Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show).

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

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

**John:** And this is the 200th episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

We are here live, recording this episode for the whole world to listen to. I was thinking back that our very first live episode was in a pretty small room. That was in Austin, right? That was the first live show.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. That’s right.

**John:** Since then we’ve done shows in Austin, Los Angeles, New York City.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** This time we’re doing it live for the entire world to hear at once.

**Craig:** Oh, my…

**John:** Yeah, I know. It’s daunting.

**Craig:** And we’re live streaming it, right?

**John:** Yeah, we are. There are 198 people as we recorded this show who are listening to this show as we are recording it.

**Craig:** And so while we talk, they can give us feedback in real-time —

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So they can complain about me instantly.

**John:** Absolutely. Keith Vacario says, “Hello world.”

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So that’s absolutely the kind of thing to do.

**Craig:** God, you know what the funny thing is, you know, we watch things like this all the time. But when you do it, suddenly you feel like you’re the first person to ever do it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like, “Oh, my god, I’m flying a plane in the air. Look at me.”

**John:** It’s amazing. We’ve landed on the moon.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** And there’s no better person to be in the cockpit with us as we’re trying to attempt this moon landing than our own, very first guest, our Joan Rivers, Aline Brosh McKenna. Welcome Aline.

**Craig:** Yay!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Yay! You had to say cockpit.

**John:** I had to say cockpit.

**Aline:** You had to work blue.

**John:** I had to work blue. I had to bring it back to phallic humor.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna, you were with us at our last live show. And at our last live show, you described this TV show that you were trying to make with Rachel Bloom. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out. But we’ll get in to all of that stuff. We’re going to talk about TV. We’re going to talk about whether the quality of a movie affects its long-term prospects at the box office.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And we’re going to answer a whole bunch of listener questions including the ones that people are typing right now —

**Craig:** Right now.

**John:** Into the little field.

**Aline:** Type, type, type, type, type.

**Craig:** Type your questions. This is it. This is your chance.

**John:** This is the show. Aline, when we saw you last you brought Rachel Bloom with you and she sang for us and she described the show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that was —

**Aline:** What month was that? It was Christmas, right?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was the Christmas show.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was right before New Year’s.

**Aline:** Right. So what was happening at — do you want me to tell you the —

**John:** Tell the story.

**Aline:** Okay, so what happened at Christmas was we were feeling pretty good about the show’s chances. We had just delivered the cut. We were doing the show for Showtime and they’d been super encouraging. We had a great experience with Showtime. And they were kind of saying the things that you say when you want to take the girl to the prom. It seemed like they were really interested in doing it. And then in January, we kind of started to hear, well, in Christmas, we had thought we would already be hearing from them and we kind of didn’t. But we kind of thought, well, maybe he’s going to call us later.

**Craig:** Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they’re at church.

**Aline:** Yeah, they’re on vacation.

**John:** So, like, Showtime wasn’t ready to leave his wife.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Showtime was not showing up with the corsage. And, you know, I always say that in show business good news happens really quickly and the rest of it doesn’t. Anything that doesn’t happen quickly is basically bad news.

**John:** So when did you have a sense that things were not going to happen?

**Aline:** January.

**John:** Oh, really?

**Aline:** So in January I started to feel like, “Hmm, this is taking an awfully long time,” and I just could tell, you know, having done this for a while, you can tell when there is that level of enthusiasm in phone calls and it kind of wasn’t there and we had had such a good experience with them that it was one of those breakups that was like everybody really liked each other. We’d had a great time.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** They were really sad. We were really sad. It ended up not being a good fit for them kind of tonally and brand-wise. And it was kind of great and difficult because I understood where they were coming from because the show ended up being a little bit more sunny and upbeat than it had seemed on the page. On the page, it had seemed very edgy I think. And Rachel is sort of a pretty naturally cheery, upbeat, lovable person. And try though we did to squelch that, we failed.

**John:** You could not break her spirit.

**Aline:** And we could not. So what happened after that was that we all went to what I have now come to see as one of the stages of grief when you work on a TV show is we’re shopping it to other networks.

**John:** Now, this is about the time that I ran in to Rachel Bloom because she and I were randomly both flying to Boston. We were seated next to each other on a Virgin Atlantic plane to go to Boston. And so, I had not seen her since the live show. I was like, “Hey, Rachel, what’s up with your show?” And she was at exactly the stage of like, I guess, it is past denial to bargaining?

**Aline:** But having to run into a lot of people who’s like, they have a busted pilot. And you say, “What are you doing?” It’s like, “We’re waiting to hear from Epics.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Is that a thing? Is Epics a place?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a real place.

**Craig:** What is that? [laughs]

**Aline:** So what you come to find out which I didn’t know because I actually haven’t worked in television that much is that so many people do programming.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And our joke with my friend Kate who is our executive at CBS is that we were right at the point when we were thinking someone was going to call and say, “You know what, Eggo is doing programming now and it’ll be on your toaster and you’ll be in the morning making your Eggo and there’ll be a TV show.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And we would have been like, “We’re perfect for them. We’re perfect for toasters and waffles,” and you got to this place where, honestly, they were places that I had never heard of that were considering the show anyway.

**John:** So at this point, you have the show.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** If you have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot.

**John:** You have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot and we have episode two and episode three written.

**John:** Oh, great. So, you are showing them this pilot that you’ve cut and it’s cut sort of for Showtime. They’re seeing that pilot and they’ve seen these two other scripts. They could theoretically come into the room with you if you guys wanted to talk.

**Aline:** Exactly.

**John:** But what was the conversation? Was it just your agent sending it out or were you doing — ?

**Aline:** They were sending the link and the scripts to people and we got a variety of reactions. And I guess it’s sort of like putting a movie in turnaround. We got a couple of instances where somebody liked it and then they would try and bump it up to someone else.

**Craig:** To the next level of approval.

**Aline:** Right. But TV is like — people are developing very specific products for their network and what they think is their brand. And so they don’t really, you know, it’s rare for shows to move. And so, you know, as —

**John:** And yet there are examples of like shows that did move and became giant breakout hits. CSI is I think the most classic example.

**Aline:** Was it shot though?

**Craig:** Who let CSI go?

**Aline:** No, it wasn’t. I don’t think it was shot though. I think it was a script.

**John:** I thought CSI was shot. I mean, I may be misremembering.

**Craig:** How can they let that go?

**John:** Isn’t that crazy?

**Aline:** Somebody should tell us right now live.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Absolutely. Someone who can do research live, tell us where CSI was actually shot for and who picked it up.

**Craig:** It’s about time these people paid us back.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There are a lot of instances of scripts being picked up by other networks but not that many of things being shot because people in TV in particular want to feel like they put their stamp on it.

**Craig:** So where did it end up?

**Aline:** So what happened was in the meantime while we were shopping it, I had gotten very into this show called Jane the Virgin.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** On the CW because I had several friends and a bunch of them are our mutual friends who insisted that I should watch it and that it was great. And then I would love it. So I started watching Jane the Virgin and I was simultaneously obsessed with it and sort of broken-hearted because I felt like even though it’s not like our show, there’s something about it in spirit. I felt like it reminded me of our show.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** So I called —

**Craig:** More wine?

**Aline:** Here is your half glass.

**Craig:** Thank you. Here is my half glass.

**Aline:** So I called our executive and I said, “You know, I know we’re only going to cable places but do you think there’s a possibility that we could send this to CW, what do you think?” So he sent it to CW. I’m going to make this story shorter. We sent it to the CW. They really liked it. We had a meeting.

**Craig:** CW is Warner Bros.

**Aline:** So CW is half CBS and half Warner Bros.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** It used to be UPN and the WB. They merged into The CW. They’ve recently gotten a lot of shows that are very popular and critically acclaimed. Two of them are superhero shows, Berlanti does —

**John:** Flash and Arrow.

**Aline:** Flash and Arrow.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then they have Jane the Virgin which has done really well and won a Peabody and its lead won a Golden Globe.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** So they’re doing cool stuff. So they expressed interest in our show. They really liked it. They really dug it. The people there really kind of got what it was. We had a meeting with them and they said, “Can you do an expanded version of it?” So what we did was we took the existing pilot and we — in the script stage, not in the edit. You know, we just wrote what our scenes would be. And what I didn’t realize is that a network — how much longer — okay, so a cable half hour and a network hour, what do you think the time difference is?

**Craig:** A cable half hour, my guess is it’s probably like 26 minutes. And a network hour is like 43 minutes.

**Aline:** So the cable half hour is like, it can be 30, 31, even 32 minutes.

**Craig:** Oh, like a real half hour.

**Aline:** Yeah, a real half hour because they don’t have commercials.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And the network hours can be like anywhere from 41 to 44 minutes, something like that.

**Craig:** I wasn’t that far off.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You weren’t that far off, yeah.

**Aline:** So basically —

**Craig:** I barely know what TV is.

**Aline:** Right. So basically we had to add — we have to add about 10 minutes.

**Craig:** 10 minutes.

**Aline:** 10 minutes.

**Craig:** No big deal.

**Aline:** So it wasn’t double, which some people thought we were doubling the size of our script.

**Craig:** You know by the way the story about Game of Thrones? Not to interrupt.

**Aline:** Yeah, go ahead.

**Craig:** But I’m interrupting.

**Aline:** Interrupt.

**Craig:** Dan and Dave did their first show and they were having this problem because they weren’t hitting their time, you know. Like they had, basically, they had done like, I don’t know, they had shot now like nine episodes and they just weren’t timing out. They needed more time. So they had to set aside a week where they just wrote extra scenes to put in for all of the shows.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then they just shot a bunch of scenes of like people talking to pad out the shows, but in a weird way those scenes where it was like it’s just two people talking were some of the best scenes of the first season.

**Aline:** That people enjoyed the most.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it was just what people wanted to see.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They wanted to see two interesting people talking. But it’s like the whole timing thing is a fascinating thing.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I know that Derek and Chicago Fire, they are constantly dealing with the breaks and all that stuff.

**Aline:** Right. And so it’s a different format. It’s also a different format because you don’t break obviously on a cable half hour.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** You don’t break. So we had to build in breaks. We did that. We lengthened it. And here is what happened which is funny, I think, and interesting for writers. So that was in April, we had that meeting. And they said, “We’re interested and can you expand it? And we are thinking about maybe you for off season development,” which I had never heard of before. And we were like, “Okay.” And they said, “But we don’t need to have the script back until later, until after we’ve finished with our development.” And so, Rachel and I had actually started working on something else and we sat down in my office and she goes, “You know what? Let’s just do it. Let’s just do the script. Let’s just expand the script and hand it in and just be done with it. We’ll know it’s done before we do something else.”

**Craig:** Smart girl.

**Aline:** Jew.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Jewish. That’s a Jewish mind at work.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Are we going to be in trouble if we talk about Jewish people like that?

**John:** No, I think it’s absolutely fine.

**Craig:** Because we’re Jewish.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah, you guys can talk about anything.

**Aline:** We can do that.

**John:** I’ll stay silent here.

**Craig:** John, what are your opinions about the Jews?

**John:** As a German I feel —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** So we did it. We turned it in. And I think it showed them that there was a show there that had some viability that didn’t involve a ton of changes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** We had profanity in the Showtime show and we had some sexy stuff but we were able to pull it back pretty easily. And so, what ended up happening was we went from being like something they were going to consider offseason to midseason to a show they were putting on the fall schedule.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Which is, congratulations. So you are now a show on The CW fall schedule which is nuts.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s awesome.

**Aline:** And we’re going to be the lead in to Jane the Virgin —

**John:** Great.

**Aline:** Which is like a Cinderella story. I mean, it’s just like a happy thing for me because I am such an obsessed huge fan of that show.

**Craig:** Well, fantastic.

**John:** So, I think you’re allowed to say that you’ve sent me the link to see the show and it’s amazing. I just love it.

**Craig:** I’ve watched a bunch of it. Now, how did I watch a bunch of it?

**Aline:** You watched a — there’s like a six-minute trailer.

**Craig:** That’s what I watched.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I watched a six-minute trailer and it was —

**John:** So I watched the whole show and it’s just great.

**Craig:** Okay, I’m not surprised because I love her. I love you. I love musicals. But also, in watching that trailer it really reminded of that segment from 500 Days of Summer that Marc Webb shot —

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Where Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns his problems and his joy into this outside Busby Berkeley dance number.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, here’s the thing that I did not know which is that Marc Webb could go toe-to-toe with you on the musical theatre stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, I have no doubt.

**Aline:** He knows absolutely so much about musical theatre.

**Craig:** But is he having coffee with Seth Rudetsky this weekend? No. I am.

**Aline:** Well, he did, though, take us to Marie’s Crisis. Do you know what Marie’s Crisis is?

**John:** No, so therefore you’re much more knowledgeable.

**Aline:** OMG. So Marie’s Crisis is this bar in the Village.

**Craig:** I don’t live in the Village. It’s not fair.

**Aline:** Well, you go to New York.

**Craig:** I did meet him in the Village.

**Aline:** And they sing show tunes.

**Craig:** Well, that sounds pretty great. But I mean, I sing show tunes in my car.

**John:** Singing show tunes in a bar is —

**Aline:** But it’s a bar filled with people and there’s a piano in the middle and he sings show tunes.

**Craig:** So what you’re telling me is there’s a gay bar in the Village? Is that what you’re telling us? Is that the big news?

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** I’m telling you that Marc Webb goes there and took us there.

**Craig:** I would totally go there, by the way.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah. You would love it.

**Craig:** By the way, Seth Rudetsky is, if you are in Los Angeles, I’ll just give Seth a plug.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** He’s playing Largo Saturday evening. He’s doing his Seth Rudetsky Deconstructs —

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Broadway songs at Largo.

**Aline:** Oh, wow.

**Craig:** So go check it out.

**Aline:** I love him.

**Craig:** I’m not going to be able to make it myself, so I’m just going to have a special one on one. By the way, I talk about Seth Rudetsky like the way other people might talk about Tom Cruise.

**Aline:** Yeah. Right. [laughs]

**John:** Absolutely. [laughs]

**Craig:** Nobody cares.

**John:** You’ve named him so often that —

**Craig:** Most people don’t even know who he is.

**John:** Like Seth Rudetsky is like a —

**Aline:** I think he’s great.

**Craig:** By the way, you want to know how cool I am? I know Seth Rudetsky and people are like, “Ah, is that your rabbi or — ?” [laughs]

**John:** So let’s do some real-time follow-up. Stuart Friedel sitting off at the corner.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Can you do a Google search through all the transcripts and see how often in johnaugust.com Seth Rudetsky shows up? For a person who’s actually not part of the show, I bet he shows up at least 10 times.

**Craig:** Stuart has leapt into action.

**John:** So —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You are going to be so busy.

**Aline:** So busy.

**John:** Oh, my god.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So because you were kind of late to this whole process —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** You had to race to get a staff together, correct?

**Aline:** Yes, yes.

**John:** You had to have a staff that could also like write songs.

**Aline:** Well, I had another friend who got a show picked up and I called her. And I said, “So what writers are you [laughs ]meeting with?”

**John:** Oh, no. [laughs]

**Aline:** And she said, “Oh, we’re done.” Because she knew from, like, weeks that they were getting picked up. So she had already staffed. So we’ve been staffing which has actually been really fun. I’ve read great people and that’s been really interesting. We do have original songs. So we’re trying to get kind of into our season early because we’re going to write — and for the first 13, we’ll have like maybe 25 songs. And Rachel is our primary songwriter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So, she’s the sort of the showrunner of the song staff. But she, you know, has a million ideas. So it’s fun. I mean, I think for people who listen to this show, what’s interesting is that when you’re a writer of a screenplay, you have a completely different role from being the showrunner or the executive producer of a television show. You really are a producer and writing is your sort of, I would say, your main, your core responsibility. But there’s a lot of production stuff.

And I can’t remember who said that producing is the stuff that writers do to procrastinate.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Like making phone calls and taking meetings.

**Craig:** Right. So now it’s like they’re paying you for it.

**Aline:** And now it’s like a huge part of your job is a lot of phone calls, meetings.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** And meeting executives. We did have a —

**Craig:** You’re still going to have to write.

**Aline:** But we have a lot, a lot of writing to do. So I have people around us who really can help us, you know, get the logistics of the show going. We had an amazing, amazing line producer, Sarah Caplan, who did Lost and —

**Craig:** Jewish.

**Aline:** She’s British, though.

**Craig:** Oh, British Jewish. That’s barely Jewish.

**Aline:** So it’s interesting. She did Lost and she worked on thirtysomething. So she’s great. Anyway, we have a lot of people helping us. But it’s fun. You know, it’s a different role from being a screenwriter because as a screenwriter, your role is always mediated and mitigated through the director no matter how close you are. You’re really not the boss, unless you’re the producer, in which case you’re still not the boss.

**John:** Yeah. On the 100th episode which I just recut for like two episodes ago, we talked about this idea of like the screenwriter-plus. And we were talking about people like Simon Kinberg —

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Who are sort of that screenwriter-plus. They are the person who’s essentially showrunning this idea of the movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And now you’re going to have that firsthand experience of showrunning an actual show.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And you will love it and it will also just drive you crazy.

**Aline:** Well, I know your experience. I remember your experience.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ve done a couple of these. And the one time we actually went to series, it was soul-crushing. But you are wiser and more mature and you have better people around you. So I think you’re going to flourish.

**Craig:** And you’re Jewish. I mean, I think it’s a huge thing.

**Aline:** [laughs] We keep going back to that.

**Craig:** I’ve got my own little series that I don’t, you know, I have yet to write anything. I still have to write the pilot. But if that happens, I would be in that position, along with our good friend and guest of the show, Carolyn Strauss.

**Aline:** Oh, right. Carolyn Strauss.

**Craig:** And, you know, I’m kind of looking forward to something like that. But it’s funny. Sometimes that, you know, even Simon who’s oftentimes the screenwriter-plus, there are probably jobs where he’s like, “No, I’m just the screenwriter.”

**John:** Yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a weird thing, you know. Like, “Oh, yeah, on this one, I’m just the — ”

**John:** I’m just the words.

**Craig:** I’m just a guy.

**Aline:** Well, something —

**Craig:** Nobody really cares. [laughs]

**Aline:** Something that’s interesting is that, you know, we talk a lot about why there aren’t more female directors. And I think that if we shot a substantial amount of movies in Los Angeles, that that would change. Because if you look at, there are so many powerful, successful female showrunners —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And most of them shoot their shows in L.A.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Jenji is here, Shonda’s here.

**Craig:** Shonda’s here.

**Aline:** And, you know, you can have that, you know, whatever happens no matter how many hours — and I had been on the track to direct a movie which would have taken me to Eastern Europe for months at a time. And so even though my workload here might be difficult, I’ll still be able —

**Craig:** You’re here.

**Aline:** To be here. And I think if we —

**Craig:** They have that huge complex in Santa Clarita.

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Your show is set in the Valley anyway.

**Aline:** Yeah. We’re going to shoot it —

**Craig:** Is that where you’re going to shoot it?

**Aline:** We’re not shooting in Santa Clarita, I think. But we are going to shoot in a place like that. Our show is set in West Covina. [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** [sings] West Covina.

**Aline:** Which is like a —

**John:** California.

**Aline:** Which is like a, you know, a sort of a sun-baked California suburb. Luckily, most of Southern California looks like that.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** But I do think that if there were — it’s such a Shonda, just to keep it Jewy.

**Craig:** Oh, not Shonda Rhimes, but this is a different Shonda.

**Aline:** It’s such a Shonda —

**Craig:** That’s Yiddish for a sin.

**Aline:** That we don’t have more production here in L.A. where everybody is based. You would be —

**Craig:** I know. It’s a Shonda.

**Aline:** But wouldn’t you be? Yes.

**John:** Stuart did complete his research and found out how many mentions of Seth Rudetsky have occurred on the Scriptnotes podcast.

**Stuart Friedel:** Nine.

**Craig:** Nine.

**John:** Nine.

**Craig:** Well, now it’s up to like 20.

**John:** Exactly. We’ve mentioned Seth Rudetsky so many times.

**Craig:** Seth Rudetsky.

**John:** You’re basically his publicist.

**Craig:** Look, I would love that, you know. By the way, Seth Rudetsky [laughs] I’ll just say another thing. He has a show. It’s really, really funny, called Disaster. He’s trying to bring it to Broadway. It’s hysterical, hysterical.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So.

**John:** Broadway —

**Craig:** I will, yes.

**Aline:** You’re an uber fan.

**Craig:** I’m a huge fan.

**John:** Let us —

**Aline:** Let’s move on.

**John:** Congratulate Aline on her amazing show.

**Aline:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Well done, Aline.

**Aline:** Thank you.

**John:** And we’ll put a link to the trailer in the show notes so that people can —

**Aline:** Thank you. [laughs]

**John:** Our next topic is something that Stuart found. Stuart found this thing. It was a subreddit, which is talking about the relationship between a film’s quality and its box office. And so what this guy did, it was a Reddit user named tcatron565 which is like a totally Reddit name.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s the perfect statistical mean of all Reddit names.

**John:** I’m sure. It’s a subreddit called DataIsBeautiful. And he looked at the wide releases in 2013 and figured out what percentage of their total gross came from their opening weekend. And then he charted that against their audience score from Rotten Tomatoes. So he’s basically saying like, how much money did this movie make on its opening weekend versus total.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And do people like the movie. And intuitively, I think all of us here would agree that like —

**Aline:** Big multiple.

**John:** Big multiple. And so it was interesting to look through this subreddit because they didn’t have the same lingo that we would have for it. They were talking about like —

**Craig:** I loved it, by the way.

**John:** Yeah, I really loved —

**Craig:** Because I was that dork from college. I thought it was great. I actually thought that guy did a great job because first of all he picked two interesting criteria. One was that he picked the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not the critic ratings.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which one would imagine probably is more relevant to determining how a movie resonates with an audience. And I also like the criteria of what percentage of the movie’s total box office was earned in the opening weekend because the theory is, okay, well, if a movie earns most of its money in its opening weekend, there was a big drop-off, it probably means there was bad word of mouth.

Now, that’s not perfectly good because there are some movies that have so much pent up demand and interest they’re always — like if a movie opens to $150 million, there’s no way it’s coming back next weekend and doing another $75 million. It’s not possible.

**John:** What’s interesting looking through this is that they didn’t have the lingo that we would have for what that was. So Aline said it right from the start. What was the multiplier?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Basically, what percentage of its total box office came from that opening weekend. So if you opened at $10 million but you made it to $100 million, you have a 10 times multiplier which is crazy.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** That would be amazing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Almost unprecedented.

**Craig:** Right. And whereas like a 2.5 — I mean, the standard really you’re looking for is a 3 multiplier, right? That’s sort of middle of the road. And that’s exactly what he found. Roughly the average was around 3.2 or 3.3 multiplier was average.

**John:** The other thing we would talk about is what was the drop-off from first week to second week.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we would definitely weight that based on what kind of movie it is.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so if a prestigious art film drops off 50% in its second week —

**Craig:** Probably bad.

**John:** Doom.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But if something like, you know —

**Craig:** A horror movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** A horror movie, totally expect that drop-off to be 50% or more —

**Craig:** Because —

**John:** Or a giant box office, you know, it made $100 million, it’s going to drop off hugely.

**Craig:** It has to drop off. And especially with real genre pictures that appeal to teens in particular, you’re always going to get that drop-off because teens are, as we know, they’re highly motivated to see movies opening weekend. So, horror movies, broad comedies, they tend to be really frontloaded just because the nature of the audience. It doesn’t necessarily mean when all is said and done that people didn’t like the movie.

But he did a really aggressive and thorough statistical analysis. He was talking about regression to the mean. He was talking about his R-values, his R-score. I mean, there’s all this like really good stuff in there. And buried in the thing, he sort of said, I was kind of surprised how loose the correlation was.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Now, alternately, there was a very similar study that was done and posted on The Black List blog, and we’ll throw that link into the show notes. And that one I wasn’t as much of a fan of because that one, it was the same thing. On one sense, it was what percentage drop-off was — or what percentage of your total box office was your opening weekend.

But the other one was they used the Metacritic score, which as far as I’m concerned, is irrelevant. And, you know, then they charted out all these things. As far as I could tell looking through the charts —

**Aline:** What were the conclusions of the first Reddit thing?

**Craig:** Well, the conclusions of the Reddit thing was that there was a loose, a very — here’s the thing. Statistics. You can say anything you want in statistics, but it’s all about but how robust is the correlation. So if you flip a coin twice, you could say, “Well, it looks like this coin is going to come up heads all the time but it’s a very loose correlation.” So he was saying there is a loose correlation between —

**Aline:** Between the “quality” of the movie.

**Craig:** Between the audience’s affection for a movie —

**Aline:** Perceived quality, yeah.

**Craig:** And the box office multiple.

**John:** Yeah. You had sent me a link this afternoon to the second thing which is on The Black List. And what I found interesting about it is because this guy broke out movies by sort of like their total box office tier, it was useful to look at, you know, a tiny little indie movie, like the multiplier factor is really huge. When you look at the giant box office behemoths, they will make a tremendous amount of their box office that first weekend just because —

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Of the nature of the kind of movie they are.

**Aline:** Right. So that —

**John:** So that tiering was useful for me.

**Aline:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** The tiering was, I mean, it’s the kind of movie it is, and then also you have to remember, huge budget movies have massive marketing budgets behind them.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So of course they’re motivating an enormous part of the audience that might normally slip to week two. They’re showing up at week one because they’ve just been motivated. They’ve been bombarded. So it’s a little difficult to make this correlation. I think it’s fair to say that if people love a movie, it will have good word of mouth and it will do better. Duh, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s no big surprise there. I think it’s a mistake to try and equate good movie with, say, Metacritic score, or even with Rotten Tomatoes score because that’s a self-selecting audience anyway.

**Aline:** But I just think it’s interesting, you know, every weekend you have these postmortems where people try and figure out, and they’re doing it right now with Tomorrowland —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Trying to figure out was it this, was it that, is it original in content, is it not, is it… — And the truth is that, you know, it really goes back to the Goldman rule like, you know, we all do the best we can in a inexact science and you can’t really account for why certain things — you can account for a certain amount of these phenomena, but really, things break out because of a million reasons or don’t break out for a million reasons.

**Craig:** And Tomorrowland, correct me if I’m wrong, made mid-40s, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Made like $45 million. That’s good.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What happens now is people will say, “Well, it’s good but not good in light of its budget.” The audience doesn’t care about the budget.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The audience doesn’t care about your profit and loss sheet.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** $45 million worth of tickets sold is good.

**John:** So the real conversation will be next Sunday or Monday as the second week comes through and everyone will take a look at like what was the drop-off, which will probably be a factor of what was the reception of the audience.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And the audience reception was mixed. And so that will be curious to see sort of how it plays out next week.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** That’s the sort of normal conversation we would have. What’s so fascinating is to look at, you know, a person with a stats background who didn’t have any of our terminology trying to explain this phenomenon he was seeing.

**Craig:** It was interesting. There’s another thing that people forget sometimes when they do these analyses. And there are two movies come to mind, Austin Powers and Pitch Perfect. Movies that come out and kind of bomb in their own sort of way. And then find this life on video and —

**Aline:** And they’re also, I mean, they’re marketed. They have marketed themselves. I mean, Pitch Perfect had marketed itself for, you know, the months since it came out because people watched it over and over again. It caught on and that, so —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** There was so much marketing that was beyond the marketing they were actually doing.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Aline:** And so those movies have such built-in awareness.

**Craig:** If you just look at the point on the chart of how much money did Pitch Perfect 1 make at the box office. Austin Powers 2 made more in its opening weekend than Austin Powers 1 made its entire run.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, I think that’s true of Pitch Perfect as well.

**Craig:** I’m sure it is. It has to be.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And so that’s really the lesson there is, well, box office isn’t necessarily the only test of success either, because some movies are discovered after. Office Space is the bomb of all bombs when it comes to theatrical release. And God only knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars —

**Aline:** Do you think if they made a sequel now people would go?

**Craig:** Oh, my god. If Mike Judge ever did it, and he won’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if he ever did, it would be massive. No question.

**Aline:** That’s interesting.

**John:** I think that’s true as well. And it’s a thing we encountered with Big Fish because Big Fish was not a huge box office hit but it actually did so well in its afterlife that we continue to sort of get interested in doing more stuff with Big Fish because it did so well.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There you go.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And so that’s an example. Like that’s not a movie that lends itself to a natural sequel. There’s not a Big Fish 2 on the docks, but like it’s useful for things down the road.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Free Willy kind of in its own way a sequel? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, it really was.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s its own sort of unique thing.

**Craig:** It’s its own thing.

**John:** I think it’s time to open up for some questions.

**Aline:** Yay.

**Craig:** How do we sound, Stuart? Stuart, I’m check —

**John:** Oh, we got a thumbs up from Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart gave us a thumbs up.

**John:** We have two questions that came in early, so —

**Aline:** [makes noises] That’s my alien voice.

**Craig:** I know. [makes noise]

**Aline:** [makes noise]

**Craig:** What have we got? Live questions?

**John:** Well, we had two questions that came in before we started the show at all. So I was wondering if Aline might read the first question from Molly.

**Aline:** Okay, the question from Molly is —

**John:** Because it’s a question from a woman.

**Aline:** Hi, John and Craig and Stuart.

**Craig:** Awww.

**John:** Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart. If can’t get Stuart married off of this?

**Aline:** I’m writing a script that is an adaptation of the life of a former U.S. president. I strive for authenticity —

**Craig:** I hope it’s McKinley.

**Aline:** And historical accuracy. So I would like to use direct quotes from the president’s speeches, letters, and memoirs as dialogue. Is this an acceptable practice in biographical films or seen as unoriginal because the dialogue didn’t originate with me, or is it plagiarism? If it’s acceptable, do I somehow need to cite which lines are actually historical and not my own original creation? Looking forward to the show tonight, Molly.

