Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/enders-game-one-hours-and-alt-jokes).

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

**Craig Mazin:** [sings] My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 104 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m feeling pretty good. I got into golf.

**John:** Uh-oh. Oh no! It’s the end of you, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Or the beginning?

**John:** Well maybe. You and Derek Haas are going to be doing nothing but play golf all weekend.

**Craig:** Derek Haas, Alec Berg, Jeff Lowell. I have so many friends. So, Chris Morgan, the screenwriter of Fast & Furious 3 through infinity —

**John:** Yes. He’s essentially written the good Star Wars of the Fast & Furious movies. Like, if you want to take a look at 3 through 6 being the good part of that series.

**Craig:** Well, you may not realize, but you just took a shot at Derek Haas who wrote Fast & Furious 2, otherwise known as 2 Fast 2 Furious. But that one, you know the problem with that movie?

**John:** Once again my ignorance has come at the expense of Derek Haas.

**Craig:** And the problem with that movie? Too fast! Too furious! [laughs] There is a limit to how fast and furious you should be.

**John:** Yes. They took it back a notch and saved the franchise.

**Craig:** That’s right. Chris Morgan is responsible for the Appropriately Fast & Appropriately Furious movies. Chris Morgan and I made a pact to start learning how to play golf, so we are taking joint lesson. And so after the podcast I’m going to be a middle aged man, go to the golf course, and practice. How about that?

**John:** That sounds wonderful for you, Craig. I will never golf. And in all the time that I’m not golfing I will do other things. For instance, I should probably watch Orange is the New Black, because if one more person tells me I need to watch Orange is the New Black —

**Craig:** I mean, honestly. And the thing is I really like Jenji. She is a cool — do you know her?

**John:** I don’t know her at all.

**Craig:** So cool. She’s the coolest person. And it’s funny, like when I met her I thought, “Uh, you know, if I,”… — just very quickly, we all are susceptible to prejudice, right?

**John:** Yeah, based on her name.

**Craig:** Jenji. Already I’m like, oh god, what is this all about. And, you know, she did Weeds and it’s sort of like, okay, so it’s like Jenji and she’s doing a pot show and I don’t know…

The coolest person. I mean, really funny, down to earth, smart, not pompous. Very much — you know, sometimes you meet writers and you can just tell right away they’re kindred spirits, they’re craftspeople, they care. They have all of the same insecurities and fears and all the rest of it.

And it’s funny, I meet people sometimes who are just much, much better than me, but they’re jerks. Sometimes I meet people that are much, much better than me and they’re awesome. Those are my favorite people. So, Jenji Kohan, very cool person.

So, yeah, I have to watch Orange is the New Black. But I haven’t yet.

**John:** Yeah. At some point we will.

**Craig:** I haven’t watched Breaking Bad yet either, so there you go. Boom!

**John:** There you go!

**Craig:** Boom!

**John:** I always feel like people can spoil whatever they want from Breaking Bad because it will make no sense to me whatsoever. But what would make sense would be to actually talk about the topics we’re talking about today which is we want to talk about Orson Scott Card and the whole situation with Ender’s Game.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We want to talk about the strong possibility that we are going to do a live show in New York in September, which is a new development.

**Craig:** Very exciting.

**John:** We want to talk about ensemble comedies. We want to talk about tone and audience. I want to talk about alternate jokes and how those come about when you’re showing things to an audience. It’s sort of like that whole process of showing to an audience and what you take and what you don’t take. So, it’s sort of a smorgasbord episode today.

**Craig:** I like that. Anytime we can provide — I always learned it as smorgasbord [pronounced shmorgasbord].

**John:** Yeah, I think they’re both. It’s a natural thing to put the “sh” in there.

**Craig:** I think it’s more Jewy to say shmorgasbord.

**John:** Yeah. It’s probably actually correct though.

**Craig:** It might also be correct. I don’t know. But before we do that I have a bit of business.

**John:** Go for it, Craig. Take control.

**Craig:** [laughs] I just so love saying that. So, here’s my bit of business — it’s not really business, it’s just umbrage. Let’s just start the show with a little bit of umbrage. For those of you out there in Twitterville who send me lists — these lists, these internet lists — top 50 movies of the summer; 50 most surprising films of the summer; the summer’s winners and losers; this year’s underrated movies; this year’s overrated movies…

Stop.

Please stop.

I hate those lists. I hate all of them. I hate them when I have movies on them, when I don’t have movies on them. I hate them when my movies are in the good part of it or the bad part of it. I can’t stand it. There is some factory somewhere that churns out these lists.

**John:** It’s called BuzzFeed.

**Craig:** Oh god. It seems like every day a new outlet is created so that somebody can make $100 writing a list. And the lists sound the same. They are absurd. And the reason that it finally hit me… — So, my kids both are involved in musical theater. And last night they had their cast party. They did Les Mis this year. And they had their cast party. And all these kids there, ranging in age from 7 to 17, were at a house. And I’m watching them and it’s drama kids, you know; they are so excited to be with people and they’re so happy.

And they were so innocent and pure and they had done something and tried really hard. And I thought, you know, sometimes we forget — those of us who are in our forties now — that we’re part of that, too. We’re drama people. You know, we’re show people. And show people are special people.

And no matter how it turns out, we put ourselves into these things. We try so hard. And then just reading these lists — it’s like somebody out there has turned it into this awful, endless competition. The lists, I think, are great if you are an agent, or you sit on the board of directors of a studio, but for us, no. It’s gross.

I actually don’t like reading about someone’s failure. It doesn’t make me feel good. I don’t like it. I immediately feel empathy.

So, if you guys out there like reading those lists, fine, I’m not judging you. I’m simply saying don’t send them to me anymore; they kind of make me pukey.

**John:** I would actually differentiate between two different kinds of lists, and I think we should send neither of these kinds of lists to Craig Mazin, but there are two different things you can look at with these lists.

There are lists that are actually based on some sort of quantifiable information. So, you can say like the most expensive movies of the year, or the highest grossing movies of the year, or the best reviewed movies of the year, which to some degree you can do. You can take that sort of rating information and put it into a numerical form.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But a lot of these lists are just basically like one random person made a list of a couple movies. And it seems to have value only because it’s a list.

**Craig:** Right!

**John:** And that’s just not actually anything we need to be wasting our time with.

**Craig:** And a lot of these lists have strange judgment calls. For instance, when they do the lists of like Winners, the Summer’s Winners and Losers. So, some of the “winners” aren’t really winners, and some of the “losers” aren’t really losers. It’s just the person — it’s just gross.

It’s gross.

**John:** It’s opinion disguised as fact. Because it’s on a list then therefore it’s not just this one guy’s opinion.

**Craig:** I know. I just don’t like… — I remember years and years ago I met this guy and he was Canadian and he said, “Americans are obsessed with lists.” And it’s true; we are constantly — I mean, the internet has become a list engine. It’s so weird.

Anyway, so that’s my bit of business. It’s really more opprobrium. I may start using opprobrium instead of umbrage. I may switch.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, and when they do history of Scriptnotes they’ll say, like, “Well sometime in the hundreds he switched from — ”

**Craig:** “The great schism occurred.” Yeah. Opprobrium.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, my bit of outrage this week: On Friday I sent through — this is a bad thing to do; never do this. But I’m angry, so I sent like three tweets and then I went off to ten hours of rehearsal and didn’t check Twitter the whole time. And then like a bunch of people responded and I hadn’t responded, so I was just like one of those dicks who starts a little argument on Twitter and then goes away.

**Craig:** Nice. I like that move.

**John:** I’m not usually the throw the grenade in and run away kind of guy, but this is what I said — these are my three tweets, in this order.

One: Feel bad for the hundreds of people who work their asses off on Ender’s Game just to have all the attention go to one whack job.

Second tweet: I don’t know if the movie is any good, but it deserves to be judged on its own merits, not just the writer of the source material.

Third tweet: I guarantee studios are going to start taking a closer look at novelists, worried about potential shit-stirrers.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think all those things are correct, except I kind of quibble with number two.

**John:** Okay, so let’s get into it. Let’s go into the background on where we’re at right now with this move, Ender’s Game, which is based on a famous science fiction book by Orson Scott Card. He was probably best known for this work and his work as a science fiction author until he not just revealed but sort of very publicly had some really strongly anti-marriage equality views and sort of anti-gay rights views that rankled many people.

And then this last week, you know, I didn’t follow it closely, but either he said something new or somebody dug up something that he said about Obama that was like really, really inflammatory towards like gangs, like Obama gangs of youth being armed and such.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** They weren’t kind, well, whatever he said you could tell that the people actually making the movie wanted him to just fall in a hole and never be seen again.

**Craig:** Yeah. Orson Scott Card, if we’re going to say anything to his credit in a weird way is that he is — this isn’t like Paula Deen where comments that were made privately were then exposed publicly. This dude makes public comments intended for public consumption. It’s just that the comments are, to me at least, awful.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** He seems to believe some things that I think are awful. [laughs] And, yeah, so on the one hand, of course, studios are — no matter what Oscar Wilde says — there is such a thing as bad press and this is bad press.

**John:** Let’s talk about it from a couple of angles. Let’s talk about it from the perspective of like, “Oh, crap, we made this movie and now we can’t promote this movie because all the headlines are going to this other guy who has nothing — ”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, there’s that angle.

Second, I want to talk about the idea of the boycott, like actively boycotting this movie and what are the ramifications of that and sort of what the choices are within that.

And the third topic, the third section of this, is as screenwriters can you adapt something that comes from a person who is considered toxic. And I would put him in the toxic category at this point.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, should we start with the first part which is you’ve made this movie and now this has happened. What do you do?

**Craig:** There is no way out. There is no answer to this. You can’t shelve it and pretend it’s going to go away; it will actually get worse with this guy. He seems to be — he either resents the movie’s existence in a passive-aggressive way after taking the money for it, and so is actively trying to undermine it. Or, he simply has no sense of self-preservation when it comes to the movie. He doesn’t really care about the movie at all. He cares far more about his deeply held awful views.

So, if you hold the movie to make the problem go away, it won’t go away. And, of course, the internet has this amazing memory. The other issue for the studios that makes this intractable is that it’s science fiction and it’s Orson Scott Card, precisely the kind of author that the internet has its huge eye on all the time, because a lot of the people who write about this stuff are geeks. I don’t use the term pejoratively.

So, they’re well aware. And he can’t hide. [laughs] You can’t hide him. The truth is all they can do is what they’re doing. Put the movie out, and it’s over, and you move on.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll be curious to see how many reviews get through the whole review without ever mentioning the controversy. Because in some ways you should review the movie without talking about the controversy surrounding it, but to not acknowledge the controversy around is to like be ignoring culture.

**Craig:** Not one review. There will not be a single review that doesn’t mention it.

**John:** And so people who wrote back to me on Twitter saying like, “Well, I don’t want to spend any money that’s…” Well, let’s not get into the boycott part. But like, my first tweet was like I feel so bad for everybody involved making the movie. Because let’s say you are the screenwriter of the movie, or the producer of the movie, the director of the movie, the star of the movie, that credit — you know, if the movie does really well, somehow does really well, it’s still going to be associated as like, “Oh, that was the movie that was controversial because of what that underlying novelist said.”

If the movie tanks, which is a strong possibility, too, it’s like this anchor sort of on your thing. No one is going to remember like, “Oh, you were really good in that movie that was — ”

Maybe they will remember. “You were really good in that movie that was a disastrous bomb.” It helps you not a bit.

**Craig:** No. And, look, any movie that gets made in Hollywood you can be assured that quite a few people employed by the movie are gay, very liberal, and they cared about their jobs and they worked very, very hard, and they have pride. It’s the Bridge over the River Kwai. You’re proud of this thing that suddenly you also feel should be blown up but not blown up.

And I do feel bad for them, because I’m sure that on the one hand they go to see the film and they’re very proud of the work they did. And on the other hand they’re like, “Ugh.”

**John:** Yeah. I mean, if you’re the guy finishing up the visual effects on this movie now, are you like, “Oh, god, I’m working on this movie that I know has this toxic cloud around it which is very, very dangerous.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it’s the vision of somebody that detests me.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That part is weird, you know.

**John:** So, let’s talk about this boycott reaction. There’s this movement to, like, “Well I’m going to boycott this movie.” And I’ve seen mainstream articles about it, mainstream journalists saying, columnists saying, “Oh, just boycott the movie.”

And boycotts to me are always a very frustrating attempt to solve a problem that cannot actually be solved. And this I feel is a similar kind of case. So, as a gay person I’m incensed by what he says. I think he’s a — I strongly disagree with what he’s doing. Yet, as a person who makes movies I know that my boycott of this movie has almost zero impact on his actual pocketbook. It is not hurting him at all.

**Craig:** That’s fair.

**John:** So, the perception that like he is the person who benefits from the success of the movie is not accurate. The only thing I could say is that if the movie were to do spectacularly well the people who believe the same things he believes would say, “Oh, it’s because of those things.” There would always be like this false causality there.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that that would really —

**John:** So, here’s my sort of thought experiment that I want to sort of propose. So, let’s say there’s this guy, Randy Fakename. And Randy Fakename is an associate producer. He’s the kind of guy who puts a movie together but doesn’t really know how to produce. Anyway, he takes two dogs that were barking a lot and throws them off the balcony of a building and kills them.

**Craig:** [laughs] Cool guy.

**John:** He’s just an awesome individual.

**Craig:** [laughs] I like this guy. He’s a problem solver as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** He’s a winner. And, you know what? He’ll go to the press and he’ll say like, “You know what? I don’t regret it all. Give me another dog and I’ll throw it off the top of a building.”

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s right.

**John:** So, let’s say he has now just made a new Harrison Ford movie. Would you go to his movie?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think so. I’m different than you, I think.

**John:** The thought experiment is basically how closely involved to the core of a movie does a person have to be for their evil, or your perception of their evil, to keep you from seeing that movie?

**Craig:** It’s not a utilitarian thing to me. I don’t look at it in terms of cost-benefit and who’s hurt and who’s not hurt. I just look at it in terms of this: If I go to see a movie I’m essentially paying for an experience that is at least in some part an emotional experience. And I’m not going to enjoy the emotional experience if it’s already emotionally tainted for me. It’s just a personal thing.

If I do not like — I can’t bring myself to watch Roman Polanski movies. The old ones, yes, pre-forced sodomy on a teenage girl, yeah. Sure. But after that, I can’t do it. It’s weird. It’s just like an emotional thing. I detest what he did and I detest him for it. And so it’s ruined for me.

**John:** Okay. So, let’s say this guy wasn’t just an associate producer. This guy was the second visual effects designer on the movie. Would that keep you from seeing it?

**Craig:** I’m sure I wouldn’t know about it, but no, it wouldn’t because I don’t feel like he made any artistic decisions that steered the authorship or the vision of the movie.

**John:** And I would argue that that is the same situation you really find yourself with Ender’s Game at this point. This is a guy who wrote this thing, 30 years ago? Quite a long time ago. Had, I believe, essentially no involvement with the actual movie that has gotten made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, to boycott this movie because of something this guy did in the meantime after writing the source material is like, you know, it feels really strange to me.

**Craig:** What you’re saying is absolutely reasonable. And I guess what I would say in return is it really comes down to how you feel emotionally about it on your way into the movie. And emotions are not rational. And if you are comfortable being able to divide your opinions about this man and bifurcate that and see the movie and see the movie as something separate from him, then great.

The interesting parallel to this is what’s happening with the Olympics in Russia right now.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And I’m kind of curious what you think about that. I have my own strongly-held opinion on it, but I’m kind of curious what you think.

**John:** I don’t know what should be done about the Olympics themselves. I think it’s incredibly problematic that you have a country that is inviting the world to it and yet denying the fundamental rights who are going to be attending the Olympics. That is incredibly troubling.

This response of like “let’s boycott Russian vodka” is absurd.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s silly. [laughs]

**John:** That I find is ridiculous because it’s like, you know, if a tree falls and kills somebody and for that reason now you’re going to stop using paper.

**Craig:** Boycott trees —

**John:** Exactly. It actually doesn’t hurt the people you want to hurt and it actually hurts a lot of other people.

**Craig:** Yeah, boycotting vodka is a bizarre move.

**John:** It’s a largely symbolic move that doesn’t actually affect anything.

**Craig:** But I do think that — maybe I’m, I know that a lot of athletes, a lot of gay athletes are like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t take my Olympics from me, dude. I need my medal.” And I get that. I honestly believe that every western country that believes in the equality of people based on sexual orientation or gender shouldn’t go. I do believe that. I think that if 20 western nations said, “We’re not going,” that it would force Russia to examine itself.

And it is gross to me that you have people…I mean, I just read something the other day. So, you can’t have rainbow colored finger nails at the Olympics. The IOC is the most cowardly organization.

But, I actually think we shouldn’t go. That’s my opinion.

**John:** Yeah. I’m not all the way to not going, but I haven’t sort of deeply thought through the ramifications. To me we’ve had Olympics in places that are troubling many times before. We’ve had them in Beijing. And it’s not like Beijing is a bastion of tolerance and wonder.

**Craig:** I agree. I don’t think we should have had those either. [laughs] No, really, to me the Olympics goes back to Greece and the cradle of democracy and what we call western civilization. And I find that this thing where we now, yeah, so Beijing? What? And the thought still that the western world thought it was fine to go have the Olympic games in Germany with Hitler, it’s just insane! It’s insane. And everybody was like, “Eh, well, it’s the Olympics.”

It’s crazy.

**John:** Yeah, we’re not going to be able to change that.

**Craig:** No, you know what? You know why? The problem is that the Olympics have become such a huge business. Really you should be able to put the Olympics on somewhere; it should be like, yeah, ad hoc, we’re doing it over here. And it’s the winter Olympics. There are plenty of places with snow. And we’re doing it over here. And, okay, I’m sorry, there won’t be a huge freaking show in the beginning. And we’re not going to have all the…blah. But you’ll still be able to ski and luge and stuff.

That’s my feeling. And ice skate.

**John:** All right. Getting back to Orson Scott Card.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, of course.

**John:** I don’t know how he feels about ice skating at all.

**Craig:** I know how he feels about it. “Too gay!”

**John:** Let’s talk about the way forward, because my third tweet was I genuinely do think that studios are going to be taking a closer look at who the authors are of the books that they’re buying, because you don’t want crazy town.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I can see like Stephanie Meyer was kind of terrific. I mean, Mormon but, you know, good fans, and sort of all that stuff. So, her Twilight books, wow, she’s exactly the kind of writer you want. JK Rowling with Harry Potter. Wow. Exactly the right kind of writer you want. But you could just as easily find that sort of crazy nagging awful person. Anne Rice was sort of a difficult author to have.

**Craig:** Very. Very.

**John:** But Anne Rice is just like paradise compared to Orson Scott Card.

**Craig:** Which is saying something.

**John:** [laughs] Yes. When Anne Rice is like a bastion of sanity and reasonability. That is going to be a source of wonder. And so I really do think we are going to start seeing studies taking, “We like this book. We like this book in galleys. And let’s get on the phone with a writer and let’s do a background check on this person to make sure that there’s not something terrifying there.”

**Craig:** I think so. I mean, the truth is — and this is why I have no problem with people who say, “You know what? I’m not seeing this movie.” The studio knew. Everybody knew. This is not new to Orson Scott Card. He didn’t just suddenly sit up and start saying this stuff. He’s been saying this stuff for years. For a long, long time. And I remember when the book was optioned I remember talking to Dan Weiss about it. I think he wrote an early draft at some point. Everybody knew.

And they’re like, “Eh, you know what? Money.”

**John:** Well, were they also maybe hoping he would die before they actually made the movie?

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that that was high up on their list of expectations. You know, it could happen, but the truth is it wasn’t going to change anything. I mean —

**John:** By the way, that’s probably an episode of Castle that’s coming up soon, where the author was killed for his unpopular views so that the movie version could succeed.

**Craig:** If I had ever seen an episode of Castle I would be so on top of that.

**John:** You have two friends who work on Castle and you’ve never seen an episode?

**Craig:** No. [laughs] No. No. I’ve seen every Game of Thrones.

**John:** Yeah, well, come on. Who hasn’t seen Game of Thrones?

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s about it for me.

**John:** I mean, let’s think about the background check. Because if they’re doing the background check on the novelist which seems to be a reasonable case, well why wouldn’t they do a background check on Craig Mazin to make sure that you aren’t a crazy person that they’re bringing in to work on this movie? Because even if like someone else came and rewrote the movie, the fact that your pen went though it —

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Your crazy views.

**Craig:** But they do. And that background check is a foreground check. I mean, we who work in this business, everybody knows. I mean, this podcast is listened to. I meet executives all the time who bring it up. If either one of us were using this podcast to espouse views that large quantities of people found deeply objectionable, we would — yeah, absolutely. We wouldn’t have to do a background check. We’d be gone.

Because it is — look, they’re making a movie. They’re spending millions of dollars. And the last thing you want is something that’s basically getting in between the audience and the movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And something else that’s changing the narrative. And, look, I know a lot of people look at this PR from corporations and properly are cynical about it, that they’re trying to control a narrative and force product down your throat and all the rest of it. And that is their agenda, I’m sure. But my agenda as a screenwriter is to provide the emotional experience I intend for the audience. That’s it.

And if something else is in the way, including what people think about me and my politics? That’s no good.

**John:** My probably biggest experience with the inability to control the narrative was on the second Charlie’s Angels. And so Demi Moore we cast as the returning Angel who had gone bad. And like she’s perfect casting and I loved her. And I remember sitting in her hotel room on my birthday and watching her drink like so much coffee but still kind of loving it because it’s Demi Moore and she actually sounds like that in real life.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, I was so excited to have Demi Moore be in the movie. And then she and Bruce Willis split up and she started up with Ashton Kutcher and it so it was right as the movie was coming out. All the media attention was on Demi and Ashton and Bruce Willis.

And it was like, “No! Focus on our movie!” And literally every — even from the premiere, like there were barely photos of like the Angels. It was only about Demi and the fact that both Ashton and Bruce came to the premiere. It was like that was the story. It was maddening.

**Craig:** It is maddening.

**John:** Also the movie wasn’t good, so that was a problem, too. But, controlling the narrative was a huge frustration. And it wasn’t an Orson Scott Card situation, but it was, you know…

**Craig:** No, it’s the same thing though. It becomes, you know, when the story isn’t the story. I’ve seen Gigli, it’s not a good movie. But it doesn’t deserve what it got. It got that because people loathed that coupling. For whatever reason that coupling drove them crazy. And I can’t understand it. I find it all gross. But, you know, it’s the way the world works. And in this case I think Orson Scott Card has made his bed, happily. He seems totally content to have made his bed, by the way.

So, tip of the hat. If you’re going to be kind of a hateful whack job, at least be a —

**John:** Own it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Be accountable to your own hateful whack-jobbery.

**John:** I find it sad that his movie which could be good is going to get dragged down by it.

**Craig:** Oh, that is absolutely the case. It is sad and like you I feel terrible for all the people who worked so hard on it. I don’t feel, you know, the company knew what they were doing. But the people who were hired to work on it, I feel sad for them.

**John:** Yeah. All right, to happier topics.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** We are talking very seriously about doing a live show in New York, because you are going to come out here to see Big Fish.

**Craig:** I am coming out there to see Big Fish.

**John:** So, it’s the week of September 20th is when you’re coming out here. So, a day during that time, and we’ve discussed the Monday quite strongly but nothing is sort of locked in stone, but if you are in the New York area and would like to come see us, keep listening to the podcast and watch us on Twitter because we will announce times and dates and venues once we figure out what that is.

So, Craig, you’re going to come see the show. You’re going to hopefully have an awesome guest. What else should we do at a live show?

**Craig:** Well, you know, if we’re lucky enough to do the live show at the theater…

**John:** Which is a hope.

**Craig:** …then maybe, well, I don’t know. I don’t know if the theater affords us any opportunities that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to have. Perhaps, perhaps, I’m just saying if one of your actors wanted to come and sing a song?

