Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/frozen-with-jennifer-lee).

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

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** And my name is Aline Brosh McKenna.

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

Now, for the first time in forever Craig Mazin is not here. Craig Mazin is, well, what actually happened to him?

**Aline:** Well, if you mean not here, there are sounds coming from the closet. I think he might be waking up. But he’s not actually in front of a microphone.

**John:** A good hit with a heavy object will knock him out. So, Aline Brosh McKenna, our Joan Rivers, has stepped in to be a co-host. Aline, thank you so much for being here.

**Aline:** You are so welcome. I actually saw Joan Rivers last week.

**John:** Ah! Tell me about Joan Rivers.

**Aline:** Live. And it was amazing. And I’m going to work very blue today and I’m going to do a lot of celebrity clothing fashion stuff, just to add some Joan Rivers to it.

**John:** I think it’s an incredible choice. I have one question for you first, though?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Do you want to build a snowman?

**Aline:** It’s so exciting that the entire podcast Scriptnotes listenership can watch me tackle someone that I’m a huge fan of.

**John:** Our guest today is Jennifer Lee. She is the writer and director of Frozen and the screenwriter of Wreck-It Ralph. Thank you for being on our show.

**Jennifer Lee:** Thank you for having me. I’ve been a huge listener. Well, I’m a huge — that made me sound huge. I have been a listener for a very long time and love Scriptnotes.

**John:** Well, thank you very much.

So, previously on an episode Craig and I took a look at The Little Mermaid and we did a deep dive on The Little Mermaid and spent the entire episode on that. But we didn’t have the benefit of having the screenwriter of The Little Mermaid here to answer our questions as we talked through things.

So, I just want to sort of dig deep and really talk about the story and the really surprising things in the story, because Aline and I were both talking that there are things you would never anticipate being in a movie like Frozen in the movie Frozen.

And so warning to listeners: we’re going to spoil everything.

**Jennifer:** Oh, that’s so much. It’s so hard to talk about the movie and you can’t talk about the movie.

**John:** Because there’s actually a lot of twists that you don’t see coming in this movie and really starting with the nature of the underlying relationships.

I want to get a little sense of history about when you came into this project, because I know that an idea of doing a movie about The Snow Queen, the Hans Christian Andersen story, had been around for a long time. But when did you first get involved with the project?

**Jennifer:** Well, it had been, I mean, rumor is that Walt Disney wanted to do it way back and there’s a production number for The Snow Queen. That’s all we know. Nothing survived. There were some paintings by Marc David for a ride called The Ice Palace, I think, or The Snow Palace that had The Snow Queen. And throughout the decades people kept bringing it up again and wanting to try it.

And then finally Chris Buck pitched it five years ago to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull and it was just the — it was seductive, of course. The concept of a snow queen is seductive. And then setting it in ice and snow and he right away pitched it as a musical, which Disney hadn’t done a big musical since around The Lion King. They have done songs in, but not what a full musical has to be.

And they green lit it and then it got put on the shelf at one point for a whole year, and then brought out again, luckily. And right when it was brought out again I was writing Wreck-It Ralph. And what we do at Disney is anyone who has dealt with animation is very familiar with this. You screen the film and storyboard for them several times and you get a lot of notes from anyone in the studio. And I was giving notes on Frozen whenever they were doing a screening and they would give notes on Ralph.

**John:** Let’s talk about this. So, you’re watching an animatic. You’re watching the cut together boards for something and this was with temp voices, with real voices?

**Jennifer:** Some of it was temp.

**Aline:** You were not yet working on — ?

**Jennifer:** I was not.

**Aline:** Not yet working on Frozen. You were working on Wreck-It Ralph?

**Jennifer:** I was on Ralph, yes. And we were pretty far into Ralph at that point. When I started giving notes on Frozen I think we were a year out on Ralph. And you go in and sometimes it’s temp voices, like Josh Gad hadn’t been cast but Kristen Bell had been. And she is so amazing. She was one of those rare actors who can do the entire script in one recording.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** And over the course of a day and often we just bring them in in small chunks, but she’s incredible. So, her voice was there. But, no one else was cast. Even Idina, I think they wanted Idina but didn’t know if the character would be the right character for her. The Snow Queen was sort of spinning in this one-dimensional chaos of evilness, you know.

**John:** When you were seeing these animatics, going to these screenings, was it still called The Snow Queen? Had it already moved over to being called Frozen?

**Jennifer:** It was Frozen, when I came to Disney — I came to Disney in, god, when was it? Spring of 2012, no, ’11. I’ve lost all track of time with these two films.

**Aline:** Did the Frozen title come from Tangled? Was it inspired by that?

**Jennifer:** I think to some extent it was just in the fact that it was a great sort of all-encompassing title. But I think — and I’m kind of remembering back to what they’ve said — but the real reason was that they weren’t sure how true to the original story they were going to be. And, in fact, they were a lot farther away from the original story than we even ended up, which is saying a lot, because we’re still mostly just inspired by.

But they knew that the Frozen Heart was going to be there. That was a concept and the phrase, sort of an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.

**Aline:** That was amazing.

**Jennifer:** That was the hook they had.

**Aline:** That was amazing.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. And that’s what kind of drove the story. We always knew that there was going to be — and this came right from Chris Buck — that we were going to look at true love in a different way. They weren’t sisters. There was so much that hadn’t been figured out, but that was, I think, really what got the movie going.

**Aline:** When you say look at true love in a different way did you know it was not going to be romantic love?

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You knew that?

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** But you didn’t know it was going to be a sister thing?

**Jennifer:** Right. We hadn’t discovered that yet and we knew that Anna was going to save Elsa. We didn’t know how or why. And it was more of a redemption story at the time because Elsa was evil.

But it was a struggle. We were struggling a lot with tone. They were struggling a lot with good versus evil can take over the story. And it was just feeling — it was hard to make it fresh or different. And so they had a lot of problems, but at the same time you could see the potential.

And I had gone in to give notes. As I was winding down on Ralph I was sort of helping on other projects, just giving notes. And that was the first time Bobby and Kristen were a part of it. And we kind of really connected with what we were thinking.

**John:** So, at this point you’re watching these cuts and had Bobby and Kristen already written songs that were attempted in there.

**Jennifer:** They had done two songs which are not in the film. A portion of one, I think, is on like the deluxe soundtrack that you can hear. But one of them, there’s another song that someday people will hear, but it is so far from Elsa and who she ended up being, we found it hard to release it because we kind of, you know, right before you give the movie out — it feels like a betrayal of her, because she was so evil. And it was hard for us because we’re so protective of her as a real person, [laughs], which I guess you get right at that end before you give it to the world, you know.

**Aline:** I know you are trying to go carefully through the process, but I wanted to jump ahead just a little bit, because this idea of who is the villain in the movie is really interesting.

**John:** It’s fundamental.

**Aline:** It’s really fundamental, because sometimes when you’re working on stuff with a villain they’ll push, push, push to make it darker and more stark and less human. And there are sort of several antagonists in the movie, but there isn’t really a single clear bad guy because she is so nuanced and you know her. So, even though she is sort of the engine of the things that are opposing, she isn’t really a villain.

And then there are the other two sort of villain-ish characters, but that’s so interesting. How did that come about?

**Jennifer:** I feel like that was one of the biggest breaks that took the longest to get to. And it was that the story would fall into the same sort of tropes, like you just — it was really hard the minute she became evil it would take over. And, plus, Elsa being the Snow Queen, any time she’s on the screen she owned the scene. There was no secondary character to her. And it became very difficult to balance the two sisters, the story, and Anna as an interesting character. Because Elsa was just, you know, she’s larger than life and she would take over.

And then you’d make her evil and it was like that was the whole film. And one of the things that was a really big challenge for us was we wanted to get to that ending where Anna makes her choice to help her sister. Well, in order to get to that you have to buy into her going to Kristoff and do it in such a way where she doesn’t seem fickle. Like, it was just a nightmare to have to have these parallel stories and to support both in such a way where it’s that surprising but inevitable thing.

**Aline:** Right. Well, the thing you have to do which is amazing is you have to build to both things.

**Jennifer:** Right.

**Aline:** It’s sort of like the end of Casablanca or all those famous — also in that movie Suspicion, in the Hitchcock movie Suspicion they didn’t know if he was going to be the murderer or not, so they had to make the movie so that both endings would work. And that’s a funny thing because I thought, okay, she’s going to kiss him and that’s going to be…I’m okay. I’m all right with that. I like him and he’s unusual and they had a nice courtship and I enjoyed enough about it. And I’m all right with it.

And I didn’t really see another avenue, frankly. So, I was thinking, okay, here he comes and there’s going to be… — And so then that thing which really, I mean, we talked about it on the other podcast, on the live podcast, that was really the thing that just blew my mind. But you did it by — I don’t know how — I mean, I’m really curious how the process affects that. Because I don’t know how you’d get that through a conventional studio process.

**John:** Yeah, I really want to get into the process because this is so different than how most screenwriters would work.

**Aline:** Absolutely.

**John:** Usually you’re not seeing a version of something. There’s no sort of temp version of the movie that you’re trying to make. So, it’s all just the stuff on the page and then you hope it works on the page.

But you got to see something. You got to see something on the screen and say like, well that’s not working. And everybody sort of knew it wasn’t kind of fundamentally working.

So, what is the conversation you have with the people who have been making this thing up until this point to say, “This is what I think you need to do?” Was it a spoken conversation? Did you write up notes? What was your process?

**Jennifer:** Most of it is spoken and it was not me alone. Like once we show a screening, and we’ll show it to a lot of people, sometimes hundreds of people in the studio. A screening, just to give all departments a sense of what we’re doing because building the world is its own struggle in animation and takes a lot of time. So, they have to be working even when the story is not finished.

**Aline:** So, you need to carve out things that they can work on that you know are set.

**Jennifer:** Exactly, like building the environments and the artistry of it and the technology. So, they’re working on that simultaneously. But about 40 of us go into a room for several hours.

**John:** This is called an offsite?

**Jennifer:** That’s not even the offsite. Oh, the offsite.

**John:** I’ve heard legends of offsites.

**Jennifer:** Oh, gosh. I hope to take a break. We’ll go in a room for several hours, you know, John Lasseter is there, Ed Catmull, and all the other directors at the studio. Sometimes some Pixar directors. They’ll come down occasionally. And the other writers who are in the studio. And we will sit there and get bombarded with every note under the sun. We joke, it’s like they take your car apart completely and then they walk away.

**Aline:** They leave it on the lot.

**Jennifer:** And they leave it on the lot. And so you just have to take it. And what you’re looking for really are patterns and you’re looking for sort of what is the — usually it’s you can tell this character is not well developed yet because it’s all about this character: “I don’t know who she is; I don’t know what she wants; I don’t believe her; I don’t care about her.” So, they will call you out on everything.

And then you’ll get the random question of like, “What if there are dogs?” You know, they will say anything.

**Aline:** This is a good thing that I think is relatable to listeners of this which is when you’re in a situation that all writers have been when you’re getting bombarded by notes, if you’re a nice person also you have a tendency to be like, “I’ll do that, and that one, and that one, and that one.” And they’re often so competing. How did you cull that feedback to know, yes, this is right, and yes, this is…

— Because sometimes people are pointing at something and that’s not, it’s like a doctor, their knee hurt but it’s because they have some other really unrelated problem in their arm.

Like, you have to also diagnose, okay, this is what they’re saying.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. And I think that’s the key. Because what’s also interesting about animation is a lot of studios didn’t have screenwriters traditionally. The story artists together would form the story. And part of it you look at some of the stories were much simpler. What was needed to build a full feature was much more straightforward. And not to belittle them, but just say it was a different time.

What audiences want now is much more complex films and that have what a screenwriter brings. And it has taken a bit to convince animation of that, but luckily —

**Aline:** Had you worked in animation before Ralph?

**Jennifer:** No, not at all.

**Aline:** You had never worked before Ralph. That was your first experience with animation?

**Jennifer:** That was my first. And it was overwhelming coming in because there was this weird feeling of almost like the writer had the least authority in the scope of everything, and yet the writer was the one who had to solve the problems if they couldn’t be solved otherwise by a collective group. And that’s how it felt coming in.

The nice thing for me was that Rich Moore had worked in television. He really believed in the writer and I was working with Phil Johnston as well who is a nice strong, not afraid to stand up for things kind of guy. Taught me a lot. And so you really had to — my first experience with Ralph was a lot of time convincing a group of people that this is what the story needed.

And if I couldn’t knowing that’s not right. I mean, obviously if I can’t then there is something wrong with it. And it was a lot of — I had to trust that I was the one who knew the whole. I was the one protecting the characters. I was the one who that was my job and I had to do that, but then at the same time people would come in with this shiny new toy idea that if it’s entertaining or if it can add something unique you want to try to put it in.

And so you have to be flexible. And Ralph was like the best boot camp ever, but exhausting. And what made Frozen very different was two things. One is we had a very intense schedule. Ralph took about three years to make and Frozen, when I came on we essentially started over and we had 17 months. So, we were in a place of a lot of choices had to be made fast. And were given sort of —

**Aline:** And that can be great.

**John:** That can be great.

**Jennifer:** It can be.

**Aline:** I think it is. Yeah.

**John:** Deadlines are a huge help. But what you’ve described though, the life of a screenwriter is often as much your ability to convince other people or to hear other people and echo back what they’re saying in ways that actually serve the story and don’t serve that other interest. So, most of your time as a screenwriter wasn’t spent with you at a laptop staring at it, “What lines should Elsa say?” It was figuring out these bigger things with other people. And that collaborative nature is crucial.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

And I think that to me that was one of the biggest things I didn’t realize coming into the business, but I’m not afraid of anymore and I think thanks to Ralph and Frozen, but I think it’s crucial understanding that I think we — particularly when I work, because I was at Columbia just, I graduated in 2005, and how precious things are. And how dogmatic we can be about “this is my vision, this is what I need to hold onto,” and forgetting the side of it that to make a film is such a big collaborative experience, and there are a lot of stakes, and there’s a lot of money invested, and there are a lot of risks being taken. That if people can poke holes, and they will, it’s up to you to repair it.

And if you can’t, they’ll find someone who can. [laughs] You know, it’s like realizing that the writer’s role is tenuous.

**Aline:** But there also have to be moments where you say, “You know what? I appreciate that feedback, but I know that this is okay the way it is and I want to give this a shot and let’s see how this…”

You know, that’s the tricky balance because I do think most of us who do this were grade grubbers and we want that acknowledgment. And it takes a long time to say, you know, to think with your heart in addition to your head and sort of say to people this is what I feel.

**Jennifer:** But I think what John said, too, is the key, because he’s saying how it’s about convincing and getting better at that. I had an idea for Anna from the very beginning and it took almost a year to articulate it in the right way to get everyone on board.

And once I did, everyone was 100% on board. But what was driving me nuts is I knew it was right for her, but it was not resonating with anyone. And so I knew —

**Aline:** I’m not articulating as well.

**Jennifer:** And part of it is I would try the other things because that’s the nice thing about animation. Because you put it up on reels several times you can try things and say, “Sure, we’ll make her want this,” and then you know that it’s not going to work but it might lead to the answer.

But for me there was a day where I stood up with a little sheet of paper and I had this is Anna, this is what Anna’s journey is. No more than that. No less than that. This is Elsa. This is what her journey is. This is what the movie is about and why I want to make this movie.

**Aline:** Wow. I got a chill just hearing that.

**Jennifer:** But I had to do it. And it’s good when you have John Lasseter on your side, because I had met alone with him first and said, “This is what I want to say.” [laughs] You know, and he was very encouraging. But it taught me a lot about how to say it is just as important as what you’re trying to say. And I like to babble and I think everyone is coming along for the ride and they’re not. So…

**Aline:** Well, one of the things I wanted to talk about formally and maybe this gets you into your John Augustinian pieces of paper that I see here. What I loved, because again, like John, I did not know what the movie was except that it seemed like it would kill some of the family holiday time. And then I was so blown away by it. But one of the things that I think is a lesson you keep learning and is really valuable to people is something happens in that movie right away, right away.

I mean, there is a little prologue with the ice, but something happens with them right away. She almost kills her. Her power is uncontrolled. And you see their relationship and how much they love each other and how much they like to play.

And then something really dramatic happens right away. And people forget about that and you’ll read these scripts where it’s like the thing that happens is on page 18 and you’re just asking so much of people and I thought it was so — you revealed some character, and then something disastrous happened, and then you continued to — and it’s very confident to not lay out everything you have, every card, every piece of silverware on the table.

You introduce them. Then something happens. There’s this amazing narrative event. And then you continue to reveal sort of what’s going to happen between the two of them.

And that was so confident. I just thought breathtaking story wise because that’s a thing that people really — they forget about in stories is that you have to start off with an event that really has pretty big magnitude, you know.

**John:** Let’s start with how the story begins. What I would love to do is just take a look at the movie as it is finished and sort of look at what’s actually up on the screen and go through sort of why it’s working in story and what the goals are. And if we need to sort of go back in time to talk about sort of how stuff happens, but let’s pretend that we’re watching this movie that’s on the screen in front of us and sort of what’s going on there.

The very first shot of the movie is a really strange shot. It’s blurry and you’re not quite sure what it is. And ultimately it’s a saw coming through the ice and it’s people cutting these ice blocks apart. And it’s setting up your world and also the colors of your world. Because you think of Frozen being blues, but it’s actually a lot of pinks. And it very much sort of sets up what the world of our movie is going to be like.

So, we start with a song. The song is Frozen Heart. And it’s not my favorite song in the whole world. And it’s very much a Fathoms Below kind of song.

**Jennifer:** That’s exactly what it is. Yeah, you’re right.

**John:** It establishes the world. And no one remembers the —

**Jennifer:** And the Dumbo song, the work song in Dumbo. Those are two sort of —

**Aline:** I missed completely that the little boy —

**John:** Kristoff and Sven are in there.

**Aline:** I missed it completely. And my kids were the ones who pointed out, “Oh mom, he was there in the very first scene.

**John:** So, in the very first scene we see these men carving up the ice blocks and sort of the idea that you would carve up ice. For some kids it’ll be the first time they see that as a thing that you could possibly do.

But we see this little boy and a cute little reindeer and we think they’re going to be significant characters because they’re adorable. They’re chasing after — but we’re essentially establishing them in the world because they’re going to become important later on.

Then we go to nighttime. We see Anna climbing up into Elsa’s bed. They’re adorable. They’re incredibly sweet. They’re sisters. “Do you want to go play?” That’s when we first learn that Elsa has these powers and it’s just sort of matter of fact. There’s not a big whole talk about it. Just suddenly she’s able to do all these things and that’s just the way of it. Talk me through that process about her powers and figuring out how to explain them in the world. How much you were going to try to articulate what the limits of her powers were.

Also, I’m curious, the decision about when to age them up and sort of how long to keep them kids.

**Jennifer:** Sure. I’ll back up just in the sense of the opening with that song was — what we wanted to establish, we wanted the audience to know is people are going to sing, first off.

**John:** Crucial.

**Jennifer:** It’s like you have to know what this world is going to be.

**John:** This is a world where people do sing.

**Jennifer:** They sing. And then the symbolism of ice. This is going to be — ice is going to be physically here and it’s going to be symbolically here. And so they’re singing this song about sort of beware the frozen heart and this concept that ice is more powerful than men. So, buried in it is a lot of sort of “this is the film you’re going to see” without saying it, you know? It’s just kind of — and then the setting of going up into the Northern Lights and saying we’re somewhere north. And starting to build this world without saying it was important to us.

And also with Kristoff, what’s interesting, we have little Kristoff in there because what I love that I always think if you do watch it again is that in a weird way Anna, the choice that she made that night leads him to his family.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Jennifer:** And that there’s a connection between them, but yet it’s not in your face, but it’s just something that… — Because what I always loved about, particularly Pixar films for me, was that everything just added up. And everything had a special little, “Oh my god, oh my god, wait, and that, and that!” And it was my favorite thing and we wanted to make kind of every time we had a scene trying to say what is that that’s maximum, why is it here. If there’s anything extraneous we got to get rid of it.

But yet adding all that flavor, so that’s why. But to move onto Elsa, it was an exhausting process coming to the simplicity of her powers. At times we had a narration by a troll, who used to have a Brooklyn accent for no reason other than I miss Brooklyn. You know, no reason. But, we had this whole explanation like when Saturn is in this alignment with such-and-such on the thousandth year a child will be born and blah, blah, blah.

And then —

**John:** Ultimately you almost throw it away with one line. So, the line is just like, “Was she born with the powers or was she cursed?. And it’s born with it and that’s the last piece of it.

**Aline:** It’s so great.

**Jennifer:** And that’s it. But I think part of what it was is if anything about us felt like it was like, “Oh, god, like okay, we have to say this,” then we didn’t want to say it. And then also we found the more you explained the more questions you had about magic and the rules. It was like, argh. You know?

**Aline:** That’s so interesting. Having worked on stuff that has that, you drop a tiny seed of that it goes kerplunk, it explodes and takes over very quickly.

**Jennifer:** In a huge way.

**Aline:** So, you have so little of it but it’s so clear. And don’t you find that in the development process people are always trying to get you to explain, explain, explain.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. Huge. And the first act was really what actually we produced last, except for the scene where Anna meets Kristoff, I mean Hans, in the boat. That was one of the earlier scenes that went into production, but everything else in act one was the last thing that we did.

**John:** Let’s move forward in time so we keep with the narrative of the actual story.

So, Anna and Elsa are playing. Elsa is building all these amazing snow things in the house, ends up zapping her sister. Her sister falls unconscious. Calls her mom and dad. You go and see the trolls and it’s the first sort of time we’re seeing there’s other magic in the world, so it’s not just the human world. There are trolls. There is something else that’s going on out there.

We get the warning about her powers. The one line of setup about her powers, that she was born with the powers. And the caution that they can save her this once, but she shouldn’t use these powers again. And she should be afraid of her powers. And really establishing the central theme of her journey which is to be afraid of who she is.

**Jennifer:** Well, and we always do, like to me that’s the scene. His name is Grand Pabbie, the troll, that he states the theme of the film. He just states it in reverse. He says fear will be your enemy. And in the way he has displayed it meaning fear will destroy you like as an external fear. And it makes her even more frightened. But what’s interesting about Pabbie and Bobby Lopez and I like to be slightly twisted sometimes, and that was one of our things where if you really listen to Grand Pabbie, he’s not telling her to not use her powers. He’s just saying you’re lucky it wasn’t her heart. And we’ve just got to remove it all because if we don’t there might be some left and that could hurt her, so I just want to remove even the memories. Let’s just clean her out.

And he says to her there’s beauty but also danger to your power. So, he’s just laying it out as it is and not saying you shouldn’t do this. But the humans go right there. And that tends to be — and as a parent sometimes you see it, because your instinct is my two children are together. One of them has issues controlling themselves and they hurt my other child. You start setting boundaries. And, of course, in this case it’s more extreme. But, what I like about the trolls is they kind of tell it like it is, but if you read into it it’s really the — if you look at it it’s really the parents making the decision for Elsa that we’re going to live in fear then. We’re going to do exactly what he just warned us about, which is fear will be your enemy, and we’re going to live in fear.

So, and it’s just, I think, a very human thing to do is to go to the negative reaction as the caution.

**Aline:** And the parents never get to learn the lesson.

**Jennifer:** No. Although there’s a whole fan base that has decided they crash on an island and they gave birth to Tarzan actually.

**John:** They’ll come back.

**Jennifer:** So, they die then.

**John:** Oh, that would be perfect.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, but that Tarzan — that’s my favorite of the connections.

**John:** So, one of the biggest narrative asks you make of the audience is that these memories are taken out, and so Anna remembers the joy she used to have with her sister but not that her sister has powers. And then as Elsa sort of essentially shuts the door and sort of gives her sister away, not wanting to hurt her, that Anna sort of loses her sister.

And so I’ve heard criticism both ways. Basically people saying like, well, that’s unrealistic, but I’ve also heard people say like that was my relationship with my older sister.

**Jennifer:** Well, it’s funny because that moment was the — I think every now and then we have to make these decisions where just have to do what you have to do. And I remember the screenwriters of Monsters Inc. and Monsters University, Dan and Rob, they — I was frustrated about dealing with the fact that I wanted to Anna to… — If the girls can’t remember, if Anna can’t remember the joy they had together, then there’s no reason to root for the relationship because it doesn’t mean anything.

But, we have to — if she remembers that her sister has powers people felt that she seemed selfish anytime she did anything for herself or stood up to her sister later. And so they said what I thought, it was the best thing just to get us through, was sometimes you just have to do what you have to do but just make a real point of it and the audience will go with it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And it doesn’t always mean it. And I’ve always, like, “No, but…but…,” but the moment —

**Aline:** I think the best thing you can do in those situations is, you know, I’ve said if you can’t do it well do it quickly.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, and that’s the other thing.

**Aline:** Just do it. And also what I think people do is sometimes when they reach a narrative thing where there is a big buy they add a lot of corollary details. You just state it. That’s the way it is. She can remember this and not that.

Let’s keep going.

**Jennifer:** And let’s keep going. And that was the best advice just because even if it wasn’t — and I’m never going to think it’s perfect because I’m always going to personally bump on it — everything else went where it needed to go.

**Aline:** Works completely.

**John:** It was a necessary thing to do. And I think you couldn’t have done three of those in a row. We would have lost faith in you and the movie, but you got one and you used it really, really well.

**Jennifer:** That’s what they said. “Here’s your wild card. Go. We’ll buy it.”

**John:** And I think also it segues us nicely into the terrific first song, which is Do You Want to Build a Snowman? Which is both — this is really Elsa’s wish song. One of your protagonists, I’m going to say that — would you consider it a two protagonist story?

**Jennifer:** We do. We joke it’s a little, not to have the gall to say this, but just technically to say this, it’s a little Shawshank-y where it’s Anna’s story but it’s really about Elsa.

**John:** Exactly.

**Jennifer:** So, it is that. We go through her eyes, so she’s technically the protagonist, but the whole time it was that relationship.

**John:** But our heroine gets to sing her wish, which is Do You Want to Build a Snowman? And it’s a really terrific number. And my favorite moment that gave me goose bumps even as I was watching it and sort of like, “Well, that was well done,” at a certain point the mom and dad go off to sail to a foreign place and you see the waves, and you see the ship in the waves, and the waves come up higher and then the ship is gone. And that’s all you needed to do.

That shot plus really great music let you know that they were gone and that they were lost at sea. And you didn’t have to talk about it ever again.

**Jennifer:** But what’s so funny about that, and this is where I think Frozen is in this weird place, all of that wouldn’t — it’s like here is this story that kind of turns some sort of fairytale things on its head, and yet those fairytale things allowed us to do things that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. You know, her falling in love immediately, we buy it —

**Aline:** It’s a trope.

**Jennifer:** Because it’s a trope. The parents dying, it’s a Disney movie. [laughs] And the parents are going to die.

**Aline:** They’ve got to be dead. I find it shocking they’re not already dead. Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And it’s like there are things that we were able to do that we didn’t have to overdo.

**John:** Well, I think talking about tropes and expectations is really crucial because it’s both a princess movie and it’s defeating the expectations of a princess movie, but it has to sort of be the princess movie so it can overcome it.

**Jennifer:** Overcome it.

**Aline:** That’s what David Frankel’s term for this is. It’s the “cake and eat it, too” movie. Where you get to do all the things that are in the genre and then you get to completely spoof and work against them. And that’s a great gift because the genre expectations kind of — the audience likes them but dreads them in a way because it feels expected. And so the fact that you’re also working against them gives you that sense of inevitable and surprising, which is what you’re always working towards.

And, really, that was the thing that blew my mind about it was how many times it does that. How many times you think, “Oh, I’ve seen this before…oh, this is completely different.” That’s what blew my mind about it.

**John:** What’s also fascinating about Do You Want to Build a Snowman is that because it’s a song you can build a longer sequence. So, it’s not just a bunch of little short scenes. And so you can go through a period of many years. You can age the character up and so you go from the little girl Anna to a teenage Anna to the Kristen Bell Anna over the course of a song, which is just remarkable change.

**Jennifer:** What’s amazing to me, that song was cut and everyone missed it so much. And the reason it was cut was the first versions of it were so sad. The whole thing was sad. And it was so — there was so much exposition that we couldn’t split it up. And it was just too complicated. But, nothing was resonating and it was such an important sequence.

You had to establish so many things, like who is Anna, what kind of girl is she. What is Elsa’s life like now? Her shutting her out, what does Anna want? Like you had to do all of this. If it hadn’t been a song it never would have worked. But what the song had — what we had to do, I remember the day Bobby flew out for it, Bobby Lopez, and we sat down and said what does Anna sound like. And then it was the [hums], and then it’s like what does Elsa sound like?

**John:** [hums]

**Jennifer:** And it’s got a little bit of Let it Go in it. And they were two separate things. And they worked with Christophe Beck as well. So, we had Anna’s story, Elsa’s story, and it was different music. So, we were able to start segmenting the storytelling. Then, with the first two first versus really what we were trying to show was Anna’s personality. Even though you know what her want is, the way she would sing into the keyhole —

**John:** That’s a crucial moment.

**Jennifer:** And then how she would throw herself over furniture and that her friends are these portraits. All of that setup is what made us be able to save the song because we were all like “I want to kill myself” by the end of that song because it was so like —

**Aline:** So you made it less sad by making her sort of an imp.

**Jennifer:** Yes. And saying this is the girl that you’re going to go on the journey with. These are things about her that you can laugh in her loneliness, I mean, and that’s very Anna. But that was the hardest, I mean, a lot of songs came and went, but that one was the one we all believed in and couldn’t make work for the longest time. And it was because it was so much. It had to do so much.

**John:** But it ends up being a crucial song later on.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**John:** Because it’s the only song that you really reprise heavily and change the lyrics through new circumstance.

**Jennifer:** Throughout the, yeah.

**John:** So, coming off of that we have the grown up characters, it’s going to be the coronation of Elsa. She is going to become the queen of this place. I’m sure there was talk at a certain point like who the hell was running the kingdom in all this time. There was some sort of regent —

**Jennifer:** Ha! We did have a regent. We had him. He turned into, and I love it because I wrote a character and I wrote it for what’s his name, Louis C.K. I wanted him so badly in the film. I just wanted him in the film. But the first act is so heavy, it’s still heavy. There’s so much in it.

One of the issues with the film, and this jumps to the end for a second though —

**John:** What are you defining as the first act? Are you defining when you she runs off into the mountains is the end of the first act?

**Jennifer:** The end of the first act is, yes, when she goes after Elsa, and right before Let it Go. And Let it Go is kind of this in between, because really the second act starts with Anna, as it should, but yet we have this song. But the end, that last moment where she sacrifices herself for her sister, I remember, Ed Catmull when I started on the film he said, “You can do whatever you need to do the film, anything you want, but you’re earning that moment.” And we still didn’t know how we were getting to it. At that point it was some big battle scene between snowmen. It was such a weird route to get to that moment.

But he said you can do whatever you want, but you have to earn that moment. And he’s like, “And if you do, it will be fantastic. And if you don’t, the movie will suck.” And that’s the only, he’s like, “Bye,” and it’s so him to say that, but I mention that because part of the reason the first act was so hard was because we were telling a much more complex story than really we felt like we could fit in this 90-minute film.

So, everything in the first act was over-analyzed, over-scrutinized. And it’s the maximum it can be without being more. And that meant things like who was in charge — we don’t have time for that. It’s not important to the story so we have to get it out. So, there are a lot of little things like that.

**John:** And that’s a case where I think Disney princess logic actually really helps you a lot, because you don’t have the expectation that anyone actually has to run the kingdom.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And the funny thing to me. I’m like, she’s 21. Why not 18? Well, because I want Anna to be 18. You know, it’s like those little things that we just had to do to say what matters to the story versus being logical, but it’s hard because you’ve got 15 people who part of their jobs in the story room is to beat on the logic of your ideas. So, that was fun.

**John:** That was fun. But, for the first time in forever the gates are going to be opening up. There’s new people coming here. It’s the first time we actually see a bunch of people. It’s a busy city and you sort of see what the universe is like.

You establish Elsa’s fear. She’s trying to hold the scepter without it turning to ice. She’s worried she’s going to freak out. but then Anna meets the cute boy and they fall in love and they have a very literal meet-cute with a horse and a boat and all this stuff.

At what point did Hans become a villain? And, I mean —

**Jennifer:** [laughs] Hans is a villain from the minute he hits her with the horse, in my mind.

**Aline:** Really?

**Jennifer:** But I am slightly a sociopath, I think. He’s just calculating from that moment. Go ahead.

**John:** But I assumed in the second viewing — first off, I was really surprised at the ultimate reveal that he’s a villainess character. But I thought like I must have misremembered. And so then I watched it the second time through and it’s like you gave us nothing.

**Jennifer:** No, I know. I know.

**Aline:** But you know what? That is another example of “cake and eat it too,” because the truth is some of those prince/princess romances are creepy. It’s creepy how generic those men are. And it’s creepy how fast the princesses fall for them. And it’s creepy that nobody questions it.