**Craig:** Molly.

**John:** Molly.

**Craig:** That’s a really good question. I have an answer for you, Molly.

**John:** I do, too.

**Craig:** The answer in order is yes, no, no, yes, no, no. So, it’s absolutely acceptable. It is not plagiarism. It is part of public record. Presidents are public figures. Their speeches are absolutely reprintable in all ways, shapes, and forms. No, nobody would look at it as plagiarism. In fact, quite the opposite. Take an obvious example, if you were doing a movie about Lincoln, which of course has already been done, and you change the text to the Gettysburg Address, people would be angry.

**Aline:** But let me throw in a caveat.

**Craig:** Yes. What is your caveat?

**Aline:** With Selma —

**John:** I was going to say Selma.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** They did not have the right to his speeches.

**Craig:** Okay. I think they did. Here’s my point. My feeling is that they would have had the right to those speeches but they could also be sued and have to battle over it. And then they have a movie about Martin Luther King that is being sued by the estate of Martin Luther King, which is bad press. But I actually think an argument could be made that as a public figure delivering a public speech, that is now part of the public record and is absolutely public domain.

**Aline:** But she had to paraphrase them and you don’t think that she — do you think she just didn’t want to take the risk?

**Craig:** I think the studio combined with the — I’m sure the screenwriter initially had that in there completely. You get into trouble there where it’s like, okay, if we’re making a movie about Martin Luther King and the family is like, “Boo, you’re exploiting,” oh, it’s a nightmare.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if you’re making a movie about McKinley [laughs], I don’t know why I like to go to McKinley always —

**John:** You should.

**Craig:** Somebody should make a movie about Franklin Pierce. If you’re making a movie about Franklin Pierce, go for it. I mean, obviously, A, everything is in public domain now anyway because of the age. So always check, you know, if you’re making an old — if you’re doing one about Ford, you should be fine anyway, I think.

**Aline:** But do you think like in the way that Martin Luther King’s speeches are owned as intellectual property by his estate, like if you were doing a John F. Kennedy movie where he has a lot of famous speeches —

**Craig:** I don’t —

**John:** Here’s a question. Like if you took something from Profiles in Courage, John Kennedy’s book —

**Craig:** That’s different. That’s different. And by the way, of course John F. Kennedy did not write Profiles in Courage.

**John:** But his name is on it.

**Craig:** His name is on it. It was ghostwritten. But that’s a novel and that’s expression in fixed form. But if you do a movie about Kennedy and you have him stand up and say, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” —

**John:** Well, of course that’s fine.

**Craig:** Well, you say of course that’s fine but really —

**Aline:** But that’s —

**Craig:** But that’s what the King family was saying is it’s not fine.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** And I think that’s about avoiding an unpleasant battle in public opinion, especially on something as sensitive as Martin Luther King and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The last thing you want to be is like, “A white corporation going against the wishes of the family,” you know, like it just smells bad. It’s bad business.

**John:** So going back to Molly’s question though, she’s writing a movie about a president, which is awesome. Make the best presidential movie possible. If you think you need to use a lot of stuff from his speeches, then I worry that you’re not making the best possible presidential movie.

**Craig:** Or maybe there’s one speech or another.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** I mean, let’s say she’s doing like Teddy, you know.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Teddy had some good speeches. But I guess even beyond that, regardless, you should write — this is the time where you get to do whatever you want. I mean, if the downside of being a screenwriter is that we’re not actually making a movie but we’re making a movie on paper, the upside is we can do whatever we want.

Down the road, some roomful of lawyers will give you advice on that stuff. But nobody will look down upon you for actually using the text of publicly delivered speeches by political figures.

**Aline:** And I’m assuming that Molly is going to be writing conversations with him and his spouse and his advisors. She wouldn’t have access to those anyway.

**Craig:** Right. Dramatize —

**Aline:** She’s going to be making that up. Especially, if they’re famous speeches, obviously people will know that she’s excerpting. But in general, she’s going to have to make up probably what consists of her dramatic writing, she’ll have to make up anyway.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Word. Craig, another question that came in before we started recording.

**Craig:** Yes. This one came from Cody Tannen-Barrup.

**John:** What a great name is that.

**Craig:** The best. Hyphenated, Tannen-Barrup. Hey, John and Craig. Thanks for everything you do. That’s weird, Cody didn’t thank Stuart.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** But I guess that’s just —

**Aline:** Also, I wasn’t thanked.

**Craig:** And also Aline wasn’t thanked. [laughs] You’re welcome, Cody Tannen-Barrup. Question. I was asked by an agent to send him a script. I sent it two weeks ago. What’s the etiquette of following up? How long do I wait? Do I just expect that if he liked it he would get back to me, unless I should move on? Thanks. Cody from Northampton, Massachusetts. Sent from his iPad.

**John:** Aline, tell us, when should you follow up?

**Aline:** Well, this is a great question. I’m glad that we can share some of this. I’ve been doing this a long time. I have never gotten any better at the waiting to hear part.

**John:** I haven’t either.

**Aline:** I don’t know what it is.

**Craig:** You’re human. [laughs]

**Aline:** There’s something about the minute you press — it’s like the minute you press send, you go back into the document and you find a typo instantly.

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** Instantly.

**Craig:** By the way, isn’t that amazing?

**Aline:** You press send —

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** You go back in there and you’re like —

**Craig:** It’s sick.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s I think —

**John:** In the old days when we used to print out scripts —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** I would wait for the messenger to come and pick up the script and take it away. And then I would look through it, like, “No, typo.”

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Always.

**John:** And now it’s a PDF.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** It’s something, honestly, that I still work on when I hand in a script. My husband pretty much wants to get away from me. I have not gotten any better at this. In the beginning of your career, it’s so difficult and it’s so heartbreaking.

**Craig:** I mean, like we send a script in to some agent or whatever the hell we do, two weeks go by, maybe it’s slightly bad news. But when you’re trying to start your career and this is — well, one agent you know and the one person who showed you interest and now two weeks have gone by, it’s your whole world focused on that one return call.

**Aline:** But I think it’s fascinating. It’s sort of like, you know, when you’re driving and there’s a pedestrian in front of you, you’re like, “Move more quickly. I’m going to hit you. [laughs] What are you doing?”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then when you’re the pedestrian, you’re going [makes noise].

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, easy car.

**Aline:** And it’s the same thing when someone —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Gives me a script to read. It’ll often sit in my inbox for a long time and I won’t respond or won’t read it. And it doesn’t mean I don’t like it or I didn’t it —

**Craig:** So what do —

**Aline:** Here’s the thing. You can’t read anything into the two weeks.

**Craig:** But what do we tell them? Like when should you write back?

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** So I think you should write back with — if you sent it on a Thursday or Friday, you should write back on Tuesday to make sure that they have it.

**Aline:** Oh, interesting. Interesting.

**John:** So I would give them a weekend, which counts as sort of one day. Otherwise, you give them like just, you know, a few days to make sure that —

**Aline:** I might give them a week.

**Craig:** It’s funny, like I’m actually a two-weeker guy.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Like I feel like email works. And so I would check in two weeks later. By the way, also you can always call the assistant.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like for instance for that one, like four days later, give the assistant a buzz and say, “I’m so sorry to bother you — ”

**Aline:** I just want to make sure.

**Craig:** “I just want to make sure it came through and then I will leave you alone, I promise.” And they’ll say, “Oh, yeah. It came through.” Then I would give it two weeks and then I would just drop a quick line.

**John:** So I had a conversation with my agent, David Kramer, about this and he said that it’s one of his great frustrations is when people don’t send the email back saying, “Got it.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Just acknowledge that you received it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it honestly reduces your stress load tremendously to say like, “Got it. Thanks.”

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** And so just this last week I had a situation where I sent something through and I expected like, well, it’s a long weekend, whatever. And then I get the email back today saying like, “Oh, because of Con, we didn’t send it through, so it’ll be like another week.” I’m like —

**Craig:** So frustrating.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like, oh my god, the whole time I was like —

**Craig:** It’s so frustrating.

**John:** I’m picturing all the bad news that possibly could’ve happened.

**Craig:** You know what the word for what you were doing was?

**John:** What?

**Craig:** Because this is what my therapist tells me I do all the time.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Catastrophizing.

**John:** I love that word.

**Craig:** You were catastrophizing.

**Aline:** Oh, and that’s what happens when you turn in a script, all you can do is picture them thinking, “Oh, my god. What do I do? How do I — what do I say to her?”

**Craig:** It’s catastrophizing. But not only does this draft not work, this person can’t ever work again in Hollywood or anywhere.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** And should be punished publicly. [laughs]

**John:** This person —

**Aline:** And it’s funny because even —

**John:** This person is an impostor.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** The impostor has now been revealed.

**Craig:** At last we know the truth.

**Aline:** But you kind of build up a thing where “You know what, I feel pretty good about this one. I’m just going to hand this in and go to the Grove and I feel great.” And it takes anywhere between two minutes and 11 minutes to go into the spiral.

**Craig:** It breaks everyone.

**Aline:** So if it makes Cody feel any better, it happens to everyone. I would say after a couple of weeks, you can lob in. And I would probably, if John’s saying a Tuesday, I would say the end of the following week, I would say lob in an email saying, “Hey, just checking in. I wanted to make sure you got it. Would love to hear from you about it. Would love to talk about it with you.” If you don’t hear from them way soon after that, I think you can just take that as being French for no.

**Craig:** Well, you could. I mean, the truth is that sometimes it takes time, and especially if you are a flier. An agent is like, okay, a friend of a friend and you come, whatever. You send me your script.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s at the bottom of my pile.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So at some point, they’re going to pick it up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you just have to be patient. And in your mind, essentially you have to remove yourself from that sicko equation of this is going to change my life. You just got to keep going on with your life and assume that that’s not going to change your life. And then if a wonderful thing comes crashing in, like the letter from Hogwarts inviting you and telling you you’re a wizard, then that’s great.

**Aline:** But the thing I would also say when you’re starting out is give your script to lots of people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Give your script to a friend. Give your script to an agent. Give your friend who’s an assistant. And I always think of it as like you’re putting little paper boats into the Central Park reservoir.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you who I give my script to. Just the other day, one of the smart — here’s an unsung screenwriter — he’s sung. But one of my favorite people in this business and he’ll never come on the show because he’s like a weirdo shut-in and he’ll never listen to this, so I don’t have a problem [laughs] with saying —

**John:** So you can call him a weirdo shut-in and —

**Craig:** He’ll never know that I called him a weirdo shut-in. But Bob Gordon, do you know Bob Gordon?

**John:** I know Bob Gordon.

**Craig:** So smart. So Bob Gordon is probably most known for writing Galaxy Quest. Brilliant, brilliant guy. I met him in Nashville actually. And like you know when you meet someone, you’re like, “Oh my god, you’re like me [laughs], you know, but even weirder. This is great.” And I sent him my script and he had such a smart comment that was just so good and really —

**John:** Was it devastating?

**Craig:** No. That’s the thing. First I thought, well, because I really like to be open about these things, I thought, “Okay, well, if I took that on its face, it could theoretically be devastating to the structure of the story.” But then the more I thought about it, I thought, “No. You know what he’s getting at I can actually solve and it will make so many things better and I could do it in three pages at the start of the script.”

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And it was so helpful that —

**Aline:** But, you know, you just —

**Craig:** This isn’t about praising Bob Gordon.

**Aline:** You put your little boats in the water, send them out, as many as you can.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then try not to worry about them. And some of them will come in.

**Craig:** That’s what Seth Rudetsky would do.

**John:** [laughs] So a question from the feed.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Steve Bethers asks, “Craig, do you think Robert Mark Kamen is Writer X?”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Wouldn’t it be great if like these two threads came together? So Robert Mark Kamen was the unsung screenwriting hero that Craig brought up last week and Writer X was this screenwriter who — wouldn’t that be amazing? I think it’s impossible, amazing.

**Craig:** It would be shocking, obviously. It would shatter me in many ways.

**Aline:** Wow. Will Writer X ever be revealed?

**John:** I’m not sure there ever was a Writer X.

**Craig:** Writer X will never come back.

**Aline:** Do you think he’s not a real person?

**Craig:** No, I think Writer X was a real person. I think that —

**John:** Well, I think Writer X had no produced credits, so that was the issue.

**Craig:** Right. And so Final Draft was like, “Hey, Writer X, why don’t you do this and we’ll give you a hundred bucks.” I don’t know if they even paid him. But I think after the shellacking that occurred, Writer X probably will not appear again. No, I don’t think Robert Kamen is Writer X. At the risk of being a dick —

**John:** Isn’t that amazing?

**Craig:** I don’t think the writing was good enough to qualify as Kamen level.

**Aline:** Kamenesque.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was not Kamenesque.

**John:** All right. We’re going to scroll back through the feed and look for a new question. So if you have a question for us, put it in the feed and we’ll hit it. Stuart has one all highlighted.

**Craig:** Ooh, god, Stuart, you’re good.

**John:** We have a question here from G Red asking, “Aline, there was some discussion about dress codes in Hollywood for writers. ‘Don’t be the best-dressed person in the room.’ Is that true for women?”

**Aline:** Yeah, I remember hearing that and I giggled through that at the thought that Craig or John would be at all concerned about —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** How they were dressed with respect to the others.

**Craig:** I think that was a Writer X thing in a weird way, wasn’t it?

**Aline:** It was a guy who’s saying that he shows up at meetings dressed in a suit and he feels more comfortable in a suit.

**Craig:** Whatevs.

**Aline:** I mean, I will say for women that, you know, I remember when I very first came out here I had bought a lot of fancy clothes and suits. This was a long time ago.

**Craig:** Like Hilary Clinton suits?

**Aline:** Yeah, kind of. And my agent said to me, “You’re a writer, wear Converse.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** I think that dressing well in Hollywood is a little bit different from dressing fancy. You want to show that you have some — well, for a certain type of writer, it’s not —

**Craig:** [laughs] Meaning not me.

**Aline:** Terrible to show that you have some taste and that you’re cool and that you’re — you know, I think dressing fancy, dressing up, wearing heels, wearing a skirt, wearing a blazer, that’s not really what writers do.

**Craig:** Don’t dress like a suit. That’s basically —

**Aline:** Don’t dress like a suit, yeah.

**Craig:** You don’t want to be corporate.

**Aline:** You can be cool and people can see that you’re making an effort in how you look. But fancy is not really du jour for anybody.

**John:** On the podcast, I had discussed Wes Anderson. If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting, you kind of want Wes Anderson dressed like Wes Anderson. So if you were a female writer, a female director, it would be appropriate to dress up kind of like the person who you kind of are.

**Aline:** I know more people whose thing is that they do something odd in the other direction. Like they always wear hoodies or they wear pajamas or, you know, writers are more known for doing that kind of thing —

**Craig:** There is a writer, I won’t say his name but everybody will probably figure out who it is when I say it, who’s constantly just doing these very contrived things with his clothes. He wears a mask. [laughs] He’ll put on a clown nose. It’s just —

**John:** I know who you’re talking about.

**Craig:** You know who I’m talking about. It’s ridic —

**Aline:** I do not.

**Craig:** I just mouthed it.

**John:** Mouthed it.

**Aline:** Right, right.

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous and it’s just insecure and dumb. I mean my whole thing about — this is one area where there’s definitely sexism going on for sure. For a guy, you know, I always feel like I have the confidence of thinking, it doesn’t what I’m wearing. I’m going to be wearing something sort of schlubby because that’s who I am. But if I can start talking impressively, nobody will give a damn what’s on my body. I do think that people are judgy about women. I actually think that it’s — a lot of a women are judgy about women with clothes, and that’s a bummer but it does — I think if what you’re saying is don’t look like a not-creative person —

**Aline:** That’s right.

**Craig:** But don’t also try and look like some contrived example of a creative person, you should be fine.

**Aline:** Yeah. I don’t — I think it’s just — it’s we live in a casual city and people dress casually.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And you can look cool. But it really isn’t a thing of dressing up. People don’t really wear suits, so you would look, you know, odd. That being said, there are some people who that’s their thing. Sam Raimi wears suits. Everybody knows that.

**Craig:** If it’s natural to them —

**Aline:** And if it’s — and if it’s your thing.

**Craig:** Paul Feig does it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Paul Feig is dressed —

**Craig:** Paul Feig directs in a suit.

**Aline:** Yeah, he is dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Which is crazy. That’s like taking a shower in a suit.

**Aline:** You’re right.

**Craig:** It’s nuts.

**Aline:** He’s dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Do you know who dresses great?

**Aline:** Who?

**Craig:** Sexy Craig. Oh yeah.

**Aline:** Sexy Craig. Sexy threads.

**Craig:** You like this velour? Yeah, it’s real velour, 100%.

**Aline:** This is from J.Crew.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** We have a lot of speculation in the chat thread about who you were talking about when you mouthed off —

**Craig:** Oh, really? Who did they come up with?

**John:** Some of the things are fantastic. Carrot Top. Is it Nolan?

**Aline:** I read a great thing.

**Craig:** No, Nolan is a jacket and tie guy.

**Aline:** I read a great thing that somebody tweeted which is like, if you have a Carrot Top, shouldn’t your hair be green?

**John:** That’s a really good point. Wow.

**Craig:** Mind blown. Mind blown. Inception.

**John:** All right. Another question from Stuart from one of you listeners. Jason Bob Gardner II writes, can you break down the skill set difference or responsibilities between a showrunner for a show versus director of a feature film?

**Aline:** The showrunner for the show is the producer and the writer. So you’re doing really what a feature producer would do for a movie, you’re doing for every episode. And you’re the writer. And then you choose a director and the director figures out sort of how the thing is photographed.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** If that makes sense.

**John:** I think that makes a lot of sense. A director is still incredibly important in television because that director is Marc Webb in your case, who did your pilot, is figuring out the vision for sort of how the shots go together, especially on a pilot. But even on a given episode, like how you are going to make that day’s work work, how you’re going to put this whole thing together.

**Aline:** You’re translating the visual — translating the script into the visuals, yeah.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And then editing that pilot together.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** At least the first stab at it.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And the real difference, though, is that unlike a feature screenwriter, the showrunner has tremendous influence and power in sort of deciding what the final cut of something is going to be.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** It’s hiring that director onboard.

**Aline:** It’s sort of like you’re in charge of the whole — and the whole is not the one episode. The whole is the series.

**Craig:** That’s right. The showrunner is going to be there later. So they have to be in charge of things like, you can say, “Well, as a director when you make a feature film, what are the characters wearing?” That’s your job. It’s not your job on television. It’s everyone’s job in television particularly the showrunner because the showrunner is stuck with that for when you’re gone.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** In features, if a director is also the writer, then frankly they are kind of like a showrunner. In that regard, it’s very similar.

**John:** Yeah, they’re a showrunner who’s doing a pilot.

**Craig:** A showrunner doing a two-hour pilot. Exactly

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So like, you know, Todd Phillips, basically is like a showrunner on his movies. He is the producer, he is the director, he is the writer or at least, you know a co-writer. And so —

**Aline:** And often, showrunners direct. I mean, Matt I directed the finale of Mad Men.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** I mean what’s interesting for me is that I had a big adjustment to make in being a screenwriter because I am fairly sociable. I like to be around other people. I like to talk to other people. So especially for the first 10 years in my career, it was very difficult for me to deal with the being alone in a room. I’m also, and this will be a surprise to everyone, a bit bossy.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** No, not true.

**Aline:** And so —

**Craig:** What?

**Aline:** I enjoy — working on a TV show is fun because it’s rather gregarious, lots of people. You have a crew, a cast, a family, a set. You know, I like to make decisions and I’m comfortable with extending the writing decisions into the production decisions.

**Craig:** So bossy. Just —

**Aline:** Just a little bossy.

**Craig:** Who am I scared of more than you? Nobody.

**John:** Nobody.

**Craig:** Nobody.

**Aline:** That says more about you than me.

**Craig:** It does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Completely.

**Craig:** [laughs] Absolutely. Whatever you want me to say.

**John:** Chris Percal writes, as someone rushing to finish a TV spec for the Fellowships, how important is it to follow a showrunner’s format? Specifically, if the showrunner has a few formatting quirks that are atypical? Thanks.

So Aline, you must have read a bunch of scripts.

**Aline:** I couldn’t care less about it for a minute, I think.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, if you’re — you have to stick to the structure of the show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you’re — if the show that you are mimicking or writing an episode of starts with a cold open every time —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** You’ve got to do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If the show has a certain amount of breaks, you got to do that.

**Aline:** I will say this. I know how you guys often say, you know, the first 10 pages of a screenplay are really important, blah, blah, blah. Wow, the first 10 pages of your pilot that you’re submitting for consideration —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** Couldn’t be more important because you don’t really have the time to read past and, you know, the people that I have read for staffing where I read the 10 pages and I’m like, “I’ve got to read this whole thing.” If you can do that, you stand out so much. You’ve got to grab people in the beginning.

**Craig:** So that’s more important than nailing the tiny little formatting, quirky, baloney, rules, baloney?

**Aline:** Also, do not save your good stuff for page 48.

**John:** Yeah. Right at the start. You must have read more in this last of couple of months than years.

**Craig:** What’s the state of writing out there? [laughs] Not good, huh?

**Aline:** Well, when you find somebody who can really do it, I think particularly for the beginning writers, it’s a bit like music. You know, I always love that thing when the first couple years of Idol where people would audition and Randy Jackson would say, “You know what, singing, not your thing man.”

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** It’s just not for you.

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** You know, what else you like you to do?

**Craig:** And he would say —

**Aline:** Remember, he would say, “What else do you like to do?”

**Craig:** “What else do you like to do? Do you have other hobbies?” And they’re like, “But all my friends tell me that I’m great.”

**Aline:** Right. And I think you can tell particularly with the emerging writers, right away, if they, you know, there’s a voice and a music. I mean the thing that really kills me and continues to kill me is, particularly in television, people writing things you cannot see.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** She remembers the summer by the sea.

**Craig:** Makes. Me. Crazy.

**Aline:** But particularly like I feel like I will give more leeway to that in a screenplay where you’re setting a mood and maybe you write in a more of prosey style.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** But when you’re writing a television episode —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** If you want to tell me, she smells hyacinth and thinks of her Aunt Lou, I got nothing. There’s nothing I can see.

**John:** She’s throwing your script across the room.

**Aline:** Yeah. It’s tough.

**Craig:** And by the way, these are people that have agents, have managers.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** Are represented.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** And still you’re —

**Aline:** And also, it’s a taste thing. I’m sure there are scripts that I don’t respond to that other people pick up and think are great.

**Craig:** I actually, I think that I’m pretty good at telling the difference between my reaction to a script. If I read it and I think, “This is not my taste versus you are bad. You’re actually incompetent. This is not right. This chair only has three legs and you’ve forgotten the back is upside down. And I can see glue blobs.”

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s a difference.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And it is, I got to say, it is amazing. And this should be encouraging for our listeners out there, following along live as we stream. There are a lot of bad, bad, bad writers who have agents. And you can take them out. And by the way, a lot of people think I’m one of them.

**Aline:** So I have a bunch of friends.

**Craig:** So you can take me out, too.

**Aline:** I have a bunch of friends who are writers because they were readers.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And they were reading a lot of the scripts and they thought, “Man.”

**Craig:** I could do better.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s that shit plus one thing that makes me so nervous.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** It’s making a —

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Terry Rossio’s crap plus one. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So his crap plus one theory is that a lot of people look at Hollywood and they go —

**Aline:** Oh, right.

**Craig:** “Well, that’s a bunch of crap. All I have to do is plus one of that and I’ll be fine.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But they don’t realize that —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The crap that you see eventually —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Has already been broken — like something started brilliant —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And then the process just destroyed it down to crap.

**Aline:** Right. But you can — it’s kind of glorious and interesting to see people who just have an ear and this is what they were put on Earth to do.

**Craig:** It’s fun. It’s great finding people like that.

**Aline:** And, you know, how much of it is learned and — but, you know, I have by and large enjoyed the process of reading. And I don’t think for a second about the format, is the short answer.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Great. One last question from Adam Alterburk. He writes, “Who decides when script is locked for production? And how does one handle the political side of this decision?” We’ve never talked about that.

**Aline:** That’s a great question.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** What a good question.

**Craig:** Well, locking for production is something that you — if you are the writer now that’s sort of the production writer, and in fact I’m doing this right now for The Huntsman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I have to talk to the line producer, a woman named Sarah Bradshaw. And she and I coordinate. What I say is, “Look, I don’t — it doesn’t matter to me when I lock this. It doesn’t matter to me what we call the white draft. And it doesn’t matter to me what we call blue or if we should lock pages at this point or issue a whole new draft. What would make your life easier on your end?” And then she tells me and that’s what I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because that’s not creative. That’s about a process. There are times when I’ll say, “Look, because of the way this last week went, we’ve just changed the second half of — there’s like every page, there’s a single asterisk gone and it’s super annoying. Why don’t we just not — why don’t we issue a whole new draft?” And then they’ll say yes or no. And that’s what we’ll do. And it’s as simple as that. You just coordinate with the line producer and get to know them. And it’s really important for you to be a master of your software.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you know exactly how to do it and you know exactly know how to not screw them up. They have all experienced screenwriters who have screwed them up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s huge mess. And they don’t like that. So know how to work your stuff.

**Aline:** It’s also great to find somebody who knows how to do it, too.

**Craig:** That’s the best.

**Aline:** You know, somebody else who knows how to handle the program. But the one thing, I have worked with people who hate revised pages. I worked with a director and a producer who want to keep the script as white as possible. And so they want you to lock as late as possible so you don’t end up with a script that’s stuffed with confetti.

**Craig:** Sure. No, I get that. But, you know, at some point you have to be able to —

**Aline:** Of course.

**Craig:** To move around. And so what I’ll do like, for instance, I know that there are some things I have to write that are for what’s coming up in the next three weeks of shooting. Rather than just send one thing at a time which would create multiple revisions.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What I’m doing is I’m saying, “Okay, look, here’s the new stuff, not in a script. Take a look at it, let’s get it approved by the director and the studio.” And then if everybody approves, then I’ll just say, “Okay, here’s a bunch — an aggregated bunch of approved stuff. This is now our green draft.

**John:** So I’m going to talk people back through who have not been through production drafts to understand what we’re actually saying. When a script goes in production, it has a locked draft. Basically, all those page numbers are going to stay the same.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That is considered the white draft. And then if there are changes that are made to that script, they release it as colored pages. And those colored pages will fit into the script that was already released and locked. So if you have change something on page 56, and you’ve added a page between 56 and 57, that is page A56 or 56a depending on how your numbering system works.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And those pages will go in there. So it’s a way of like not reprinting the whole script every time, which is a really good thing. The issues and challenges become, when do you close that down? And most scripts that I’ve brought into production, it tends to be about like two weeks beforehand, it has pulled the trigger and suddenly like, okay, that’s the white draft and everything from that point forward.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But what Craig is saying is really smart too, is that if it is just a small change and it’s not going to shoot really soon, you hold back on releasing those pages so you can release it as a block so it’s much less confusing.

**Aline:** You just to be careful because sometimes there’s departments that are waiting for those pages for some reason.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s why to me, there’s a sort of like two levels. When I try and do this stuff. I mean I would do this like with the Hangovers, this is how Todd and I would do it. We wouldn’t — because we were changing stuff all the time. But we wouldn’t just like every five minutes, go — we made sure like, “Okay, who needs to know this?”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Here’s three pages that’s not script stuff. And it’s not like pulled from the script. It’s just a scene that we all now we’re going to be doing. Obviously, you never mess with scene numbers. That’s the one thing you can’t do. And then if everybody knows, then we can hold it and then we do an issue.

**Aline:** The funny thing about scene numbers, I know you guys have talked about this is that, people rush over to you and say, “Are you doing something to 56?” And you’re like, “What’s 56?”

**Craig:** What is 56?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** How would I possibly know what 56 is? But they know — the crew —

**Aline:** Well, eventually you kind of learn.

**Craig:** Always knows.

**Aline:** Eventually —

**Craig:** I don’t.

**Aline:** Never?

**Craig:** I never once — I’ve gotten to the end of a movie and somebody’s like, “All we have left is 83a”

**Aline:** 73.

**Craig:** And I’m like, I still don’t know.

**Aline:** Yeah, once in while, there’s ones that become, you know, important or you know that scene is being revised.

**Craig:** I don’t have space in my brain. [laughs]

**Aline:** And in 27 Dresses, it was scene 69. And every time it came up —

**Craig:** How’d you remember that one, huh?

**John:** A question for you guys. I suspect you do the same thing. I always keep a printed out copy of the script so I will do like one last idiot check if I’m going to release pages to make sure they will actually fit in the real script. Do you keep a printout of your script or do you just trust that it’s going to work?

**Craig:** I don’t. What I do instead is I have the prior draft and the current one. So, for instance, if I’m working on, I don’t know, what’s the order, blue, yellow, pink?

**Aline:** Blue, pink.

**Craig:** Blue, pink, yellow. So I’ve got — let’s say I’m going to yellow. So I take my pink draft. I save it as. And now I got my pink draft on the left, I got my yellow draft on the right. And then when I’m done with my yellow changes, I just look back —

**John:** You’re looking at the PDF that you created out of it?

**Craig:** No, I’m looking at my screenwriting files.

**John:** And I would never trust that. I will always either create a PDF or literally print it just to make sure there’s no like —

**Craig:** That’s what a German would do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s very German.

**Aline:** Brings it back around. There’s absolutely nothing worse than realizing that you’ve unlocked some page or not locked a page.

**John:** Oh god.

**Aline:** Or starred a page.

**John:** I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight, Aline.

**Craig:** Why would you do that? What’s wrong with you?

**Aline:** You’ve done five hours of work and not locked or unlocked or released or marked —

**Craig:** Stop talking. Please stop. Stop. [laughs]

**John:** I will have nightmares.

**Aline:** Because there’s no way you can go back and recapture all those keystrokes. That’s really — so when you’re doing —

**Craig:** I’m getting pee shivers.

**Aline:** When you’re doing production revisions, you have to turn on the part of your brain that is the librarian that can —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Sort of monitor what you’re doing.

