort of three.

John: All right, so can you ever forgive me? Are those people alive at this point?

Mari: No, everybody’s dead.

John: Great, so that’s helpful for you.

Mari: Ooh. That’s the best-case scenario. I hate to say that.

John: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Fred Rogers was still alive as you were making this?

Mari: No, he passed away. His wife was still alive. A lot of the people who we were putting on screen were still alive, but he was not alive.

John: What’s the third biopic?

Mari: Well, it’s not exactly a biopic, but The Diary of a Teenage Girl is based on Phoebe, who wrote the book. It’s based on her real life and real people in her life, including her mom and her mom’s boyfriend. It wasn’t a biopic, but it was still based on people’s real lives. I actually cringe at the idea of calling any of the movies biopics because they aren’t cradle-to-grave stories and I don’t love biopics in general, but they are based on real people.

John: Yes. Where I come out with Palmer Luckey and Tell Me How You’re Feeling is that I think there’s so many things that are fascinating here, but I don’t think this article or any story about him specifically right now at this moment makes sense to do.

Mari: No.

John: If you could make this with his permission, I don’t see that working out very well. If you make this without his permission, he feels like a person who could be litigious and you could be in for some real situations there.

Mari: I could see like an organization on the right, somebody within the Trump world wanting to make a biopic of him as a hero for the right because the contribution he made was to a Trump troll account. Then eventually so many of the other people in the tech world ended up coming out for Trump and he feels like he was the one who started that. I don’t know. I wonder, it would almost be like a propaganda film.

John: Yes. I could also see if someone tried to do that, I could see him pushing it back against that too because I think he believes himself to be outside of those systems completely.

What I do think is maybe useful about this is to think about this as a kind of character and think about it as a template for sort of like an interesting character to build a new fictional character off of.

Mari: I think you’re right. He’s like an archetype that we don’t see very often and it makes you realize, my husband always says he finds it interesting when I adapt books because things don’t follow a certain way that they’re meant to go. Books take narrative in different directions or characters are more complex than they would be otherwise.

I think there’s something about him that’s sort of contradictory, like the fact that he is in this long-term marriage and has chosen to become a parent. It’s not what you would expect, but it gives you permission to look at a character and think, oh, you can make weird choices.

John: Yes. Agreed. I think he’s fascinating. I think people should read the article and think about him as a character, but I don’t feel like people are going to rush out and like, I want to make the Palmer Luckey movie. I just don’t see that working out well.

Mari: I can’t tell. Somebody might. It would not be me.

John: Look at Succession. You’re not going to make a movie or a series about the Murdochs, but what you can do is take some of the framework and some of the area around them and make a fictionalized story, and that may be the best approach here.

Mari: I miss Succession so much.

John: I miss it so much. It’s so good.

Mari: It’s so good.

John: It’s so good. All right, let’s wrap this up with sort of the opposite of Succession, which is How to Give Away a Fortune. This is by Joshua Jaffa writing for the New Yorker.

This is really fascinating. I’d sort of heard about little pieces of this before, but this is the first encapsulation where this is all together. It centers around Marlene Englehorn, who’s this Austrian heiress. Her family is incredibly wealthy because of a pharmaceutical fortune and her focus is like, I don’t believe I should have this fortune. I want to give away this fortune, but I want to give it away in a way that actually most benefits society.

And so to do this, I’m going to recruit a bunch of Austrians, 50 Austrians who are representative of our country and have them come together over the course of weekends to make decisions about how this $500 billion, this big chunk of money is going to be distributed to the world. I thought it was cool and ambitious and felt naive at times. There were lots of things that were interesting about it. I was trying to think like, could this be a movie? Would this be a movie? If this were a movie, who would you even center it on?

Obviously Marlene Englehorn is one choice, but the story actually puts a lot of its time in Emma, who’s this 80-year-old retiree who gets this letter recruiting her, which sort of feels like the Golden Ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, come to this thing and we’re going to do this thing. She doesn’t even believe it at first, but then she participates in it. Marielle, what’s your instinct here? Is there a movie here? If so, how would you start?