**John:** It could be kind of fantastic.

**Craig:** It would be awesome!

**John:** We have numerous incredibly talented people involved with the show, from Andrew Lippa to our great cast, and director. And even little Zachary Unger, I just sent you the link to him singing the National Anthem at the Jets game last night.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** Talent top to bottom. So, anyway, if you are in the New York area and want to come see a show, sometime the week of September 20 would be a week that you might be able to see us. So, just like an early shot across the bow warning that this is a thing that could happen.

Now, something that happened at our last live show, our big 100th episode was that we hid, actually you picked the chair and I stuck the little note underneath, we hid underneath one seat a Golden Ticket and promised on that Golden Ticket that we would read the script of the person who was sitting in that chair.

And the person whose chair that was was a guy named Matt Smith.

**Craig:** Matt Smith. And he’s real; that’s not a pseudonym.

**John:** He’s an actual genuine person. And this week you and I had the pleasure of having a good half hour Skype conversation with him about his script.

**Craig:** We did.

**John:** So, when we talked about it with Matt we decided it wasn’t a think we wanted to sort of get into on the show because it’s a full on script and it really wasn’t ready for everyone else to see it. But I think we talked about some good things. So, in a very general sense I want to talk about the kinds of things we noticed and challenges you deal with when you deal with certain situations in his script and many others we read.

So, he wrote a one-hour drama/comedy ensemble show.

**Craig:** Television show.

**John:** Television show. And I think we actually had some interesting conversations about sort of the nature of an ensemble show. And one of those being that you have to very clearly differentiate each of our character’s voices, because a challenge we had was remembering who each individual person was because it sounded like other people could have the exact same lines of dialogue.

**Craig:** That’s right. So, when you start an ensemble you almost necessarily need to sit down and give yourself an organizational chart of the characters you’re tracking. If you’ve got ten or 12 characters that you’re supposed to care about in a soap operatic kind of way, or god forbid you’re in a Game of Thrones situation where you’re juggling 40 or 50 characters, and throwing characters in at a faster rate than you’re decapitating them, you really need to organize them by purpose I guess is how I would put it.

Because there are characters whose purpose are to be heroic. There are characters whose purpose is to be villainous. There are characters whose purpose is to be mysterious, manipulative, funny, but generally speaking even though there are characters who can change back and forth depending, roughly they need to have their own kind of space so that when you move between the stories you don’t feel like you’re watching three of the same movie with different characters. You’re watching three different kinds of things within a larger environment.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the things we recommended to Matt — which I would recommend to anybody who is trying to write a pilot, like an original pilot for a show — is really take a step back and write up the character bios for those people. Pretend that you are pitching this show to a network and have to be able to provide all the sort of supporting documentation.

So, on the site, on johnaugust.com site in the library I have these sort of pitch documents for the shows I’ve done. So, for D.C., for Ops, for, and I think I have The Chosen stuff up there, maybe not quite yet. But you end up writing these things that describe who the character is, and not just who the character is at the very start of the show but what the arc is they’re going through over the course of the first season. And it gives you a much better sense of like the function this character serves in the show overall and the function they can serve within your episode.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And once you know sort of what this character is capable of doing, you’ll start to realize in an ensemble show you’re not going to have probably three different love storylines happening in an episode. One might be the through line of a love story. One might be like the little caper plotline. One might be something suspenseful. There’s different stuff happening with the different characters through it.

Because if we see three love stories we’re going to just get confused; we won’t know what the actual —

**Craig:** Get confused — we’re diluting the impact. I mean, love stories follow a particular path. And they either end up with the people in love or not in love and they have their ups and downs. But that means that if you’re running three at the same time you’re going to be essentially duplicating your drama.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you watch a show — like Dexter is a very traditional ensemble cast show. Maybe it’s not about a traditional subject, but the way that they structure it and execute it is extraordinarily traditional. Masuka is comedy. And then you’ve got buddies arguing about their job and you’ve got family squabbles. And you’ve got the main mystery and you’ve got personal drama. And it’s all divided up essentially.

**John:** Yeah. I haven’t seen Dexter, but the sense I get of it is while there is a main titular character, everybody else in that show has a very clear function about what they’re supposed to do. And that’s what I would argue for any, especially one hour. You need to know what the functions of the people are so that you can actually get through an episode and sort of have a follow through line.

**Craig:** And for the soap operatic series and ensembles tend to be that way, a villain is just as important if not more important than the hero because oftentimes it’s the villains that drive the story by creating the circumstances that challenge the hero. The hero must be active and must make their way through and perhaps that’s who we identify with, but it’s the villain that builds the problems.

**John:** Yes. The obstacles that need to be overcome. Desperate Housewives is a great thing to take a look at in terms of how they’ll pick somebody to be sort of the nemesis for a time and she’ll often then shift into being a heroic supporting character for a time, but they’ll very cleverly sort of build how they’re going to let the characters function within their world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And important thing to do. The other thing you note about Desperate Housewives is it has a very clear and very specific tone. And I think any time you are writing an original show, or any original movie, but particularly if you’re writing a show that would hopefully end up on a network, you need to figure out what that network is. And it needs to actually be able to fit on that network.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so if you’re writing something that is designed for Nickelodeon, it has to fall into the nice little boxes of what Nickelodeon is. If you’re writing something that’s going to be going on FX it probably can’t have anything to do with a Nickelodeon show. And if it did have anything to do with that Nickelodeon show it wouldn’t work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It has to be completely different rules for how those things function.

**Craig:** There are gradations that are achievable in tone based on the nature of your characters. For instance, Freaks and Geeks comes to mind. There were kids who were older and kids who were younger. High school, I mean, Matt Smith’s case, his show was about a summer camp where kids ranged in age. Freaks and Geeks is about high school where kids ranged in age. It’s acceptable to have different kinds of storylines for the 17 years olds and different kinds of storylines for the 13 year olds.

But, even within those gradations, while the 13 year olds may be less interested in sex, and more interested in fitting in, it still has to happen within the same general tone. You can’t go into really broad comedy if the rest of it is not broad. It has to kind of all feel like… — Because the truth is these people meet each other. They all have to be able to share a scene together and believably so, even if they rarely do.

**John:** If you look at a show like Modern Family, Modern Family has some slightly racy things, but they’re slightly racy. And they’re racy in a way that it’s going to go over a kid’s head and so you don’t feel awkward watching it with a young person in the room. That’s a show that very smartly sort of splits that line. So, it’s possible to do but it has to fit in the same universe.

No one is going to watch only half the scenes. It all has to sort of fit together. And Modern Family, I think what is so genius is those kids can actually have scenes with adults and things don’t fall apart.

**Craig:** That’s right. All the characters, I mean, Eric Stonestreet is broad on that show but he’s not unacceptably broad. He’s broad in a way that makes sense. And when he’s with the other characters who maybe aren’t as broad, it also makes sense. That’s the key. You just have to be able to imagine all of your characters together having conversations. You should be able to draw a line between every character and believe that a conversation could occur, that they’re all in the same world.

**John:** Yeah. So, then when it comes time to actually write your one hour pilot spec, I would strongly suggest, and this is very classic TV advice but I will give it here, is that you write your act breaks first, which is that you figure out, you know, a lot of shows are going to have five act breaks, sometimes there are six act shows, but those are the moments you’re writing up to that would lead to classically a commercial break.

And those are the moments of suspense, or a question that is going to get answered on the other side of the break. And that seems really artificial the first time you do it, because like well why am I writing up to this out, this thing, but you will come to cherish it because it provides a really nice structure for one hour of television. You get to know this is how much I can do in each of these little chunks. This is what the — it’s like you have this one little movie of like there is this ten-minute movie that has all this information in it. And then you get to move onto your next thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like being able to open a scene again. It’s incredibly helpful. So, I would say you figure out your characters, get that on paper, figure out your characters on paper. In your pilot episode, figure out your act breaks, and then really dig down and figure out what the scenes are within each of those acts and start writing them.

And too often you get sort of captivated by like, “Oh, here’s an idea. Here are some characters. Here’s what they can be talking about,” without actually knowing how it’s going to work as a show.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, with television everything sort of screams for cliffhangers because people show up to movies, they’ve paid their ticket, they sit down. Walking out of a movie is kind of a big deal. So, but then again, the commitment is short, relatively short. Television, you can turn it off anytime, or just change the channel, or hit pause and maybe never come back to it. The game is not only keep watching within an episode but then show up next week for the next episode.

It’s a game of cliffhangers. And even when it’s not a cliffhanger-y show, you can see that they — watch Modern Family. It’s a sitcom. It’s not a thriller. It’s not Game of Thrones. No one is getting killed. But there are little mini-cliffhangers throughout.

**John:** Yeah. It ends with a “how will this turnout” moment.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s what’s getting you back to the next bit.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s designed to tease your curiosity. And when you’re doing an ensemble show with lots of characters, it’s inevitable that certain storylines will appeal to certain people more than others. And I’ve had that experience before where I kind of, even in Game of Thrones sometimes I’m like, eh, I’m tempted to just fast-forward through this conversation because really I don’t care that much. But, then I’m happy that I stayed with it.

It’s okay that some stories appeal to people more than others because everybody is different about that. As long as there is something that is pulling them through.

**John:** Agreed. So, anyway, I want to thank Matt Smith for sending us the script because it was actually a good conversation. I hope it was helpful to Matt. It seemed like it was.

**Craig:** And I’ve got to give him credit. He was really, you know, I love it when we talk to people and they have a really good professional attitude where it’s not all, “Oh gods,” and emotions, and huffing, and it’s very much about being open-minded. I love that.

**John:** Yeah, listening, hearing, responding in ways that helps both sides get more communicative. It was great.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, thank you Matt for sending your thing through.

**Craig:** Good job, Matt.

**John:** And who knows, maybe we’ll do a Golden Ticket at our next live show.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** Let’s not over-promise.

**John:** That’s not a promise. [laughs] Yeah, it was your idea last time, so maybe we’ll under-promise this time.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, there you go.

**John:** I can pretty much guarantee that we will not be providing food and alcohol at this next one.

**Craig:** Not to them, but to me. I at least need a glass of wine and some crackers.

**John:** Perfect.

So, Craig, one of the things I’m working on now for Big Fish, because we are sort of up — like, you know, we did our five weeks in Chicago and we sort of really know the show. And over the summer we did a tremendous amount of work and stuff is really good and it’s exciting, but one of the things I’m now spending a lot of time doing is for the jokes of the show I want to make sure we have alternate jokes for the show for the things that just don’t work.

So, in Chicago I rewrote a lot of jokes. And every night you could see what things worked and what things didn’t work. But now there’s new things that I need to write new jokes for. So, I wanted to talk to you about that process because I don’t know for like the Hangover movies or the other movies you’ve worked on, do you come in with a list of alternate jokes? Or do you do stuff on the set?

**Craig:** Usually we don’t write alternate jokes. Usually what we do is on the day we find them because it’s frankly just much easier to writer alternates once you see the scene with the actors in the place. Little things happen. Obviously the actors, when you’re dealing with people like Zach they come up with stuff, or Melissa, or Jason, they come up with things. An then you sort of try and work with those. But, I know then you have those moments that I think people think happen all the time that don’t happen that often.

Like, for instance in the Hangover III when Alan returns to his house and finds that there’s an intervention going on, when he walks in the door he’s yelling at his mother for lunch and I wrote probably 30 different things that he could yell. And then we would try different ones. So we have, once we get into the editing room, we know we have choices. And then we run them for test audiences

What’s tricky about alternate jokes is that — and this is particularly tricky for you I would imagine — is that not every audience reacts the same to the same joke. I’ve seen individual jokes kill in one room, get okay in another, and so the problem is it’s very hard to actually get any kind of sense of a controlled experiment.

**John:** Yeah. That’s definitely the experience I’ve had with this. And I was struck by the idea of alternate jokes because I was looking at, I’ll try to find a link to it, but one of the writers on Happy Endings, which was a show I enjoyed on ABC, was posting some pages from a script. And if you look at how they actually write their scripts there’s like a character has a line of dialogue but then slash, and then a whole different line, slash a whole different line.

And basically they’re going to bang through it and they’re going to shoot all those different things that that character could say.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s a show that tends to get into a lot of lists of things, so it’s sort of natural for that, but it’s also a very common thing to see in sitcom land — all those slash jokes stacked up in there.

**Craig:** And it’s easy to understand why. Because you have a staff of writers and there are times when you go, “Okay, we have a great setup here. Let’s play who-has-got-the-best-punch-line.” And you’ll get two or three jokes that really work great in the room. And so you should try all of them because you can’t really, you’re not going back and reshooting a sitcom, you know. You’re not adding stuff in.

So, in the moment if you have three or four, why not? But, you know, for you it’s a tough one. You probably have lines that are very consistent and then you have lines that aren’t. And that’s the thing that’s so fascinating to me. I just don’t understand how it happens, but it’s that weird crowd psychology that just sometimes everybody together laughs at something and then sometimes everybody together doesn’t. It’s so weird.

**John:** Yeah. And so the goal with a show, you said a controlled experiment. And in some ways a Broadway show should be incredibly controlled because literally the entire thing is on an eight-count. There is not a lot of room and maneuvering ability. So, there is a reason why sometimes a joke will be ten words rather than 12 words. So, it’s like, that is going to fit the vamp in the music.

But why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work is a fascinating thing.

**Craig:** Fascinating. You can almost feel it before it happens.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But then also I have to say, you know, so for the movies that I do with Todd Phillips, the two of us will stand there on the side of the theater watching it when we test it. And so many times we’ve looked at each other like, “They’re laughing at that? We thought that was going to die.” We liked it, but we thought it was going to die. And then there are other times where we’re like it’s a joke that we love and it gets nothing. We’re like, “What?!”

So, there are surprises. But more often than not you can almost feel it just like you have a relationship with every specific audience. Isn’t it weird? I can’t explain it.

**John:** Yeah. You also notice that sometimes audiences are just primed to laugh. So they’re laughing now because that last thing was funny, but if they haven’t laughed for awhile it’s going to take a bigger thing to cross over that threshold and get them to start laughing.

**Craig:** Yes. Well, now that is a time tested truism. And we know when, look, I’ve been writing movies that are like “ha-ha” comedies for a long, long time, so I know the first test screening is always going to be difficult. And every writer who works in this space I’ve ever talked to, we all have the same experience. You know going in that the first one is tough because you’re going to lose them, necessarily, because you know you’re trying things. And when you lose them every time you have diminished their confidence in you.

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** So, so much of the editing process is pulling out the underbrush and the stuff that’s hurting the confidence, the contract between you and them to the point where if you can get seven or eight really good jokes in a row, that ninth joke, they’re going to give it to you because it’s like, well, these are funny people.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You can really feel that, by the way, more than anything in movies like, okay, the Scary Movies I did, which are nothing but jokes. That’s just a vaudeville show. Boy, it makes all the difference.

**John:** Yeah, getting rid of the bum joke is a crucial thing. With Big Fish it’s an interesting case because the movie that I wrote 15 years ago, it’s not really funny ha-ha. There are some jokes-jokes in there, and there are things that you could laugh out but it’s not structured like a funny ha-ha comedy.

And so it’s interesting going to a theater situation in which by necessity — by expectation there is going to be more of that. There is going to more of an expectation that like something shouldn’t be kind of amusing funny, it should actually be funny-funny and that it needs to actually get a laugh. And so I’ve enjoyed it mostly.

But it has been a really interesting experience to sort of continuously workshop this. I called it Iteration on the blog when I wrote about it this week is that, you know, with a movie, well, you get two iterations — you keep revising and refining, revising and refining the script. And then you shoot it and then in post you get to revise and refine, revise and refine. But you’re limited to really what you shot. I mean, you could go out and shoot some new stuff, but most cases you aren’t really going to do that. So, you can make the best version of the movie you shot.

And in a television show you can shoot a new episode, but you’re never going to go back and reshoot the pilot. Very, very rarely do you go back and reshoot the pilot.

With this, it’s like every night we’re reshooting the pilot. And that’s a wonderful opportunity but it’s also just like, oh my god, I’ve seen this show so many times and it’s a gift to be able to keep going back in, tweaking it, and perfecting and refining, but at a certain point, god, you’d just love to write the next thing.

**Craig:** Well, for sure. I mean, the nature of what you’re doing seems tortuous on that level. You know, I guess the closest experience that I have is just sitting in an editing room and reworking a scene over, and over, and over. I mean, in film, obviously editorially there is an enormous amount you can do to save something. And just by changing the perspective, or in the case of jokes, a lot of times the problem is too much or too little setup.

And so you can change things that way. It’s just a different changing process. But, for a live performance, I mean, I guess the nice thing is when it’s working you know.

**John:** Yeah. When it’s working it’s great. And I really do miss post-production. I miss being able to sit down at — I won’t call it an Avid, I’ll call it a non-linear editor — but I miss being able to sit down and just perfect things that way because that’s my nature is I want to be able to tweak and do those things. You can’t with like live people in front of a live audience.

But, you get the next night, so that’s been nice.

**Craig:** And one more problem for your experiment is that the lines that you’re trying out are being performed. You know, when we’re working with lines in movies they’re done. They are imprinted. So, I have a choice of four lines and a choice of ways to edit them. But you write a new line and the actor delivers it and you’re like, “Okay, they didn’t laugh, but the thing is I didn’t like the way he said it. You know? Can we try it again but say it this way?”

**John:** If you could just get rid of actors and audiences, live theater would be fantastic.

**Craig:** The best possible world for artists is a world in which no one sees anything but we’re still rewarded for it.

**John:** You know, if you could just be the kind of artist who just writes words, and they print it on paper, and then people buy the paper. Like I want to be that kind of artist. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, no such luck.

**John:** We have no such luck. What is that, like a novelist? That would be fantastic.

**Craig:** We did it to ourselves, didn’t we?

**John:** We did it to ourselves.

Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** Did you forget?

**Craig:** Eh, yeah.

**John:** Mine was sort of half-assed, like right at the very end, too. Because I am in New York City and I thought I had a DVR in my room, but now I don’t have a DVR in my room for like this whole issue and I had to get angry on the phone, but I do have my Apple TV. And on my Apple TV I connected to Netflix and watched both seasons of Portlandia which is — if you haven’t seen Portlandia it’s kind of a must-see.

God, here I am bitching about Orange is the New Black and everyone needs to see that, but Portlandia really is great. And we’ve been talking about comedy, the way Portlandia gets to a joke is just fantastic and wonderful and it’s just a delightful half hour. So, if you are somewhere with Netflix access I highly recommend Portlandia which is on Adult Swim, no, not Adult Swim. I don’t even know what channel it’s on.

**Craig:** Isn’t it on IFC?

**John:** I think it’s on IFC. You’re right.

**Craig:** Well, I can steal a One Cool Thing from one of our Twitter followers, and it is a One Cool Thing, and I’m totally buying it. It is a Microsoft — and you will rarely hear me say, “One Cool Thing, Microsoft,” but I use an ergonomic keyboard.

So, in my office I have a laptop. I have my MacBook, but in my office I have the cinema display and an external keyboard and an external track pad. And I like using an ergonomic keyboard, a split keyboard basically. It’s just easier on my wrists. And Apple doesn’t really make one.

For years there was a company called Adesso that used to make one, and I think they just stopped or went out of business or something. And so I picked up the Microsoft — it’s their standard big huge chunky split keyboard, and it works fine with the Mac. You can map the keys and stuff and it works fine. But, it’s ugly and it’s clunky.

Enter a newly announced Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard which is beautiful looking. It really is cool looking. We’ll put a link up in Scriptnotes. So, I’m going to buy that. The one annoying thing about Microsoft, and it’s like I just wish they would — but they can’t — it’s not even a question of learning; they just have no — tone deaf, they’re just tone deaf.

So, Microsoft has an online store and their online store has like “Featured,” and it’s whatever featured article. Well, they’re not ready to sell this keyboard yet. They keep saying at the end of the week. It’s now Sunday. Maybe it’s available today. I don’t know, as we’re recording this. But, it’s not even listed under “Featured” or anything. It’s just people are reporting on it because they made a press release, but on their own site they don’t say, “Available this date,” or, “Look at this, coming soon.” Nothing.

It’s just — you can’t even find it on Microsoft’s store. Doesn’t exist on their store, until the day they decide it does. It’s just so dumb!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why are they dumb?

**John:** I don’t know why they’re dumb. I think it’s really a fundamental question. If you actually had the answer and a time machine, the computer software industry would be very different.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re just dumb. But, I’m going to buy this keyboard. It looks beautiful and so I guess congratulations and boo to Microsoft, as always.

**John:** [laughs] So, to wrap up the show, I would remind people that if you want to come see Big Fish on Broadway we start September 5 is our first performance of previews. We start real, our grand official opening is October 6. But, for all September and that first week of October there is a discount for our listeners which is almost half off if you use the magic code SCRIPT either at Ticketmaster or at the theater box office, or at the Neil Simon.

Craig is going to come sometime, but I will be here. So, if you’re coming to see the show, let me know. So, you can email ask@johnaugust.com. Or, me at @johnaugust on Twitter. And let me know that you’re coming and what date and I will try to find you.

What worked out best in Chicago, ultimately, I tried to find people at their seats and it was a disaster. But, because I actually look like myself, I look exactly like the person you would see if you were to Google me, people would see me and they would wave, and I would come over and introduce myself. So, that worked out well. So, I look forward to seeing more people there.

Craig is @clmazin on Twitter. But let’s remember, do not send him lists.

**Craig:** Stop it with the lists.

**John:** You can send him things that are interesting. You can send him things that could be One Cool Things.

**Craig:** I love everything that people send me. I just can’t stand the lists.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We are on iTunes which is how a lot of people usually would find us. But, if you’re not subscribed to us in iTunes you probably should subscribe to us on iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes in the iTunes store.

You can find information about everything we talked about in this episode and links to all the other episodes on johnaugust.com/podcast.

And I think that’s it.

**Craig:** Good. Good episode.

**John:** I thought it was a good episode for zero preparation.

**Craig:** And you stayed awake.

**John:** I stayed awake. I had coffee at hand the entire time.

**Craig:** Fantastic. We’ve done it again. We’ve done it again, Magoo.

**John:** Hooray. Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

**Craig:** See you next time.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* The [Ender’s Game](http://www.if-sentinel.com/) movie
* AV Club on [Orson Scott Card’s recent comments](http://www.avclub.com/articles/oh-hey-orson-scott-card-also-wrote-about-obama-bec,101703/)
* Big Fish’s Zachary Unger [sings the National Athem](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEnK734bIpg) at this weekend’s Jets game
* [Happy Endings script pages](http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/07/a-happy-endings-writer-tweeted-a-bunch-of-rejected-jokes-after-the-show-officially-ended/) with alternate jokes
* [Portlandia](http://www.ifc.com/shows/portlandia) on IFC
* [Microsoft Sculpt](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/4617468/microsoft-sculpt-keyboard-and-mouse-aim-for-ergonomic-cool) ergonomic keyboard (from [@jeremycohen](https://twitter.com/jeremymcohen/status/367453556967620609))
* If you’re coming to Big Fish on Broadway, [email](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [tweet](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) us to let us know!
* And feel free to [Tweet Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin), too. But no lists.
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Olivia Neutron Bomb

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/disaster-porn-and-spelling-things-out).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 103 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, three things I want to talk about today.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** First off something you suggested which was this interview that Damon Lindelof did about big movie stakes and story gravity which I thought was great.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I want to talk about this idea of spelling things out in dialogue, which is a thing that you sort of face at every stage in your career. And so let’s talk about what that actually means when someone tells you that they want to spell stuff out.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And, finally, I want to talk about — as we talk about movies, why do we never read stories about what went right? We sort of only read stories about what went wrong. And sort of what that is and maybe how would fix it.