**Craig:** Because my god, they will hate you. And also, it’s not just hatred. It’s a hatred plus you’re an outsider who doesn’t understand our world. It just makes screenwriters look worse in that — as screenwriters, we have to be able to operate the way the crew operates.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Or they won’t respect us.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They don’t really care that we, “I invented everything. None of you would be here without me.” They don’t care.

**John:** They don’t care at all.

**Aline:** But the first time you do the job — the first time you’re the job, the writer in production —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There’s a little bit of like, “So okay, listen, I was just still wondering. Guys, what do I…?” You have to sort of — I guess it’s like any job. Anybody who’s ever worked in production, you kind of fake it till you make it. You kind of use your, you know, your wits. I, you know, when I —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** The first movie that I did that on, there was no Internet. Oh god, I can’t believe I said that. But I couldn’t Google like how do you lock that, unlock that, what did I do, what were you doing?

**Craig:** What year were you born? [laughs] The no Internet.

**Aline:** The first movie that I wrote when I was doing the production edits was ’99.

**Craig:** Oh, there was the Internet in ’99.

**Aline:** But I mean, we weren’t on there. Like you wouldn’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You weren’t going to Google and saying, “How do I lock this?”

**Craig:** No. That’s — oh that, yeah.

**Aline:** “Unlock this?” You know.

**Craig:** I mean my first production —

**Aline:** No, I feel like people now —

**Craig:** Was ’95.

**John:** Mine was ’98 for Go. Yeah.

**Craig:** Mine was ’95 for America’s favorite —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Classic RocketMan. And —

**Aline:** Well, I’d done TV stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I have another Cool Thing. I have Two Cool Things.

**Craig:** You have Two Cool Things?

**Aline:** Yeah, I just realized another one.

**Craig:** That’s not my Cool Thing.

**Aline:** I just realized two things.

**John:** Okay. Start us off Aline.

**Aline:** With our two things?

**John:** Cool Things.

**Aline:** Okay. I realize one, there’s a diet thing that I haven’t discussed with you guys, which is this — and I would like to put the — if we could find the study, put it in the show notes. There is a study that shows that it matters when you eat. So you should eat within a 12-hour span. And they did a study with mice or rats where mice who ate all of their food, no matter how many calories they had, in a 12-hours span, never gained weight. And the mice who ate the exact same amount of calories over a 24-hour span, gained tons of weight.

**Craig:** But who’s eating over 24 hours?

**Aline:** Well, but a lot of people eat from 6 o’clock in the morning until midnight.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’ve heard this general theory like you should only eat during —

**Aline:** So the general theory is you should eat from 7am to 7pm.

**Craig:** So explain why Spanish aren’t super fat.

**Aline:** They don’t start eating until — I don’t know.

**Craig:** They wake up, they eat breakfast.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Then they have like, they take a nap.

**Aline:** I am only —

**Craig:** Have a huge dinner. And then they eat dinner at like 11pm.

**Aline:** Well, I’m just reporting the fact. I’m just reporting the facts, ma’am.

**Craig:** And then they —

**John:** Twelve hours diet.

**Aline:** Twelve hours diet. And then the other thing is —

**Craig:** That sounds like baloney to me.

**Aline:** All right.

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** I wanted to run it by you just to see how —

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** How it went on the umbrage, because you know what? I want to tell you something. I totally believe it.

**Craig:** You believe it?

**Aline:** I totally believe it.

**Craig:** Something about it smells.

**John:** There’s science in mine as well. But go to yours.

**Aline:** Okay. So then the other thing is —

**Craig:** Mine is all about science.

**Aline:** So bone broth has gotten very trendy.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, bone broth?

**Aline:** Bone broth, do you know what this is?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Do you make broth out of bones?

**Craig:** Is it broth out of bones?

**Aline:** So if you guys lived in Brooklyn or in Silver Lake —

**Craig:** I was born in Brooklyn.

**Aline:** You would know what these things are. So bone broth has become very trendy.

**John:** Stuart Friedel is from Silver Lake.

**Aline:** It’s a — you know what bone broth is?

**Stuart:** I’ve heard of it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Bone broth is a soup that you make by boiling bones for hours and hours and hours.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And people distill it and they make, you know — and Kobe Bryant drinks it and it’s trendy.

**Craig:** Oh, then it must be good.

**Aline:** And when you go to a butcher, you can have bone broth.

**Craig:** Yeah, it makes sense.

**Aline:** But bone broth is —

**John:** Somebody in the thing just said, Aline Broth McKenna. [laughs] Congratulations, Craig McDiarmid. You won the feed.

**Aline:** Well done. So, but bone broth is something that Korean people have been eating for centuries.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** And we lived in Koreatown. And I found this place that makes authentic Korean bone broth.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And it’s awesome. It’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And I love restaurants where it’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** We serve bone broth.

**Aline:** We serve bone broth. You go in. And you decide —

**Craig:** I’ll have the bone broth.

**Aline:** But you can have bone broth with flank, brisket, intestines, tripe and tongue or mixed. So you get a bowl with the bone broth and it’s supposedly one of the most nourishing things you can eat.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And you choose the kind of meat. And then it’s unsalted. So you salt it and they bring you scallions and they bring you hot sauce and they bring you kimchi and rice.

**Craig:** Everything other than the bone broth there, sounds awesome.

**Aline:** It’s like a delicious beef soup. Anyway, it’s supposed to be —

**Craig:** If you boil bones long enough, you’ll get glue.

**Aline:** It’s supposed to be the most restorative wonderful thing. And I found this place in Korea that does it. It’s not a trendy place.

**Craig:** In Korea?

**John:** Koreatown.

**Aline:** Koreatown.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Aline:** Did I say in Korea?

**John:** You said Korea.

**Craig:** Because that’s a whole —

**Aline:** Wow, the wine is kicking in.

**John:** 1.5 glasses of wine.

**Craig:** Well, there’s South Korea —

**Aline:** The wine is kicking in.

**Craig:** And there’s North Korea.

**Aline:** Anyway, it’s called —

**Craig:** They would love bone broth in North Korea.

**Aline:** I sent the link to myself so that I can remember the name of it, and it’s in Koreatown. And it’s called, for the eight people who are going to drive over there, oh good lord, where is it?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Where is it? It’s called Han Bat Sul Lung Tang.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Stuart will have that in the show notes. So everyone can like feast on bone broth there in Koreatown. Craig Mazin —

**Aline:** There’s also a line out the door.

**Craig:** I have a One Cool Thing that in many ways is just wonderfully oppositional to the nonsense we just heard about 12 hours and bone broth. This is a new Alzheimer’s treatment that they are working on in Australia. And it’s actually pretty remarkable and I have to say, very exciting because, I don’t know — do you guys have anybody with Alzheimer’s in your family?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. My aunt had it. It’s the worst. And it’s just a brutal, brutal disease. So Alzheimer’s happens basically because there are these proteins that start to gather in the brain that should be cleared up by glial cells and they’re not. And so they basically become like sticky, tangled bone broth in your brain that are kind of blocking transmissions and disrupting memory and ultimately destroying you as a person.

So what these guys in Australia are doing is they’re actually using this kind of ultrasound — so they’re — it’s not invasive. It’s not pharmacological. They’re actually ultrasounding your brain and it’s disrupting those tangles of proteins. And what they found in rats is that they were able to restore 75% — they had rats with memory problems. I don’t know how exactly they get rats to have Alzheimer’s but they just do.

**John:** [laughs] They try to do the crossword puzzle and they can’t.

**Craig:** They can’t.

**John:** They can’t do it.

**Craig:** So they pulled them out. So they had rats with Alzheimer’s, 75% of them regained all of their memory after this treatment, all of it.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Which is astonishing. So it was so promising that they’re already kind of moving towards human trials which is amazing. They think they’ll be able to get human trials going in 2017. If this sort of thing works, you and I —

**Aline:** Won’t have to worry about it.

**Craig:** And Stuart will not have to worry. I mean I’m kind of hoping that we can hit the singularity and just be put into —

**John:** Yeah. I would say that Alzheimer’s is way up there on my list of overall fears because the idea of not being able to, you know, be myself and sort of have my memories and have my own personality is terrifying to me.

**Craig:** It’s terrifying. And if there’s something as simple as this to solve it —

**John:** That would be great.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** Great. My One Cool Thing is also about simplification and science. So it’s a article that was in FiveThirtyEight this week by Emily Oster called Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding. And Emily Oster, she is not a doctor. She is an economics professor. And she was looking at the data behind breastfeeding and sort of like the real study is to see like what is actually really going on behind the scenes when they’re doing the studies on breastfeeding.

And because we’ve always been told that like breastfeeding is awesome.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And I kind of believe breastfeeding is awesome. But I also had this sort of suspicion is like, but how are they really testing for that? And are they really taking care of all the other variables?

**Craig:** How do you measure awesome?

**John:** How do you measure awesome?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because are you really like taking into account the age and background and economic setup —

**Craig:** Socioeconomic status.

**John:** Of all the people who are breastfeeding.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And she was able to do that. So she took a look at all the studies. And when you actually filter out for all that other stuff, you find that a lot of the advantages of breastfeeding aren’t quite so pronounced or aren’t —

**Craig:** They’re not boob-based. They’re sort of related to other issues.

**John:** Exactly.

**Aline:** They’re correlative?

**John:** They’re correlative, rather than causal. So I bring this up because, you know, I think breastfeeding is still awesome and I’m a fan of people who want to breastfeed, I think we need to make sure that we make it an option for any woman who wants to and sort of create structures for that.

**Craig:** And not demonize women who don’t.

**John:** Exactly. Not demonize families that don’t do that because, you know, we’re a two-dad family. And so we did not have breast milk.

**Craig:** [laughs] Try as you did.

**John:** But we know other two-dad families who did like, you know, they would have —

**Craig:** They would buy it.

**John:** They would buy it.

**Craig:** I told my wife to sell it. We had a freezer full of this. She would make me freeze every stupid extra bag. She made so much — my wife is not a big bosomed woman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She makes so much milk.

**Aline:** Making milk has nothing to do with the size of your boobs.

**Craig:** Apparently, I did not know that. I just went like, big, you know, like a guy, big boob, big, lots of milk. No. She made so much milk. And so our freezer’s full. So I’m like we should sell this. And she was like, “No, I can’t sell it.” She was weird about it.

**John:** Yeah, she totally could have. But I think the question is, you know, we had other two-dad families who ended up like, you know, having breast milk frozen and like FedEx’d and every day they were using that stuff.

**Craig:** And it’s probably —

**Aline:** So I think a lot of us, you know —

**John:** But according to science, it’s actually not necessarily —

**Craig:** It’s not worth all that trouble.

**John:** No.

**Aline:** A lot of this with parenting all these like, you know, strongly held beliefs that people have are just, you know, their talisman that they’re clinging to because it’s so scary and it’s so challenging emotionally. So people cling to things which are “we’re attachment pair, we’re not, we’re breastfeeding, we’re not…”

**John:** Right. Absolutely.

**Aline:** You know, it’s all sort of like things you tell yourself that is going to —

**Craig:** And then they go away.

**Aline:** It’s something that’s going to make you safe.

**Craig:** Like remember co-sleeping?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Co-sleeping, everybody had to co-sleep. So our baby, our first kid was born and we tried co-sleeping for two days. And we’re like, screw this. He’s sleeping, we’re not.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** This is the worst.

**Aline:** And we just don’t have enough —

**Craig:** He doesn’t remember.

**Aline:** Of an emphasis on our culture in happy parents make happy babies.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And sort of do what works for you. And we cling to these things in a very anxiety-ridden, unrealistic way, punish each other. It’s the same thing with childbirth and natural child birth —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** And not. And there’s so many judgments attached to it. Whatever works for you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Whatever makes you a happy parent is what makes for a happy child.

**Craig:** I’m so with you on that. You know, we were like — I remember, we went to my son, our first kid was born at Cedars because we lived near here. And we went to this talk that the retired head of obstetric anesthesiology ran. He was no longer in practice, really old guy, he’s like 80 years old. And he was talking about epidurals and why and how, you know, why he thought it was a good idea. And this one woman raised her hand and she was very like and she said, “Well, I’ve heard from my friends that an epidural can prolong labor and I don’t want to prolong my labor because I don’t think it would be good for my baby.”

And he said, “Well, in my experience, actually, it shortens labor because when you’re in pain, you’re muscles tighten. When you’re not in pain, you’re relaxed, you relax and labor actually goes faster. Granted that’s only in my experience, I’ve never had a baby myself, but I have overseen the delivery of 70,000 babies.”

And that’s when I leaned back and went, “Okay, epidural.” [laughs] 70,000, that’s good enough.

**Aline:** You know, it’s funny my dad — but do you know there are some people who have like a very valid reason for not wanting that and that’s important to them.

**Craig:** Totally.

**Aline:** And they should do that. When my parents were raising me and they didn’t have a lot of, you know, they were living in a country they weren’t born in. And I remember my dad went to a lecture that a parenting expert gave. And, you know, everyone asking these questions about should you do this, should you do that and do that.

And the guy said, “You know, what’s really important, the most important thing is to love your children.” And my father thought, “Well, I’m doing that.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So what could go wrong?

**John:** I think it’s really good on the 200th episode of this show that we’ve brought all the way back down to really the crucial fundamental issue of what Scriptnotes is.

**Craig:** Vagina.

**John:** Vagina. Female health.

**Craig:** We’ve always been a gynecological podcast.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We have like a shadow gynecology podcast. We dress it up as screenwriting.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s really —

**Craig:** But we’ve always been about gynecological issues.

**John:** A pretense about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Two hundred episodes.

**Craig:** Unbelievable.

**Aline:** I can’t believe it.

**Craig:** John, congratulations.

**Aline:** How long ago did I start emailing you and saying, “What’s going to happen for the 200th?”

**Craig:** I know, I know. Aline was very excited.

**John:** Episode Four or five.

**Aline:** I was very excited. [laughs]

**Craig:** But I have to say, John, what an adventure we’ve been on. I mean, you know, I wouldn’t have foreseen this.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** I mean we — this is over — almost four years.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** It’s insane.

**Aline:** And I know I think I’ve said this before, but when each of you said I’m doing this thing with the other guy, I thought, “Well, that would be interesting.” [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s not going to work. [laughs] Well, that’s kind of why it does work.

**Aline:** It does, yeah.

**Craig:** I think, I mean if we weren’t an odd couple, it would be very boring.

**John:** We’re both strong personalities, but very different personalities and —

**Craig:** Well, you know what I think one of the things that helps us, we are both strong personalities, but I decided very early on — I don’t even think I decided. I just did it. I decided to be the beta male. [laughs] I decided to be the beta podcast male because it’s just — it felt right.

**John:** If people are watching the Twitter feed, I posted a photo of Craig and Aline and Teddy who is our summer intern. And Teddy, the dog is the alpha dog even though he looks like the beta dog.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s crucial to see dogs in their own environment having their own sort of space.

**Craig:** I’m totally the beta podcast guy. Now, what’s — how many people actually showed up for this?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh, we had a total of like 250 people in our —

**Aline:** Wow. Nice.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you, everyone. Thank you. That’s awesome.

**John:** That’s amazing. So that’s like a big full house. So thank you guys very much for listening.

**Craig:** And we can kind of cull some of these questions for another Q&A.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’re going to be saving the transcript of all the Q&A here.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So we’ll get back to some of those things.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Guys, thank you, guys, so much for listening.

**Aline:** It was fun. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. And thank you, Stuart. Two hundred — and Stuart, have you been here for all 200?

**Aline:** Oh wow.

**John:** Stuart Friedel has been here from the very beginning.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Craig:** Stuart just nodded.

**Aline:** And it was as if, yeah, it could have been grief. It could have been joy.

**Craig:** It was as if I had asked him do you like tuna fish. He just has one emotion which is mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

**Aline:** I like tuna fish.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** He does like tuna fish. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro for this week’s show. Thank you, Matthew, and he did our intro and so much stuff for the show.

**Craig:** He’s the best.

**Aline:** Lala.

**John:** If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us @clmazin for Craig, @johnaugust for me. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com. People who listen to the show know where we are.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We are on iTunes. We’re Scriptnotes. Look for us there. We have an app which is downloadable. You can find our show there.

**Craig:** {laughs]

**John:** It’s been two glasses of wine. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** John hit two glasses and has just fallen off —

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s it, it’s going off for a cliff.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** Craig Mazin, thank you always. But Aline Brosh McKenna, thank you for coming by.

**Craig:** Aline. Thank you, Aline. You are our Joan Rivers, but alive.

**Aline:** I want to be Supergirl.

**John:** You could be our Supergirl. Did you watch the Supergirl trailer?

**Aline:** I did. It’s my friend Ali’s show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I’m excited about it.

**John:** I’m excited for her, too. And I heard like negative buzz on it. And it was like — but the show is not for you. I mean like the show —

**Aline:** No, I think it looks like lots of fun. She’s adorable.

**John:** She’s adorable.

**Aline:** That actress is amazing. She’s the girl from Whiplash. Supergirl —

**Craig:** I have to recuse myself from discussing any issues regarding superheroes and gender. Thank you.

**John:** And thank you all for listening. Good night everyone.

**Aline:** Bye-bye.

**Craig:** Good night.

Links:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes) and [180](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male)
* [CW picks up Crazy Ex-Girlfriend](http://deadline.com/2015/05/crazy-ex-girlfriend-dc-legends-of-tomorrow-cordon-cw-series-1201422393/) on Deadline, and [the first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ctFmXGm_yE)
* [Jane the Virgin](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/jane-the-virgin/) on CW
* [Marie’s Crisis](http://www.yelp.com/biz/maries-crisis-new-york) on Yelp
* [Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructions](http://www.sethtv.com/watch-tv/deconstructions/)
* u/tcatron565’s Reddit post, [2013 Domestic Wide Releases Opening Weekend Out of Total Gross Over Audience Perception of Film](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37d8fg/2013_domestic_wide_releases_opening_weekend_out/) from [r/dataisbeautiful](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/)
* [A Cliff or a Rolling Hill](http://blog.blcklst.com/2015/05/a-cliff-or-a-rolling-hill/) from the Black List blog
* [Can You Copyright a Dream?](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/selma-martin-luther-king-can-you-copyright-a-dream-114187.html#.VWyxT1xViko) on Politico
* Hear about Writer X on [Scriptnotes, Episode 194](http://johnaugust.com/2015/poking-the-bear)
* The New York Times Magazine on [A 12-Hour Window for a Healthy Weight](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window-for-a-healthy-weight/?_r=0)
* EaterLA on [Korean bone broth soups and where to get them in LA](http://la.eater.com/maps/bone-broth-korean-los-angeles-koreatown-map-guide), and [Han Bat Sul Lung Tang](http://www.yelp.com/biz/han-bat-sul-lung-tang-los-angeles) on Yelp
* [Ultrasound Restores Memory to Mice with Alzheimer’s](http://www.popsci.com/ultrasound-restores-memory-mice-alzheimers) on Popular Science
* [Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/) on FiveThirtyEight
* [Supergirl first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOAMGpRilnI)
* [Intro and Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hello and welcome. My name is Craig Mazin.

**John August:** My name is John August.

**Craig:** And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**John:** Craig, you did a great job with that.

**Craig:** Well, I’ve heard it 198 times.

**John:** Yes. So it’s big episode 199. It’s near the bicentennial, I guess we’d call it?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You can call it centennial for things that aren’t years, so sure.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, it’s exciting. It would have been really embarrassing had I — I didn’t practice, I swear. I gave a talk about some general creative topics at this very interesting place called Bricksburg. Are you familiar with Bricksburg?

**John:** I’m not at all. Tell me what this is.

**Craig:** It’s the LEGO Movie headquarters.

**John:** Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing.

**Craig:** So they have all these artists and everybody and the woman who introduced me mentioned that I did the podcast with you and she said, “And this podcast about screenwriting,” and then there was this artist sitting there sort of to my left who just mouthed, “And things that are interesting to screenwriters.”

So, if she could get it, I’m pretty sure I could get it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** You did a fantastic job. Yeah, I wanted to mix things up for this next to the 200th episode show. And so I threw this at you and you just caught that ball and you ran with it. So, well done, Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, my whole thing is I’m not a big planner, but I like saying yes to stuff.

**John:** Fantastic. Today on the show we are going to talk about ageism in Hollywood. We’re going to talk about unsung heroes. And finding your way out of the woods on a draft of your script.

But first we need to talk about the 200th episode which is coming up next week, which seems impossible.

**Craig:** I know. So, 200 episodes is a lot. And when I put it into years, that’s where I start to actually feel kind of shocked. Because I don’t —

**John:** We’ve been doing this a long time.

**Craig:** We’ve been doing it for over four years.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It doesn’t feel like that to me.

**John:** It doesn’t to me either.

**Craig:** But yet we have been. We’re going to hit like, what do you think we’re going to hit, like 10,000? [laughs] When do we stop?

**John:** I don’t know. The technologies will change. Things will move on. It was weird cutting last week’s episode, we did the centennial episode, and so I was recutting the 100th episode just popping in every once and awhile to offer some perspective. And it felt really recent, but it was 100 episodes ago, which is just crazy.

**Craig:** I know. I know. It’s just nuts. Well, it will be fun. So, where did end up on that? Are you going to do a Google Hangout kind of thing?

**John:** So, we’ll do something like a Google Hangout. So it will either be a Google Hangout officially, or it will be something through Mixlr, which is the live streaming thing we’ve done before. Regardless, whatever it is, we will announce a few days ahead of time, so follow us on Twitter and the website and we’ll tell you what we are doing for the live show. In fact, I might even cut it into this episode if we know what the details are. But it will be you and me and hopefully Aline. We’ll be hanging out. We’ll be here at our offices. And we will just do our show, but we’ll do it live for everyone to hear.

We’ll do it in the evening so it can be sort of after you’ve come home from work. You can listen to us and we’ll have Stuart or somebody else on hand so you can tweet in your questions and we can answer and be with you live in the room as we do it.

**Craig:** Maybe we can have a segment like maybe Stuart do stuff, and then people just send in things and he has to do them.

**John:** Yeah. That’s pretty much what daily life is like for Stuart. So, it would be good.

**Craig:** Excellent. Well, I’m looking forward to that.

**John:** I’m looking forward to it as well. So, let’s get onto today’s work. A bit of follow up here. This is just as we were about to start recording, Deadline had a story about Mr. Holmes. Did you see this?

**Craig:** I did see it. Not only did I see it. I even read the filing.

**John:** I read the filing, too. In a previous episode we talked about the Gravity lawsuit and this is Tess Gerritsen’s claim that the movie Gravity was really based on her book. This is similar, but different. This is a filing from the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle saying that the new Sherlock Holmes movie, Mr. Holmes, infringes upon the copyright in some of the later works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

And we’ll see what happens. Craig, what was your initial assessment based on reading through the filing?

**Craig:** Well, first of all, it’s sort of a fascinating thing. The idea here is that this new movie is based on a novel. The novel uses the character of Sherlock Holmes. It’s about Sherlock Holmes. But, I like most people, was under the impression that Sherlock Holmes at this point was entirely in the public domain.

It may actually be entirely in the public domain in England. So, what happens is copyright length is different from country to country. The United States has actually amended copyright length a number of times and always in favor of intellectual property rights holders.

So, I’m not sure what the situation is. But the deal is that the last ten Holmes works by Arthur Conan Doyle are not yet in public domain. The copyright has not lapsed. The copyright is controlled by the estate. It is intellectual property. What they’re alleging is that the screenwriter of the movie, who was the writer of the novel that the movie is based on, essentially infringed on the copyright of that protected stuff.

And so I looked through the complaint and I took a look at their areas of comparison and I must say I found their complaint formidable.

**John:** Interesting. I read it much more briefly than you did, so I sort of skimmed through those little sections where they talked about those things. It reminded me a bit of an arbitration claim. I don’t know if you felt the same way, too. It felt to me like an overwritten arbitration claim where they’re trying to say like, “Well, in this book, in this Arthur Conan Doyle short story he says this, and in the book he writes this.” And the movie is apparently similar, because they don’t officially have access to the movie yet, I don’t believe. So I think they’re claiming that it’s similar enough, that the same things infringe across this boundary between what the book was and what the movie was. Interesting that they didn’t go after the book when the book was published, because theoretically if the book infringed, they could have gone after the book.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They did not. The thing that gives me pause and makes me wonder if they’re going to have any success in this is that apparently they’ve tried to do the same sorts of things to other Sherlock Holmes works and have not succeeded. And they’ve had those cases thrown out.

So, I’ll be interested to see whether the fact that this is apparently focusing on a portion of the fictional character’s life that was written about in those last ten stories, who knows.

As a writer, I find it incredibly frustrating and challenging that really esoteric details about like, well, in the early Sherlock Holmes stories he doesn’t like dogs, and in the later Sherlock Holmes stories he likes dogs, so therefore this movie infringes upon our intellectual property. Well, you’re being impossible, people.

**Craig:** Yeah. That was not compelling. A couple of things. One, they don’t really need to see the movie. If the movie is based on the book, then the movie is part of an extension of rights from the book. So, there’s sort of an original sin they’re alleging there. And then all derivative works from that theoretically tainted work are now part of the whole tainted property.

I want to read very briefly two sections that they cite here. This is where I stopped and went, oh, that’s not good. So, first I’m going to read this very short paragraph from Arthur Conan Doyle’s story Blanched Soldier, which is one of the copyrighted stories.

“Perhaps I’ve invited this persecution since I have often had occasion to point out to him,” meaning Watson, “how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. Try it yourself, Holmes, he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in a way as may interest the reader.”

Okay, that was Conan Doyle. Now, this is what Cohen, I can’t remember his first name here, but Mr. Cohen, the author of the novel, this is what he wrote in the novel.

“During the years in which John was inclined to write about our many experiences together, I regarded his skillful if somewhat limited depictions as exceedingly overwrought. At times, I decried his pandering to popular tastes and asked that he be more mindful of facts and figures. In turn, my old friend and biographer urged me to write an account of my own. If you imagine I’ve done an injustice to our cases, I recall him saying on at least one occasion, I suggest you try it yourself, Sherlock. The results showed me that even a truthful account must be presented in a manner which should entertain the reader.”

That’s pretty close.

**John:** I agree. They’re talking about the same kind of thing. It’s not close enough that it feels like plagiarism to me, because he’s not using the same words. He’s expressing this overall same idea and the fact that it’s about the same underlying character could make that troubling.

The only way that it could be legally troubling is if you believe that this character and his work are still fully under copyright and that is a murky situation in the US and overseas and every other market.

Further complicating this is the claim in this lawsuit over the Sherlock Holmes trademark. And trademark is a completely separate legal creation where they’re trying to basically trademark the name Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know the degree to which they’re going to be successful in using the trademark defense of Sherlock Holmes as a thing.

But I can tell you that it is a real challenge that you run into sometimes as a person adapting things. Tarzan is a trademark. And it is really frustrating that the underlying works of Tarzan are public domain and yet you can’t say the word Tarzan.

**Craig:** Yeah. Trademark is a very murky area. I mean, to be honest, even this notion — I mean, you mentioned plagiarism. Plagiarism is a term of art. Obviously every court hopes for those slam dunk cases where it’s a simple case of cut and paste. But that’s rarely what goes on.

When, for instance, journalists uncover plagiarism, usually it is in the form of a slight rephrasing and really an intentional rephrasing of somebody else’s work. So, for here, for instance, the last line is, “I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as my interest the reader.”

And Cohen writes, “The results showed me that even a truthful account must be presented in a manner which should entertain the reader.” He’s copying there, I believe. I’m not a judge; but I believe he’s copying the work here. The entire paragraph is about the same thing. It’s about Sherlock Holmes saying to his chronicler, “Won’t you please stop embellishing and stick to the facts.” And then the chronicler says, “Well, you try it sometime. It’s hard.” And then he says, “I did try it, and yeah, I realized that sometimes you got to glam it up.”

So, here was an area where what happens now is essentially a judge or jury, I don’t know how these things work.

**John:** A judge in New Mexico, of all places.

**Craig:** Oh, a judge in New Mexico is going to have to make a decision. And it’s a decision that will be informed by dramaturgical experts, I’m sure. And there’s going to be some brouhaha here. But this complaint, I will say, at the very least provides some concrete evidence, whereas the Gravity one was just — felt like it was throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping bits of it stuck.

**John:** Yeah. So, we will follow this as it shakes its way through. I think the interesting take home for screenwriters is a character you might assume is in the public domain like Sherlock Holmes, because lord knows there’ve been a zillion versions of Sherlock Holmes, is not entirely in the public domain and that can come back to haunt you.

And in the case of this one paragraph that Craig is citing, this one paragraph might be enough to hang this whole weird lawsuit on.

**Craig:** It could. And I must say in conclusion here that I feel so bad for Bill Condon who is a very nice guy and a fantastic filmmaker and couldn’t have possibly known. I mean, you know, he was making a movie based on a book. And obviously then there’s this whole other process to make a movie. I can’t imagine that he knew that there was this landmine buried in there somewhere, or at least a potential landmine. But what happens in legal cases is that people get enjoined, which is one of the nastiest words in the English language.

Well, I’m suing this guy, but you were vaguely involved. I’m enjoining you. Now you’re getting sued, too. That sucks.