Mari: What I think is so interesting about it is it plays on something culturally that we as Americans, I think, feel is very foreign to us, which is this idea that we’re such a capitalist society. I didn’t even really realize how much that’s baked into our everyday life until I spent time in Berlin. I was talking to an American acquaintance who had moved to Berlin, and he was somebody I knew from my days of making theater, and he was working as a theater artist in Berlin.

He was saying, yeah, the thing about having a job here or about Berlin in general is nobody’s going to get very rich, but nobody’s going to be very poor. We’re all working and making a good living wage, and doctors and theater artists make somewhere around the same amount of money. We all have jobs, and we all have health care, and education is free, and the quality of life is really good, and nobody’s going to be too rich, but nobody’s going to be hurting too much, or not nobody, but in general, it’s just much more socialistic in that way. We’re operating from a very different perspective.

Then he pointed something out to me, which was he was like, have you noticed that when you talk to people here in Berlin, the first question is never, what do you do? It made me realize how much we’re focused on just wealth and career and what we do and how we make money and all of these things in our country. That I found it really liberating and beautiful to think about a society that was really thinking about wealth distribution in different ways. Berlin had capped rental increases at that point as a city because they just didn’t want housing to become unaffordable.

All of these things that the society in itself was supporting a more socialist view of the world, and somewhere it jived with me from an ethical point of view where I just thought, “God, we’re an unethical country.” That makes so much sense. Even just reading this, I felt the same feeling of like, “Could you do this? Could you change the whole way we perceive money and capitalism in such a jarring way?” There’s something fun about it.

John: There’s something fun about it. I like that. You could look at Marlene Englehorn as being sort of the antithesis of an Ayn Rand character, basically, not believing that any individual is worth more than society, therefore, she should not be worth more than everybody else around her. There’s something really noble about that. One thing that the article has to do a lot of work to explain is that, well, how did this family become so wealthy in a country that is not to have such great disparities? It’s because of sort of inherited wealth and sort of the way that inherited wealth becomes this perpetual cycle that’s very hard to break out of.

As a story purpose, I’m not sure who the antagonist is in a way, I’m not sure like what the–

Mari: I wonder if from a story point of view, if it’s the type of story that starts out with this great idea and great intentions, and then as soon as you get into the nitty gritty of it, things go really wrong and you can’t– she sort of, like you said, has a little bit of a naivete about what this would do for people’s lives that is probably coming from a privileged position where she actually really doesn’t understand what people who haven’t grown up how she did need or want, the sort of rich person, “I’m the hero of my own story” narrative vibe. Then maybe she could actually come to a point where she actually has to grow and change also in some other way, I don’t know.

John: Yes, we were talking about Succession before, it feels like she’s almost like the Siobhan’s character in Succession if she actually believed the things she sort of professed to believe in Succession, and then she sort of keeps getting pulled back in. The other thing that reminded me of was The Good Place and that it was a chance for have characters wrestling about like what is good and right in society, like how do we do this thing?

Because the probably most interesting parts of the story, which I think is probably a better documentary than a feature film, is about sort of like, well, how are we going to prioritize these choices that we’re making as a society and as a subset of society who gets to make some of these choices? It comes down to at the end, I’ll spoil a little bit, is that they have a slush fund at the end where they have like these stickers, they can just apply their stickers that are each worth like $50,000 to different projects and it’s like they’re putting my posters around.

Mari: Very Succession.

John: Yes, which is absurd, but also you get it. There’s a certain point you’re throwing money at things.

Mari: Yes, it does feel like it’s a fun way to explore some bigger ethical questions, and you would almost want like economists and ethicists to come in and weigh in on all of the like pitfalls that you couldn’t anticipate. If you were fictionalizing this and narrativizing it, like what’s the most extreme thing that could happen in this situation?

John: Let’s do a recap of our three How Would this Would Be a Movies.

I think the surprise for me is like the one that’s probably closest to a movie is the Thread thread of Dating a Celebrity because How To Give Away A Fortune is so interesting, but it’s probably a documentary, it’s probably not really suited for a two-hour theatrical experience. Palmer Luckey, I don’t think we want to tell his specific story over the course of this time. We’d like him as a template, but I could imagine several different kinds of movies that are based on essentially this list of advice for dating a celebrity.

Mari: Yes. When I first read it, I didn’t think it would be a movie, but as we talked about it, I got convinced.