**Craig:** In my bones I believe this is going to be an excellent podcast.

**John:** I hope so, too. I’m a little better prepared for this podcast than I am for some, so I’m eager to get into this.

**Craig:** I am equally as unprepared for this as I am for all.

**John:** Yes, but sometimes you just wing it, and winging it is sort of the Craig Mazin way.

**Craig:** I’m more of a jazz podcast kind of guy. Yeah, absolutely.

**John:** [laughs] Your variations on a basic theme.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** First, sticking with our basic themes, there is always some housekeeping and sometimes some follow up. Some housekeeping: we’ve sold quite a few of those 100 episode Scriptnotes USB flash drive thingies. So, basically if you have an interest in previous episodes of the show and you like maybe caught up with us in the eighties and would like all those first episodes, you can now buy them all on one little USB drive that you can stick in your computer and listen to — 100 hours of me and Craig talking through the things that I’ve carefully thought through and Craig has improvised.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s a lot of haphazard, off-the-cuff theories and opinions.

**John:** We are taking orders for these little drives. They cost $20 apiece. We’re taking orders through this Friday. And then we’ll ship them two weeks later. So, if you would like one of these buy one now because I’m not sure we’re going to make any extra ones, so it’s good for you to buy them if you would like to buy them.

**Craig:** You’re like when Disney puts out the animated movie and says, “And this is it. For the last time ever…”

**John:** Yes. It’s your only chance to buy Pocahontas…

**Craig:** Ever!

**John:** …on DVD. That would maybe be okay. Or Song of the South which they never even actually release.

**Craig:** Song of the South, just as a side note, is watchable on YouTube.

**John:** How nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, the entire thing. And, you know, just as a side note again, I watched it because, you know, it’s a big part of Disney history.

**John:** Yeah, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I was sort of curious to see if Disney was being a little fuss budgety about just pretending it didn’t exist anymore. And the answer is, no, it’s incredibly racist. [laughs] It’s so much worse than I could have imagined.

**John:** Okay, while we’re side-barring here, speaking about incredibly racist, have you seen Pinocchio, not Pinocchio, blah, Peter Pan? Have you seen Disney’s Peter Pan recently?

**Craig:** Recently, no, but I have yes.

**John:** “And it makes the red man red.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I know, it’s bad.

**John:** It’s bad.

**Craig:** It’s bad.

**John:** And that movie is out there in the world.

**Craig:** It is. Yeah, but the thing is it’s animated and there are humans in this movie, [laughs], that are being forced to portray… — It’s just bad.

**John:** It’s the Aunt Jemima problem.

**Craig:** It’s super bad. It’s no good.

**John:** So, let us return from our sidebar. Do you think our sidebar was on the left hand column or the right column?

**Craig:** I instinctively imagine sidebars on the right, but I’m Jewish and we tend to do right to left.

**John:** Okay. Let’s slide back left then and a common question about these little USB flash drives were selling — are the Three Page Challenge PDFs on them? Yes, they are.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** So, again, if a nuclear apocalypse happens and we’re all wiped out, or maybe zombies — it could be anything that actually wipes out all of humanity and our ability to access the internet, if you had one of these little drives and some sort of computer that was capable of reading them, like a laptop that you’re powering through some sort of pedal bicycle in a kind of Gilligan’s Island scenario, you would still be able to listen to all of them and be able to follow along on the Three Page Challenge which is I think really important as we’re rebuilding civilization that you have access to not just our words of advice but the words on the page that you can see why we were giving the notes we were giving about these Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** I don’t know where it would fall on the hierarchy of goals, but certainly it would be probably between procuring food and medicine.

**John:** Yeah, I mean the shelter — the hierarchy needs is shelter, shelter and safety, right?

**Craig:** Yeah. Actually, I think food and water first.

**John:** Yeah, okay.

**Craig:** Then shelter. Then podcast. And then belonging.

**John:** Yeah. A sense of community. A sense of place.

**Craig:** Yeah, Maslow put our podcast somewhere in the hierarchy. I just can’t remember specifically where.

**John:** Yeah, it’s tough. We’ll ask her onto the show at some point to talk about it.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Maslow is a she, isn’t it?

**Craig:** I believe it’s a he.

**John:** I could be wrong. Oh, I’m thinking of stages of grief. That’s a she.

**Craig:** That is a she. That’s what’s her face? That’s Kübler-Ross.

**John:** Absolutely. So, if we could only introduce Kübler-Ross to Maslow and have them combine things, put them together in a merger scenario would be fantastic.

**Craig:** They could discuss their hierarchies and steps all day long.

**John:** Very good. Another bit of follow up. At the same time we are selling these little USB drives, we’re selling off the very few remaining Scriptnotes t-shirts we have left. They’re almost all gone. Almost all of the normal sizes are gone. But if you are small person you’re going to find yourself in luck because as we’re recording this podcast the smaller sizes are what we have a lot of. And like one or two stray extra large extra-larges, or extra extra-larges.

That’s confusing. I’m not saying extra-extra-large. We have one or two extra —

**Craig:** Additional, you mean? You have one or two additional extra-larges.

**John:** Additional would have been the right word to choose for that because otherwise it was confusing. Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Thank you. A very good writer there.

**Craig:** There. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] That one example, Craig. You have been tremendous help on this podcast.

**Craig:** At last.

**John:** Several people have written in saying you should sell other stuff, you should sell mouse pads, you should sell hats. Uh, no we shouldn’t.

**Craig:** Slow down folks.

**John:** I have learned a tremendous amount about the shipping of physical goods through this exercise, and I like to learn new things. And so I feel if at any point we decide to sell more t-shirts, or now we’re selling these USB drives, we’re better at it than we were four weeks ago. But it’s certainly not our goal. Our goal is to make movies and to some degree apps. It is not to sell t-shirts. T-shirts are just a fun little side thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, no mugs. No mugs for you.

**John:** No mugs for us. We have a bit of follow up. Last episode we talked about Daniel Loeb, the hedge fund investor who is telling Sony you have to split off Sony Entertainment and Sony Entertainment is going underwater because of these two big tanked movies. And George Clooney yelled at him and there was all that brouhaha.

A bit of follow up, a listener in Japan name Stevie — Stevie in Japan wrote: “Although George Clooney brings up valid points, Loeb’s actual aim of suggesting spinning off Sony Entertainment from the parent is to maximize the advantages of Sony Entertainment. It’s not that Sony Entertainment is unsuccessful, it’s that the parent company is unsuccessful. He describes Sony Entertainment as a hidden gem and that the Sony parent is relying on it for much of its profit. The other very successful arm is Sony Financial, I think. He suggests a breakup because the parent company is limiting the scope of what Sony Entertainment can do and has made it impossible for Sony Entertainment to be an alternative to the iStores or iTunes, and Netflix.”

**Craig:** Uh…no. [laughs] That’s not what he said.

**John:** Well, basically this is sort of the Japanese perspective. Let me get to the second paragraph. “Of course, Loeb could be playing Gordon Gekko and everyone. He supposes that Sony is undervalued and its breakup values much higher than the listed value. But his comments about the fundamental differences in the business culture between the parent and Sony Entertainment have gotten a lot of press here in Japan.”

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** So, Stevie is telling us how it is being portrayed in Japan where Sony is, of course, a very big and important company.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s been a big subject in Japan ever since Sony bought Columbia and wrote of $3-point-something billion as part of its overinvestment.

**John:** My recollection is Sony bought it from Coca-Cola. Didn’t they own Columbia at that point?

**Craig:** No, I think…I read that book Hit and Run. I don’t remember who… — I think they were just their own company, I think.

**John:** Maybe. Anyway. Since we recorded the previous podcast the Sony board unanimously rejected Loeb’s idea of doing the spinoff and sort of wrote a very detailed letter to Mr. Loeb saying, “Thank you but no thank you for your suggestion.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And then Loeb gave this interview with Variety, which coincidentally he owns a piece of.

**Craig:** Eh!

**John:** And so this is what Loeb wrote. “‘Notwithstanding the fact that the media likes to create a stir, I admire Mr. Clooney’s passion for Sony and his loyalty to Sony and his friends there,’ said Loeb, suggesting that he and Clooney share ‘a common goal’ and that ‘a more disciplined company with better allocation of capital means less mess money spent on bureaucracy and more investment in motion picture.'”

“We are all aligned for intelligent investment and creative content. I believe our interests are aligned in a way he probably doesn’t realize.”

Eh.

**Craig:** Yeah. Congrats on spinning your stupid statement that was either stupid or transparently manipulative. Either way, yeah, you know, we’re not necessarily financial geniuses here in Hollywood but we’re really good at words. And, no, you need a rewrite.

**John:** So, I think it fundamentally comes down to the question of is he really looking to improve Sony Pictures or is he doing what financial people do which is look at, “Can I make money by breaking this thing apart? Can I make money by gluing it back together?”

And there’s a long tradition of that in all corporations, but especially I think Hollywood corporations. You look at what’s happened with MGM and the travails of MGM over the years, essentially it’s been bought and sold, sometimes by the same people, multiple times within a decade. And so they’ll split off the library because it’s worth more separately. “Oh, no, let’s glue it back together because it’s worth more together.”

That’s just what they do.

**Craig:** Yeah, they will do that with companies that are vulnerable to that sort of thing. But you don’t see it at the big, long-standing stable companies that seem very allergic to the idea of fragmenting any part. If anything they want to consolidate everything. So, when you and I entered the business studios didn’t own networks. And now every network is owned by a studio. The consolidation is the name of the day.

This guy, I think what it really comes down to is he doesn’t really care about movies. He cares about whatever is going to lead his stock to be worth more and so he’s attempting to insert himself into a creative discussion about what movies will make more money because he thinks he knows the answer. And Clooney’s response, which was correct, is you don’t know the answer. And if you just shut up and let us do the movies that we do, you’ll be fine. You’ll be better off than if we listen to you. But unfortunately the people that make decisions have to listen to you, so would you please shut up?

**John:** Yes. I think that is a good summary of what Mr. Clooney said.

Speaking of Sony specifically, Sony is a hardware manufacturer that also owns a content business. And there would seem to be natural synergies there, but I don’t know that we’ve actually seen evidence of tremendously great synergies there. Not in music, not in movies. It’s one of those things like, well, this should work better together, and so far it really hasn’t worked better together.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only company that seems to truly capitalize on synergy — a terrible word that was invented a decade ago — is Disney. And Disney capitalizes on it because they’re the only entertainment company that actually has a brand, a significant meaningful brand to the consumer.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, I understand when they take a property that they have at a theme park and they convert it into a motion picture and then convert it back into a television show and merchandise and a cruise experience, this all makes sense because Disney means something to the consumer. But Universal doesn’t mean anything to the consumer, and certainly Sony doesn’t.

**John:** And hardware has not been a Disney strength, either. People don’t remember that Disney actually tried to make phones and they also made like an ESPN phone. And those did not work well.

**Craig:** Right. Precisely. Yeah, because it’s not really — the Disney brand is connected to an experience. A family experience where parents and children can share an experience together in a safe way that doesn’t totally bore the parents to death and delights children.

**John:** Yes. And Sony is not that yet.

**Craig:** No, and never will be, because Sony — even when the marketplace was such that content needed to be played on devices, you know, in a way that they don’t, because even your laptop now can play this content. You don’t need a device. But everybody had Walkman and remember the Watchman. But the problem is that those devices rely on content, not Sony content, all content.

So, for device manufacturers, in fact, the broadness of application is the key, not synergy. Anti-synergy. Standards basically.

**John:** Standards help. All right, let’s go to today’s new business. First off was this article that you had said, “Ooh, we should talk about,” and I agree that we should talk about. So, there’s an article by Scott Brown, which was in both Vulture and in New York Magazine, the article headline was “Star Script Doctor Damon Lindelof Explains the New Rules of Blockbuster Screenwriting.”

And, Craig, why don’t you give me the highlights of this because this was your impetus.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, this is, I guess, one in a series of 14 billion articles that have come out in the last three weeks about Hollywood falling apart, even though it’s not. But it was unique because Damon who actually writes a lot of these movies is pointing out something that for a change is true and relevant.

What he’s saying is the problem with the bigness of movies isn’t what people think. What everyone else has been saying is the problem is financial, that the movies cost too much, and so if they if they don’t succeed they crater the studio and then the studio can’t make little movies, or they can’t make this kind of movie, or they’re going to drive the audience away.

And his point is none of that is in fact relevant or even true. His point is that the problem with the bigness factor is that it’s necessarily infecting, irrevocably infecting the way the stories for those movies must be written.

**John:** Here’s a quote from what he says in the article. “Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world. And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world — you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there.”

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right.

**John:** So, basically by saying like we are going to make a big giant tent pole movie, by its nature we’ve come to expect that the stakes in a big giant tent pole movie have to be sort of save the world stakes. And so to try to do anything that is not that gets met with huge resistance and fear quite early on in the development process. And through successive iteration will scale bigger, and bigger, and bigger until sometimes these movies are kind of absurd.

**Craig:** And when we say that the audience is feeling fatigued because they’ve seen a succession of movies this summer that have destroyed cities or chunks of the planet. The problem isn’t that “Hollywood has run out of ideas,” which you often hear. The problem is that the concepts of the movie require it. And I don’t think people understand this. When you’re a screenwriter you have to write within certain parameters.

Forget budget. I’m talking about creative parameters. If you had me a concept and say, “The concept is five of the world’s most powerful superheroes ban together and form a team to fight a threat,” creatively that threat must be enormous. One of the people on my little team is literally a god, and the other one is so strong that he can throw tanks. So, obviously the threat needs to be formidable or there’s no drama.

Well, what’s formidable? Somebody that’s even more powerful than they. And, well, what would that person do, rob a bank? No. The threat therefore must be concomitant with the hero’s and the heroism. And that’s what’s going on here. So, you know, for me when I read this I just though, first of all, I thought it was important that Damon did it. I was really glad that he did it because he is part of the machine of these kinds of movies in a very important way. But also in a smart way I think Damon kind of issued his own memo to Hollywood on behalf of all of us who are writing movies saying, “How about we become aware that this is a thing creatively so that we don’t just keep doing it blindly? At least if you’re going to make me do it, you acknowledge that you’re doing it.”

**John:** Yeah. Well, what’s happened is that there’s an escalation which is sort of natural where, you know, you were talking about the assemblage of super heroes. And Damon actually calls this out and says, “The Avengers aren’t going to save Guam. They’re going to have to save the world.” And so they can’t have a small challenge. They have to have a huge challenge because you’ve made these things so bad.

It’s also a challenge of sequels in that you feel this pressure to have to top yourself over what you did last time. So, whatever the big set piece was in this last movie, it has to be bigger than that.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You know, in the most recent Star Trek movie, the first Star Trek movie actually had more planets being blown up than the current one, but he says, “Did we have to have a gigantic Starship crash into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it felt like it did.” And that was the issue of audiences approach these kind of big tent pole movies with a set of expectations. And one of those expectations for better or worse has been that big stuff needs to blow up. Big things have to be destroyed.

**Craig:** And that is leading us to an almost pornographic celebration of big stuff from a creative point of view, because the movies begin to stack up against each other. And there is a fear that you’re simply going to disappoint people if you blow up a smaller city than a big city. If I had just watched New York explode, it just seems like a little bit of a dramatic letdown to watch Portland explode. But, the truth is, I think, that we are collectively as an audience quite a long way from that day when we sat down in a theater, saw Jurassic Park, and went, “Oh my god!”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “Look, there are dinosaurs!” Right? We don’t have that anymore because we’ve seen it a lot now. We have become comfortable with the spectacle of impossibility. So, admittedly when I saw Pacific Rim on one level I thought, “Wow,” and on the level I thought, “Eh.”

You know? Okay, so, I get it. Yup, that is quite an accomplishment to show huge robots fighting enormous monsters, but on the other level, not enough.

**John:** I want to step back and look at some of our earlier blockbusters and figure out sort of if we can track where this pattern came from. I’ll start with Star Wars because Star Wars I think about as this classic hero story, this boy rises up and sort of has to learn who he really is and that destiny and he would restore balance in the force. But it does end up with blowing up the Death Star. And it does have that expectation of like that really big thing has to blow up and our hero has to do it. And if we don’t see the destruction of something giant at the end of that movie it wouldn’t be as rewarding.

**Craig:** That’s true.

**John:** I go to Indiana Jones and the end of Indiana Jones you have Indy and Marion, they’re tied there. So, he wants to save the girl, but it’s also you’ve got the Nazis and you know if the Nazis get this thing it’s going to be really, really bad.

**Craig:** But you don’t see anything other than about 14 Nazis dying.

**John:** Yeah, on a soundstage.

**Craig:** Right. On a soundstage. And even with the Death Star exploding, what you didn’t see, I mean, the sort of shocking moment of Star Wars is when they blow up Alderaan, you know, when they blow up a planet. But even that in a way what you didn’t get was what you get now where you’re on the ground and you see people vaporized and the buildings flittering —

To me, the moment I always think of is Terminator 2. To me Terminator 2 is the movie that sort of said, “Hey everyone, I’m so far beyond you. Look what I’m doing. And I’m going to blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb. And I’m going to have this guy be liquid metal. And I’m going to do all this stuff. And I’m going to visually blow your minds.”

**John:** Yeah. But you also brought up Jurassic Park. And what I think is interesting about Jurassic Park is the dinosaurs don’t leave the island. And the goal of the heroes in Jurassic Park is not to stop the dinosaurs from taking over the world. It’s to survive.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And those stakes are very small and relatable and wonderful. And that’s a hugely successful movie.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, by creating a world in which there never was the expectation that they had to stop the dinosaurs from taking over the world, you’re able to keep those stakes really intense for the characters you actually know and care about and not have to destroy the pier. But then, of course, in Jurassic Park 2 you do destroy the pier.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. I mean, look, what happens is as size escalates there is a certain antiseptic nature to the whole thing. Because on some level we understand none of it is real which is the death of drama.

I remember watching the Star Wars prequel, the first prequel, and the movie concludes with a fight between CGI creatures and CGI robots. And I just couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t possibly feel anything. But, I think sometimes of the ending of the first X-Men movie. And that was very smartly done because even though in a sense the world was at stake because there was one of those silly movie gatherings of luminaries, and there was a beam that was going to turn them all into mutants and therefore the world would sort of head towards mutant-ville, it was all focused through the pain of a little girl and this unloved man who had formed a bond with her.

So, the managed to be both big and small. And I think if you can be big and small it’s okay. But if it just is about size, you got a problem.

**John:** Damon is also an interesting person to be talking about this issue with because of course he and Drew Goddard and Chris McQuarrie came onboard World War Z. And the third act of World War Z was originally huge. It was this giant battle in Red Square.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it was apparently not what the movie wanted to be. And Damon in the article says that had he come in to write the first draft of it and had been the writer who got it into production he would have written that version.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** He would have written the version that was big at the end because you write big things for the end. What they discovered is that you stopped caring about Brad Pitt’s character in it and that what you really wanted was to see Brad Pitt succeed in a small, and relatable, and human way. So, all of the stuff in the end of that movie from the plane flight on, all the stuff at the CDC lab is small. And it’s contained and it’s very thriller personal stakes. And that it movie ended up working for, god bless it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I really liked it. And I particularly enjoyed the ending because I felt that once I had gotten through the sequence in Israel which was enormous that the movie itself was a little microcosm of what’s gone on this summer. Well, we just had this insane scene in the middle of the movie, I guess we’ll have to end really insane. At that point it’s so insane you just lose connection with it.

So they went the opposite way when they reconceived the ending and it worked great. And Damon is right; if you, or I, or anybody had come in, our instinct of course is you’re making a movie called World War Z. The climax needs to be WORLD WAR Z, not Laboratory Z.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it turns out Laboratory Z was a little more human and more relatable and there is a good lesson contained in there.

**John:** Yeah. You would never have set out to write the movie with that ending because a lot of the stuff should not work — I’m going to go back and say I don’t think the ending is fantastic. I think the ending is good for what the movie needs to do. But, the idea that you would end up in a lab with a bunch of people you’ve never seen before and that’s going to be the end of your movie is not the idea you would set out to write. You would never set out to write that script that way.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** You would have found some way to make it more relatable to characters we’ve actually seen longer. But, it was a good, salvaged shot.

**Craig:** Well, if somebody had come to you and said, “Listen, I’ve been to the future and I know that you can — the audience can only withstand one massive sequence in this move. Go ahead and write it now. You would save that for the ending probably.

**John:** You would.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s move onto our second topic today which is the idea of spelling things out. So, this was sort of generated by a question that came in through the mailbag, but also based on a meeting I had this week with a studio about this book property to adapt. And it was an interesting difference between this is a book and there are certain things that are on the page in the book that work really well and certain things that felt a little forced because you’re just reading the same words again and again. There are like terms given to certain groups that made me feel like, “Oh no, I’m reading a very obvious parable about something.”

And so in doing it for the movie version I wouldn’t have to be so literal about that, which was going to be really useful. But an issue that we as screenwriters face on every script throughout our careers is how much information do we have to have characters say.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or speak aloud so the audience will be able to follow along with what’s going on in the story. So, a lot of times we call this exposition, or if we have a character who is doing it too much we call him a plot-bot. But it can also be more subtle. So, I want to give you some examples of some more subtle things that happen.

You need to get out a specific thing about a character’s background. So, if you need to know that a character is a nuclear physicist who specializes in quantum gravity. Sometimes you find yourself having to get that spoken so a character actually hears that. Sometimes you need world background — why there’s a giant wall of ice in the north. Or, sometimes you need to make it clear to the audience what the limit of the character’s knowledge is, like, “I never actually saw my father die,” so you know what the boundaries are of what this character really does know and what you as the audience know that the character doesn’t know.

So, I want to talk about spelling things out and, Craig, how we make decisions about what needs to come out of a character’s mouth and what we could just let the audience figure out for themselves.

**Craig:** Well, part of the game is to figure a way to give the audience all the clues they need to solve the mystery. And every little one of these expository moments can be viewed as a mystery. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometime a guy a walks in and he flashes a badge and says, “Lieutenant Smithers, LAPD.” That’s fine.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But sometimes you want somebody to convey information naturally because the two people in the scene know each other and probably know this information already. It’s just that we in the audience don’t. That’s where we start to feel that weird tension. And that’s where we find the clumsy exposition where people start sentences with, “As you know…” And we hate that.

So, the game is let’s seed in little clues that the audience can kind of put together either sub-textually or even if it’s just a visual thing that’s happening and have fun with that so we can do it in a way that is satisfying for them. They feel engaged. However, as a producer said to me just a couple weeks ago, sometimes you have to spell it out more in the script because people are reading it. And if they miss it because they’re not watching the movie and experiencing the puzzle the way it’s intended then they’re not going to enjoy the script as much. Good point.

**John:** Yeah. An example being like do we understand that the character has registered that thing we just saw in the movie? And so sometimes, visually watching the thing, oh, we clocked that he saw that and knows what’s going on. Sometimes in a script you will actually have to have him say or acknowledge that he saw something so that we know that he saw it and that can be frustrating.

An earlier point you made though I think is worth sort of underlining is that we have conflicting goals. We don’t want the audience to miss something important, yet at the same time every scene needs to be about what the actual characters in the scene want to do and are trying to do. And so if you try to wedge something in there that isn’t what the characters would naturally be talking about, that’s going to feel forced. And so finding that balance is really tough.

So, what you say about like a character introducing his name and showing his badge, well I believe that actually could happen in the real world so that I would totally accept and buy that. But no character wants to suddenly reveal that he was fired from his job for gambling. That’s just not a natural thing that’s going to come out. Unless you very specifically construct a scene so that he has to get that information out, which may work fine. But if the whole purpose of that scene is to get that piece of information out, then that character probably isn’t moving the story ahead in the way that the character would want to move the story ahead.