**Jennifer:** We buy it. Right. Exactly.

**Aline:** And it is amazing how in those movies often that’s the thing that makes you kind of roll your eyes is like this sort of instant connection. And there is something kind of, you know, if you met those guys there would be something a little too perfect and creepy about them. And so it has that thing where it does exactly what you want the genre to do, but it actually unveils this kind of seamy side to those guys.

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s interesting was it was a big — there was a lot of debate about that, not when to give it away. And John Lasseter particularly really didn’t want to. He loved it so much not to that he would push to the extreme sometimes where my sociopathic mind would break down because I’d be like, no, no, no, he wouldn’t do that because he’s calculating.

So, I had to literally walk through every scene, what’s going on in his head for real, and at least I could — like when he says, the first time when he finds out she’s princess and drops to his knees. Before that she’s just a girl. But the key moment is when she says, “It’s just me.” And he goes, “Just you?”

And that’s like inside he’s going, “Ooh, you don’t think very highly of yourself, do you? Well, I’m gonna…”

**Aline:** Terrific. Great news for a narcissist.

**Jennifer:** It’s all very sick and twisted deep down.

**John:** But clearly he’s a very talented sociopath.

**Jennifer:** He’s very talented. He’s charming. He mirrors everyone. And actually the original story had a lot to do with mirrors. And in many iterations of the story we talk about mirrors and we bring them up. And so I held on a little to that, what Hans is is a mirror as a lot of charming, but hallow or sociopathic.

**Aline:** And she’s also so lonely.

**Jennifer:** She’s lonely.

**Aline:** That it’s like she’s falling in love with her reflection in the pond, yeah.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, exactly. And he mirrors her and he’s goofy with her. He’s a little bit more bold and aggressive with the Duke, because the Duke is a jerk, so he’s a jerk back. And with Elsa he’s a hero.

**Aline:** I really like it because their love song is so quick and so declaratory that I was thinking, “God, I mean, I’m buying this. I’m buying this because I’m enjoying this, but man this is awfully fast.” And then I thought, well, this is just a trope of the genre, so it’s okay. So, I’m thrilled that it turned out to be, because that really is —

**Jennifer:** It’s another song that we had to have and I was going nuts, because to me there was one too many songs in the beginning and I — if you talk about like can’t find your way out, I couldn’t my way out of it. I just couldn’t find a way that we didn’t need everything we had. So…

**John:** Because really For the First Time in Forever and Love is an Open Door, they’re the same kind of song overall.

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**John:** They’re basically sort of like what it feels like to be me. But there’s the fun cute two-hander. We haven’t seen that kind of thing. Their chemistry was really terrific. You’re establishing sort of what it is. And you’re buying that this girl might say yes at the end of this song. That’s the crucial thing is she’s going to say yes to a proposal.

**Jennifer:** Right. She’s so lonely.

**John:** Because like, yeah, it’s a great idea. This is a fantastic idea. And the luxury you have is that not 20 minutes later someone is going to hang a lantern on like, “Wait, this is a stupid idea. How can you possibly do that?” which they never say in a Disney movie which is so remarkable.

**Jennifer:** Right.

**John:** So, Love is an Open Door, the proposal happens, they tell Elsa, “Oh, we’re going to get married.” “That’s a stupid idea.” She freaks out. Big catastrophic snow icy thing. Her powers are revealed and she runs off.

This is the moment where, I don’t know, I guess Hunchback of Notre Dame has the same quality where like he seems like the villain, the community believes that he is the villain. What was the discussion around this point?

**Jennifer:** It was another scene — the scene where Elsa flees, we call it, there was a lot of debate of that scene and then the one after where Anna goes after her about what needed to be and how much of a monster should she feel like, how aggressive should people be.

And really we ended up giving a lot of it just to the Duke as a representation. And this is where we talk about the villain and not having a villain.

**Aline:** He’s villain-ish.

**Jennifer:** It’s having these antagonistic forces and to us like the real villain is fear. And so what we did is take all the characters and as antagonistic characters they hang off of fear. So, he goes to the ultimate fear, she’s a monster, points fingers. And Elsa lives in fear —

**Aline:** A fear of her own self.

**Jennifer:** Fears herself. And then there’s someone like Hans who exploits it. I mean, he exploits love, too. So, every character plays off of — I should say fear and love. And Kristoff is the honest goods. Anna is fearless, actually, and all her faith is in love but she has to learn what that is.

So, it was our way of creating the constant villainess forces. But we felt like just having the — people could be frightened, but just having the chatter of “Get her!” or something, it just was, it was too complex. And it was too like why are they going right there? Why do they hate her? And just giving it to the Duke just gave Elsa the signal to go.

And from there I don’t think she sees herself as —

**Aline:** Well she doesn’t know what she’s done, which is really interesting.

**Jennifer:** That’s why. Because she doesn’t know what she’s done.

**Aline:** Does not realize what she’s done for a good portion of that. She thinks she’s just going off to hide.

**Jennifer:** [Crosstalk] I think if Anna — if it were much more of an extreme reaction Anna wouldn’t have just thought, “I’ll just go and bring her back.” It would have been too complicated. So, I – just like, just keep it about this moment as the girls being divided and being separated from each other.

**Aline:** It’s gorgeous visually. It’s amazing.

**Jennifer:** Oh, thank you. I will say our head of story, Paul Briggs, came up with one of my favorite things in the movie which is the run across the water.

**John:** It’s beautiful.

**Aline:** Amazing.

**Jennifer:** And turning into ice. And that moment. And that was the second sequence to go into production from the first act was that one because when we had that we were like —

**Aline:** Home run.

**Jennifer:** We were like that has to be it. [laughs] It can’t be anything else.

**Aline:** The sound of the ball hitting the bat heading for the bleachers.

**John:** Let’s talk about Let it Go, because it’s clearly a crucial thing. Without that moment you don’t understand who Elsa is or sort of what her journey is. And what point in the process did Let it Go come to be?

**Jennifer:** Let it Go came in about 15 months from finishing. It was the first song that landed in the film and was in the film. And it was an amazing moment. I remember, you know, we had spent a lot of time talking about Elsa and we were still going on the villain journey, which was killing me to try to figure out how to make that work and then redeem her. And have a love story. I was dying. [laughs]

And we just said, “Let’s talk about who she is. What would it feel like?” And Bobby and Kristen said they were walking in Prospect Park and they just started talking about what would it feel like. Forget villain. Just what it would feel like.

And this concept of letting out who she is that she’s kept to herself for so long and she’s alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact that the last moment is she’s alone. It’s not a perfect thing, but it’s powerful. And they came in with the demo of Let it Go and it’s exactly word-by-word the exact song.

**Aline:** Wow. You’re kidding.

**Jennifer:** Exactly. And we — half of us were crying. And then I just went, “I have to rewrite the whole movie.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Jennifer:** I really, it was — I was just like I’m going to go lie down for a couple minutes. But it was the best thing. We knew we had the movie.

**Aline:** It captures such a moment for girls and women which is sort of the — really is the song where you go in your room and you close the door and you sing to yourself in the mirror, you know, “I’m going to be who I’m going to be. I don’t care about anybody else.” I mean, it really, really captures such a great I think particularly female moment.

I have a question about it which is in the sort of thing where she transforms herself she becomes so sexy.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Aline:** And what I had sort of admired up until then was how kind of sporty they were, especially Anna, how sporty she was. And then all of a sudden she was sort of pageanty and she has the slit and everything. Tell me about that.

**Jennifer:** Well, I can tell you. What’s interesting, that actually we did a lot of push and pull. There were two things we were feeling. One is that freedom moment where you strut and you just go for it. And I was fine with that and that was great. There was a lot of pull of, I will say from the guys, of loving her as the — every man in the studio, and some of the women, were in love with Elsa.

We used to joke like just put Anna in a closet. Just push her. There was one shot where someone was like, “Can you push Anna further back, further back?” And I was like, “Just take her off, just get her out of the stick. Just go stick her outside.” Because Elsa was — everyone was seduced by her. And so there was this tug of war I think, a bit, of letting people have a little — people who wanted to have that a little and not be afraid of it, but not make it a sexual statement. It’s more a moment of, for me, it was like you strut and you say nobody is looking, this is what I’m going to — I’m not going to be afraid of my sexuality. I’m not going to be afraid of who I am. I’m not going to be afraid of anything about myself.

**Aline:** But her sexuality is definitely part of it. It’s text.

**Jennifer:** And it’s definitely become, I think what we have found is the reaction to it has been bigger than what we had thought it was. But, that’s okay. It’s a moment that was — so many people worked on it that it was, yeah.

**Aline:** It’s the way she’s walking and the way it’s lit, it feel different. The depiction of the women’s bodies feels different in that moment.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Even before or after that.

**Jennifer:** It’s so funny because also it was animated — half of it was animated by a woman, half was animated by a man. And my favorite thing about it though is the actual model for doing it was John Lasseter. Not a woman. Because we got him — he was so moved by Let it Go. He knew every line and what he thought it meant. And he was a huge help in talking through how we translate that emotional journey, not just with Idina’s voice, but with the animation. And for him he got up and he’s like, “Let’s, all that uptight, bottled up down and her hair goes, and she transforms, and she struts,” and he’s doing it. He’s acting it out.

And so it was really, he was the inspiration which his ironic —

**Aline:** To picture him in that dress.

**Jennifer:** Well, I have a lovely caricature by John Musker of John in that dress.

**John:** Ha!

**Aline:** Oh, you do?

**Jennifer:** Someday maybe I can share.

**Aline:** Oh my god, that’s great.

**John:** Well, what’s fascinating is it’s a sexual outfit, but she’s not actually a sexual character.

**Jennifer:** No, she’s not.

**John:** She doesn’t even talk to a boy other than Hans for a brief second. So, it’s not that she’s trying to seduce a man. There’s man around for her to seduce.

**Jennifer:** But I do think it was a moment that we weren’t hiding from the sexual aspect of it, but it wasn’t the statement, but people have seen it that way so I think we have to own that. Like saying, yeah, it was there.

**Aline:** Also, it’s the story of your older sister is coming into this time in her life and you kind of need to be separated from her because she’s going through things that you don’t understand and that your parents are sort of like that’s none of your business, honey, don’t look at that.

**Jennifer:** That’s true.

**Aline:** And then all of a sudden she’s coming to this flowering and the younger sister doesn’t understand it and there is this divide that happens. I mean, a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl —

**Jennifer:** It’s huge.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And, you know, I didn’t want to shy away from — the thing is the original material is actually a lot about sex. And it’s about the sexual awakening.

**John:** Because all Hans Christian Andersen stuff is about sex.

**Jennifer:** I know. It’s true. It’s true. And we weren’t going there. I mean, that’s not the story we were telling, but at the same time I think my whole thing with this film was wanting sincerity. So, even though like I say we take tropes and then we spin them upside down, even in the tropes of sincerity —

**Aline:** You’re not spoofing.

**Jennifer:** Not spoofing. And that in every one of these things there is that mix. And I wanted these girls to feel real. I mean, even Anna’s sort of romantic relationships, it’s like the one with Kristoff, I like at the end that she kisses him first and he asks permission. And it feels a lot more real. But she’s not — I mean, she’s out in public. She kisses him on the dock. Like it’s a little — she’s pushing it. I don’t think there would be one second where she wouldn’t say, “We shouldn’t kiss here,” because that’s not Anna.

**John:** That’s not Anna.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** And I think we didn’t want to make these girls uptight, but at the same time I wasn’t certainly trying to make a sexual statement. But it just wasn’t trying to avoid, I guess you could say. But you could tell in the studio there was — the boys loved he I will say. Let’s just say that.

**John:** Let’s talk about Kristoff because we’re just about to meet him.

So, we sort of get into our Romancing the Stone aspect of the journey which is that she hooks up with a guy who can take her up the mountain to find her sister. And so this is Kristoff. He has his reindeer, Sven. Reindeers are Better than People. Does Sven ever talk?

**Jennifer:** Sven does not talk. Kristoff is talking for him.

**Aline:** I loved that.

**Jennifer:** That came…we wanted…because here’s the theory, and this I think came from Chris Buck is you only need one special talking thing per movie, meaning like if it’s all the animals the animals it’s all the animals. But you’ve got a snowman who’s magical and he talks. And it’s like — and then Sven talked, too. That’s where you say you put too magic on top of —

**John:** Hat on a hat.

**Jennifer:** Hat on a hat. But we were saying how do we — we knew we wanted to have him pantomime and things. And you don’t want to not do that in animation. You want to exploit it. It’s so much fun to do. It’s like if you didn’t the animators would just be like, “Why am I even here?” You know? [laughs]

But were just talking one day about confessing how a lot of us talk for our pets. And I’m like, I talk for my cats. And Chris has different voices for his three dogs. And that’s the kind of thing a lonely guy who lived in the woods with his reindeer would do. So, that’s where that came from. And it was just something we hadn’t seen, you know, which is always the hard thing, I think, where you haven’t seen.

**John:** Absolutely. And this is also where we meet our second male character. We met our snowman…

**Jennifer:** Olaf.

**John:** Olaf. I forgot his name. Olaf is his name.

**Jennifer:** That’s okay.

**John:** And Olaf is great.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**John:** Olaf is so just odd and cheerful and his song is not necessary in any way, but just delightful. So, his song, In Summer, is one of my favorite things.

**Aline:** Oh my god. I really had one of those, you know, when you’re watching a movie where I’m like I’m really loving this, this can’t get any better. And then it goes into that. It was just…

**John:** It was like a clean South Park moment.

**Aline:** Yeah! I mean, it was unbelievable.

**John:** We have a character who is so deluded about how the world works, and yet is just completely chipper and cheerful.

**Aline:** Oh my god, and I have boys, a 10-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy, and they just like, wow, when that happened. And just the spirit of him and the comedic strength of him. I just watched them just go like, wow.

**Jennifer:** That’s amazing.

**Aline:** Really magically interesting to them.

**John:** On a second viewing I did look like, well, what if you took Olaf out of the whole thing. And there are ways you could write it, there is a way you could write him out of the movie completely. But yet he provided that extra sort of — that just extra little something that was so important. Because things would get so dark without him to just be happy, and bright, and smiling.

**Jennifer:** The thing about Olaf is he was by far, for me, the hardest character to deal with. And I say that because when I came on, when I went to see a screening, people are going to hate me, when I saw the screening — I wasn’t on the project yet — every time he appeared I wrote, “Kill the f-ing snowman.” I just wrote kill him. I hate him. I hate him.

And part of it was, you know, we didn’t have Josh yet. And that’s a huge thing, obviously. And it wasn’t the scratch artist, he was great, but it was that he was — he wanted to be a shoulder because Elsa had these guards. He was half-good and half-bad. He was acerbic. He was a little, I don’t know, he just was kind of mean at times. And I didn’t know why he existed and I didn’t like him.

**Aline:** He does a funny thing that I don’t think I’ve seen. This is not even a trope that I haven’t seen. He’s sort of doing Mystery Science Theater on the movie from inside the movie, and I can’t think — can you think of anything else like that where he’s sort of doing a running commentary on everything that’s happening?

**Jennifer:** And so what happened with him is we really had to start over and we said sort of how does a snowman think? You go that, like snow is pure, so we started thinking innocence. And that’s what led us to him being sort of a representation of the girls when they were little. That they create this, “Hi, I’m Olaf and I like…” They create the snowman together when they’re the happiest.

**Aline:** He’s that spirit.

**Jennifer:** He’s that spirit. And so when she creates him magically, not realizing he’d come to life, he had to be a kid. And there was a while where we almost had, we were looking at younger, like is it a teenage boy, is it a young boy? But, I think we found just, no, when they built him they built this snow Man, so he’s encompassing what that fantasy play was for them.

**Aline:** But it’s another great fun thing of the genre which is, well, guys, we’ve got to have a sidekick, a comedic sidekick. We’ve just got to do it.

**Jennifer:** And he definitely started as that, totally.

**Aline:** And so give that and given that that is such trammeled ground, you know, every animated movie seems to do that in a different way, I could see that you were looking for ways to use him in ways that he hadn’t been used before, because he doesn’t really deliver a lot of the sort of homilies that you think are going to come from that character.

He doesn’t have that.

**John:** He has no deep well of wisdom that’s —

**Aline:** Which normally that character would. Just to me it’s sort of like an alt comic that wanders into the movie and does this commentary. And it’s funny because I think it makes the movie safer for boys, for sure.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Which is why he’s so prominent in the marketing.

**Jennifer:** We wanted to get to him a lot sooner and have more of him. Obviously for those kinds of reasons. But, again, whenever, and I’m sure you guys find this, too. Whenever you try to force something on, it’s obvious for every second of it that you’re doing that. And he just didn’t belong until he showed up. And he belonged to me, him showing up was the moment for Anna of hope again. It’s that moment of like you’ve just survived this wolf chase. What are you doing? I hope you know what you’re doing.

And they walk ahead and there is everything of why she’s doing it. It’s her sister. I mean, that childhood innocence.

**Aline:** But they also parent the snowman.

**Jennifer:** And they parent, yeah.

**Aline:** So, it’s a big part of their romance.

**John:** It’s a way of bringing them together.

**Jennifer:** Totally. And to me it shows — that’s where you start to see there’s more to this guy. And he is not perfect. He doesn’t try to flirt. He doesn’t try to be anything but what he is, but the more you get to know him then you realize, like they say finally in the Troll song, he’s the honest goods. And I think Olaf helps with that.

So, for me he very much earned his place, and yet I was terrified because he is a character that I think — and Josh thinks this, too, we’ve talked about this a lot. He works when he plays off of other people. That’s just what he is. Because that’s his whole reason for being. He brings joy to other people. He exists because of this relationship. And then when you take him alone he just doesn’t have that same — you don’t feel the same thing. And so it took us a long time because wanted to say, “Let’s put Olaf and make him a host of this, and do this.”

And for us, both Josh and I were like, “We’re feeling wrong about it.” And the minute we add one of the other characters, it’s a joy. And so I love that we figured that out, because it was like we kept trying to say why where for so long did he not work for us and then all of a sudden he did. And it was like he just fits with this group and he is somebody who brings — it’s like he brings joy to other people. He’s not in and of himself some sort of iconic character.

**John:** So, one of the most surprising things that happens next is Anna gets to Elsa, which you sort of think of the quest of the movie, well eventually they’re going to get there and it will all be resolved by then. But at the midpoint of the movie —

**Jennifer:** That’s a good point, yeah.

**John:** They actually get there and they have the conservation and The First Time in Forever and then like things seem like they’re going to be okay.

**Aline:** God, another great tip for writers which is you can just go and do it.

**John:** Don’t delay it. Actually just start it. And it surprises you because you’re not expecting, you know, you establish a journey. So, like, oh, the journey is to get there. And like, oh, but we’re here. And so what else can happen? Well, she can shot in the heart with it and Elsa can refuse to change and shut them out and build an abominable snowman and sort of become more monstrous herself.

She doesn’t attack them literally, but she builds something that does attack them and sort of sends them down, back down a mountain.

**Jennifer:** Well, I think it shows you the part — for me it was like showing you the part of her that is still damaged. And like a lot of us, get damaged by moments in childhood. You know, being free felt wonderful, but she has right in the present “I could kill, I could hurt, and you have to go.” And then that fear takes over so much that obviously it hurts her and then it literally chases her out, in a way, if you look at it that way.

And that’s where you understand that, oh, we’re nowhere near resolving this relationship or, and wait a minute, things are — it’s the side of her powers that say there’s a great danger to them. And we had just done the beauty and we had seen her dangerous as a little child, but it’s still whimsical and accidental, but to see the fact that her emotions could create this spinning storm that hurts Anna you start to go, oh god, what more can she do?

And it is where I feel like her powers become villainess, but she doesn’t. But in having it — what’s interesting is the heart moment, where her heart is struck, was originally in the first act, and it was deliberate. And it was when she was evil and it’s when the girls were divided in a different way. But the whole second act was about Anna trying to get to Hans and to kiss him and then Elsa trying to stop her. And that was the whole second act.

**John:** That would have been a terrible movie. I’m glad you didn’t make that movie. That would not have worked.

**Jennifer:** [laughs] Well, the issue — the biggest thing I’ll say is it was an action-adventure film and that’s not — you can’t make a musical with that.

**John:** No.

**Jennifer:** And so it had to change, but we loved the concept of Frozen Heart, symbolically, and when we moved it to the midpoint is when we were like, oh, we can keep it because we wanted it at some point.

**John:** It’s the right idea, just that wouldn’t have worked —

**Jennifer:** It couldn’t sustain a whole film. That’s what we found.

**John:** So, leaving here we go back to see the trolls again. We see Kristoff’s adopted family and that’s when we realize that this early moment we saw where the boy was looking at the stuff, they actually stayed with those trolls and the trolls are real to him and all that stuff.

We talked about sort of the alt comic who walked into the movie, this is another great moment with Olaf, you know, whispering out the side of his mouth, “We need to get out of here. I’ll stall. You run.”

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s good is that was another John Lasseter moment though. Literally to the point where — because we were saying the joke is — there’s no joke because we know that the trolls are going to wake up. We’ve seen them wake up. And there was a time where pitched sort of you never saw them wake up so when you go there you didn’t know. But it just was like — the beginning is so complicated and it raised too many other questions.

But we said watching Olaf misunderstand we can have a lot of fun. And John Lasseter is the one who literally acted out the side of his mouth. And I caught him in the hallway because nobody was getting it. I’m like, “Could you just do it?” And I videotaped him doing it. And the animator had that and watched that. So, we will all watch it and we see John in that moment. [laughs]

**John:** What I like about this moment, this is the moment when I first watched the film when I realized like, wait, do I want her to end up with Hans, or do I want her to end up with Kristoff? And that’s a strange thing to happen in a princess movie, because a princess movie there should be like one prince that she should be with. It should always be the prince. But there’s this other guy and they’re trying to push these two together.

**Aline:** Again, that’s a trope which is the you meet the perfect guy and then you meet the kind of weather-beaten, not as handsome guy, you meet Jon Cryer — with Andrew McCarthy and then you meet Jon Cryer.

**Jennifer:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Yes, but when those happen I should have already disliked the perfect guy. I should have already seen his flaws. I should have seen why he’s not perfect. And yet every time that we’re going back to see him —

**Aline:** But Pretty in Pink is a good example because initially she ended up with Duckie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** I knew it!

**Aline:** They changed that. They changed it. And so he was actually — whatever villainous stuff they had with Andrew McCarthy they must have pulled out. But he’s the same thing. It’s that slightly bland, handsome-y guy.

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s interesting about it for us is it wasn’t just about withholding Hans’ reveal. We knew where we were headed, which was her trying to get to Kristoff. But if you feel it too early then you’re just waiting for her to kiss Hans and it doesn’t work. Like you’re just waiting for it, and you’re not invested in it. But so it had to be this slow build where you really don’t feel — in my mind I never quite felt that moment until when she looks back at him and he looks at her through the door, right before Hans.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** And the goal was to — it’s coming, but is it?

**Aline:** You don’t feel like you’re ahead of them like let’s just get together already. Yeah.

**John:** But by establishing the expectation in people’s mind that like, oh, she thinks she’s going to have to kiss Hans, but she should really have to kiss Kristoff, you’re not thinking of any other options.

**Aline:** That’s the great thing. You think that’s the twist.

**Jennifer:** You’re not thinking about the…that’s the key. And we needed to feel that —

**Aline:** Double twist.

**Jennifer:** What you need to feel is her feeling something but not quite understanding it so that she doesn’t then seem like, “Well he doesn’t love me, I’ll like him.” What it is is there’s an awakening and you’re sensing it, but it’s not 100%. Because the minute it is it deflated. And that’s what made, to me, the Fjord moment we were headed for so hard. It wasn’t literally until we screened it in June — that was our last screening — so the last change. And Ed hadn’t seen it, because we had done an internal screening but he wasn’t there.

And then we screened it in Arizona for two audiences and he was there. And it was still only half animated, but the story was there. And he came out and he just said, “You did it.” And I went, boom, I mean, not literally, but emotionally I collapsed because — and it was because it was so nuanced. Anything we tried, it’s like you tip it and then it would suck, and then you tip it and it would suck. And it was just like can we build it?

**Aline:** How do you keep your sense of what’s working and what’s not working after you’ve been exposed to the same material so much over time, over time, over time? How do you do that?

**Jennifer:** God. I guess, I don’t know. How do you? I feel like it’s just trust. Because there are things, like for me Olaf was so challenging that I never could get that out of my head as to — never say is this working. I only knew what it needed to be. And I had to have faith and people were reacting right to it. But, I think that — and that’s always a danger in animation because we joke it’s the “Shiny New Toy Syndrome.” You get tired of a sequence and you want to change it because you’ve seen it so many times. But I think it’s a trust of —

**Aline:** Yup.

**Jennifer:** And it’s also a desperation of like —

**Aline:** Also true in comedy. You get sick of your own jokes. And then you start to look for other stuff. And they’re still —

**Jennifer:** And I’m still learning comedy. I mean, for me, I was a dramatic screenwriter. Everything that I’ve done is an independent, my options, nothing was a comedy. And Phil Johnston only worked in comedy, but we worked together all the time.

We met every week in school and then after school even, once we graduated, and we gave notes on each other’s material and we worked on each other’s stuff. So, there was this understanding of each other’s sensibility. But Ralph was the first comedy I worked on and then to have Frozen just me, without him, I was terrified.

And I still, you know, I still can’t — I cringe, I’m freaked out, and so I think comedy is the most insanely hard. It’s the craziest thing to have to do. It’s torturously hard. For me, anyway. I don’t know, maybe not for you.

**Aline:** No, it is. It’s very hard. But I think it is hard when you work on material over, and over, and over again, you have moments of being like, well, I don’t know. I have no idea.

And I’ve definitely had moments on stuff that was good where I tried to cut it, or get rid of it.

**Jennifer:** Oh, I did that a lot.

**Aline:** I saw an early cut of one of my movies and I went back and said, “Well this has to go, and that, and that, and that, and we’re cutting this and that and that.” It’s like I wanted it to be a 13-minute movie because there were only a few things that I liked. And I really admire, there are people who can read a script over again and watch a movie over again with fresh eyes and that’s very hard to do. It’s something you have to train yourself to do. Sort of like wipe out all your associations with something and try and feel it again. It’s tough. It’s tough.

**Jennifer:** I had a hard time. And it was always Olaf for me. He was the hardest. And I think possibly because he is a true comedic character and I’m not comfortable. I can do it, but it’s hell.

**Aline:** So, he improvised “I have no skull and no bones?”

**Jennifer:** No, that I did. I will say I did write that. [laughs]

**Aline:** Okay that, because I had read somewhere that that was improvised. That — if you wrote that — that is A+, A+.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** That seems like it’s improvised. That is an A+…

**Jennifer:** How I could always get around, it’s a cheat I felt like, was because I love and I personally love — state the obvious humor that’s — and when you say it’s like he’s constantly, it’s like he’s doing this running commentary. I just personally like it. In Wreck-It Ralph I did a bit with Felix and with this character Gene.

**Aline:** That’s a joke that’s so good that I laughed through the whole scene. That scene ended and then the other scene started and I was still laughing about that line. When I watched it the second time I realized how much stuff I had missed just because I was so — it’s one of those things where you’re just really in the movie. You’re like so in the movie to be able to make that comment in that moment and to nail that character and have him say that in that moment.

That’s an amazingly funny joke.

**Jennifer:** Thank you. I’ll take that because there would be so many that — and there are a couple that I still would want to pull out and I see them and they fall flat every time. No one laughs. And I knew it and I wished I had pushed. But, what are you going to do?

**John:** Now, a strange thing happens in your musical at about this point. There’s no more songs. No more characters sing their songs. And it’s I guess common in movies where there’s fewer songs. You establish everything and then the action just resolves. But it is a strange thing where like no one sings —

**Jennifer:** It’s surprisingly — oh, go ahead.

**John:** I saw a cut where someone had built a version of Do You Want to Build a Snowman at the very end, like a reprise of it. Did you talk about adding more songs through the end?

**Jennifer:** What’s interesting, we worked with Chris Montan who is the president of music at Disney. He has been there for all the musicals over the years. Lion King. The most major ones, iconic ones as well. And Bobby and Kristen had never done a film before. They had done Winnie the Pooh, but that’s not a full-on musical. And that’s actually traditionally what happens. There are no more songs after the end of the second act.

**John:** Okay.

**Jennifer:** And, I think for me the reason it’s so much more obvious in Frozen is because it’s so song-heavy in the beginning. It’s got one more, maybe two more songs than even the traditional musical does. So, it kind of exposes itself a little more. But the reprise, now, we had a reprise. It was not Do You Want to Build a Snowman. There was a different song that got cut called Life’s Too Short. And that had been the song at the midpoint that became a reprise.

And there was a reprise of that where the two girls are — Elsa is in prison and Anna is in her room alone and they’re singing. But what’s incredible, and this is why — and I love that watching that moment the fans created, but the reason it wouldn’t work for the film where we did it, and I know they put it in a different spot actually.

**John:** They put it with Elsa singing it, yeah.

**Jennifer:** The reason it didn’t work where we put it is it gave away the ending. The minute you retied the girls together the movie was over. So, then —

**Aline:** You need to keep that tension open.

**Jennifer:** You had to keep it. And as soon as she thought about regret for her sister I knew the solution of the film was going to be her sister. And that was — if the solution of the film is buried in the Fixer Upper song when she says, “People make bad choices when they’re mad, or scared, or stressed, but throw a little love their way, you’ll bring out their best.”

Well, that’s the answer to the film. The solution to the problem, but it’s hidden. And it had to stay hidden. But also the issue of had Elsa sung at that moment a lot of us felt it would start mocking itself.

**John:** It would get syrupy.

**Jennifer:** We couldn’t do it. But to do it the way the fans have, I think we can enjoy it because you can always add after the fact and have fun. But, yeah, we did — at least we did talk about it, but it was that fear of —

**Aline:** That is true also with a lot of comedies, the first two thirds or three quarters have a lot of jokes, and then the resolution is a drama.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s also, too, you’re so invested in the story, that’s when you feel the stop of a song. You go, “Halt.” [hums] It’s like, no, you can’t do that.

**John:** Stop singing!

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And Bobby and Kristen were very conscious of that and we would always do that.

**Aline:** But they also as a tribute to the fact that the stakes were really working so that you’re not really noticing, that you’re so immersed then in what’s going to happen and how it’s all going to work out that you’re sort of okay with being past that, because you’re trying to puzzle out how is this puzzle.

The two things that I think are really great about this movie. One is that you’re sort of emotionally invested, but you’re also thinking, I mean, maybe just writers are thinking, but I’m thinking, “How is she going to get out of this?” There are so many moving parts to resolve in that ending. And so I didn’t really feel the absence of the song because I was so immersed in seeing how is this going to work out. And the emotional/dramatic resolution of a love story, you know, I’ve said this a lot: there are so many love stories in the world that are not girls and boys, that are not a man and a woman. And I think we’re getting better about that.

But, I think people are just always so excited and grateful that there’s something that just isn’t just about idealized romantic love.

**Jennifer:** Idealized. Yeah.

**Aline:** And this is what — almost everybody has a great love story in their family. And those sibling emotions, those sibling relationships are so deep. And almost everybody has that.

**Jennifer:** What was so weird for us with the — not weird, but it was a nice surprise was that with the — everyone we worked with, none of us can remember who said it. We were all in the room together. We all remember being together, and we keep saying you said, no you said it, said the “what if they were sisters?” And I remember that moment so distinctively because that was like when the film mattered all of a sudden to me.

I could not see this movie before it at all. I actually was very —

**Aline:** They were not sisters at all?

**Jennifer:** No, they weren’t sisters until about maybe one screening before I came on is when they tried the sisters. But the first screening I saw they weren’t related in any way. And part of why —

**Aline:** What were they?

**Jennifer:** Part of why Idina was not cast yet is it was more of — Elsa was more of like a Bette Midler kind of character. She was that more iconic older Snow Queen. And they were not related or connected in any way. And it was making them sisters was the first breakthrough I think.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** But what I loved was everyone suddenly could feel it. They could feel the film. Even if you don’t have a sibling, but just understanding that kind of — what you go through with your family is something you don’t go through with anyone, or rarely go through for anyone else.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** But you get it. And part of because what happens as a child, you know, to you, that bond as a child even if it disappears you never let it go.

**Aline:** Right. But going back to that sort of subtext that I kind of see with the flowering with the older sister’s adolescence, you do feel when your older sibling goes through that. You feel like you’ve lost them. And as the younger sibling you just feel like, “I’m still here. I still want to be your friend. I know that I’m not wearing the right jeans and I’m not at the cool parties, but I’m still…”

So, I think that people really connect to that feeling of I want to do something. And I have two kids and the younger brother — the funny thing in our family, we are all younger siblings, except for my older son. My husband, and I, and my younger son are all younger siblings. So, that feeling of “let me prove myself to you, let me prove that I can be something and that I can do something.” And Elsa has been dealing with all of these issues on her own. And then the person that she doesn’t want to turn to — she doesn’t want to burden her, but yet becomes her savior. It’s just so incredibly moving.