**John:** It does suck. I would also say beyond the legal decision that will come out of this, I think the greater/broader picture is looking at sort of what it is that’s happening with copyright in these days. So the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate can sue over this really honestly esoteric bit from this tiny slice of the Sherlock Holmes character that exists in still copyright-protected work is really troubling. And that this character who is 99% public domain can still stay 1% protected and that 1% can be something that can be financially beneficial to people who had nothing to do with the actual creation of the work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s not the intention of copyright. And it is a very frustrating time to live in. And I think it could lead to some of the kinds of trollery we’ve seen in intellectual property in the computer sphere as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m a pretty staunch supporter of intellectual property rights. And I’m not much of a copy-fighter at all. In this case, I agree, this feels cheap. It just feels cheap. I don’t like it. And they may win. Or win, you know, there will be a settlement. But, I don’t like it so much.

Here’s what I do like, though.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** A little second bit of follow up for us, sort of follow up. I received a letter from a doctor, Dr. Ryan Dadasovich, M.D., who works at Yale New Haven Health, something or another. [laughs] Northeast Medical Group. And that’s in Connecticut. And he sent me this letter and said, “Craig, I know you’ve been taking umbrage for years. But I’m worried you were obtaining it illegally. Internet umbrage can be, quite frankly, dangerous. I’ve included a prescription you could fill at your local pharmacy, a safe and FDA-approved source. If questioned by the police or authorities for any reason you can show them your legal prescription. I think the XR formula will be most effective to sustain you. Good luck.”

And he did, in fact, give me a proper prescription. I get Umbrage XR 500mg. Take one a day. I get two refills, which is nice. I now have a piece of his — I don’t think I could do anything with this, but thank you Dr. Dadasovich. That’s super nice. Can you snort this? Is this snortable?

**John:** I’m sure you could. I think it would be incredibly dangerous. I think the thing I would question is whether in taking umbrage, Craig may have too much umbrage. And so really do you need to provide more supplements for Craig who takes umbrage relatively frequently on the show, or me who sometimes doesn’t take enough umbrage. So, it’s a question of like what is the proper amount of umbrage you need to have in your daily life, or in your daily diet.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, obviously that’s different for people and I’ve built up quite a tolerance. I feel like Dr. Ryan is sort of like, hey man, whatever you need to get up on your feet and do your show. I’m like Judy Garland now. People are just shoving pills in my mouth. Go to bed, wake up, sing. Go to sleep. This is great.

**John:** It’s a good life.

**Craig:** Anyway, thank you Dr. Dadasovich.

**John:** That’s very, very nice of him to send that through. So, previously on the show, back when we did our dirty episode, which is sort of two-part episode, we had Rebel Wilson come on and she was just amazing. And she continues to be just amazing. And she was in this little movie that did some business called Pitch Perfect 2.

**Craig:** Just a touch of business.

**John:** Just a touch of business. Just, you know, a huge blockbuster. A sequel to blow off all sequels. So, congratulations to Rebel Wilson. But then you put in the show notes here about something I wasn’t even aware of, another article had come out. So, talk us through it.

**Craig:** So, apparently what happened is over in Australia there was a bit of brouhaha where the press figured out through their pressy ways that Rebel Wilson, who was according to IMDb is 29 years old, is not 29 years old. In fact, she’s 35 years old. And Rebel Wilson isn’t her name. Her actual name is Melanie Elizabeth Bownds. And that Rebel Wilson was not brought up by Bogan parents, meaning sort of Australian white trash parents, but in fact perfectly fine middle class parents that were not Bogans. And that it was all just sort of a made up thing.

And, you know, over here in America I think we all looked at each other and went, what, who cares. Like that’s what everyone does. We all know that Tom Cruise is Tom Mapother. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter.

And lie about your age, I mean. So, women in Hollywood, particularly actors, are damned if they don’t lie about their age, and now apparently they’re damned if they do lie about their age. You know who lied about her age? Mae West. This is not new.

But what I found so interesting was Rebel’s response. So, she said, in response to the investigative journalism she wrote, “OMG, I’m actually a 100-year-old mermaid formally known as CC Chalice. Thanks shady Australian press for your tall poppy syndrome.” And tall poppy syndrome was something she discussed with us when she did our show. And sure enough, here’s the proof.

**John:** Yeah. I think what outrages me the most about the whole situation is that we’re calling it investigatory journalism, like there was some great secret being kept and hidden. There really wasn’t. And so I think it’s well known throughout town that Rebel, we knew her real age, and we knew sort of what that was. Entertainment Weekly had published her real age back I think when the first movie came out.

So, it’s not like there was some great secret. So, to portray it as like this big revelation about who this person is just crazy. I think it also speaks to this weird thing we’re insisting upon our celebrities these days is that they have to be 100% authentic, but also 100% untouchable gods that are completely incapable of being wrong in any way. So, it’s this weird bundle of expectations we put on our celebrities that I don’t think is at all justified. And certainly it’s not borne by history in terms of like what we do to create our movie star actors.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s really stupid. I mean, this is — investigative journalism? It was neither investigative nor journalism. This is, I mean, truly file under who cares.

Maggie Gyllenhaal had a sort of an interesting parallel moment to this this week when she mentioned in an interview that she’s 37 years old and she was told recently that she was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55 years old. And when I read that, I’ll tell you, I had two reactions. My first reaction was, yup, I believe that. And my second reaction was, man, that’s awful.

And I just thought it was interesting that “yup I believe that” came so quickly, because it seemed, yup, I totally believe that that happened. I can hear it happening. It fits everything I see about casting in movies where aging male stars are constantly paired with women who frankly are their daughter’s ages. And now these people are going after Rebel Wilson.

Hey, here’s something to report. Want to report something? How about this. Rebel Wilson is a woman in her 30s who is completely convincing as a college student.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** How about that?

**John:** So, this whole discussion made me think back to Riley Weston. I don’t know if you really remember Riley Weston.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I do. I do.

**John:** That was back in 1998. She was a staff writer and an actress on the TV show Felicity. And I remember it very distinctly because I was doing my own TV show the same time this was all coming out.

So, Riley Weston, she was sort of hailed as this wunderkind for like being this great writer who could really speak with the voice of an 18-year-old because she was so young. And then it came out that she wasn’t that young at all. And she was actually in her 30s. And she just seemed really, really young.

So, in the show notes I’m going to link to two things that talk about it, her Wikipedia entry, but also this Entertainment Weekly article from ’98, and the URL for it is funny. It was Riley Weston Fooled Us All About Her Age. And they’re essentially taking umbrage for like how dare you make us think that you are younger than you were.

You know, in the case of someone who is a politician, someone who is running for office, someone who we have to rely on them telling the absolute god’s honest truth for us to trust them to do their job, I can see sort of how this could be a big deal. But I find myself going back in time to this 1998 Riley Weston thing and saying, “What were we doing? Why we running her out of town for allowing us to misbelieve her age?” And that is incredibly frustrating to me.

**Craig:** I mean, the one thing about Riley Weston that I recall is that she was kind of promoting herself via publicity. And, okay, when you sort of make a publicity point, a self-promotional point about something that turns out to be not true, I think there’s a fair reaction there to say, hey, you were using us, you know.

But in general, Hollywood is an illusion business. Our job, our industry, is to create entertaining and interesting lies. Charlie Sheen is Emilio Estevez’s brother. They are both Estevez. Nobody cares that he’s Charlie Sheen. Nobody cares that Martin Sheen is not Martin Estevez. It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what anyone’s real name is. I know what Elton John’s real name is, because I’m a dork, so I know it’s Reginald Dwight. But I don’t care.

**John:** What you’re talking about really is branding. And so both Elton John and Rebel Wilson and Charlie Sheen have chosen like this is what my — this is the person I want to present myself to the world is this person with this name. And that is a choice a person should be able to make. And so Rebel Wilson changing her name to Rebel Wilson, well that name fits the woman who came to talk on the show much better than whatever her born name was.

Just like John August fits me much better than my born name, which is German.

**Craig:** That’s right. Your name isn’t John — oh my god. Someone get the Australian press.

**John:** Ha-ha. They’ll correct everybody. But this last week I also encountered this actor. So we were both waiting for a meeting over at Sony and I knew him through a friend. And so we were talking and he was saying that he was going in for casting on something, I think Marc Cherry show, and Marc Cherry said like, “Wait, I didn’t know that was you.” And it’s because his agents had sent him in under like his — so he has a normal Anglo name, but his mother was Latina, and so they started using his mother’s Latina name to send him in for casting so he could get roles that were going to Latino actors. And he’s like, that’s crazy, that’s not my name. Nobody knows me when you send me in as this name.

But they’re trying to create an expectation. And they’re trying to essentially rebrand him so that he could get cast in those Latino roles. And that’s, again, it’s the illusion that we’re creating. It used to be back in the time of Rita Hayworth they were trying to de-Latinize somebody, and now we’re trying to Latinize them.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. And this is what people do. Actors in particular, their stock and trade is to pretend to be somebody else. So, oh my god — I mean, this is the dumbest thing. I think it is tall poppy syndrome. I think this is absolutely just a general resentment of somebody that’s doing well. So, boo Australians, hooray Rebel Wilson. That’s what I say.

**John:** Two other examples that sort of came up that I wanted to talk through with you and to get your perspective on, sort of where you stand with them right now. First off, James Frey, and A Million Little Pieces. So, James Frey if you remember wrote this book which is supposedly a memoir of drug addiction that was a huge bestseller. It was supposed to become a movie and then it came out that some of the details in the book did not actually pan out. He had not been arrested for the things he said he’d been arrested for.

The book was ultimately pulled. It was moved from nonfiction to fiction. Lots of stuff happened. Craig, where do you land on a James Frey situation as a memoir theoretically?

**Craig:** Very scornful of James Frey. I think that the difference is this. When you create a piece and you present under the auspices of trust, and you say that this is a true story of my life, and I want you to learn from it and feel things about me because of it. And it turns out that you have invented it, that is just flat out manipulative lying.

That is different than changing your name because you like a different name. That’s different than changing your age because you want to try and get some parts. You’re not asking for public trust there, at all. You’re just doing something because it might help you get some jobs and you’re not hurting anyone.

When James Frey writes an account of his drug addiction and is trying to use it to inspire other people and then it turns out that he made it up, yeah, that’s hurting people and it’s violating public trust.

**John:** So, let us imagine a situation in which Rebel Wilson wrote a bestseller comedy thing, the same way that Lena Dunham would, same way that Tina Fey or Amy Poehler did, and she were claiming her Bogan parents and all that stuff. Would that push you through to the level of Rebel you betrayed us?

**Craig:** Yeah. If Rebel Wilson wrote a book and talked about — and it wasn’t about pure comedy — but rather talking about the hardships of growing up in poverty or with parents who didn’t fit into society and how that affected her as a child, absolutely, that would be a violation of trust. I can’t imagine she would ever do it.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think that what you’re talking to is sort of the social contract we make with celebrities, that it’s a different than the social contract we make with writers. And the social contract we make with writers where like we’re reading their books and they’re telling us their own personal story is that you’re going to tell us the truth. And that I’m going to invest in you to tell you the truth.

The social contract we make with celebrities is basically you are going to be great in this movie and you are going to perform this weird Kabuki thing we do at press junkets. And we are going to pretend like everything is happy and good because that’s sort of what we do. And that’s a reasonable deal we’ve made with celebrities that some celebrities are delighted to do, and some celebrities hate.

Some of the folks who do the Marvel movies hate doing that dance. I don’t know if you saw that really uncomfortable interview with Robert Downey, Jr.

**Craig:** I did.

**John:** Where he walked out. And like god bless you Robert Downey, Jr. I totally understand why you’re upset because that guy was breaking the contract of like what movie publicity is supposed to be doing. You don’t sit down to talk to Robert Downey, Jr. about Iron Man and then like let’s drag up terrible things from your past. That’s not the performance that’s happening there.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, the press junket people I think 98% of them understand their function, which is to help sell a movie. So, they’re helping Robert Downey, Jr. sell a movie, and Robert Downey, Jr. is helping them sell clicks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Occasionally 2% of them start to get this thought that maybe they’re Woodward or Bernstein, which they’re not. [laughs] Because they wouldn’t be at a press junket if they were. And then they go a little wonky and in a sense it’s very self-serving because suddenly they’re the story. But it never works for them.

Here’s the interesting thing. Robert Downey, Jr. is still famous. That guy has been forgotten already.

**John:** Yes. The last hypothetical I want to throw out to you to get your opinion on. So, there’s a friend who I went to college with and he is also a screenwriter, but he came to Hollywood later than I did, and so had another career and then he came to Hollywood. He looks younger than me. And he sort of comes off as younger as me, I think partly because he has a writing partner who is younger. And so they’re perceived as being a team and everyone thinks of him as being quite a lot younger.

And so when we talk to people, it’s never actually sort of officially said, but it’s sort of like implied like, hey, maybe don’t say we went to college together because that ages me up. And that was never said, but that was sort of kind of implied. So, I find myself saying like, “Oh, we went to the same college rather than we went to college together,” because that would automatically put him in his 40s and people don’t think he’s in his 40s at all.

Is that fair to allow people to misassume your age?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. If you — I mean, I’ve never had any perceived value attached to my age at any point. I’ve never thought that anybody would give a damn. And I still don’t think so. But, for people who do, if they prefer to be thought of as a certain age and people are thinking of them as that age, I don’t care.

I know there’s a very big time writer-director out there who lies about his age. And I know he lies about his age, for sure. I wouldn’t say anything. I don’t care. I don’t know why he does it. It’s kind of stupid. So, you know, I don’t necessarily respect non-actors who lie about their age, because I think that’s kind of ridiculous and narcissistic because they’re not trying to get parts. You know what I mean?

But whatever. I mean, there’s worse things to do. It doesn’t bother me.

**John:** I’ll close with one little example that happened at a lunch. This is many years ago. And I was talking to a producer and she described a project. And I was like, oh, that sounds really interesting. And she’s like, “Oh yeah, we’re looking for a younger writer for that.” I was 30 at the time. [laughs]

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** And really what she meant was she meant newer. She meant less expensive.

**Craig:** Cheaper.

**John:** Cheaper. Cheaper is really what she meant. She meant like a baby writer. But the word she said was younger. And there was some degree to which that was true. And there is a degree to which being the young person in the room can be really helpful. It was very helpful for me when I was going out for meetings after Go because I was like, oh, I was the guy who could be hired to write these teenage things, or these younger things. I was a guy who could get a show set up at the WB at the time. So, my comparative youth was an advantage.

I’m always mindful of the fact that youth is one of the qualities that you can be bringing into any discussion that can be useful. Because when you don’t have experience, youth might be another useful thing to offer.

**Craig:** I’ve been in a race to get old my whole life. I like getting old.

**John:** Basically you want to get to the appropriate age for your level of crankiness and umbrage.

**Craig:** That’s right. I want to get to an appropriate age where I don’t have to wear pants. Yeah. I’m just running. I’m running towards a future where all food is soft and pants are loose.

**John:** It sounds like a wonderful future.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m going to have a scooter.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Ooh, I can’t wait.

**John:** You put the next topic on the list and it deals with a screenwriter who has been working for quite a long time, and so a good transition between ageism and a guy who’s flourishing and quite late into his career.

**Craig:** So, I thought we could have a new feature. I don’t know how frequently we can do it, but unsung screenwriting heroes of Hollywood. So, what if I told you that there was a director. And the director directed the following movies. Karate Kid. A Walk in the Clouds. Fifth Element. Transporter. And Taken. One director did all those movies. I’m thinking you would know that director. That would be kind of a big name.

**John:** Yes. And because I recognize those last three credits I would say like, wow, Luc Besson directed Karate Kid?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But I would say, yes, that is a very notable list of credits.

**Craig:** It’s Luc Besson-like. Well, one writer wrote all of those movies. Robert Kamen has been doing what we do since 1981. He wrote the movie Taps. Did you ever see Taps?

**John:** I saw Taps.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, he wrote the movie. That was his first credit in 1981. And then came The Karate Kid, which obviously was a seminal work. And then A Walk in the Clouds, Fifth Element, Transporter, Taken. And what is so remarkable about him, and I’ve never met him. I don’t know him. But I’m fascinated by his career because first of all the — his ability to be relevant is just remarkable.

It’s not only that he wrote Karate Kid back when you and I were teenagers and captured that time perfectly. But Taken is culturally relevant. So, this is somebody who has remained culturally relevant for decades. That is harder than it sounds.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** And he’s done it across genres. And I just find his career fascinating. And always, by the way, here’s another thing I love about this guy. He never drifted off into let’s call it kind of indie la-la ville. He’s still writing good genre popcorn theater-filling movies. I love that.

**John:** How did he come into your radar, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, you know, the truth is I — sometimes I go on a little click hole expedition. And for some reason I found myself fiddling about with The Fifth Element. I happen to love The Fifth Element. I’m just a big Fifth Element nut.

And when I was looking at the screenwriter’s name, I felt like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I feel like — that’s not the guy that wrote Karate Kid? That can’t be, because they’re totally different movies. And they were from different times. So then I went, and yup, it’s him. And then I looked at his list of credits and my jaw dropped. Just dropped. I couldn’t believe.

Robert Kamen is a name that everyone should know. They should know that name like they know Luc Besson or they know Steven Spielberg for that matter. He’s an incredibly influential filmmaker. And I do think of screenwriters as filmmakers. And so Robert Kamen, you are the inaugural unsung screenwriting hero of Hollywood.

**John:** I think it’s a great first choice because I kind of half recognized it. I recognize like, oh, I’ve seen that name, but I couldn’t tell you what the credits where. But I was trying to figure out like why don’t know his name better. And some theories, which I’d love to talk through with you.

First off, he doesn’t seem to work — he doesn’t seem to live and work in Hollywood. So, looking up the stuff I could find online, it seems like he lives in New York and in Sonoma where he owns a winery. So, he’s not in our circle, so we’re not seeing him sort of at the usual watering holes. So that might be part of it?

**Craig:** I think so. Sure. And I guess that when you write movies like he has, and god knows how many moves he’s written on that he doesn’t have credit on, that plus all the residuals from these things. Yeah, you own a winery. That sounds about right.

**John:** A second thing I was thinking about is because so many of his more recent credits have been with one director, you tend to sort of forget that he — you forget about him as an individual. So, you just lump him in with his director. And you don’t think about him as being an individual person.

The same way that a writer who might work with Ang Lee consistently, you don’t think about them as the individual writer. You think of them as being Ang Lee’s person. Is that possible?

**Craig:** Well, it is possible. And that’s something that for instance Ruth —

**John:** Ruth Jhabvala.

**Craig:** Exactly. Ruth Jhabvala kind of struggled in the shadow a little bit of Merchant Ivory. And maybe she liked being in the shadow. You know, not every writer particularly wants the spotlight or notoriety. And perhaps Mr. Kamen is that way. But I think it’s incumbent upon people who care about movies and filmmakers for them to know who is actually doing the work here. And so he deserves plenty of attention from those of us who care.

**John:** Very good. Next time we are over at your house playing D&D, I think we should get a bottle of his wine and drink it.

**Craig:** Done.

**John:** Done. Next topic is also your topic. And you have this listed on the outline as finding your new home, but it seems to me based on the things we have in here that it’s really talking about what happens when you kind of get lost with a script. Is that what I’m feeling?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it’s a little bit like when you’re homeless in your own project. So, there’s this thing that happens where you create a movie on paper. You write your screenplay. And that’s a home. You don’t hand it to somebody until you feel like, okay, this is whole and done, at least for now, and I’m safe with it.

And then you hand it to people, and they read it, and then there’s a collaboration that ensues. And you get notes and thoughts and things and you write a new draft. But in the writing of the new draft, you end up at a place and you’re not sure it’s right. The problem is though that you’ve drifted far enough away from your first script that you don’t feel like you could go back to that at all. You start to think that’s not right either.

So, suddenly I’m like a person that’s sold my house and bought a new one, but the new one is not built yet. I’m outside and it’s raining. And that’s a very scary feeling because essentially you begin to be lost in your own project and disconnected from your own movie. Have you ever felt that?

**John:** Oh my god, yes. And so I think maybe the reason you brought this up because you and I might both be at those kind of moments, or recently experienced that, where you turn in a draft and then you do the revisions. And most of the things you’re happy with, but it’s not your initial vision of what it was. And you’re not sure that some stuff is working, that some stuff is not working. You’re trying to make sure all the pieces fit together and they fit together in a real and meaningful way. And you don’t know how to feel about something.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a weird feeling to look at your own script and think, “I don’t know this. Who are you?” You know, it’s like waking up next to your wife or your husband and not recognizing their face. It’s distressing.

And so you’re right. It’s certainly — I feel it every time, by the way, I’m in a second draft. Every single time. Without fail.

And so I wanted to talk through some possible strategies for dealing with this feeling when it happens because it can be debilitating. So, first, the simplest of all things is take a break. And we have kind of an unparalleled ability as writers to take breaks without anyone knowing. You don’t have to call people and say I’m taking a week off. Take a week off. Just don’t think about it for an entire week. Don’t do anything related to it for an entire week. If you don’t want to write anything else, don’t write anything else for a week. Take a week off.

And then when you come back, hopefully some of the panic and concern has been flushed out and you can get a cleaner look at what you actually have.

The second thing that might help is to read it out loud, which we talk about all the time, but reading things out loud will start to snap things into view a little bit. Reading out loud reminds you that you will one day be on a set. And it will one day be a movie. And you may find that it’s actually working better than you think.

I also recommend at this point sharing it with a friend. And the friend is hopefully somebody that you think understands how to read your work and help you, which isn’t everybody. So, you have to kind of figure out who that friend is.

**John:** And you need to actually set up the expectation with that friend properly. I have a friend who sometimes reads my stuff and she will quite candidly ask, “Do you want me to tell you that it’s great, or do you want me to find the mistakes?” And those are equally valid things. And I think at this point you’re asking for the please tell me it’s great, and problems too, but mostly I need you to tell me that I’m not crazy and this is worth my time.

**Craig:** Well, and that brings me to this fourth strategy which is to actively seek praise. Praise, in general, is underrated. I think everybody that grows up in our business and the business of developing screenplays is trained by their higher ups to avoid praise and to instead drill down into what’s not working, because frankly in a bloodless sort of way that probably is the most efficient way to get towards fixes.

But, praise is really important because what praise does is it helps you, the writer, understand what is working. And what is working, frankly, is more likely to get to you to more is working stuff, than hearing about what isn’t working.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So, you want to seek praise. And there is nothing wrong with saying to somebody, listen, I want you to read the script and feel free to be honest with things that aren’t working, but I need you also to be vehement about the things that are working. That will help me. And when you give people permission to do that, they do it.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s very encouraging.

**John:** I was just on a phone call with a friend right before we started recording this and I was talking through this pilot that he wrote. And there were things that were great about it and things that weren’t great about it. And luckily, thank god, there were things that were great about it. And so I could say in a really very true, real way, “I love where this gets to. I love the tone you’re able to find. You were able to create this really unique special thing. I think you can find ways to do that throughout the whole rest of the script. And if you’re up for it, let’s talk through ways we can get more of what’s working so well there to be working throughout the rest of this.”

It ends up being a much better conversation when you can tell somebody you’re awesome. This part is great. And I think you can do this same kind of stuff for the whole script.

**Craig:** Right. Right. Exactly. When you get a series of “I don’t like this” you begin to feel stupid. You begin to feel like nothing you do is any good. And you also begin to extrapolate to say, oh, and they’re leaving out a bunch — they basically hate everything.

When people zero in on something and say this was wonderful, let me tell you why it was wonderful, let me tell you how it made me feel, that will embolden you to think about those moments and think about why those moments are working as opposed to other moments. It’s very important. Not many people do this instinctively.

And I would urge those of you who listen to us who are development executives, studio executive and producers, to really make this part of your deal. Not because you’re there to make writers feel good. But because you’re there to actually make the script better. Believe it or not, that will make the script better.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And in general, when you’re lost, you have to remind yourself that when you can’t see things, you can’t see them. And then you do see them. There is an impatience there. You think, well, if I really strain, I’ll see it. No. You’ll see it when you see it. Things are never as good as you think. And things are never as bad as you think. So, take heart in that. And remember that you’ve been out in the rain before. And then the new house is finished and you go inside.

**John:** I do encounter this experience on almost every second draft. And sort of a second draft ennui where there’s this real gap between what it was I initially set out to create and what I’m looking at on the page right now. And I’m trying to figure out what the movie wants to be next. And so the suggestions you’re offering I think are all really valid ways of getting you to think about the movie that it’s becoming, rather than the movie that it was.

And praise from smart people is part of it. Hearing it out loud is part of it. And it’s also reminding yourself what’s no longer there, but what is also new about this new draft and what is going to be exciting about this new pass.

And also you won’t know this until you’ve done a couple of these, but reminding yourself that this is the process. That feeling this way about your second draft is the same way you’re going to like want to kill yourself after you see the first cut of a movie.

It’s the same way that the first day of production will be overwhelming. Those are all just real things that are just part of the nature of the process. And to allow yourself to feel them.

In recent things I’ve been though, I’ve gotten a couple of those emails where just sort of I point out the problems, things like let’s fix these things. And I have to remind myself that they’re singling out these things because they’re small things they think they can address rather than spending 45 minutes to tell me all the stuff that they loved. But if, I don’t know, I just feel like great producers and great studio executives find the time to tell you what is terrific so that you can be inspired to do more stuff for them.

I know when I’m giving notes to somebody, I always try to look for those highlights of this is why this is worthwhile. This is why you should pay attention to the rest of my notes, because I really did read it, and I really did understand what you were going for in this moment. And this one really succeeded.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you tell people that this is something I like, then the writer is going to think to themselves, okay, there is — this person does get me. This isn’t a situation where there’s nothing I could write that would make them happy. There is something I write that makes them happy. What is that thing?

And a lot of times, I think everybody, writers and note-givers will sort of say let’s skip past the formalities of I like this, and I like this. I don’t need anyone to say, oh, I really like this, or I really like this. What I need them is to stop and go, no, this right here I loved. I loved this. I don’t need — hopefully there’s more than one, you know, but if you love something, you tell me because I need to know. Because that’s going to help me.

**John:** Craig, do you think that some of the reasons why they might be reluctant to tell you those things is because they know from experience that those things might get cut, those things might change, or their opinion might shift on those? Are they protecting themselves by not telling you that they love something?

**Craig:** Maybe. If there is a psychological resistance to it, I suspect it may be connected more to a fear that they will be demotivating you. They think, well, if I tell you that I loved something, you’ll just start to think that you’re great. And you don’t need my help and you don’t have to change anything. The writer that development executives and producers fear the most is the “I’m okay/you’re not okay” writer. The one who thinks that I wrote it, therefore it’s great. Screw you. So, they’re hesitant to tell you they loved something because they’re afraid that then you’ll say to them, well, the same person that wrote that thing you loved wrote this thing, and so you should just defer to me.

In fact, that’s just not how we work. And I think if they really put their minds to this, they’ll understand we’re not looking for empty praise. If you say, “I love this,” that means nothing to me. If you say, “I love this, now let me tell you why,” then it does, because now we are talking about the script. We’re talking about how the machine is working. And it’s very crucial for us to understand what is working. More crucial I think than not.

**John:** And the process of understanding what is working sometimes really is a process of interrogation, of really figuring out like what it is that’s not happening in the other person’s head that is happening in your head.

So, last Sunday before we were playing D&D, I was talking to Chris Morgan about this note that I got that I just fundamentally didn’t understand. And I started to sort of rehearse my sort of defense of the way things currently were in the script. And Chris, who has been through this rodeo so many times, said, “You know what? Just call the guy and just ask him what it really means and see if there’s something that’s sort of in the middle that could work out right.”

And so I had that conversation and it ended up being so much better than I had anticipated because it was literally just what I had on the page, partly because of trims I’d made to try to tighten stuff up, the intention had gotten lost in his read. And so it was a matter of restoring some things that could make the scene be about what I really mean the scene to be about, rather than what he was reading the scene to be about. And that can be useful.

**Craig:** Not only is it useful, but I think that is the stuff in which positive development relationships grow. They give us notes and then we leave and they go back to their office and think, “They’re not going to do any of that. And I’m still responsible for what they turn in.”

When you call and you say, “I don’t understand this. Let’s talk about this,” they think, oh good, you were listening. I’m happy to explain this.

**John:** That’s part of the reason why I think the screenwriter’s job is so unique and weird and different. Because I was trying to think about what the equivalent would be for a novelist. And so a novelist would have an editor and the two of them would have a discussion about this moment, this scene, this line. Sort of what’s going on in this section of the book. And they would have a relationship and a discussion, but ultimately the novelist is not bound to do whatever the editor says. It’s just, you know, this would be my suggestion, but take it or leave it.

It’s not a take it or leave it with screenwriting. That executive, that producer, that director ultimately can say yes or no and can make some changes that may not be the changes you want to make, or the thing can proceed to the next stage or not proceed to the next stage, or proceed with you or without you in ways that’s so different from other forms of fiction writing.

And that’s part of the reason why a person could be a terrific novelist but just not actually have the social skills to manage that relationship.

**Craig:** Social skills and psychic strength. You know, novelists are creating the end product and we’re not. And so part of what happens is you become incredibly aware that you have shifted your job description from creator to protector. Now, you have to figure out how to safeguard the stuff that matters the most through this gauntlet of other people’s opinions and other people’s authority.

And it is doable, but it is not doable perfectly. It’s simply not. And that’s even if you are the director and writer. Even if you’re the director, the budget will get you. Or the studio will get you. Or an actor will get you. Something — it will rain on the wrong day. Something is going to get you.

So, you can put aside your visions of purity and instead engage in that notion of how do I protect all the way through here. How do I keep as many of these eggs, you know, to carry them to full term? That’s kind of what’s going on.

**John:** Yeah. And the wisdom role that you have to make here is that in trying to protect my script, am I actually protecting the movie, or am I really just protecting my self-esteem? Am I protecting my ability to believe myself as being the guy who wrote this script which is so, so good, or am I really looking out for what the final product is and what’s going to make it to the screen?

And every one of those decisions is going to be tough. And so part of my discussion with Chris was I don’t know whether maybe the note is right and I’m just being stubborn and not seeing that the note is right. What do I do? And the answer was to have the conversation and in this one case it was the right choice to make.