**Craig:** Yeah. And these moments, even when you’re scripting them, you can turn them to your advantage by essentially crafting them as little pieces of surprise. So, I’m thinking of The Ring. There is a moment where you suddenly are surprised by the fact that this man we’ve been watching and this boy who have had these weird encounters that have been mute and silent are father and son.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And if it’s a surprise you’re actually allowed to be kind of overt about it because you’re fooling the audience and then pleasing them with this sense of suspense followed by surprise. But even within a scene, a man and a woman are in an office, they’re talking, and you know that it’s important to your story that they’re married, but you certainly don’t want to have somebody walk in and say, “Hi sweetheart, how are you? You’re my wife. Now let’s discuss business.”

So, there’s two lawyers arguing over something and they finish arguing and then they get up and then she kisses him on the mouth and says, “Pick up dog food on the way home.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just find ways to do that, but, you know, there are moments. I will say that my tendency always is to provide as little as possible and I never get the note, “You’ve spelled it out too much.” I often get the note, “You should spell out it more.” And my response to that note is always, “But did you know?” Because a lot of times producers or just people reading a script will presume that they’re the only smart one. And that’s not in fact the case.

**John:** Some other techniques which I’m not going to say are good or bad for getting this information out, but you will see them used and used effectively can help you. Have a character who is a proxy for the audience who knows as little as the audience knows.

And so Jurassic Park is a good example of this. We have to explain how dinosaur cloning works. And so David Koepp writes this terrific sequence in which the characters are shown this little movie that explains how dinosaurs are cloned. It’s funny, it’s witty, and it’s good, and it tells us everything we need to know.

The only reason that works is because we have characters who are coming into the environment with the same amount of information that we have. And so the new person into the world is often a conduit for getting all this information out. You’ll see this in TV pilots where it’s someone’s first day on the job and they’re being shown around and this is how it all works.

It’s kind of a clichéd scene, so if you can find a new way to spin it, you’re going to be better off. But it is a way of letting us sort of in to what this environment is and what the situation is.

It doesn’t have to be like a person who is brand new into the world. It might be like the “Hey, how are you,” first time they’re ever meeting, but a person who is not normally part of that world. So, someone else who is, you know, the sister who has come into this thing. I’m thinking about like Homeland where Carrie’s sister is a way of getting out information about how the agency actually really works because she’s not actually part of the agency normally.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Finding those sort of proxy characters for the audience can be a useful tool for doing it. But it’s tough and, you know, as you’re constructing your scenes, as you’re looking at the big outline either on the whiteboard or on the cards, you have to always be mindful of what will the audience know at this point. What is the audience expecting to happen next? And is there a way that you can use the audience’s expectation to sort of fill in those gaps?

If the audience expects that like, “Oh, I think they might be married,” then you have to give them a little thing to sort of prove that they’re married. And you don’t have to have this whole long explanation.

**Craig:** That’s right. And similarly if you feel like the fact that they’re married is something that the audience is too easily onto, then go the other way and then surprise. Always be surprising. In a way your relationship with the audience is a little bit like a judo match. They bring a certain weight of expectation to the experience of watching a movie. And your job is to use that weight against them.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They like being thrown to the mat, basically.

**John:** Well, what I would say about expectation is that audiences are always going to have an expectation. They’re going to have expectations about genre. They’re going to have expectations about characters. Expectation about the kind of movie this is that they’re watching. And most of the time you want to meet their expectations, or hopefully exceed their expectations. But make them feel smart. Make them feel like, “Oh, I got it. I’m with it, I got it. I think it’s going to happen. Oh, and it happened. Oh, and it happened, that’s great.”

And then if they’re with you that way then you can pull the rug out from under them every once and awhile and surprise them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If you surprise them every scene they’re going to stop trusting you. So, you have to sort of balance those two things of making the audience feel really smart and also making the audience feel rewarded for closely watching.

**Craig:** Correctamundo.

**John:** So, how do we, I don’t know, how do we advise people to talk about exposition then? What kinds of things do you think you have to have a character say? Can you think of any examples of things that characters need to speak aloud?

**Craig:** You mean exposition that sort of requires that sort of thing?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No, I don’t think so. I think ultimately there’s a visual way to do anything, or a conversational way. Two other people can comment on another person. There are moments, though, where you want them to say it out loud.

**John:** Yes. And an example I think of is when they articulate what the plan is for how they’re going to do something. You love to actually hear what the plan is so that if everything goes right you know what to look for. So, they’re laying out the roadmap ahead. And usually that’s a reasonable thing to do because the characters would need to do that. They would actually need to articulate what the plan is supposed to be.

You have to find the right moment to do it, because if they’re in the middle of it and then they’re suddenly talking through all this stuff that they should have talked about five minutes ago, that’s frustrating. But if going into something you see what the plan is supposed to be, that’s generally helpful and I believe that when I see it in a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. Even then, though, if you watch Ocean’s Eleven you’ll see that Ted Griffin gives you only pieces of the plan. So, he actually again is kind of judo-ing the audience. He’s spelling it out overtly to make you feel like you just heard what the plan is. But you haven’t.

**John:** Well, what he’s done is he’s giving you little markers to show these are components of the plan. And then when you, you know, “We’re going to need a very limber guy” It’s like, well why do you need a very limber guy? We’re not going to tell you now, but now we know like, okay, we should look for that really limber Asian guy.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And then when we see him again, “Oh, okay, that was part of the plan.”

**Craig:** But he also leaves out huge chunks like — spoiler alert — we’re going to build a fake version of the vault and we’re going to film ourselves robbing the fake vault on a soundstage.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And then we are going to play SWAT team guys who come in and he’s literally going to call us and we’re going to rob the bank after he thinks he’s been robbed when he hasn’t been robbed. That’s just simply not articulated in the plan.

**John:** Because if it were fully articulated all the suspense of–

**Craig:** Movie over. [laughs]

**John:** Movie over, yeah. Like, you know, will it go? According to that, the plan was too detailed.

**Craig:** And that’s why I think even when you’re spelling out a plan, don’t spell out everything. Just give us what we need to know but don’t be afraid to cheat a little bit. I mean, stylistically that’s the beauty of editing. You don’t know that the camera was there for the entire conversation. Obviously it wasn’t.

**John:** Let’s move onto our final topic of the day. This is about what went right. And so this actually is based on an email interview I did with Scott Brown who is the same guy who wrote the Damon Lindelof article. So, he was interviewing me to talk about sort of the summer’s movies and sort of what went wrong. And so I sort of challenged him back to say, yeah, okay, I get why you’re writing this article, sort of. But I also never see the articles about what went right.

And so it feels like it’s become the air duct of entertainment journalism is we just keep writing the same story. We keep writing the same story of like, you know, movies cost too much, ticket prices are too high, everything used to be better back when, and Hollywood is doomed. We keep writing that same story. And the story we always write though is what went wrong and we never actually write the stories about what went right.

And, honestly, a small exception to that is World War Z which is one of the few stories you’ll read in the popular entertainment press about like this presumed disaster sort of righted itself. But I think the only reason we’re reading about it is because it was supposed to be a disaster.

**Craig:** And we’re reading about it because they wrote about it and they were wrong. The amazing thing is they create this thing that simply is unrelated to the movie itself. They didn’t see the movie. They’re just creating this thing — oh, there’s trouble, we hear there’s trouble, there’s supposedly trouble, it’s a disaster because we believe it’s a disaster and now we’re saying it’s a disaster so it’s a disaster. And we just read other people saying it’s a disaster, so let’s repeat that it’s a disaster.

And then a news story comes along. Wow! How about that? It’s not a disaster. That’s an interesting story. No, it’s actually not. All you needed to do was not write the first story and then you wouldn’t have to write the second story. You’re now writing stories to answer your own stories. It’s gross.

And similarly this pattern of, well, what went wrong? Uh, I don’t know, the same thing that always goes wrong: some of the movies don’t work. I mean, hasn’t this happened every summer since the beginning of movies?

**John:** Well, I think we’re treating failure as an exception rater than failure as sort of like the normal state of things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s the wild successes that are the exceptions. It’s the things didn’t go as well as we’d sort of hoped they would go is the norm actually. And when they go just a little bit wrong, they still make money. When they go really wrong, then they lose money. But failure is kind of the normal state for what this is. And we don’t ever want to acknowledge that.

So, I think back to the R-rated comedies of the summer. And the R-rated comedies of the summer did really well.

**Craig:** And continue to.

**John:** Hangover 3 did great. The Heat did great. We’re the Millers is doing really well. And I don’t think we’re going to see stories about how amazing these movies did because that’s not a doomsday scenario. There’s nothing —

**Craig:** It’s boring, yeah. It’s boring. People, you know, give them dirty laundry. So, let’s just refer to the book of Don Henley here. That’s what interests people. If it bleeds it leads. And in the entertainment journalism version of that is if it fails it sells. I had to do like a southern accent to make the run.

**John:** Or you can make sails like a sail boat.

**Craig:** Right. If it fails it sails. Exactly. So, you know, and of course underlying all of it is the fact that the chattering classes have a contempt for Hollywood and popular fare anyway. They have a contempt for movie studios. They love movie stars who speak their mind in concordance with the chattering class topics.

But, they hate Hollywood studios and they hate big Hollywood movies and they hate popcorn movies. And so this is fun for them. They delight in it. They get angry when a lot of these movies do well, frankly. They get confused. They’re still wondering why people showed up for the second Pirates movie, you know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, that’s what sort of fuels a lot of it is a general sense of resentment and bad faith combined with a delight in the thought that Hollywood would collapse under its own weight and return to what they believe the ’70s were, the worship of the ’70s, or as I like to put it, the worship of 2% of the movies that were made in the ’70s.

**John:** Yes, it’s that golden age fallacy of all the movies when I was young were amazing because I only remember the good movies when I was young. And you didn’t see the other 97% which were not.

**Craig:** Endless crap. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Specifically this summer there is a lot of talk about, oh, the sequels aren’t working or it’s all sequels and there’s this whole problem. And yet Fast & the Furious did tremendously well.

**Craig:** Huge.

**John:** And I don’t see anybody talking about that now.

**Craig:** Or Iron Man 3.

**John:** Or Iron Man 3. Another huge hit.

**Craig:** Huge.

**John:** You don’t see people talking about that now. They’re only talking about like these last couple of movies that didn’t work or like there are no movie stars left. Well, okay, fine, but maybe that’s because you’re sort of only talking about the movie stars.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Even if you go back to Damon Lindelof and World War Z or –there are a few writers whose names are actually sort of mentioned in relation to their movie, so Joss Whedon is, J.J. Abrams is, Sorkin, Lindelof. I think the only reason you see their names mentioned is because we already knew who they were. We already knew who Damon Lindelof was because of Lost. And that’s the reason why you see his name brought up so often in relation to World War Z and not Drew Goddard or Chris McQuarrie who are just not the profile of Damon Lindelof.

**Craig:** Well, and also Damon chose to talk to Vanity Fair when they did their big article and Chris and Drew didn’t. And so that was part of it, too. And also Damon is kind of an interesting public figure. He’s made a public figure of himself because he likes engaging the media on his movies, for better or for worse. And so they feel like now that’s somebody they can — they’re very simple. I mean, the media’s understanding of how Hollywood works is a child’s understanding of how it works.

**John:** Yeah. But here’s where I’m trying to get to with the point of these sort of star writers is that I really think that’s a carryover from television, is that I think ten years ago we started to notice who TV showrunners were. We started to notice who Aaron Sorkin was, who Shonda Rhimes was, you know, Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams — showrunners.

And so we started to see their names in popular entertainment press. And now that some of those people have moved into movies, if we see that they’re associated with a movie, we assume that they are the showrunner of that movie. And so therefore we want to talk to that person as if they are the showrunner of the movie. And as we talked about before with Screenwriters Plus, sometimes they kind of are a little bit more of a showrunner. They’re doing more than just writing the movie. They’re producing in a meaningful way.

But we associate them strongly with a movie because we actually already knew who they were. You look at Fast & the Furious 6, Chris Morgan wrote that. You never see anything written about Chris Morgan writing that. Look at The Heat, Katie Dippold, I’ve seen nothing about her and that was one of the biggest movies of the year. And that is singularly her movie.

We see writing about these writers because they were already famous. It’s the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Because they already are famous, anything they touch that does really well or doesn’t do well, they’re going to get more press about it.

**Craig:** And ultimately the attention is irrelevant. The attention that we get and the attention that directors get is dwarfed by the attention the actors get. I don’t — I know the media is into it, but, you know, I mean, Brad Pitt and Melissa McCarthy are names on the tips of everyone’s tongue, not necessarily Damon Lindelof or, I don’t know.

**John:** Here’s where I disagree when you say it doesn’t matter. I think it does matter for the perception of what a screenwriter does and what a screenwriter’s responsibilities are. Because I’ve long maintained and even — I don’t think statistically I can prove this, but you will see that every great movie just happened and every bad movie had a bad script. And every bad movie had a bad writer kind of behind it.

And I think that’s become sort of the narrative. Like if a movie doesn’t do well, it’s because of the script. And if a movie does great, you never hear about the script. You only hear about how good that actor was in it, as if they sort of made up all their lines themselves.

**Craig:** Yeah, That’s true. And I don’t know — I guess all I can say is that for me it’s — there’s nothing wrong with, even toiling in obscurity and success and being called out in failure, if along with that the people that make decisions about how movies are made don’t care. That’s the big one. And I don’t know if they do. I don’t think studios really care that Damon gets — that they blame Prometheus on Damon Lindelof. They don’t appear to care at all.

**John:** They don’t care at all.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I come back to that showrunner idea, and I think maybe the closest we really have in the feature world for showrunners has been the writer-director. And you look at the people who have been making interesting movies the last couple years, I look at Rian Johnson who is that guy. He’s the writer-director. You look at Chris Nolan, who even if he doesn’t write everything himself, is very intensely involved in the very genesis of the idea. That’s who — I feel like that’s who we need to spotlight if we’re going to get people to pay attention to the good contributions of writing to movies.

**Craig:** In the end I think that you have more faith in the media righting their ship and doing a good job of reporting on this stuff than I do. I just think they’re dopes. Of course, the feeling is mutual. [laughs] So, there you go.

**John:** There you go.

I think it’s time for some One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Woo-hoo!

**John:** Woo! I can go first or second. Your choice.

**Craig:** You know me, I remain passive.

**John:** All right. I will go first. So, my One Cool Thing this week is kind of self-serving but it’s also hopefully generous for our listeners.

So, I am in New York for 11 weeks to get Big Fish, the Broadway version of Big Fish up on the stage and out into the world, which is very exciting. It’s been a very long nine years to get to this point.

So, back in April we did our run in Chicago which was exhausting and fun, but one of the most things about it was I had a bunch of listeners come to see the show. So, I had a couple hundred people who came over the four week run, which was great.

And part of the reason we were able to get those people there is because I asked the producers to give me a promo code so they could get discounts.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And so I went back to the producers and said like, hey, for Broadway can we do this? And they said, “Eh, maybe, maybe, sure, sure.”

So, I said for Chicago I could only get the discount on the balcony seats and that theater was huge and those balcony seats were a very long way from the stage. So, I asked could we get like for all the seats in the house and they said, “Okay, sure, we can do that.” And not only for Ticketmaster but actually at the box office.

So, now if you would like to come see Big Fish during its first month of previews, you can do so for quite a lot less. Big Fish starts previews on September 5, 9/5. And so for the orchestra seats and for the first part of the balcony, the mezzanine, it’s half-off basically.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** So, $74 versus $150.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** If you want a little bit further back in the balcony, it’s about a third off the price. So, it’s $52 for those seats.

**Craig:** That doesn’t make any sense. If you’re giving them good seats for $75, don’t save the $23 or whatever.

**John:** Yeah, I think you’re probably better off getting the 74. I think you kind of want to be on the floor. Although, so now having actually been in the Neil Simon Theater. It’s so much different than our Chicago theater. Our Chicago theater was huge.

**Craig:** Broadway theaters are small.

**John:** They are small. And so by seats the Neil Simon Theater is about a third smaller than the Oriental Theater is. But by actual volume it feels like half the size because it’s just crammed so much tighter together.

**Craig:** Yeah, everything — but I like being level with the show. It’s that looking down on the show that bugs me.

**John:** Yes. So, I will say that the first row of balcony in New York is probably better than the best seats were in Chicago, which is kind of amazing.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** So, you won’t get a bad seat in this house because it’s nice and small. If you want to come see the show, get tickets because they will at some point not be available. September 5 is first performance. You can go to Ticketmaster Big Fish Broadway if you want to do it online. If you want to come by the theater box office, that is at the Neil Simon Theater on 52nd. The promo code, I believe, is SCRIPT. I will correct this in the podcast if it is not SCRIPT. But that should be the one that gets you your discount.

So, we officially open October 5, or October 6, which is a month after our previews. At that point all the ticket prices go up like ten bucks, but for that first week you can still come and see us. So, please come.

**Craig:** I was spending some time yesterday with Aline and she and I — we’re figuring out how to get out there to see.

**John:** Very nice. I would love to have there.

**Craig:** The previews are — I mean, are you still tweaking, or is this really just about tech previews?

**John:** Previews are still tweaking. The luxury of having four weeks in Chicago is we could do a lot of tweaking. And so the show is I think honestly a lot better. And better in ways that I would never have been able to anticipate if we had gone straight to Broadway. Because there are things you recognize. It’s like as if someone said to you, Craig, like, “Hey, we just had a test screening for The Hangover. Do you want to go back and reshoot? Anything you want to reshoot? Anything you want to do, go for it.”

**Craig:** Yeah, ooh.

**John:** By god, you would love that chance. And so that’s what we’ve had the chance to do. So, we did some tweaking while we were in Chicago, stuff we could do on stage during our limited afternoon rehearsals. But over the summer there were bigger things we wanted to change around and move. We have new songs. We have new ways that stuff works. And that’s great.

**Craig:** But I’m not going to see a greatly different show in previews than I would once it has its official — ?

**John:** No. It will be the same show. It’ll be nicely put together and worth every penny.

**Craig:** Great. Plus I get to sit next to the creator of the show, the author of the book.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That’s pretty cool.

**John:** And next to Aline Brosh McKenna which is honestly sometimes more rewarding.

**Craig:** Always rewarding.

**John:** What I will say, whether you’re coming with the special promo code or jut some other time coming to see the show before opening, send an email to Stuart and let him know that you’re coming. Because if I have a chance to find I will find you. The lobby is so much smaller in this theater than the old one, but I will somehow track you down.

**Craig:** I love New York. It’s tiny. I mean, it’s a big city and it’s a tiny city. Great. I’m looking forward to it. I’m really excited for this. And I’ve just got a good feeling, you know? I’ve got a good feeling.

I don’t look at reviews, as you know. I just have a good feeling about the show. I feel like you’ve done it the right way. You have a great, great partner in Lippa. He’s so talented. And I like that you guys didn’t just like jump from a really tiny — sometimes shows go from — I saw a show recently that went from La Jolla to Broadway. It just seemed a little kooky.

I like that you were in Chicago. I mean, you’ve got a great cast. It just feels like everything is right.

**John:** I think everything is right. And one of the things I’m sort of trying to emotionally prepare myself for is like everything can be right and we could run for ten weeks, or ten years.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And some of that is just out of my hands.

What is strange — and this is my last sort of plug for the show — with a movie, like if you don’t see a movie, well you can catch it on DVD. If you don’t see this show while it’s on stage in Broadway, you may never sort of get the chance to see it, or at least not see it with the A-level team and cast because this is sort of the one chance. And we hope to be running for fifteen years like wicked. But realistically that’s probably not going to happen. So, come see the show as soon as you can.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. Well, I’m very excited. And I’m hoping that I can time it so that I can see the show with Seth Rudetsky, my best friend Seth Rudetsky, but I suspect that Seth sees every show like in the first week.

**John:** Yeah, he probably sees opening week.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll make him go see it again with me. How about that?

**John:** Yeah, do it.

**Craig:** Okay. Terrific.

So, my One Cool Thing is a person. I had a really interesting day yesterday. The producer Lindsay Doran had this fascinating gathering of people at a home in Hermosa Beach. And the whole day was really just a discussion of creativity and it was led in part by this brilliant man named Marty Seligman who basically there are chapters about him in psych textbooks.

He famously coined the term “learned helplessness” to describe the nature of depression. And his new thing lately is creativity and questioning whether or not we can teach creativity, enhance creativity in people. It’s an interesting line of inquiry. And so we had this day where we all just talked. And there were very cool people there. Aline was there. Lord and Miller, the guys who did the terrific 21 Jump Street and also Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Really cool guys. Jen Celotta who is a former showrunner of The Office. Just neat people like that.

But the person that made me the happiest was a guy I didn’t even know. His name is David Kwong and he’s a very unassuming guy, just sort of sitting there. I didn’t know who he was. And he got up to talk about what he did. And he’s a magician. And I thought, okay, that’s cool. I like magicians. They’re impressive. And he was super impressive. I mean, his tricks were remarkable. He did a bunch of close-up magic for us, it was great.

That aside, I’ve seen awesome magicians before. It’s great, but it doesn’t change my world. No, what made me fall in love with this man was that he is a huge crossword puzzle guy. And in fact he has written a number of crossword puzzles for the New York Times. And I don’t know if you know this but I do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day.

**John:** I can believe that. It’s not surprising to me. I didn’t know it, but it’s not surprising.

**Craig:** Every day. I am a crossword puzzle connoisseur. I only do the New York Times crossword puzzles. And I love them. And, in fact, he mentioned — he started to describe a Sunday puzzle he did and I stopped him. I’m like, “I did it. I know exactly what you’re talking about. It was great.” It was an amazing Sunday —

So, the Sunday Times crossword puzzles have themes and a lot of times, there’s always some sort of gimmick. And sometimes they’re simple gimmicks like word play gimmicks. And sometimes they’re more involved. And he created one that was so brilliant. The theme was basically, it referred to Mad Magazine. And in the end you did a fold in.

**John:** Ah!

**Craig:** And I like the Mad Magazine fold-ins to create answers to certain starred clues. It was really smart. I was just very inventive and I love that. So, I got super excited. However, what’s so cool and we’re going to put a link to it is that he does a particular trick that isn’t even a trick. Well, it’s a trick, but god, it’s so amazing.

In part of his show what he does is first he does a deal where he fans the deck and he has somebody pick a card. He doesn’t see it. They show it to the audience. They put it back in the deck and he puts the deck away. He moves onto a bunch of other stuff.

Then, he does this bit where he creates a crossword puzzle right in front of you using words that the audience is suggesting, which is already remarkable. To create a crossword puzzle is a very complicated thing.

Well, he starts with this 15×15 grid and he follows the rules of American crosswords which is that all words must be three letters or more. It has to be rotationally symmetric in terms of where the black boxes go. There can’t be too many black boxes. They can’t be clumped together in any particular way. So, all these rules.

And the thought of just creating on the fly a crossword puzzle from random things people are shouting out is amazing. He does it and then when he’s done, as if that weren’t impressive enough, he has embedded the card —

**John:** The card, yeah.

**Craig:** Running diagonally through the puzzle. And it’s just mind-blowing. And the truth is, the only trick part is that he knows what card that person picked. The other stuff isn’t a trick. It’s just a fascinating Rain Man like ability to manipulate words in a way that is just awesome to me. Awesome.

So, his name is David Kwong. He does magic shows around… — I believe he does a standing once a month appointment at the Soho Club here in Los Angeles. Brilliant guy. Super nice guy. Check out this video of what he does. It’s astonishing.