John: As we drop this podcast, you and I both be racing to get our versions of this story down and get them sold off there.

Mari: I’m going to call Leonardo DiCaprio right now.

John: Right now. Appian Way, we’re going to get in there and make that movie.

Let’s do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a blog post by Teresa Justino called, You Get To Be Fulfilled Now. She’s talking about how as writers, often we need day jobs to sort of get through and pay our bills and pay our rent. Often we think of those as survival jobs and she wants to recast those as what she calls thrival jobs, which are jobs you can thrive in even while you’re making a living to do your thing.

She says, “I love thrival because I believe it’s possible to find a job outside your chosen field that nonetheless contributes to your ultimate goals, supports you financially, and provides some sort of joy, fulfillment, and purpose. In other words, a job that allows you to thrive rather than just survive.” She talks about what that was like for her, but I think that’s a nice framework for us to be thinking about what we’re doing in terms of the work we do that is not the work we aspire to do. It applies to writers, directors, actors, everybody.

Mari: It reminds me of some advice you guys gave on the podcast a few weeks ago, I think, to somebody who was asking whether they should take a certain job within the industry even though they felt, I can’t remember what their hesitation was, and I loved that both of you were like, take the job, make the money, do the thing you need to do, and we need to all, not that you’re saying, “Oh, you just have to pay dues and we all have to pay dues,” but there is this sort of, I think, thing within Hollywood where people sort of believe somehow they’re just going to get handed their dream job out of the blue.

It just never has happened from what I can tell in the world. I agree, I feel like working in restaurants for 15 years and all of the different jobs I’ve done where I was a hard worker and I was good at multitasking and I learned lots of skills that helped me be a director and that everybody who I worked with recognized that I was a hard worker. There were times that I felt like that would be what I did for the rest of my life, and oh no, I want to do something else. But I was still going to give my all to jobs. I was still going to work hard and be the person I want to be in the world.

John: I think I always talk about with my early jobs, my sort of survivaly thrival jobs, is it was helpful for me to have a job that I didn’t hate, but I didn’t love, and that I could leave with enough brainpower left in me that I could still go home and write. That’s the balance, and there’s some, I do see sometimes people who will take a job that is so overwhelming that they don’t have anything left in the tank, and that’s not going to be the right choice. It made more sense to take a job, like waiting tables is physically exhausting, but it’s not using that same creative spark that you would otherwise be spending.

Mari: It’s true. My main thrival jobs of my life were all waiting tables and working as a camp counselor or for a daycare and taking care of children. That was much more exhausting on an emotional level than was waiting tables.

John: Yes, I can see it. What do you have to recommend for our listeners?

Mari: My one cool thing is a book that I just started reading that’s beautiful by my friend Priyanka Mattoo, and it’s called Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones. It’s a memoir, and it’s funny and relatable and just gorgeously written, and I recommend everybody reading it. She’s just a beautiful writer, and it’s a series of essays, and I think it will just warm your heart and make you feel less alone, which is what I think the goal of all art is.

John: Fantastic, Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones.

Mari: Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, which is also just such a great title, right?

John: I love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, it’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

It’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware now. They’re all great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become our premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on film festivals. Mari Heller, an absolute damn delight having you back on the show.

Mari: It’s so nice to be back, like coming home.

John: Check out Nightbitch, which is going to be coming out in December and many festivals before then, right?

Mari: Yes, please come and see it.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, we just mentioned film festivals. Let’s talk about film festivals. Nightbitch debuted at TIFF, but this was not your first experience at film festivals. Was the first time you were there with a movie, was that Diary of a Teenage Girl?

Mari: Yes, so Diary premiered at Sundance and that was a very specific and special experience because the movie had been supported by the Sundance Labs, a place you and I both know and love. Sundance had been, sort of my creative home in that way because I had developed both at the Writer’s Lab and the Director’s Lab. Then I got to premiere the movie at the Sundance Film Festival.

John: That’s amazing. So in that case, you want people to see your movie, but you want them to buy your movie, right? Because it hadn’t been sold yet?

Mari: Absolutely, it had not been sold yet.

John: There’s a lot of pressure there.

Mari: It sold at Sundance back when that still happened, which from what I can understand, movies don’t really sell at film festivals the way they used to.