**Craig:** Great. Well, I’m glad that that worked out.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get to our One Cool Things. Craig, talk us through it.

**Craig:** All right. I’m sort of continuing a theme here of One Cool Thing that will happen one day. I saw this trailer for a new game that I don’t know if it’s going to be a mobile app or desktop only. I’m not sure yet. My guess is mobile, as well as desktop. It’s called Oxenfree and it’s from a company called Night School Studio.

And it appears to be on the one hand kind of a straight up adventure puzzle kind of deal where some characters that it looks like they’re high school students are hanging out on some island as part of like a high school getaway bit and then crazy stuff happens. And from the trailer I kind of get the feeling that it’s going to be a little bit like sort of that standard puzzle thing of, okay, I’ve got to get my guy from here to there. What do I do? What do I press? And what do I move? But what’s so interesting about it is the dialogue is really good. I mean, it’s written in a way where you could tell they cared, that the characters are vibrant and the dialogue is on point. It’s well acted.

There’s also appears from the trailer to be an interesting dynamic to interactions where most of the characters are answering per a script, but occasionally you have choices where you can select what your answer is. And I assume that would influence how the people respond to you. Maybe not go so far as to influence how the game goes. I mean, this is the way video games are. They are trying to disguise the fact that you are on rails, but I really loved this trailer. I can’t wait to play this game.

So, hopefully it’s a cool thing.

**John:** It’s a gorgeous trailer. I clicked through the link when you put it in the show notes and it really is just terrific looking. And I agree that the dynamic, you know, Dragon Age and lots of other games have done that thing where you get to choose what your answer is back to things, but very cleverly like just having the little thought bubbles and you get to pick which little speech bubble you want to pick for your answer seems like a really clever dynamic.

So, I’m curious to see what this will become as well.

**Craig:** Excellent. And what about you?

**John:** My One Cool Thing is the TV show Silicon Valley, which I may have already harped about how much I love the show, but this last week’s episode, which by the time this airs will be two weeks ago, was particularly spectacular over this one moment that was so incredibly well crafted. And it was well set up throughout the run of the episode, but just so brilliantly done.

So, it’s two of the character, Dinesh and Gilfoyle are trying to figure out whether to tell this really annoying douchebag character that his son is actually going to kill him. And they make this SWOT board which is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for this very Silicon Valley way of trying to make a decision. And the cards they put up on there for Let Blaine Die are so hilarious. And the degree to which you have to pause the show to read them, I’m going to put a link in the show notes that shows you all the cards that are up on that board.

But it was such an incredibly well structured episode, but also that scene and that moment and every card that’s up on that board, and then within that scene, the structure of the scene, of like they could just let the guy walk out and that would be hilarious, but at just the right moment they reveal to this character that these guys are considering letting him, basically plotting murder, which was just geniusly handled.

**Craig:** Yeah. I love the show. Alec Berg, who is the head writer, kind of Mike Judge’s right hand man on that show is one of my best friends in the world. And so I’ve been kind of following along his Silicon Valley trials and tribulations. I mean, it’s a tough show to make. But, you know, that show — so the whole thing with the Let Blaine Die, and it kind of reminded me a little bit of the way last season’s finale was structured with the —

**John:** End to middle out.

**Craig:** Tip to tip. It’s very Alec. Alec with his former writing partner, I guess they still collaborate on some things, Berg, Schaffer, Mandel, they ran Seinfeld sort of in the latter series of its run. And Seinfeld was always — the episodes were kind of masterclasses in recursive plotting. You know, that in the end every episode was a callback to itself. That’s the kind of way they worked. And that the end would kind of go, oh look, the thing from the beginning is paying off. It’s a Rube Goldberg plot.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then Alec and Jeff and Dave did Curb Your Enthusiasm and it’s the same deal. And now, Silicon Valley doesn’t always work that way, but in this case it did, and it was very Alec. It was just a very Alec thing. I loved it.

I particularly loved Dinesh and Gilfoyle, god, they’re just great. Those characters are awesome. So, Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr are just spectacular in those parts. I would honestly watch those two characters talking about anything for 12 hours. It would make me so happy. But my favorite character on the show has to be Jared.

**John:** He’s so good.

**Craig:** Zach Woods.

**John:** So, I mean, it’s a variation on a kind of character that we saw him do in the American version of The Office, and yet he is so needy and yet so sweet, and so trying to be the den mother to this group and yet keeps getting batted down in a way that’s just fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, like the character, so Zach Woods, this character that he’s playing, first of all, Jared isn’t even his name. The character’s actual name is Donald, but somebody called him Jared once and it stuck because he just felt like he didn’t want to disturb them.

So, Jared is the answer to this question. How nice can a person be? Jared is in fact I think what Jesus Christ would be like if he were alive and working in Silicon Valley. [laughs] That’s basically what he is. He’s Jesus. He’s awesome.

And when he’s — oh my god, his face. Ah, his face. I just want to hug him.

**John:** He does crushed so well.

**Craig:** Crushed and sort of hopeful also.

**John:** Absolutely. He’s a puppy who just got scolded but really thinks that maybe you’ll let him hop up on the lap.

**Craig:** Yeah. Silicon Valley is the best. If you’re not watching it, you’re stupid. Honestly, you’re just dumb.

**John:** That is our show this week. Our show, as always, is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. I’m not sure who did the outro this week, but if you have an outro that you would like to send in for us, you can send it to ask@johnaugust.com. Send us a link to the SoundCloud. It would be fantastic way to do it.

ask@johnaugust.com is also a great place to send questions, those longer questions. Little short things we can answer on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We are on iTunes. So, if you’re listening to this show on the John August Blog, that’s fantastic, but it would also be great if you can subscribe to us on iTunes, because that helps people find the show.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Leave us a comment while you’re there. We got some really nice comments this last week, so thank you for those people who did that.

**Craig:** Oh good. Thanks.

**John:** We have an app. And that app is also found through the App Store. You can find it both in the Apple iOS App Store and on the Google Play Store. That lets you get to all of the back episodes as well. Back to episode one.

Next week we will back with a 200th episode. We will record it live in some capacity. It might be audio. It might be video. We might have Aline. We might not have Aline. But we will figure out how we’re going to do it. And you should follow us on Twitter and we will give you ample warning that we are going to be doing the show. It will be sometime in the evening, so it will be post-work. And you can hear us do the show live and read some questions. It should be fun.

The police in the background are coming to arrest Craig Mazin, so we should probably wrap it up.

**Craig:** You know, I did it again.

**John:** And we have promised at some point that we will do a bonus episode that is nothing but all the sirens that have come after Craig. Because at least I would say five minutes of every week’s episode has to be trimmed for sirens.

**Craig:** Trimmed for Sirens, title of my biography.

**John:** It’s going to be good. It fits really well with the umbrage theme.

**Craig:** Yeah. Absolutely.

**John:** Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

**Craig:** Thanks, John, you too. Bye.

Links:

* Follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for details on the 200th episode live stream
* [Deadline on the Mr. Holmes lawsuit](http://deadline.com/2015/05/mr-holmes-lawsuit-arthur-conan-doyle-estate-sues-bill-condon-1201431854/), and [the filing itself](https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/mr-holmes-conan-doyle-estate-infringment-lawsuit-wm.pdf)
* [How Hollywood Taught Rebel Wilson To Lie About Her Age](http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/how-hollywood-taught-rebel-wilson-to-lie-about-her-age?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgz#.psOGAW3W5A)
* [Scriptnotes, 182: The One with Rebel Wilson and Dan Savage](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-one-with-rebel-wilson-and-dan-savage)
* [Maggie Gyllenhaal Was Told She Was ‘Too Old’ to Play 55-Year Old’s Lover](http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/maggie-gyllenhaal-too-old-lover-1201502936/)
* [Riley Weston on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_Weston) and [Entertainment Weekly](http://www.ew.com/article/1998/10/30/riley-weston-fooled-us-all-about-her-age)
* [James Frey on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frey)
* Robert Mark Kamen [on IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0436543/), and in [Script Mag](http://www.scriptmag.com/features/interviews-features/interview-robert-mark-kamen-2) and [Wine Searcher](http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2015/01/q-a-robert-mark-kamen-kamen-estate)
* [Oxenfree from Night School Studio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGwz4ovskx4)
* [Silicon Valley: Read every card on the Let Blaine Die SWOT board](http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/15/silicon-valley-read-let-blaine-die-swot-board)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Travis Newton ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/back-to-100).

**Present John:** Hey this is John. I am traveling this week, and Craig is super busy, so we haven’t been able to find time to record an episode this week.

Longtime listeners know that I listen to a lot of podcasts, while Craig listens to exactly zero. Or one, if he listens to Scriptnotes, which I’m not convinced he does. So, Craig will have no idea that a lot of podcasts, like Planet Money, do episodes where they take old shows and record new stuff to provide updates on what’s happened since it first aired. So that’s what I want to do today. I’m going to be breaking in a few times during the show to fill in additional details about things that have happened.

Since we’re quickly approaching our 200th episode, I thought we’d travel back to our last centennial: episode 100, recorded live in front of an audience in July 2013.

This episode remains one my favorite experiences making Scriptnotes, because it was the first time we realized holy shit, actual people are listening to the show. Which reminds me, there is swearing in this episode, so parental guidance is recommended.

So let me set the scene. We’re in a giant warehouse space that used to be a yoga studio, but at the time was owned by The Academy, who used it for special events. If you know Hollywood, we’re right next to the Arclight theaters. In fact, that space is now the offices for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which in 2013 would have seemed insane.

We have about 250 people in the crowd, and because there was free alcohol, they’re especially enthusiastic.

As we start the episode, you’re going to hear theme music created by Matthew Chilleli. At the time, I’d never met him, but he’d later become the editor of the show — including the episode you’re listening to right now.

The announcer is a guy named Travis, who I found online. He’s great. Here’s a tip: if you ever need a voiceover for a project, Google Voiceover and you’ll find great freelancers. You Paypal them some money and they record whatever you want.

Craig had no idea there was going to be intro music, which was part of the fun.

**Announcer:** Live from Hollywood, California, it’s the 100th Episode of Scriptnotes.

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, it’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are inTEResting to screenwriters.

Thank you so much for being here. We’re live here in Hollywood at the Academy Lab Space Theatre. Thank you to the Academy for having us here. It’s kind of amazing.

**Craig:** Thank you. I’d like to thank the Academy. I will never say that again. Never have a chance, ever to ever say, I’d like to… — God, I’d like to thank the Academy. Let’s just do it a bunch of times. I — I — I’d like to thank the Academy.

**John:** I feel like we need to have Dennis Palumbo here to help talk you through the emotions you’re feeling right now.

**Craig:** It would be good.

**John:** Yeah. Specifically, I need to thank Greg Beal and Bettina Fisher for putting this together and their tremendous stuff.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you so much — because Craig and I talked in a very general sense like, “Oh, you know we’re going to hit 100 episodes at some point.” And so then we actually looked at the calendar, it’s like, “Oh, it’s going to be some time in the end of July. We’ll both be in town and we could theoretically do a live event.” We sort of put it out in the universe in sort of a The Secret kind of way like maybe somebody will want us to do a live event. And it was the Academy. So this is amazing and thank you very much for having us here tonight.

**Craig:** It’s pretty awesome and that Nicholls Fellowship and Nicholls, you know that wonderful screenwriting, the one screenwriting contest that matters frankly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Is sponsoring all the food and the wine and the beer. So…

**John:** Yeah. I think in some ways like we’re a fundraiser for them but they’re kind of fundraising for us and it’s kind of amazing. It’s an educational outreach. So thank you very much for this existing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, this is our hundredth episode.

**Craig:** One Hundred.

**John:** And it’s kind of remarkable. Do you have a favorite episode of the episodes we’ve recorded?

**Craig:** Well, I’m kind of partial to the one where I opened my heart up and bled all over the keyboard there…

**John:** The dark night of your soul.

**Craig:** The dark midnight of my soul.

**John:** After the terrible reviews.

**Craig:** Yeah. After the terrible…

**John:** Which of the two movies?

**Craig:** All of them.

**John:** Yeah. Right.

**Craig:** All of them. That was good. That felt good, actually.

**John:** It felt good. Yeah.

**Craig:** I actually got something out of the podcast for once which was nice.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I really liked, even though it was the one that we just did so it feels a little bit like a cheap, and I don’t know if you guys have heard podcast 99, but that’s the one we did with Dr. Dennis Palumbo and that was great.

**John:** That was great. And so that was our sort of psychotherapy for screenwriters and that was a… — It’s recent to you but we actually recorded it like three weeks ago and we knew, it was like, “God, that’s really good.” It was one of those situations where we’re actually live in a room like, “Wow, that’s going to be a good episode.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I’m happy that turned out really well.

**Craig:** But…

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Favorite podcast out of the one hundred?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Raiders.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Raiders.

**John:** The Raiders episode was probably my favorite too because it was the first time we were doing something just completely brand new. We were just focusing on one episode. And what I liked so much about Raiders is we could talk about the movie that we were watching but we could also look back at the transcript and see like, “This is the process they went through to make that movie that we loved so much.” And I thought tonight we could actually go back and do the transcripts of how this podcast came to be.

**Craig:** Because it’s as important as Raiders.

**John:** Yes. Maybe as seminal an event in film history. And so this afternoon I went through email archives and found the four emails between me and Craig Mazin about this podcast. So this is the entirety of the planning for the original Scriptnotes. So this is actually what happened.

So this is June 27, 2011, 1:17 pm, I wrote to Craig, “Subject: Podcasts. Do you listen to any? I had dismissed them as a fad but now I find myself listening to several, wondering if you would have any interest in doing a joint podcast on screenwriting?”

**Craig:** “I don’t. But then again, I didn’t read any blogs either and then I wrote one for five years. A podcast would solve my ‘I want to talk about screenwriting but I’m tired of writing about screenwriting’ problem, so, yes, count me in. What sort of thing were you thinking?”

**John:** This is at 3:04 pm, “I was thinking a weekly thing in which we would talk about the Issues of the Day for screenwriters and the film industry, loose, not edited. The first couple would probably be a cluster-fuck but we’d get better at it. Then we would go in with a mutually agreed list of things we want to discuss. Most of these podcasts seem to be done remotely on Google Talk or some such. I’ll have my guy Ryan,” — Ryan Nelson! — “look into them to see what would be involved. My guess is that at most you’d need headphones with attached mic to plug into your computer. Some of the best podcasts are the ones Dan Benjamin does on 5by5 [url]. This is the one he does with the John Gruber of Daring Fireball [url].”

**Craig:** I should mention I did not listen to any of them but 16 minutes later I wrote back, “Perfect. Sounds like it is easy and fun! And easy! And fun! At this age, that’s all I care about. I’ll check out the podcasts you cite below for inspiration.”

**John:** Yeah. It’s a lie. The first of many lies in our relationship over the course of making the show.

**Craig:** And you can see a theme emerging here at the beginning. He had the idea and then had all the details and I said, “Sure!”

**John:** Yeah. “Just tell me when to sign on.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So that was the initial sort of a spark of the show and now we’re a hundred episodes later.

**Craig:** Amazing.

**John:** And tonight we get to talk about the same stuff that we’ve been talking about for hundred episodes which is screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** To screenwriters.

**John:** Tonight we’re going to talk about…

**Craig:** Wait, wait, hold on.

**John:** What?

**Craig:** I have to say it’s really cool that you guys showed up. I really do. I mean, I have to say…

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just cool. I’m a little verklempt because people really do enjoy the podcast and it’s great and I often tell people, “It’s just John and I. I always look at it as like we’re having a phone conversation for an hour each week.” But it’s great to see a little love reflected back and I really appreciate all the people, you guys bought tickets. I mean, granted, it was five dollars and so I’m not going to give you that much praise for it but still, you know, you parked, right?

**John:** Yeah. You drove to Hollywood.

**Craig:** You drove to Hollywood and you parked. Nice.

**John:** Ah! Nice.

**Craig:** And that’s the kind of ethic that we support.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** So thank you guys. That’s great.

**John:** Craig, this is an honest conversation here. Did you ever consider bailing on the podcast?

**Craig:** Not once. No.

**John:** I did.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Right around in the 50s.

**Craig:** Was it because of me? [laughs]

**John:** No. I just had sort of, getting tired of it.

**Craig:** I mean, here’s the truth. You know I’ll never bail on it because you make it so, so easy for us. So it it’s like I just show up and there is food in front of me and I eat it. I mean, you and Stuart. — Stuart is real. The guy here tonight who is playing Stuart, we have a different guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Where’s our Stuart?

**John:** No, it is a real Stuart?

**Craig:** Where’s the Stuart tonight that we have?

**John:** Stuart who’s here tonight. Can you raise your hand. There is he, here’s tonight’s Stuart.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s tonight’s Stuart.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not, I mean, basically we’re like, okay, we just go, they have books of like we need a curly-haired ginger and then we get one.

Stuart does so much.

**John:** We hired Stuart from the Disney Channel. He’s actually one of the… — He was a kid actor who aged out and then that’s who we got.

**Present John:** So, Stuart Friedel is officially a real person. He’s my assistant and he also produces the show. And It’s strange that this sort of the “cult of Stuart” has arisen, really probably starting with this episode. Because people will hear his name and know that he works on the podcast. He has a sort of mythical quality that happened. He’s sort of our Snuffaluffagus, like is he a real person or is he not a real person. And it’s just weird that this sort of Stuart Friedel meme has occurred.

But people will recognize his name. Like, he was in New York and he was at a bar talking to some folks and he said his name was Stuart. It was like, “Oh wait — you’re not Stuart Friedel from Scriptnotes?” And he is Stuart Friedel from Scriptnotes. And that will probably haunt him for quite a long time.

I don’t have any plan on fixing his being haunted by Scriptnotes, but we’ve been talking about when do you actually have Stuart on the show as a real person who introduces himself and answers questions.

And that will probably come whenever it is time for Stuart to move on. He’s a writer himself; he’s written some really great scripts that are going to pull him out of this office pretty soon.

But whenever that happens, we will have him on for an exit interview, and we will talk through all the secrets of Stuart and Scriptnotes and how it all works.

So: Stuart Friedel, this is for you.

**Craig:** He aged out. Exactly and so we caught him before he went full Amanda Bynes and… [Audience: “Ohhhhh.”] — Oh, okay, well she’s crazy. It’s not my fault. Anyway, no, I’ve never thought about it, but please don’t leave me.

**John:** All right. I won’t. I won’t.

**Craig:** I can’t quit you.

**John:** We’re good. Actually, as I was putting together the music for tonight I put together a lot of sort of like the break up songs just to try to set up that idea that maybe this was going to be the end.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** It was actually the last episode of Scriptnotes, but it’s not now. So we’re good. Fine.

Tonight, we’re actually going to talk about some things that are interesting to screenwriters including something that Craig calls Screenwriter-Plus.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We’ll get into that.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** We’ll talk about that Slate article that literally everyone in the audience tweeted me saying like, “Hey, you should talk about this” Yeah. We know. We will talk about this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So it’s Slate article about how…

**Craig:** It’s fun. There is like you get that tweet of, “I’m sure everyone’s mentioned this to you,” and that is the one you get 15,000 times.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “I’m sure everyone has mentioned.” Well then, if you’re sure…

**John:** Yeah. Well, so we will talk about that thing because that would be useful to talk about. Before we get into that though there is a little bit of housekeeping, because there’s always housekeeping on our show.

**Craig:** Always housekeeping.

**John:** There is always a little housekeeping.

We switched our server that the podcast is on. So if for some reason episode 99 did not show up properly in your feed or your device or your app or wherever you expect it to be, that’s probably because your system logged in at just exactly the wrong moment when Ryan was switching stuff over and so if that happens delete the thing that you have there and re-add it in iTunes or however you add it into your thing. It’ll be there; it will be magic.

The reason why we switched stuff up over is because there is some cool new stuff that’s coming next week that you’ll see that we had to go to a newer server to support. So, enjoy that.

Secondly, Craig, I have here something that you’re going to be so excited to see. This is the Golden Ticket. So, when we sent out the t-shirts we said, “Oh, you know what? There should be a Golden Ticket that’s provided with one t-shirt.” This was your idea, Craig.

**Craig:** I had one.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I had an idea.

**John:** It didn’t work out so well.

**Craig:** Here’s why…

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So the idea was somebody would open up their t-shirt package and there would be this Thank You card that everybody got and then they would turn it over and it would have the special message just for them, there was one of them.

**John:** Yeah. It was handwritten.

**Craig:** Yeah. And Stuart and Ryan — it’s fair to say Stuart and Ryan, or not that guy, but the real Stuart and Ryan — they never sent it out.

**John:** Yeah. Okay. But let’s talk about why it never got sent out. So, Craig, there is this big box of the postcards that went in with t-shirts and so Craig is like, “Well, let’s do this” and so, “Okay. That’s a good idea.” It seemed like a good idea. This is when we were recording the Dennis Palumbo episode. And so we’d sign all these cards, it’s a lot of cards to sign. And so we did this one special card and Craig put it back in the box, so like, ah, I have no idea where it is in the box.

**Craig:** Right. That’s the point.

**John:** It should be the point. It’s magical and like you don’t know where it’s going to be.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But then finally like no one was writing in. So like I said, “Guys, look through the rest of the box,” and there it was.

**Craig:** Well…

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of a bummer. What was the idea behind the golden ticket?

**Craig:** Well, the idea was you would get the golden ticket and on the back, well, here, I’ll read it.

**John:** Yeah. Well, it didn’t really quite say, but…

**Craig:** Oh, you’re right. Oh, yeah. “This is the golden ticket, email ‘Prairie’…”

**John:** Prairie was the magic word.

**Craig:** “…’Prairie’ to ask@johnaugust.com to tell us that you got it.” And then what we would tell you is, “John and I will read your script and we’ll talk to you about your script.” And we’ll, I mean, we’re not going to help you really. But we’ll give you feedback and stuff. You know.

**John:** Yeah. That would be nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. But it’s too bad. There is no…

**John:** I mean, would that have been a good thing? I mean, who would have been excited to get that? Yeah? Craig, I wish there was a way we could do that. I mean, we got to find another way to do that. I mean, whenever life sets challenges for me I usually think, “What would Oprah do?”

**Craig:** Oprah!

**John:** And it’s got me through so much.

**Craig:** What would Oprah do?

**John:** Well, you know what she would do? She would tell people to look underneath their chair; there might be something under one person’s chair.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** In the audience tonight.

**Craig:** So maybe they should look under their chairs.

**John:** Maybe everyone should look underneath their chairs.

**Craig:** Take a look under your chair.

**John:** Take a look under your chair. Take a feel under your chair.

**Craig:** Because one of you might have it. Look under your chairs.

**John:** Someone in this audience might have something that’s different than everyone else’s.

**Craig:** Someone has it. Anyone? Anyone? No?

Ya!

**John:** Oh my god! Come on up here and the audience can meet you.

**Craig:** Awesome!

**John:** What’s your name?

**Matt Smith:** My name is Matt Smith.

**John:** Matt Smith, I’m John August.

**Matt:** Hi, I met you in Chicago.

**John:** Oh, yeah! So, great.

**Craig:** What happened in Chicago?

**John:** We made a musical called Big Fish. You don’t really keep up with this…

**Craig:** Hey, hopefully you don’t have a script or anything like that. Do you?

**John:** Are you a writer?

**Matt:** Several.

**Craig:** Oh geez.

**John:** All right. So, do you have a script that you think would be appropriate for us to read?

**Matt:** Sure.

**John:** All right.

**Matt:** It’s like a pilot.

**John:** Oh pilots are great. We love.

**Craig:** It’s shorter than a screenplay!

**John:** [laughs] There’s a reason!

**Matt:** I could give you a short film if you want a short one.

**Craig:** What’s the shortest thing you got?

**John:** Yeah.

**Matt:** 130 pages.

**John:** So it’s a pilot?

**Matt:** Yeah.

**John:** I love a pilot.

**Craig:** Great! Awesome! Can we read it?

**Matt:** Sure.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** So the guy who is playing Stuart is going to track you down later on. He’s going to give you a magic email address that you’ll email to and…

**Matt:** Awesome.

**John:** We’ll talk about it.

**Matt:** Thanks guys.

**Craig:** You just got Oprahed! Awesome.

**John:** All right. Thank you so much.

**Craig:** I’m glad that worked out.

**Present John:** So, a few weeks later, we read Matt’s script. And we didn’t record it as an episode; it didn’t feel like it wanted to be an episode, and he wasn’t ready to share his script with the world.

I kind of remember it — I think it was a pilot, it was a summer camp. And there were things we liked about it and things that really weren’t working about it. And that’s sort of the nature of all scripts.

A really valuable experience I think for Matt, but also for us. It was just a phone call that wasn’t recorded, but it became the template for how we would talk about an entire screenplay on the podcast, which — many episodes later, in episode 190, we looked at KC Scott’s This is Working. And that really kind of had its genesis in the Golden Ticket that was found underneath Matt Smith’s chair.

So next up, we have our first guest who truly was our first guest: Aline Brosh McKenna. She was our first guest on the episode way back when in a live show we did. She’s had the most apperances on the show to date; she probably always will. She’s the only person who Craig has given me permission to bring on the show if he’s not available to record.

We call her our Joan Rivers because, well, she is indispensable in that way.

**John:** I was terrified that was not going to work out. Yeah.

**Craig:** Some guy is going to be like, “Nah! It’s never me. I’m not looking. I won’t look under my seat.”

**John:** No. No. No.

— I’m really not just checking Twitter. This is where all my notes are here.

It’s time to get onto the real meat of our show. And our first guest, and when I say first guest she really is our first guest. She was our first guest at our live show —

**Craig:** She was.

**John:** — in Austin, Texas. This is the writer of Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, the upcoming Cinderella. She is a friend of the show, a fan of the show. She’s kind of…

**Craig:** She’s our Joan Rivers.

**John:** She’s our Joan Rivers. This is Aline Brosh McKenna. Come on up.

**Craig:** Come on, Aline. Steps. You get yellow microphone.

**John:** Ooh!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** You don’t have your wine.

**Craig:** Oh god.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** We talked about this before we started, because the ideal amount of wine to have before recording a podcast is…

**Craig:** Between one and two glasses.

**Aline:** Craig said between one and two glasses. So this is the half.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s your, you’re onto your half

**Aline:** That’s my half. I’m on my half. I did it.

**Craig:** I did a full. I did one. That’s technically.

**Aline:** You did? Okay.

**John:** I did a little less than one. It’s a lot, so…

**Aline:** So I’m going to be way more entertaining.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Than both of you.

**John:** Let’s get to our first topic which is…

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig suggested this topic which is what is called Screenwriter-Plus. So what is a Screenwriter-Plus? What are you talking about here?

**Craig:** Well, I’ve been thinking about this lately because as we talk to people about the way our business is changing it occurred to me that there’s been this kind of huge change and I’m not sure anyone is really specifically talking about it in nature and that is what I call screenwriter, the job of Screenwriter-Plus.

When I started in the business, and we all pretty much started at the same time, it was fairly common for feature film writers to write a screenplay and then turn it into the studio and the studio and the producer would talk to you about your screenplay and then one day they’d say, “Okay, we’re interested in making this. We’re going to go find a director and a movie star.” And then they found those people and those people would talk to you maybe briefly or not. Maybe they would have somebody else come in and do a little thing or not. And then they go make the movie.

And you would show up at the premiere. That was kind of a routine sort of thing, not always, but often. It is so different now and there is this new position, there is just like a new way of thinking about a screenwriter and that is a screenwriter who — and forget titles — don’t worry about producer, producer-director, screenwriter. Just screenwriter. A screenwriter who writes a screenplay works with the studio and the producer, works with the director, works with the actors, is there during prep, is there during shooting, is there during editing, is in meetings talking about marketing, essentially as involved as the director is and maybe even more so because they pre-date the director often.

And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what you guys think about, is that real? Is that something that’s definitely happening and if it is, is it something that you need to be doing as a screenwriter and if so how do you get into that sort of thing, particularly if you’re trying to break into the business?

**Aline:** Well, I think partly the reason that’s happened is because of television and because there is such an ascendancy of television, so people are used to writer-producers. So they’re used to writers performing those functions. And I also think it’s because there are just fewer jobs, they’re less likely to bring in multiple writers on movies now. They kind of want to get their money’s worth and towards the end your steps towards the end you’re getting paid less money and they’re like, “Oh, we have this guy and he’s around. We’ve already paid for him and he’ll do this and maybe he’ll come look at this and look at some footage and …”

So, I’ve definitely notice that. And also as we were talking about earlier, there are a lot more writers who have become producers, who really have become officially producers and produce their own stuff and produce other people’s stuff. So I’ve definitely noticed that, but I think it’s any time you’re in a position to really protect your own work and to have input, it’s a great thing whether you get the title or not.

**John:** When you said showrunners I immediately was thinking about the guys who are doing these jobs right now and Damon Lindelof comes in on a movie, he was a showrunner, he comes in like Kurtzman/Orci, they come from that TV background where the writer is responsible for the script but also for this is the whole package, this is the everything, this is the marketing, this is the running of the show. Simon Kinberg, who you worked with, is the same kind of guy who does just features but very much is that guy. You think of him as much as being the guy who sort of delivers the movie as much as the guy who is putting the words on the page.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there are guys like Chris McQuarrie who have really done almost only features but they do this kind of thing. There has also been an interesting change in the way writers and directors work with each other because there was a kind of a weird antipathy between the two camps when I first started in movies. It was, I mean, sometimes you had directors that were really imperious, sometimes you had directors that were really cool but they almost felt like it was part of their job to exclude the writer. It was like their peer group essentially pressured them to sort of say, “Well, if you have a writer on the set you’re a loser, you’re not a real director” That seems to have changed almost to the point of being obliterated and gone the other way where they want you there, which is great I think.