**John:** That sounds great. Craig, thank you again for a fun podcast.

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

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

**Craig:** Awesome. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* Scriptnotes First 100 Episodes flash drives [are available until Friday, 8/16](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* Daniel Loeb’s [Variety interview](http://variety.com/2013/film/news/exclusive-interview-daniel-loeb-vows-to-end-sony-spinoff-quest-at-least-for-now-1200572856/)
* Vulture: [Star Script Doctor Damon Lindelof Explains the New Rules of Blockbuster Screenwriting](http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/script-doctor-damon-lindelof-on-blockbuster-screenwriting.html)
* Use discount code SCRIPT for a deal on select [Big Fish on Broadway tickets](http://www.bigfishthemusical.com/) (And be sure to [tweet](https://twitter.com/stuartfriedel) or [email](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) Stuart and let him know when you’ll be there)
* David Kwong’s [crossword puzzle magic](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1VPUZDr-fY) will blow your mind
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Bryan Duke

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/hits-misses-and-hedge-funds).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes; it’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, it’s been 10 days as we record this since our live 100th episode. How are you feeling about it now in the aftermath?

**Craig:** Well, I feel great. I mean, we had a great time. That went great. I mean, it’s a little sad now suddenly to be doing it the old way, you know, just you and me, quietly.

**John:** I’m kind of enjoying it though. It’s nice to have total control over things.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** Because what people probably don’t understand is that the live crowd was amazing and like it was great to be in that space, it was a nightmare to edit that episode. And poor Stuart lost his mind because you were the one who sort of noticed, “Oh, there’s sort of a buzz in the speakers.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, before the audience came in, Craig was standing at the speakers, trying to get the stuff to deal with the sound guy to make it all sound good. And we thought like, oh, it’s a speaker problem, it will be fine. But actually it was a soundboard problem. So, there was a hum in the soundboard and so our recording was bad. So, we had to take that out and then we had to make the crowd sound good. And then everything kept falling out of sync.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So, poor Stuart; he had a rough time. But I was delighted with the end result of the episode.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, that aside, and listen, it’s very easy for me to carve Stuart’s pain out of my sphere of acknowledgment.

That aside, it was a great crowd. Obviously the venue was terrific. Bettina and Greg over at the Academy did a terrific job on our behalf. And we had great guests. And it was just a terrific crowd. I stayed pretty late. I didn’t close the place down or anything, but I stayed late talking to people.

Everyone was — with the exception of one person — everyone was incredibly well behaved.

**John:** I do want to talk about behavior, because I noticed also that people were so much better behaved after this than other sort of live things.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Probably because I think these were our people, so they had come specifically to see us. And so therefore when we were shaking hands afterwards, they would do like that 30 second thing rather than the five minute “let me tell you all about how I am and what my life story is.”

**Craig:** Right. Or the “follow you around” thing, or the “suddenly there you are again” thing.

**John:** Yes. People were terrific and I really enjoyed that.

**Craig:** Yes. They were. They were great.

**John:** A few things to follow up from the 100th episode. First off, Matt Smith was the guy who won the Golden Ticket.

**Craig:** Congratulations Matt.

**John:** He had the ticket underneath his seat. He apparently just sent in his script to us, so we will be taking a look at that.

**Craig:** I saw his tweet. Yes, very exciting.

**John:** So, we will take a look at it. If it seems like the kind of thing which would be appropriate to discuss on the air, we will discuss it on the air if he agrees to that. I noticed he also has a podcast, so he may actually be a person who could even join us on this. So, we’ll see how that all works out.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** Today, I would like to talk about some developments at Sony Pictures.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You actually sent me an article and I think there’s two interesting things that have happened at Sony Pictures that we need to talk about.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** I want to look at three Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** It’s been awhile since we’ve done that. And, as always, we have to do some housekeeping. So, here is some housekeeping for today. People have been writing in saying, “Hey, you referenced the Raiders episode, or I see that there’s only 20 episodes available in iTunes, where are all the back episodes?”

The truth is the back episodes have always sort of been on the site at johnaugust.com. But we don’t put that whole feed through to iTunes just because it overwhelms things and makes it hard to sort of process stuff. I asked Stuart and Ryan to figure out if we were to take all the episodes, both the normal m4a, which is on iTunes, or the mp3 which some people need, we took all those episodes, took the transcripts, took all the Three Page Challenges, how much space would that be. And they came back to me and said it’s a little bit under 8GB.

And so I said, you know what, let’s just put that on a USB flash drive so people can buy that if they wanted to.

**Craig:** Nice!

**John:** And so we’re going to do that. It turns out we can actually stick them all onto a little drive. So, if you are a person who has come in late to the podcast and want to catch up on back episodes, or if you just want to go back and have easy reference to them, or have them all in one little place, you can buy that. So, we’re going to start selling that today, as of this podcast.

**Craig:** And how much would that cost?

**John:** That will cost $20.

**Craig:** Ooh! I like it. $20 for the whole back catalog.

**John:** You get the entire catalog of Scriptnotes for $20. And the thing that Nima pointed out — Nima Yousefi, who is my third employee here — the drive itself is actually like a pretty good useful drive. So, even if you just want the drive, you dump all the episodes onto your hard drive, then you have an 8GB flash drive which is super useful.

**Craig:** Normally that’s like ten bucks anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s awesome. And please assure me, as you always do, that we’re not actually really making money off of this.

**John:** No. Basically it will cover our costs and it also pays for stuff like the server and for the other little things we need to do like transcripts, which is an ongoing cost for us.

**Craig:** Does any of it get converted into food for Stuart?

**John:** You know, it probably does hopefully get converted into some type of food, some coffee, some —

**Craig:** I like to call that Stuart Feed.

**John:** Yes. [laughs]

**Craig:** Comes in a huge bag.

**John:** You scoop it out. You put it in a bowl.

**Craig:** You put it in a bowl. It clanks —

**John:** If he’s really good then you sort of wet it down and soften it for him.

**Craig:** Or, well, if he’s really good then there’s like a special Stuart treat. But you can only do like three or four of those a day or else Stuart has gastrointestinal problems. I mean, really, Stuart is best with just his feed, twice a day, in a bowl.

**John:** Yeah. I find it so weird that we talk about him and then he has to edit these podcasts.

**Craig:** [laughs] I know. It’s the greatest! It’s the greatest. And he can’t get rid of this. Because the cool thing about Stuart is he knows that this is the best. This is really why people show up. He is, god, what are we going to do if something should ever happen to Stuart?

**John:** Well, Stuart will become tremendously successful. I mean, that’s a thing that’s going to happen. And so at some point he will move on, and it will be sad, but it will be good.

**Craig:** It will be good.

**John:** Progress is progress.

**Craig:** Do you think one day, maybe like 80 years from now, when Stuart finally passes away, that he’ll just disappear and his clothes will just flop away. And then you look up and there will be a new star in the sky?

**John:** It’s entirely possible that he’ll be raptured. He could be raptured this very week.

**Craig:** [laughs] Stuart would be… — Let me tell you something. The worst part of the Rapture is that we’ll lose Stuart. That’s the worst thing. That’s the worst thing. Most everybody else I know will be right here with me.

**John:** So hopefully the Rapture won’t happen in the next ten days, because it’s ten days from now that you have to order the USB drive.

Basically we’re going to take preorders for ten days and then we will make them and then we will ship them out. And so I can’t promise that we’ll make any extra ones. So, if you would like one of these things, you should do it within the next ten days by Friday, August 16th, that would be. Because then we’re going to make them and we’re going to ship them out and that’s probably going to be it. So, that is the hope to get these 100 episodes out the door in a handy package form.

**Craig:** I just have to say, the thought of Stuart being raptured and the smile on his face as he hurdled towards heaven would just be — I just love it. I just love him just hurdling nude towards heaven.

**John:** Did you see This is the End?

**Craig:** No, I haven’t seen it yet. But I heard it’s really funny.

**John:** Yeah. And so the Rapture, of course, is a central idea within it. And it’s nicely done.

**Craig:** Yeah, I got to check it out.

**John:** Yeah. Jews being raptured.

**Craig:** Ha, ha, ha, that’s ridiculous.

**John:** Also, at the same time that we’re going to be selling these USB drives, we have a few — and seriously just a few — extra t-shirts that we will put up there. So, quantity is incredibly limited; some sizes are there, some sizes will not be there. But, if you wanted a t-shirt and didn’t get in on the t-shirt thing the first time through, there are a few t-shirts left.

We’re also going to be putting up some Karateka t-shirts that we just have sitting around and someone should wear it because they’re cool. So, all that stuff is $20 apiece. It’s at store.johnaugust.com. So, get that stuff if you want it.

**Craig:** Sweet.

**John:** Cool.

Today, let us talk about Sony Pictures and what’s going on with Sony Pictures.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You had sent me this article specifically about this investor guy, but essentially some backstory here, Sony Pictures is Columbia Pictures and TriStar pictures. But TriStar Pictures has been sort of inactive for a long time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** There’s also Sony Pictures Classics, which I think still exists? I’m never really quite clear what they’re doing with Sony Pictures.

**Craig:** Sony Pictures Classics, I think has — I don’t think they’re still around.

**John:** All right. It’s never entirely clear.

**Craig:** Or, if they are it is moribund.

**John:** Yes, moribund. Moribund is such a great word.

So, Amy Pascal has run Columbia Pictures and then Sony Pictures for quite a long time. This summer has not been a fantastic summer for Columbia Pictures. They had White House Down, which underperformed, and After Earth, which underperformed, both of which had huge movie stars and seemed like they would be movies that should work and did not work.

So, this has raised the ire and focus of a man named Daniel Loeb, who is an investor. He runs an investment company called Third Point, which bought a 6.4% stake in Sony Pictures. This is where I get really confused by the finances.

**Craig:** I think in Sony itself.

**John:** In Sony overall?

**Craig:** Yeah, I think so.

**John:** And so he has been pressuring — he has been pointing to the failure of these two movies, calling them the Waterworld and Ishtar of the day, and basically calling for some heads to roll and for Sony to split the entertainment part off and he’s calling for a lot of changes. And you had sent me an article that was George Clooney’s response to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I’ll be honest, usually when actors start talking about things that have nothing to do with acting, my eyes glaze over, or I just get angry. But in this case I think Clooney absolutely nails it, is absolutely correct.

So, the deal is this guy made a choice running a hedge fund to invest in the Sony Corporation. And now he’s making a choice to basically say to the Sony Corporation, “Get rid of your entertainment arm because its ‘perpetual underperformance is embarrassing.'”

And here is what Clooney basically said. He says, “Daniel Loeb is a hedge fund guy who describes himself as an activist but who knows nothing about our business. And he’s looking to take scalps at Sony because two movies in a row underperformed. When does the clock stop and start for him at Sony? Why didn’t he include Skyfall, the 007 movie that grossed a billion dollars? Or Zero Dark Thirty? Or Django Unchained?” Great point.

Absolutely correct. I have no, I don’t — first of all, I think the answer to that is the clock stops and starts for him when it’s convenient, because he’s not about actually saying that Sony “perpetually underperforms.” The people who run Sony aren’t morons. If Sony Pictures lost money year, after year, after year, they would have dumped it a long time ago.

No, this guy is up to something else.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Clooney then says, “How can any hedge fund guy call for responsibility? If you look at these guys there is no conscience at work. It is a business that is only about creating wealth, where when they fail they get bailed out and nobody gets fired. A guy from a hedge fund entity is the single least qualified person to be making these kinds of judgments and he is dangerous to our industry.”

Well, to be fair, a lot of the people that run movie studios also have no conscience either. However, great point in as much as, again, when a hedge fund guy starts saying things like, “Well, the problem is underperformance,” you just can’t believe them. They’re up to something else. And he says what he’s doing is scaring studios and pushing them to make decisions from a place of fear. Why is he buying stock like crazy if he’s so down on things? He’s trying to manipulate the market. Ding, ding, ding, ding! Right?

**John:** There’s your answer.

**Craig:** There you go, okay? There you go. He’s trying to manipulate the market. This is such a load of bull that you’re going to go after two movies, which by the way, aren’t the Ishtar and Waterworld of their day. Waterworld wasn’t the Waterworld of its day, by the way.

**John:** Yes, Waterworld was actually much more successful than people acknowledge.

**Craig:** Correct. Correct. And the fact of the matter is that one massive hit, as we’ve often discussed, will dwarf one massive failure, because it’s repeatable. Simple rule of Hollywood bigness: failure is not repeatable and success is repeatable, therefore in the long run you’ll be okay, unless all you do is failures. Right?

But you can go ahead and make John Carter, and you can make Lone Ranger because you’ve made, now it’s going to be five Pirates.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Plus all of the things that spin off of Pirates. So, this guy — and this guy knows this. I mean, Daniel Loeb may be, as George Clooney says, “Conscienceless,” and he may be a joyless individual who has no appreciation for anything in life other than the pointless existentially bizarre creation of wealth for its own sake. But, he’s not stupid. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so lastly George Clooney says, “If guys like this are given any weight because they’ve bought stock and suddenly feel they can tell us how to do our business — one he knows nothing about — this does great damage that trickles down. The board of directors start saying, ‘Wait a minute. What guarantee do you have that this movie makes money?’ Hedge fund guys do not create jobs and we do.”

Well, I don’t know if that’s quite true, that last part. And I think that board of directors are already pretty scared at these studios. But, no, they shouldn’t be given any weight. Smart people in Hollywood should look at a guy like Daniel Loeb and say, “You are basically just a greed head who is saying stuff that you believe will accrue to your financial benefit. And it has no meaning beyond that.”

**John:** Yes. So, a sidebar here to talk about George Clooney, because I’m very glad we have George Clooney in that I think he’s a very good actor, but he’s also a good filmmaker. I’ve like the movies he’s produced. I’ve liked the movies he’s directed. I like that he seems very interested in making good movies, which not everyone seems to be actually interested in making. So, I’m glad we have him.

And if you can sort of imagine the alternate scenario in which we didn’t have George Clooney, things would be just a little bit worse, and I don’t know who would have stepped up to fill his function, but things would not have been as good as they would be. So, I’m grateful that George Clooney exists and that he’s saying these things.

His point about sort of starting and stopping the clock is absolutely true. You can take the most successful filmmaker, the most successful studio, and if you want to make a little time slice, there are moments of great failure in there.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And that’s just the reality of it all. And so you can say like, “Well, they haven’t released a movie in six months,” well, maybe because they released these big giant tent poles in Christmas and summer and they have no released no movies at this time. So, you could say like, “Oh, this studio has lost money over this time.” Well, that’s just the way it’s going to be.

This sort of fear-based moviemaking is also — it’s everything that is dangerous about this kind of guy is that you have to be able to justify the decision to make any movie. And then the only movies you’re going to make are the things that are considered incredibly safe like the sequels.

**Craig:** And you’ll run out of them.

**John:** You’ll run out of them, because you’ll burn through them and you won’t be able to make more movies in the future. You can’t make sequels until you make originals.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And, trust me, when they made After Earth, when they made White House Down, they would have loved for those movies to be so successful that they could make a sequel.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** But it didn’t happen. Yeah.

So. A different development that happened at Sony Pictures this last week was TriStar, which has been a very dormant label — they release some movies just for the TriStar banner every once and awhile, but I don’t think there really is a TriStar company — now has a new Chairman. I think he’s called Chairman. His name is familiar because he used to run Fox for a very long time. His name is Tom Rothman.

**Craig:** Wait, let’s cue Darth Vader’s theme. [hums] Well, he’s not such a bad guy really. [laughs]

**John:** I was trying to do the Star Wars thing, but I think I actually did the pon farr from Star Trek.

**Craig:** Oh my. [hums] No, he’s not a bad guy. He’s a really smart guy. He’s just a little, you know, he’s very Foxy, well, when he was at Fox he was sort of Fox epitomized, wasn’t he?

**John:** Yeah, he was. And he was a reason why some people didn’t want to make a movie at Fox.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Yes. So, you and I dealt with him when we were making this deal for writers at Fox.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I thought he was smart to make that deal, so I liked him for that. I don’t quite honestly understand this from Sony’s perspective, because I don’t see Sony saying like, “We need to make more movies. We need to be releasing more movies.” I don’t perceive that as being Sony’s problem that they’re not releasing enough movies. But maybe that’s what they perceive to be the case. They’re trying to make four movies a year at TriStar. And I don’t quite know how that’s going to work.

**Craig:** Well, can I ask, because I don’t know the answer to this — traditionally, did the TriStar brand represent a certain kind of movie for them the way that Touchstone did at Disney?

**John:** Sometimes yes and sometimes no. So, TriStar had a lot of romantic comedies. They had some Julia Roberts comedies kind of things. TriStar was actually my first employer in Hollywood. I worked there as a reader for about a year, during grad school. And so every day I would go into the lot — if you know the Sony Pictures lot, TriStar is at the far end of it. And so it’s this sort of big, modern building that feels very eighties.

And so I would park my car and go in and I’d pick up the two scripts that I needed to cover. I’d go home, read them, write my coverage, bring them back in, and this is all on paper. There was no email at that point at all. And deliver my coverage and pickup my new scripts. That was paying my rent for quite a long time. So, I have some affinity and some affection for the TriStar name.

TriStar was actually where I first met Andrea Gianetti who was the executive who ended up buying Go. So, that was fantastic. And it’s also where Chris Lee was — Chris Lee was running TriStar at the time when we set up Big Fish. And ultimately during the time we were making negotiations for Big Fish they merged TriStar into Columbia Pictures so it became a Columbia Pictures movie. But without TriStar I’m not sure that there would have been Big Fish. So, that’s my little like history and memory lane of TriStar brand.

But, I would say they didn’t have as clearly defined a role as Touchstone did for Disney, where Disney was “we are family movies,” Touchstone was “we can do other things, too.”

**Craig:** Right. So, in a case like this, listen, the bottom line is it’s good for us as writers. Sony, the Corporation of Sony, Daniel Loeb aside, has decided they’re going to make more movies. Great. And by the way, a guy like Tom Rothman I actually believe could be a spectacularly good producer. There’s something funny, you know, when you are asked to run a studio and report to the board of directors and deal with things outside of just making an individual movie, or two, or three, or four, it can certainly bring out the best, or worst, or both in you.

I guess it could send you to extremes depending on the kind of person you are. But, I could also see somebody like Tom being a terrific producer because he is a remarkably intelligent guy. I mean, you can see that right away. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever encountered. And I didn’t spend much time with him. But one of the smartest, evidently smartest people I’ve encountered in this business in my time in it. And that always helps.

And then maybe if he doesn’t feel like he’s responsible for delivering something other than a move that — in the shape it’s supposed to be, that it wants to be in, as opposed to a movie that say a slate needed to be in — I think he could be a terrific producer.

So, good for us. Maybe there’s another good producer out there. Maybe there are four more movies that employ writers and that’s terrific. Yeah, I’m not really sure what the point is, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

**John:** I question though whether producer is really the right term for him, because he really is running a studio. So, is it more like the way that Joe Roth was a producer when he was running Caravan Pictures?

**Craig:** I think so.

**John:** So, we talked about Screenwriter Plus the last episode, but this sort of like a Producer Plus, where like you are running a company that makes movies. And so almost more like what a New Line is where they are heavily involved in sort of everything they do in a way that a studio isn’t. That distinction between what a studio head is and what a producer is can get kind of murkiness.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, because, it depends really on if he’s allowed to green light his own movies. I would be surprised if that were the arrangement, but maybe it is. And if he is, then yeah, maybe he just goes back to being the Tom Rothman he was three or four years ago.

**John:** Here’s the question: will his name be on the movies that get released? Because Amy Pascal’s name is not on Columbia Pictures movies.

**Craig:** No. And I would imagine that they wouldn’t be, but yeah, I guess I am sort of thinking of him in that Joe Roth way, Roger Birnbaum way from back in the old Caravan days, or Spyglass, that it is sort of like Producer Plus. But, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.

I mean, I guess if TriStar doesn’t have its marketing department, and TriStar isn’t green lighting movies, and TriStar doesn’t have say a number under which they can just make any movie they want and TriStar has to get certain casting or director approvals from big Sony, then no. But if yes, then yes.

**John:** Yeah. So, looking across the different studios, there are a number of these sort of entirely absorbed sort of second entities within companies.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, I’m thinking of Fox 2000 at Fox.

**Craig:** And New Regency at Fox.

**John:** New Regency at Fox. Although New Regency has completely their own money. So they function autonomously but then they also — they release through Fox.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** New Line, which is now absorbed into Warner’s, they still have like a New Line logo, but they feel like they’re really very much a Warner’s company now. New Line which used to — the executives at New Line used to be listed as producers on their movies.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We talked about Disney with Touchstone Pictures, which I think they sometimes dust off that brand. They used to have Hollywood Pictures. And you remember what they always said about Hollywood Pictures?

**Craig:** “It’s the sphinx, it stinks.” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Exactly.

**Craig:** And you haven’t seen the sphinx in a long, long time.

**John:** We haven’t seen it. Oh, I kind of love the sphinx though. I wish there were some next sort of Tarantino filmmaker who wanted to make movies at Disney who insisted on using the Hollywood Pictures.

**Craig:** I always wondered why the sphinx, by the way? Why would you call it Hollywood Pictures and then put a sphinx on it?

**John:** Well, isn’t that from Cleopatra, from that kind of —

**Craig:** Is it? I don’t know. I mean, but it seems strange. Is Cleopatra really that — is there a synecdoche — am I using that — synecdoche of the — ? Anyway.

**John:** A synchronicity?

**Craig:** No, I think it’s synecdoche. I think synecdoche —

**John:** Oh, so like one thing stands for the other.

**Craig:** Exactly. Yeah.

**John:** Okay. All right.

**Craig:** Now it’s just that Charlie Kaufman movie.

**John:** Yeah, that’s all it is now. And so now they’re going to revive this TriStar label at Columbia Pictures. And, yes, it’s an opportunity to make more movies. And maybe you’re going to make some slightly different kinds of movies than you would make at the other place. Maybe a different person’s taste will help balance it out. Maybe some diversity in there is useful. But, I mean Tom Rothman diversity versus Amy Pascal diversity, is that really diversity? We’ll see

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. Now, is TriStar the horse that runs towards us?

**John:** Yeah. TriStar is the Pegasus that flies up.

**Craig:** Yes. Got it. Remember Orion?

**John:** I remember Orion had a great little logo. The last Orion movie I remember seeing was Silence of the Lambs, I think.

**Craig:** Was that Orion?

**John:** I would swear that was Orion.

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** I can Google it right now.

**Craig:** I know that Woody Allen had movies through Orion for awhile. And I remember, let’s see, Orion…oh, listen to you clack, clack, clack, clack.

**John:** Yeah, I have the loudest keyboard on earth.

**Craig:** I’m doing it on my quiet iPhone.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s see who gets there first.

**Craig:** Let’s see. Silence of the Lambs, well done. Well done.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Yup. Silence of the Lambs, 1991.

**John:** God, I remember sitting and seeing Silence of the Lambs in Des Moines, Iowa. I was with my friend George Vosness. And at some point, like about midway through the movie I just tuned to George like, “This is amazing.” Just acknowledging this experience like, “This movie is so good.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it was so good.

**Craig:** A little side note on Silence of the Lambs. My friend Steve Garrett, this college buddy of mine, he said, “You’ve got to read this Tom Harris book. It’s the most amazing book.” And so I read it, I think, I would say the summer right before Silence of the Lambs the movie came out. Because it came out I think in like January or February of ’91, I think, or something like that. And I think I read it the summer prior. So, I knew everything. I had read the book, which I thought was the most amazing book I’d ever read.

And then I saw the movie and I’m like, “Oh man, this is better than what I saw in my head.” It was one of those things where the movie was better than the movie I saw in my head when I read the book. It’s a perfect movie.

**John:** It’s just amazing.

**Craig:** It’s flawless.

**John:** You look at what they do. I mean, brilliantly cast throughout. Just the right kind of misdirections and surprises.

**Craig:** Everything is just perfect. And it’s also timeless. I mean, there’s not one old fashioned thing about it. Pretty remarkable.

**John:** Pretty remarkable. And even discounting sort of the Hannibal, which some people really like — the TV series version of Hannibal — it had a huge impact on not only how we were making movies for awhile and what a thriller would be like, but you look at sort of the procedurals, the one-hour procedurals and sort of like how that changed. It was just a huge cultural impact.