Mari: Probably a topic for a bigger discussion, but like a lot of times, there’s been a lot of screenings ahead of time so people know what they’re going to buy or they premiere there and it’s weeks or months later that the actual sale happens.

Mari: That seems like it happens more often now, yes.

John: The case of, Diary of a Teenage Girl, there was that excitement of like, oh my gosh, there’s like two in the morning and the offers are going back and forth. That’s so cool and exciting.

Mari: That’s exactly what happened, which blew my mind that it played out in that way. What we did at the time was I took a lot of meetings before the movie premiered with a number of companies. I got to know the players and sort of people who were maybe going to be interested in the movie before they had seen the movie.

Then once the movie premiered, we were in that exact game of trying to sell the movie. Then three weeks later, I went to Berlinale with the movie to try to sell it to foreign markets. We had our foreign sales agent and I did a million meetings there and worked on basically selling off different territories to the movie too.

John: Good. I had two Sundance experiences. My first one was with Go and Go was a premiere at Sundance, but we already were sold. Columbia owned the movie everywhere in the world. This was just a happy premiere situation, like getting hype for the story and it was great. The second time was with The Nines and The Nines was not sold anywhere. We had that, the big screening, but really the purpose there was to find a buyer for the movie.

Like you, we had some conversations ahead of time. They hadn’t seen the movie, but they’d sort of knew who we were. We enlisted both a film sales agent and a film publicity agent who were there to make sure all the right people were coming to the screening. Of course, they don’t actually come to the screening because they’re getting busy with other stuff, so they have to come to a later screening or we’re burning a DVD for them so they can watch it in their hotel room. It’s so stressful to try to sell a movie at a film festival.

Mari: It is so stressful. At the time, I had just had a kid. He was five weeks old. I was at the film festival with a five week old baby and trying to understand the sort of ins and outs of selling this movie. UTA was representing the movie and having all of these meetings. It was, yes, it was very stressful and exciting. I’m glad I had that experience, but man, it was stressful. None of my other film festival experiences have been like that.

John: Let’s talk about the happier situation generally of a film festival where you are there to premiere your film, to debut it, to talk about it, but you don’t have to actually sell it. Something like A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood or Nightbitch, what do you go in with? Who has seen it before? Let’s talk about Nightbitch. Who had seen the movie before it debuted at TIFF? The programmers at TIFF, somebody had seen it, right?

Mari: Yes, so we had actually shown the movie to the programmers at TIFF the year before, before the strikes happened, because the plan was to premiere then. They were so passionate about loving the movie that they basically said, if you need to hold it for a year, we’ll hold a spot for you for next year, which was so kind and wonderful. So yes, programmers see the movie early. We had tested the movie. We had shown the movie to test audiences.

We had done some sort of tastemaker screen, or no, not tastemakers, not the right– toe-dip screenings, as they call them, where you sort of show them to journalists who will never cover the movie, but you get a sort of sense of how people might review the movie. We had done all of those preliminary screenings, and then, of course, I had shown the movie to everybody I had, no, in my house or living room or screening room or whatever, and done a million friends and family screenings. Because we weren’t selling the movie, the movie was already with Searchlight. It wasn’t the same situation where we needed to meet with people ahead of time in order to have them see the movie.

John: Let’s talk about the actual experience, then, of the premiere screenings. Was it at nighttime? Was it 7 PM, were you at one of the sort of marches?

Mari: It was 9.30 on Saturday night, which was a pretty key time, but late for me.

John: As a parent, yes.

Mari: Yes, I started that day at 8 AM doing my tech check of the DCP and checking all the theater stuff and showing up to make sure everything was going to sound and look great, and then I got into my glam, which is a wonderful thing, but, exhausting, too, and did pictures and press all day, and then the movie didn’t play until 9:30 at night.

It was really fun, though, because we were in a huge theater, this gorgeous theater that sat almost 2,000 people, and it felt like it was the hot ticket, Everybody wanted to see the movie, and I was getting calls and texts from everyone, “I can’t get into your movie, do you have any extra tickets, blah, blah, blah.” It just had this feeling, this energy, which I think that’s the best part about film festivals, is this energy of being together communally, watching movies, and people getting excited about something and hearing about something.

John: Because it’s in a big theater they’re not on their phone doing anything else, they’re actually just focused on the screen for once.