**John:** A writer can be the director’s best ally, because the writer is there remembering what the intention was behind things and can be someone to back you up. So if you have a great relationship with the director that’s an incredibly useful thing.

I was thinking back through sort of my own movies and there have been movies which I’ve been in that function, sort of that writer plus. My very first movie Go, I was there before we hired Doug, I was there for every frame shot in second unit, I was in the editing room the whole time through; that was very much that function.

And Charlie’s Angels was that, too. I was there before McG was there and I sort of came back in. And even though a zillion other writers worked on that movie I was the guy who sort of captured the vision of things around because I had a relationship with Drew to sort of steer through.

But the Tim Burton movies, not at all. The Tim Burton movies I’ve been the writer and I show up to give them the script and help in pre-production but I’m not there…

**Craig:** Well, that’s interesting because that’s almost a generational thing because that Tim Burton does sort of — he became powerful in the 90s when that was still going on but, you know, like so I worked with Todd Phillips. He’s not like that at all. Seth Gordon is not like that at all. Marc Forster is not like that at all. So it just…

**Aline:** I mean, it’s always been confusing to me because I don’t understand why everyone isn’t clamoring for a writer on the set. I always feel like don’t you want the guy who’s just going to sit in his trailer and then things happen, you’re on location or something is not working out with an actor, you have a costume change, whatever, don’t you want to be able to run to that guy and have them fix it and change it? Because there are situations where the director who has so much to do is trying to figure out how to figure out a new piece of dialogue to cover something. And I think it’s strange that it’s not the other way — that they’re not begging us to be on set.

**Craig:** Well, I feel like they are now in a weird way. I never understood it. A lot of screenwriters would sit around and talk about this. I remember Phil Robinson said once. He said something to me and I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a great point.” Like, okay, we can grouch about how we’re not there but I guess the director, they have their thing, whatever. He’s like, “There is a standby painter, there’s a guy who literally just stands there and if something has to be painted…”

**Aline:** In case there needs some painting. Yeah.

**Craig:** In case something needs to be painted. But there is not somebody to be there in case a line needs to be written? It’s kind of crazy. And it never made sense and I kept waiting around for somebody to make sense of it for me and it seemed like instead the business went, “Oh, yeah, oh, no, it doesn’t actually make sense.”

**John:** But we talked about sort of who the directors are and some of the generational shift that they may be more inclusive of the writer and I think to J.J. Abrams who is having those guys around all the time because he came up in the television world.

**Aline:** Well, he came up in both. I mean, I would say that the guys who do that come out of two things. One is TV and the other one is production rewrites. So the production rewrite guys, which is Simon, and J.J. was that guy too, and McQuarrie, you know, the kind of high end guys, they’re accustomed to being on a set, solving problems, really being there in the same way as a TV writer-producer. So those guys are really accustomed to solving problems in a production situation.

Not all writers know how to do that, really, and it’s something that I know you’ve talked about and worked on, you have to kind of be there and get that experience and if you’ve been in television or you’ve done production rewrites you’ve been on production, some of the other — if you — before you’ve done that — we’ve had this conversation before where writers don’t always know how to comport themselves.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then there is this other kind of fascinating thing that I always think about which is there is this tremendous blind date that happens in the middle of your movie getting made which is you write a script and then it goes out to directors and it’s always like, “Well, I hope this goes okay.” Like you bring in a guy, you have a meeting, they say something. It’s like, “It sounds good. I don’t know. It seems okay.”

**John:** But it’s not even really a blind date though; it’s really an arranged marriage. Like, “This is good, this is going to work out. Right? This is going to work.”

**Aline:** Right. That’s true. A blind date implies choice.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You’re not going to throw acid on my face, right?

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Something stupid like that.

**Aline:** Yeah. But it is this incredible thing where like it’s not just creatively what they want but it’s also how they like to work and do they want writers around? Is that something that they want? Every guy is different, guy or gal.

**Craig:** Well, that’s true. And I think also that if you’re writing comedy you will likely end up in a situation where you get some of that experience because there is a certain immediacy with comedy and a lot of comedy writers end up on set trying to make things work if things are going a little sideways.

But I guess that brings up the question for all these guys. Okay, you’re starting out and the old narrative is, write a screenplay and then someone gets attached and someone gets attached and then it goes into the black box and a movie comes out. But that’s probably not going to really — that’s not necessarily what you want to aspire to anymore. What you want to aspire to is be part of the filmmaking process. To that end, it doesn’t make sense to say to budding screenwriters and aspiring screenwriters, “Don’t be — don’t settle just for I’m writing a great script. Learn how movies are made because if you don’t you’ll never know the other half of the job.” It’s like you’re a plumber that works on stuff until they turn the water on, but…

**Aline:** Well, we’ve seen that a lot of times. We know people who just — they just don’t know what to do when they get on the set. They don’t know how to behave, they don’t know where to get the food, they don’t know where to sit, they don’t know how to act… And the other thing is, younger —

**Craig:** Food is…

**Aline:** — Yeah. It’s important to know where it is and not to put your hand in the cereal box.

**John:** No. Dump out.

**Aline:** Yeah. So…

**Craig:** That happens?

**Aline:** Oh, I’ve seen that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** But the other thing is younger people have access to production in a way that we did not.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Aline:** I mean, those guys are all making movies. Everybody has made a movie; everybody is making a movie, everybody’s shooting a video. I mean, I’m working with a young woman now who shoots and produces and directs and does her own shorts; and so they have a lot more experience with production then I think we did when we were coming up and that’s great. You really have to understand how it’s made and also how to contribute, how to really make a contribution in a positive way to being part of the crew.

**John:** The general advice I would say for the aspiring writers who wonder sort of, “How do I become the Screenwriter Plus?” First you have to be a screenwriter, you have to be able to write generally to start, but you also have to really think of yourself as a filmmaker and so your function of filmmaking is to create that initial screenplay but to also be able to change and roll with it as things happen and so a lot of times the problem-solving you’re doing on the set isn’t because of a difficult actor, although a lot of times it’s the difficult actor. It’s because you lost a location or like suddenly we can’t make this thing work. So if we have this location versus this location, how do we make this scene work in this space?

**Aline:** I think it’s helpful to say, “It’s perfect. Just do it.”

**John:** Yeah. Don’t change the line.

**Aline:** I’m kidding.

**Craig:** Sometimes that actually works.

**John:** Sometimes you do. Sometimes that is the right answer but sometimes you need to be able to explain back and so I think I often credit you with saying this but I think you may not have been the first person that…

**Craig:** He is wrongly crediting you for a thing.

**Aline:** What did I say was brilliant?

**John:** The screenwriter is the only person who’s already seen the movie.

**Aline:** I don’t think I said that but I’ll pretend I did.

**John:** Okay, the useful thing to remember as a screenwriter is that you as a screenwriter have already seen the movie and the director and everybody else has not seen the movie because they didn’t write it, and they didn’t have that in their head and so sometimes they’ll make a choice that is not the right choice because they’re just still not quite getting the movie that’s in your head. And so if you could be there to help explain that in a very tactful way about what the intention was…

**Aline:** And also just you have custody of the story. It’s like Craig said, you know, there is all these like department heads and they have custody of certain parts of it and you have custody of the story.

I once had a director call me and he said, “I’m standing here on the set and there is a character in the scene. I don’t think he’s supposed to be here…”

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** “I think he’s supposed to have already gone home but I’m really tired.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** “And I can’t remember if this guy is supposed to be here or not.”

And I was like, “No. He’s drunk. He was walked home before that scene.”

He was like, “Thank you.” Just to have somebody around who actually knows, that’s all you have thought of.

**John:** It’s a call sheet mistake. Like his little number got put on the call sheet.

**Aline:** Right. But that’s why when I feel like a confident filmmaker is happy to have a writer there in charge of the story department to ask questions, but part of that is I think we need to acclimate directors and producers that we are going to behave in a helpful productive manner.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then ultimately the director is responsible for what’s going on to the film or the flash drive and because they’re responsible they have to have authority. You can’t have responsibility without authority. If you can figure out how to have a respectful relationship with that person and acknowledge that they have authority and accountability for what they’re doing you’ll be the greatest help to them.

One exercise that I would suggest is if you have some material, little something short that you want to shoot yourself, even if it’s just with your phone and you have somebody that you know who is also trying this, swap and see what it’s like to interpret somebody else’s work, and watch how many choices you make and watch how off you can be from what they thought it was supposed to be. Not necessarily bad, right, but start to understand what it’s like to be in those shoes.

And the more you can understand the nature of production, the psychological nature of production and also the procedural nature of production the more useful you will be to it and the more useful you’re to it the better chance you have to actually protect what matters.

**Aline:** Yeah. I also want to say those guys like J.J. and Alex, Bob and Simon, those guys are really as they produce stuff, even producing stuff that they didn’t write, they’re just invaluable on set because they’ve done the other job, too. So they understand how to communicate with writers. I mean, that’s why I’ve really enjoyed working with those guys who are producers but were writers first because I feel like they speak writer and I have such a good shorthand with them and they understand how to solve problems in a way that I understand. So I really love that. I think those guys are uniquely equipped to deal with the writing part of it is as producers.

**John:** Well, let’s get to next topic which is talking about the writing itself. And to join us on this topic I want to invite a gentleman who was one of my first assistants. He is a frequent suggester of material for our podcasts. He is the one who suggested 15 is the new 30 and which was a whole topic that we talked about. He’s also made some movies. He wrote and directed this movie called Dodgeball, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. He has this movie called We’re the Millers which comes out really soon. So, maybe you should go see that movie.

**Craig:** Couple of weeks.

**John:** Couple of weeks. August 7th I believe. So maybe we can hype that. This is Rawson Marshall Thurber. Rawson get up here.

**Present John:** So I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but Rawson Thurber was actually one of my very first assistants, way back in the day when I was doing a terrible TV show called DC for the WB network.

I hired Rawson — he was a Starkie, he was interning at William Morris in the mailroom there. And so I first met him, he was wearing this ill-fitting suit, and it was the last time I saw him in a suit. I guess I’ve seen him in suits for like his wedding and other things, but he’s not a suit wearer by nature.

So Rawson Thurber at this time of recording the episode, he had just directed We’re the Millers. We didn’t know then it was going to be a huge hit — it was a huge hit. And it really changed the trajectory of his directing career.

He had done some other movies beforehand, but this really put him on a lot bigger lists for bigger movies.

The one he’s directing now is Central Intelligence starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Heart. It’s shooting in Boston right now.

Rawson is always awesome.

**Craig:** Rawson! There he is. And Rawson for those of you who don’t know is the best-looking male screenwriter.

**Aline:** Yeah. There is a competition ongoing. There’s a calendar…

**Craig:** Well, we had a little chit-chat about it. There is a calendar. One question about the calendar, that we didn’t know, and you guys just mull this over, in sexy calendars is it supposed to get sexier as you go through the year? Is December better?

**Aline:** Well, there is this thing where there are lot of screenwriters who were…

[Audience member: Yes!]

**Craig:** Yes. She says yes.

**Aline:** Are there? Is it really…?

**Craig:** She says December is the hot one.

**Aline:** Is December hotter, is better than January? I don’t think so. But a lot of the good-looking screenwriters were actors.

**Craig:** Right, but he’s not.

**Aline:** And that disqualifies them. So that rockets Rawson right up there.

**Craig:** Right.

**Rawson Marshall Thurber:** Thank you. That’s so kind.

**Craig:** We don’t count, like, so he’s made a movie with Jennifer Aniston, she’s married to Justin Theroux. He’s a screenwriter…

**Aline:** Does not count.

**John:** Does not count.

**Craig:** But he’s an actor. Doesn’t count. That’s it. It’s not fair to us to include actors.

**John:** We have to be judged against your own cohort.

**Craig:** Right. And against his own cohort…

**John:** Also pretty good. What’s weird is that I think of Rawson as like this young child who came in to interview for an assistant job and you were working at the William Morris mailroom. You came in dressed in like a suit that did not fit you very well.

**Rawson:** No.

**John:** This is at Dick Wolf’s company and like you were on like a lunch break from William Morris and you kept being so insistent about like, “What my salary is going to be…?”

**Rawson:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** I think your dad had sort of drilled that into you, too, didn’t he?

**Rawson:** And gave me the suit. It was both of those things.

**Craig:** “Son, two bits of advice: wear my lucky suit and demand a salary over and over.”

**Rawson:** Yeah. I think I was just being paid so little at William Morris that I was like, “Look, if I’m going to leave I just, I want be able to it eat…”

**John:** Like that was it.

**Rawson:** It was really hunger. The hunger and shame. I think both of those things. The beats of a screenwriter.

**John:** There is no hunger but there is certainly some shame in the article that we’re going to be talking about from Slate. This is an article by Peter Suderman in which he argues that — I’m kind of reading of my phone here because that’s how I can read things — he argues that the reason movies feel formulaic these days is because there is a formula, a template, described by Blake Snyder in his 2005 book, Save the Cat.

This is a quote of what he said, “When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed beat sheet: 15 key story ‘beats’ — pivotal events that have to happen – and gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula.”

So before we start our discussion I want a show of hands of this audience, how many people have read Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat? It was a lot, I mean, this is common for aspiring screenwriters. Did any of you read it?

**Craig:** No!

**Rawson:** Never read it.

**Aline:** The explosion that ripped through Hollywood, I missed it when I was online shopping and eating pizza. I missed it.

**Craig:** Yeah. “Oh, did you hear there was an explosion that ripped through Hollywood the other day? Yeah, apparently now it’s a minute by minute break down.”

**Aline:** I totally missed it. I totally missed it.

**John:** Yeah. And so this article was on Slate. And a general rule I do follow is I never read the comments on articles but I figured like well, people are going to be responding. I’m curious how they’re going to be responding to this. And so the very first comment on this was from a guy name Shagbark and this is what Shagbark says. He says, “Also, other screenwriters including John August and Thomas Lennon, now quote Snyder’s numbers re. which page of the script each thing should happen on, without mentioning Snyder, as if they were universal truths instead of made-up numbers.”

Okay, first of all, fuck you Shagbark. To throw me in with this article saying like, “Oh John August got that thing from Blake Snyder…”

**Aline:** Anybody who’s a careful listener of this podcast knows that John August, who is the nicest person in the world, is secretly very angry.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not really a secret. I’m famous for letting it out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There is so much niceness over it that when it comes out, it’s a delight.

**Craig:** By the way, I’m Shagbark. You know that.

**John:** Oh yeah. You totally are Shagbark. Craig has been trolling me for the whole hundred episodes. So to say like, “Oh, John August said and took it from Blake Snyder.” I did not take it from Blake Snyder, I took it from like the fact that certain things tend to kind of happen at certain places.

**Craig:** Wait, wait are you saying maybe Blake Snyder took from something? Like the history of movies?

**John:** Maybe. Perhaps. Perhaps.

**Craig:** Or the history of storytelling, that either started 3000 years ago or in 2005?

**John:** I want to let our guests speak. [laughs]

**Rawson:** Thanks!

**John:** This is Rawson Thurber. So you’ve not read Blake Snyder’s book?

**Rawson:** I’ve not. No.

**John:** Are familiar with the book? Have you heard of this book?

**Rawson:** Only by title, until you sent me the article and I read the article, of course, and all the supplementary material, but I have not read the book.

**John:** Okay. And so what is your impression? Do you think there is a formula? Question: Are movies more formulaic than they have been or than they should be, is question A and if so, is there a formula?

**Rawson:** Well, I guess, I mean, I would say, are movies formulaic? I mean, yes and no. There are certain moves that need to happen in a three-act structure but, I mean, I feel like the article that — is it Peter, is that right? — that he wrote, I thought it was largely horse shit, frankly.

I think that it’s easy to kind of put all those touchstones and those beats retroactively back in and say like, “Look at Olympus Has Fallen, look at The Lone Ranger, look at all these things.” It’s really easy to do that and whether that’s right or wrong is one part of the article. The other piece that I thought was absolutely not true in my experience is that that is something that professionals in Hollywood are actively doing, which is fallacy and, I mean, I guess it makes a good article but it makes no sense. I’ve never ever in a meeting had anybody talk to me about any of these terms in any way like that.

**Craig:** Ever.

**Rawson:** Ever. Not even close.

**Craig:** Ever. Where do they make this? Is there some building where these people get together and say, “Let’s all agree that we don’t know shit and now let’s start assigning each other topics?”

**John:** Yes. It’s the new journalism. So really it’s a question of like whether it’s — if it’s journalism then you would actually interview a screenwriter to see if there was any basis of reality but it’s essentially an opinion piece based on sort of like one idea which is like a blog post…

**Aline:** Here is the thing. Here is the thing. There are tropes. There are tropes and there are things that reappear and there are people, you know, there are modes of storytelling that become fashionable and people adopt it but the idea that, I mean, when I looked at that I thought, I went to the 15 beats and I thought, “Oh maybe this will be helpful.”

**Rawson:** Yeah. I did the same thing.

**Aline:** Yeah. I was like, “Oh, maybe there is something good in here.” And you go and it’s like, it’s the same crap that everybody always says. And my feeling about those things is buy one book, buy Adventures in Screenwriting, buy Syd Field, buy this, buy one, take one class. There are sort of some basic principles and — look at Craig, he looks so horrified. There are some basic principles of storytelling that are good to sort of have run past you but the idea that anyone has — if it worked, people would do it.

**Rawson:** Of course.

**Aline:** If you could slavishly follow those things and they would work, they don’t. But I don’t think his contention that people are following it more and then it works, particularly he said it works better for male characters and then he said J.J’s whole canon is that and I really take exception to that because J.J. did Felicity and Alias and it has really nothing to do with that. No one consciously retrofits it. There are certain tropes of storytelling in the culture that will filter in; no one has ever consciously…

**Craig:** Yeah, there always have been. Narrative has, I mean, read Poetics. Aristotle talks about this stuff in Poetics. We might as well say that Poetics exploded through Hollywood in minus-2005, right.

**Aline:** “Oh, this protagonist.”

**Craig:** Right and apparently there needs to be a catharsis. Yes.

**Aline:** Whatever.

**Craig:** Yes. Storytelling — oh, we have a spider hanging out!

Sorry, I was distracted for a second.

Storytelling has a purpose and anything that has a purpose therefore will have a form to fit its function. This isn’t new and movies will vacillate in and around various different kinds of form to match their function, but I just want to be really clear for both the writer of this nonsense and anybody else that might have been susceptible to it. Nobody professionally in Hollywood, to echo what Rawson said, nobody talks about this book. I’ve never, no one has ever mentioned it to me and I mean anywhere, on any level, at any place. That’s how thorough that is. And anything inside of it that may be of some use to you is only of use to you in that regard. That it’s of use to you however it may do, but don’t think…

**Aline:** Good God, don’t mention it in a meeting.

**Craig:** Yeah. Oh, please because by the way that is literally like you might as well just stamp “rookie” on your head like, “Well, I read in Save the Cat…”

**Rawson:** I had one experience with Save the Cat, actually. There was an actor on a movie that I was directing who kept coming up to me, like about a week in he would come up and have these very strange ideas and questions about what we’re doing and where it was going. And I didn’t, you know, I would answer them and walk away sort of scratching my head. I didn’t quite understand like where this is all coming from. And he had an assistant named Jim, no Jimmy, and he would come up to me, the actor would come up to me and say, “You know, Jim was talking to me about” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and it all sounded super suspicious to me and I’m like, “Okay, okay.”

And then one day at wrap, they were leaving and I said goodbye to the actor and Jim was driving home and I saw in the backseat of Jim’s Prius was Save the Cat. And I went — Oh, you’re fucking kidding me! Of course! So that’s my only experience with Save the Cat which…

**Craig:** It’s deeply frustrating.

**John:** And how was Nick Nolte other than that?

**Rawson:** [laughs] No. It wasn’t Nick.

**Craig:** I just want to say also, just one thing that makes me nuts about this.

**Aline:** Umbrage, umbrage, umbrage.

**Craig:** It’s happening.

**John:** You know we actually seeded the article in Slate this week specifically so that it would …

**Craig:** The sad thing is like I know that and it’s still working. The purpose of these articles really if you think about it is to go, “These screenwriters, these filmmakers are just, they’re just machinists. They’re building IKEA furniture, you guys. There’s nothing special about what they do.” It’s all like, “Let’s demystify their nonsense.”

You know, I’m not going to say that we’re all amazing Mozarts, we’re not. But go ahead, Peter whatever, pick up that book and you go just as a goof, as a goof, follow it and write a screenplay. I’d love to read it and see just how amazing this explosive affair is.

**Aline:** Well, when you do pick them up, like when you do pick up those books or when you look at that I always find it so inscrutable and difficult. It’s like, “Here the hero either transcends or does not transcend the gate which he does or does not pass at which point he does triumph or does not triumph with a sidekick or without one.” And I’m always like…

**Craig:** There. Done. Problem solved.

**Rawson:** Writes itself.

**Craig:** It writes itself.

**Aline:** I wish it gave me something to use. I always find it like, “Has he crossed the threshold of the mighty river?” I don’t know. She’s got a job at a magazine. I don’t know. Is that the mighty river? It might be. I’m not sure.

**John:** My frustration with it is really the false causation, it’s the sense that, “Here I’ve noticed a pattern and therefore because I’ve noticed a pattern everything — I’m magical.” So it’s like saying like, “Many pop songs have a structure of one, six, four, five and like therefore every pop song after that point is following my structure that I identified.” No, it’s not. That’s just how songs work.

**Aline:** That’s analysis.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s the difference between reading and writing.

**John:** And so the reason why I’m willing to say three-acts for a movie is because like movies have beginnings, middles and ends. They just do. The projector turns on at a certain point, it turns off at a certain point. Like there are phases of a movie and it’s useful to be able to talk about those phases with terminology, but everything else is just inventions.

There was one thing I — because my function in the podcast is to play devil’s advocate — there is one thing I will say devil’s advocate. He calls out the, which is kind of just thrown in, but he calls out the villain who gets himself caught deliberately.

Guys, we need to stop doing that. We just need to stop doing that. It’s become the air duct.

**Aline:** And he’s in a glass room.

**John:** Yes. Right. Exactly. So, like, you know, we’ve caught the bad guy but no, no he meant to be caught. No, uh-uh. Stop. I want a ten-year moratorium on that.

**Craig:** It was cool when Heath Ledger did it.

**John:** Yeah. It was, it was great, remember when he did that?

**Craig:** I do remember that. That was awesome.

**Aline:** But that’s what I was talking about like there are these tropes that kind of filter through where there was a whole thing for a while when there were cop movies where it was like they were partners but they were shadow images, mirror images of the same person and their lives are really similar but wasn’t. That was a huge thing and culminated in Face/Off. There are kind of vogues in storytelling.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, that’s normal. That book won’t even help you chase. And you know my whole thing is: never chase. You write what you write, I’ve said this a hundred times. The only thing interesting about you is what’s specific to you. That’s it. If you’re writing something, if you’re just chasing the market, there are 50 people ahead of you in line who just better writers because they’ve been it longer. So don’t that, that’s crazy. But this book won’t even help you do that. It’s useless.

**John:** Useless

**Craig:** Useless!

**Rawson:** I think what Aline is saying is right is that there are tropes at work and you’re saying there is always a beginning, middle and end and one of the ones in the list that made a lot of sense to me is the sort of Dark Night of the Soul at the end of the second act, right, where everything looks like it’s lost.

**John:** The worst of the worst.

**Rawson:** That’s right. So when John and I, we both went to USC and we had, I think, the same instructor and she talked a lot about the three-act structure and how it works typically and the big moves in it. And that’s been incredibly helpful to me in my career. And so I don’t think you shouldn’t pay attention to these things but it doesn’t mean that they’re gospel and they have to be followed lockstep. But I do think there is some value there but if you pin your hopes to it you’ll be working at Ralphs.

**John:** I was watching a movie on the plane…

**Rawson:** — Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

**John:** Good to be working at Ralphs.

**Craig:** Would have been great if like four people just stood up, “Fuck you. It’s a decent living.”

**John:** I will say there was a movie I watched on the plane as I was flying back from Europe this week and it was really well executed, like the performances were really great but like the movie just didn’t quite hold up right. And I did look at it and say like, “You know what, the problem here is that it’s kind of not doing the things that it needs to do. Like your hero, your protagonist, she’s just not actually changing that much; you’re not making things difficult enough for her. It’s never reaching a real crisis.”

And so those are the kind of things that this book would point out. And so if reading this book makes you think about story in that way that’s useful. But also a smart person reading your scripts who knows about movies would also say the same thing.

**Craig:** Yes. Agreed.

**John:** Let us go to One Cool Thing which has been a staple of the show I think since the beginning. I think we started…

**Craig:** For you it’s been a staple. For me it’s just a nightmare.

**John:** Yeah. Every once in a while Craig will remember and sometimes they’re good. But, Aline would you kick us off with a One Cool Thing?

**Aline:** I will. I found a thing that had been I believe on PBS and then I found it on iTunes and I read about it. I didn’t watch it when it was on PBS and I just watched it recently. It’s three one-hour episodes, it’s a documentary, and I gobbled it up and each episode seemed like five minutes to me and I was in tears through most of it. And it has a very bad title. It’s called Making: The Women who Made America, or Who Make America.

It’s not a good title but it’s called Making and it’s the documentary about the women’s movement and it is so well done. And the interviews are so good and it’s so well balanced. And they talked to Phyllis Schlafly and they talked to Gloria Steinem and it’s incredibly well done and if you have interest in that subject matter it just whizzes by and I loved it.

**John:** Cool. Rawson Thurber.

**Rawson:** Yeah. This is, you might not like this one, but my One Cool Thing is actually this podcast which I love dearly.

**Aline:** Oh my god. Oh, he’s not your boss anymore! You don’t have to suck up anymore.

**Rawson:** I know. I know. But sincerely, it’s the truth. Like what you guys do every week for the screenwriting community is amazing. I listen to it all the time; I know a lot of friends do. And it’s really, really cool.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Aline:** Also you guys are really good-looking.

**John:** We’re built for audio podcasts.

**Craig:** Yeah. Faces for radio.

**John:** My One Cool Thing: So my go-to pen — I’m not actually like a person who like tries to have, like obsess about sort of things like, you know, light coming through a window at certain thing, but I hate a terrible pen. And so I like a good, cheap pen that I don’t care if I lose. So my go-to, cheap pen has been the Pilot G2.

[The crowd cheers]

**Aline:** Wow!

**John:** It’s a good pen.

**Craig:** Are you serious?

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Holy shit.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Rawson:** That was amazing.

**Craig:** I also…

**John:** Spontaneous love for the Pilot G2. It’s a really solid good pen and I love that pen. So wherever Stuart will like hand me a pen that’s not that I’m like, “Stuart, no.”

**Rawson:** Is it .05 or .07?

**John:** I like the .05 or the .07. Really the .05 is fine…

**Rawson:** That’s how I roll, too. The .05. I think I might have gotten that from you, the G2 .05.

**John:** It’s good. Well, this week…

**Craig:** They came out with the G3?

**John:** No. But Pilot has a new pen and it’s actually kind of an amazing pen. So it’s the Pilot Frixion.

**Aline:** It’s not a vibrator?

**John:** It’s not. Doesn’t it sound like it could be?

**Craig:** Aline has lost interest.

**John:** Although it has, Aline, it has a rubber component. So, here is the thing about the Pilot Frixion.

**Aline:** The Pilot Frottage.

**John:** Up until now you can only get them in Japan. You can now get them in the US on Amazon.

**Craig:** Or vibrating.

**John:** Yeah. You can get it on Amazon. They’re fairly cheap. If you lose one you’re not going to feel sad about it. They are erasable and like you would think like well an erasable pen would suck. All erasable pens have always sucked, right?

**Craig:** Yeah, like the kind in fourth grade.

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** They were terrible.

**Craig:** Paper Mate or whatever.

**Rawson:** They were terrible.

**John:** They were terrible. So the way this pen works is it writes just like a normal gel pen and it’s not quite as awesome as the G2 but it’s really solid and good. It’s a good solid pen and it can erase. And so when you erase it, it’s actually, the little rubber tip — I know this sounds really pornographic — the rubber tip creates heat and the heat actually makes it go invisible.

**Aline:** This is like a John August bit. This is like somebody wrote a John August bit.

**Craig:** I could not write that perfect. That was really — that was good.

**Aline:** It heats up, it gets a little bigger.

**John:** It gets a little bigger. And so my daughter has become obsessed with it, too, now because…

**Rawson:** Oh Jesus. Good night folks. Good night.

**John:** Here is the thing, because it can erase and if you’re a kid you make mistakes and you erase. Although, if you stick it in the freezer the hidden text comes back!

**Craig:** I mean, you’re just, you’re doing this on purpose now. “Although, if you put it up your ass…”

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** “And on the surface of the moon it’s amazing.”

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of great!

**Craig:** Frixion.

**John:** You got something better than that, Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** I have something so different than that.

**Aline:** I hope you have a vibrator.

**Present John:** So I want to point out that in episode 196, Craig’s One Cool Thing is the RocketBook Indiegogo project that is basically just the Frixion pen and a notebook.

So he is mocking me, and I’m just way ahead of the curve.

And for the record: I still like the Frixion pens. They’re not my most favorite go-to pen, but they’re still a solid pen; I would recommend them.

**Craig:** I have Two Cool Things.

**John:** Oh, yeah, he’s breaking the rules again.

**Craig:** Breaking the rules again, as always. So I don’t if you guys, on one of the podcasts we talked about our origin stories, like how we got started in the business because people often ask that question.

So tonight there are two people here, my first job, they gave me my first job in Los Angeles. It was 1992. I had just turned 21. Well, technically, my first job was temping at William Morris, typing their employee manual. And because some secretary had typed it, literally on a typewriter in the ’50s, and so I put it into Word Perfect.