**Craig:** And you know, last but not least I will say that Anthony Hopkins prior that movie had kind of disappeared for a bit because he had this pretty serious drinking problem. And just fell off the wheel. And then this was kind of his triumphant return in a big way. And I just wasn’t that familiar with him, you know, because I was still pretty young.

And it was just cool at the age of 20 to be hit in the face with an actor of that age who is that good who I just wasn’t familiar with at all. It was pretty remarkable.

**John:** It’s a nice thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, god, man, he was scary.

**John:** Well, folding back through the Orion and sort of like why this sort of matters is it’s important to recognize that studios and labels come into being and then go away. And they rise, and they change, and that is sort of the natural flow of how the business works. You just want to make sure that there are enough places out there, because if there aren’t it feels like, you know, six good studios that are releasing movies, it’s tougher for everybody.

You want there to be some different people out there doing different kinds of movies.

**Craig:** Right. One more advocate on your behalf is a good thing. We have three people who are seeking advocates today in the guise of you and me.

**John:** We do. I think we actually have five, because two of these Three Page Challenges come from writing teams.

**Craig:** Quite right. And for the first time I believe we know everyone’s name. Maybe not the first time, but nearly the first time. We even know somebody’s address, but we won’t read it on the air. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yes. Stuart is very careful to strip out that stalker information from the Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Who shall we look at first, Craig?

**Craig:** You know what? Why don’t we — how about we start with Detroit. Would you like me to summarize Detroit?

**John:** Go for it. I was hoping you would do this one.

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. Detroit written by Robert Rue. Thank you, Robert, for sending this in. So, we open in a hospital room and the title says, “DETROIT, MICHIGAN JULY 27, 1999.” Mary in her 20’s is in bed with her newborn son in her arms and her husband, Ben, a little older in a police uniform, holds hands with her but he’s on the phone. And he’s talking to somebody and he’s very upset. “What!? What the hell for?” He’s upset, he’s upset.

And she asks why. And he says, “Barry quit”

“What?”

“Barry Sanders. He quit.”

We then go to the Pontiac Silverdome and we hear the voiceover of a boy. And the boy is describing Barry Sanders’ career and how he quit the Detroit Lions and why and what it meant for the Detroit Lions. And says, “I came into the world the same day Barry disappeared.” So we understand that this voiceover is the kid that we just saw being born in the first scene.

And then we hear, as Ray Charles sings, we see shots of Detroit. It’s a disaster as you would expect. And now we meet our narrator kids who is 14-year-old Doc. And he’s chasing another 12-year-old kid down, grabs him to the ground, takes a switchblade out, and basically robs the kid.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, what did you think, John?

**John:** There are things I enjoyed about this. And I liked the way of painting the city. I thought some of the voiceover stuff with that worked really well. I got confused at times in a not helpful way. And I also, I wasn’t convinced that I was going to be led on a good path, a good story path.

And so let me talk about some things that did not work for me.

**Craig:** Go.

**John:** Right from the very start, Hospital Room, we get that title card that says what day it is. “MARY GILLETTE (late-20’s) lies in bed with her new-born son in her arms. Her husband, BEN GILLETTE (mid-30’s), in a police uniform, holds hands with Mary.”

So, this is, and he’s on the phone, this is meant to be like the baby was just born, yet I didn’t really feel that in the sentence, probably because there’s a lot being thrown at me here at once.

Let’s maybe focus on the baby first so I know like, okay, this baby is the important thing. And then we will talk about the other people. I keep expecting for like Mary and Ben to become the big main characters. And it’s the baby is the thing that I need to be worried about. So, in some ways if I had just heard the phone call more before it actually got focused on the guy, I might appreciate this a little bit more.

We think like, oh, they got just horrible news, just horrible news. It’s Barry Sanders, he quit, then it’s sort of a bit of a joke. Right now it didn’t really feel like a joke to me.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** How are you reading that opening scene?

**Craig:** It seemed like a joke to me. I laughed. [laughs] I laughed when he said, “Barry Sanders. He quit.” I totally agree that I would love to see a shot of that newborn kid. We’re going to see this in another script in a minute, in another Three Page Challenge, but “lies in bed with her new-born son in her arms,” you need to show me that it’s a newborn son. It’s not enough even that it says hospital room.

I love your idea of opening on the baby. See that there’s the clip on the umbilical cord, or it’s wrapped in that blanket, evidently newborn, you know. That they’re literally — the delivery people are cleaning stuff out of the room, like this just happened, you know what I mean? But, yeah, I laughed when he said, “Barry Sanders. He quit.” That made me laugh. It’s such a Detroit thing.

**John:** One thing, so it’s 1999, so this is pre-cell phones. He wouldn’t be on a cell phone.

**Craig:** No, no, it’s not pre-cell phone.

**John:** Let’s try to think. No, he could be. Yeah, he could be.

**Craig:** He’s on a Nokia.

**John:** He’s on a Nokia. A little flip phone. All right. But then if it is on a cell phone there are jokes to be had about that, too. Because like you’re not supposed to use those in a hospital. I don’t know. I felt like there could be more — I don’t know. I want a little bit more of a meal here and I want to know who I need to focus on and what’s the important thing.

So, let’s go to what I thought was a more successful, well, first something that didn’t quite work for me. Doc starts his voiceover. And here’s his voiceover: “Barry Sanders walked away from football just 1400 yards shy of Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record. From what I hear, no one saw it coming.”

And then it says, “We see a video clip of a heart-stopping Barry Sanders move.” And it describes the move. But what’s weird is we’re in this EXT. PONTIAC SILVERDOME, and suddenly we see a — wait, is this somehow projected inside the stadium itself? Are we cutting to something? If it really is like a new thing, give us that as an intermediate slug line of like the video thing. Because otherwise I feel like we’re seeing it in the stadium. Or tell us that it’s overlapping somehow.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I just got confused like what I was actually seeing on screen.

**Craig:** I agree. You definitely — my impression is that you’re going to want to cut to, that that’s going to be sort of like a burst. And then back to where we are. The other thing is I feel quite — I like that it — Doc’s voiceover, “Barry Sanders walked away from football just 1400 yards shy of Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record.” Period.

Do not say, “From what I hear, no one saw it coming.” That’s just a weird thing to put in voiceover. “From what I hear.” Who are you, A; B, what do you mean “from what I hear?” What do you mean? “No one saw it coming.” No one say it coming, right, you could say, “No one saw it coming,” but we know no one saw it coming because we just saw your dad not see it coming. Just lose that line. Just don’t need it.

**John:** I agree. A thing I liked later on in this page, “We hear the sound of an iPod SHUFFLING through the choices and a faint CLICK.” I know what that sound is and that’s great, too.

I don’t know that we necessarily need all of that sentence. “We hear an iPod SHUFFLING though choices and a faint CLICK.” But anyway, that’s a nice way just to introduce the fact that we are going to be starting a track, in this case it’s a Ray Charles track, which is great. And so we’re going to be overlapping this Ray Charles track with his voiceover and this is all very stylized, poetic, and it feels like some credits are going to be probably happening at the same time, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. That works. Tonally I’m a little jarred, because the first scene is comedy, frankly. And the second scene feels like we’re in The Blind Side, replete with footage of an NFL game. So, tonally I’m a little jarred. Also, by the way, on your second voiceover paragraph, “The Detroit Lions have never played in a Super Bowl.” You could lose that line, too. I mean, voiceover really needs to be as sparse as possible. “With Barry, the Detroit Lions made it all the way to the NFC championship game. Without him, they’ve never even come close.” That covers that it’s also not a Super Bowl.

But I like that he ties it to, “I came into the world the same day Barry disappeared. Let the Detroit curse continue.” That’s interesting, you know. You don’t need to say “a beat.” “Beat” usually works there in parenthesis.

And then sort of continuing to stomp on the tone of the first page, we have what happens on page three.

**John:** Yeah. The bottom of page three is really my issue and my challenge. So, Doc, who is our narrator, so here’s what’s described:

Uh, okay. I now do not want to be in a movie with this kid Doc.

**Craig:** Well, let me say this. I really liked that he says, “It’s not just Barry. People disappear around here all the time. Sometimes I think about disappearing, too, just to find out where everybody goes.” That’s a really good line. I like that. I’m not exactly sure what it means, but I like it anyway, you know what I mean? It just feel evocative. It feels like something a very dramatic 14-year-old kids would say. I did not like that he then actually says “Let me know if you want to disappear” out loud.

**John:** Exactly. It’s one of those sort of poetic lines that can work in voiceover but sound bizarre coming out of an actual person’s mouth.

**Craig:** Bingo, right. So, you get away with stuff in voiceover. Everybody in voiceover is Morgan Freeman. Everybody is Maya Angelou. But the second you start talking like Maya Angelou in the street, they’re going to arrest you for being insane, unless you’re actually Maya Angelou. And even she probably doesn’t do it over lunch.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, that doesn’t work. There is a version of this story where you’ve got this 14-year-old kid who is an absolute criminal and he is, I don’t know, he’s going to join the football team and he’s going to find his way. Who knows? I don’t know where it goes from here. I’m not willing to judge it just because Doc is a jerk. Not yet, you know. I need to see sort of where it goes.

But, I guess just from a craft point of view, it was just that line. Just dialogue wise, that’s a no-no.

**John:** So, to me, when I had a voiceover philosopher talking to me for two pages, and then suddenly he’s pulling a knife on some 12-year-old kid and throwing him down to the ground, I have this cognitive dissonance that makes me not trust the storyteller.

**Craig:** You know, it’s funny. I had the other reaction. I kind of liked that the omniscient wise narrator turns out to be a jerky kid. That to me was exciting. So, there you have it. This is why we need more than one person running a studio.

**John:** Exactly. Maybe Tom Rothman would like the script and Amy Pascal wouldn’t. I can guarantee you Amy Pascal would not like this script.

**Craig:** Yeah, Tom’s not going for it either. But, you know what? That’s okay. When I run my studio I’ll go for it unless I don’t like what’s on page four.

**John:** Mm-hmm. It’s all about page four.

**Craig:** Yes, but Robert I think there was really good stuff in here, Robert. You just need to kind of clean up a little bit of these — some of it is a little overwritten, I guess.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree. And I think there is something provocative and interesting that you’re setting up here. It’s a matter of just getting it to, you know, making sure we are with you on every page and every sentence.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Let me summarize our next script which is Blood from a Stone, by Catherine Grieve & Dylan Wagner.

We fade in on a desert settlement at dawn. It’s a world beyond repair. A solitary ghost town tucked against the sandstone canyons. We’re going to be following a lone child who is six years old who hurries through the square. And we hear this — we see other inhabitants of the town in a straight line, talking amongst themselves.

We hear this thud, this thud keeps happening. He’s going to follow this line through. He comes up to his mother. She clutches him close, but she tells him to sort of stay silent. There is a woman buried up to her chest in the dirt. And the people in this line are each taking a turn throwing a stone at her. And so we see one woman stop. This is Aponi.

She steps forward through a pile of stones, searching for blunted edges. She throws the stone and the women’s temple, dazing her.

We then go to see sort of more of the town life. Various women gossiping, going about their lives, gathering water. There are men with guns, they’re goons, who wander through the settlement as protection but also as sort of authority. As we close the story down, as we get to the end of these three pages, we are at the old town hall with a semicircle of seats. And the nine elders of the town, the Council. And right as we end at page three, Elder Pulvers, who is the most senior of these people, is about to speak.

I should say this: throughout these three pages, no one has spoken the whole time, so this is just a silent sequence.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig Mazin, tell me about this.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Well, I really struggled with this. I really struggled through this. And I’ll go through the reasons why, but here’s just a large bird’s eye impression. There was something about the rhythm of the way that these two wrote this that was so boring to me.

You know when you’re writing without dialogue you can make it really interesting, but it just seemed like everything kept starting dry. Every new bit just was like, there was no flow to anything. And I mean, we’ll go through why, but it just felt like everything just stopped and started, stopped and started, stopped and started. And nothing seemed exciting. Everything seemed sort of weird and lifeless.

I’ll just walk through some, first of all, the amount of facts not in evidence problems in this is just remarkable. I mean, let’s just start. “The world beyond repair.”

So:

Uh, what?

**John:** Yeah, so here’s my biggest issue with this. I don’t know if I’m on Tatooine, or if I’m in Iraq, or if I’m in Afghanistan, or some sort of African village. I have no idea where I am.

**Craig:** I don’t know what year it is. I don’t know, is this Mad Max? Is it post-nuclear apocalypse? Is it Afghanistan right now? Is it Detroit? [laughs]

**John:** It’s Detroit. [laughs] The big surprise on page four, they pull up, “You’re in Detroit.”

**Craig:** No, I mean, but no matter, the fact that we don’t know where we are in and of itself isn’t necessarily a crime, because we may find out in an interesting way on page four. But, when you start your script, showing me a desert settlement and then telling me “the world beyond repair,” I don’t know what the rest of the world looks like at all. You can’t say that.

“A solitary ghost town tucked against sandstone canyons.” Fine

**John:** Again, Tatooine.

**Craig:** Right. Now basically Bartertown from Mad Max, rundown buildings, we’ve seen this world. The Book of Eli town. We’ve seen it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then there’s a lone child and we’re using this child the way that people use waiters to begin banquet scenes in movies. It’s basically just a kid running through so we could see other stuff. And either this lone child, six years old, is going to be very, very important — I doubt it because the character’s name is Lone Child — or you’re just using a gimmick and you’re forcing me to watch the gimmick for an entire page. Gimmick kid, you know, is not worthy of my attention.

The problem is you know that gimmick kid is just gimmick kid. I don’t. I’m sitting here waiting for something to happen to this kid. And if the kid is important, give him a name, and then I’ll feel a little bit better about it. But there is an entire page to reveal this woman buried in her chest getting stoned to death, Sharia Law style.

And it was exhausting to me, frankly.

**John:** Yeah, it was.

**Craig:** Exhausting.

**John:** So, here’s another problem of lack of specificity. Halfway through page one, “He sees the settlement’s INHABITANTS, waiting in a straight line, softly MURMURING amongst themselves.” So, inhabitants? Well what is an inhabitant? I don’t know what these people are like. How are they dressed? Are they men, are they women? Who are these people “softly murmuring amongst themselves?”

If they’re talking, they’re talking. So, are we going to hear what they’re saying, or we’re not going to hear what they’re saying?

**Craig:** Right. Is it English?

**John:** Is it English? Like what language are we in now?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that just made me lose a little bit of faith in the script and it was only a half a page finished.

**Craig:** Yeah, keep going.

**John:** So,

Well, am I going to know that’s his mother? I don’t know that we’re going to know this.

**Craig:** Facts not in evidence. [laughs]

**John:** Exactly. It’s a woman who does that. So, unless she says something to him or we get some special information, but we don’t even know that this boy is important. So, this boy doesn’t have a name. And the mother is just a mother. So, I don’t know what this is.

Finally on page two we get a character with, okay, well actually the start of page two I need to point something out.

**Craig:** Yeah, here we go. [laughs] Stone in stone.

**John:** Yeah. “Her STONE FACED HUSBAND (60s) stands a few yards away.”

**Craig:** By the way, facts not in evidence. Don’t know that he’s her husband.

**John:** But, “Her STONE FACED HUSBAND (60s) stands a few yards away.”

**Craig:** Yeah, and…

**John:** “A STONE strikes her in the face, and she gasps for breath.”

**Craig:** Oh boy. How do you miss that?

**John:** Yeah, so you’re using stone in two very different ways, not in a clever way, just sort of like, “What? Huh?”

**Craig:** It’s just jarring. Here’s the thing: you could make a movie and the movie could be awesome and it could have a “stone faced husband,” and then the next thing could say “a stone strikes her in the face.”

The problem is for the people reading your script, when they see stuff like that they think, “Well, this writer, either they’re a little tone deaf or they don’t care.” Literally the word “stone” is capitalized right underneath the other stone.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** So finally we’re going to meet a woman named Aponi. So, this is who we get to know Aponi.

But, we haven’t been given any — the filmmaking and sort of the words on the page haven’t given us any reason to why we’re going to focus on her rather than all the other people who we’ve seen in this line. And so she needs to do something. There needs to be some reason why we’re story-wise focusing on her. So either something needs to, an interaction needs to happen with her, she needs to take some action that puts the spotlight upon her, because just like the camera revealing her as the next person ain’t gonna cut it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Okay, so you’ve had a little boy, a mother, sorry, lone child, mother, woman, stone faced husband, thrower, teen boy. Oh, boy, all right. So, this is like a procession of inhabitants. Now this stoic woman — which by the way is the same thing as stone faced — she gets up and if she picks up this rock and she has this moment, “Their eyes meet, the woman stops digging as they stare, lost in a moment.” If that woman buried in the ground mouthed her name, something, so that we knew that this woman was something. You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Also, again, just facts not in evidence, “A stoic woman, slender and tanned from a life spent working,” we don’t know that. She could just be thin and in the sun. “Seemingly without affect.” Okay, seemingly doesn’t work. [laughs] And again, you’re cheating. Either without affect or not.

**John:** I will say that if Aponi is a major character, you are allowed to cheat on her character description to some degree. If there hadn’t been so much cheating already happening.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s why. I’m just so cheat, you know, yeah.

**John:** So, middle of page two.

So, I had to read this like three times. So, “lost in a moment. Before Aponi hurls the stone.”

**Craig:** Right, exactly.

**John:** Wait, is it a time jump? What will happen, really the before needs to be in the previous sentence so we know that Aponi hurls the stone. But the before, that’s a weird sentence fragment that makes me think we’re going to do a time jump here.

**Craig:** Also, let me give you another thing that’s impossible to shoot. “Aponi steps forward to the pile of stones, searching for blunted edges.” How will we know? Please tell me how I know on screen someone is searching for blunted edges.

**John:** So, here’s the confusion. Is she trying to find a stone that will hurt her more or will not hurt her more? That what we need —

**Craig:** Even if, you’re absolutely right, that is a question. Like even if I knew — even if you flashed on screen, “Aponi is searching for blunted edges,” it would still leave us with a question. The problem is we’ll never even know that anyway. All we’re going to see is a hand mushing through stones, [laughs], see.

**John:** Let me give you an example of how we could do that if she wanted to find a less hurtful stone. She could pick up a stone and it’s like pretty small, and then someone could take it out of her hand and give her a bigger stone.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that would let us know that she did not want to hurt someone.

**Craig:** Or she could pick up a stone that’s sharp, look at the woman, then put it down and take a smoother. Then a choice has been made. But, come on.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right, there’s a lot of impossible things here. Yes, before Aponi hurls the stone, very strange. “It finds the woman’s temple, dazing her.” The stone didn’t find. I mean, you throw a rock at somebody, it hits them, you know.

**John:** I do love when things like, “It finds purchase,” like I love that sort of archaic writing, but in normal prose. It just doesn’t work in screenwriting. Screenwriting is very much the present tense and written like it is today.

**Craig:** Impact. A rock hits someone in the temple. That’s impact. Write with impact.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “The next stone lands, knocking the woman unconscious —
And the dead rap continues behind…”

What’s that?

**John:** I think that’s the thump, thump, thump, thump.

**Craig:** Oh, okay, that’s weird. It’s just a weird phrase anyway, “dead rap.”

**John:** I want to point out word choice in the next block here. “A gaggle of 30 women.”

**Craig:** Oh boy.

**John:** Gaggle is a funny word. Gaggle makes me think, ha, ha, ha, giggle.

Don’t use gaggle in a serious situation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So a group of 30 women can be better than a gaggle in that situation.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** Gaggle or geese. Another funny word: goons.

**Craig:** Yeah, what is that?

**John:** Goons is funny. G words are kind of funny. And they’re not meant — honestly, goons might kind of okay, but just don’t put it out there by itself.

**Craig:** I’ve got to go back to another one. There is so much going on here. “The entire settlement bustles.” So, you say, “EXT. SETTLEMENT – TOWN SQUARE — DAY” Settlement is a place, right? I know you could also say it is the corpus of people themselves, but “the entire settlement bustles” is an awkward sentence. These sentences are weird.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, “Maybe 500 people in all.” Maybe? Maybe? [laughs] Tell us! How many people live here? Maybe? Eh.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, you know what, the entire settlement bustling. Every single person is bustling.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** D’oh! All right, yeah, goons is the worst possible word here. A good is an old fashioned heavy that works for a mobster. A goon is like a weird guy who’s the fifth banana in a gang. You know? This is different. And there’s no specificity to goon at all. Goon.

“Protection from dangers without and within.” How do we know that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Now we have, and see, this is what I meant by also this kind of weird rhythm. So, we keep starting and stopping. We had the scene with the rocks. Then a gaggle. Then the settlement. Then the patrols. Then a collection of cars. Then a well. Then a settlement. Then a hall. It’s just uh-uh-uh nothing is happening. I feel like we’re looking at still photos almost.

**John:** I honestly feel like, you know, I took a trip to the Middle East and here’s all my slides. I’m going to click through them one at a time.

**Craig:** Yeah! It’s like a bad slide show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s like a bad slide show here. There’s nothing that’s leading us anywhere. Like how do you cut — we talked about transitions — what’s the cut from this settlement outside to suddenly a truck depot, which by the way, how would will we even know where we are at that point? We’re suddenly at a truck depot.

I guess if we saw the truck depot or we saw somebody running with gasoline toward a truck depot, “a collection of late model vehicles.” Please describe what that means. Late model what?

**John:** Well, at least I knew we weren’t on Tatooine anymore, because they were like normal trucks and there were no Starfighters.

**Craig:** Right, so like 2013? 2012? Huh? I mean, “a collection of late,” this is really where my mind started going kazonky. “A collection of late model vehicles arranged in a row. Relics of an old world.” Explain — please to explain. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, so late model, so are we in the future? Maybe we’re in the future.

**Craig:** If we’re in the future, how are they late model? They’re ancient. They’re ancient — like a collection of ancient 2010-era vehicles, or 2000-era vehicles arranged in a row. Relics in an old world. I’d understand that. But if they’re late model vehicles, how are they relics of an old world? What’s happening?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then…oh, I’m sorry. I know.

**John:** I feel like we’re just piling on. Because, a lot of this doesn’t work. So, I want to go back to sort of — there was some instinct to write this thing, because I believe they’ve written probably more than just these three pages. They wrote this together. There was some instinct and some idea that caused them to write these things.

And so I want to tip them into a place in thinking about how to get those ideas or those instincts into something that is going to look good on a page.

So, they have this instinct to write a story of a woman buried in the sand and people throwing stones at her. That’s a very provocative image. And I’ve seen reports of that, but I haven’t actually seen that portrayed on film, and that’s a very potentially powerful thing to start with in a script.

But, I don’t think you start that kind of story with a kid running around in sort of the clichéd “let me show you the town” kind of way. I think you have to kind of get to that image. And then when you’re painting the nature of the town, you have to anchor us places and let us know what kind of world, what kind of movie this is. Is this Iraq, is this Afghanistan, is this Somalia? Where are we? Because we’ll get incredibly frustrated, just like Craig and I did, if we don’t know by that point.

You can start with this image that is sort of like you have this limbo kind of place. That’s great. I think the woman in that thing could be great. You can get right to your woman Aponi. But then Aponi should be our guide for what the rest of this world is like.

**Craig:** Yeah, look, there is always, there is story and there’s screenplay. And the story here may be spectacular. The problem that Catherine and Dylan have is a simple craft problem. They are not conveying what they see appropriately through the words here. And so the problems that they need to address, aside from story problems, which aren’t necessarily in evidence here — problems of tone, for instance, again, goons whacking each other upside the head, two pages after a woman is assassinated with rocks.

So, there’s problems of tone. There’s problems of facts not in evidence, which is a real situation. And in general there seems to be a disconnect between what the purpose of a screenplay is and what this screenplay is doing. Really ask yourselves guys how will people shoot this — how can they shoot what we’ve written? And if we really want them to know something, how can we put it in the screenplay in a way that they can actually shoot?