Mari: People are there because they love movies. People are geeking out over movies which is such a fun place to be, it’s always scary to show your movie to an audience no matter what but you feel like you’re watching with a ton of people who love movies and love watching movies and there’s just an energy that you can’t replicate. I remember Jorma talking about MacGruber premiered at South by Southwest and he was like, I’ll never have a better screening than that in my life. That was the most exciting, best audience reaction I could ever have.

John: Yes, Go’s premiere was also, it was at nighttime at Sundance. It was a great big party. My movie, The Nines, we had like the great big premiere, but like it went well, but like that’s by far the biggest house that’s ever going to see the movie. That probably is true for Nightbitch as well. You’re going to have a theatrical release, but this is the only one time you’re going to have that many people looking at their eyeballs directed towards your film at one place.

Mari: I sit in the audience and watch the movie at these film festivals because of that exact reason, because it’s so satisfying and fun to watch that many people watch your movie. I know a lot of filmmakers who can’t, who can’t sit there while it plays, and it just feels too much or actors who feel like it’s just too much to sit there while everybody watches the movie.

I think even when I was sitting there, this was only now two weekends ago, sitting there with the audience watching Nightbitch premiere, I was, as it was happening, doing that thing of being like, remember this, remember this feeling, remember that laugh, this feels so good, it’s never going to feel like this again.

John: It’s not your last festival, so let’s talk about that, because it’s not just, because this is really the start of awards season, and TIFF sort of kicks off awards season, part of the goal of doing this is to sort of get that first initial buzz started about sort of the things people might say like, “Oh, this should be on our list for picture, for screenplay, for Amy Adams, for other things.” All those things, those conversations are going to start happening, and you keep those conversations happening by going to different festivals. What does the runway look like ahead of you?

Mari: Yes, I’m so lucky that I can talk about this with as much experience as I’ve already had, because I had two years in a row, 2018 and 2019, where for Can you Ever Forgive Me, and A Beautiful Day, I did a very similar trajectory of film festival to film festival to film festival and press. An awards campaign, essentially. I am a little more prepared, I guess, this time around for all of that. I will be going to the London Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival, the Savannah Film Festival, the Chicago Film Festival, Hampton’s Film Festival.

I would be doing even more if my husband wasn’t off making a movie in Finland right now, and I wasn’t also solo parenting. I’m going to do as many as I can, and I have called on all the grandparents to help because it’s going to be quite a fall. Once you do the initial film festival, the rest of them don’t feel nearly as terrifying. They are a little bit more fun. You start to get your talking points down.

We all went to TIFF, the cast, me, the author of the book, the producers. Often what then ends up happening is we sort of split up and we each cover different territories when it comes to the film festivals. you become less– you’re more alone doing the next sections of it, so a few of us will go to London but I think like when I go I don’t know to Middleburg it may just be me I might be the only one really there representing the film, there to answer questions and do the press around it so it doesn’t have the same energy as the first time when everybody comes together and gets to celebrate.

John: The Nines went to Venice Film Festival it was like, “Oh what movies did at Venice?” I’m like, I saw nothing. I was there. That’s the other irony.

Mari: I saw nothing at Toronto either, no. I’ve never seen anything at a film festival when I’m there for a film. You’re working the whole time. Going to Sundance when I haven’t had a movie there is one of my favorite experiences because getting to see three movies a day or whatever you might be able to sneak your way into is such a cool experience. No, when you’re there with your own movie, you don’t see anything.

John: Yes, you’re in work mode. Mari, congratulations on the film you’ve made so far, on the festival so far, and all the festivals ahead.

Mari: Thank you.

John: Thank you for talking us through this.

Mari: My pleasure.

Links:

• Nightbitch | Official Trailer
• Marielle Heller
• Highland Pro Austin launch party – sign up here!
• MacGruber on Peacock
• Hollywood’s 10 Percent Problem by Matt Belloni at Puck
• Dating a Celebrity – Thread by bo.predko
• American Vulcan by Jeremy Stern for Tablet
• How to Give Away a Fortune by Joshua Yaffa for The New Yorker
• You Get to Be Fulfilled Now by Teresa Jusino
• Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones by Priyanka Mattoo
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
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• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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