**Jennifer:** And I’m the younger sister, too. I have an older sister. And she was a big inspiration for Elsa for me, because I think there was a lot of the shutting out. And like you said, it’s not that contrived. It happens even if it’s not for a big reason. It really does happen. And I remember a moment, too. We didn’t become close until I was in my twenties. And it was almost like one day, and I had gone through something very tragic and lost someone, and it was like she looked at me as a human being, an adult, and I became real again to her.

It’s like I’d lost her, and then all of a sudden we kind of arrived at the same place together. And then from that moment on she was like my champion. She was always there for me. And it was — that scene, having to like lose each other and then rediscover each other as adults, that was a big part of my life.

**Aline:** So relatable. So relatable.

**Jennifer:** And I think a lot of people…

**Aline:** So relatable. Really so relatable.

**John:** So, I want to focus on one last moment in the movie which was this reveal that Hans actually is up to no good. How nervous were you the first time you saw that with an audience with kids in it?

**Jennifer:** Oh, I thought they were going to hate me and Chris and hate us. It was a hard thing. Definitely.

**John:** Because it’s such a grown up moment. It’s that thing that I’ve never seen before in a kid’s movie where a character you assume is good completely pulls the rug out from underneath you. And that’s — it’s shocking.

**Jennifer:** What was interesting, I mean, we’ve gotten a couple — there have been a few Op-Eds of people saying how dare we teach as children not to trust anyone and saying good guys are bad. And I’m like, you know, I can’t — part of me is like, okay, I respect that people have that concern.

But for me what I think people always under — they underestimate children. And what we found is when we screen, it happened on Wreck-It Ralph as well and it was eye-opening for me, because you do a screening and it’s a family audience with real little kids and then you do older audiences to see how they react. And for both Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen the kids are like this is the theme. This is what they want. Well, he really loves her, but she doesn’t love him. Well, you know, she didn’t know him. Why would she marry?

And Frozen it’s like it’s about fear versus love. And, you know, well, she just met him and married him. Of course you don’t know him. He could turn out to be horrible. You got to get to know someone.

It’s like they go right to it.

**Aline:** Yes, she’s made that mistake. And the funny is anytime you’ve ever dated anyone who turned out to be a creep, it’s not like in the beginning it was awesome.

**Jennifer:** It wasn’t like he was like, “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

**Aline:** Right. No, in the beginning he’s actually — the creepy ones almost seem the most charming and the most prince-like. You’ve taught girls an important lesson.

**John:** To me the important lesson is that if you’re unhappy in your life and you’re feeling shut down and no one understands you —

**Aline:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** You’re going to fall for the first guy who seems like he understands you.

**Aline:** Boy, that’s it.

**Jennifer:** Yes.

**John:** And everything is going to seem wonderful and perfect, but it doesn’t mean that he’s actually a good guy.

**Aline:** That’s exactly right. She’s latched onto something for those wrong reasons.

**Jennifer:** And we all do. And I think — I have to say, I mean, I grew up on Disney. I was a Disney kid. Like, I wanted to be an animator. I was an escapist, so Disney was perfect. I could escape right into that.

But, as much as I love them — now I work for Disney — it would have been nice to have the one that says, “Don’t do that.” And for me, I mean, maybe I would have learned it a lot earlier in life and not at 40. [laughs]

**Aline:** I actually have to, when I look at those things, I actually have to force myself to look at the prince as something other than a man or a love story, because some of those movies which are so wonderful, they just are selling romantic love, so over-selling it to a point that you don’t really want to say that to girls.

**Jennifer:** No. I agree. I mean, I have a ten-year-old daughter.

**Aline:** That’s an aspect of the love you’re going to experience in your life, but there’s going to be —

**Jennifer:** I wish someone had said, “Your best friend is probably the one who’s right for you as the guy,” instead of saying, “It’s the hot guy who looks at you those ways.”

**Aline:** Well, you did say that.

**Jennifer:** The saxophone.

**Aline:** You said that to the tune of $765 million so far. And I do think, I mean, one of the reasons I was so elated when the movie was over is it’s just so rare to see a movie that tells a story about women’s lives and girl’s lives that has this other emphasis to it and doesn’t say — you know, she ends up kissing a boy. It’s not, because sometimes you have the other thing which is it’s a very empowering movie about women but they weirdly kind of end up alone and an addict somehow.

And other people go off and have boyfriends, but the Tom-boy heroine doesn’t.

**Jennifer:** Exactly. Well it’s the point of like not wanting to preach or make statements, but letting it evoke itself. And that’s the key I felt like with Frozen because anytime we — and even with Elsa like teetering on is she sexual, is she not, it’s like anytime we — if we had not given her any, too, there might have been that statement of like, “She has no sexuality. That’s a statement you’re making.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** It’s like we’re not making that statement. These are real to us. And it’s like these are real characters.

**Aline:** But that’s a great thing what you said. Another great thing for young writers to hear which is what you tried to go with was sincerity and reality.

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And saying what is emotionally sincere here. And that is your guide. Not sort of thinking about it from the outside.

**Jennifer:** You can’t. And I used to say this thing, and we talk about in the room when you’re trying to sort of sift through all the notes, or fight for things. The key to me was always like you’re controlling her. Like don’t control Elsa. Don’t control Anna. Because the minute you do, the audience is gone.

Because I always feel that way. I can tell when I’m being manipulated in that the character’s motivations don’t — I don’t buy her. I don’t believe her. Or I feel like she’s turned for the sake of someone else, not for herself. And that’s the hardest thing to do, I think when you are doing something so collaboratively. And it’s to protect — your favorite moment is actually when you hear them go, someone else in the room go, “Elsa wouldn’t do that.” And you’re like, ooh, thank god! We’re here.

**John:** Jennifer, because you’re here I can actually ask you a question that was on my mind from the very start. On the podcast we’ve talked about the Bechdel test which is —

**Jennifer:** Oh yeah.

**John:** The classic statement of the Bechdel test is is there more than one female character with a name. Do these two or more characters talk to each other over the course of the film? And do they talk about something that is not a man?

**Jennifer:** Yes.

Aline : The question here, does it pass the male Bechdel. Yeah.

**John:** Your movie actually barely passes the reverse Bechdel test, which is one of the first things I can actually say.

**Jennifer:** Really.

**John:** Within your film actually as I looked through it the second time, it’s very rare to find, it’s almost impossible to find a scene that has two men with names who talk to each other.

**Aline:** Well, Snowman is a man. Olaf is a man.

**John:** Oh, I guess we count Olaf as a man.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** I guess if you count him.

**Aline:** Yeah, but otherwise.

**Jennifer:** Then it passes, but, yeah.

**John:** There’s a little moment at the very end of the story where they are throwing Hans and the [Briggs] and they talk about —

**Jennifer:** Yes. They talk about the brothers.

**John:** The brothers. But that’s the only time other than… — If Olaf really counts…

**Jennifer:** Do they have to be alone onscreen, because I’m like maybe the bargaining with Oaken, but Anna is there, so I don’t know if that counts.

**Aline:** She can be there. They just have to —

**John:** Or they’re talking about like going off to get Elsa, or something like that, so they’re really talking about a girl.

**Jennifer:** No, right, that’s true.

**Aline:** That’s thrilling.

**John:** So, it almost passes the reverse Bechdel test which is just fascinating. Or it fails —

**Aline:** Fails.

**John:** It fails the —

**Jennifer:** The thing I will say is that completely just happened to be that way. I have to say that even I didn’t remember. I know I’m like, I just assumed we were going to pass because we had two female leads, but I hadn’t thought about it through the whole thing until I was like, oh god, did we pass? But I never thought of the reversal.

I was happy that we were doing a film like this where it is two female leads. And there was a point where there was that concern of like is there anything in it for the boys, but people just really got around the girls and the story.

**Aline:** We also have to talk about the big snow monster.

**Jennifer:** Marshmallow. That’s his name is Marshmallow.

**Aline:** Which the kids enjoyed also. It gives you some of that.

**Jennifer:** What’s interesting about him, and this talks about sometimes you’re asked to do these weird, almost impossible things. Is there was a test done with the Snowman chasing them, and it was just a test to learn the animation. We were so late in production, I mean, this movie was so tight. There was a time where they said, “Do you think you can make that scene work? So actually use the scene, because we might not have time to animate.”

And I was like, oh god, and it was that scene.

**Aline:** Amazing. Oh my god.

**Jennifer:** So, I wrote it in and I found a way —

**Aline:** It’s like you’re juggling six balls and someone gives you a banana.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And we had to reverse into how Marshmallow would fit and why Elsa would make him.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** And Olaf was a bit of an anchor with that. She’s like, if I can make that, I can make this. And if you won’t leave, I will make you leave. And so he’s kind of — we had to make him a bouncer, but then it had to be Anna who pissed him off or it would make Elsa too mean.

So, there’s all this stuff, but the funny thing was at the end of the day we had to actually go back and reanimate because we had changed Anna’s character so much that it was driving me insane. Because the first, the test version which went out at some point, and I was like, “No!” is Anna is at the edge of the cliff going, “Oooh,” you know, scared, holding her hands together. “He’s coming! Hurry. Hurry. No, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.”

And that was the —

**John:** That’s a different character.

**Jennifer:** An Anna version way back. And I was like it doesn’t fit in the film. If she’s fearless she can’t do it. So, we had to reanimate it anyway. [laughs] And they did it, though. But by that point luckily we had done much better in production than we thought we were going to do. We had scheduled a lot of redo’s that —

**Aline:** That you didn’t need.

**Jennifer:** That we didn’t have to do. So, that allowed us to do it. But I remember begging for that moment I guess.

**John:** It all turned out pretty well.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**Aline:** I think we can agree.

**John:** This was an amazing conversation.

**Jennifer:** This was so fun, thank you.

**John:** This is our longest episode over.

**Jennifer:** Oh my god. See, I told you I can talk. I just —

**John:** Well, between you and Aline, we got a conversation covered. But thank you so much for coming and talking. And, Aline, thank you for being our amazing guest host.

**Aline:** I’m thrilled.

**Jennifer:** Thank you for having me. This is so much fun.

**Aline:** I hope it’s creepy that John and I have probably seen the movie twenty-five times combined. [laughs]

**John:** We have kids. That will be our excuses, that we have kids.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**John:** So, like all of our episodes, if you want to know about things we talked about, Frozen, oh, and thank you for putting the script for Frozen up online. That is so terrific and I’m so glad that people do that these days.

**Jennifer:** I love that, too. I love getting to read them myself, all the scripts.

**John:** So, we will have links to stuff about Frozen and the script to Frozen up on johnaugust.com.

If you are listening to us on a device that supports podcasts, like your iPhone, you can find us on iTunes. We are there. Just search for Scriptnotes. And we will be back next week with a normal episode featuring Craig Mazin.

**Aline:** I’m going to get Craig out of the closet now.

**John:** All right. I heard him stirring there a little bit. So, we’ll let him out.

**Aline:** The drugs are wearing off.

**John:** All right. Thank you again, so much.

**Jennifer:** Thank you so much.

**John:** Bye.

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) and [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular)
* Jennifer Lee on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1601644/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lee_(filmmaker))
* [Frozen](http://movies.disney.com/frozen)
* The [Frozen final shooting draft](http://waltdisneystudiosawards.com/downloads/frozen-screenplay.pdf)
* Let it Go [in 25 languages](http://video.disney.com/watch/let-it-go-in-25-languages-4f06e85c30ce6b18db34b461)
* Our episodes on [Raiders of the Lost Ark](http://johnaugust.com/2013/raiders-of-the-lost-ark) and [Little Mermaid](http://johnaugust.com/2013/the-little-mermaid)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/women-and-pilots).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 127. The Female Directors at Pilot Season episode of Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** — Thrones.

**John:** Thrones. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, this was a very big week for you. You had a life-changing experience from what I understand.

**Craig:** I did. This past Sunday for the first time ever I played essentially Dungeons & Dragons. Now, let me back up for a second. When I was a kid I played a Marvel Universe role-playing game, so I don’t want anyone to think I’m not a total dork. I am.

**John:** Rest assured, I think everyone understood that you’re a total dork.

**Craig:** There might have been one person out there who is still wondering, and they’re probably such a dork that they didn’t realize. I also played Top Secret, which was sort of a spy-based role-playing game, but I never played full-on “here comes a Cobalt” Dungeons & Dragons.

So, here’s who I’m playing with. I’m playing with Phil Hay, who has Ride Along coming out this weekend that he co-wrote with Matt Manfredi, this weekend meaning when we’re recording and will be out by the time you guys — and it’ll be a bit hit, which is awesome; Michael Gilvary who writes on the excellent show, Chicago Fire; Malcolm Spellman, a great screenwriter of note who has worked on a whole bunch of different movies; and Chris Morgan who is the auteur of the Fast & Furious franchise.

**John:** The good Fast & the Furious ones. Not the Derek Haas incarnation.

**Craig:** Not the Haas and Brandt ridiculous second movie.

**John:** Absolutely. We’re talking 3, 4, and 5. We’re talking quality.

**Craig:** Yeah, the one that everyone calls The Mistake.

**John:** So, these are a lot of like A, or high-level screenwriters.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** All playing Dungeons & Dragons together.

**Craig:** Right. And it’s great, because we’re screenwriters we’re pretty decent at sort of coming up with story. We’re weighed down a little bit by the dungeon master. The Dungeon Master, John August.

**John:** So, I DMd my first game in about 30 years, which was fun to have all these players here in my house to do this. We actually played Dungeon World which was a listener’s suggestion.

And so Dungeon World is a very stripped down version of kind of Dungeons & Dragons that really focuses on the storytelling. And you guys had to contribute a lot more to the narrative than you would normally have to do in classic Dungeons & Dragons.

**Craig:** Which I liked. I actually liked that. I mean, the rule book is — you can read the rule book in about 20 minutes as opposed to Dungeons & Dragons which I think requires an eight-year course.

**John:** It’s a commitment, yes.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, it went fast. You create your character really quickly and easily. And we had a great time. You were a very good Dungeon Master.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** And we are very, very excited to get back in there and finish the business at hand.

**John:** Yes. Now, listeners at home are probably wondering what character was Craig Mazin playing. Because Craig, he could be a knight, a pilot and a champion sticking up for one point of order.

**Craig:** Or beyond that.

**John:** I was thinking a wizard of some kind with a sort of secret agenda.

**Craig:** Mm.

**John:** But what were you, Craig?

**Craig:** A thief. I am a thief. I’m a dirty, dirty thief. I’m a paranoid. I’m not particularly nice. I’m constantly making fun of the people that I’m with. And —

**John:** I also remember you’re running scams on your own party. That was a —

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s the other thing. Like I worked out a deal because my character is physically not particularly impressive, so he worked out a deal with the strongest member of our party that that guy would kind of have my back. And when I collect gold from things that I would siphon away 10 percent of it and split that between me and him, and the rest would be… — So, I’m cheating. I’m really —

**John:** You were basically the manager of this whole group. Basically you were siphoning off some money. You got a percentage for things you didn’t really earn.

**Craig:** I’m the Littlefinger. I’m the Varys of this group.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That is relevant.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** How about that segue.

**John:** That’s an incredibly relevant thing because our guest this week — so our topics this week, we want to talk about this article that a bunch of people tweeted at us. It sort of went viral this week. This article that Lexi Alexander had written about being a female director in Hollywood.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** We also want to talk about the end of pilot season, which is a thing that Fox is proposing.

**Craig:** Again.

**John:** So, we needed to find a guest who could talk to us about female directors, could talk to us about television. We needed somebody to talk to us about Craig’s Littlefinger problem.

**Craig:** [laughs] So gross.

**John:** [laughs] Yes.

**Carolyn Strauss:** Venn diagram.

**John:** This Carolyn Strauss.

**Craig:** Carolyn Strauss everyone! Woo!

**John:** Carolyn Strauss, former president of HBO.

**Carolyn:** Entertainment.

**John:** HBO Entertainment. A producer in her own right. A producer on Game of Thrones.

**Craig:** The producer of Game of Thrones, I would say.

**Carolyn:** No, no, no, no, no.

**Craig:** I think so.

**Carolyn:** No, no, no.

**Craig:** That’s the way I think of you.

**Carolyn:** Oh, thank you, Craig.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Aw.

**Carolyn:** I’m still recovering from the dorkiness of this conversation.

**John:** It was a pretty hardcore dorky. She’s never listened to the show —

**Carolyn:** Which is perfect for Game of Thrones.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** Yes. So, you’ve never actually listened to our podcast, so you have no idea how this all works.

**Carolyn:** No I don’t.

**John:** There’s no quizzes. There’s no nothing. We just talk about stuff.

**Carolyn:** I’m scared.

**John:** Don’t be scared at all.

**Craig:** Don’t be scared. You’re scared? Don’t be scared.

**Carolyn:** I’m scared.

**Craig:** Don’t be scared.

**John:** So, some backstory on you. I know you from television. I know you from HBO. Did you work in broadcast television before that, or have you been sort of the premium from the start?

**Carolyn:** I started in HBO as a temp in New York and I just clawed my way.

**Craig:** Littlefinger.

**Carolyn:** Yeah. Exactly.

**Craig:** Varys. I love that. I actually think it’s kind of cool that you have managed to insulate yourself entirely from whatever is going on in network. It seems like it’s just a clown party over there at times.

**Carolyn:** It’s definitely different. And I’ve been very relieved that I don’t have to dabble in that too much. We did have a couple of forays at HBO where we produced shows for network, but…

**John:** What shows did you produce for network? I don’t remember that happening.

**Carolyn:** Perhaps you remember a little show called Martin.

**Craig:** Martin!

**Carolyn:** Oh my god, that’s a big show.

**Carolyn:** Or Down the Shore.

**John:** I don’t remember Down the Shore at all.

**Craig:** I totally remember Down the Shore because when I came out here the first jobs I was trying to get were in sitcoms. And Down the Shore was a Fox show, I want to say.

**Carolyn:** It was a Fox show.

**Craig:** It was a Fox show and it was like ’92, ’93, somewhere in that zone?

**Carolyn:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** And I was actually trying to get on that show. And so somebody invited me to go watch a taping of it and I was sitting there thinking, “Oh my god, I would love to get a job on the show. I do not like the show.” [laughs] “Boy, I would love to get this job!”

**Carolyn:** But the one show that was the big, big show for HBO Productions was Everybody Loves Raymond. That was —

**John:** Well, that’s a pretty successful show.

**Craig:** Boy.

**John:** I’ve heard of that show.

**Craig:** HBO is just making money hand over fist.

**Carolyn:** Fist over hand.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Fist over hand.

**John:** Yeah. And now they’ve got the little HBO Go app.

**Craig:** They’ve got the Go thing.

**Carolyn:** Which I still can’t figure out how to get. I have never — [crosstalk]

**Craig:** This, by the way, is why Game of Thrones is the most pirated program in the world.

**Carolyn:** Exactly.

**John:** Because Carolyn Strauss can’t get it to work on her iPad.

**Craig:** Well, if Carolyn and her mom can’t figure it out, what are the odds that anyone else can?

**John:** Well, let’s figure out the problems we can solve, because these are really simple, easily solved problems to just deal with in this one hour of our show.

**Craig:** That you’re going to solve for us.

**John:** And that’s why we brought you on —

**Carolyn:** We’re going to solve it together. Teamwork.

**John:** Well, yeah, we’ll basically listen to you solve it.

**Carolyn:** I’m a collaborator.

**John:** We’ll fill in the punctuation as you solve the problem for us.

So, women directors in Hollywood are underrepresented. And that’s sort of like an — you can’t really contest that.

**Carolyn:** Fact.

**Craig:** It’s a fact.

**John:** There’s no way — and we’ve talked about this a couple times on the show is that more than 50 percent of film school graduates are women. And yet you look at feature films, you look at network television, you look at any television, women are vastly underrepresented in those ranks of director.

**Craig:** Sub 10 percent, right?

**John:** Yes. And among writers it’s less but it’s not as bad as it seems to be among directors. That’s not a new phenomenon. It seems to have always been that kind of phenomenon. This last week —

**Carolyn:** Although it depends where you’re looking for your writers. I mean, I think if you’re looking on the TV staffs you will probably find fewer, or there may be more. I actually don’t know. It would seem to me there would be less represented on TV staffs.

**Craig:** It’s not good on TV staffs. It’s not good.

**Carolyn:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** The numbers aren’t good anywhere.

**Carolyn:** And screenwriter’s numbers aren’t fantastic either.

**John:** Yeah. So, this last week Lexi Alexander who is a director in her own right —

**Carolyn:** I’m not going to disagree with a thing she said, though, because she’s like a kickboxing champion.

**John:** Absolutely. So, by the way, we should stress from the very start —

**Craig:** I’m going to disagree with a couple of things, but I will just get —

**Carolyn:** You’re going to get the shit kicked out of you.

**Craig:** I’ll just get my box kicked.

**John:** [laughs] So, Lexi Alexander, who in addition to being a kick-boxer is also a director and has directed several feature films, directed an Oscar-nominated, I think it was a short, but she wrote a blog post that sort of went viral and passed around this last week about female directors and the underrepresentation.

And so a couple little quotes from there. She writes, “There is no lack of female directors. Repeat after me: There is no lack of female directors. But there is a huge lack of people willing to give female directors opportunities. I swear if one person even so much as whispers the sentence, ‘Women probably don’t want to direct,’ my fist will fly as reflex action.”

**Carolyn:** See, it was funny, because that was the one — one thing that she said — I’ve never heard anybody say that ever that women don’t want to.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Carolyn:** I think there’s subterranean, I think misogyny is the wrong word, but discrimination. But I’ve never heard it so forthright, “Women don’t want to…”

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ve never heard that either.

**Carolyn:** No one’s — I haven’t come across anybody who’s that stupid really.

**John:** But I think subterranean is a fascinating way to phrase that because there are these things that you think about that you don’t actually say and they may influence your decision making based on like, “Well, she probably doesn’t really want to direct.” So, maybe that guy who was a good writer, who you’d say, oh, he probably wants to step up and direct, you may not say that same thing about a woman who could be next up to direct.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s a thing you could be thinking without actually saying it.

**Carolyn:** I think there are a lot of unspoken things that people think. And whether —

**Craig:** Let’s speak them. Let’s say them.

**Carolyn:** I’m not going to say them.

**Craig:** Darn.

**Carolyn:** I’m not in the fellow’s head, but I think there are definitely instances, I think, where women are looked at as first woman and then everything else. And I think that’s true of most — black directors. Black, then everything else. Gay, then everything else. I mean, it’s sort of the nature of people that they categorize things that way. But, I’ve never heard anybody say that. I mean, I think to me what she was talking about, which I thought was interesting, is basically let’s just be honest about what the situation is. Let’s not —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Carolyn:** And then at the same time she’s saying, “I don’t want to be a part of quota,” so then you’re basically just saying, “I want people to change.” And can they change without forcing them to change?

**Craig:** John and I were talking how she kind of runs ashore of this strange kind of contradiction at the end of her piece where she says, “This is really hard. No one has figured out how to solve this.”

**Carolyn:** Except for Sweden.

**Craig:** Except for Sweden. And why is no one trying to figure out how to solve this. And that’s part of the problem.

**John:** What she’s pointing to is that it feels like it’s an institutional problem. That it feels like overall we’re not hiring enough women. There’s something broken with the system that we’re not hiring enough women. The challenge I see with Hollywood is that it’s not really kind of a system in the way that other things are a system. It’s not like a corporation.

**Carolyn:** Yeah. It’s not quantifiable. It’s all based on opinions. It’s not like — there’s no facts involved, like this one is better than that one. I like this one better than I like that one, but that’s not, you know, that’s just an opinion.

**Craig:** Just an opinion. Doesn’t work.

**John:** After the fact you can say, look at the last 30 movies and say, well, only one of those was directed by a woman. But it’s not like you’re making a slate of movies. It’s not like you’re lining up all your directors for the next 30 projects and saying like, “These are going to be the directors for the next ones we’re going to do.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then you would see that, “Oh my god, they’re only white men that we’re hiring here!” But instead what we’re doing is we hire directors one at a time. You are asking the question, who is the right director for this project?

And that’s where I think her logic is tripped up, because I think you could argue there is a lack of female directors because there’s a lack of female directors who say like that’s the right person to direct that movie. And so it’s the lack of those possible choices.

**Carolyn:** But also is it that women get categorized as a certain kind of director. Oh, this is more of an emotional, touchy feely director.

**Craig:** No question.

**Carolyn:** It’s not the one that we want for Fast & Furious, Good, Bad or Indifferent Fast & Furious. You know, so, they can’t — a chick could never handle that. I mean, I look at — I observe women directors working and I would say for sure that there is a different attitude towards crew, which is almost —

**Craig:** You mean towards the crew, or the crew’s attitude towards the director?

**Carolyn:** Crew’s attitudes toward the director.

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** I mean, every once and awhile it doesn’t happen, but they’re much tougher on female directors.

**John:** So, what’s an example of a behavior you would see from a crew towards a female director? Is it when she’s asking for the four extra takes and — ?

**Carolyn:** Yeah. It’s impatience. It’s snappishness. It’s assuming they don’t know what they’re talking about. Whereas the same question or whatever done by a man who might be — have the same personality of that woman would be received entirely different.

**Craig:** See, this to me — so much of the problem is one of a perpetuation. Because at least in features, usually when we’re talking about larger features when they’re asking who should direct this they’re looking for somebody with a lot of experience. If they don’t have a lot of experience directing feature films then hopefully they have a lot of experience directing commercials.

And so it becomes a feedback loop.

**Carolyn:** Yeah, exactly. And who’s going to get that experience? Well, someone who you keep hiring.

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** A director that we had dinner with the other night, you and I, who I won’t name, but had a pretty successful movie this year.

**Craig:** Very successful.

**Carolyn:** I was sort of shocked by her saying at dinner that she has had no work come off that movie. And —

**Craig:** Well, I’m not as shocked by that in the sense that there are certain directors, and I think she falls into this category, that are sort of genres onto themselves. And, frankly, don’t — the movies that they make aren’t commercially lighting the world on fire.

**Carolyn:** Yeah, I think that’s true. But I think in that movie’s niche it did pretty well.

**Craig:** It did.

**Carolyn:** And I think that — I’ll just say it — I think a man who made that movie would have —

**Craig:** More heat.

**Carolyn:** There would be meetings up the wazoo, you know, because it’s a yakked about film.

**Craig:** Okay, so here’s my question. And this is something John and I have talked about.

**Carolyn:** Whether they get work off it, I don’t know, but they certainly have a lot of meetings.

**Craig:** We’ve often commented that one of the strangenesses of this situation is that there’s not a lack of women in charge of the decisions.

**Carolyn:** True.

**Craig:** I mean, when you look at who’s — Sue Kroll sits on the green light committee at Warner Bros. Amy Pascal has run Sony forever.

**Carolyn:** Women are not always women’s best friends.

**John:** Donna Langley.

**Craig:** Donna Langley at Universal. Emma at Fox.

**John:** Let’s talk about that. You can say that.

**Carolyn:** She mentions that in the article.

**John:** Yeah. And you can say that. so, talk to us about that, because it would seem from the outside if you look, “Oh, it must be all white men running the studios and that’s why they’re only hiring white men.”

**Craig:** It’s actually white women running the studios, kind of.

**John:** So, do you think that’s a truth?

**Carolyn:** Personally I would never hire a woman director. Let me just say that. Flat out. Writer-director, what have you.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Right. Only Jewish men between 40 and 60.

**Carolyn:** Exactly.

**John:** So, you’ve often been in the situation where you’re figuring out who to hire for different positions. How often does the gender question come up as you’re looking at a list of candidates? Are you always looking for who are some women who would be great for this spot? Or is always based on who is the right person to direct this?

**Carolyn:** Well, I mean, generally it’s who is the right person to direct it. If we have the ability to fold a woman director into that, I think that’s great. You know, I think, for instance on Game of Thrones the last two seasons we’ve had Michelle MacLaren direct who is amazing and we said, okay, let’s try and find a woman director, because we’ve had all these guys directing. But it wasn’t like we compromised on this, that, or the other thing. We knew that she total fit our profile. It wasn’t like we got to say, “Okay, we’re affirmative actioning you into the director slot.”

**John:** But was there a discussion at some point that we’ve not had a woman director. We want to have a woman director. Was that a discussion — ?

**Carolyn:** Yes.

**John:** And so you actually had to have that discussion.

**Carolyn:** Well, I think you have to push, simply by the numbers. There are a million directors that come up in front of you. I would say a small fraction of them are female. It’s not like there are tons of women directors that get pitched to you every day.

**Craig:** Yeah. I always feel like the best of these kinds of things is to be aware of a positive intention to employ people that don’t look like everybody else. But to then sort of, to have that at the top layer and then forget about it when you’re looking at individuals, because you don’t want to hire — and I know the TV staffs struggle with this all the time. They are required to hire say a certain number of people of color for their staff.

And those writers who come on are aware that they’re now the diversity hire. And the room knows that they’re the diversity hire. And it’s a problem.

**Carolyn:** But, that is partially a problem, but what’s the worst problem I guess in a way which is there are no writers of color out there. And I think sometimes unless you push it in that way people aren’t given the opportunity.

**Craig:** I agree.

**Carolyn:** Or they get to write on the black shows, or, you know.

**Craig:** You want there to be a philosophical alignment to say we are dedicated to the idea of being conscious enough that we don’t just fall into the rut of what’s the path of least resistance.

However, sometimes the solutions, and she points this out here, come with the law of unintended consequences. I mean, for instance, I know at the Writers Guild every year they spend $70,000 or so to do a diversity survey. So, we spend $70,000 of writers’ dues, and I always like to do the reverse math on that to see, okay, how much — our dues are 1.5 percent. So, how much money did writers have to earn to generate the $70,000 to spend on a report that will tell us what we already knew, what we knew last year, and the year before, and the year before, because the numbers don’t change.

**Carolyn:** Right.

**Craig:** And what I think something really important that she brings up, that Lexi brings up in her thing, is can we can out of just the patting yourselves on the back/window dressing/baloney solutions that go along with this stuff. They’re not working.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Let’s stop the reports. We get it. We know.

**Carolyn:** That idea of commissioning a survey to tell you what you know is —

**Craig:** Is just dumb.

**Carolyn:** Time tested and true.

**Craig:** Unfortunately I think it relieves a lot of people from, well, you know what we’re going to do, we’re going to get the survey back, we’re going to take a look at those answers, absorb them, and then we can come up with a plan. And by the time you get the survey back, you’re not doing anything, and then we’ll do another survey. [laughs]

**Carolyn:** Yeah, exactly. [laughs] It’s time.

**John:** So, let’s talk about what’s happening in the film and television industry right now, because I wonder if part of our way forward, and I do wonder if we’re sort of supply constrained. It’s not that we don’t have enough female directors. We don’t have enough great female directors that they’re obviously going to be on the list even if they weren’t women.

But I wonder if television is part of the way through it, because in television at least when you’re doing a series you are picking directors down the road. So, you can actually look at who is going to be directing these episodes and sort of recognize like, “I have no women directing these episodes. We need to make sure we get women in directing these episodes.”

Television is terrific now, so hopefully we can get more women directing these episodes and from television transfer through to features or transfer through to the other stuff they want to make.

To what degree do we also think it’s a genre situation? I do wonder if we were making romantic comedies whether our numbers would be higher. Because you see that women who are consistently employed directing features, it’s the people — it’s the Anne Fletchers who are directing romantic comedies. It’s the women who make those movies.

**Carolyn:** Nancy Meyers.

**John:** Yeah, Nancy Meyers.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Carolyn:** Yeah, I mean, I think that’s true. But I think there are also women who have sort of gone out of their way, whether it’s Kathryn Bigelow or whatever to say most affirmatively that’s not what I do.

**John:** Exactly.

**Carolyn:** “I do something…” And I think for, you know, Kathryn Bigelow has kind of got to keep doing that because otherwise she’s going to slip into doing girlie shit and no one is going to…

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** You know, she’s going to…[crosstalk]

**Craig:** That’s a pretty decent title for a movie.

**John:** Girlie Shit.

**Craig:** Girlie Shit.

**Carolyn:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Kathryn Bigelow’s Girlie Shit. I would write that.

I have a theory to explain, because I think that Lexi is correct that there’s not a shortage of women who want to direct. She may not be quite as accurate when she says there is not a shortage of women who meet the qualifications, the sort of standard for like literally let’s strip gender out and just go gender blind and look at experience, all the rest, I think that the perpetuation is.

But here’s my theory of what’s going on. There are differences between men and women. They are not manifested in how good you are at directing a movie. But, for instance, here’s a difference that I think everyone can agree on: Men are more violent than women.

**Carolyn:** For the most part.

**Craig:** That’s just — that’s a fact.

**Carolyn:** Except for Aileen Wuornos. [laughs]

**Craig:** Sure. But, you know, generally speaking men commit I think the vast majority of say murders and physical assaults. There is a —

**Carolyn:** But women think about it more. We visualize it.

**Craig:** [crosstalk] And I do, too, because I am, you know, I’m a girl.

There is, my theory is that in order get jobs in Hollywood you are literally put in a situation where you must commit moral crimes all the time. And that men frankly are less moral. They are more violent in this nature. So, if there’s a difference between men and women, it’s not how good they are at their jobs. It’s how good maybe they are maybe at getting the jobs, if that makes sense.