But, more than that, don’t be boring. Don’t be boring. And, you know what? Unfortunately this was boring.

**John:** Yeah, and I do wonder if sometimes it’s a writing team problem with this. It doesn’t feel like it has one voice. And maybe that is a problem of sort of these two writers trying to come together and negotiating word-by-word how they’re going to do stuff. But it didn’t feel like it was one — I didn’t have the confidence that I was hearing one person speak.

**Craig:** I will say that it’s certainly better than the first three pages I ever wrote. [laughs]

**John:** Ha!

**Craig:** So there’s that!

**John:** There’s always that.

**Craig:** Yeah, don’t let this define you. The fact that we didn’t like these three pages doesn’t mean that you’re bad writers. It just means that you’ve got work to do on these three pages.

**John:** Let’s end on a happier note and let’s talk about — I hope it’s a happier note — The Dead Never Die, by Sarah Carman & James Roland.

**Craig:** It is. It is a happier note.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Quick summary here. We open on 1865. We’re out somewhere in the Old West. And a little girl, Loretta, eight years old is holding water and she’s holding water for her father, Moses, 50 years old, who’s digging a hole for a dead pig. And while he’s digging and drinking another pig keels over and dies and he starts digging another hole.

They’re in Central California and a lone rider approaches their home. His name is Frank Martin, he’s in his thirties. He enters their house, they’re not in the house, they’re away by the pigs. And he goes up into Moses’ room where he finds all these crates and chests full of stuff and he’s looking for something.

And Loretta sees some light coming from the room where this guy Frank has pushed a little wind chime around. And she goes into investigate. Frank spots a case, like a mysterious case, painted blood red with strange symbols. The little girl comes in. He gets her. He doesn’t hurt her, he just says, “Don’t scream or make any noise.”

And Moses realizes she’s gone. He heads into the house. And we realize that while Moses is entering the room that Frank is looking for a set of six shooters that have ivory handles. Moses enters. Frank draws his gun. Loretta knocks Frank’s arm away and the shot goes wild.

**John:** I enjoyed these three pages.

**Craig:** Me too.

**John:** So, let’s talk about sort of, I hate to say specificity, but like I knew the world that we were in. It was familiar, but it was just familiar enough. I sort of know what 1865, I know what the West is supposed to feel like. Our first image is “Two CORN HUSK DOLLS lie forgotten on a tree stump, dressed as boy and girl, a narrow gap between their outstretched hands.” Even that’s not necessarily and important image for the story overall, it puts me in a time and a place that I sort of get like corn husk dolls. That’s useful.

The dad is burying a pig. I get what that is like. This isn’t a rich — there are issues here. Some drama is going to be happening here.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** One thing, for simplicity sake, I think you can cut out Loretta’s from all the scene headers, because every scene header says “EXT. LORETTA’S HOMESTEAD — DAY.” We don’t need, just homestead, we don’t need Loretta’s homestead. There’s no other homesteads we’re going to see.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** So, just give us HOMESTEAD. We don’t need to know anything more important than that. Also Loretta’s made me think that it was an older character at the start that I needed to, so.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I like that Loretta takes some action. She’s curious. She’s a good girl who is there to help her father but she sees something. I love that she sees the reflection of the light in the room that makes her curious to go in there.

**Craig:** Yes, that’s how we connect things. Yup.

**John:** That’s terrific. And so early on, so this guy, this thief sort of comes to the — Frank comes into the house. Right away, near the top of page two: “Frank spots a case covered with a BURLAP SACK and whips it off, revealing: a STEAMER TRUNK, painted blood red, decorated with STRANGE SYMBOLS and locked tight. Yep, that’s the one.”

So, come on, you give me a trunk with strange symbols on it in an Old West setting, I’m intrigued. I really want to know what’s inside that chest. I want to know what kind of — I have enough information that I know what the Old West is, and now I think this is Old West Plus. There could be something supernatural happening here and I’m desperate to know what it is.

**Craig:** Yeah. These are really well done pages. The first thing that, yeah, I love the corn husk dolls, and I suspect that they are, as is often the case, thematic. There’s some thematic value there. But I really liked that while he’s digging this pit for this dead pig another pig wavers and falls to the ground. Even if that’s just meant to be like, “Ugh, life sucks out here. My pigs are sick,” in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “What’s going on with the pigs?” Something is up with the pigs.

**John:** There’s some poison. And now that we know that there’s something supernatural…

**Craig:** Well, and also the title is The Dead Never Die. And I’m thinking, hmm, virus, animals, dead, zombies. Who knows, right?

But something is up. I just like that it just — but the point is the writers just allowed that to happen and had faith that that was going to interest me. They didn’t make a big deal out of it. In fact, the main character just sighs and continues digging, as is appropriate.

The other thing that I really like, first of all, I always like it when characters, you know, little things, little writing things like “This must be the place. Frank begins his search.” That’s good. And I like that they’ve put it in italics, that’s smart.

**John:** Not only italics. They put it in Courier Prime. That’s why it looks so good. This whole script is in Courier Prime.

**Craig:** You’re so easy. You’re so easy.

And, yes, when he gets to that moment at the top of page two where he reveals the steamer trunk, what’s great is that they spent the first page not doing anything like that, just setting us really grounded in this world of the West. And now a new little thing. But then it’s right back to the rest of the world. The dialogue is sparse but makes sense.

I learn about Frank’s character through his actions, not through action description telling me what I’m supposed to think about his character. The action description doesn’t say anything about this dude.

He is 30. That’s what it tells us. That’s it. He’s 30. And then everything what I find out, he’s looking for something but is he bad? Well, I know this much, I know he’s confident. And then when he sees her and he grabs her, he’s actually okay with her. Right? Yeah, he threatens to kill her, but he doesn’t. Right?

**John:** At least on this page he doesn’t.

**Craig:** That’s right, he doesn’t. So, he’s not all bad. I have a feeling that Frank is not all bad.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’re probably right.

**Craig:** And the fact that I have a feeling about that from this is good. That’s a good sign. And then, “I bet a little girl like you has poked her nose into every nook of this house. I bet you know about every secret thing. Am I right?” It’s interesting. It’s just good stuff.

And then Moses is going to come in and then our first gunshot goes off at the bottom of page three. It’s tight, good writing, kept me interested. I really liked it.

**John:** I really liked it a lot. So, if I had small little points of suggestion, on page one, the description of the interior of the house. “The house is a thief’s paradise, crammed with dusty ANTIQUES and odd, exotic KNICK-KNACKS.” Thief’s paradise did not work for me. And the reason why is I don’t know if that’s meaning that the people who own the house are thieves or that this guy is a thief.

I would scratch that out because the next block of description we get into Moses’ bedroom. “The room is a dragon’s lair of treasures.” Dragon’s lair of treasures is a much better description. I know exactly what that is that you’re talking about there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, I would get rid of that thief’s paradise.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** But the fact that I can focus on such small little things is because it’s all really nicely done. And in terms of cheating, the italics that they’re using here, “STRANGE SYMBOLS and locked tight. Yep, that’s the one.” Yup that’s the one is completely a playable moment.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes!

**John:** We know how to do that, so that’s not cheating to say that there.

**Craig:** No, you can act it.

**John:** That’s a completely actable moment.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, just really well done you guys.

**Craig:** Same thing, “Did he see her?” Right? That’s actable. That is in fact how directors direct actors. There’s nothing wrong with writing the subtext like that.

**John:** If it’s a playable moment.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** So, let’s talk about this as what we think the script might end up being. Because people will come to us saying, “Oh, should I write this script, should I write that script?” This seems to be like a supernatural western. Are supernatural westerns the hottest thing in the world right now? No. And this could be a challenge to make. This could be an amazing read. And you should focus on writing the script that you really want to write, because I think they really love what they’ve written here. And I think the script is going to probably be great.

Even if they can’t get this one made, I bet people are going to read it and like it. And people reading and liking your stuff is tremendously helpful in terms of getting work and getting other things happening in your life.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** So, I suspect we will hear more from Sarah Carman and James Roland at some point in the future.

**Craig:** I agree. And you know, remember folks, it’s a marathon. Scott Frank just finished — he’s editing A Walk Among the Tombstones. That’s a script that he wrote in 1997 or something. Sometimes these things just sit in a drawer for awhile until they get cool again. And so okay, yeah, supernatural westerns, maybe there’s a stink on that right now. No biggie. There’s not a stink on good writing.

**John:** No, never is.

**Craig:** Never. Never. So, somebody has something that they think you guys would be great at, they’ll hire you. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Cool. It’s time for One Cool Things. Craig, I would like to go first.

**Craig:** Do it.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is this movie called The Spectacular Now which opened this past weekend. It is written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, based on the novel by Tim Tharp and directed by James Ponsoldt who is actually one of my WGA mentees sort of people. I got assigned to him and he’s terrifically talented. He also did Smashed, which was a great movie.

So, everyone should just go see this movie. These are the same guys who did 500 Days of Summer.

**Craig:** Yeah, very nice guys. Well, I’ve met Scott. Scott’s a really nice guy.

**John:** Maybe Michael could be just a total jerk.

**Craig:** He might be, but Scott is a super nice guy.

**John:** Yeah. And so you can hate them for their success, but you could also celebrate them for making good movies. And so they’re known as sort of book adapters at this point. They’re also doing The Fault in our Stars, which will probably be a giant hit coming up down the road. But, the reason why you should see The Spectacular Now is it’s a movie without a villain really. It has a classic sort of two-hander structure where each of the main characters is the other character’s antagonist. They’re causing change in each other.

Amazing performances by Miles Teller.

**Craig:** Oh, Miles Teller is cool. I like that guy.

**John:** He’s great. And Shailene Woodley who is great and honest and sort of simple in a way that you just wish more performances could be. So, highly recommended. Try to go see it in the theater while you can because it’s great.

**Craig:** Terrific. Well my One Cool Thing is for those of you out there that like wine. Are you wine drinker?

**John:** I love wine.

**Craig:** So, I’ve been getting into wine, but I’m not a big drinker. Usually I’m good for, well, you know, anywhere between one and two glasses. One and 1.5 glasses. So, what happens if you’re just not basically a big wine guzzler, you open a bottle of wine and you pour yourself a glass or two, maybe your pour your spouse a glass or two, but there’s some left over and what do you do with it. So, there’s an industry around that. And the idea is that oxygen is bad for wine.

Well, it’s good for wine until it’s bad for wine. So, over time, you know, some wines can stay out for a couple of days, some sort of need to be drunk that night. You could put your wine in the fridge; that seems to slow the degeneration down. And then they have these little vacuum stopping things. Do you have those?

**John:** We have them. I don’t find them useful.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, it’s interesting. There’s a whole debate about whether they work or not. Some people, basically the conventional wisdom is they work better than nothing but they don’t work as well as they should.

Enter this genius, this engineer wine drinker and his device which is available now for sale called the Coravin. And what I love about this is so he’s drinking wine he thinks, like an engineer, “Really, what I want to do is teleport the wine out of the bottle without ever opening it.” Right? [laughs]

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** So, how do you do that, right? He comes up with this brilliant device, the Coravin. And the way it works is it’s basically a needle that pushes through — you don’t even take the foil off — pushes through the foil, through the cork, into the gap in the bottle, right, between the cork and the wine.

And then it injects a little capsule of argon. Argon is a…

**John:** It’s a noble gas.

**Craig:** It’s a noble gas. It’s inert. And it uses the same kind of cartridges that they have in like those fancy whip cream things, or even like a paintball gun. And so it fills that space with Argon, which doesn’t interact with the wine at all. And then when you tip it over it basically forces the wine out through this little needle that you’ve pushed through, and out through the needle into your glass.

And then when you’re done you just lift it back up and the Argon basically is filling that space and no air is getting in at all. And then you take this thing when you’re done you just remove it and essentially the needle is so thin that the cork just seals up behind it and air never gets in.

And when you watch the video of it you’re like, “Oh, that’s cool. That is cool.”

So, what you’re doing is, A, you’re getting rid of having to deal with ever taking a cork out of a bottle again. And, B, the whole pumpy vacuum things, or your fridge, or any of that stuff is gone. So, it’s very expensive. I think it’s like $300.

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

**Craig:** Well, I’m not buying it. I’m just saying it’s cool. I mean, look, here’s the thing: if you’re just an average wine drinker, no, of course not. But if you’re a person that buys $100, $200 bottles of wine because you’re a big winey guy, well this makes total sense.

**John:** Yeah, I disagree. I don’t think it makes sense in almost any situation. Because here’s the solution to this problem: finish the bottle.

**Craig:** But sometimes you can’t, you alcoholic.

**John:** Invite some friends over and finish the bottle. If you have a bottle of wine that is that that good, you should have someone over there to celebrate that bottle of wine with you. I got a bottle of wine for my birthday and I’ll have people over and we’ll finish it.

**Craig:** Oh, did you get something good?

**John:** I think it’s pretty good. My agent sent it to me. It’s French.

**Craig:** Ooh!

**John:** It looks kind of old.

**Craig:** Is it from Burgundy? Is it [French accent] Burgundy?

**John:** I actually haven’t looked that closely at the label. But it’s probably delicious.

**Craig:** All right. Great.

**John:** So, what would also be delicious is if people want to find out more information about the things we talked about today on the show you can follow the show notes at johnaugust.com/podcast where you’ll fine show notes for all our things.

If you are listening to this on iTunes or for some reason your feed did not update, you could delete what you have now and just re-add us in iTunes. That’s the best solution for people who seem to have trouble following us after the server update.

While you’re in iTunes, leave us a comment, because that helps other people find our show. If you would like to buy the 100 episodes of Scriptnotes that existed before this point, you can do so now at store.johnaugust.com.

**Craig:** Totally you should do that. That’s just a no brainer.

**John:** You should probably just do that because that’s a good idea. And we have a few t-shirts left, so those are only while supplies last. Literally while supplies last. So, those are $20 a piece.

We are available on Twitter, @johnaugust and @clmazin. And then if you need to send us an email about a Three Page Challenge you go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out.

And if you need to send an email to me or to Craig, you should send it to ask@johnaugust.com and we will answer questions at times.

**Craig:** [sirens in background] Listen, listen, it’s the first one. So, we didn’t have any for the entire time and then one just came by. You know what that is? That’s the birthday siren.

**John:** Mm-hmm. A very special siren indeed. And I also want to thank all the people who have been sending through their outros. So, a couple weeks ago I said like, “Hey, if you want to write us an outro for the show send it to us, or send us a link to it, even better, at ask@johnaugust.com. I just ask that you use the underlying theme, the sort of opening them. [hums]

And people have sent through these really amazing ones. So, I’ve been using a couple of them. Every time I will put a link to who the person was who sent that through.

And, Craig, thank you again for a fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. And Happy Birthday.

**John:** Thanks!

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* George Clooney tells Daniel Loeb to [stop spreading fear at Sony](http://www.deadline.com/2013/08/george-clooney-slams-sony-investor-daniel-loeb/)
* The New York Times on [Sony hiring Tom Rothman to revive TriStar](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/business/media/sony-hires-rothman-to-head-revived-tristar-unit.html?_r=0)
* Three Pages by [Robert Rue](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/RobertRue.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Catherine Grieve & Dylan Wagner](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/CatherineGrieveDylanWagner.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Sarah Carman & James Roland](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/SarahCarmanJamesRoland.pdf)
* [The Spectacular Now](http://spectacularnowmovie.com/) is spectacular
* [Vanity Fair talks to](http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/08/the-spectacular-now-writers-miles-teller) Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
* [Coravin](http://www.coravin.com/) lets you enjoy your wine without ever pulling the cork
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show).

**John August:** Now, if you have a question for me, or for Craig, or for Aline, or Rawson, there is a microphone on this corner of the stage. And you can line up and we will hear your questions as you ask them and we will be so excited.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** John, I’m writing a script with an assistant character in it and I’ve named him Stuart and call dibs on that.

**John:** Done.

**Aline:** Done. I got it.

**Craig Mazin:** I’ll take Ryan.

**Aline:** I claimed it.

**John:** Hello and welcome! What’s your name?

**Eric:** Hi, my name is Eric.

**John:** Hi Eric.

**Eric:** First off, thanks for being awesome. I had a quick question for you guys. Before you’re about to send a script out, do you have particular checklists that you go through that it has to pass muster? And what are those particular things?

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Yeah, that’s a very good question. What are the last looks? Rawson, do you have a last look list on a script before you — ?

**Rawson Thurber:** Yeah, well, I do something a little different, obviously, than just… — I don’t really send them out anymore, so if I’m hired to write a script or rewrite a script, typically if it’s the first draft, and I sort of, I don’t know if I stole this from you or if I adapted it from you.

But I’ll finish the first draft, and obviously plenty of spell check and typos and I have my lovely fiancé go through it, and she finds a lot more than I do.

But if it’s a first draft, I actually hand deliver it. I go into the production office or the studio. I bring however many copies I need, usually two or three. I have the PDF on my iPhone, so I just call them up I say, “Look, I’m going to need ten minutes of your time. I’m just going to pop in, maybe right before lunch, between meetings, whatever.” Pop in, hand them the script. It gives me a chance to do two things. One is it gives me a chance to prep their read or frame their read, or I can talk about things that I really am excited about in the script, things that went really well.

I also get a chance to sort of maybe head off some negative notes at the pass where I say, “I think the villain in the second — it gets a little muddy, I’m still working on it. Don’t freak out.” So, it helps frame the read.

And then the second part of it, which I think really helps, is that it also puts it at the top of their stack. If you’re going to walk in and hand it to them, it really imprints with them. So, it’s not just another one on their stack, which doesn’t exist anymore.

When I leave I email it to them so they have a PDF and they can read it on their iPad.

The only thing I would say is just do that once. Like don’t go for every rewrite, just the first time, so they know you’re taking it seriously. And then after that it can all be email. That’s what I do.

**John:** I never heard of that. That’s very cool.

**Aline:** I’ve never heard that either I thought —

**Craig:** It’s pretty old school. Old school.

**Aline:** If you do that, bring a vibrating pen for everybody.

**Rawson:** I think you’re also apologetic. And I know it’s quaint and it won’t take much time. And you don’t really call it a meeting.

**Aline:** I think Craig and I share this. I kind of obsess a little bit over page breaks.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s my big — that’s my flight check.

**Aline:** That’s what I will fiddle with. Because I don’t like the “CONT’D” and I like things to fall on —

**Craig:** Sometimes there’s a line that’s like that’s the conclusion of the thought and if it’s on the next page, even though — look, the truth is they all read it on their iPad. There are no page breaks anymore.

**Aline:** So I have this belief now that if it starts to fall right on the page it means the script is good.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh boy, that’s mentally ill.

**Rawson:** Ooh, that’s nice.

**Craig:** I’m with you, but, I mean, I have the same problem.

**John:** Thank you very much. Next up.

**Hani:** Hi, I’m Hani Vadi and thank you; this is really amazing. My question is to Craig but anybody can chip in. Regarding writing parody films and how much is too much, copyright laws, and how much you can push and not push.

**Craig:** Well, the basic thing that governs parody is fair use. The fair use doctrine accepts certain things for use by all of us that are copyright material, for instance if you were doing a review of the book you can publish a few quotes from the book without infringing on the author’s right to reproduce that book.

And parody is one of those things. It’s very well protected. Occasionally it gets challenged in court. The very famous case that’s part of the subject of The People vs. Larry Flynt where Hustler Magazine published a cartoon in which Jerry Falwell’s mother was something, something Hustler-y. And it was considered parody and it was protected.

When we were making parody movies the big rule of thumb was “never ask permission.” If you ask, people will say no, and then they’re on record as saying no, and you’re on record as asking, which is sort of like implying that you think it’s infringement.

In general, bigger minds than yours will be concerned with this. Law professors are hired to work this stuff out. Your job is to just be funny. So you be funny, and then whoever is going to produce the movie, they’ll figure it out.

**Hani:** Just make the cat drunk.

**Craig:** Pardon me?

**Hani:** Just make the cat drunk. Save the Cat!

**Rawson:** We haven’t read it.

**Craig:** Yes sir.

**John:** Hello!

**PiPS97:** How you doing. Person in plaid shirt number 97. I was just wondering, John, what podcasts were you listening to before you approached Craig here?

**John:** I was listening to John Gruber’s podcast which was The Talk Show with Dan Benjamin. I was listening to some of the Slate podcasts. Like One Cool Thing is sort of a rip-off of the Slate Political Gabfest has Cocktail Chatter as their last little thing. My husband, Mike, was the one who talked me into listening to Slate Political Gabfest, and it was great.

So those were the two. And then I think the fact that our show is about an hour, the fact that we do three topics is really modeled on those.

**PiPS97:** And have you been on any other podcasts other than Jay Mohr’s?

**John:** I have. I’ve been on John Gruber’s new podcast, I’ve gone on Brett Terpstra’s podcast and at least one or two more, Moisés Chiullan’s podcast. So, they’re fun. And I really enjoy guesting on other people’s podcasts because I can just be the Craig who shows up unprepared.

**Craig:** It’s the best.

**John:** Yeah. Thanks.

**PiPS97:** Thank you.

**Craig:** It’s the best.

**John:** Hello!

**Kevin:** Hello there. My name is Kevin and I just want to say I hope you guys are not hungry; you’ll never shop in Ralphs again. No, I’m just kidding. I was going to ask you, do you think — It seems to me like the structure of films now, because they write in three acts, I think it was better in the earlier days of Hollywood because they wrote in reels and sequences. And what you were saying about Slate and blaming Blake Snyder, a lot of people did that with Syd Field because they felt like he gave you a couple plot points and nobody knew what was happening in between.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, we still talk about reels. I mean, movies are shot digitally and they’re edited digitally and they’re projected digitally. And in the editing room we divide them up into reels. And we even spend time balancing the reels sort of pointlessly because we just don’t want too much in one reel or the other.

We still think in terms of sequences. Certainly in animation, they’re constantly talking about sequences. The truth is I really don’t think much about acts. I don’t think much about sequences. I think about my main character and theme, and their relationship with the theme, and their progression from one kind of philosophy of life to another.

We all have different ways of approaching it, but once you get into production, I actually feel like things probably haven’t changed much in terms of the way we conceive of it.

**Kevin:** Thank you. I don’t use a G2, but I prefer writing in reels. Thank you very much.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Hello.

**Jeremy** Hi, my name is Jeremy. This is for writing comedy films. Do you hammer — what is your process for getting funny onto the screen? Do you start out by hammering out the plot and characters, look to see where to insert the funny, or do you have funny concepts and ideas and go from there?

**John:** I’ll say the comedy stuff I’ve done is making sure that you have a character who is funny and interesting in the world, and you’re creating situations in which that character can show, can be funny, and let the world be funny around them.

Go is a situation of like the world itself is not particularly hilarious, but you create predicaments in which these characters and their specific wants become funny. And hopefully you are able to write funny stuff for them to say and do. And that’s the trick. You can structure a perfect comedy, but if you’re not funny it’s not funny. Aline?

**Craig:** Or Rawson was about to say something.

**Aline:** Rawson has to answer this because Rawson wrote one of my favorite comedies ever.

**Rawson:** Thank you. That’s very kind. So, I think there are two things, because one is writing funny for a script and then the second thing is how you end up with funny in the movie. And they’re different, because a lot of times what you write in the script gets changed either from the performance or from the editing as you put the movie up.

I know in the last movie I made, We’re the Millers —

**John:** August 7th.

**Rawson:** August 7th, yes, August 7th.

You know, I guess one thing I really learned on that was nobody, not only does nobody know anything, but nobody really knows what’s funny. The people who really know funny will confess that they’re not 100%. They’re like, “I think this is going to be funny, but you don’t know.” And you don’t really know until you put it up in front of real people and they either laugh or they don’t. And then the process of editing kind of brings — takes the stuff out that isn’t working and brings in things that are closer. But that’s a process of making a film.