But the next job I got was at this little ad agency and these two took a chance on this kid and, you know, I say all the time like luck — people overemphasize luck, chance favors the prepared and all that. And that’s true. But this was legitimately lucky that these were the people I met instead of total assholes because you there’s a lot of those, too.

And you can’t really replace what it means to be supported and valued by good human beings. So Nancy Fletcher and Julia Wayne could you please stand up?

**Aline:** Wow!

**Craig:** 21 years later. And also they would buy me lunch a lot which was really nice because I had no money. It’s great. So, you are my two. Oh, and also Julia and I, I’m not going to say what it was but she did something in front of me that is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, ever. Nothing will ever be funnier. Sometimes when I’m sad I think about it and I still laugh again. So thank you for that.

**John:** Aw. I have a couple of special thank yous, too. Stuart Friedel, or the man playing Stuart Friedel, please stand up. This is the man who edits our podcasts and makes us sound coherent when we’re drunk. I also need to thank Ryan Nelson who I think is in the very back of the room.

**Craig:** Ryan!

**John:** Ryan Nelson. Oh Ryan is up here now. He is the actual Ryan Nelson who designs all our apps. Along with Nima Yousefi who is also up here.

**Craig:** Nima!

**John:** Where’s Nima? Nima, the magical elf, who is just this week a full-time employee at Quote-Unquote Films. So hooray!

I need to thank everyone here for coming to this thing. We really, really wondered whether anyone would show up.

**Aline:** Awesome. So awesome.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And you did and that was so cool and it really means a lot. I’ll get sort of verklempt and weepy. But since that won’t happen, because I won’t let myself get verklempt…

**Craig:** I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.

**John:** I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. I’m just going to thank you and we’re going to applaud and then we’re going to do some questions. So hooray!

**Craig:** Woo!

**Present John** So, that’s episode 100! Almost 100 episodes later, the podcast is largely the same, but some things have changed.

For starters, our audience has gotten a lot bigger. We were probably 15 thousand per week back then. Now we’re about 50 thousand. And that’s about three times as many — more than three times as many. And that’s great. So thank you for listening to the show.

Our audio has also improved. This was a live show, so it doesn’t really count, but if you listen to a normal episode of the show now versus episodes ten or twenty — oh, it’s a huge difference. Some of that is better microphones, but a lot of it is Matthew Chilleli, who has been editing and mixing the shows, and they’ve just gotten so much better. So thank you, Matthew.

The last thing that’s changed is really the nature of podcasts itself. As they’ve become more popular, you’ve started to see these marquee titles like StartUp or Serial that are bringing people into the world of podcasting.

But I think the form itself is also evolving. In the second hundred Scriptnotes, we tried some very different types of episodes. We’ve done those deep-dives episodes like 183, where we looked at Gravity, 129 where we sat down with the makers of Final Draft, and episode 190, where we took a look at KC Scott’s This is Working.

They’re very different kinds of shows than just me and Craig talking about stuff. But I think the show is really at its heart about me and Craig talking about stuff. So over the next hundred or howevermany more of these we do, it will mostly be those kinds of shows. But I still want to continue experimenting, trying some new things. And I hope you’ll join us for whatever it is that comes next.

As always, our show is produced by Stuart Friedel — the real Stuart Friedel. It’s edited by Matthew Chilleli, who also wrote our outro. You can find links to some of the things we talked about in our show notes at johnaugust.com, along with transcripts to every single episode of the show, including the 100th episode that we just listened to.

If you’re listening to us on the blog, do us a favor and please click over to iTunes and subscribe, and while you’re there, leave us a comment so other people can know we’re worth listening to.

Last week on the show, I mentioned that I have a Kickstarter up for a brand new game called One Hit Kill.

We’re all funded now! So thank you everybody who baked us on Kickstarter. If you would like a copy of the game before anyone else, you have about two weeks to get in on the Kickstarter and get your copy of the game now.

So head over to Kickstarter and search for One Hit Kill. You’ll get to see the video that Ryan Nelson put together, along with the music that Matthew Chilelli wrote, which is great. So take a look at that, and a listen.

If you have a question for me, find me on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. Longer questions go to ask@johnaugust.com, and we will check the mailbag every once in a while for your questions there.

So for Craig Mazin, I’m John August. Thank you for listening to Scriptnotes, and we will see you next week.

Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, the 100th Episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* The Academy [Nicholl Fellowships](http://www.oscars.org/awards/nicholl/) in Screenwriting
* [Scriptnotes, 190: This Is Working](http://johnaugust.com/2015/this-is-working)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on IMDb
* [Rawson Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on IMDb
* Slate’s article on [Save the Cat!](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html) (and Stuart’s [review of the series](http://johnaugust.com/2012/in-which-stuart-reads-the-save-the-cat-books-and-tells-you-what-he-thought))
* [Makers: Women Who Make America](http://www.pbs.org/makers/home/) on PBS
* [Scriptnotes](http://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes): A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters
* The classic [Pilot G2](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GAOTSW/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and the brand new erasable [Pilot Frixion](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009QYH644/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Stuart](https://twitter.com/stuartfriedel), [Ryan](https://twitter.com/ryannelson) and [Nima](https://twitter.com/nyousefi) (and [Matthew](https://twitter.com/machelli))
* [One Hit Kill](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/913409803/one-hit-kill) is on Kickstarter now
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is episode 197 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig just opened up a Diet Coke. I could hear it. It sounded delicious.

Craig: It’s so good. I just read an interesting article somebody was writing about diet soda. Because, you know, ah, so good. Because, you know, it’s very —

John: Controversial?

Craig: Fashionable. I mean, is it controversial? I think people are trying to make it controversial but certainly fashionable is how I’d put it. Say, “Oh, god, aspartame in diet soda.” Yeah, actually, you know, one of the most studied substances in the human body is at this point aspartame and artificial sweeteners.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. The science is fairly clear like as clear as clear gets. And I know people are going tweet me and say, “Wah, wah, wah.” That’s what it’s going to sound like, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.”

John: Yeah. That is, and we actually have a filter that we built through the email that whenever one of those comes in it just goes “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.”

Craig: Yeah, it’s like the Peanuts teacher.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

John: It’s just a trombone with a little mute in there.

Craig: Yeah.

John: You know, going back and forth.

Craig: Yeah, when people talk about, you know, how GMOs are bad for you. All I hear is wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Yeah, because it feels good, man.

John: But I will tell you that that Diet Coke while not necessarily bad for you —

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: Would be incredibly bad for me if I were to drink this right now. Because we’re recording this at 4:30 PM on a Friday. If I were to have a Diet Coke after 3 PM, I would have a panic attack.

Craig: Oh.

John: It would feel like a heart attack. And then I would convince myself that I was having a heart attack and I would be driven to the emergency room.

Craig: Mm-hmm. Of course, you might be having a heart attack.

John: That’s the thing.

Craig: [laughs]

John: I’m in my 40s now. It’s actually reasonable that I could be having a heart attack. But when I was in my 20s, when I was like 22 and this happened the very first time —

Craig: Yeah.

John: I’m like, “Oh, my god, I’m having a heart attack,” and so I went to the emergency room. And they’re like, “You’re not having a heart attack. But when this happens again, you still have to come back,” so.

Craig: Yeah. That’s the problem with panic attacks. They are very similar. You must be very sensitive to caffeine.

John: I am. So I can’t — after about 2:30 PM I should not have caffeine at all.

Craig: I love caffeine.

John: Oh, it’s good, good substance.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Today on the podcast, we are going to answer a single question. We’ll attempt to answer a single question, “How do bad movies get made?”

Craig: I would have no idea!

John: So that’s our sole topic for the day but we have some follow up to get into first. First off, last week we asked, “Hey, should we make more of those USB drives that have all the episodes of Scriptnotes on them like when we cross 200? Is that a thing we should do?” And the answer was a resounding yes. So at some point after the 200th episode, we will have USB drives for sale that will have the entirety of Scriptnotes on them so you can hold them for after, you know, Armageddon comes.

Craig: Yeah.

John: You could still hold on to Scriptnotes.

Craig: I don’t need one. But I can see why people would want one.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And I’m gratified that they do.

John: Yeah, it’s nice.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Second bit of follow up. We asked in the last episode about a 200th episode kind of Google Hangout thing where we would attempt to do a live video feed for the show and there was an enthusiastic response for that and some suggestions. So we are thankful for everybody who suggested ways to do it or places to do it. We are sorting through that now but people can just generally anticipate for three weeks from now for episode 200, we will attempt to do some sort of live video thing. And so, we would attempt to do it at a time where at least people on the East Coast and West Coast of the United States are awake and could enjoy us talking about things, perhaps in a Google Hangout kind of situation.

Craig: That are interesting to screenwriters.

John: Yes. And we don’t know which guest we might have on that kind of show. A person who we need to have on the show very soon is Aline Brosh McKenna because her show just got picked up.

Craig: What? Wait, what show? What?

John: Yeah. You haven’t been following the news?

Craig: I don’t follow news.

John: So Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the show that she did with Rachel Bloom.

Craig: Yeah.

John: They did that for Showtime and it didn’t get picked up at Showtime. And so we’re like, well, that’s just terrible. And then suddenly, yesterday, we’re recording this on Friday, so Thursday, it was announced that the CW is picking it up.

Craig: Well, how about that. So it’s —

John: Yeah.

Craig: A second life. Well, that’s fantastic. We should definitely have — it’s been too long. We should have her on. There’s all sorts of people I want to have on the show. You know, I want to have Rian Johnson on the show. I want to have Chris Miller from Lord Miller. Not that — I love Phil Lord too but Chris said yeah, so.

John: Well, yeah, Chris Miller is just better than Phil Lord in almost every way.

Craig: Oh, don’t. Poor, Phil — Phil Lord is wonder.

John: Phil Lord is absolutely fine for being Phil Lord. But Chris Miller is Chris Miller.

Craig: Chris Miller is Chris Miller.

John: It’s like Derek Haas and Michael Brandt.

Craig: Oh.

John: Like, you know, they’re both lovely.

Craig: [laughs]

John: But —

Craig: Well, you see, you know, Derek is one of my best friends in the world. And so it’s not fair. I just don’t know Michael that well.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So, you know, it’s like, “What’s that name for the Baxter?”

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know they used to call the Baxter, the guy in the romantic comedy that has the girl but isn’t supposed to be with the girl. And her heroes —

John: Adult [woman role].

Craig: Yeah, and her hero is supposed to get the girl away from the Baxter, somehow Michael Brandt has become the Baxter. But actually Michael Brandt is very cool. Knows more about wine than anyone I’ve ever met.

John: Yes.

Craig: He’s a wine genius. I want Megan Amram to come on our show.

John: Oh, god, she’s so funny.

Craig: So funny. And you know what? I might as well just say, somebody that has agreed to be on our show and will be on our show is Katie Dippold who wrote The Heat and is writing the upcoming Ghostbusters re-jiggering.

John: Mm-hmm. Starring our best bud, Melissa McCarthy.

Craig: Starring our girl Melissa. And that’s pretty good.

John: Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Craig: Actually, right there, that’s a hell of a list.

John: While we’re talking fantasy list, I should just get it off the chest. I really would love to have Shonda Rhimes on the show. Shonda, I know from way back in film school. But Shonda is busy running a television empire. So at some point I would love to have her come on the show. So if somebody who is close to Shonda, might would just like nudge her and say, “By the way, John August who lives down the street would love to have you on the show.” I would love to have Shonda Rhimes on the show.

Craig: I don’t know anything about the Shonda-verse. I mean, I know her shows, but you know, I don’t — because I don’t watch TV, so I don’t know the Shonda verse. But certainly she is a titan of the industry and speaking of other showrunners that I do know that actually I could call up, Jenji Kohan.

John: Oh, my god, of course.

Craig: Who’s hysterical.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Should get her on the show.

John: Yeah. These are all great suggestions, Craig.

Craig: Oh, you know, who else we should get on the show?

John: Yes.

Craig: Glen Mazzara.

John: Yeah, and who was supposed to be on the show like about six months ago.

Craig: I know and is the best. There are so many people we have to get on the show.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I can’t believe we wasted an entire show on Ryan Knighton. [laughs]

John: [laughs] Ryan Knighton was fantastic.

Craig: He was.

John: Ryan Knighton who listens to the show the day it comes out.

Craig: I know. [laughs]

John: So right now he’s like, “Oh, yeah, screw you guys.”

Craig: Well, that’s — I did that for Ryan Knighton of course. Of course, we actually got a tweet back. I don’t know if you saw it from Chris O’Dowd. [laughs] Did you see that?

John: [laughs] Yes, Chris O’Dowd. But did Chris O’Dowd say that he looked nothing like him or agreed that he did look something like him?

Craig: He sort of just jumped into the fray in general to point out that somebody had said that Ryan Knighton and Chris O’Dowd were similar sort of from the nose down and I said, “Yes, they both have a jaw.” And Chris O’Dowd jumped into the fray to say that sometimes he even has two chins.

John: Well, that’s good. That’s an honest, true assessment of sometimes people’s physical realities.

Craig: [laughs] That was the most John August thing you’ve ever said.

John: [laughs]

Craig: [laughs] That was — if you guys want to know what it’s like if you take John August and boil him down to a delicious reduction —

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: It was that sentence.

John: All right, I’ll take it.

Craig: It was gorgeous.

John: The other thing I’m really known for is segues. Like talking about —

Craig: Oh, man.

John: Our 200 episodes and really our favorite episodes out of those 200. We asked last week what people’s favorite episodes were and we got just a shot-gun full of very different answers about what things were the best.

Craig: Yeah.

John: But they broke it down in sort of general categories. And so, some people love the craft episodes. Some people love our interviews. Some people love when we go deep on one movie. And there were, you know, a few other sort of recent hits which I think you would anticipate it if there’s a recency bias that people who listen to the show religiously, they’re going to think more about the ones they heard more recently than the ones from way back in the day.

Craig: Right.

John: But we will put together a list of some of our favorites and as we hit the 200, we will go through and highlight those as well.

Craig: I should mention that I did get a text from America’s favorite unpronounceable comedian Mike Birbiglia who said his vote for favorite episode for listener’s guide — is that — I don’t know. Is that what we’re calling it? Listener’s guide?

John: Yeah, listener’s guide.

Craig: Listener’s guide. The Conflict episode and the Directing episode.

John: Great.

Craig: He said Conflict episode is a three-peat for me. You should make a YouTube how-to video of it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Which I’m going to —

John: We’ll never do.

Craig: I’m just saying no to right now. [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Craig: Yeah, I’m going to say no, Mike Birbiglia.

John: That’s so much work.

Craig: No.

John: So, way back in the day I used to do these YouTube videos where it was like a screencast and I would start with a scene and sort of rewrite the scene and sort of talk through sort of why I was rewriting the scene like word by word, sentence by sentence. And people loved them. And I said like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll do more of them.” But the truth is they’re so incredibly exhausting to do that I just don’t know if I’ll ever get back to doing more of those.

Craig: I truly love the wonderful isolation tank of podcast DO.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know, it’s just nice. I don’t have to worry about anything.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I don’t even have to wear clothing if I don’t want to.

John: Yeah, he’s been naked most of this time.

Craig: Well, I’m naked all of the time under my clothes.

John: Yeah, sometimes he’s smoking. We never quite know what Craig is doing in his office in Pasadena while we’re recording the show.

Craig: Occasionally I’m cleaning fish.

John: Yeah, that does happen. Occasionally a cleaning woman walks by and takes the fish cuts away.

Craig: Correct.

John: Correct. The only last bit of business before we get to the topic at hand, One Hit Kill, which is the game we are launching. By the time you listen to this podcast it very well might have launched. So we’re launching, we anticipate, on Tuesday, the 12th and if you are interested in card games or things that smash into other things you will probably enjoy this card game. So just go to onehitkillgame.com or search Kickstarter for us because hopefully by the time you’re listening to this, we are up there in the world for you to back and pledge. And Craig now is fully converted to the world —

Craig: No, no, no.

John: Of crowd funding.

Craig: No, no, no. I would love to be included in the “we” on that but I am not part of the “we”.

John: Oh, he’s not part of this thing at all.

Craig: Yeah, I can’t —

John: Oh, lord, no.

Craig: I claim zero credit.

John: Yes, so when I say “we” I mean the people who work for me and my side of the company.

Craig: On the other hand, I also claim zero blame.

John: Yeah, true.

Craig: Yeah.

John: That’s the lovely thing about being sort of not involved.

Craig: Not my fault. Not my fault.

John: Not your fault.

Craig: Boy, there is a segue softball for you. Not my fault.

John: Absolutely. Let’s talk about movies that don’t work out. So Nima Yousefi who works for me phrased this question at lunch, “Hey, why don’t you talk about why they make bad movies?” And I was like, well, you know what, we never really framed the conversation around that but that’s a totally valid question.

Craig: Yeah, from the mouth of babes.

John: Yes. So let’s talk about this issue. And I guess we have to start by defining our terms. What do we even mean by bad? And, you know, we could talk about movies that are just genuinely terrible. They get bad critical review. They get bad audience reviews or like the very low consensus in general of the quality of the movie. But often we talk about the movies being flops because they just didn’t connect at the box office.

So, when I say bad movie, Craig, which of those kind of categories are you thinking about?

Craig: I never think about the box office honestly because I’ve seen some wonderful movies that people just didn’t go to see at the box office. I’ve seen some massive box office hits that I just didn’t like.

John: Yeah.

Craig: When I — honestly, when I think about a bad movie and I have a very limited definition. I’ll stipulate that upfront. I think about a movie that I don’t like at all.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I just don’t like it. It was bad for me. That’s sort of a thing on the end. And there are movies that are seemingly bad for everyone.

John: Yeah. I think that’s really, I think, what we should probably try to focus on is like the movies that just like, “Well, that just didn’t work.”

Craig: Right.

John: Because there’s certainly movies that are tremendously successful that I just can’t ever watch and I just don’t like and I don’t get.

Craig: Right.

John: But clearly somebody really loved that movie. So you can’t sort of definitely say like, “Oh, that didn’t work.” But there’s many movies that just don’t work and you sometimes scratch your head, saying, like, “How did that movie happen?”

Today, let’s talk through how those movies happen.

Craig: How do things go wrong? And it’s true that sometimes through the lens of time we will see that things that weren’t working actually were working. They just weren’t working in the right time.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They were ahead of their time. And it seems like a crazy thing to say. It sounds pompous. And sometimes the movies that are ahead of their time are low-brow culture.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But they foreshadowed something and they may have been rough around the edges. They may have been startling or shocking. Did you see by the way, there’s this wonderful video out there on the Internet about the genius of the first follower? Have you seen this video?

John: No. Tell me this.

Craig: So, it’s a guy narrating a simple video of a crowd at some sort of outdoor music festival. And the video is just of this small area of the crowd, mostly people sitting on a lawn. And one guy is dancing like a lunatic, all by himself. He’s all alone and he’s the kind of person that people would look at go, “Wow, what a freak.”

John: Yeah.

Craig: This is the leader. He is the brave leader who does something on his own for the first time. He doesn’t care if other people are doing it with him. And after about a minute of this, one dude just comes running in out of nowhere and starts dancing along with that guy and learning his dance and dancing with him. And other people see this and the second guy sort of gesturing back at his friends like, “Come on.” And now three or four people come to dance with the guy.

Now there’s about five people dancing. Then about, now people see a group of people dancing. And so a bunch of people were like, “Oh, yeah, cool. People dancing, I like to be a part of a group of people dancing.” And within 30 seconds, it goes from two people to five people to ten people to what seems like everyone, like hundreds of people all doing this.

And the point that the guy made was the leader is an interesting person but it’s the first follower who is the bravest and the first follower who is the most important. Sometimes with movies, the leader comes out and gets crushed.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s the first follower that kind of reaps the reward. So in time we may look back at that first, that first crazy guy dancing on the lawn and go, “Actually, you’re good.”

John: You know, thinking back through my own movies, a movie that I’m not especially happy with is the second Charlie’s Angels. And I was at some screening some place about a completely different movie and this guy in the audience came up and said, “Hey, I just want to let you know, I really love Full Throttle.” I’m like, “Wow, really, you really love it?” He’s like, “Yeah. It was like so much of an improvement over the first movie.” I’m like, “You’re the only person on earth who thinks that.”

And he said — he basically was a first follower. He’s like, the way it kind of made no sense and it just kind of came jumping from thing to thing, I thought it was like really avant-garde and sort of just — he had his whole theory at that that was deliberate in a certain way.

Craig: [laughs]

John: And —

Craig: Yeah.

John: And so, in some ways, I do kind of — I get that and there might be things you just love about something that is not necessarily the inherent qualities that the even creators were attempting to do but you might love something for a certain reason and sometimes the movies that are not great end up having a great influence.

If you look at some of the Grindhouse classics you wouldn’t say that those are great movies but they’ve had —

Craig: Right.

John: A tremendous influence on Tarantino but also a lot of other filmmakers.

Craig: That’s a great example of the first follower. Tarantino will get knocked around a little bit by some people that say, “Well, you know, all the great moments that you love in Pulp Fiction have been cribbed from other movies.” Yeah, but he’s the first follower. He knew to crib those. Where other people were just laughing at them because, frankly, a lot of those moments are from movies that are bad.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They’re just not well done.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But he was the first follower.

John: It was their lack of artistry that made them sort of incredibly exciting and sort of incredibly —

Craig: Or maybe they had one wonderful moment and then a lot of junk.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know.

John: Sometimes a movie cannot work because it was ahead of its time. And sometimes a movie just happens to be behind its time. And like, you know, while you were shooting the movie like, well, this is really current and then by the time it comes out, well, this is clumsily outdated.

Craig: Right.

John: So things involving technology often don’t age well and sometimes that aging process happens before they’re even out in the movie theatres. Sometimes that’s, you know, about computer technology, about hackers, about sort of anything related to the Internet. The Sandra Bullock movie The Net, The Web, the whatever —

Craig: Right.

John: I remember that coming out and it’s like, “Oh, wow, this movie is at least six months too late. This is not at all sort of what this world is.” The other challenge can be like you’re — there was a fad and that fad has now passed and now you seem just incredibly laughably out of date because no one is doing the Lambada anymore or skateboarding is not about gleaning the cube anymore. There’s just reasons why that moment has passed and now you’re still trying to hit those notes.

Craig: Like, if you were, say, dumb enough to make some sort of compendium spoof movie, at the end, long past perhaps the end of that trend.

John: Well, that’s just ridiculously bad actually.

Craig: No one would do that.

John: No one would ever do that.

Craig: That would be stupid.

John: But let’s talk about those, you know, some movies are just inherently bad ideas. And some, you know, you wouldn’t necessarily know that at that time but there are some movies, you’ll just look at them, it’s like, well, that was just never going to work. I don’t understand why you really thought a movie about talking baloney was going to be the thing that people wanted to see or like, you know, a romantic comedy about talking baloney was something that people wanted to see. And yet somehow it made it through all of these levels. Maybe we can dig in to sort of why sometimes something that looks on its surface like a bad idea makes it through.

Craig: Well, it’s hard to know that it’s a bad idea occasionally.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Sometimes you’re hit with an idea as a member of the audience, right. You see a trailer. You see something. And you look and you go, “That’s just an inherently bad idea because I don’t even know what it is.”

John: Yeah.

Craig: For instance, why would I watch a movie about talking baloney? But every now and then something comes along like that and everybody just goes, “Yup, love that.”

John: Yep.

Craig: “That thing. I love the talking baloney movie.” Sharknado was like —

John: Yes.

Craig: You know, now granted Sharknado was a goof, you know. But sometimes there are ideas that are such outliers you can’t tell if they’re an outlier bad or an outlier good.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They are just off. And you will have to find out if it’s off good or off bad.

John: Yeah. You won’t know. And sometimes those ideas get forced into the universe because of, you know, reasons that aren’t completely clear from the trailer or from the movie you’re actually watching. So sometimes there’s an incredibly powerful person behind it or a group of people behind it who say like, “You know what? We somehow for some reason trust that this thing could breakthrough, this thing could work.” And that could be a really powerful director. It could be a powerful producer. It could be a studio head who says, like, “No, no, I really think that the world needs, you know, a talking baloney movie because it’s going to be like the talking dog movies, but people love food and therefore we’re just going to do it.”

Craig: Yeah.

John: And sometimes a charismatic person or a powerful person can push that movie into existence, hire the people to do it and that movie now exists even though it’s not a good idea maybe on a fundamental level.

Craig: I’ll give you an example from my career.

John: Right.

Craig: I seem to have a lot of them. Very early on I had a writing partner and we did our first movie. And as that movie was in post or something like that, our managers came to us and said, “Look, Dimension Films wants to make a movie with Marlon Wayans and we need ideas for Marlon Wayans. So come and sit down and just pitch us ideas for Marlon Wayans.” We said okay. And we were very young and, you know, had basically written one thing and got paid for it. We were trying to make career as a screenwriter. So important person saying important person wants a movie with important person, let’s go sit and come up with some ideas. So we sat there for an afternoon. We came up with a bunch of log lines for the kinds of comedies they were making then, character-driven Jim Carrey-ish comedies.

And we came in and we just pitched them all one after another. And they picked the weirdest one. [laughs] They just said, “That one.” And they all agreed. “That one. And we’re making it.”

John: And, Craig, was the “that one” because they could picture the poster? What was it that singled that one out?

Craig: I don’t know. So the idea was a man only has four of his five senses at any given time but the missing one keeps switching. So, at some point he’s blind. At some point he’s deaf. At some point he can’t speak. At some point he can’t feel. It was a very strange idea but they all just got excited. They thought, this is exactly what the world needs and we said, “Oh, okay.” And they’re like, “Here’s a bunch of money. Go start writing it and you need to write it now because he has a thing on a schedule and we’re going to shoot it,” and we did it. And they were like, “Great.” And then they made it

John: [laughs]

Craig: But I remember very clearly —

John: And then it won an Oscar, right?

Craig: It didn’t. It didn’t. I do remember I was walking with my writing partner Greg and we were talking about, we had, you know, gotten paid to do this and we were figuring out how to write the script and we were just discussing it on a walk. And then he turned to me and he goes, “You think they’ll ever make this?” And I said, “Never in a million years will they make this. This is just a dumb idea.”

John: [laughs]

Craig: Well, they did make it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And the whole time we were like, “Wait. At some point, someone’s going to stop this, right?” [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Craig: And the crazy thing is we got to the first test screening and I thought, “This is where it’ll stop.” And the test, it was through the roof. It scored great. The audience loved it. And I was still like, “But it’s not — ”

John: But —

Craig: No one’s stopping this? [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Craig: And then eventually the audience stopped it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

John: I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this on the show. But at some point in your career, you must have been pitched or been advised to pitch on Clipped over — a Brian Grazer project.

Craig: Yes.

John: A Brian Grazer project at Imagine.

Craig: Of course.

John: So this project, I’d kind of love for it to made at this point because I think almost every screenwriter I’ve ever met has had this brought up to him or her, which is a project that Brian Grazer initiated and I think some scripts have been written for it. And it involves a man who gets a paperclip stuck in his brain or like up his nose and like it touches his brain. And I think that’s the entire premise.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And I think it’s gone in a gazillion different directions but that’s the premise. And so, you’ll go into one of these general meetings and they’ll say like, “Oh, and we also have Clipped and like we’re really excited to make this movie.” And you’re like, “Well, but, tell me about it.” It’s like, a man gets a paperclip stuck up his brain. And it’s like, “Okay.”

Craig: Right. Rob Schneider is a Carrot.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And that, there is this thing that happens where powerful people get an idea that they can’t let go of.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And everybody, at some point or another, has an idiosyncratic attraction to an idea that few others do. I do. We all do. But the difference is, if you run a big studio that’s making a lot of money for another big studio, you get to constantly impose your idiosyncratic obsession at everyone.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So when they have these meetings and they say, “Well, we have something we’re really excited about,” they’re not excited about it. They hate it. [laughs]

John: Yeah.

Craig: They just know that their boss is. And there have been movies — someone should make a list of these. Movies that seemingly everyone in the Writers Guild has been hired to work on at some point or another, like Stretch Armstrong is —

John: Yeah. Yesterday we were talking about Bob the Musical which really I think everyone has worked on.

Craig: Yeah. There’s a good list of movies that have done nothing but generate dues for the Writers Guild [laughs] and will never actually get made.

John: Well, I think Taylor Lautner at some point got like a big payday for doing Stretch Armstrong, which of course never happened.

Craig: Stretch Armstrong, at this point, the story that somebody should make is the story of trying to make Stretch Armstrong. The movie will refuse to be made at all times. And no matter how close you get, it will not be made. It’s a remarkable story.

John: Circling back to Lord and Miller, I think one of the things we need to blame them for whenever we get them on the show is —

Craig: Boo.

John: The tremendous success of The Lego Movie means that anybody who has like any piece of this like random IP can genuinely say like, “Well, look at The Lego Movie. They had nothing and then they made something amazing.” So, you know, Stretch Armstrong is at least a character.

Craig: Right. So then you want to say, “Actually, no, The Lego Movie had Batman.” [laughs]

John: That’s absolutely true.

Craig: Yeah. No, The Lego Movie had Batman and it had Abraham Lincoln. It had all sorts of cool stuff. But I imagine that Chris and Phil have no idea. When you are involved in the thing that people are copying, you generally aren’t the person that knows about it that much, you know. I mean, I got sent a bunch of Hangover-y type stuff, but when The Hangover was kind of doing its thing, everybody was basically like, “It’s Hangover but blank. It’s Hangover with this. It’s Hangover with that.”

John: Yeah.

Craig: And I don’t think Chris and Phil know [laughs] how much it’s Lego Movie is going on out there.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Which, by the way, is another reason why bad movies happen, because studios tend to play follow the leader.

John: So I want to talk about this IP thing because that becomes an issue as well, is that let’s say you have a big piece of property. Let’s say you’re Hasbro and you have a big piece of property and you say like, “You know what, I think there’s a movie here. Look at The Lego Movie. I will give you, studio, the opportunity to make this movie but the clock is ticking.”