**Carolyn:** Well, I think that’s definitely true. I think that there’s a certain way that a woman comes off, where she was saying bitch, difficult, whatever you’re either in terms of —

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** But I think that a woman sort of coming out in a forthright, as a director, this is boom, boom, boom. These are decisions I’m going to make — and which you have to be as a director. You’re making a million decisions all the time. So, if a woman is very assertive in that way, I think more people have a negative feeling about it than a man who presents him “boom, boom, boom,” that’s great —

**Craig:** He’s a leader.

**Carolyn:** Yes. So, I think those things are, you know, women have a more delicate — they run more risk of being judged for their assertive decision making than man do.

**Craig:** And do you think that woman are more concerned about that judgment? Because it seems to me like I’ve met so many men in this business who behave terribly and don’t care. And that’s this amazing weapon they carry.

**Carolyn:** They don’t care and it doesn’t seem to matter.

**Craig:** They’re shameless. Yeah, they’re shameless.

**John:** Well, but isn’t it true like most directors you know who are successful, they’re a little bit messed up. They’re kind of on the edge of a little bit psycho killer at times.

**Craig:** Or a lot of it.

**John:** Yeah, exactly. And so the fact that they can sort of like drive crew, you know, seven hours of overtime is because they fundamentally kind of don’t have a caring about people’s comfort or safety.

**Carolyn:** There’s no empathy there.

**John:** There’s no empathy there. And that is a factor.

**Craig:** It’s like a sociopathy. There is a value to sociopathy.

**Carolyn:** It gets a lot done.

**Craig:** Well, and even forget get — like I do believe, I honestly do believe that if you take a woman and you take a man and they’re both directors and they both have similar talent levels and all the rest, they will both run a perfectly good set. It’s the sociopathy I only think helps you get the job because you’re just willing to do anything. Anything. You’d stab your friend in the back and terrible things.

**Carolyn:** I also think, and this is just a guess on my part. I have no — it’s just an instinct. That people who are picking directors and picking first-time directors, because you’ve always got to start somewhere, are probably more likely to pick a male director. I don’t know, it’s just my instinct.

**John:** I think you’re right.

**Craig:** A paternalism kind of…

**Carolyn:** Just a sense of capability and just can do it, they can pull it, yeah.

**John:** So, I think I agree with Craig that just doing the annual report where we just look at the numbers and crunch the numbers is not a useful use of our time and money, but I think what would be a fascinating study would be to take a longitudinal study of like let’s just track a bunch of men and women from early 20s through their 40s who are trying to enter the film business, who all wanting to be directors and track sort of like what their path is.

Because I suspect that what we’re going to find is the reason there are fewer women directors may partly just be because of the difference paths their lives take. And you sort of see what jobs they got, what they did, what they did, what they did.

And I just feel like something is happening in the late 20s or late 30s for women where they would be getting their first feature where they’re not getting their first feature. If we can figure out what the gap is.

**Carolyn:** Are you saying they’re making life decisions? They’re having children?

**John:** They are making life decisions. They’re having children. That’s part of it. And obviously if you’re going to have a kid that is going to slow down your directing for awhile.

**Craig:** It took me out of the directing game, I mean, to be honest.

**Carolyn:** I mean, I have certain friends of mine who are screenwriters who are very — who definitely want to direct, but do not want to do that until their kids are over the age of 14.

**John:** Yeah, we’ve talked — Aline Brosh McKenna, had the same conversation with her.

**Craig:** That’s me. I’m the same way. But, I think that that applies to men, too.

**Carolyn:** To a point.

**John:** To some degree as well.

**Craig:** Although, men again, the sociopathy factor oftentimes just don’t care about their own children.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’m serious. They don’t give a damn.

**Carolyn:** Well, I think, yeah, it’s a very societal, you know, “I’m going to go out. I’m going to be defined by my job,” and this and that.

**Craig:** God. I am a female director. I feel like a female director.

**Carolyn:** So, hand in your penis please. [laughs]

**Craig:** Right here?

**Carolyn:** Right here, right now.

**Craig:** John, turn around.

**John:** The other analogue for directors is really I think showrunners. Because you look at showrunners, that’s the other sort of all-consuming job, and there are women who are showrunners and that is an established thing. But that’s, again, an incredibly tough job that’s taking up 100 percent of your time. The life balance of doing that —

**Carolyn:** It’s really, really hard.

**Craig:** It’s brutal.

**John:** It’s maybe the hardest job in Hollywood is running a show.

**Craig:** Yeah, because it’s like five jobs in one.

**Carolyn:** You’re a writer, you’re a manager of an enormous amount of people.

**Craig:** You’re an employer. You are a corporate relations person. You’re a director, an editor, a producer. You’re everything.

**John:** The amount of relationships you have to be able to maintain is insane.

**Craig:** It’s sick. It’s just sick.

Well, I would love for us to be able to get to a place where we don’t have to say, “Well, Kathryn Bigelow, and well, Shonda Rhimes.” And I think we’re going to get there, but my solution — because she’s asking for solutions — my solution other than chucking the fake take is that the women who run Hollywood need to talk to each other and just say we’ve got to be aware of this, we’ve got to stop this.

It’s crazy. I think that’s where the change is going to come. Men aren’t going to change it. They’re sociopaths and we’ve already established that.

**John:** I would also say I think she perceives there as being — or, she doesn’t perceive, she actually writes that — she points to this 1978 report showing that there was a lack of equal opportunity for women in Hollywood. And she writes, “The fact that there has been no improvement in 35 years can really only mean two things. Number one, those who promised to bring about change were insincere. Or, two, those who promised to bring about change were not very smart. You choose.”

And that’s clearly a false choice.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**John:** There’s many reasons why that could happen. And the analogue that sort of came up for me is that you look at — turn back the clock 35 years and you look at sort of what we thought we’d be able to do in 35 years. And we were wrong about a lot of things. We thought we could have like man missions to Mars. And we thought we would have flying cars. And it was actually just much harder than we thought it was going to be.

**Carolyn:** There’s still, I mean, look, ERA, whatever that was in the ’80s.

**Craig:** ’70s.

**Carolyn:** No, but it fell in the ’80s.

**Craig:** It did, under Reagan, right.

**Carolyn:** But women still make a lot less than men. I mean, there’s a lot of things that — I think that’s kind of a little simple.

**Craig:** It’s a lot simple. And I’m sympathetic to her desire to blame those who paved the path to hell with good intentions.

**John:** I’m sympathetic to her frustration. Because I feel exactly what she’s feeling.

**Carolyn:** But there are a lot of institutional things, not just within Hollywood as a business, but in the world as a whole. And not just institutional things but I think life things. Because I think when you just mentioned Kathryn Bigelow and Shonda Rhimes, it strikes me as I’m thinking about it those are two women, as far as I know, do not have children.

**John:** Oh, Shonda Rhimes has kids. She has a couple kids.

**Carolyn:** She has kids? Okay, I take that back.

**John:** But she has kids on sort of her own terms and her own way.

**Craig:** Hmm. That sounds interesting.

**John:** Shonda lives up the street. We can go knock on her door and ask.

**Craig:** I’m just wondering why I didn’t have kids on my own terms and my own way. I have them apparently on their terms.

**John:** Yes. My child is very much on her own terms.

**Carolyn:** And it sounds very retro of me to say, like, kids, but I know for a fact that it influences people’s decision making in terms of where they want to go, what they want to do. This is not to diminish the institutional barriers that are in the way.

**Craig:** No, they are there. Short of people in power making a big decision, I’m not sure where the answer is. I will say that I do take hope from this: these things rarely work out linearly. It always seems to me that there is an amount of energy that’s put in just to make a slight increment and then suddenly there is an explosion.

**Carolyn:** Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that I think, and I could be totally wrong about this, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a staff, a writing staff on television, that doesn’t have a female on, that are on staff.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, but one woman —

**Carolyn:** But, I think if you dial back a few years, it would be very easy — and not that many years — it would be easy to find.

**Craig:** Yes. I agree with you on that. I think that they have been incremental changes, but that big thing that’s going to actually move things —

**Carolyn:** A seismic shift.

**Craig:** A seismic shift. I think that really is what has to happen. And that’s kind of the way these things do happen. So, I guess anybody that thinks that we’re going to — that’s why I hate the surveys. Well, if you’re looking for a three percent improvement each year, that’s not the way social change works. It just doesn’t.

**John:** Yeah. To me it’s going to be Marvel hiring a woman to direct the next Avengers. Some big things that are going to happen so you can’t say like, “Oh, it’s the little niche things.” No, this is front and center. This is the big —

**Craig:** And also studios are going to have to commit to allowing failure to occur, because they allow men to fail all the time.

**Carolyn:** Well, that’s exactly. But I think the problem with the whole thing is that women have to be a million times, you know, they have to be sort of bulletproof.

**Craig:** You’re not allowed to — if you failed, well, we tried that woman thing.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s just a disaster. Well, speaking of disasters.

**John:** [laughs] Speaking of disasters, so another thing that happened this week, Fox announced — this is at the Television Critics Association, TCA, that’s what it stands for?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**John:** Announced that, they were talking about their new shows, and Kevin Reilly, the head of Fox Broadcasting, said that Fox is going to be moving out of the idea of pilot season.

**Carolyn:** Not the fact of it, but the idea of it. [laughs]

**John:** The idea of it. Like the whole idea of it, of pilot season is gone. And this wasn’t the first time someone said something like this in the sense of like we’re going to try to do year-round development is a thing you’ve heard for a very long time.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But this was probably the most clear articulation of a plan to not sort of play the pilot season game.

**Craig:** To make pilots, but not to just schedule them all at the same time.

**Carolyn:** Well, actually he said they were going to try and not make pilots so much, sort of based on backup scripts and —

**Craig:** Go one-to-one.

**John:** And you’re a perfect guest for this because you come from the cable world which is sort of more like this, where you — rather than shooting a bunch of pilots you’re very specifically targeting like this is a series I think we’re going to make. And what I perceive to be the HBO model is we think we’re going to make this show. We are going to shoot a pilot for it. We’re going to look at this pilot. And if we like this pilot, this will be a show that we make. But it’s not that you’re making 15 pilots in one month —

**Carolyn:** And saying, okay, we can pick four. Yeah, we did that once in a blue moon, you know, like years — like Dream On and all that. There was a couple, like Rita Rudner and Dwight Yoakam had a show at the same time and Dream On got picked. You know, that kind of thing.

**John:** Oh, Dream On.

**Craig:** I want to live in a day when Rita Rudner and Dwight Yoakam both have shows going head to head.

**Carolyn:** Right. [laughs]

**Craig:** I want that now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I want them on the same show.

**Carolyn:** That’s magic.

**John:** They would show up tomorrow. Write that show, they’ll show up tomorrow.

**Carolyn:** I think they would.

**Craig:** So good.

**John:** They’re coming from Vegas.

**Craig:** So, these guys, basically they’re looking at the way you guys are doing things and they’re looking at how successful you are creatively. And I think they’re feeling the heat. They know that their system — the question isn’t whether their system works. Everybody knows the system doesn’t work for everyone at all. The only question is this the best of all the terrible choices we have of how to do network programming?

**Carolyn:** Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. Well, I think Fox in a way has an easier time probably doing it than the rest of the networks because they program fewer hours.

**Craig:** Fewer hours.

**Carolyn:** So, that’s — I think HBO has one night of programming. Every once and awhile they have two. So, I think the window is very small. And you don’t have to really sort of scattershot to try and fill it.

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** So, that’s definitely an advantage. I have always — what’s interesting to me is his thing about moving away from the pilot. I’m a big believer in a pilot. I think that every time I’ve worked on something where we haven’t done it, you need to take a break, you need to look at everything. Whether or not you actually call it a pilot or you shoot something and then take a little breath, to be able to look at something and say, “Yes, this is something I want to make a five-year commitment” or whatever, that’s really helpful to be able to go back and say, “Well, that’s not really working.”

**Craig:** But his whole thing is that by — he seems to be committed to pilots, but that by doing it in one season they’re essentially restricting —

**Carolyn:** He’s talking about going direct to series, though.

**John:** He’s talking both things, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, I guess that’s true.

**John:** So, let’s first talk about the idea of moving out of pilot season, because having developed a couple of network shows, this is incredibly appealing.

**Carolyn:** Totally.

**John:** But there are also some challenges. So, here’s what’s terrible about pilot season is you go in, everyone is incredibly stressed and overworked because they’re hearing a thousand pitches. They pick the pitches they want to hear. You go in. You write up those scripts. They read all the scripts over the holidays. They decide which ones they’re going to make. And then you are scrambling to get those actors, those directors. It’s a feeding frenzy.

**Carolyn:** And you’re driving the price up.

**John:** You’re driving the price way up.

**Carolyn:** Creating this feeding frenzy.

**John:** And you end up having problems like three things want to shoot at the same location. Like you’re going to be in city and you can’t even get like a bunch of crew. It’s madness.

**Craig:** There are six great shows for three slots, so you’re going to waste three of them or back them up for mid-season. You’ve got surpluses that are kind of unnecessary.

**Carolyn:** You have actors in second position, third position.

**John:** It becomes crazy. And, I think one of the other big challenges with classic pilot season is the people you want to do your shows most are the people who are really good at making TV shows. So, you’re pulling them off of a show that’s really good, their mother ship, so they can write another pilot, and shoot another pilot while they’re still supposed to be able to run their main show. And the established show is going to be suffering for doing that.

**Carolyn:** Something suffers. Definitely.

**John:** Something has to give. So, moving away from the calendar of pilot season is probably useful for some things. What is terrific about the current state of pilot season though I will say is that that ticking clock can be your best friend for forcing them to make a decision.

**Carolyn:** I agree.

**John:** Because otherwise if it’s just whenever, it could just be whenever. You can be sort of held indefinitely working on this project.

**Carolyn:** I think that’s definitely true. I think for Fox, certainly, and other networks they have needs. You know, they need to get stuff. They need to do — the idea is to do better than they’re doing now.

**Craig:** Right.

**Carolyn:** So, that clock, I think, may not tick as loudly, but it’s going to tick.

**John:** Although Jordan Mechner and I did a show for Fox, wrote a pilot for Fox — gosh, six seasons ago — and we were one of those shows that didn’t quite get an order, but they still loved and they kept us going. And we were just clawing the hook for them forever.

**Carolyn:** Which is a great feeling, isn’t it?

**John:** Yeah, it was great. So, we end up writing a new pilot. So, you got a little bit more and that was like, you know. This last time when I did a show for ABC, like we didn’t get the order to shoot the pilot and you were just done. You could walk away and that was lovely. That was a really good experience.

But let’s talk about the idea of shooting pilots or not shooting pilots, because one of the things that Kevin Reilly brings up here is that we may shoot some pilots but we’re going to read the read the scripts, we may bring in a staff.

**Carolyn:** Let’s not read them!

**John:** Oh, yeah, we’ll read the scripts. Oh, they seem good.

**Craig:** That’s new.

**Carolyn:** Ish.

**John:** Ish. We’ll look at the scripts. We may bring in a staff. We may write more episodes before we have shot anything.

**Craig:** Right, so that you’ve got three sort of backed up behind the pilot.

**John:** Is that an HBO model? Does HBO do that with backup scripts from the start before you even shoot something?

**Carolyn:** It depends. Once and awhile they’ll do backup scripts. Once and awhile they’ll shoot, you know, multiple episodes of something. I think now it’s pretty standard that they’ll look for a bible for shows and a fairly detailed one.

But, I think it’s definitely, you know, the question that always comes in is where does the show go. And so I think a lot of times people want to see that on paper.

**Craig:** Well, my question for Fox, listen, shaking up and disrupting the way things are done makes sense to me. We don’t live in a world anymore where they’re waiting for the new cars to come out in September and that’s why we launch seasons and all the rest of it.

But, if you’re going to reduce the amount of development and you’re really going to try and go one-to-one, then it seems to me that you have to do a very un-network like thing and that is actually believe in your shows and be willing to suffer with them until they catch on, which is something the networks used to do. I mean, remember when we were kids Cheers was saved by a letter writing campaign and then became this juggernaut that anchored one of the great nights of network television history.

Game of Thrones, it wasn’t like the first round on that pilot was like, hooray. You know, it needed work.

**Carolyn:** No, it was like, look, there’s a lot — we reshot a lot of the pilot. But I think everybody looked at the pilot and went, “We definitely have something here. It’s not 100 percent.”

**Craig:** But we’re not going to do that thing where we go —

**John:** Even the pilot that ended up airing, it didn’t set the world on fire.

**Carolyn:** No.

**John:** That’s actually been my experience with most HBO shows. The first episode is like, maybe. And then by the third episode like, “Well, this is the best thing on earth.”

**Carolyn:** Well, yeah, I don’t remember anybody coming off the first episode of The Wire being like in love with the show.

**Craig:** Right. Or the first episode of Breaking Bad.

**John:** I’m thinking True Blood. I’m thinking of Six Feet Under. All of them.

**Craig:** The point is that one of the things that they always way —

**Carolyn:** I think Six Feet Under had a pretty good pilot.

**Craig:** Yeah, that one.

The cable world, when they look at the cable world what they see is the quality and they see the freedom of it and they see the inventiveness. And they see these big shows attracting eyeballs. What they often, I think, miss is that when HBO says we’re making a show, they make it. And we’re here with you. We’re going to take bullets with you if we have to. We’re going to get this show going and it’s going to work.

And what you can’t do is have it both ways. You can’t do the old well I’m going to only make one-to-one pilots but I’m still going to look at pilots as disposable razors.

**Carolyn:** Yeah. I mean, the thing is that, I mean, going back to what you were saying about female directors is you need to make room for failure. You know what I mean? And you need to have a little patience for it. It’s impossible to be in a creative business and not fail.

**Craig:** Seinfeld is another great story. One of the worst tests, maybe the worst testing pilot in NBC history.

**Carolyn:** I remember seeing those test results in Larry’s bathroom, framed on the wall.

**Craig:** Just sort of a classic story. And it takes time.

**John:** It will be interesting to see if Fox really does make this shift how it changes the relationship between development and current. So, classically shows are developed through pilot season in development and then current is the people who take over the show and sort of do the weekly, weekly, weekly.

But, if you’re really going to go more straight to series, that development and current handoff is going to be a very different thing.

**Craig:** Weirdest division.

**Carolyn:** I mean, we never really had that. And I think it’s really — because you develop these relationships. You get the intent. You understand, you know, really sort of you’re in the bones of the show as much as someone can be.

**Craig:** It makes no sense to me. And, in fact, the very first thing that I ever —

**Carolyn:** And you lose your investment in it, by the way. I can’t imagine people in current have the same kind of investment.

**Craig:** No, no, they don’t. The very first thing that I did in Hollywood was between my junior and senior year of college I got an internship with the Television Academy.

**Carolyn:** You knew all the way. You knew.

**Craig:** I knew. I knew all the way. So, I got this internship and they placed me at Fox Network in the current programming department. And I spent a summer in the current programming department. And even as a 19-year-old kid, it didn’t make sense to me. So, you have people that figure out what the show should be, work with the writers, develop the show, work on the pilot, get it to a place where they put it on the air, and at that point those people are just gone.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re sent away and now new people that had nothing to do with that give notes on the show that clearly the people running the show don’t care about at all. But, we don’t do that in features. We’ve never even contemplated doing something like that in features. Can you imagine? I’m developing a script and then, “Okay, well green light. Bye!” [laughs]

**John:** “Bye, see ya!”

**Craig:** Now you can talk to this person.

**John:** Yeah, it would be madness.

**Carolyn:** Why do they do that?

**John:** Because the quantity. The quantity is so high and they need to —

**Craig:** The quantity was so high.

**John:** The quantity was so high. The other challenge is that the calendar is part of it, too, because there’s that pilot season those people need to be focusing on that stuff, so they can’t be running their other show because all they’re doing is —

**Carolyn:** Running from table read, to table read.

**John:** That’s what it is. They can’t be doing anything else.

**Carolyn:** Just read though…

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**John:** It’s madness. One of the dangers of losing a pilot is something you sort of suggested is that you need that chance to breath or to say like, “You know what? Mostly great. But some stuff needs to be fixed. And this is not working.”

**Craig:** Right. Cast.

**John:** Cast. Whatever. And it’s also that reciprocal thing which is like we weren’t sure this was going to work, but this is actually great. And so you’re leaving out the chance that something will just surprise you. So, one of the advantages of sort of the research and development of just shooting 40 pilots is like something you didn’t really think was going to work is actually fantastic.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s great. And so some of the shows we love right now, Seinfeld might not have happened. Cheers might not have happened. Well, those are actually — Seinfeld might not have happened because that was like who knew that he was going to work in a television way?

**Carolyn:** I mean, I think basically what this does I think is take your cover away. And you have to be as a network person working in a system without pilots and making fewer. And I would say the scripts leading up to it fewer. You have to really sort of believe — you’ve got to believe in the shows. You’ve got to go with your gut. And so the cover of “we did a million and we can’t,” more unhook your own person self.

**Craig:** Yeah, anybody can get five base hits if you have a thousand at bats.

**John:** That’s absolutely true.

**Craig:** I mean, the one great hope I have for, just now talking for writers and writer’s employment, is that if a system like this stays and, look, it’s been tried before and abandoned. So, we should also point out there is a damn good chance that they abandon this. But, if it stays and it engenders an improvement in the amount of scripted programming, that’s great for the employment of writers.

If it stays the same is bad, because I mean pilot season pays a lot for a lot of people.

**John:** That’s a crucial point I think you’re making is that pilot season is wasteful in a way that really helps writers.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** Because honestly instead of hiring a bunch of people to write these things that shoot, and not just writers employed, but production employment, that wastefulness is really good for a lot of people.

**Craig:** Yum. Slop-over.

**John:** Totally. It jacks up actor’s salaries. And those sort of second tier actors who would never otherwise be a lead in a show are suddenly a lead in a show because that’s who was available.

**Carolyn:** But the wastefulness of it all then makes the bar — the success level goes up with that. Because if something costs $5 million as opposed to $2.5 million, it’s got to succeed at a much higher level than the show that cost half that much.

**John:** Although, but weirdly in network television I feel like in some ways the cost isn’t — the cost isn’t as much of a factor, just what the rating is. And so it’s just like what do we do this week, what do we do the next week. And if they’re doing fewer shows they’re not going to have the back catalog probably to fall back on.

**Carolyn:** I think that’s true. But I think there’s also a cost per rating point.

**Craig:** There is. Especially once fin-syn went away, and the networks, and the production companies, which were ultimately the same thing.

**Carolyn:** Which was the worst thing ever.

**Craig:** Pretty much the worst thing ever. Then at that point, I mean, it used to be, yeah, it wasn’t the network’s problem. The network’s only concern was ratings because the only revenue they made was from advertising. But now they also own the shows. Maybe not directly, but they’re kissing cousin owns the show. So, I never — it’s like, 20th Century Fox produces a show that runs on Fox Broadcasting and they have like a weirdly adversarial relationship, but not really.

**John:** Not really.

**Craig:** I don’t buy it.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** They all know. They’re just moving money in a circle.

**Carolyn:** Yes. Close your eyes.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Excellent.

**John:** So, I think it’s time for our One Cool Things. So, at the end of every podcast we talk about One Cool Thing that we like. So, if as Craig and I talk about One Cool Things we like, if there is some idea of something that you would like to share with the world —

**Craig:** A gadget. A thing. An app —

**Carolyn:** A gadget?

**Craig:** Mine today is an app.

**John:** Oh, mine is sort of app like. Go, you first.

**Craig:** This came to me through one of my wonderful One Cool Thing saviors on Twitter. My whole thing is that I never had a One Cool Thing, so I’m always like, oh god, and then so I ask people on Twitter to help me out and they do.

This one was legitimately cool. And every now and again I am reminded why I’m so happy to be alive now as opposed to during like the era of cholera, or mustard gas, or the plague.

**Carolyn:** [laughs] Exactly. Penicillin. Awesome.

**Craig:** Or Penicillin. Exactly. There is an app called Shakespeare and it is free. And dig this, it’s for your iPad or your iPhone, it has every single thing Shakespeare ever wrote. Every play. All of them. Plus the sonnets. They are in plain text or in like next scripty folio text like old school style.

**John:** And so you say has everything, does it have the contrasting versions between like Folio 1 and Folio 2? Or what does it do when there are conflicts between texts?

**Craig:** I think they probably just stuck with one, but they have character breakdowns for everything. They have scene summaries for everything. All words are linkable and definable, which is great.

**John:** That’s hugely helpful.

**Craig:** Yeah, sometimes you’ll run across a word in Shakespeare that you know, just not in the old context. It’s spectacular. And all of it — and it’s free! How do you not immediately just get this?

**Carolyn:** Yeah, no kidding. Don’t have to lug around that Riverside Shakespeare that I have with me.

**Craig:** At least, I mean —

**Carolyn:** My back thanks you.

**Craig:** I’m looking at it right now. She’s got one of those rolling —

**John:** Wheelie cart.

**Craig:** Yeah, a wheelie cart with all of her old Shakespeare.

**John:** It transforms her life.

**Craig:** Yeah, because now you don’t need it. It’s gone. So, anyway, Shakespeare, free. Free! And it’s really well implemented.

**John:** That’s fantastic.

Mine is also an appy kind of thing. It’s called WorkFlowy and it’s an outliner.

**Carolyn:** Flowy?

**John:** WorkFlowy, with a Y on the end. So, Work Flow with a Y on the end.

**Craig:** It’s not WorkFlowy [pronounced Flou-ee]? You sure?

**John:** No, I’m pretty sure it’s Flowy. Pretty sure. And it’s just like workflowy.com.

What it is, it’s an outliner that lives in your browser. And so as you start typing it does nice little indenting of things. It’s great for to-do lists and stuff.

What’s so smart about it is because you log in with an account it’s just always there. So, any browser you go to, or if you look at it on our iPhone, there’s an app for your iPhone and for your iPad. It’s just there. And it’s really smart and minimalist.

And so I’ve found it being great for just keeping track of the projects I’m working on. Right now I’m working on this project where I need to figure out like character names and sort of all the character stuff. And it’s been great for just organizing that stuff. It’s really, really well done. And so WorkFlowy.

**Craig:** Is it free?

**John:** It’s free.

**Craig:** Free!

**John:** And then there’s a pay for subscription for like the bigger storage of it all.

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**John:** So, it’s sort of like Dropbox if it’s free and then if you cross a certain point —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Carolyn:** Until it isn’t.

**Craig:** They give you a little taste to crack and then suddenly…

**John:** Then like you can’t imagine life without Dropbox.

**Craig:** Cannot.

**John:** And I’m only a week in on WorkFlowy, but it’s really smartly done.

**Carolyn:** So far changed your life.

**Craig:** What about your, Straussy?

**Carolyn:** You know what? What am I going to say? I’ll say this book I just finished, The Orphan Master’s Son. Loved it.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Tell us.

**Carolyn:** It’s a little dash of North Korea in my day.

**Craig:** This is the one that Dan Weiss was talking about.

**Carolyn:** Yes, exactly.

**Craig:** And David Benioff said he was going to read it even though it was a terrible title. He’s always got to attack. Always.

**Carolyn:** Yeah, he’s on — but Dan and I had not discussed it. But when I read it I said, oh my god, because Dan is obsessed with all things North Korea.

**John:** Who is not obsessed? North Korea is just such an amazing —

**Craig:** I’m so into it right now.

**Carolyn:** And then when I brought it up to him he’s like, “I loved it!” Of course he would be there first.

**Craig:** Did you see this, because I’m now over the last month, ever since the probably apocryphal story that he threw his uncle to the dogs I’ve been obsessed with North Korea. And there was this amazing video they showed of the speech that he gave where he sort of said, okay, that guy is gone. And this is a new dawning for North Korea. And America bad. The usual thing.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, it’s North Korean TV so it opens on this crowd of people and then it goes to him talking. And then they cut away about 45 seconds in to show an exterior of the building, the big Pyongyang building. And they never cut back until the end of the speech.

**Carolyn:** They’re just on the building?

**Craig:** Yes. And it’s like a 45-minute long speech. And so you just scrub through the video and he’s just talking and there’s applause and it’s just a building. The entire time, static shot, until the last 30 seconds. And I honestly believe that somebody just forgot to hit the switch. There’s no other explanation.

**Carolyn:** But now they’re dead.

**Craig:** Totally dead.

**Carolyn:** Absolutely.

**John:** Absolutely dead.

**Craig:** Totally dead. Something happened and I would love to know what it was. But, that to me is the essence of North Korea right there.

**John:** Have you guys been to the DMZ? Have you taken the DMZ tour?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, we did this a couple of years ago. It’s really fascinating. So, if you’re in Seoul and you’re American.

**Carolyn:** Which I am quite often.

**John:** Are you actually in Seoul? No. Seoul is like the Los Angeles of Korea in the sense it’s huge, and sprawling, and spread out and it’s a city. It’s very close to North Korea for reasons that are problematic.

But, the fun thing is as an American you can go on the DMZ tour. You get on this bus and you go to the DMZ, the safe side of it, and then you can actually cross from North Korea because what you do is you cross into these buildings that are actually exactly on the border, and there’s a North Korean guard on the far side, and a South Korean guard on this side. And you can walk around the table and technically be in North Korea and then walk back out.

**Craig:** They let you do that?

**John:** They let you do that.

**Craig:** Oh my god, the guards the let you do that?

**John:** They let you do that. It’s just this whole weird kabuki thing that happens.

**Craig:** That’s so strange.

**John:** But they teach you on the bus you’re not to smile, you’re not to say anything, you’re not to interact with anybody, because every once and awhile someone will like try to defect and they will like run across.

**Carolyn:** Wow.

**Craig:** Run across, to North Korea?

**John:** To North Korea.

**Craig:** You’re doing it wrong! [laughs]

**Carolyn:** If somebody tries to defect to North Korea…

**Craig:** You’re doing it wrong.

**John:** So, I have a question for you guys —

**Carolyn:** Why doesn’t North Korea, I don’t understand, why doesn’t —

**John:** Come, take them.

**Carolyn:** Take them. Why is it a big — ?

**Craig:** Great. Bye.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** You don’t have to run.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You can walk to North Korea.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**John:** When Dennis Rodman goes to North Korea, how — are we supposed to feel bad when something terrible happens to him?

**Craig:** No. Absolutely not.

**John:** I’m trying to figure out what the feeling I actually have.

**Craig:** I feel bad that something hasn’t happened to him.

**Carolyn:** I was amazed that he could actually get players to go with him.

**Craig:** Well, now what’s happening, I didn’t know if you knew this, but some NBA players aren’t quite as up to world global politics, geo-politics and so forth as you might have imagined. So, now it’s happening and some of them are coming back and going, “Wait, what? Oh no!” [laughs] Like just didn’t know. They just didn’t know.

**Carolyn:** That’s why we had to throw the game!

**Craig:** They’re like, “Ooh, that was…oh, North Korea is the bad one? Oh man, I thought the food was bad. I thought that was where Gangnam Style was from.”

**Carolyn:** I didn’t know that —

**John:** Everyone is like, I love Korea, as if it’s one.

**Craig:** It’s amazing because I’m sure you’ve seen Team America: World Police, one of the finest movies ever made. And so there’s this entire thing about how American celebrities get suckered by the North Koreans. He’s doing it. He’s actually doing that thing.

**Carolyn:** Maybe that is his whole playbook perhaps.

**Craig:** It’s totally not. It’s totally not. I’m more willing to believe that Shia LeBeouf’s playbook is to tweak everybody with his crazy plagiarism than I am to believe that Dennis —

**Carolyn:** Is that a theory that’s out there?

**Craig:** Well, that’s what he wants us to believe, I think.

**John:** He’s doing a Joaquin Phoenix there. It’s really all a performance art thing and then we’ll forgive him and it’ll all be good.

**Craig:** It’s so not working. Shia, it’s not working! It’s not working.

**John:** So, because you’ve never listened to the podcast before, all the boilerplate stuff I’m about to say is brand new to you.

**Craig:** And this is going to be fun. Get ready!

**John:** Wait till you hear all this good stuff.

If you are listening to this on an iOS device you can probably subscribe to us in iTunes, which would be great. And if while you’re there you could leave us a comment or a rating, that’s also great. But if you’re on iPhone or Android you could also get the Scriptnotes app which is free to download. And through that you can listen to our show. You can even access the back episodes, which is fun, because we have now 126 back episodes to listen to.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** If you would like to talk to either Craig or I, or share with us —

**Craig:** Talk to Craig or me.

**John:** God, I did that again. I’m so sorry.

**Craig:** You’re never going to stop saying that.

**Carolyn:** Do you do that every week, because it’s the 127th?

**Craig:** No, it’s the second time in like three episodes he’s done it. And the only reason I say it is because I know he would do it to me. [laughs]

**John:** I would totally. I absolutely would. I always [crosstalk] snipe you. [Crosstalk] pronouns snipe you.

**Craig:** Yeah, you would pronoun snipe me.

**John:** You can reach Craig, @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust on Twitter. Do you care to share your Twitter? You don’t have to share your Twitter.