In terms of, when I was writing Dodgeball and when I was rewriting We’re the Millers, it’s a lot of what John said is figuring out situations that are funny or awkward, or hard, or weird, and then hoping you have characters in there that will say funny stuff.

**Aline:** The other thing I would say is characters can’t be funny if the scene is broken.

**Rawson:** That’s true.

**Aline:** And I have found that often, like if there’s something wrong and no one is saying funny things in a script, in a scene, something is wrong with the scene.

**Rawson:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And, lastly, there are scenes that are funny because the characters are odd. And the way they’re interacting with something that is mundane is specific and particular. So, you can go through — like a very famous example is if you look at Rain Man. It’s not a funny movie. I mean, there are a couple of jokes in it, but it’s a drama.

It’s the same movie as Midnight Run. It’s a guy and a weirdo on the road and the weirdo refuses to fly and they’ve got to get from here to here together. And along the way they kind of have this… — And that’s on purpose, because the men who made Midnight Run wanted to do Rain Man. [laughs] So, they’re like, “Well, I guess we can’t do Rain Man, so let’s just do this one.”

So, sometimes that’s all it is, is just a weird character and their weird take in a mundane situation, like a restaurant.

**Jeremy:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Thanks.

**Natural comedian:** This is kind of a strange problem. A couple years ago I had a lot of success with like a dark thriller sort of movie that got me repped and everything. The problem is I’m a comedy writer and of the first five scripts that I’ve ever written, four were comedies, and the other one was successful.

So, I go into these meetings and like I have to try not to tell jokes and I have to try to be like eye liner guy who is like, “This movie is about pain,” and it’s not really me because I’m always trying to make people laugh. So, how would you know what your genre is, and should you just shut up and try and take the money if you’re out of genre?

**John:** Awesome to get paid. But, you should write the movie that you want to see exist in the world. And if those movies are comedies then you should write the comedies.

**Natural comedian:** What if no one else seems to want to see them in the world?

**John:** Well, I think, you need to make them in some way. Because you have these things on the page and if for some reason people aren’t finding it —

**Craig:** Well, hold on. We don’t know how unfunny he is.

**John:** Well, maybe —

**Natural comedian:** I’m pretty funny to me.

**John:** Yeah. So I think you need to find some way to make that, either as, make something that’s either a short or something that can show people like, oh, this is actually funny, because they’re not getting it, or they just only have one preconceived notion of who you are.

Before I wrote Go I was only the guy who wrote kids movies. And so I was only getting sent things about gnomes, elves, dwarves, and Christmas. And it was driving me crazy. And so then with Go, I wrote Go as sort of like, “You know, I can write other things.” And it was so useful because if people wanted to see it as a comedy, it’s a comedy. You want to see it as thriller, it’s a thriller. It’s an action movie. It got me other things.

So, either make something that’s specifically a comedy that can be that comedy sample for you, or write something that’s broader that people can see like, “Oh, he can do these different things.”

**Natural comedian:** So, would you write a sample — I’m sorry, I know I’m taking more time than I deserve. Would you write a sample that, you know, just to be a sample, or does it have to be something that can sell? Because I have those ideas but they’re things that aren’t going to be made. And if they’re just going to be awesome, you know.

**Craig:** If you’re so sure that they’re not going to get made —

**Natural comedian:** I’m pretty sure.

**Craig:** Then why are you? I mean, they must stink.

**Natural comedian:** No, because they’re awesome.

**Rawson:** Can I just —

**Craig:** You don’t understand how this works, see.

**John:** Rawson has the answer.

**Craig:** Awesome things get made. Right?

**Rawson:** I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never heard anybody say, “I’m working really hard on my writing sample.” Like that doesn’t make any sense to me. Either write something you love or don’t. But don’t write something that you think no one will buy, or write something that you think someone will buy. Write what you love. Don’t work on a writing sample, work on a script, work on a movie.

**Craig:** You are prime candidate for Brian Koppelman’s best advice. Brian Koppelman who writes with Koppelman/Levien. They did Rounders and stuff like that. Very smart guy. Two word advice: calculate less. Just calculate less.

**Aline:** Biederman also says, “Write with no attachment to the outcome.”

**Craig:** Boom.

**Natural comedian:** Write better.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Alex:** Hello. I’m the first woman in the line.

**John:** Have at it. There will be another woman in the line.

**Alex:** We’re outnumbered.

**John:** Hooray! What is your name?

**Alex:** I’m Alex Angelis.

**John:** Are you here from Los Angeles?

**Alex:** Yes, I live here.

**John:** We have some people who are from Canada.

**Aline:** She looked so scared from that question. Her eyes went wide. Did you see that?

**Craig:** You leave her alone!

**John:** Who here is from Canada? See!

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Rawson:** That’s awesome.

**Alex:** Okay, I was just hoping to get some advice about a problem which I think is probably common, where you have a lot of scripts in your mind at one time. And when I sit down to try to write one I’m supposed to focus on, I just have all these other ideas for the other ones. And is there anything, like hypnosis. Like what do you do?

**John:** That never happens to any of us.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** We’re all perfect.

**Craig:** Yeah, we just focus. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple things going on in your mind.

**Alex:** No, of course.

**Craig:** I think it’s important to at least give yourself an opportunity to take one of those ideas and make a little outline of it. You know, I don’t know if you like index cards, or maybe you like to type up a little outline or something like that. Outline it. And what I find is sometimes by putting a little bit of flesh on this skeleton, now I think, “Oh, that could be a person and I’ll leave these other ones here for awhile. This one I have to commit to.”

Nothing is sexier than a new person, right? It’s the same thing with ideas, but you’ve got to marry one of them. You got to have the kid. You got to pay tuition. Wife leaves you. And then you move on.

No, my wife is lovely. She would never leave me. But you do have to commit at some point.

**John:** I would say if you’re picking between projects, my first simple bit of advice, pick the one with the best ending, which I know sounds really weird.

**Aline:** It’s great advice.

**Rawson:** Great advice.

**John:** Everything is going to have a great start because first acts are easy. But think of the one that you’re excited to write the ending for, because that’s the one you’ll actually finish.

**Aline:** That’s the answer to the question.

**Rawson:** Wow. We can all stop.

**Alex:** Nailed it.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Nailed it!

**John:** Hello sir. You have a fantastic orange shirt.

**Orange shirt:** I went with umbrage.

**Craig:** Great shirt. Umbrage orange! Also blue is umbrage.

**Orange shirt:** First of all I’m so glad to hear that some of you guys are obsessed with page breaks. That makes me feel so much better. I thought I might have been going crazy.

**Craig:** You are, but…

**Orange shirt:** My question is, Craig, you warned against not chasing trends. And I have to ask, because at least three of my most recent favorite films released failed miserably at the box office. Is there any value in not avoiding failures?

**Aline:** Name one.

**Orange shirt:** The Lone Ranger. Pacific Rim. Cloud Atlas. These things, like should I not write a giant monster movie? Should I not write a western movie if I’m writing one?

**Aline:** I thought you were going to say like a tiny movie —

**Craig:** No, I think you should write what you want to write, what you care the most about writing. The truth is you may run into something where you’re off trend. And they may say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re a big huge robot monster movie. Dude, Pacific Rim, we’re not going to make this.” But if you’ve written something well and it’s impressive, they’re going to say, “But, what about this, what about this, are you interested in this? We bought this…”

And here’s another thing, just so you know about off trends, there really is no off trend, because what happens is you’ll hear that something is off trend. There are 50 producers out there desperate to get a movie made who own properties that are on trend. And trends just do this, right?

Nothing could have been more off trend than a pirate movie, until Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, not just one, two spectacular pirate failures had happened. And then, look right? So, ignore all of that. You just do your thing.

**Orange shirt:** Will do. Thank you.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Makers fan:** Hi, sorry, I’m short. Firstly, lady business. Makers is awesome. I cried like for three hours.

**Aline:** Amazing, right? I cried so hard at the beginning, with the lady, the runner.

**Makers fan:** Yes! Oh my god, sorry, okay. I just want to say your episode on why you should continue writing was like, whoa, I needed to hear that, so thank you.

**John:** Great. Thank you.

**Makers fan:** Also, so, you guys were going over the WGA report a couple weeks ago and you were talking about how screenwriting for film is like kind of doing this, and TV writing is doing this.

**John:** For people who are listening at home, one hand was going down and one hand was going up.

**Makers fan:** Down, up. Increasing, decreasing. So, do you think that there’s any merit in trying to bring back the miniseries or the made for TV movie?

**John:** Yes. And I think that the stuff that we’re talking about, like that off trend, that’s going to come back on trend. And so if you look at Under the Dome, that’s really kind of a miniseries. It’s like its own special thing. You look at Orange is the New Black, it’s kind of a miniseries because it’s all put together as one thing.

**Aline:** I loved those growing up, like the Shogun and what was —

**Craig:** Shogun was awesome!

**Aline:** What was the World War II one?

**John:** Winds of War?

**Aline:** Winds of War.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Thorn Birds.

**Aline:** Yeah. I mean, those were great.

**Craig:** Richard Chamberlain, basically. Richard Chamberlain’s entire career.

**John:** So, yes, I think that’s the kind of thing that’s going to come back. Now, as an aspiring writer, is that the kind of thing you should do out of the gate? It’s sort of hard. It’s neither fish nor fowl, so it’s weird for you to do that. But for the TV execs who are listening, yeah, make some miniseries, because they’re kind of cool.

**Aline:** Yeah, but you know what? If somebody called you and said, “This woman wrote this thing. It’s weird. It’s three two-hour episodes of a story,” you’d be like, “That’s great, I want to read that, because I haven’t seen that.” I would think that would make it more interesting. If you could write a miniseries, I mean, that would be —

**Craig:** If you have something in that shape, why not?

**Aline:** Yeah, people would, yeah.

**Craig:** Look, when miniseries ruled the earth there were three networks, right? So, the world stopped and watched Roots. That was the deal, right? But now with Netflix and everything you’re starting to see there are just more avenues for television content because there are more delivery systems for it. Which means there are more delivery systems for shorter series. All a miniseries is is basically what they call a regular series in England, you know?

**Aline:** You know what would be cool would be to option a piece of material that was a miniseries and write the first part of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And then be like, “Boom, I have the rest of it. I own the rights to the rest of it.”

**John:** Aline, do you want to do Winds of War for ABC?

**Aline:** I love Winds of War.

**John:** We could totally do that. We could totally —

**Aline:** Who was in it? Who was the woman who was in it, the blonde who was in it? Victoria something.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Herman Wouk wrote the novel.

**Aline:** Ooh, it was so good.

**John:** So good. So, thank you for a great idea.

**Makers fan:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Cool. You’re awesome. We’ll name a character for you. It’s going to be great.

**Craig:** Good question.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Doppelgänger problems:** Hi guys. There are a bunch of us so I’ll try to be quick. I have a question, a very hands-on question. I’m writing a script with an alternate universe in it, so there are two versions of the main character. And there’s one scene where I want us to think that it’s the main character but it’s really the doppelgänger.

So, how do I write that? Because if I write it as the original, it’s kind of —

**John:** It’s rough. And so many people have faced exactly what you’re facing where what information should the person watching the film have versus what information should the person reading the script have, and it’s a bitch. And you’re going to have to make a choice between is the reader going to be ahead of where the viewer is at?

**Doppelgänger problems:** Right. That’s what I’m doing right now.

**John:** How are you going to pull that off? I think it’s one of those rare cases where bold is your friend. And so at a certain point when something has to be revealed, break out that bold text to really say, “Pay attention. This is a thing that happened.” Otherwise people are going to be confused. They’re going to be confused anyway.

**Craig:** By the way, that’s also a moment to step out of the script and just say, “That’s right. The person you thought was blank was really blank.” It’s okay to do that.

**Aline:** Just in case you missed it.

**Craig:** It’s okay to do that if it’s a big deal.

A**Doppelgänger problems:** Okay. And on the names and everything I use like —

**Craig:** Use the name that you want the audience to think is the person, otherwise it’s going to be super boring to be like, “Secretly blank but looks like blanks.” Right?

**Doppelgänger problems:** Right.

**Craig:** Then they’ll be like, “Okay?” Go ahead, fool the reader the reader you want to fool the audience.

**Doppelgänger problems:** Great. Thank you.

**John:** Thanks. We have people in line. The gentlemen in the red shirt is who, in my head, you, is the last question, but anyone else can grab us afterwards and we’ll answer your question. Hello sir at the microphone.

**Hunter:** Hi, Hunter, first time, long time. So, you guys were talking and I’ve seen on the blog and the podcast discussions of how to dress for meetings and what to do. But can you guys give us some tips or examples of what the most ridiculous, rubbish thing that you have ever done or heard of somebody doing in a meeting?

**Aline:** That’s good.

**Rawson:** I’ve got one.

**John:** You go first.

**Craig:** Let’s hear it.

**Rawson:** Well, this was recent. I met Jennifer Aniston for the first time. And I was a little nervous.

**John:** Did you drink her Vitamin Water?

**Rawson:** I did not. I did not. But I walk in and all I’m thinking is like, “Be cool. Be cool. Be cool.” And the door opens and she’s like, “Hi, I’m Jen,” and she’s like the nicest person, reaches out. And I go, “Hi, I’m Rawson,” and go like, bang, right into a glass coffee table and eat shit. And I’m like, “Hey! Hi! — ”

So, don’t bang into things. And if there’s a glass coffee table, just take a beat before you try to shake somebody’s hand. That would be my advice on the glass coffee table movie star thing.

**Craig:** Wow. That’s bad.

**Rawson:** It was awful. And it got better. It got better.

**Aline:** I have a good one that’s not rubbish but was funny. I made a movie with Rachel McAdams, who I just adored, and I was saying goodbye to her on the last day that I was on set. And I was wearing this pink scarf. And I was talking to her and I was saying she was so amazing and thank you so much and she’s been so great. And I become aware that she’s looking at a thing right here and she’s like, “Oh, honey, Aline, it’s so great. I had such a good time working with you.” And then she reaches down and picks out a piece of donut frosting that was wedged in the middle of my scarf.

So the entire time I was telling her about amazing, how much I love working with her, all she was thinking was like, “Really? Donut frosting?”

**Craig:** “Pig.”

**Aline:** “Pig.” On the scarf.

**John:** I can’t beat that, so next question.

**Jeff:** Hello.

**Craig:** Hello!

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Jeff:** My name is Jeff and I always think of you, John, whenever I tell people hello now, so thank you. So, my question is actually about reading scripts and if you guys have any tips about giving feedback or like how you get through maybe a bad script or stop at a certain point.

**Craig:** There’s an art to it, isn’t there? Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, Rawson, you, as a director, you —

**Aline:** How often do people give you scripts to read and they really want an opinion?

**Rawson:** Well, what do you mean? When they want you to tell them, “This is great!” When they want that opinion?

**Aline:** Most of the time people really just want to hear, “This was awesome.”

**Rawson:** I have a screenwriting friend who will say, “Yeah, I’ll read your script.” And then all he says is, “I love it. I think it’s going to be the best movie that’s ever been made.” And that’s it. And they love that. He goes, “It’s incredible.” I don’t even know if he reads it. But no matter what his thought is, that’s his response ever time.

**Craig:** So, that’s awful, right? I will tell you that as I’ve gone on, and this is going to sound Pollyannaish, okay, I read scripts all the time and a lot of times I read them and I think, “This is not very good. Maybe this person is just not professional. They’re never going to be a professional. This is never going to be good.”

However, it’s worth it for me, an exercise for me, to talk about some things in the script from a craft perspective and say, “So, I want to talk to you about, let’s just look at this one scene and let’s talk about some of the things that I thought maybe could make it better.” And just in a craft way, it forces you to start thinking about things.

I find that looking at mistakes helps me crystallize how to avoid mistakes. There is a value to it.

**Aline:** The other thing is when you’re reading like a terrible script it takes like 11 hours and every page weighs like forty pounds.

**Rawson:** That’s the worst.

**Aline:** So, you’re like, “Ooh [feigns turning page].” I’m too dumb and lazy. Like I can’t even focus on what’s happening in the thing. I don’t know what’s… — Somebody once said at a meeting, an executive was talking about this script that needed to be rewritten. And she said, “This script is so bad that I can’t remember what happened on the page before.”

**Rawson:** Yeah, I think every time someone hands me a script to read, I mean, I think this is probably the same for all of you, is that you want it to be great because you read it so much faster.

**Aline:** So much faster.

**Craig:** And also you’re going to avoid that terrible moment.

**Rawson:** Of course. And the way I’ve tried to kind of avoid the terrible moment is like you get a bad script, sometimes it’s a friend, sometimes it’s not, and you’re going to talk to that person. A lot of times what I’ve found very helpful is two things. One is to start by asking some questions about what they want from this script that they’ve written. Like, what is your goal? Is your goal to get an agent?

**Aline:** Did you want this to be boring?

**Rawson:** But that’s exactly the point. I don’t talk about the script. I talk about the intent. So, what do you want from this? You want an agent? You want a spec script? You want to direct it? And that takes up the first ten minutes of the conversation?.

**Aline:** “You wanted to euthanize me?”

**Rawson:** And then the other part is like then I saw, “Okay, so tell me the story.” And invariably they’ll start telling the story and sometimes it’s better than the script and then you can focus on what they’re talking to you about. You can say, “That sounds great. I didn’t get that here. Maybe do that, what you’re saying, because here it didn’t come through.” And then you’re off the hook.

**Aline:** You’re so nice. Give your scripts to him.

**John:** Yeah, he’s nice.

**Rawson:** No, no.

**Aline:** First him, then him. I would say then me. And then him last.

**John:** If you’re reading a script for a friend, who is a genuine friend, and it’s not working, there’s probably something that is working — I would hope there’s something that’s working. I always start with like, “These are the moments I loved.” And talk about this and why it was working really well. And hopefully that is what they actually want the movie to be. And then you can start having a conversation about like how to make the rest of the movie that movie.

**Aline:** Okay, I have a good story about this.

**John:** All right, tell me.

**Aline:** I read Gatins’s script for Flight, you know, John Gatins who is a very good friend of mine. And I read that script a bunch. And I was like, “Dude, you need to take out the scene with the cancer patient in the stairwell. This just does not contribute to the forward momentum of the script at all. This has nothing to do with anything. This character does not…”

**Craig:** Violates Save the Cat!

**Aline:** The famous Save the Cat! clause. “There’s this character who does not reappear. He’s like a combination of exposition-man and the theme-god. Like this needs to go.” And it’s one of the reasons that Robert Zemeckis directed the movie, and it’s everyone’s favorite scene. And it’s a tour de force. And it’s brilliant. And it’s one of the things that makes that script so special.

So it’s…

**Craig:** Don’t listen to Aline.

**John:** Don’t’ let Aline read your script.

**Craig:** She’s an idiot.

**Jeff:** Thanks guys.

**John:** Great. Thanks. Hello, our final question tonight.

**Craig:** Hello!

**Final question:** Hello. So, quick question, probably rough answer. So, you finish your draft and you’re unhappy with how one of your characters turned out. How do you approach that on the redraft?

**Craig:** You mean how they turned out like, “Oh my god, this guy is a dick at the end?” Or just you don’t like the way they’re reading in general?

**Final question:** So, yeah, those.

**Craig:** Both.

**Rawson:** Is it a main character or are you talking about — ?

**Final question:** Main character.

**Rawson:** Main character. Yikes.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Now, normally, you want to know how they’re going to turn out before you start writing. So, did you do that thing where you’re like, “I’ll just start writing and we’ll see what happens?”

**Final question:** Well, it wound up more passive. So the character isn’t as active as you would hope.

**John:** My quick suggestion would be think of a new character, who has a new name, and run that character through your story and see if it works better. And see how do you make things as interesting and as terrible for that character as possible. Because a passive character is only passive because you’re allowing him to be passive.

**Aline:** Are you asking can you do a whole character pass without messing up without your script? Like can you change a lead character without changing your script? Is that what you’re asking?

**Final question:** Well, I’m just wondering if you’ve encountered that problem and your approach.

**Aline:** I had — not a lead, but I had, I’ve told this story before, but on Devil Wears Prada the character that Stanley Tucci played was very difficult and I really struggled with it, because he was very nice, he was sort of like that character that Héctor Elizondo always plays. He was like that very nice kind of helpful character. And it was not working for the story at all.

But draft after draft he was still there. And then there came a point where we needed to cast it. So, we started thinking of specific actors and I was like, “This guy just doesn’t have a point of view. He has nothing to say.” And then I talked to somebody in the fashion business who said, “The problem with this character is he’s too nice, and no one in the fashion business is nice to each other.”

And I said, “No one ever?” And he said, “No, there’s no reason to be. And no one is.”

And so I went back and I wrote that character like an insult comic. And I’m a huge Rickles fan. And I just went in and wrote him as sort of un-mentor-ish as I could. And that was a situation where like his story didn’t change, but I just went in, and there are situations where somehow, sometimes, your character just doesn’t move the levers in the way that you want to.

It’s easier with a supporting character. It’s going to be harder with a lead character because they’re already — it would be very hard to do.

**Craig:** It’s impossible.

**Aline:** But sometimes with supporting characters you can kind of lift that out and plunk somebody back in there.

**John:** Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief.

**Craig:** Yes, so the original Identity Thief, the spec script was two guys. But, that required a complete rewrite. You know, what you’re describing is a function of an error that happened very early on in the beginning, in your conception. Because your story allowed for a passive character.

Maybe ask yourself in going back to the beginning, what is this movie about? What am I trying to impart upon people? What is the argument that I’m making at the end? Take a character, make him believe the opposite of that. And then get him there.

**Aline:** Have you ever talked about this thing that Ted Elliott talks about which is like, I think he calls is “Phase Space” or something like that, which is this thing — isn’t it something like that?

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** At length.

**Aline:** Where there are these decisions, it’s like there’s a whole pie of a reality when you start a script. And you make a decision. And all of a sudden it goes from being a circle to this shape. And then this. And then this. And you’re narrowing your narrative possibilities with every choice you make. It’s like, “Oh, it’s going to take place in Detroit and the lead character is going to be a cop and his partner is going to be a woman.”

And you start narrowing, and narrowing, and narrowing, and every time I’ve ever worked on or experienced a script that had problems, it was because someone you ended up in this tiny sliver and the solutions were over there. And you had made some choices that were so big in the beginning that it was like even if you saw the pill across the room that would make the problem go away, you can’t get there. And that’s why those first … — You know, I’m working with a friend and we’ve been outlining and now she has to write. She’s very intimidated by the writing process.

And I said, “You’ve outlined this movie. You have a 15-page outline. You’ve done most of the writing.” Those decisions are — those big, first decisions, are critical, and the lead has to embody your theme, and your momentum, and your narrative. So, if it’s not doing that there’s probably some other things that are not working.

**Craig:** But don’t get sad. No, I’m serious, don’t get sad. That’s our lives. What’s happening now, that’s it. It’s the constant redoing and redoing. And sometimes you do fall into a terrible trap.

Go ahead, you can cry one night if you want. Have a couple of drinks, wake up the next day, begin again. You’ll be fine.

**John:** Thank you!

LINKS:

* [Scriptnotes, the 100th episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on IMDb, and her [first](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes) and [second](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice) appearances on Scriptnotes
* [Rawson Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on IMDb
* Go see [We’re the Millers](http://werethemillers.warnerbros.com/) on August 7th!
* [Fair use](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) on Wikipedia
* The Slate [Political Gabfest](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest.html)
* John on [Mohr Stories](http://mohrstories.libsyn.com/mohr-stories-53-john-august), [The Talk Show](http://www.muleradio.net/thetalkshow/7/) with John Gruber, Brett Terpstra’s [Systematic](http://5by5.tv/systematic/30), and Moisés Chiullan’s [Screen Time](http://5by5.tv/screentime/13)
* [The Winds of War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winds_of_War_(miniseries)) on Wikipedia
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener [Seth Podowitz](http://www.musictomedia.com/)