Craig: Right.

John: And you and I have both encountered many situations where they say like, “Listen, we have to make this movie by this time or else we’ll lose the rights to X, Y, or Z.”

Craig: Yes.

John: And Battleship was apparently that situation by many accounts. They had this title that they really liked. They wanted to make a movie called Battleship and it got rushed. It got rushed to make that movie. Similar thing happened with Spider-Man. So Sony had the rights to make Spider-Man movies.

Craig: Yeah.

John: But they had to keep making Spider-Man movies. If they stopped making them for a period of time, the rights would revert back to Marvel. So that’s a trap often with IP is there’s a clock attached to it.

Craig: Yeah. There is this thing in economics called the Concorde Fallacy. When they were building the Concorde, they said, “Well, it makes sense because we’ve done the numbers and it’s going to cost $700 million to build this plane but we believe at that cost, we will be able to at least break even.” And everybody said okay. And they spent about $300 million and went, “All right, actually, it’s going to cost $1.4 billion and we’re never going to be able to make money on it.” And someone said, “Yeah, but what are we supposed to do? Just stop and just have nothing to show for our $300 million? Of course not. Let’s keep going and build it.”

John: And let’s keep going and build it sometimes had paid off incredibly well in the movie business. And classically, Titanic, hugely over budget.

Craig: Right.

John: And could have just been a complete whiff and a miss, and instead became, for the time, the biggest movie in history.

Craig: That’s right.

John: And Cameron beat himself again after that with Avatar. So sometimes, those crazy bets really do pay off. Again, another crazy bet was The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, like basically betting the entire studio on these three films working, and it worked. So sometimes those are good choices. In the case of Battleship, it didn’t work out well for most of these people.

Craig: And that, by the way, is another answer to Nima’s question. Why do bad movies happen? Because everybody’s hoping that it’ll work.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And everybody looks at history and goes, well, you know, Fox sold off international on Titanic to Paramount because they were afraid that they had a flop on their hands with Titanic. Well, they shouldn’t have done it. Fox also let George Lucas keep merchandising and sequel rights in order to have him put money in on the budget or however it worked on Star Wars because they were frightened of that project as well. Well, are we going to be brave like Star Wars and Titanic or are we going to be scared, you know?

Well, the problem is, if you act like your movie is a big hit, it will come back to bite you if it’s not, so you actually can’t say ahead of time, one way or the other, which of the narratives is the appropriate one.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You might as well cite no narratives. You might as well just admit you can’t predict it, don’t tell me about the outliers on either side, let’s just deal with what we have. But a lot of times people are kind of clinging to outlier hopes.

John: Well, it’s like they’re playing poker and they’re really hoping they can fill an inside straight. And rarely are they going to be able to fill that inside straight, but the cost of folding is so high. Essentially, you’re in for so much and if you try to cancel a movie — like you can, theoretically, like, you know what, we’re $20 million in this movie, we still have another eight weeks of shooting, it’s going to cost us so much money, we’re just going to pull the plug.

That’s happened. I can think maybe five times in my Hollywood experience have I seen a move just actually get the plug pulled on it because kind of worse than a flop is just like burning a bunch of money and having nothing to show for it.

Craig: Yeah. This is why gambling is addictive for so many people. It’s entirely about the rush of beating the odds. And frankly, the movie business is, in part, about the rush of beating the odds. The odds are stacked against you to be hired. The odds are stacked against your movie to be green-lit. The odds are stacked against your movie to do well.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So when you beat it, you’re now chasing that rush all the time. The other thing that studios have to deal with, and this is another reason why bad movies do get made, is they have a pipeline. And the pipeline is this big infrastructure of salaries and offices and materials that exist to put movies out into the world. If you don’t have movies to put out in the world, you’re paying all those people lots and lots of money for nothing.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So they must fill their pipeline. They must make a certain number of movies. And if they don’t, they have failed as executives. They failed. You can’t go to your board and say, “I actually only found three movies I liked, so we only made three.” No. You were tasked to make 15 movies. If you couldn’t find the other 13, it’s your fault. Much better to say, “I made 15 movies. These should have worked.” Better to swing more than to take pitches.

John: Absolutely. So, a couple of weeks ago, I went and saw a very early cut of a film that a friend of ours is directing. And it was a great early cut. It’s going to be a really good movie. But I didn’t know anything about the history of the film. So I was like, oh, who’s — because it was over at like one of the nearby studio lots and I said like, “Oh, who’s releasing this?” He’s like, “Oh, it’s actually this company that they’ve put out their own slate and they’re going to release it themselves.” I’m like, “That is fascinating. And that will probably end in tears.”

I hope it doesn’t end in tears but it’s so challenging to try to become a new studio because how are you going to hold all those talented people from movie to movie to movie to release this thing? It’s just an incredibly difficult job. And that’s why I have sympathy for studio executives because they are trying to make sure that they can keep everyone continuously employed and also still make the best movies at the same time. And those aren’t necessarily perfectly aligning goals.

Craig: Yeah. That’s right. Sometimes when you want something, you have to get into business with somebody and take a bunch of stuff you don’t want.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Which, of course, ironically, is the same model that the studios then turn around and foist upon the theaters.

John: Yeah.

Craig: If you want Avengers, you also have to take this stinker.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Well, if you want to be in business with Brad Pitt’s company or you want to be in business with Scott Rudin or you want to be in business with Neil Moritz, you’re hoping that you get, you know, their big awesome stuff, you might also get the other stuff. You never know. And you might need to take both to kind of make it all work. Sometimes movies will be made to keep people happy.

John: Yeah, absolutely. It keeps your relationship with a major actor happy. It keeps your relationship with a prolific producer happy. If you let this director direct this one film in hopes that she will also direct this other one. You basically make a twofer deal that, you know, we will do this one that we don’t genuinely believe in and you’ll get this other one.

And classically, some directors and some producers had put films where they basically say, “Over the course of my contract, I am allowed to come to you with a project and you can pass but I can still say, uh-uh, you’re making it for up to this budget.” And that has rarely ended well for the people involved.

Craig: Yeah. You know, a lot of the let’s say, we’ll call them privileges that people had are gone. The business has changed in such a way that these perks have disappeared because everybody got burned and because the corporate control has become that much more scrutinizing. The problem with things like put movies where you can say, “No, no. You have to make this movie,” is they have to make it. And I’ve found in my life in all aspects, forcing people to do something doesn’t work out in any situation, even if it’s good for them.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Unless they’re children, it doesn’t work. You want people to actually want to do something with you.

John: Absolutely. So we were talking before about some bad ideas that become movies. But sometimes you start with a really good idea. And sometimes even at the marketing or kind of deep within that movie you can see like, “There’s a good idea there but it didn’t work.” And so let’s talk about some of those things that happened to those good ideas that ended up resulting in bad movies.

So, start with the director. Sometimes just the wrong director was hired or a theoretically good director who just made weird choices that did not end up serving the film. And you and I both have been involved in projects where like, wow, with a different director, that could have worked out so much better than it did work out right here.

Craig: Yeah. This is the eternal lament of the screenwriter, if only for the director. And it’s a little unfair in the sense that when the director works out, we go, “See, they did what we told them to do in the script.”

John: Obvious.

Craig: And great. And when it doesn’t, “Ah, the director.” The truth is that all movies are impacted dramatically by so many of the director’s decisions. And when a movie works, you have to give the director an enormous amount of credit. And then when a movie fails, you have to give the director an enormous amount of blame. It’s a high-risk/high reward gig.

The mismatch of director and material, more often than not, is the thing that sinks a movie. They have a vision and the vision is competing with the material. They are trying to make a different movie. And what happens is everybody else is hanging on saying, “Well, the reason we hired you in the first place, the reason we’re spending all this money is because this feeling we had about a different vision. So we’ll just keep tugging you this way and the director will keep tugging that way.” And then you end up with this mush.

John: Yeah. You’re somewhere in the middle and that’s never where you want to end up.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So, almost as commonly as the director being the wrong person, it’s a star being the wrong person. And it’s not hard to think of examples of, “That was a great idea for a movie. That was not the person to star in this film.” And, you know, either that person was miscast in the sense of like you were making a comedy and that person is just inherently not funny. Or you don’t fundamentally believe the chemistry between these people that you’ve put up on screen together.

And that is terrible when it happens because you’ve wasted all of this time and money and energy on something that people just fundamentally don’t buy into.

Craig: Yeah. There’s two kinds of miscasting. There’s the kind where the director, again, simply doesn’t see a problem. They have a vision that is completely incompatible with the material and with the people now that they’ve placed in the position of performing the parts.

The other kind of miscasting is the studio forcing something. I’m not sure which one is more common. I can say this. I remember seeing a poster for The Truman Show before I knew anything about it and I thought, “So that’s miscast.” [laughs] Why is Peter Weir making that movie with that guy? It’s just miscast.

Awesome movie. My favorite Jim Carrey performance by far. Loved it. And it totally worked. Peter Weir is a master of casting, I would argue. His casting instincts are extraordinary. And he’s also cast people that I haven’t liked in other things and I’ve loved them in his movies. But then there are times where you go, “Why is that person in that movie?” That just feels like, “Well, it’s a movie star, so that’ll work, right?”

John: No.

Craig: No, it won’t.

John: No, it will not. It’s a real thing. And a good thought exercise is to imagine some of your favorite films and then imagine who their second choice was in that role, and it’s just not fundamentally the same movie. Indiana Jones, classically, it’s very hard to imagine that character not being Harrison Ford, of the films that we’ve seen him in.

And it doesn’t mean that he made the movie, you know, that movie was written and directed with, you know, incredible, intense care but there’s something right about him in that spot. And they were very smart in their casting to see him and say, “Oh, that is the guy who should do that.”

Craig: But he was not the first choice.

John: He was not the first choice. Wasn’t it Tom Selleck?

Craig: Tom Selleck.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Tom Selleck couldn’t do it ultimately because they wouldn’t let him out, schedule-wise, for enough time from Magnum, P.I.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And, you know, that’s just —

John: And Tom Selleck would’ve been fine. He’s a talented actor, certainly. But I don’t think, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the iconic movie with him in it.

Craig: You know, here’s the thing. Who knows?

John: Who knows?

Craig: Who knows?

John: We could be wrong.

Craig: You just don’t know. Like people start with an idea of who the star is and then the craziest things happen. You know, Jeff Conaway was supposed to be the start of Taxi.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I mean, he got top billing and everything. Just didn’t work out that way.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Rob Lowe was supposed to be the star of The West Wing.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Or West Wing, sorry. And it just didn’t work out that way.

John: Yeah, but that’s the luxury of television. In television, you can go episode by episode and sort of see what’s working and you can change along the way. A feature is like a TV show that you shoot exactly one episode of.

Craig: That’s right.

John: And you won’t know. And the cameras will be put away and you’ll be out there in the world and you won’t know. So you won’t know if you’ve made Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts and you’ve created a huge star or you’ve made like a really creepy movie about a guy who hires a hooker but it’s trying to be funny.

Craig: Yeah. It’s sort of like the entertainment version of the nature and nurture situation. Television allows you to nurture something.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And you can impact it and affect it environmentally and change it as you need to. Movies are entirely about nature. I am putting some DNA together, clapping my hands, walking away. Hope to God I did it right [laughs] because that’s it. It is what it is.

John: But sometimes you can change things. And part of the way you change things is by, you know, editing the movie together, showing it to an audience and then making changes based on what the audience tells you. And I think you and I have both encountered suggestions from the audience that the studio will be very excited about that you know are like just the worst ideas imaginable.

And sometimes the studio will say yes because they want the audience to be happy and they’ll make choices that hurt the movie but might bump up the needle a tiny bit.

Craig: So, the idea of chasing a score was I think more prominent. In a strange way, I see it less and less now. You think you’d see it more and more. As studios become more corporate, they would adhere more to some kind of empirical evidence-based system of quality rather than trusting instincts. But the score has failed them so many times, so many times, that they are now smart enough, I think, to know score, shmore.

How did it play in the room? Let’s just feel the room. And then when people talk to us, let’s think about why they’re saying what they’re saying. Because they also have experienced where they didn’t do what the 25 people in the focus group said. “Oh, you should totally do this and this and this.” They listened, they heard the movie, they went back, they made the changes that they felt were right.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Came back to a new audience and it killed.

John: Yup. And so I don’t want to sort of denigrate all audience testing because it is a crucial part of sort of knowing what movie you actually made and how it plays to audiences. Seth Rogen camp I know is very well known for putting the video cameras in the theatre so they can actually go back to the tape and see, “Ah-ha, you thought this was funny but there’s actually no laugh. It’s not actually a joke.”

Craig: For comedy, I’m a huge believer on that and I know Todd Phillips does it for all of his movies. All the movies I did with David Zucker, we did it, because frankly, there’s a ton of debate in an editing room about, “No, people loved that.” “No, they didn’t.” “No, they didn’t.”

So all right, let’s go to the video tape. And then you can watch it. But the other great thing about watching that night vision video of the audience is you can see them getting bored, you can see them leaning forward because they’re into it. There are things that they do silently that are informative that you cannot see from the back of their heads.

John: Absolutely true.

Craig: So it’s really important to see and feel your movie with an audience. And you’re right, there are opportunities to “save a movie,” but only if the movie is savable. There’s a difference between this a good movie gone wrong and this is a bad movie.

John: Another framework I want to look at is sometimes a movie is mismarketed. And it’s not just that the trailer is wrong or the advertising is wrong, but literally, this was meant to be a tiny art film and now you’re trying to push it out to 2,000 screens and it cannot connect with that audience in that way. And I think we’ve all encountered films that got of pushed way beyond where they should have been and they suffered for it. They suffered from that expectation of like, “Oh, this was meant to be a giant crowd pleaser.” But no, it’s actually a movie that’s going to play really well at a festival. It was never designed to be going so big and so wide. You set this weird expectation by opening a certain way.

Craig: Yeah.

John: The same thing happens with the images you’re showing in your trailers, images you’re showing in commercials. If you’re selling something as, you know, a feel good comedy but it’s actually about suicide, you’re going to hit blowback and that’s going to hurt you down the road.

Craig: Yeah. I feel like there are two oppositional errors that occur with marketing. On the one hand, you have the filmmakers who feel a way about their movie and insist that the marketing reflect it. “I made a dark treatise blah, blah, blah. You’re trivializing it with this ridiculous ad. I need you to sell the movie I made.” And they do and everybody goes, nope. So that’s one kind. But the oppositional error to that is the marketing team says, “You know, our testing shows that blah, blah, blah in this segment and so forth, we’re going to sell this movie as a romantic comedy even though it’s not.”

And even putting aside the phenomenon of “I thought I was getting this, but I went to the movie and got that,” people don’t even go because they smell something wrong from the start. It seems synthetic. It seems like they’re forcing something that isn’t right. And these two kinds of errors occur all the time and it’s a discussion that frankly filmmakers and marketing executives need to have very early or else there’s trouble.

John: You will find that directors and screenwriters and the creative people on a movie don’t enjoy having this early marketing discussion because they feel like marketing is going to try to influence the movie they make. Well, they are to the degree that marketing is going to try to influence you to make a movie that they can actually market it.

And if they don’t understand how to market your film, you’re going to suffer down the road. So it’s eating your broccoli, go in and take that meeting and really talk through what it is you’re trying to do and what it’s trying to feel like. So you can be on something like the same page.

You know, when things work really well, sometimes, you know — this actually happened on Go — they cut a trailer that was actually really good. It helped inform us about our movie. It’s like, “Oh, I get what that movie feels like.” Actually, even better example is the first Charlie’s Angels because we were floundering and we were in a cut and we just didn’t know where we were. And then the good folks at Columbia or whatever trailer house they used, cut a really great trailer for it and like got us really excited. It’s like, “Oh, let’s make the movie that goes with that trailer.” And we knew that we had that movie in there? And that helped provide us some focus.

Craig: Yeah. There are unfortunately some movies that are wonderful and they are unsellable in a traditional way.

John: Yeah.

Craig: One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride. It’s probably one of everyone’s favorite movie. In a world without The Princess Bride, it’s hard to sell the Princess Bride. And in fact, they really struggled. The Princess Bride in 1987 opened to a $4.5 million which is not that great. And it ended up making $30 million which in 1987 just wasn’t that great.

Now, that of course, retrospectively has become a beloved classic and I fear the day that they reboot it. But really hard to sell because ultimately what made The Princess Bride great was that gestalt of the experience. It was one of those movies where you just needed to kind of see it. Another movie that I love is Time Bandits. I think Time Bandits is brilliant. And Terry Gilliam in particular has made a career of unsellable great movies.

John: Yeah, 12 Monkeys, yeah.

Craig: Unsellable, great movie. Baron Munchausen, unsellable, great movie. Time Bandits, unsellable, great movie.

John: Yeah. You know, I remember seeing Time Bandits in the theater and I think it was just one of those summer movie series when I was a kid in school. And so I had no idea what it was. But it was like, “Wait, this is a movie that exists in the world?” It was just so crazy pants.

Craig: Yeah.

John: I loved it.

Craig: It was mind blowing to me. And it was just so — I still and I will always for the span of my life, the dwindling span of my life, I will never forget the feeling I had when the dwarves started pushing on that kid’s bedroom wall and the wall started moving —

John: Yeah.

Craig: And became this crazy hallway through time. My little brain went, “What?”

John: What? It was an acid trip before acid.

Craig: I was. I mean, God, Gilliam, what a genius.

John: Yeah.

Craig: What a genius.

John: So before we go too deep into the, “Oh, it’s actually a good movie,” let’s do sort of cycle back through and say like, “You know what, sometimes movies just are bad.”

Craig: Yeah.

John: And we have to acknowledge that there are movies that are just — they’re just not good. And they flop because they’re terrible. And the take home I want everyone to have is that while you’re making them, you probably didn’t know they were terrible. I would also want everyone to know that it takes just as much work to make a bad movie as a good movie, like sometimes even more work because whatever happened that caused that bad movie to exist in the world was probably really challenging and painful for the people involved.

No one showed up on the first day and said like, “Let’s make a terrible movie.” They really thought they were making something good. They thought they were swinging for the fences. They thought they were taking a brave dare, a risk that was going to pay off, and it didn’t.

And so we need to make sure that we don’t slam the bad movie so hard that no one tries to take any risks. And I kind of have a worry that’s what’s happening overall as an industry right now, is that we are making safer and safer bets, you know, expensive bets but safer bets on the films that will do okay kind of no matter what.

Craig: Yeah.

John: I don’t know if you feel the same way.

Craig: I do. I mean the fear of the bad movie isn’t a fear so much of just losing money, it’s a fear of how traumatic the process is in your attempt to save it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: When critics say this movie is lazy, that’s the stupidest thing any critic can say. The least lazy movies are the bad ones.

John: Yeah.

Craig: There is nothing easier than taking a very healthy baby home from the hospital. Well, there is a lot of things easier, but in the world of babies, healthy baby is the easiest baby. The hard baby is the one that’s sick because that one is stressful and requires resources and time and anxiety and sometimes cannot be saved and there’s terrible grief and you’re working crazy hours through while you’re also suffering and you’re thinking to yourself, I’m now working around the clock on something that can only be bad.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I’m trying to get it from, “Oh my god, that’s the worst thing ever to merely bad.”

John: Yeah. We’ve both had conversations where, you know, under the code of silence we say like, “I’m trying to bring this from like a D to a B-.”

Craig: Right.

John: And you know, there’s not an A to be found, but you’re trying to make it up to just a salvageable level where you can at least see the intention behind it. The good moments are highlighted and you’ve gotten through the bad moments as painlessly as possible.

Craig: Yes. There is a misconception among many people that study film, because they are consumers of completed products, that movies are excreted whole from a mind. This is not at all true ever. All movies are like cars that are being built while you’re driving them.

John: Yup.

Craig: All of them. And every good movie is a compendium both of intentional smart choices and unintentional happy accidents. Every bad movie similarly is a compendium of bad choices and bad accidents. And when you’re on one of those cars and you know basically now the idea is can we build this enough so that when we crash [laughs] we don’t die, we’re just trying to maybe get hurt —

John: Yeah.

Craig: It is absolutely brutal. So from the studio side of things, there is a tendency to give a certain kind of direction to all films in which you’re aiming for the middle.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Unfortunately, in your desire to avoid negative outcomes, you begin to create negative outcomes.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Because pushing things towards the middle definitely can reduce the risk of a bad outlier but it also reduces the risk of a good outlier.

John: You look at, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean. You look at, you know, the choice to let Johnny Depp go in that crazy way with his character, that was a risky thing. And while you’re watching it, in dailies, you’re like this doesn’t make any sense. This is going to end poorly for everyone. And yet, it was just fantastic.

You look at The Matrix, and while you’re getting the dailies of The Matrix, you’re like, “What? What is this?” Like people just flying around on wires? This makes no sense. And even though you read the script, I’m sure you’re watching those dailies come in and saying like I don’t know what we’re going to do here.

And until you had a trailer or some sort of cut together piece to show like, “Oh, that’s what this feels like,” you were, you know, panicked, I’m sure.

Craig: Yeah. I mean very famously Disney executives saw the initial dailies from Pirates of the Caribbean and they saw an unrecognizable movie star with gold teeth in his mouth and he was sort of swishing about. And they went bananas. And essentially what they were told by a very powerful producer was, tough. Now, that paid off. Later on —

John: Yeah.

Craig: Johnny, they got dailies where Johnny Depp was in white face wearing a dead bird in his hat and they probably looked at each other and said, “Oh, let’s not freak out.” I mean [laughs] the last time we freaked out, we were totally wrong.

John: We have the same director.

Craig: Right.

John: We have the same actor.

Craig: Right.

John: We’ve got a big title. Everything’s going to be fine.

Craig: Well, that’s life, you know.

John: That’s life.

Craig: That’s life. I mean I guess one argument could be, “Hey, Goldman’s Law as true as ever. No one knows anything, so you might as well not worry about anything and just lean back and hope,” right? I mean I think most people in the movie business think they’re playing poker when really they’re playing roulette.

They think they have some kind of strategic edge, some way of — some predictable path to victory. Yeah, it’s basically a big wheel and a ball is bouncing around, for a lot of people. There are some filmmakers who seem to defy that. But most filmmakers have had at least one Waterloo.

John: Yeah, it’s going to happen. Craig, I thought that was a terrific analogy to end it on, that the roulette is the truth behind it. The question of why do bad movies get made? Because it’s ultimately kind of random. And there’s going to be wonderful successes but there’s going to be some disasters along the way.

Craig: There will be disasters along the way. Alas.

John: Alas. It is time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a YouTube video series, so Craig won’t watch it because he doesn’t like YouTube.

Craig: Oh, I love YouTube.

John: Oh, okay. But in the start of the program, you said you didn’t watch YouTube things.

Craig: I did?

John: Oh, you said you wouldn’t want to make a YouTube thing I guess.

Craig: Yeah, I know. I don’t want to — yeah, no, never.

John: Yeah. And I honestly would not want to make something as sophisticated as this thing. But God bless the people who do this. So it’s called Cash Course, so John Green who wrote The Fault in Our Stars is involved with the whole thing and behind it and bless you for doing this.

But the one I want to point people to because listeners to our show would be fascinated by this, I hope, is an explanation about copyright, exceptions, and fair use by Stan Muller. And it’s really well done. It’s animated and sort of talks through, you know, in course of a daily life, you’re going to violate copyrights so many times. In most cases, no one will ever come after you but they theoretically could. And so then it talks through what fair use is, the current state of how you can get away with fair use. And it’s just a really smart explanation of copyright and fair use.

But the whole series is great. And there are things about astronomy and world history and U.S. history. So I highly recommend it and I intend to stick my daughter in front of these videos at some point.

Craig: That’s great. You know, I’m a big copyright nerd, so I love that they’re doing that. And people tend to not understand a lot of that. There are so many misconceptions about how that all works. And one of the big misconceptions is that it’s binary like that is a violation or not a violation. Yeah, but then there are violations that have damages and violations that damage no one. And so at that point, there’s really, what’s the problem?

John: Yeah.

Craig: So there’s all sorts of interesting things about that. So great. Good recommendation. My One Cool Things is maybe a cool thing that may be happening. There is a rumor and it feels pretty good to me that at the next E3 convention, that’s the big video game convention, here in Los Angeles, I believe, there will be a 20 to 30-minute demo behind closed doors of the upcoming game, Fallout 4. Did you play the Fallout series, John?

John: I did play the Fallout series. I enjoy it.

Craig: It’s great. So Fallout is from Bethesda, the folks that also do The Elder Scrolls series. And this is basically, they are kind of the same game. Elder Scrolls is a quest based solo adventuring game that takes place in an epic fantasy setting. And Fallout is a quest based solo adventuring game that takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, basically kind of the same thing. And they’re great if you love stories and narratives. It’s really, really addictive and fun. They tend to be huge games that are well crafted.

And it’s time, it feels like it’s time. So the release schedule from these two, they sort of alternate between them. Elder Scrolls 4 came out in 2006, Fallout 3 came out in 2008. Two years later, Fallout: New Vegas which was a very big expansion pack of Fallout 3. One year later, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now, it’s been four years.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Now, during that four years, they did release their multiplayer online.

John: Yeah, The Elder Scrolls, the one where Rawson Thurber runs around and kills people.

Craig: Correct, exactly, but not right now because he’s directing a movie. But when he’s not directing a movie, Rawson runs around killing people in the world of Tamriel. But that’s kind of what they’ve been doing. So, I think I’ll say that was their kind of two-year thing because I do believe that came out in 2013, 2014.

John: But what if they’re doing nothing? What if they’re like sitting around and just like, you know, vaping this whole time?

Craig: It’s possible. I would be super angry. I’d just be so, so angry.

John: You owed me a game!

Craig: Well, you know, no, I feel like I — I mean [laughs] I remember when I got — when Skyrim came out, and I finally got it in the mail, I sat down, I put the CD in my Xbox and I went, “Ah, let’s begin.”

John: So good.

Craig: Let’s begin. This will be — I get to go away from my planet and go somewhere I would much rather be. [laughs]

John: [laughs] A post-apocalyptic wasteland? That’s a telling reveal into Craig’s soul.

Craig: Well, in Skyrim, it was a snowy, snowy fantasy wasteland —

John: Oh, that’s true.

Craig: Strewn with dragons. But yeah, my terrible post-apocalyptic wasteland awaits me. I think it’s time. I think they’re going to be announcing it. I’m hoping that — my guess is it will be probably Christmas or a little after Christmas.

John: Actually, before Christmas if they can possibly do it. But the triple A console games, they really do like to sell those for Christmas.

Craig: They try. They definitely try. So with Skyrim, they did release it on November 11, 2011, 11-11-11. What I’m scared is about is they’ll go yeah, that’s what we’re going to do so we’re just going to basically take another year and a half and I’m going to be sad.

John: So out of our 50,000 weekly listeners, I just have a feeling that somebody works at Bethesda. So if you are that person who works at Bethesda and you’re like, you know what, I want to whisper something to Craig’s ear or invite him to a secret closed demo in E3, I think you should write in to ask@august.com and let me forward to Craig because Craig never checks the email.

Craig: [laughs] I can’t check the email. You don’t give me the password.

John: We don’t give Craig the password. It would be so dangerous. I only forward him the really nice emails. And the really nice email from Bethesda saying, “Oh you know what, you should come check out the new thing we’re building.” That would be great.

Craig: Hey, it’s like we do have a podcast, people listen to us, right? So let me come see this thing.

John: Because lord knows that game they’re making will not be successful without —

Craig: No. Not with our 50,000 listeners. [laughs] It will never happen.

John: Meanwhile, I’m making a game that won’t even play the demo for yet.

Craig: I’ll play it. [laughs]

John: You’ll play it. I’m going to send you a link to the Kickstarter page after this so you can see what we did because it looks, it turned out really well.

Craig: The thing is like I have this discussion with my son all the time. And as I’m having it, I know that I’m just as bad if not worse. Like look, it’s better to like — if you’re really into Pokemon video game, it would be better for you to actually, like, let’s transition you to just like the cards and stuff so that it’s reading and not just video game stuff. But I also am guilty.

John: [laughs] Guilty.

Craig: Guilty.

John: Craig’s does read. I see him reading through his Dungeons and Dragons manuals at every session.

Craig: Oh yes.

John: He loves to read.

Craig: I do love reading that.

John: He also loves to read your comments on our podcasts, so if you would like to leave a comment about this show or any show, the great place to do it is to leave us a review on iTunes because we actually do look at those and those are terrific and they help other people find us. While you’re on iTunes, you can download the Scriptnotes app which just got updated, so it should not get frozen like midway through an episode anymore, which happened to some people, so sorry about that.

We also look at the comments on Facebook. And so people left some good suggestions on Facebook for things for our 200th and for USB drives, so thank you for that. The short little bits of nuggets for Craig, you can send to @clmazin on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel as always.

Craig: Yeah.

John: It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli who’s also busy doing the score for our video for this, so thank you Matthew for all your hard work. As we quickly approach our 200th episode, I would ask you who would you love to have be on the show as a guest? I can’t promise you it will happen on the 200th, but we talked about our thoughts, but if you have any thoughts for somebody you’d love to see come on the show, always let us know those.

And Craig, thank you so much for a fun episode.

Craig: Thank you, John.

John: All right. Have a great weekend.

Craig: You too, bye.

John: Bye.

Links:

• Aspartame on Wikipedia
• CW Picks Up ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ As Hourlong Series on Deadline
• John’s Screencasts on Entering a scene, Writing better action, and Writing better scene description
• One Hit Kill launches today on Kickstarter
• First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy
• Rob Schneider Is A Carrot
• Copyright, Exceptions, and Fair Use: Crash Course Intellectual Property
• Fallout 4 Rumor Puts Reveal at Bethesda’s E3 Conference on IGN
• Outro by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)