**Carolyn:** I don’t really twit.

**John:** She doesn’t tweet.

**Craig:** Twit.

**Carolyn:** I don’t really tweet.

**Craig:** Before you go, can you tell us anything about the upcoming season of Game of Thrones?

**John:** Where are my dragons?

**Craig:** WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?

**John:** Is it good? Is the next season good?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Carolyn:** It’s okay.

**John:** All right.

**Carolyn:** It’s all right.

**Craig:** Is there any chance that I can get on this show? And I’ve talked to the guys before.

**Carolyn:** I was on the show.

**Craig:** I know.

**Carolyn:** It’s the first time in 25 years.

**Craig:** Trust me, I know. And I’m willing to be like a guy slogging through horse manure.

**Carolyn:** What, they said no?

**Craig:** No, they’re like, they always laugh. They’re like, “Yeah, sure, if you want to come to Northern Ireland,” I’m like I’d absolutely come to Northern Ireland. They’re like, okay, and then they look at each other like, “What’s wrong with him?”

**Carolyn:** Believe me. There have been a lot of people who’ve been in it. Come to Northern Ireland.

**Craig:** Oh, great, now a lot of people have done it.

**John:** Exactly. You’re really nothing special at all.

**Carolyn:** You should come for a [crosstalk] or something. You know, they’ll put you in an unsullied outfit.

**Craig:** Oh, I would like that. Oh, no I don’t think I would —

**John:** Yeah, you’d fit in really well there.

**Craig:** They’re like, “That guy is sullied.”

**Carolyn:** Totally sullied.

**John:** They’re eunuchs, aren’t they? Are the unsullied? Yeah, so there’s also that.

**Craig:** That’s I’ve got covered.

**John:** Done.

**Craig:** It’s just the abs.

**John:** It’s just taking care of the abs. [laughs]

**Craig:** I am a field director, but my abs are not unsullied level.

**Carolyn:** Yeah, I feel like I think we can make it happen.

**Craig:** Definitely like to me, my guy is I’m in the Knight’s Watch. I’ve taken the black.

**Carolyn:** Because they have the big cloak.

**Craig:** Right! So, I’m really covered. It’s cold. I look dirty.

**John:** Yeah.

**Carolyn:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Done. Set. You have a little dragon glass, you can poke somebody.

**Craig:** I just need like one moment where I look, just where I notice something. That’s all. That’s all I ask for.

**John:** And then you’re just — like an arrow in the throat.

**Craig:** That would be the best of all time. If I could get killed onscreen and like actually…

**John:** Malcolm Spellman got killed onscreen.

**Craig:** So you know, our friend Malcolm, it’s the moment when what’s her face?

**John:** Arya.

**Craig:** Arya is with the Hound. And they’re walking along and she hears like three guys talking about how they killed at the Red Wedding.

**Carolyn:** And she goes…

**Craig:** Right. And one of them is named Malcolm. One of them is named Spellman. [laughs]

**John:** One’s Malcolm and one is Spellman.

**Craig:** It was the most amazing thing ever.

**Carolyn:** Clever. So, you mean, you actually want to be killed, not just in name.

**John:** Oh, not just in name. We want Craig —

**Craig:** I physically want to be killed on the show.

**John:** It would actually be fascinating, you know, if you love the show so much you actually wanted to die in real life. You wanted your death actually filmed. Not just like your character being killed.

**Craig:** I mean, I would consider it. It depends on —

**Carolyn:** I think we can work this out. I really feel like it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s basically a snuff film fantasy. Carolyn Strauss, thank you so much for being our guest.

**Carolyn:** Thank you guys. It was a lot of fun.

**John:** So much fun.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** And we’ll talk to you guys…

**Craig:** See you next time.

Links:

* [Dungeon World](http://www.dungeon-world.com/)
* Carolyn Strauss on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Strauss) and [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1865467/)
* Lexi Alexander’s [blog post on the underrepresentation of women in Hollywood](http://www.lexi-alexander.com/blog/2014/1/13/this-is-me-getting-real)
* [AV Club](http://www.avclub.com/article/fox-at-the-tca-press-tour-kevin-reilly-kills-pilot-106902) on Fox’s announcing they are moving away from pilot season
* [Shakespeare](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shakespeare/id285035416?mt=8) for iPhone and iPad
* Organize your brain with [WorkFlowy](https://workflowy.com/)
* [The Orphan Master’s Son](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812982622/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Adam Johnson
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/punching-the-salty-ocean).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 126 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** Pretty good, John. How are you?

**John:** I am doing just fine.

**Craig:** Yes! I was hoping you would say that.

**John:** Why?

**Craig:** Well, because, you know, you got such a good run going of being just fine and I feel like one of these days I’m going to say how are you and you’re going to say, “I’m no good, man.”

**John:** I’m no good at all.

**Craig:** “I’m no good.”

**John:** Yeah. I had a one-day cold, but now I’m over it. So, I’m happy. I’m back to full speed.

**Craig:** One-day cold? One-day cold?

**John:** A one-day cold.

**Craig:** Is there such a thing?

**John:** I don’t know that there is such a thing, but it was like it was not allergies because it was just more than allergies could possibly be. And yet I was just over it really quickly.

**Craig:** It’s possible that you either had —

**John:** Scotch.

**Craig:** Scotch! You either had a four-hour cold and you’re constitutionally weak, or you had a three-day cold and you’re unbreakable.

**John:** It’s very possible. My constitution is at least a 15, so I feel like I’m pretty solid.

**Craig:** [laughs] My constitution is weak, but my dexterity is outstanding!

**John:** Well, I’m glad you have some strength needed, Craig, because we have three Three Page Challenges to go to today.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We also have a little bit of follow up to do and some other stuff to talk about, so let’s get started.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** So, on the last episode we talked about Beyoncé’s surprise releasing her album, and I proposed well what filmmakers could do that. Or are there filmmakers who could release a whole movie, just suddenly, like you didn’t know it existed and suddenly was out there?

And so since that episode aired a lot of people tweeted in saying, “Well, how about this movie, how about that movie?” And there were some good suggestions. So, first off, the day that the podcast came out Louis C.K. released a movie that he’d actually shot years ago that starred Amy Poehler and just like put it out there on the internet. So, that’s an example.

**Craig:** Kinda.

**John:** Kind of. But it’s not a new movie. So, it was a movie that was already playing at festivals. It existed in the world but no one could see it.

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s just call that a re-release of a library title that there will hopefully be new interest in because Louis is doing so well.

**John:** So, another good suggestion was Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing.

**Craig:** Closer.

**John:** Much closer, I think. So, Much Ado About Nothing, he shot it himself. No one really knew he was making it. And then just released it at a festival and then suddenly it was out in the world. So, there was a gap though between like the movie exists and you can go buy the movie. But there’s no reason he couldn’t have just put it on iTunes right then.

And he has the kind of profile that I think it would have made a splash. So, if he didn’t care about theatrical he could have just released that into the world.

**Craig:** And that’s essentially what he did with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, right? I mean —

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** He made it and he put it out there. And that’s cool. I get that. I think in the context of feature films that was sort of the context I was talking about. And it doesn’t quite connect there. I think that if he could have gotten an initial theatrical release he probably — there wouldn’t have been a surprise about it.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** I mean, we just don’t want to confuse surprise with nobody knew about it. Those are two different things.

**John:** Yeah. I guess nobody knowing about it and no one knowing that it’s coming out can be two different things, really. Because everyone knew that Beyoncé was working on an album in a general sense. Because she’s an artist, of course she’s going to be working on an album. It was that it suddenly came out. And so James Cameron could suddenly surprise you with a movie that he just made.

Steven Soderbergh feels like the kind of filmmaker who could just do that.

**Craig:** Could possibly do it. I mean, the difference really is one of intention. For instance, Louis’s movie, the point wasn’t to make a movie and then go, “Surprise!” The point was to make a movie and then get theatrical release or some sort of release and talk about it and promote it. But hit just didn’t catch on at that time. And so now he is saying, “Hey, what about now?”

So, what Beyoncé was very — from the start I presume everything was orchestrated around the concept of no one is going to know until it’s there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If people have other suggestions for filmmakers that could do that, I’d be curious. I just really do think it’s going to happen. I think someone else will make one of those movies and now with digital distribution — now that most of our screens in the US, like literally almost all screens in the US are digital, there’s less to stop you from trying to do that direct to theater kind of release.

**Craig:** Well, I suppose my position on it is this. I don’t really care about the gimmickry of it. If somebody figures out how to do it in such a way that gets their good movie more attention and eyeballs then I’m always for it. That’s all I care about.

**John:** Absolutely. I have a sneaking suspicion that this last weekend this movie Hercules was actually just slotted there so some really great movie could take its place and the great movie just didn’t happen.

**Craig:** You think that it’s a mis-slot, in other words? It was like a fill-in slot?

**John:** I’m just speculating that maybe that was a possibility of why that movie got a theatrical release is that some other movie was supposed to be there and they were like, “Oh wow, Renny Harlin made a movie. We’re just going to stick it on screens.”

**Craig:** Well, there is a phenomenon of burying movies. That’s the other thing.

**John:** The Sixth Road.

**Craig:** Of, course, The Sixth Road. What a great title. The concept of buying a movie is — I think it’s poorly understood out there. Sometimes movies come out and they don’t do well and everybody says, “Oh my god, the studio buried it.” It’s actually rare for a studio to truly bury a film. But when they do bury a film what they’re calculating is we don’t believe that this film will attract anyone no matter how much money we spend, but we can’t not release it. At this point it would be economically unwise to not release it. So, we’re just going to shove it where we don’t have anything. And we’ll attempt some counterprogramming. We’re not going to promote it very heavily and whatever happens happens.

Unfortunately, I think 47 Ronin is probably a good example of burying. That’s an action effects-driven summer kind of movie that just came out in the middle of Christmas awards drama season. Basically from Thanksgiving through the end of the year you’re looking at family films, because families are together, and you’re looking at prestige films. You don’t see much in the way of action movies or popcorn genre films. And they kind of just buried it.

**John:** They did. That was a movie where they actually took a write-off on it before it was even released, which is never a good sign. So, they go into it knowing that they’re not going to get their money out of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. And you know, no matter what I think about any individual movie, and I haven’t seen 47 Ronin, I just don’t like it when it happens because I root for movies and I root for the people who make them. And there have been interesting cases of big flops that in time have been viewed differently. The one that always comes to mind for me is Speed Racer, which is a far… — Did you ever see Speed Racer?

**John:** I never saw Speed Racer, but a lot of people have said that it’s a much better movie than you would think it would be.

**Craig:** Vastly better. [laughs] It’s not even close. The perception, both the critical perception and the commercial perception, are just out of whack with what the movie is. And I think maybe it was a function of the fact that it was Speed Racer. Maybe it was the cast. And maybe there was some blowback, residual blowback from the Matrix sequels which I think got some people grumpy.

I don’t know. But Lone Ranger is another one. I haven’t seen Lone Ranger, but I hear people say that it’s better than everyone suggests.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve definitely heard that, too. Anyway, the next topic I want to get to is a weird that — I don’t know if you followed this on Twitter that happened this week. So, I had tweeted about this thing which other people had also acknowledged which was that an assistant sent out…you saw this thing.

**Craig:** I saw that. Yeah.

**John:** So, it was the classic sort of CC versus BCC problem. Essentially an executive moved to a new address and so the assistant sent out this email saying you can now reach this executive at this address and this phone number. But instead of using the BCC field he used the CC field, so all of us got each other’s email addresses.

**Craig:** I think just everyone with the last name A through B.

**John:** Oh, that’s right. Yeah. It was only that small section.

**Craig:** It wasn’t everyone. Yeah.

**John:** Oh, yeah, that actually does make a lot more sense. Because that’s why, so I was on this email.

**Craig:** You and Apatow and —

**John:** Apatow and Josh Brolin. So, that’s why we’re all in this batch. Yes, it’s a classic mistake. It’s an annoying mistake. And so I tweeted about it saying like, folks, this is — I didn’t tweet specifically about this incident, because it was actually the third time that week that this has happened — that this is a solved problem: BCC is your friend. That means that BCC is your friend. That means when you send out that email only one person’s name shows up in the To field and that is the person who is going to get the email. And it is a classically solved problem, so therefore this should not still be happening.

So, I tweeted that and then other people sort of sent funny emails about sort of who are on that list. So, Josh Brolin did. And Apatow did. But this Business Insider wrote this story about it saying, “Oh, this thing happened and look at these funny responses, except for John August who was just a total buzz kill on it.”

And, [laughs], I’m so annoyed. Did you see this story?

**Craig:** You’re a buzz kill. I didn’t see that, but god, you’re a buzz kill, John. You ruined a crappy internet site’s story.

**John:** Yeah. I know, that really was the worst. And so my tweet was the only embedded tweet and it was the last thing in the story. And it struck me as a great example of how context is everything. Basically, since I was this last tweet it was like, “Oh, John August is a buzz kill.” Like a bunch of people tweeted me saying like, “You’re a jerk. You’re a jerk to that assistant.”

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** They did. And so to the point where you never should get into a little Twitter war, but I was like, “Who are you?” And it was the second time in my whole Twitter career I’ve blocked somebody for like, stop, leave it alone.

So, people were saying, “You should not be so mean to that assistant.” First off, I didn’t acknowledge the assistant. I didn’t acknowledge that I was on this email chain. I was just saying in a general sense BCC is a solved problem.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this is an issue of context because any tweet if you apply it, if you were sort of mentioned in the course of the story can make it seem like you’re just a horrible person. I’ve been thinking of examples of things like, you know, a tweet can be like, “Oh god. There’s nothing worse than other people’s children.” But if you were writing a story about like a school shooting tragedy and then you put that celebrity’s tweet in there at the very end, like it makes it sound like, “Oh my god, Sarah Silverman, you’re a terrible person.”

It’s so maddening. It seemed like I was responding to the story rather than just the acknowledgement that there are such a thing as BCC fields.

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous. And, of course, the way they listed it, it makes it seem as if there was some exciting roundtable discussion of this and everyone was jocular, and funny, and forgiving, and then puritan panty-waste, John August, grimly intones that this is not funny at all. [laughs]

**John:** That’s what it was. I was that person sitting at the edge of the table with my arms folded in front of me saying, “Oh, this is awful.”

**Craig:** “Yes. I mean, I don’t know why you’re all taking this so easily. You know, BCC, [gibberish].” Because you see, John, the point of these crappy stories is that they’re a crappy story and you have to fit the narrative of their crappy story or they’ll just jam you in there. They don’t care. Never forget that every story you read like this is someone who is either high or about to get high making $100.

**John:** Yeah. Oh, it’s true.

**Craig:** I can’t take it. I can’t take it.

**John:** Well, here’s the thing. I know that the frustration is really not the story, it’s that the people who read the story and would somehow think like, oh, I really meant that in that context. That was the frustration. My frustration is stupid people —

**Craig:** Welcome to my world, man. This is every day for me.

**John:** My frustration is stupid people on Twitter which is basically all of the universe, so…

**Craig:** Now you’re just yelling at the ocean for being salty.

**John:** Yeah. I hate the salty ocean.

**Craig:** I know, it just [laughs]…

**John:** I always forget the ocean is salty. And then I go in the ocean and I’m like, “Wait! This is wrong.”

**Craig:** “What the…! God, I spent all day punching the ocean.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Listen, these things, when they happen I guess the best thing to do is ignore them if you can. And I was the subject of a very strange Twitter brouhaha with people, I don’t even follow them, I don’t think they follow me. But a mutual friend who is aware of — I guess does follow these people — kept emailing me what was going on. There was this strange discussion about me and it didn’t even make sense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I didn’t know what to do. And I was just like, well what do I do? It’s very strange that people are publicly talking about me. It’s bizarre. It’s mean. There is no shock there. And I wish that — I don’t want to know about it, but now I do know about it because I just got an email with all of these copied tweets and what do I do. And there’s nothing you can do.

**John:** Yeah. It’s the challenge of being public is that, you know, in a public forum people can reach you. And that’s actually a lovely, great thing, and our guest next week is because of Twitter, which is fantastic, so that’s awesome.

**Craig:** Yes it is.

**John:** But because here’s this public thing people feel like they can reach out and annoy you. Actually, probably my biggest frustration with Twitter is that you’ll get put on chains, or not really chains, but you will be mentioned along with other people in a Twitter thing. And they’ll start arguing back and forth. You’ve done this to me actually.

**Craig:** Yeah, I love it.

**John:** And, like, just take my name out of this.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Because I don’t want to be in this anymore.

**Craig:** Nope. [laughs]

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

**John:** It usually happens because people will tweet to both of us about something Scriptnotes wise.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And then you’ll engage with them and I’m like, I just, I don’t care. I don’t care.

**Craig:** And I am literally too lazy to delete your name the one time it would take to get you out of the conversation. I’m that lazy.

**John:** Yeah. But, you are good at reading Three Page Challenges, so let’s just get to that. Because that’s something we can do.

**Craig:** Are we doing that first?

**John:** I think so. I don’t think there’s anything else on the agenda.

**Craig:** Oh, I thought we were going to discuss Final Draft Nueve.

**John:** Oh, yeah, we were going to discuss Final Draft Nueve. Let’s do that first. Let’s get into Final Draft because I think that’s an important thing to do.

**Craig:** And it will probably go fast.

**John:** It’ll probably go pretty fast.

**Craig:** I mean, how long will it take me to just say “crap” over and over? [laughs]

**John:** So, this last week, this feels like kind of a filmmaker’s surprise announcement because I didn’t honestly expect Final Draft to suddenly come out, Final Draft 9.

So, Final Draft 8 had been out for quite a long time.

**Craig:** Yeah, a long time.

**John:** A really long time without being updated. So, it had finally gotten into the Mac App Stores so people could buy it through that. And I knew and I don’t think I’m doing any sort of confidentiality stuff because I think they’ve talked publicly about there was this whole move towards they were going to have more of like an online platform for stuff. So, I kind of thought the next version of Final Draft would be much more of like an online thing or subscription service.

But suddenly, last week, Final Draft 9 came out.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s a real app for both Windows and for the Macintosh. Interestingly, they have two different interfaces. So, on the Windows side they make a big point about like they sort of have ribbons and they have stuff that’s very familiar to Windows people, so things that are much more like Microsoft Office.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** On the Mac side, it feels very much like the existing Final Draft 8. Like really very much like it, just with some new sort of cleaned up graphics.

**Craig:** It’s not — it’s 8.1. I don’t know what to say.

**John:** I does — I think it also feels like 8.1.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, there are some new things that they are touting which are worth talking about. It finally has full screen mode which most Mac apps have had for quite a long time.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** The full screen mode.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It has a new scene navigator and sort of this palette that can sort of switch between a couple different views with notes, characters, which is interesting to some degree. It’s certainly a better, different way than how Final Draft 8 handled it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I don’t think I found it especially useful.

**Craig:** I don’t find any of that stuff useful. I mean, every screenwriting program has some sort of navigator. I turn them all off. I don’t need it.

**John:** Yeah. And it also has this thing where like it can track character arcs. And so you can sort of build in this thing about arcs and stuff. A potentially useful feature that I did see in there is that it can show you which characters are in which scenes and you can actually tag characters being in a scene even if a character doesn’t have dialogue. So, in theory you could sort of generate a report that shows who is in what, which would be useful for scheduling or for sort of other purposes, potentially.

**Craig:** I think they have — the scheduling stuff that they have I think tracks that anyway, I think. I don’t really need my software to tell me what characters are in what scenes. If I don’t know that a character is in a scene, what am I doing? What kind of writer am I? That’s pathetic, you know? [laughs]

**John:** So, in my playing around with it, one of the features I did think could potentially be useful, or that I could see myself using, when you’re in colored pages, you’re in that stage of a production draft, it keeps the actual page white but on the borders it shows what color that page would be.

**Craig:** Yeah. I liked that.

**John:** And that is actually, I think, a smart feature.

**Craig:** And it’s an option.

**John:** It’s an option. And it’s a useful thing if you were in the middle of figuring out pages and stuff and seeing what pages are going to be generated for what new revision. Potentially useful.

But I guess what I was so surprised about was that honestly very little had been done. It’s cleaned up for retina displays now.

**Craig:** Finally.

**John:** Finally. But all the — basically you’re not going to ever get lost because it’s kind of exactly the same program.

**Craig:** It’s exactly.

**John:** They didn’t make any sort of design choices to remove or simplify, get rid of things that no one is using. And I’ve asked around. I don’t know anybody who beta tested it. I don’t know any working writer who actually used it. And so if you are —

**Craig:** Well, what’s to beta test? I mean, that’s the thing. For me, beta testing is about a bunch of features. And do they work? Do you like them? Eh, they didn’t do anything that even deserves beta testing here.

**John:** Uh, yeah, okay.

**Craig:** You know what I mean?

**John:** But I don’t know that they engaged, even beta testing, I don’t know that they engaged with working writers to see like what are you actually using.

**Craig:** They don’t care.

**John:** And stuff could go away.

**Craig:** They don’t care. They’re not making this stuff —

**John:** One of the challenges of legacy software is that unless you actually talk to users frequently, you don’t know if anyone is really using that script notes feature. There’s this bookmarks feature which has always been in Final Draft. I don’t know anyone who’s ever used it.

**Craig:** No. Ridiculous.

**John:** But it’s still there.

**Craig:** It’s still there. And the truth is they don’t care what working screenwriters do because there aren’t that many of us. You can’t build a business on working screenwriters. Final Draft is in the business of the cottage industry of aspiring screenwriters. They push their products through all of those channels and they try and associate their product with the lottery ticket of becoming a professional screenwriter. So, that’s their audience.

And for that audience, really, that audience is so absurdly susceptible to being told what they should do as opposed to being asked what they want, so Final Draft says this is what you should do. It’s a very enviable business position to be in, to dictate to your consumer base what they ought to be doing. That would be nice, I think, for soft drink companies and fast food restaurants.

But, I — some impressions from me. First of all, it crashed twice on me.

**John:** Oh, that’s not good.

**Craig:** On opening, which is absurd in this life for an app to crash on opening. It’s a joke.

It doesn’t look particularly good. It looks pretty much the way the other one looked, which is thin. It looks thin. It’s overly white to me. The words are floating in a sea of empty white.

I like that I can now — there is a split screen mode which I don’t know was in 8.

**John:** I think split screen has actually been in Final Draft for a long time.

**Craig:** Oh, it has been?

**John:** But I also noticed that it seemed a little bit more featured.

**Craig:** It’s more prominent. Yeah.

**John:** It’s more prominent. And that’s one of the things that I haven’t seen a lot of the other apps be doing, and that can be useful.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’d like to see Fade In have a split screen. I thought that that’s a potentially useful thing when you’re comparing what changed on a given page.

But, for instance, if you were to go into the — I’m looking right now, in the revisions menu and bring up that revision scheme, other than the new option of the page color revision it’s the exact same scheme as always. Clumsy. It has always been clumsy. It continues to be clumsy. The interface is clumsy with a plus and a minus. It doesn’t look like Mac software on a Mac. They’re still pushing the, what is it, the collaboration. What is that, Script Collab?

**John:** CollaboWriter?

**Craig:** Yeah, good for you. That’s never going to happen. You know, I think they are at least somewhere in there. Maybe they’ve given up on it.

The pages have these interesting black lines on the left and right. Did you notice this?

**John:** I did. And that is for, I think, the revision pages so that those side things can be colored when they need to be colored.

**Craig:** Right. Here’s a thought. If I’m not going to be using the colored sides, or if they’re white, get those black lines out of my face. [laughs] I hate them. So, there’s that.

But really what we’re looking at is the same old boring Final Draft software with 100 warnings that Final Draft documents from 8 will not work in 9, or features will not crossover. Thanks. Good job.

**John:** There’s some really strangely worded warnings throughout that.

**Craig:** And what did they have, five years to figure out how to make this backwards compatible and they couldn’t.

Dual dialogue is still a joke. That you can’t just start writing in dual dialogue as opposed to you have to write to subsequent lines of character/dialogue, character/dialogue, then go backwards, hit your first character in the character element, and then select Dual Dialogue. It’s just clumsy, clumsy, clumsy.

**John:** So, one of our real concerns, and part of the reason why I did upgrade right away is because Highland, of course, can open Final Draft files, and that’s one of the things we’ve done for a long time. And Highland actually, to the degree that we can handle FDX files, even in the finder now with — if you have Highland installed — you can just hit the space bar and it will pull up the document like in that little quick view, so if you want to look at a file without actually opening it.

So, we wanted to make sure that they hadn’t changed the file format so much that we were going to have problems with Highland.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And apparently not really. So, it’s working fine in the tests that we’ve done. There are probably going to be some things that will change in the final format that we’ll have to adjust in Highland. But it seems basically the same, which is not the worst thing obviously. But FDX is sort of a messy format in the sense it’s a really tangled XML format, but it still works.

**Craig:** I just don’t understand. If this is what they were doing, why did it take this long exactly?

**John:** I don’t understand. That’s a very good question.

**Craig:** The other thing that bothers me about Final Draft is that they are so clearly driven by a naked desire for revenue over taking care of their user base, at least that’s my opinion. Because a lot of these features should have just been released incrementally as free updates on top of 8. There is nothing here that justifies a brand new release and to charge whatever they charge. What does this thing cost?

**John:** It’s an $80 upgrade.

**Craig:** $80 upgrade in a world where the entire operating system for Mac is free and you’re going to charge $80? For what? For colored pages that you don’t need and what?

**John:** For full screen mode that really should have been a .1 release.

**Craig:** And retina compatibility? That’s outrageous. It’s just sick. Sick. And that’s the upgrade. I mean, what does it cost new?

**John:** $199 I believe.

**Craig:** Oh please. We live in a time where you cannot, I’m sorry, to sell a piece of word processing for a hundred and what? [laughs]

**John:** $199.

**Craig:** I mean, what?! Are you out of your mind when you can get Highland for how much, John?

**John:** Highland is $29.99 right now.

**Craig:** I think Fade In is $40.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous. It just doesn’t make any damn sense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t get it. And I think that frankly Final Draft is — they are perilously close to being disrupted, as the Silicon Valley term goes, because nobody cares about this Final Draft crap anymore. We’re in the age of PDF for transmission and they’re going to go bye-bye. I really believe it. Unless they do something seriously different than this they just can’t make it. They’re going to get beaten.

**John:** Okay. So, I mean, I’m not just playing Devil’s Advocate here. I do think we need Final Draft to exist for those production features that we talked about. Because Fade In does not have the ability to handle revisions the way it needs to be able to do. Highland certainly can’t. And Fountain is just not set up to do that kind of thing. So, at a certain point in production it will make sense, I think, for many screenwriters to move their file over to Final Draft or another big pro app that can do a good job generating colored pages and generating revisions. I think we still are at that point.

**Craig:** I disagree on Fade In. As far as I can tell it has every bit of the revision functionality that Final Draft has.

**John:** Oh, okay, I have not seen that work well. So, maybe that’s been improved.

**Craig:** It’s got multiple levels of revisions. Multiple colors.

**John:** Have you done it for a real movie yet?

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Oh, okay.

**Craig:** I mean, not in production on it, but I did go through on my — a lot of times when I write a second draft for a studio I like to send two copies, a copy with revision marks and a copy without, just so they can see —

**John:** As do I.

**Craig:** Right. And by the way there were issues with the revisions. There were bugs. There were just some bugs. And Kent, who is the coder of Fade In, tracked them all down and fixed them. But it has, as far as I can tell, all the functionality.

In fact, one of the functionalities it didn’t have, initially the way it worked in Fade In was if you changed a line it was asterisk the line but not necessarily show you which words had changed. And then it would color the page. And I said, “No, no, no, no. I need to know which words.” Because sometimes I want to know that one word changed and sometimes I want to know that the whole sentence changed, or everything.

And he fixed all that. So, Fade IN revision wise, scene number wise, all that stuff, it seems to be right there with Final Draft. The parallel softwares, the scheduling and the budgeting and all the breakdown stuff, someone is just going to write a version of that, too. It just doesn’t make any sense anymore to waste time with this. This thing is a boulder. I do not like Final Draft. [laughs]

**John:** I think that’s pretty clear. I think most people listening to the podcast understand at this point.

**Craig:** I do not like it.

**John:** Sam I am.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yup.

**John:** So that’s Final Draft 9 in a nutshell.

**Craig:** They’re so happy we did that.

**John:** They’re so happy we did that, we talked through this. I guess it’s not a ringing endorsement for people to rush out and upgrade. If you have $80 in your pocket and you really want full screen mode and you want to stick in Final Draft, I guess. And I will say that the difference between retina and non-retina if you have a retina display significant and it’s actually really painful to look at 8 on a retina display for very long.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And this would look much better on that.

**Craig:** It will. No question.

**John:** So, there is that.

So, let’s get to our Three Page Challenges which could have been written in Final Draft or some other piece of software.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Which one should we do first, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, let’s see, we’ve got, you want me to just pick one?

**John:** Pick one.

**Craig:** You want to do the first one? You want to do like a sandwich where you do the first one, I do the second, you do the third?

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Why don’t you start with Billiam Coronel’s thee pages entitled Life Incorporated.

**John:** So, do we think his name really is Billiam?

**Craig:** I think his name is Billiam.

**John:** Okay. Have you heard that name ever before in your life?

**Craig:** Nope. Nope.

**John:** Nope. I’m wondering if Stuart mistyped it when he did it.

**Craig:** I find that hard to believe because as we know from our live podcast —

**John:** Stuart is nothing if not extremely professional when it comes to the Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** He is a steel trap, absolutely.

**John:** So, you did say Billiam. How did you pronounce it, Colonel? Or did you say Coronel?

**Craig:** I said Coronel because Colonel would be Colonel.

**John:** It would be C-O-L, that’s right.

**Craig:** So, Coronel. I don’t know how else I would pronounce that.

**John:** All right. Well, Billiam has written a script and the title is Life Incorporated.

So, as we fade in we’re flying over the forest and a narrator starts speaking directly to us. “There’s an old joke — How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one. But the bulb really has to wanna change.”

And so we’re flying towards the town. The narrator keeps speaking and is telling us as the reader, as the audience, that you need to do the same thing. You have to really let go of your preconceptions and what you’d expect to see, because this is the journey we’re on. And we’re here to — this laboratory where they are building better mice, better dolphins.

“Inside these building they create and revise genetic code for all the mammals of the animal kingdom. You heard it correctly — the actual, original genetic code.”

It’s here where we meet our hero, Ebo Tuck, who is 28. He is a messenger of some kind. We see him going into this oppressive building. In the lobby he is interacting with different employees. There’s different hallways: “Tarsiiformes” and “Lemuriformes.” He’s trying to find a specific place where he meets the receptionist for the chimpanzee department. And he’s trying to meet Mr. Jaster. He has an important breakthrough or a way to do something new that he really wants to talk to him about, like figure out a way to raise the enzyme levels of the chimpanzee.

That would kind of be like a huge breakthrough in simian biology. “You don’t care, do you?” And the receptionist says she’ll call security.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And that is the end of our three pages.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** Well, this is a fascinating one and a half pages in terms of what Billiam is attempting to do here. And I can’t help but think that he’s received some notes from people and is scrambling to address them. So, what he’s doing — first of all, I don’t ascribe to this whole VO is terrible and narrators — I like narrators. I like VO.

The one thing that I think good narration, good VO tends to do when it’s not the main character speaking but rather an omniscient narrator is there is a — tonally they need to be in line with their own omniscience. And there is a slight conversationalism that begins to creep in. I was excited by the first two lines, by the joke, and then what he says afterwards. And then I got unexcited because I realized that really what was going on was Billiam was attempting to convince me that a bad idea is a good idea.

And he’s blaming me, [laughs], the reader, or you, the audience member, if you just aren’t willing to go along with this thing. That’s not a good way to start a screenplay.

**John:** Well, I think what you’re pointing out is that it doesn’t feel confident.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It doesn’t feel like this narrator is here to take us by the hand and say this is what we’re doing. It felt a little defensive.

**Craig:** It felt a lot defensive. Because here’s what he’s saying: He says, look, I tell you this joke about a light bulb, and there is good craft I like in that that’s how he was going to start this. I’m going to tell you a joke about a light bulb and the only way to make the joke funny is if in your mind you do the math to make the light bulb have a consciousness.

And then he’s saying, well, of course light bulbs don’t have consciousness, but you see what you did, you left reality behind to grasp greater meaning. I’m going to ask you to do that again. And I’m telling you we’re not in the real world, even though this looks like the real world. We’re somewhere else. And I know what you’re thinking: suspending reality for a whole movie? That’s going to be really hard to do.

Well, hey, nobody said change comes easy. Mm, it’s going to be hard to do if it’s going to be hard to do. I suspend reality all the time for movies. I mean, if I were to stop and think about the reality behind even a movie like Inception or forget Star Wars, just Inception.

**John:** I would take any Wes Anderson movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Those exist in these special little bubbles and yet they don’t ever sort of announce like, “I’m in a movie bubble.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** No character actually acknowledges that they’re in a movie because that would just hurt it more.

**Craig:** It’s almost like Billiam wrote the screenplay and someone said the problem with the screenplay is the idea just simply isn’t believable in any way. It’s just sticking out as a weird, unbelievable idea, And he’s saying, “You’re right. What I’ll do is I’ll just tell people to believe it anyway.”

So, I don’t like the way this opens because I feel like you’re right. It’s not confident. And essentially it’s telling me that there is a problem. Better probably to just fix the problem. And even though we only have three pages, I’m already starting to see that there is a problem, because it seems to me that the story that Billiam is writing is a family-friendly workplace comedy about a company that engineers evolution.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And this is the role that Jerry Lewis would have played in 1958, but in this case we don’t do that anymore. But he is essentially the lowly guy who has great ideas and needs to somehow get passed the power structure to convince people that he’s got some terrific ideas. No doubt along the way there will be some villainous businessmen. There will be a beautiful woman who is likely a scientist that he has to impress. And he is going to screw some things up for sure, because even though he is good intentioned he’s a bit of a klutz. And in the end he’ll cure his [sound of motorcycle in background] un-muffled motorcycle. His cure his emotional or character problems and that will be that.

**John:** It’s a movie about evolution, but he’s the one who has to change.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** So, as you were talking it struck me that this is a case where you’re taking something that is sort of metaphysical or sort of grander than life, sort of the idea of evolution is sort of an abstract concept and applying very specific concrete things to it. The Albert Brooks Defending Your Life came to mind, where that is a movie about heaven and sort of like heavenly choices and what all that is.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And yet it gets reduced to sort of comedy term. And so you have to very clearly set up the world and like this is what our heaven is going to be like. So, in this case Billiam is setting up this is what our little mythical world of evolution is going to be like and these are going to be the rules from which we’re playing. That voiceover didn’t quite hit it for me.

**Craig:** Well, it can’t, because heaven can be whatever we want it to be, but this world can’t. So he has an idea he likes, it just doesn’t fit in the world, you know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It doesn’t fit.

**John:** A friend sent a script that I read a couple weeks ago that I really liked the idea, and in fact I was 20 pages into it and I was like, oh, this is really exciting. And then by about page 30 I really started to fall out of love with it. And I had to very gently say to him, “I really think this is a short film idea. I think this is a heightened world that is delightful as long as we don’t have to think about it for too long. But if you’re asking me to think about it for too long I start to ask these really troubling questions and the whole thing just starts to disintegrate.”

One of those things where, but if that’s true, then this would be true, and this would be true, and this would be true. And suddenly all I’m thinking about is what possible world could this be? And in a short film I would totally love it. And as a 90-minute feature it fell apart for me. And I worry that Billiam is going to face the same situation. This could be a delightful little short film idea, which is like the evolution office, but I’m wondering if it’s going to really be possible to build this out as a full feature.

**Craig:** And unfortunately for him he’s picked a topic that immediately eliminates metaphysics. Normally when you do a fantasy movie like this, whether it’s Heaven Can Wait, or Beetlejuice, for instance.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** You’re leaning on metaphysics so you’re allowed to do anything, but evolution, you can’t have an evolution office in heaven. [laughs] It doesn’t work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s the whole point. So, it doesn’t work. I think there may be a problem here at the heart of the idea. Just small writing things, I thought the page is laid out pretty nicely. I needed far more of an introduction to our hero. His name is Ebo Tuck. That’s a very strange name. And I want to know what he looks like more than the fact that he’s simply a messenger. Something, you know, what’s his hair look like?

**John:** Considering how much voiceover and character we’re given from this narrator, it does seem really strange that we’re not even thrown a line of scene description to tell us why Ebo is different from anyone else in this movie.

**Craig:** Correct. We need a little piece of character beyond simply a guy walking. Also, “A nondescript man secretly eyes Ebo as he passes.” Well, no doubt that will be very important, but then don’t make him a nondescript man. [laughs] He needs to be a descript man.

**John:** Describe the nondescript man. [laughs]

**Craig:** Exactly. You never want to say “nondescript man.” I just think that that’s a big problem, particularly for somebody that’s going to matter.

There’s a lot of because we’re in a world of science there’s just a lot of terms, which will start to become white noise to us, like Tarsiiformes and Lemuriformes and Hominidae. And note that there is a typo here where he’s heading the Hominidae hallway, but in the slug line it is Homininae Hallway.

And then there is Gorilla beringei and Mammut furlongi and Pan paniscus and by the time we — we just don’t care. There’s just too much. And we’ll never be able to read all that anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And, lastly, the female receptionist is having a discussion with him that is just out of a different time. It does feel like something from, you know, the bell boy, or the errand boy.

**John:** And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s just you’re going to have to build your entire world so that this fits right. And I don’t feel like the opening voiceover quite set that tone.

**Craig:** Agreed. There’s also a little bit of the “as you know” syndrome here.

He says, ” I was hoping to talk to Mr. Jaster.”

“Want to talk to the Head of the entire Hominids Division? Name?”

Well, no one does that. [laughs]

**John:** No one does that.

**Craig:** That’s not a good way to — I think there’s a better way to show us that Mr. Jaster is a very important person.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, there are some fundamental issues here and it could be that on page four all of this starts to gel and be great, but I am deeply concerned.

**John:** I am concerned as well.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Billiam, thank you so much for sending through your script.

**Craig:** Thank you, Billiam.

**John:** All right, let’s next go to Mr. Jeff Pulice.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Now, this is a very special Three Page Challenge entry.

**Craig:** Yeah it is.

**John:** So, people who listened to the Q&A from the live show, the holiday live show, will know that Jeff Pulice was there in person and he asked us why have you not done my Three Page Challenge. And so Stuart was there and we brought Stuart up and said like, hey, do you know this guy, do you know his Three Page Challenge.

And then Stuart revealed the elaborate system by which he figures out Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And after that revelation we said, Mr. Pulice, we will find your Three Page Challenge and we will feature it on the next time we do this. So, this is Mr. Jeff Pulice’s.

**Craig:** And I thought his name was Police as in cops, but it is Pulice like Pulice if you’re going to be appropriately Italian. So, Jeff Pulice, there’s no title on this but we fade in in a sitting room —

**John:** And I think he told us what the title was though at the — How the Genetti Brothers Saved Hollywood or Created Hollywood.

**Craig:** Oh, okay, well that’s a good name. So, we begin in a sitting room in the morning and the title says “Bayonne, New Jersey, 1902.” It’s a dingy apartment and Roxy Huston, who is a 20-year-old hot woman with red hair is getting into a bathtub and she’s barely dressed. The tub is cold as ice. And we reveal that this is being filmed. Carlo Genetti, 27 years old, is kind of the producer of this little film that we’re making. And his brother, Primo, is the cameraman. And they’re using an Edison Moving Pictures Co. camera. And it’s quite clear that they’re making a porno.

And so she gets into the tub and is following the direction to pretend that the ice cold tub is, in fact, nice and warm and comforting. And now it’s time for Jamie to come in and find her. And Jamie is not hearing his cue. Finally Jamie, the horny landlord, comes in and delivers his line, “Two weeks late with the rent? You’re in hot water now, you little tramp!” But the film has run out because Jamie took too long to come in and it’s just not going well.

We cut outside to the street and there is a horse-drawn wagon full of Irishmen, burly Irishmen, holding baseball bats and axes, and they are led by a man named Eugene Cortland who has apparently been hired by Mr. Edison to beat up the Italians — Italians in general, I think, and he delivers an inspirational speech about how these Irishmen are going to win the day by beating up these awful Italians.

And then we’re back to the sitting room where Carlo is patient explaining to his actor, Jamie, that it’s really important that Jamie figures this out and gets this done, gets the scene done so that they get paid and he gets paid. Carlo gives Roxy one last little bit of instruction, and that is our three pages.

**John:** Our three pages. I like the idea of this a lot. I do very much like the idea of looking at the start of the film industry from a titillating perspective and a somewhat inept perspective of like trying to make this little film in someone’s bathtub and this is what creates the industry. We don’t know where all this is going, but I liked sort of how it started. And I can sort of see how it started.

I had some issues and concerns about the rules of the world. For instance, this is a pre-sound time, so it shouldn’t matter that he comes in and says his line, but he says his line. That would be a title card. I felt like there were jokes that could have been put in there that didn’t happen because of the nature of a silent film about this, but that’s fine.

Where it lost me, honestly, when we get out to the street and we see Cortland, and Cortland has his speech. It was just — I had a really hard time parsing his dialogue and sort of even what he was talking about and why we were listening to him talk right then. And so I was so eager to get back into this bathroom, the sitting room, and continuing with the filming of the movie.

**Craig:** I agree with you just about in all ways. I think that this is a great idea for a movie. I love the idea — I think porn is fascinating, particularly —

**John:** I would question like, so clearly we’re not supposed to see her boobies. The goal is that it’s near-porn.

**Craig:** Yeah, it may be so that it’s near porn. But the idea is that it’s whatever porn counted for in 1902. This is a pornographic film. When she’s getting into a tub and then this guy is going to say, “You’re in hot water now, you little tramp.” I suspect then she’s going to have to have sex with him to pay the rent.

So, we’re dealing with a porn of the kind, and porn is part of our culture now in a way it has never been before. And underlining, it’s an old saw, but porn is always the first proof of new technology. And it’s quite likely that this is true that porn was an early use of motion picture film cameras.

So, it’s a really interesting topic and I like the way it starts. There’s a comedy. There’s a light tone to it. There are two brothers. I like the quiet brother, doesn’t say anything but mutters in Italian. There is a truth to that.

And I like the way it was written. It was a little overwritten here and there, but in general good details. I could see the room. I could see her getting in. I could see the direction of it all. And I think that the sound issues, it seemed that the problem was that they just ran out of film, because Jamie was late on his cue. I also — but I do agree with you that there is a tonal issue when we go outside to this guy, Eugene Cortland.

This was a common thing at the time that companies would hire thugs to do their bidding. Carnegie was most notorious for this sort of thing, but here you have a character, an interesting character, a villain and I want this villain to be better. I think, you know, like Bill the Butcher was such a wonderful guy, such a great villain, such a terrible, wonderful guy. This guy, his thugs are a little too goofy. I think there was a mistake here that Jeff makes.

Cortland is sitting with all of these guys and then he begins a speech sort of dead. “Gentleman, what do I hate?” No one does this out of nowhere. And they answer, they drop the N-bomb, which is always going to put people back on their heels a little bit, especially if it’s in service of a joke. And then he says, “No, no, no. I hate these Dagos.”

And then he delivers a speech. And the speech is kind of a Bill the Butcher speech, but to me I would much rather see a realer version of this scene, particularly because he’s going to be the villain. I want to believe that there’s a real threat here. And I want this to be truer, maybe, to the way it went.

**John:** I would also, let’s take a look at this from a pacing point of view. So, we have about a page and a half first scene, and then we get out to the street and that’s another page that we’re out there and it’s just a dialogue scene. How much better it could be if we had that first scene, just keep it exactly the way it is, then cut to outside and we see guys getting out of the truck and they’re getting their baseball bats and their stuff. And so we see that something is about to happen. And then we go back in.

So, we don’t really introduce Cortland by words yet. You just see that there is all this activity happening outside. Frenzy, frenzy, frenzy. And then we go back inside and suddenly there’s tension to be back in that sitting room because we know something bad is about to happen. Something is about to show up.

**Craig:** Correct. And what you’re really putting your finger on is the absolute lack of transitions between these two moments and they need transitions. You’re correct. Because all we’re going to know is we’re in a room and then we’re outside, somewhere. We don’t even know if we’re in the same town, for god’s sakes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, you’re right. You do need that transitional element. You need to have Primo cross by the window cursing, and then we look out the window and we see this thing pulling up. And then we’re down on the street. We see these guys come out and it also gives you an opportunity to learn about Cortland in a more interesting way. All of these men are getting their bats and their axes. And maybe one guy looks at Cortland and says, “I’m a little uncomfortable with this. Do you really think that we’re going to need to use these?”

And Cortland takes the bat from the guy’s hand as if to say you don’t need to use this and then whacks him on the head with it. [laughs] You know, give us something where we go, ooh god, this is a bad guy, other than a speech. Speeches are wonderful for later.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** When we’ve established that this is a bad guy. Then the speech will be surprising and will reveal some interesting things, I think. But you’re absolutely right that there is a big lack of transition here and this is precisely where screenwriters get into trouble with directors. They don’t provide these transitions. The directors will begin to rework things to get the transitions. Much better for us to be a participant in that process.

**John:** Yeah. Where the narrative is actually creating the transition. And by going to outside you’re increasing the tension and by coming back inside you’re increasing the tension. Every time you cut, every time you move from one place to another place, you should be sort of providing energy on both sides of the cut, of the transition. And we’re not feeling that here.

**Craig:** Especially when we want tension. Especially when we want to feel like Carlo is having this casual discussion with an actor and he has no idea that 40 Irishmen are about to head up to the fifth floor to beat the crap out of him.

That all said, I’m very hopeful about this.

**John:** I am, too.

**Craig:** I think this is a really good idea for a movie. It could be terrific. And I think this is something that Jeff can do. I like the dialogue. I thought there were a lot of good things in it.

**John:** Now, I took it that Cortland and his men were there to beat him up, or Kodak sent them there because he didn’t want his cameras used to make porn. Is that what you took?

**Craig:** Well, he’s working for Edison, so yes.

**John:** Or Edison.

**Craig:** I think that that’s exactly right. That Edison does not want his cameras to be used for porn. And that’s an age old problem where people that make technology don’t want it used for porn, but until porn actually popularizes the technology — it’s the birth of this strange symbiotic relationship, this embarrassing relationship between technology and porn. So, for that reason I find it very fascinating, particularly if it’s real.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, I’m hopeful. Very hopeful.

**John:** I’m hopeful, too. And so that detail about it being Edison and being his camera, in the very first page we’re seeing the detail on the camera, which is great.

But right now on page two we’re tipping the Edison of it all. It would be more interesting to me if we just don’t know why these people are showing up. And so our mind can start to race. What are the reasons why these people are going to show up to do this? Is it because it’s porn? Is it because it’s a girl? Because these guys are behind on money?

And then it would be a nice surprise that it’s about the camera. That it is Edison himself who sent them.

**Craig:** Exactly. And if they do beat these guys up and then Cortland leans in to poor Carlo, who is slumped on the floor, picks the camera up and says, “Mr. Edison thanks you for your choice in cameras, but requests again that you not use it for this filth,” and then walks out.

We would go, ooh boy, Edison is a jerk! [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, and then smashes the title card. And you’re off to the races.

**Craig:** You’re off to the races. Exactly. It’s just about transition and structuring the reveals here. But some good stuff.

**John:** So, Jeff Pulice, thank you for standing up during the Q&A and getting us to read your script.

**Craig:** Nice work, Jeff. Good job, Jeff.

**John:** Our final Three Page Challenge of the week is from Steven Arvanites.

**Craig:** I’m going to go with Arvan-eat-ees. I’m going to suggest that Steven is Greek, of Greek decent.

**John:** Oh, I think you’re right. Arvanites makes more sense. Well, this one is inspired by true story.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Okay. So, it starts with the Heaven’s Gate Motel in Manhattan. Alicia, she’s 25, she’s on her back on the bed staring at the molded ceiling while Chubby Kowalski, 39, is on top of her. They’re making the love.

**Craig:** The love.

**John:** She’s a prostitute we’re going to quickly find out. And she’s like, “Oh, yeah! Bring it home, Mr. Kowalski!”

He took three Viagra and…passes out. She’s freaked out. She’s trying to get him back alive. Cannot get him to revive. Catastrophe. She hops off, gets her smartphone, calls an ambulance to pick him up. She sends them upstairs.

As we follow her out leaving we meet Nestor, 22, with a crescent scar on his cheek and hair tucked up tight in a do-rag. They’re talking about what just happened. She is trying to get back to, oh god, I’m trying to remember what she’s turning back to. I read this like five minutes ago and I’ve already forgotten.

**Craig:** Well, this is part of the problem. [laughs]

**John:** This is part of the problem.

**Craig:** Yeah, keep going.

**John:** Nestor is a drug dealer.

**Craig:** We don’t know where she’s going.

**John:** We don’t know where she’s going. We really don’t know where she’s going.

**Craig:** We don’t know what she’s doing.

**John:** Ultimately she’s going to end up in Spanish Harlem with a Bachata beat. Kids play stickball.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re drowning here on this. I love it.

**John:** I am drowning here on this. So, often when I do these Three Page Challenges I will spend about three minutes to write up the quick summary. But today I thought, you know what, I’m just going to wing it.

**Craig:** You thought you were going to do it Craig style.

**John:** I was going to do it Craig style and I just can’t do it Craig style.

**Craig:** You can’t do it. Can’t do it Craig style.

**John:** Quickly summarize the lines and go through it. But essentially she’s going to end up at Our Lady Deli with Sal Genetti, 46, hirsute and stocky, who hands off an envelope to his little thug named Goon Frankie.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** We also meet Filomena Genetti. There is a second Genetti which I think is a sign of kismet.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And Alicia and Genetti have a bit of conversation at the bottom of page three.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That was a terrible summary, Craig. I just want to apologize to Steven Arvanites.

**Craig:** It was a terrible summary, but I am going to sympathetic with you here because these are really troubled pages.

First of all, I have to presume that one of the reasons that Stuart put this in the mix is because do you notice something interesting about Mr. Genetti’s name?

**John:** Same Genetti as from before? From the Genetti Brothers Saved Hollywood?

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s both Genettis. Okay, that’s what you meant by another Genetti.

**John:** That’s what I meant —

**Craig:** How odd is that? And just as a lesson to all of you out there who, “They stole my script. It’s the same name!” Yeah, it happens all the time.

**John:** It does. It involves sex and Genettis.

**Craig:** Yes. However, just as importantly, the name Genetti at this point I think we can say is a bit too generic, generic-y. Generetti.

**John:** Generetti.

**Craig:** Yeah, for use here. But, it’s also indicative that Jeff Pulice’s script has these two Genetti brothers in 1902. This screenplay purports to take place now in 2013, and yet it is — it sounds, [laughs], I —

**John:** I mean, when you saw Viagra halfway down the first page were you like, “What?”

**Craig:** I was shocked.

**John:** I was shocked. And so I had to kind of go back and re-read through it because — so the names that we’ve seen so far, Alicia, okay, that can be modern, but Chubby Kowalski?

**Craig:** Chubby Kowalski. And then the dialogue. Take away Viagra and you’ve got, “You’re the only regular I got now. Don’t go and die. No, Mr. Kowalski. Oh, Mother Mary!” [laughs]

**John:** yeah. She really says, “Oh, Mother Mary!”

**Craig:** She says, “Oh, Mother Mary.” Then when she’s giving him CPR she says, “One, two, three. One, two, three. I got this from that hospital show I saw on TV, Mr. Kowalski. Oh, no!” She breaks a nail. “Oh no! Oh no! That did not just happen. I’m done now. Done!”

This is so arch and old school. It’s beyond old fashioned. It almost reads like a parody of 1930s screwball comedy. So, let’s back up to the beginning here. The first problem we have is we’re opening inside of a motel in Manhattan. I have no idea where we are. That’s a tricky move to pull right away.

**John:** Oh, absolutely. Now, you’re telling me this is present day. Where are there motels in Manhattan?

**Craig:** I’m not aware of any. But if it’s a building, like a slummy building and she’s in some slummy apartment in the slummy building, you’ve got to at least show me, give me an exterior. Let me know I’m in New York. Then go inside the room.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She is having sex with a man who absolutely cannot be named Chubby Kowalski, particularly because he’s dead now, I think. Maybe he comes back and he’s not dead. Either way, he cannot be called Chubby Kowalski. Not today. No way.

Her dialogue with him falls into that category of things people would not say in a situation. If you’re having sex with somebody and you’re a hooker, and the man actually dies while he’s on you and in you, you would say none of the things she’s saying here.

And when you make this mistake you are letting the audience know that the movie is not in control of itself. It is divorced from a reality the audience understands.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s very disorienting. Very confusing. I’m meant to be laughing at this, possibly, but it’s not funny. She then — I assume our main character — is distracted from saving this man’s life because she breaks a finger nail. So, this is not a hooker with a heart of gold. This is actually a venal superficial hooker who is so concerned with nails that she doesn’t care that this man is dying.

When she walks outside and someone, she casually sends the EMTs upwards. She talks to a drug dealer who is right out of the big book of racial stereotypes. And she tells this guy, he asks her, “What’s up?” “What up, Alicia?”

**John:** “Tryin’ to find a phone booth so I can turn into Super Hooker.”

**Craig:** Oh, that’s what up? Not a human being is dying. [laughs] And then he attempts to do a joke about drugs. It doesn’t work.

**John:** Would she refer to herself as a hooker? It just doesn’t…yeah.

**Craig:** I know. And, I’m sorry, is the finger nail the thing that makes her Super Hooker? [sighs]

We then, and this is where you were struggling, we’re now walking around in Spanish Harlem. Perhaps the crash pad motel was in Spanish Harlem and she’s just where she is. We don’t know where the Heaven’s Gate Motel is in the entire expanse of Manhattan.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** There is a decent drawn view of Spanish Harlem.

**John:** Well, I mean, stickball? Stickball, again, made me feel like we’re in a period movie.

**Craig:** I know. I know. I didn’t understand it. The stickball thing really threw me.

**John:** When I saw Viagra I’m like, okay, well maybe it can be like early ’90s. I mean, there was Viagra back then. But then she has a cell phone, so.

**Craig:** But stickball is ’40s and ’50s. My dad played stickball in Manhattan. And he’s 71. So, that made no sense. And then here she is sashaying down the block, people are catcalling, and she says, “Let’s see the bills, muchachos!”

Is she Spanish? Is she Latina? Why is she there? Why is she talking to them like that? Am I meant to be sympathetic to the fact that she is a 25-year-old prostitute in dire straits?

She walks into this deli and now we get new tropes: mobsters. Italian mobsters.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Which I don’t think operate in Spanish Harlem anymore in this manner. And particularly don’t own. If you are anywhere near Manhattan, if you’ve been anywhere near Manhattan in the last 20 years, bodegas are owned either by Latinos or increasingly by Asians, by Koreans, and Vietnamese, and Chinese.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But an Italian guy handing over money to another Italian guy who is known as Goon Frankie. And now I just feel like I’m getting screwed with her, because I don’t know what time this movie is taking place in.

**John:** Yeah, it’s taking place in a never time. It’s taking place in a strange movie time.

**Craig:** It is. And the last line really upset me because she’s saying, well first, she says, “What did the goon want, Mr. Genetti?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Well, look, you’re a hooker. I think you know what the Italian guy demanding money from a small shop owner wants. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But then he says, “The usual, my dear?”

And she says, “Ya know it. Extra grease. Oils the hinges.”

**John:** No one in the history of time has ever asked for extra grease.

**Craig:** I don’t know what that means. I kind of know what she’s implying by oils the hinges. All I know is I don’t like her anymore.

**John:** You didn’t like her from the start, Craig, admit it.

**Craig:** I liked her… — Look, the movie opens with a shot that reminds me of the terrible moment in the movie Traffic where you see this girl who has lost herself to drugs and she’s on her back getting pounded by some guy because she’s selling her body. And her face is dead. And she’s staring up at the ceiling just as this girl is staring up at the ceiling.

And your heart breaks.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** And then, so I was with her until she was like, “Oh yeah! Bring it home, Mr. Kowalski. No, you’re the only regular I got now.” Literally the man is dying and she’s like, “Oh man, this is going to really impact my bottom line.” [laughs] There are so many mistakes. Steven, there are so many mistakes here. And I think primarily what you have to ask yourself is what year is my movie taking place in, and what do I want people to think about these characters? Because there’s no way I’m thinking about the characters what you want me to think about them. That can’t be possible.

**John:** I’m trying to imagine what the true story is that is inspiring this. Because the second line of the script is inspired by a true story. I’m assuming that there is actually some event that happens that these characters would interface with. So, there was some real event, but he’s probably inventing these characters to play into this event, maybe?

**Craig:** Maybe.

**John:** But if it’s a true story it happened in some place and time.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that could be really helpful in terms of finding a place to land where this actually happening and a time period where everything sort of fits and makes sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, look, I think that, Steven, it’s important for you to understand that when we talk about sending screenplays and people reading them, these are the kinds of pages where people will stop after five or six pages because they don’t believe that you’re in control of your story and they have no faith.

And so your job as a budding screenwriter now is to really ask yourself these tough questions. How can I engender faith in my work? And because of the choices you’re making repeatedly throughout this, either because you’re not paying attention, or because your instincts are just off, you really need to analyze this because this is not going to fly. This won’t work for you.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s also a good lesson in terms of everything — the pages themselves are basically fine. There were a few little tiny little mistakes in them where like, you know, missing spaces or sort of weird word choices. But it was actually the content that was keeping us from going further forward.

So, a lot of times people are so freaked out by the form of screenwriting, like, oh, everything is not going to look just right. This looks basically right.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** None of the action lines are too long. I can read it. I just can’t actually process it in a way. I can’t form the movie in my head that you want us to form because things are not lining up right. And it only takes one little thing to make you disbelieve or sort of knock you off the trail of enjoying it. And so for me it was the Viagra halfway through. It’s like, wait, this isn’t a period movie? And suddenly I’m just thrown for a loop.

So, you’re going to need to let us know we’re here and now from the start or just basically, you know, look for the things that are making me believe this is taking place in the past which is really the dialogue.

**Craig:** The dialogue. The characterization. The way that characters are reacting to situations. The tone. And the — I mean, look, unfortunately the introduction of the wise cracking 1930s screwball type hooker with a heart of gold, the 1940s style silly mobsters. I mean, I don’t know if they’re silly, but the fact that the guy is literally known as Goon Frankie is not a good sign. The middle aged Italian woman praying with her rosaries. This all feels like a collection of very old…

**John:** Tropes.

**Craig:** …cinematic tropes. Really old. And when I say old, I mean, because you and I now we’re getting old. When we started those were old. But now they’re really old. We’re talking about things that are 70, 80 years old.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Older than a lot of dead people. So, I think this need a real… — This is one those moments, Steven, where you’ve got to sit back and think. And you’ve got to really think here about this, because a lot went wrong.

**John:** It did. And I would go back to if there was some — there was obviously an inspiration because there was inspiration of a true story. So, to look at what was it about that true story that made you want to write the script? And then how can you convey that excitement about what that story was on the page?

**Craig:** Right. [motorcycles in background] There’s something going on in Old Town. I’m not sure what it is today. There’s been a lot of motorcycles. And then there’s —

**John:** It’s a rally.

**Craig:** Well, there’s a big crowd, actually, in the distance that keeps cheering. And at first I thought, you know, I know they do the American Idol tryouts here, but I think that that’s too late for that. So, it can’t be that. There’s some sort of motorcycle rally.

**John:** Well, nothing would make more sense for Old Town Pasadena.

**Craig:** Nothing. Nothing would make more sense.

Well, I want to thank the three people that sent their Three Page Challenges in. They were all very brave. And I know, Steven, we were a little hard on you and maybe, Billiam, we were a little hard on you, too. But this is all — this is tough love and we have your best interests at heart. The rest of the world does not. Trust me on this. So, please take it in the best possible way it was intended.

**John:** Yes. Thank you very much for sending it in. And if you are a listener who would like us to look at your three pages, we will do these again in the future, so you can go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and there are instructions there for how you can send in your three pages of your script, and we will talk about them on the air when Stuart masters his strategy for organizing them.

Stuart does read everything that gets sent in. I truly believe in my heart he does read everything.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Do you? [laughs]

**John:** Does he always file it in a way that he can find it again? That’s a different question. But I think…

**Craig:** Oh boy.

**John:** …Stuart will often find amazing things like he did this week.

If you want to read along with us, these things that we just talked about, they are available also at johnaugust.com. Just look for this episode. This is 126. And you can see the PDFs of these pages, see what we talked about.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** It’s time for some One Cool Things, Craig.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have one.

**John:** Great. I have two, so, go.

**Craig:** Whoa. You’re going to use them both? I mean, geez.

**John:** I’m going to use them both. They’re both books, so it was fine to do that.

**Craig:** Would you like to go first?

**John:** Sure. So, my two Cool Things are the last two books that I read because over this little break I finished two books and so I thought I would share them with people.

The first one is huge. It’s like 542 pages. It’s called Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber. And it was really fascinating. And I can’t wholly recommend it because it’s just super, super long. And I bought it with the specific purpose of when I — sometimes I need a book to fall asleep to. And I need a really long book to fall asleep to. And so this was a book that was just interesting enough to sort of keep me awake for awhile and then I could easily put it down.

What Debt: The First 5,000 Years is talking about is really the idea that when you had basic economics in college they would say like, oh, the money developed, because first there was barter, you know, tribes would barter and like I’ll give you some fish for your beads and all this stuff would happen.

And modern economic theory sort of derives from this idea like, oh, there was barter, and then it became coins, and then money systems developed. But if you actually go back and look at it anthropologically you can’t find any evidence that bartering ever actually happened. And even when money systems break down, barter doesn’t really happen that way.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** What does happen is that people have IOUs, essentially. Like I will take three of your fish and I will pay you back some time in the future. And debt is really probably how modern economic systems started.

**Craig:** Oh, okay. That’s interesting.

**John:** And sort of all got kind of swept under the rug because people were like, well, bartering sounds so nice. It just makes sense that you exchange other things first and then you eventually —

**Craig:** Right. You need bread and I need shoes. So, I’m the baker, you’re the cobbler. This is great.

**John:** But essentially what probably really did happen is that the person who made the bread would give you some bread with the understanding that at some point they could ask you for something back. And you would be in debt to that person and they would be in debt to you. And that’s how communities actually sort of form is that sort of bond of debt.

**Craig:** Makes sense. Because really if you think about it this nice pair of shoes is worth 100 loaves of bread. I don’t need 100 loaves of bread right now.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And you can’t give me 100 loaves of bread right now anyway. You’ve got other people you’ve got to give bread to. So, debt is an incredibly useful thing.

**John:** Exactly. So, that was one of the sort of essential tenets. The other thing is that in economic theory we sort of don’t want to think about slavery and military violence, but that’s really at the heart of sort of how economic systems developed. And that so much of economic life was partly, was centered around slavery and people who were essentially working, either who are captives who were slaves, or were essentially in debt bondage basically. They were sold to somebody else by their family to work someplace because that’s the only way the family could have enough resources to survive.

And so that kind of debt is part of it, too. And most money systems like coins were really developed to pay soldiers. So, the ability to fund wars, that’s why you needed to have silver because you need to be able to have something you can actually hand people and say I’m paying you this for being a soldier.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So, it was a fascinating book about sort of the history of that. As you start to apply it to more modern things I had a little less confidence in Graeber’s analysis of it, but essentially all money systems are really a system of trust. It’s a system of whether you believe that the person who is creating this currency can back it up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so gold itself really has no value. Silver has no value. It’s what you believe that the state will honor that money. So, that’s one of the books.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** Second book I just finished which is just completely opposite of it is a short little book called Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. And it’s great. It’s really, really funny.

She’s a writer and illustrator. She talks a lot about dogs, a lot about sort of her stupid dog’s perspective on things. Her profound depression that happened. And there is really great look into sort of what depression is, because people think like, oh, depression is being sad.

**Craig:** Oh, I think I saw this.

**John:** It’s great, Craig. You’ll really like it.

**Craig:** She’s the one that — she illustrates it and she has like a very quirky, almost stick figure style?

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s great.

**John:** When she draws herself she sort of looks like a person with a shark fin.

**Craig:** Yeah, her thing on her depression is amazing.

**John:** Yeah. And so that section isn’t so funny-funny, but it’s really a smart look at what depression is because people say like, “Oh, you feel sad?” It’s like, no, I don’t feel anything. I would love to feel sad. I don’t feel anything at all. And so just telling me just to feel better it’s like telling somebody who likes to fly higher, because you just can’t do that.

**Craig:** That was the one where she’s on the ground and she sees something under her refrigerator.

**John:** She sees a tiny piece of corn.

**Craig:** Right. And that’s what starts her feeling something again. It’s really well done. It’s beautiful, actually.

**John:** So, I would highly recommend it. And I’ve talked before about other books I’ve recommended where you see like a writer has a voice and she’s so clearly a person who has an incredibly specific voice, an ability to look at her flaws and enjoy them. So, I would really recommend her book.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And any book with illustrations we always say like you don’t want to get that on a Kindle. But it’s actually set up really well for the Kindle because it’s black and white illustrations. So, don’t be afraid to buy it on the Kindle because it works there.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I believe that her piece on her depression is also out there on the internet, so that’s a nice free sample for you to go buy the book. It’s really beautifully done.

My One Cool Thing is Global Entry. Have I talked about Global Entry on here before?

**John:** Global Entry is the best thing in the world, Craig. So —

**Craig:** The best.

**John:** I wholly endorse your One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Yes, it’s so great. So, as our listeners know I traveled with my family to Austria over the holidays. And long before that I had had in the back of my head this terrible memory. So, when you return from overseas you have to go through customs upon reentry to the United States. And I remember coming back from Bangkok when we had finished The Hangover Part II. And that’s essentially 21 odyssey of flying.

So, by the time you got off the plane you really are about as miserable as you can be. And you’re there in the Bradley Terminal and then you walk into the customs room and you are in a line —

**John:** At first it’s immigration and then it’s customs.

**Craig:** Right. I’m sorry. So, first it’s immigration. So, the immigration control is the first one you deal with. And I’m on a line, because I’m from New York, I’m on lines, not in them. And the line is — it looks like, I don’t know, It’s a Small World circa 1973. It’s brutal. It’s a brutal snaking line that appears to be an hour long.

And then as I’m about 10% of the way through it they announce that a lot of their computers need to be restarted. And I stood in that line for I think two hours.

**John:** Ugh.

**Craig:** Two hours with — and it’s immigration, so you’re in the cantina at Mos Eisley. You can’t even talk to the people next to you. [laughs] And everyone is freaking out. And it’s hot and it’s miserable. And all you want to do is just be home and you are home but you’re not home.

Okay, so I swore to myself never again. Global Entry is a program that the customs and border patrol United States, whatever, department has where if you are a trusted traveler you can get vetted. And if you are vetted then you don’t have to stand in that line. You go to a kiosk which is automated. You insert your passport. You scan your fingerprints. It takes a picture of your face. It checks that you are you. You make a quick declaration for customs. Yeah, I have some chocolate that I’m bringing back but not, I don’t know, fruit and raw meat.

And then you take that slip to a customs guy who stamps it really quickly because that’s his own little special no line for thing. And you’re through like that. In addition, you also automatically qualify for TSA Pre-Check which is spectacular. TSA Pre-Check, which is for most major airlines at most major airports, allows you to go through a special security line where you don’t have to take off your shoes, you don’t have to take your computer out of your bag. You don’t even have to take off like a light sweatshirt or something like that.

And if you think that taking off shoes and taking your laptop out of your bag isn’t that annoying, when you don’t have to do it anymore it’s the greatest feeling ever.

**John:** Glorious.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. So, what do you have to do to qualify for Global Entry? Pretty simple. You go to globalentry.gov. You’re not going to qualify if you’ve been arrested before even. It seems like just literally being arrested. Certainly felons or any kind of conviction is going to be a real problem for you. It costs $100 to apply that’s not refundable if they don’t approve you, so it’s a bit of a gamble unless you’re super duper clean in your record.

But, if you are super duper clean in your record, you apply, and you fill out all the forms properly and then you have to go do an interview. And for those of us in Los Angeles unfortunately the only place to be interviewed is at LAX. It takes a really long time to get an appointment. You have to go down there. And at that appointment they scan your fingerprints, they take a picture of you. You have to basically be willing to have the United States government collect your biometrics. You answer a few questions about why you’ve gone to the places you’ve gone. And then they approve you.

And at that point you’re golden. The only other tips I have: if you travel with your family, if you have family members, a wife or a husband or children, everybody needs to do a separate application. And I mean even if you’re an infant you need a separate application. And everybody needs a separate appointment. And everybody needs to be scanned separately. So, that’s a bit cumbersome thing to do.

You want to make sure that for your airlines when you’re registering your information and buying tickets that the name that you’re using for the airline is exactly the way it is on your passport. So, if your passport has your first, middle, and last name, please put your first, middle, and last name into the airline stuff. And you’re going to use a known traveler number which is your Global Entry number. And then you’ll get the pre-check and, of course, the awesome quick and easy immigration when you return to the United States.

**John:** Global Entry really is terrific. And so my husband has had it for two years. I got it this last year. My daughter has it. And so when we came back from Europe this last time it really was a godsend because there was a huge line. Mike and I could go through and with our daughter, she was like too short — it takes your little picture there — so the guy said, “Lift up your kid.” And so we lifted up our kid so it’s high enough that her photo was taken, which is not ideal, but it worked.

And it really is great. And you won’t 100% of the time get TSA Pre-Check, but most of the time I’ve gotten through. And as often as I was going back and forth to New York this year, it was a godsend. It paid for itself just in the TSA of it all.

**Craig:** Yeah. I now routinely got it every time. It is amazing. I went — in fact, I used it when I went to New York, when I went to go see Big Fish, actually. It was the first time I think I used TSA Pre-Check. And it was amazing. I got to the airport and I walked to the line and I was through security, I’m not kidding, in six minutes. Six minutes.

First of all, the line is much shorter because very few people have it. And then just less to do. The taking off the shoes and all the rest of it, it just takes up time. It’s great. I just thought it was awesome.

It’s very annoying to get it all done, but once you get it all done, ooh, what a relief.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Global Entry.

**John:** Global Entry.

So, that’s our show for this week. Standard wrap up stuff here.

Oh, actually one bit of news. We have the last few Scriptnotes t-shirts are available on the store right now. So, it’s store.johnaugust.com.

Essentially whenever we make new t-shirts we order a few extras in case people have problems or need to change sizes. All that stuff seems to be remedied, so the last few Scriptnotes t-shirts are up for sale right now. So, if you’d like those you can go get those.

If you would like to leave a comment on our show you can do so at the iTunes page for Scriptnotes.

Anything we talked about on the show this week you can find in the notes for the show, so johnaugust.com. Look for podcasts and this episode.

What else to say? Oh, on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. You can write little short things to us there. If you have a longer question or something to talk about on the air the email address is ask@johnaugust.com.

And I think that’s it.

**Craig:** This was a pretty good show.

**John:** It was a pretty good show. It was longer than some of ours have been.

**Craig:** I know. A little bit of an epic show.

**John:** Yeah. But, Craig, thank you so much and I will talk to you next week.

**Craig:** See you next week, John.

Links:

* Business Insider on [the responses from Hollywood CCs who should have been BCCs](http://www.businessinsider.com/hollywood-assistant-accidentally-ccd-a-listers-and-their-responses-were-amazing-2014-1)
* Final Draft 9 is [now for sale](http://store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-9.html)
* Three Pages by [Billiam Coronel](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BilliamCoronel.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Jeff Pulice](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JeffPulice.pdf) and the [Q&A from the Holiday Spectacular](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular)
* Three Pages by [Steven Arvanites](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/StevenArvanites.pdf)
* [How to submit your Three Pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage), and [Stuart’s post on lessons learned from the early batches](http://johnaugust.com/2012/learning-from-the-three-page-challenge)
* [Debt: The First 5,000 Years](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612191290/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by David Graeber
* [Hyperbole and a Half](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451666179/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Allie Brosh
* [Global Entry](http://www.globalentry.gov/) is worth your time
* An extremely limited number of shirts are back in the [John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Kim Atle

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/egoless-screenwriting).

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

**Craig Mazin:** [Yawns] My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 125 of Scriptnotes, the Ego episode of a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

On today’s episode we’re going to talk about Beyoncé’s surprise album and what it might portend for filmmakers and the future of home video.

We’re going to talk about a post that Craig found on egoless programming and how that could benefit screenwriters.

Finally, we’re going to talk about a lawsuit filed about The Expendables and what that could mean for the future of WGA credit arbitrations.

But, first and most importantly, Craig, how was Austria?

**Craig:** It was great. I had a great time. It’s why I’m a little sleepy because I’m still jetlagged. Jetlag is one of those things that everybody just goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, jetlag. It’s annoying like airplane food is annoying. And security is annoying.” But it’s so much worse than that. [laughs] Nobody really wants to admit that it’s actually a traumatic illness that your body goes through, not once, but twice.

**John:** See, I think it affects different people different ways. I actually really enjoy the coming-back-from-Europe jetlag because it just means I go to bed really early and it’s really nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s true. And that has been the case. But I can still tell that my body is a bit screwed up and I tend to wake up at 3am for 45 minutes and then I go back to bed. It’s just not — I’m not quite there yet. But no question, much easier that way than actually showing up. You’re so messed up when you get there.

But Austria was wonderful. I had a great time. Vienna is a remarkable city. It’s a beautiful city. I learned a lot.

**John:** Good.

**Craig:** You know, it’s nice going to a place where you leave knowing more than you — I mean, this is how ignorant I was. Did you know that Marie Antoinette was Austrian? She was Viennese.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You did?

**John:** Because I saw the Sophia Coppola movie.

**Craig:** Oh, there you go. That’s how you knew.

**John:** Yeah. So, I saw it in the tent where they stripped her down and then she put on her new clothes to leave Austria behind.

**Craig:** Exactly. And then I was reading more about Marie Antoinette. She got a really raw deal. But, regardless, I learned a lot and I saw a ton of stuff. And I had a wonderful lunch with some of our podcast listeners and it was great.

**John:** So we have Austrian podcast listeners?

**Craig:** We do. Yeah. We have, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six, I believe six.

**John:** Wow. That’s kind of great.

**Craig:** Well, six that agreed to show up at lunch. But we had a great time. And it’s a beautiful city. My kids had a great time. My wife had a great time. We all — it was a lovely vacation. I plan on not leaving — even the Pasadena area at this point seems like too far to travel for me, so I’m not going anywhere for awhile.

**John:** Very good. Well, it’s good to have you back. And actually a lot happened while we were gone, or at least while we were not recording our shows, because our last two episodes have been the live shows. We did our live show and then we did the questions from our live show, so it’s been awhile since we’ve done this thing where just you and I are talking about the issues of the day.

**Craig:** It’s nice, isn’t it?

**John:** It’s kind of nice. It’s nice, and relaxing, and quiet. We’ve got the lawn mowers dealt with before this, so I think we’re good.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** So, one of the things that happened was right before the holidays, actually December 12, so right before we going to go record, Beyoncé released this album. And we’re not a show that talks about music very much, but in general anything that happens in the music industry is something that’s going to happen in the film and television industry just a couple of years ahead of time.

**Craig:** Mm.

**John:** That’s what we’ve largely learned is that all the changes that sort of shook through the music industry with piracy and artists and all that stuff eventually happened in film and television land. So, I watched the Beyoncé surprise album and wondered what could that mean for us.

And two things I want to talk about. First off, Beyoncé was able to surprise the world with this album because she sort of made it in secret and she shot these videos in secret and she could just, surprise, here’s this album. It came out on like a midnight.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I want to ask whether you think a filmmaker, certain kinds of filmmakers could do that, where they would just surprise the world with a movie that they don’t even pre-announce. There’s no advanced publicity for it. And what that could look like.

**Craig:** It’s possible. It would have to be a very small movie.

**John:** Maybe. Maybe. Or it would be have to be a very reclusive filmmaker.

**Craig:** Look, let’s say you’re making a normal size movie. You have to pull permits just to shoot outside. You know what I mean? I mean, there’s a specific kind of movie I think you might be able to get away with, but it would be very hard to show up somewhere with famous people and start shooting if it were a normal movie.

**John:** Yeah. Although I genuinely think there are ways to do that. You look at J.J. Abrams with Cloverfield. Everyone thought they were making a different movie than they were actually making. And so they called — they had some sort of code name for the movie. It was like Cheese Party or something.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And everyone thought they were making some goofy little comedy for Paramount and it turned out they were making Cloverfield. So, I wonder if there is, I’m not even going to wonder. I’m wondering when the first filmmaker will just suddenly drop a movie on iTunes with no advanced notice. Or just literally drop it in theaters, basically taking the slot of another movie that was supposed to be there and suddenly this movie exists out there in the world.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think this is going to happen.

**John:** No one thought that Beyoncé could suddenly release an album.

**Craig:** No, you know what? That to me is — the only impediment to doing what Beyoncé did, or I suppose the only two impediments are, one, a level of fame that is so extraordinary that anything you do is news.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And, two, balls.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Just absolute balls. And she has both, obviously the second one figuratively. But you can sit in a… — And I think also the music industry has been plagued by pre-release leaks and pre-release piracy that is connected to the promotion and hype surrounding an upcoming album. So, it was smart that she was able to do it this way.

The videos are things that you can shoot inside soundstages. And the music obviously can be done inside of a small studio. It doesn’t require large movements. And most importantly the publicity campaign for an album is designed to get people on the day the album is released to press a button and get the album.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You can’t press a button and get a theatrical movie experience.

**John:** Well you can if you’re willing to give up theatrical. If you’re willing to give up theatrical, or if you’re able to slot yourself into someone else’s place. That’s sort of hard to believe that someone is going to actually like be able to take 2,000 screens and then give them up for you so you can —

**Craig:** You can’t. You can’t because the theaters are different. They’re owned by different companies. It’s so complicated. And I’m not even sure what the upside is, frankly, because the upside of what Beyoncé did was to say, “Surprise everybody. Here’s an album. And on any day of any week if I put an album out you’re going to want it. Isn’t this cool that I just did this without even telling you I was going to do it?”

And that’s great, but that’s not the case for any movie. I mean, the only movie that I think you could get away with something like this would be if suddenly J.J. went, “Surprise, Star Wars is in theaters today!” But why? [laughs] What’s the point?

**John:** Well, let’s talk about the J.J.s or the David Finchers or somebody, because if you don’t need to have a big screen theatrical experience, if you’re willing to say, like, well this movie is now suddenly on iTunes and you didn’t know it existed and right now you can download it and watch it right now, there are certain filmmakers for which that would be an incredibly compelling way to do it if they could charge $15 for the download of that. There is good money to be made there.

So, if David Fincher — Or really you can think about it with television at this point, too. If David Fincher came out with a four-hour series on something that was kind of great and he just made it and released it out there, that’s possible.

Or, your concern seems to be about that you need to be outdoors and people are going to notice that you’re doing this thing. Well, yeah, but people are outdoors filming a lot. Or sometimes they don’t even make movies outdoors. Gravity is shot entirely inside.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure.

**John:** So, it’s possible.

**Craig:** Yeah, that is possible. I’m just not sure why you’d want to do it that way. I mean, to say, “Surprise! I made a movie,” is great but I can’t think — the only movies I can think of that would be so immediately compelling as to get people to want them right on that surprise day would be movies that don’t need this trick.

**John:** Well, a surprise prequel. A surprise sequel by a filmmaker who is really interesting. So, essentially the David Bowie of filmmaking who doesn’t make things very often would be interesting. And I think the advantage, you said what is the advantage. The advantage is that promotion is incredibly expensive. As we’ve talked about on the show, you can spend $25 million, $40 million promoting an upcoming release. If you don’t have to spend any of that money and just the surprise of it all takes care of a lot of that, that’s pretty compelling.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, but you know that’s —

**John:** It’s a gamble.

**Craig:** It’s a gamble. The only time you’re not gambling is when say you’re releasing an album that didn’t cost $50 million to make but cost maybe, I don’t know, $5 million to make. And the album is from the biggest pop star in the world.

**John:** Yeah. So, I’m not going to convince you that someone is going to do that, but I think some filmmaker will do it and it will be really interesting. It will be sort of the bigger version of Shane Carruth what he did with Upstream Color which was basically, “Surprise, I finally made a movie,” and released it sort of almost day and date with the theatrical debut at Sundance.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But here’s I think the more interesting thing about Beyoncé and the thing that we should think about in terms of the industry is what happens when you release this thing through iTunes and then suddenly your physical retailers, your Targets and your Amazons, say, “Well screw you. We don’t want to ship your CD anymore.” And that’s going to be a really interesting case with movies.

If we are debuting more of our features on iTunes, at a certain point these retailers are going to say, “Well, no, we’re not going to sell your movie in our store.” And that’s going to be an interesting development. I think it’s going to happen.

**Craig:** Well, for theatrical movies I believe that the moviegoing experience, the theater-going experience is going to continue.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** And so I don’t think that that’s relevant in any significant way for feature films. For television shows —

**John:** Well, Craig, let’s talk about it. There’s always been this sense that theatrical movies are releases in the theaters and then they’re released on home video.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that home video has traditionally been the same time that the physical DVD comes out there is a download through iTunes. And every time we try to change that day and date people get really, really angry.

**Craig:** Well the theaters get angry.

**John:** No, no. Theaters get angry. But I think, let’s take the theaters out of it for a second. Let’s say you have The Avengers and it goes spectacularly well in the theaters and everyone is delighted. So, let’s say that Marvel decides, you know what, we are going to put it on iTunes a week before we ship the physical disc.

**Craig:** Well, look, the physical discs are going to die. That’s inevitable. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows. That’s going to happen. So, you mean, right now the studios are still making money off of the plastic. They will continue to protect the people who push the plastic for as long as they can. But they realize they’re groping along a curve and they’re not quite sure where they are in the curve. But they are as convinced as anybody that the plastic is going to go away inevitably.

**John:** So, my question though is does the plastic go away partially because some studio says, “Okay, we’re going to do the digital version first,” and the retailers say, “Well screw you. If you do that we won’t carry your physical disc at all,” which is exactly what they did with Beyoncé.

**Craig:** I think that when that day comes it will not be what causes the death of plastic. It will be the death rattle of plastic. In other words the studios aren’t going to — they’re not going to do anything to hurt their revenue base until they are quite sure that there is more money to be made doing it the other way.

So, that will be — that’s like one of those jungle fights that happened in a South Pacific island in 1946 because soldiers there didn’t realize the war had ended.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** How’s that for an analogy?

**John:** That’s a good analogy. We should get Aline Brosh McKenna here. She would mix some squirrels in with it, but I think she would appreciate that analogy.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So, to summarize your positions, you believe that we will not see a filmmaker surprise us with a feature film on iTunes with no publicity within the next year.

**Craig:** Not a major one, no. I mean, I think that, look, there are movies that are small that frankly anyone could say, “Surprise!” because they don’t really have much of a budget to promote it anyway. And I don’t think there’s any need for Shane Carruth to promote his movies. He has a very small avid fan base. His own website, I think, would suffice. However, if you have a company that is investing tens of millions of dollars into a feature film, no, I don’t think — no one is going to be going, “Surprise.”

**John:** I predict that there will be one. And it will be — if it’s not J.J. Abrams it will be someone like J.J. Abrams. And I also strongly suspect that within the week after Beyoncé did her album there was a conversation happening at Bad Robot about how do we do something like this.

**Craig:** Why? I don’t know. Why do you think that J.J. is so obsessed with this?

**John:** Because J.J. and I think a lot of other filmmakers are obsessed with secrecy, obsessed with surprise, obsessed with the ability to go directly to their fans and not have to do all of the in between steps. I think it’s possible and compelling.

I also think George Lucas could easily, you know, before they sort of shipped off the Star Wars empire, George Lucas could have easily done this, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Just like a surprise prequel thing.

**Craig:** That I agree with. In other words that’s such a compelling movie for so many people all over the world that the publicity that surrounds a new Star Trek movie is pointless, really. Everyone is going to see the next Star Wars movie. So, I agree with you on that point, but while I understand the love that filmmakers — all filmmakers I think have a love of surprise. And all filmmakers hate the exchange that occurs in marketing the movie where you need to show what you need to show to get them to show up, but you don’t want to show them things you don’t want them to see because you want them to enjoy the movie.

That tension is there for everybody, but the difficulty, I mean, look, the day that J.J. I think can do this is the day that he’s financing his own film. I guess that’s how I would put it. That would be a prerequisite for this, I think.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s why the Lucas model of it all makes sense. And so if it’s not him, then he has to have access to such a huge quantity of money, a Megan Ellison or somebody who can just do that to make that possible.

**Craig:** Well, somebody who could do that and then also not really care — have no problem just throwing —

**John:** Rolling the dice.

**Craig:** Crazy roll of the dice. Because the truth is it’s not like, look, what Beyoncé did in no small part was just for funsies because promotion wouldn’t have hurt the sales of her albums, the album, one little bit. It was just more like — it was swagger. It was great swagger.

**John:** It was swagger.

**Craig:** But it wasn’t businesswise I don’t think she made more money. I mean, you could argue that people tweeting each other “Oh my god, did you see what Beyoncé did?” created a huge amount of expectation for free and that’s true. And it was a roll of the dice. But in the end I can’t — I mean, look, the album is doing really well. Her last album did really, really well. The next one will do really, really well. So, from a business point of view I’m not sure that there’s a huge upside.

**John:** All right So, segueing from that topic of ego and swagger, let’s go to this article that you tweeted or emailed to me this week which I thought was really good. So, it’s this article from 2006 that you found.

**Craig:** Yeah. Actually I didn’t find it. Kevin Bisch, screenwriter Kevin Bisch sent it to me. And it is, yeah, it’s officially old. It’s now seven plus years old, I guess, or seven-ish years old. And it’s not about screenwriting at all. It’s about coding. It’s from a blog called codinghorror.com. And this piece was written by a guy named Jeff Atwood. And what he’s citing is actually the Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming as originally established in Jerry Weinberg’s book The Psychology of Computer Programming.

So, why are we talking about this on our screenwriting podcast? Well, Kevin when he sent it to me he said replace coding with screenwriting and all this stuff applies to us. So, I’m going to quickly read through these and stop me if you have comments.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Number one, understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production.

**John:** I would agree with that. I think you have to agree with that. And I think any kind of writing which you’re going into not anticipating it being perfect from the start you will never finish it. You will never actually begin.

**Craig:** That’s right. And in the context of egolessness, the idea being you’re not perfect so you need to sort of negotiate between your pride and your belief in what you’ve done with your sense of humility and your understanding of your own imperfection.

**John:** Yeah. A second corollary thing that goes into this idea is to fail fast, fail often. Is that sense of like to go, write at to it and so you can actually — to get to a far enough place that you can actually see what the mistakes are and sort of not go so slowly that those mistakes are extra costly because of all the time you have put into it.

**Craig:** Do you do this thing, I do this thing where after a movie is done I look back to the first draft and I try and see if any line of dialogue survived intact. [laughs] You know, not changed in any way.

**John:** I haven’t done that. That would be fascinating to do.

**Craig:** There’s not many. There’s not many. It’s wild. The process is thorough.

Okay, number two, you are not your code, or in our case you are not your screenplay. Remember that the entire point of a review is to find problems, and problems will be found. Don’t take it personally when one is uncovered.

**John:** We’ve talked about this before on our “how to take notes” episode which is to listen and hear what they’re saying about the script and to not take it personally that you are a terrible writer for this perceived problem in a story, but to listen — to be the person who is there to help make this script better, not the person whose entire self-esteem is wrapped up into this one bit of writing.

**Craig:** And it’s hard for us, I think perhaps harder for us than it is for coders because it is us. I mean, the truth is we’re being artists here. And we’re pouring ourselves into something. No matter what genre it is, we’re pouring ourselves and it is an expression of many voices inside of us. So, it is us. When we’re writing we have to essentially say we are our script.

And then when we email it off we have to shut that off and say, “No, now we’re not our script.” And then we’ll come back to it and we’ll be it again and we’ll have to keep going back and forth in a strange way.

**John:** What is actually harder I think about our job than a coder’s job is that a coder to some degree can say that problem is solved. Clearly like it does what it needs to do and it does it in a way that lets the entire program run.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** When we solve a problem in a script, yes, it might get us past a little thing but it may not serve the greater purpose the way it needs to serve. Because there’s no one scene you can write and you can say is the perfect scene. Whereas programs, or at least the sub routines in programs, can be optimized to a degree where you can say like there’s nothing more to do there.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. There’s an objective success there and it’s much harder for us to find that.

You know, I’m looking at reviews for some of the movies I’ve seen recently that I loved and naturally there are — some nut hates it, you know. There’s no objective victory available.

Okay, number three, no matter how much “karate” you know, someone else will always know more. Such an individual can teach you some new moves if you ask. Seek and accept input from others, especially when you think it’s not needed.

I like that last part in particular.

**John:** Yeah. That last bit of advice is very hard for me to take because I tend to not seek other people’s input and opinion unless I really feel stuck.

**Craig:** I’m with you. I think we’re all with you. That is completely natural. I’m trying lately, sort of independent of this, I’m trying now to be a little, I could say brave, or I could say masochistic, [laughs], I’m not sure which one. I’m trying to be a little bit more of one of those. And handing over work that I am actually very happy about, because I feel that my emotional opinion isn’t necessarily related to the reality of whether or not it could be better.

And what if I hand something over that I just think is gorgeous and wonderful and someone says it is gorgeous and wonderful, but what about this or this? And you think, oh, that would make it gorgeouser and wonderfuler. So, I’m trying to… — But, obviously, when you’re not feeling good about it, which is a lot of the time, seeking out the wisdom of people with better karate is a positive thing.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Okay, next, don’t — this is an interesting one and it will feed into our Millennium discussion — don’t rewrite code without consultation. There’s a fine line between “fixing code” and “rewriting code.” Know the difference, and pursue stylistic changes within the framework of a code review, not as a lone enforcer.

This is a bit messier for us, isn’t it?

**John:** It is. Because obviously as the writer of a film, the writer of a screenplay, you are ultimately responsible for everything that’s there. And what Jeff Atwood is talking about here is that your writing of code has to fit into the broader framework of the whole thing that’s trying to be done. And so basically saying like don’t fiddle with this little work because it could potentially break everything else.

And usually, as a feature screenwriter at least, we are dealing with the script either entirely by ourselves or it’s so clear that we’re working on this bit while this thing is being filmed. So, it’s tougher. And consultation with whom? Ultimately there won’t be other writers on a film, usually.

**Craig:** That’s right. The one thing that you and I both do is we give a call to, if we’re being brought on we call the prior writer or I guess the most significant prior writer. I think the translation for this for what we do is know what you’re being asked to do. And don’t cross the line unnecessarily.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** There was a movie I worked on this year that I did some work on, uncredited work on, and there is a movie that will be coming out this year that I also did some uncredited work on. And I know the people who had written the movie and I knew that they were — it was their movie. I didn’t ask for credit or anything like that, and I also understood the parameters of my job which was not to rewrite but was to fix a few things here and there as best I could.

And I didn’t let that fixing spill over into other stuff. Believe me, if somebody had said, I think any screenwriter, if any screenwriter was asked, well, given free rein and your fee what would you do here, almost every screenwriter would change gobs and gobs of stuff, because it’s their individual expression. But knowing how to work within the lines of somebody else’s work respectfully when that’s the job, I think it’s a great thing to keep in mind.

**John:** You’re describing basically recognizing the scope of your involvement in the project. And there have been things where I’ve been brought in to do a very specific little thing and because I know that my natural voice wouldn’t fit this script I will deliberately write in the voice, or at least the style of the existing script, the previous writer.

And so there will be cases where I will do slug lines the way they do slug lines, or basically do action the way they would do action just so it will read consistently, so it won’t feel like the gears are not kind of clicking together.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** But there are other cases where I really am being brought in on a page one and then I really will sort of go through the whole script and make it all feel like my voice because its ultimately going to be my version of the script.

**Craig:** No question. When you’re asked to come in and do a page one, or if sometimes I’m asked to come in, sometimes they will think that what’s required is a fix. And all you have to offer is to start over again. And I’m not demanding about it. I just say if what you want is to fix this within this I’m not the guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would, however, this is a separate coherent story I think I could do from scratch if you’re interested. And sometimes they are. And when that happens then I just start from scratch. But I’m with you. If I’m working within the framework of somebody else’s screenplay, I don’t, yeah, I don’t sit and the first thing go, “Okay, I like bolding slug lines, so I’m going to start bolding all these slug lines.” I don’t do that. And don’t change the names. You know.

**John:** All that stuff.

**Craig:** All that stuff.

**John:** There’s a project that both the Wibberleys and I worked on that neither of us were the original writers. But they were the writers who came right before me. And so I looked at sort of how they did these sequences and there was stuff that I thought I could do better. I thought I could do better for what this movie wanted to be in its current incarnation. And so as I went through them I was — I used their style. And sometimes it’s as small as like do you end a hanging line on a dot-dot-dot, or a dash-dash?

And if I recall correctly they’re dash-dash people. And so I was like, you know what, I will dash-dash it. And it felt right for this one project.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. There’s never really a debate on set between the director and the cast about, you know —

**John:** “But it says dash-dash.”

**Craig:** I mean, for me dash-dash is an abrupt thing and dot-dot-dot is a trailing. But, okay, next one.

Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. Nontechnical people who deal with developers/screenwriters on a regular basis almost universally hold the opinion that we are prima donnas at best and crybabies at worst. Don’t reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.

**John:** Again, this is something that we talked about on previous shows, just expressed a little bit differently, which is how do you take a note and very gracefully understand it and reply to it in a way that is respectful, that makes sure the person is being heard and also can continue the conversation and doesn’t sort of abruptly say, “No, that’s a stupid idea. That won’t work.”

**Craig:** Yeah. One thing that I sometimes think about is that I am in the meeting for myself and the screenplay. I’m also in the meeting for the next screenwriter that walks in and the next one. And every screenwriter this person hires or talks to. That there is a way to get what you want, defend your work, fight for what’s right, and not be an ass.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And I like this, the “don’t reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.” I think that’s great advice for us a collective.

Next, the only constant in the world is change. Be open to it and accept it with a smile. Look at each change to your requirements, platform, or tool as a new challenge, not as some serious inconvenience to be fought.

And we are dealing with change in our business all the time, it seems.

**John:** And I think change on a given project will happen a lot. You’ll have suddenly an actor will be replaced. And that role which was a female role is now a male role. Or we were supposed to be shooting this in Topeka, but now we’re in Atlanta. That happens all the time to real movies that are really going to happen. And you have to accept that and sort of roll with it. Because if you try to fight it and say like, no, that’s impossible, well you’re not going to actually be able to proceed with the project.

**Craig:** Correct. They will find another writer who will be correct in saying, no, that’s very possible. The other thing that we deal with is change on a macro level across genres. Genres change. The kinds of movies that we write change. Trends change. And people’s taste change. And you have to be aware of it. You have to see it and keep your eyes open. I know writers who wrote a kind of movie that was in style and they’re still writing that kind of movie and that’s not the style anymore.

**John:** It’s true.

**Craig:** And it’s not about chasing things as much as just keeping up with the times. I mean, nobody walks around saying “radical,” [laughs], you know, so why should we write as if it were 1992?

Next, the only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position. Knowledge engenders authority, and authority engenders respect — so if you want respect in an egoless environment, cultivate knowledge.

And this for me is really one for our employers and maybe less for us.

**John:** I would agree. This is the one I had the hardest time applying to screenwriting. You can say, in a general sense you can say a good idea is a good idea no matter where it comes from. That partly that idea. But really that’s not knowledge, though. That’s just an idea. So, I guess I would say that you could take this to mean recognize that — oh god, I can’t even phrase this better.

I’m stumped on this one.

**Craig:** Yeah, to me it doesn’t really apply to us because the truth is if we write a screenplay that is the expression of the knowledge available. And I do believe most of the time that the screenwriter is the person in the room with the best understanding of the story. And that should impart authority. It often doesn’t. And there are times when we are talking to people who by position but not knowledge have a very arrogant way of essentially saying, no, no, I’m thinking of one person in particular that I’ve done some things with the best, who has a brother. And, you know, he would say things like, “No, that’s not funny.”

Well, but you’re not funny. You just own a company. That doesn’t make you funny. It just makes you a guy that is in charge. Being in charge doesn’t mean that you know what you’re talking about.

**John:** Agreed. And I think that you’ve hit on what you can actually take from this lesson is that just because that person has the power or is the person who has the authority to sort of make decisions doesn’t mean they actually are correct.

The egoless aspect of this though is to understand that that person is not necessarily correct and yet at the same time always be thinking of how do you move forward and to make this project the best it can possibly be given that this person with authority is making incorrect decisions.

**Craig:** That’s right. Essentially once you become aware that somebody saying confidently and with corporate given authority promotes an opinion, once you’re aware that that doesn’t necessarily connect to it being correct, now it’s about conniving to get what you want.

**John:** Well, conniving and also conspiring in general. Usually the only way you’re going to be able to get past an impossible gatekeeper is to rally enough support from other folks who actually need to help make the project.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so if you have an impossible studio head then you need to enlist the reasonable studio head, or the producer, or director, or as many people as you can to get this thing to happen or find another way to make it happen, make them not realize that it happened.

**Craig:** Yeah. One thing that has occurred to me many times in my career is that if somebody is being a palpable jerk in a room, you’re not the only person who notices, nor are you the only person who is suffering. So, you have allies that are being created simply by the fact that this guy is a jerk. It may be your turn in the barrel, but jerks are jerks.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, everybody else has gotten it at some point or another and perhaps you could make a friend.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** All right, let’s see, we’ve got three more.

Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat. Understand that sometimes your ideas will be overruled. Even if you do turn out to be right, don’t take revenge or say, “I told you so” — told ya — more than a few times at most, and don’t make your dearly departed idea a martyr or rallying cry.

What do you think about that?

**John:** Absolutely true. And so often, yes, I think it’s a screenwriter’s job to stick up for what he or she believes is the best possible solution, but you also have to recognize that there may be a range of solutions that are all quite good and that you will not always win on those. And so if the solution that is picked is not your preferred solution, if you can live with the other solution write the best version of that you can and don’t try to, you know, don’t try to tank it so that you can sort of say, look, I told you it wouldn’t work.

No, you need to make that work. You need to make that work and make it work really well. That is your responsibility. That is what you’re brought in to do is to write really good words.

**Craig:** You know, there are times when we know we’re right. And it is beyond frustrating. It is sickening to be in a situation where everyone is talking about how to build a building and you’re saying that there needs to be a poured concrete foundation with reinforced steel in it and everybody else is saying, “No, no, no, I think just…”

**John:** Some bricks.

**Craig:** “Just some bricks. Some bricks that are loosely mortared.” And you can feel your body starting to tense. And the frustration of people around you denying what is patently, obviously correct can make you insane.

The one thing that you can’t do in a sense is just put the bricks, and the mortar, and the foundation. You have to find a way by hook or by crook to make the foundation right or go. But what you can’t do is you can’t throw yourself into doing something — there’s no way to write something that you know is absolutely totally wrong.

I will say that there is — people will eventually, I think, they eventually come and they see when it’s that obvious. Other people will start saying it. And eventually you’ll get your proper foundation. The advice here that I love is to not take revenge or say, “I told you so,” and don’t make your dearly departed idea a martyr or rallying cry, because what is more satisfying, to throw a tantrum and then get your way, or to get your way without throwing a tantrum and then have the people that were the problem come to you quietly later and say you were right?

**John:** They will never come to you and say you were right. I’ve never in my life had somebody come back to me and say like, “Oh, you know what? You were totally right.”

**Craig:** I’ve had it.

**John:** You’ve had it?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s never like — they’re not crying about it or anything. I mean, look, we’ve all been there. Haven’t you ever gone to somebody and said, “You know what? You were right.”

**John:** Oh, I totally have. In terms of my screenwriting life and where things would go to the rail, rarely has that happened. To some degree on the second Charlie’s Angels. I think I’ve talk about this on the podcast before is at the very start of the process for making the second Charlie’s Angels I made a list of like, “Hey, let’s not do these things list,” which is basically like all the stupid things sequels do. And so it was like a 20 point list of like let’s not do these things. Let’s not have Cameron dancing in every scene. Let’s not sort of overdo stuff.

And it was a detailed list. I made everyone on the project sign it. [laughs] And it became the checklist of all the things we did.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And the movie suffered for doing all those things. It was trying to deny fate. But I want to step back for a second because you started talking about like bricks and foundations and things and I wanted to differentiate between those fundamentally bad choices which you described as sort of this feeling in your gut like, oh, this is going to end poorly.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there are much smaller things which happen all the time which is I think these things should be in this order rather than that order. And sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re wrong, but I guess the question is sometimes you’re wrong and it doesn’t really matter that much. And so when it doesn’t matter that much you have to let it go.

**Craig:** Yes. I agree with you there. Some hills not worth dying on. No question. The one hill that is always worth dying on is the beating heart of what matters to you in the movie. Defending at its core what the movie is, what you want it to be, and defending what makes you passionate about writing the material. No question.

Look, the silliest thing a screenwriter can do, I think, is get into a fight before or during production over scene ordering, because once you get into the editing room there is no scene ordering anymore.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, there are things that you just don’t argue about. Certainly locations and things like that, if the director is absolutely in love with the location make it work. Make it work. Because that’s going to be the location. That’s reality now. You know?

**John:** And when you’re in post you will actually be able to see the scenes two different ways to two orders of things and see what makes more sense. You may still be overruled, but hopefully it won’t matter that much.

**Craig:** Right. And, frankly, the directors I’ve worked with, and maybe I’m just lucky in this regard, have always been — they’ve always been reasonable. I mean, they’ve made enough movies to know that they’re not always right, so they’ll say, “Look, this is my feeling. I believe in this way. I get that you think it’s that way. Let’s try this one for the first test screening. We’re going to have another test screening. We’ll try it your way.”

Well, everything will get its shot, so everybody relax. That’s like a good example of why fight. No need to fight. Let’s just see it play.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Next, don’t be “the guy in the room.” Don’t be the guy coding in the dark office emerging only to buy cola. The guy in the room is out of touch, out of sight, and out of control and has no place in an open, collaborative environment.

Well, I don’t know, there are some wonderful guys in the room in our business, aren’t there?

**John:** There really are. I think what’s useful for screenwriters, and we’ve talked about this before, is that so much of a screenwriter’s job is solitary and it is literally being like that one guy sitting at the desk, one woman sitting at a desk, writing a script and pouring everything you have into this one imaginary world that you’ve created on the page.

The challenge is you also have to be the person who can talk to other people and interact with them so that this thing you’ve created on paper can be an actual movie that is shot. And that’s a tough thing to learn is that balance between being sociable and being public and being agreeable and friends of folks, and being that recluse who is really good at getting things written.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that there are writers who can very successfully be the guys in the room, or the women in the room who never emerge. They are very solitary. They are not particularly social. They’re not really fit for, I don’t know, being on set and dealing with the hundreds of people moving in and out.

Those writers can write beautiful scripts and they may very well write beautiful movies. Their work will always be in danger because they aren’t equipped to care-take it through a very social process.

**John:** Agreed. Ultimately an incredibly collaborative process.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, it’s a challenge.

**Craig:** Finally, critique code instead of people — be kind to the coder, not to the code. As much as possible, make all of your comments positive and oriented to improving the code. Relate comments to local standards, program specs, I don’t know what that means. But the point here is, and we see this all the time in the wasteland of internet “film criticism” that things get personal instead of about the subject matter itself.

And I’ve seen it happen many, many times in meetings. I never do it, but I’ve watched producers and studio executives suddenly get very personal with each other when it has nothing to do with the work.

**John:** I agree. General advice, never slam the writer. If you’re reading someone else’s screenplay, whether that person is in front of you or a thousand miles away, don’t slam the writer. If there is something that’s not working in the script, talk about what’s not working in the script. But don’t throw it all at the writer’s feet there.

**Craig:** I agree. And you hear it sometimes from people. They’ll say things like, “Well, I just think that this person stinks.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, somebody may stink until they write something great. There are people, I mean, Charlie Kaufman used to write episodes of Alf, I think. And, you know, I thought Alf stank. A lot of people liked Alf. I thought it stank. Charlie Kaufman was writing Alf.

Did Charlie Kaufman stink? No. No he didn’t. There are lots of examples of this. And every good screenwriter has written something that somebody thinks stinks. I can’t think of a writer that has written nothing that I think stinks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know? I mean, at some point, because it’s me — you can’t make me happy all the time.

**John:** We’ve learn that through 125 episodes of the show.

**Craig:** [laughs] But you can make me happy a lot of the time.

**John:** Ooh, I try.

**Craig:** Yeah. And so anyway those were — I just thought it was fascinating how a completely different business shared so many of the same interesting problems that we have and some good tips here from Jerry Weinberg via Jeff Atwood via Kevin Bisch via us. Hat tip all of us.

**John:** Absolutely. Good advice is good advice.

And I think we’ll also have some good advice for the people involved in the lawsuit about The Expendables, which is our next topic.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this happened just before Christmas. It was December 24 is when the story came out that Nu Image and Millennium, which I guess are sort of a joint venture, are suing the Writers Guild of America West and screenwriter David Callaham, arguing that the 2009 guild arbitration gave Callaham undeserved credit on The Expendables and its sequels.

And so in the links to the show notes you’ll see there’s the PDF of the lawsuit you can read, there is other supporting material about it. It was really fascinating and I think we should probably before we dig into it too deeply just give us the refresher course on what credit decisions mean so we know what happened back in 2009 and so why this is happening now and sort of what it means now.

**Craig:** Well, the way credits work very fundamentally is that the Writers Guild and the companies have all agreed via our collective bargaining agreement, the writers’ union collective bargaining agreement, that the companies will propose screenplay credit that conforms vaguely to the rules that the guild has put forward. They can’t put forward proposed credits that don’t fit, for instance.

And then if any of the participating writers in the project disagree, or if any of the participating writers had another job like producer or director, then the guild has an arbitration. The guild arbitration is unilateral. By agreement between the company and the union the guild appoints three people. They read the material. They render a decision. That decision is essentially final. The review process is also internal to the guild and typically doesn’t yield any changes.

And those become the final credits, period, the end, that’s it.

**John:** And when we’re talking about the credits on a feature film we are talking about Story by, Screenplay by, and if a writer is credited with both of those things those are often conflated down to Written by.

**Craig:** Right. And there’s also Screen Story by, which is the adaptation version of Story by. And a very, very rarely used credit known as Adaptation by. That is the unicorn of credits. You never see it.

**John:** So, the Writers Guild determines credits for feature films. And pretty much all the feature films you’re going to see in theaters are going to have a Writers Guild credit determination because those were released by the majors, and the majors have all agreed by contract in order to be able to hire Writers Guild writers they have to agree to Writers Guild credit determinations.

**Craig:** That is correct.

**John:** All Writers Guild members have agreed that this is how credits will be determined. We’ve talked about on the show before it’s not a perfect system by far. You’ve been involved personally, Craig, on talks of reforms or changes to it and maybe some of those will happen. But what’s so fascinating about this lawsuit is when you hear people with problems about their credits its usually the credit writer or the person who believes they deserve credit and didn’t get credit. They’re the ones who kicking up a lot of dirt and dust about the credit process. This is interesting because it’s a company doing it which was the first I remember this having happened.

**Craig:** I’d never heard of such a thing. And I have bad news for Millennium, [laughs], there have been a number of court cases where Writers Guild members or former Writers Guild members have sued the union because they felt that they were unfairly deprived of credit. And no one has ever one. No one has ever beaten city hall on this one because the rules are pretty clear.

And the rules are not that you get credit that you can agree with. The rules are this is the credit. And as long as we follow the rules that’s that and you are powerless to change it. And it can be extraordinarily frustrating and traumatic and emotionally distressing for writers and there have been really bad decisions. And you can imagine how that feels to be disappeared off of a movie that you’ve written half of. And it’s happened. Or more than half of.

And still no victories.

**John:** Still no victories.

So, let’s talk about this case at least as well as we understand it. So, this all stems from Stallone is trying to write this movie called The Expendables. He reads a script that Callaham has written called The Barrows or something and if I get any of this stuff wrong read the real court case, because I could be misrepresenting some of these details. Callaham has written this script called The Barrows. Stallone reads it. Ultimately Stallone decides that he’s going to be basing some of it on the script The Barrows. The script is purchased and at a certain time as it goes in for credit arbitrations, because Stallone is that production executive of features, he’s a director or producer on the project, it has to go to WG arbitration.

In that WG arbitration Callaham is rewarded sole story credit and shared screenplay credit.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** That should basically be it. That’s usually the last you ever hear about this, except there have been two sequels to that movie. And it’s because of those two sequels that this is continuing to come up. And because of some emails that surfaced from Callaham to it’s not clear whom in which Callaham basically says this movie is terrible and he’ll be surprised if he gets certain kinds of credit.

**Craig:** Screenplay credit. Yeah, so look, here’s what this is really about. We’ve talked about separated rights before and there are certain rights that go along with getting story credit. Screenplay credit gets you a bigger share of the portion of residuals, but story credit is what confers separating rights. And that includes certain things that go along with sequels to original screenplays.

For example, the contractual credit Based on characters created by. So, for instance, in The Hangover Part II and III in the credits it says Based on characters created by Lucas and Moore because they had sole story credit, importantly, on the first Hangover.

And there are also payments that go along with this sort of thing. And that’s, I think, there may be some payments per his contract if he gets story credit. I think that’s what they’re annoyed about. They may just be doing this because they’re frustrated with this guy and they hate having to put his name on there and Stallone wants sole credit on this and he can’t believe that he’s still putting the name of a guy on who didn’t even like the movie and had nothing to really do with it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But what’s interesting is that they’re suing over the screenplay, that’s what they’re complaining about, the screenplay credit.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And all this stuff is attached to story credit anyway, which I think would be contractually required for him because it’s an original screenplay and he was writer A essentially.

Look, this lawsuit is never going to work.

**John:** No, this lawsuit is declared nuts in a lot of different ways.

**Craig:** It’s nuts in a lot of ways.

**John:** Let’s talk about the decision process here because I think I question some of the decisions behind this lawsuit existing. First off, it’s one thing to sue a screenwriter because that screenwriter, he is not going to have your legal resources. At a certain point he’s going to say, “Whatever. I’ll do whatever. We’ll settle it. Fine. It’s gone.” An individual screenwriter is not going to have the legal fire power that Nu Image and Millennium will.

If you’re going to sue the Writers Guild of America, they’re going to fight back. It’s completely within their interest to defend their credit process. They will defend it to the death. So, now you’ve angered the Writers Guild. That’s not a good choice.

**Craig:** Well, you’re going to lose. You’re not just going to lose. You’re going to lose early. And that’s why when I looked at the details here all I could think was that this is a stunt, not a publicity stunt, but a stunt to make someone happy. I mean, someone is — and maybe it’s Stallone, I don’t know — is so infuriated by this credit that they think is unfair that they are being placated by a corporation. [laughs] They’re basically saying you sue these people or I’m not going to work on this movie or I’m not going to deal with it. Somehow someone has thrown a huge tantrum because I think any self-respecting corporate attorney has to be holding his nose while he’s filing this lawsuit. He knows this thing is a loser. I mean, never going to work. Never going to work.

**John:** So, it seems like they want to get Callaham’s name off of the sequels, for example, but as we discussed because it’s story credit and they’re not even arguing that Callaham shouldn’t have had story credit on the first movie, his name is going to part of those sequels regardless.

**Craig:** Seems to me that’s the way it is.

**John:** That feels like separated rights to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. Based on —

**John:** Based on characters created by.

**Craig:** Yeah. And given the details we have, and again, we’re not lawyers and we don’t know all the details, but just going by what we see here that does seem in fact to be the case. And more importantly it is completely relevant what this writer thinks.

I don’t care if this writer puts up posters or does a Shia LaBeouf skywriting exercise to explain to the world that he also thinks he doesn’t deserve that credit. It doesn’t matter. It’s not his credit to give or take away.

**John:** That’s the crucial thing that people are not acknowledging.

**Craig:** They don’t get it. Right. The credit is not something that the writer possesses. The credit is a form of compensation essentially that is proposed by the companies and then finalized by the union. That’s it. It belongs to the union, not to the writer.

**John:** So, in the lawsuit they are accusing Callaham of fraud. And wrongful and fraudulent conduct is actually the quote. And what they’re saying essentially that in his statements arguing for sole credit, or sole screenplay credit, which is what he apparently filed for, but I don’t know that we actually know that publicly.

**Craig:** I don’t know how we could.

**John:** Actually we couldn’t because that’s supposed to be a private matter.

**Craig:** Confidential.

**John:** But they’re saying that because in his statements seeking credit on the movie he believed he got sole screenplay credit and in these emails that have come out which are around the same time he feels like he shouldn’t have credit. And so they’re saying that it’s fraud.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, but I don’t even understand how they could see his statements. I mean, those statements that we write to the arbitration committee are highly protected by the Guild. They are considered confidential documents. Forget the public seeing them, the other writers involved in the arbitration aren’t allowed to see them.

That is an expression entirely between you, the arbiters, and the staff. And it’s also anonymous.

**John:** Yes. And let’s talk about what an arbitration statement actually consists of, because you and I have both written plenty of them and we’ve both read plenty of them as we’ve served as arbiters. And what you’re talking about is really ultimately not about how much — the amount of time you worked on something. You’re not talking about whether you like the project. You’re talking about do you believe that there is enough stuff in this thing that is your work, that shows that the final product reflects your work.

That’s ultimately what it’s about. It’s about the drafts. It’s not about what you think about it or how you feel about it. It’s about is there a percentage basis of what is reflected in the final script that is my work. And that’s ultimately all it is.

So, whether he loves the movie or hates the movie is ultimately irrelevant. And whether he emailed somebody saying that he hated it, partially maybe to protect his own reputation is irrelevant as well.

**Craig:** It’s all irrelevant. Frankly, even if he believed everything that he believed on one day and believed the opposite the next day because he’s schizophrenic or fickle, who knows. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And I’m so puzzled by this. Why would, I mean, this is the easiest thing I suppose for the guild to argue — why is it that they think this writer was lying to the guild? Why don’t they think that maybe he was just lying to them when he sent them an email saying he didn’t think he deserved credit. Who cares what he thought on that day. It doesn’t matter. It’s not his decision to make.

I might as well write a letter to my doctor saying whether or not I feel I deserve to get tonsillitis.

**John:** Yeah. It ultimately does not affect —

**Craig:** It has nothing to do with that. I’m not in charge of that. Yeah.

**John:** [sighs]

**Craig:** Exactly, man!

**John:** Yeah. It’s a big sigh.

**Craig:** This is how I feel all the time. [laughs] You realize that? This is my life.

**John:** So, my frustration with the lawsuit, actually, there are some lessons to learn from this. I guess probably general good legal advice is don’t email people things that could come back to haunt you later on. In general I’m mindful of the things I will write in an email, that should anyone ask for those emails I don’t have to present those emails. I will have phone conversations with people about things rather than emailing people things. I will generally try to say nice things about people.

Those are good advice for any screenwriter in any situation. It might have made this situation a little bit better. But this is mostly on Millennium. I think it’s just a silly lawsuit that has the bad effect of casting doubt on credit and writers and sort of the merits of the system.

**Craig:** Kind of. I mean, it’s Millennium. And, listen, I’m sure there are good people that work over there, but these are the same guys that got in trouble for having an audition where writers had to actually write spec material in order to get employment which is a clear violation of the MBA. It’s not like we’re talking about Warner Bros. turning around and suing the guild over something like this.

You know, the big boys don’t mess around in this stuff. This is bush league. This lawsuit is bush league. I don’t believe it. I don’t even think they believe it.

**John:** Do you think the lawsuit is just going to go away.

**Craig:** I think what will happen is it’ll just get settled out and by settled out means they’ll lose and withdraw it. I just think they’re going to drop it.

**John:** Yeah. I’d be surprised if it goes to trial. They want a trial. They claim to want a trial.

**Craig:** Oh, it’ll never, I mean, I hope it does go to trial.

**John:** Be fascinating.

**Craig:** It would be great. It would be great to watch them get their butts kicked out. I don’t see a world in which —

**John:** It would be fascinating if it went to trial and because of the trial ended up delaying the release of Expendables 3.

**Craig:** Stranger things have happened.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I can’t see a world where they win this. I just don’t know how they do.

**John:** I don’t see how they do it either.

Craig, we have not done One Cool Things for two weeks in a row, so I really hope we can get back into this with a roar.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Let’s roar into it. Who do you want to go first?

**John:** I’ll go first. So, this Christmas Santa brought my daughter the Lego Mindstorms kit —

**Craig:** Ooh, yeah.

**John:** Which is really great. So, it’s a robotics kit that’s based on Lego. Mindstorms is actually pretty expensive and so you have to kind of really commit to like we’re going to build some robots here. But I do really love it, so that’s fantastic and there will be a link for that.

But we also got her this little thing at the school book fair which was called the Crazy Action Contraptions Lego kit, which is a little flip book which comes with just the Legos you need to build the projects in this kit.

And it’s actually terrific. And it’s smaller, and it’s cheaper, and it’s like ten bucks. And it was really impressive in the sense of like one of the projects is this little car that has like a windup rubber band thing. And it actually zooms really quick. And it was an impressive use of like gears. Because it’s so basic elementary gears and physics I think it’s much more exciting for a kid, especially a kid with an eight-year-old attention span.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Something that she can put together in 20 minutes rather than a three-hour project like most of the robots kits.

**Craig:** Man, I wish I were a kid.

**John:** So, two different Lego robots.

**Craig:** You know, I assume you played with Legos like I did when you were a kid?

**John:** Absolutely. But Legos when I — it was just basically you had the 2 by 4 blocks essentially what a Lego was.

**Craig:** You had 2 by 4s, you had 2 by 2s. They were all yellow. [laughs] It’s just the worst. I would make bricks, like larger bricks out of smaller bricks. I mean, I wasn’t particularly graphically inclined.

**John:** The only thing I will say I did learn from those very fundamental bricks was that I would build houses and you recognize you can’t just stack up the 2 by 4s and like make the walls out of that, because those walls will fall in.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You have to actually brook lay the proper way for structural strength. So, I do credit that to Legos.

**Craig:** Yeah. My Lego houses were built with all of the care of, I don’t know, like a Turkish shopping mall. And the slightest tremor and thousands perish. Everything is cooler now. Everything is cooler now and that’s just a fact.

**John:** Yeah. They fundamentally understood something about axles and how — basically once they figured out how to cut holes through Lego pieces so you could put axles through them it changed everything. And that didn’t really exist in the original Lego kits I had.

In order to attach wheels in those original Lego kits there were special bricks that had like little holes where the wheels snapped in, but it wasn’t really effective. You couldn’t build anything special or meaningful out of these. These are incredibly impressive.

**Craig:** Do you know even though I’m not — I’m a dork, but I don’t do a lot of stereotypical dorky things. One dorky thing I do do occasionally is build some enormous Lego thing. And a few years ago I built the big huge Millennium Falcon Lego thing. It’s like 6,000 pieces or something like that.

**John:** Those are great. I’ve seen those.

**Craig:** It took weeks and I’m so proud of it. [laughs] Sometimes I just look at it. Yeah, I built it.

**John:** You built that yourself. Did you glue it together or is it just held together with friction?

**Craig:** No, no, it’s held together with Lego magic. But, I wish that there were something I could spray on it and maybe somebody could point us to something where I could fix it, because I can’t transport it anywhere and it’s actually quite heavy as you might imagine. So, but it would have taken a year to glue everything together. And, of course, sooner or later you’re going to make a mistake.

**John:** Doom.

**Craig:** At least twice I made not just a mistake but a deep mistake and I had to go back and undo a bunch of stuff, you know. Because sometimes it’s like, ooh, that was a black piece, not a dark gray piece. I’m screwed. You know? So there’s that stuff. So, if somebody knows of something you can sort of spray over a Lego project to fix it together, I’d love to hear about it.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like someone should develop some sort of heater thing that like heat it to just enough that the pieces fuse but don’t actually melt the whole thing down.

[sirens blare in background]

Hold for siren.

**Craig:** Why even bother at this point? Let’s just let them go. I miss that. You know, I mean, in Austria it’s just [makes European siren noise]. I wonder why we have [makes USA siren noise]. We have this kind of flowing up and down the scale thing and they have this [makes European siren noise]. What is that? Why?

**John:** I think it’s just a different historical basis.

**Craig:** One must be —

**John:** One could argue that, well, one must be stronger or more powerful for certain cities.

**Craig:** I think one must be more effective for the human attention. I’m kind of curious who’s doing it right.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Well, another thing that somebody can write about.

**John:** Well, in general I would say that perhaps the European siren played here would be especially effective because you would be like, “What is that?”

**Craig:** Yeah. Is it a European having a heart attack?

**John:** It could possibly be. I’ve also noticed, and you may have noticed this in Austria, I definitely notice in Paris whenever I go there is a color of green that exists for emergency vests and emergency vehicles that does not exist in America whatsoever.

**Craig:** I know what you mean.

**John:** And so the people who are sweeping the streets are wearing this sort of, it’s both bright and dark green that you can’t, I don’t know what it is, but it’s fascinating. Every place where we would use orange they use a green. And it’s arguably better. It’s just different and it’s really striking.

**Craig:** It’s Euro. That’s for sure.

**John:** It’s certainly Euro.

**Craig:** It’s very Euro.

My One Cool Thing, this is a first for me, because it seems so easy but it’s important to me, it’s a movie. We have all of our screeners from the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild and the Academy and blah, blah, blah.

**John:** And the Academy.

**Craig:** And so on and so forth. I don’t get those. You get those. I assume that those hand delivered by butlers.

**John:** Oh, no, it’s pigeons now. Specially trained pigeons.

**Craig:** Trained Oscar pigeons.

And so I’m watching these movies and enjoying them. And so far I’ve actually enjoyed, it’s weird, I haven’t seen a movie yet of my screeners that I don’t like.

**John:** Because of positive moviegoing, Craig.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s it. I’m just really trying to be a positive moviegoing guy. But I’ve actually — none of them have lost me. I will say, okay, so Wolf of Wall Street I really liked. American Hustle I really liked. I liked Walter Mitty a lot. I really appreciated Inside Llewyn Davis. I can’t say I love it, because I kind of don’t understand what happened, but I kind of do, but I kind of don’t. And it’s not quite the puzzle box that Barton Fink is for me that I truly love, because Barton Fink is about writing anyway. I don’t know.

Anyway, so I can’t say I didn’t like it, and I was a very positive moviegoer about it. But yesterday I saw, or a couple days ago I saw Her.

**John:** Yeah. I saw it last night.

**Craig:** I think this movie, honestly, aside from being my favorite movie of the year, that doesn’t even matter. Who cares? That’s a calendar demarcation. I think it’s a classic. I think this is an important movie. I think this movie is going to live on and it’s going to be talked about for a long time. I think it’s amazing.

I thought that Spike Jonze and his cast and his crew did a profoundly brilliant job with this movie. I loved it. And I want everyone to see it.

**John:** I strongly endorse your endorsement. I’m very careful to never say like best movies of the year or anything like that because, I don’t know, it just feels gross to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree. It’s stupid anyway. Who cares, the best movie?

**John:** Who cares?

**Craig:** Yeah, whatever.

**John:** But I think it’s superlative for the reasons you describe, in that it not only is the storytelling terrific, the production design is unbelievably good. Because it’s set in a near-future Los Angeles and just the details they chose are so incredibly smart.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** You look at it and it’s like, well, of course that’s what it’s going to look like in ten years or however much in the future it’s supposed to be. And to a degree that I feel like it probably will look like that just because it will look like that because everyone saw the movie Her, because it’s just so right.

**Craig:** It’s so right. And what I also loved, I mean, look, I could talk about this movie for an hour. One of the things that I thought was so brilliant just about the vision of the near future is how many things they were restrained on. People still open their mailboxes with metal keys because that’s how we’re going to open our mailboxes for a long time. So, they were so smart about that. They just didn’t get stupid with fake sci-fi stuff.

Everything just felt really natural and, frankly, inevitable like you’re saying. It never caught your eye. It never seemed outrageous. But every choice, just when I started to ask myself a question like, well, if he has this operating system and it’s not like a beta or anything, it’s available to everybody, so it’s not like Google Glass. And he’s falling in love with his operating system, surely other people are falling in love with their operating systems. So, why aren’t we hearing about them?

And just as you start to feel that it just comes up and then people are. That’s, in fact, exactly what’s happening. And then when he tells somebody, “Oh, you should bring your girlfriend.”

“Okay, I will. She’s an OS.”

“Oh cool, yeah, bring her anyway.”

No one seems to care. [laughs] Everyone is cool with it. It’s brilliant. Brilliant.

**John:** Yeah. What you describe is the awareness of what the audience is experimenting right at every moment. It’s such an incredibly important thing to do and it’s such an incredibly hard thing to do as a screenwriter is to recognize what is the next question that people are going to ask and how do I answer it for them in a way that is especially rewarding. How do I reward them for asking the questions?

**Craig:** It’s so true.

**John:** It’s so well done.

**Craig:** I mean, think about this. To do a movie like this, to be Spike Jonze, a guy I’ve never met, so this isn’t my friend. I don’t know him. All I can say is he must be an extraordinary person. He is an extraordinary person. He’s special and different. He’s special and different and he wrote and directed this movie. And yet while he is special, and different, and extraordinary he understands what not special, not extraordinary people will be feeling as they watch his special thing.

And he takes care of you in doing it and surprises you and delights you. And everything makes sense. It’s beautiful. Scarlett Johansson is just, I mean, what an incredible, incredible job she did.

**John:** She’s great.

**Craig:** Again, I don’t know her. I’ve never met her or worked with her. The day I meet her I’m just going to thank her for that. That was just amazing. The writing is outstanding. And it has to be, of course. A character not on screen. [laughs] How important does the writing become? I just loved it. I just think it’s wonderful and an important movie and a terrific movie. And so, of course, John, you know what I did.

**John:** What did you do?

**Craig:** I went and read a bad review of it.

**John:** Oh, good, just to take the edge off?

**Craig:** To gloat.

**John:** Oh, to gloat.

**Craig:** To gloat over how stupid the film “critic” at the Village Voice is. Enjoy your shame for the rest of your career, for blowing it that badly. That is the equivalent of running the wrong way around the bases, okay? That is like driving east on the westbound side of the highway, you dummy.

**John:** Craig, that is actually a very smart technique, because you can’t do that with anything you’ve been involved with because you have a personal stake in it. But when you know something is brilliant and you see that terrible review, you’re reminded like, “Ooh, you know what? People are idiots.”

**Craig:** I get more angry because when they do it to me I get sad and also they’re kind of, you know, there’s —

**John:** Yeah, we know, Craig.

**Craig:** I know. And there’s also, you know, inside of me there’s a person that hates me more than they ever could hate me. So, that guy is like, “See, I told you.”

But in this case, this is like — I feel like this movie is my friend, you know? And they’re hurting my friend. And how dare you, you dummy. Where’d you get your film criticism degree, stupid?

**John:** It’s terrible.

**Craig:** Ooh, and so anyway, beautiful movie. Boy, I hope it was the Village Voice. [laughs] I better go fact check that.

**John:** Whatever publication that was.

**Craig:** Yeah, I better go fact check that.

**John:** While you’re doing your fact checking I’ll go through our normal end of show boilerplate.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, if you are listening to this device, what, I can’t even speak properly. If you are listening to this podcast —

**Craig:** You always say that. You always say, “I can’t ever speak properly.” You say that every podcast, so I feel like — just accept it. You can’t speak. Don’t even point it out. We know.

**John:** It’s true. Everyone knows I can’t speak properly.

**Craig:** We know. We know! We still love you.

**John:** In fact, in iTunes you can read reviews of this podcast and one of the few negative reviews will be “John August can’t speak clearly.” And it’s kind of true. I do the best I can.

**Craig:** Is that real? I mean, somebody took the time to complain about you?

**John:** Craig, it was my mom.

**Craig:** Oh, well, listen, she’s — all the money she spent on speech therapy and you still can’t get it right.

**John:** I can’t do it right.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, if you are somebody other than my mom who would like to read us a review on iTunes, [laughs], go ahead. And we would love that because it helps other people find the show.

If you are using an iPhone or Android device you can also get to our podcast through the Scriptnotes app which is available on the App Store for iPhone and for the Google Play Store. And probably also the Amazon Store, but I don’t really know how Android devices work. But you could also find us there. And that’s useful. That’s also where you can find all the back episodes of our show, so that’s a possibility for you, too.

If you have a question for me or for Craig that’s short, Twitter is your friend. So, you can write to me, @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Longer questions can go to ask@johnaugust.com.

And johnaugust.com is also where you’ll find all of the back episodes. You’ll find links to things we talked about on this show and other shows. Just look for the episode name.

And, Craig, did you find Village Voice?

**Craig:** Oh my god, was I supposed to be doing that right now?

**John:** Well, that was the goal that you would actually be doing this while I was talking.

**Craig:** I was listening to you. I was just falling in love with your voice again. Hold on, we’re doing it live. I’m looking it up right now.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Village Voice review. It’s hard because Her is a tough word to look up, so I’m going to go Spike Jonze.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Okay. Oh, god. Her review, Spike Jonze…Village Voice…I can’t find it now. [laughs]

**John:** Well, just go to Rotten Tomatoes.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, of course. See, I forgot about that website. I love Rotten Tomatoes. They’re great.

**John:** They’re fantastic.

**Craig:** Oh, they’re just so great.

**John:** How they like your movies.

**Craig:** They love ’em! Okay, so here we go. Her. And then I can just go to Rotten. Oh, here are nine people who thought it was rotten. You’re all dummies. Yup, Stephanie Zacharek, perhaps pronounced Zacharek is a top critic according to Rotten Tomatoes. And she does write for the Village Voice. And unfortunately she, like James Verniere of the Boston Herald, and Mick LaSalle, the San Francisco Chronicle. And Cole Smithey of the hard to work for, very, very selective colesmithey.com are all big dummies.

Sorry. You’re just wrong. This was a terrific movie. Is an important, great movie. And you’re just all dummies. Yeah.

**John:** And on that note, I think we should wrap up our show.

**Craig:** All right. Sounds good. This is going to be a great year.

**John:** I think this is going to be a great year. By the way, I think it will be a great year. And I think it will be an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly busy year for reasons I’ll talk to you about off the show.

**Craig:** Ooh, terrific. Okay. Can’t wait.

**John:** All right. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [BEYONCÉ by Beyoncé](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/beyonce/id780330041) on iTunes
* [The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/05/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming.html)
* The Hollywood Reporter on [The Expendables lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/expendables-writers-guild-tribunal-evolves-667599)
* Lego [Mindstorms](http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms.lego.com) and [Crazy Action Contraptions](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591747694/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [European green](http://carsihaveseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_0175.jpg)
* [her](http://www.herthemovie.com/#/home) is in theaters now
* A bad her review in [The Village Voice](http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-12-18/film/her-movie-review/) and the [very few other bad reviews](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/her/reviews/?sort=rotten) on Rotten Tomatoes
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli