Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/young-billionaires-guide-to-hollywood).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, the Young Billionaire’s Guide to Hollywood episode, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** Oh, I’m very excited today because of my One Cool Thing, but I can’t talk about it so I’m just atwitter.

**John:** Ah! You’re One Cool Thing is not Twitter itself? That would be redundant.

**Craig:** Oh, oh, it is. Did you know about Twitter?

**John:** I think Twitter is going to be revolutionary. I think it’s going to be great.

**Craig:** Oh man. I thought I was the only one who knew about it.

**John:** [laughs] Wouldn’t that be so amazing. Imagine trying to describe Twitter to somebody from like 10 years ago and they’d be like, “What the hell are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

**Craig:** I know. You’d have to back up so far. I mean, you’d really have to back up. You’d have to start with like, “Okay, imagine everybody’s phone was connected to everybody else’s phone all at once. It’s like that. But, just with typing.”

**John:** Yeah. But try to differentiate it from text messaging, which is really where it started. It’s so odd. And actually I don’t know if you saw this last week that Facebook and I think Twitter, too, made these deals in like third world countries that don’t have data plans so they can actually do Facebook updates and Twitter over like normal text messaging networks.

**Craig:** Oh, interesting. Well, that could actually have political implications.

**John:** This last week I was interviewed KPP — KPCC. I added extra letters to that radio station. I was interviewed on KPCC where they were talking about Mob City who did this promotion of the premiere of Mob City using Twitter. And basically they tweeted every scene, every sort of line from the script in like this long stream of Twitter which I will give them points for trying something new, but it just seems like the really wrong form for screenwriting.

**Craig:** Yeah. That is — I’m not–

**John:** I’m not convinced that’s going to work.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Because here’s the thing about a screenplay. A screenplay, there’s obviously many forms a movie could take, but they are essentially linear. And a screenplay begins at the start and goes to the end and you have to know what happens before it for the next thing to make sense.

Twitter is exactly the opposite of that. Twitter you’re supposed to be able to drop in at any point and just sort of figure out what’s going on. And if you really want to start at the beginning of a thread in Twitter you have to go down to the bottom and read up. It’s just weird.

**Craig:** It is weird. And in the end we still have the capacity to be passive consumers of narrative. And Twitter is not that.

There’s nothing wrong with interactive storytelling. I like interactive storytelling and I believe that such a thing exists. But it’s so different than what is provided by a movie or a television show, or listening to a song for that matter.

And I remember when interactive was everyone’s favorite buzz word and people thought that everyone was going to eventually sit a movie theater and press buttons to decide what should happen next. [laughs]

And people don’t want that actually. They’re okay just watching.

**John:** This last week someone emailed us to say, oh, I think there’s going to be this next wave of stuff where people are going to have their screens on in theaters and doing that stuff, and I don’t see that. You and I both disagreed on sort of that Little Mermaid experience.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That I can see being like a one-off stunty kind of thing, but I don’t think it’s going to be the future of entertainment. I think there’s something really great about just only the single screen experience, which is one of the last things that the movie theater does very well.

**Craig:** Yeah. Even among younger people, there are certain human demands that are robust. And a demand for silence, shared silence in a communal space, is actually robust. Everybody uses cell phones constantly and everybody wants to be able to use the internet on a plane. But now that they’re talking about letting people talk on phones on a plane, suddenly a lot of people are saying, “No, actually.”

**John:** No.

**Craig:** “I would prefer that you just be quiet.”

**John:** Yeah. I got to be on the plane quite a bit last week because I got to do the thing that you would enjoy most more than anything else on earth, I suspect, which is to be recording a Broadway cast album.

**Craig:** Ooh! God am I jealous of you.

**John:** Yeah, so that was Monday and it was great. It seems impossible that you could record the whole show in a day’s session, but because everyone knows every line of the show and the musicians have been doing this for 100 shows we can just bang out two takes of everything and it was kind of great.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** It was just really amazing to do it that way.

**Craig:** That’s spectacular.

Rian Johnson turned me onto this documentary that is available on YouTube freely. I don’t know if that’s okay or not, but it’s there. And they did a documentary of the Broadway cast recording of the original cast of Company. And there is Sondheim. And so you’re watching them all do their songs and seeing Sondheim make adjustments and ask for things. And then there’s this point where it’s going long. The day is really long. It’s now really late or night or even early in the morning and they’ve left Elaine Stritch for the end and Ladies Who Lunch.

And she just doesn’t have it. It’s just too late. And they go through six or seven takes. And finally they just give up and they have to do another day. And they bring her back and she just nails it on the first one, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But we’ll toss a link in there if we’re allowed to link to questionably posted material on YouTube.

But it’s a really cool documentary if you like Stephen Sondheim and Elaine Stritch. And who doesn’t?

**John:** Who does not like Sondheim and Stritch?

**Craig:** Nobody. Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.

**John:** Great. And nobody, I think, will not like what’s in our episode today, because this is sort of the classic best of what Scriptnotes is, which is we have three Three Page Challenges which are always fun. Three very different scripts, which is always a nice blend.

And then I thought you and I would talk about something that is a good thought experiment which is we often talk about what if — if somebody came in and threw a bunch of money around, how it would change the film industry? I thought we could generalize this as a thought experiment of if you are a young person with — or really any person — with a tremendous amount of money who wants to get involved with the film, or television, or any sort of Hollywood business, what would you do?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, Craig, let’s talk about this. Let’s imagine we are a person with a lot of money who wants to get involved with the film business.

And I guess we should preface this by trying to figure out what the decision process is for that person. Because is this a person who wants to make money or doesn’t really care about making money and just wants to make a bunch of stuff.

**Craig:** Boy, I think it would be the latter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is not a great way to spend a billion dollars if your goal is to have $10 billion.

**John:** Yes. I would agree with you there. But if you already have a billion dollars, so let’s say you — let’s make our theoretical person some sort of internet billionaire. So, you created something that became Twitter and then like got bought out and now you are free. And you have a billion dollars in your pocket. And you’re like, “You know what? I think I would like to be involved in the entertainment industry.”

There are many people like that I would say.

**Craig:** Sure. We see them. They’re here.

**John:** They’re here. And honestly I think we can offer them some useful advice. So, if you are this person, pull up the chair close, because I think we have some good suggestions for you.

**Craig:** [laughs] And now advice for billionaires from not-billionaires.

**John:** So, a couple opportunities, and let’s talk about the range of things that people could get involved with.

Film. So, big films, and small films.

Television. And so classic model of television or the sort of Netflix model of television. You could absolutely do that.

Broadway I certainly know a lot about now. And that’s one of the places where even just like $2 million or $3 million can have a tremendous impact. That’s a possibility.

**Craig:** Sure. Those are the big ones. The music industry doesn’t really require billion dollar investments anymore, nor do I think the profits are there quite the way they used to be.

**John:** Although it’s probably worth talking about music in a general sense, because you could essentially become really in any of these fields like the patron of an artist that you want to support, and therefore let that person do whatever he or she wants to do.

**Craig:** It’s true, although the money in music is so heavily weighted towards promotion. The creation of music is relatively cheap.

**John:** Inexpensive.

**Craig:** Yeah, compared to… — Movies and television are just expensive to make. And Broadway shows are expensive to make. So, they require a lot of that stuff. I mean, Broadway, I get the sense most shows are kind of group funded by investment pools and not so much by one large backer.

**John:** Absolutely. But, within those investment pools there tend to be some larger backers who are primarily responsible for things.

Let’s talk film first, because I think most people are going to be most familiar with film.

So, films range a huge amount in sort of their budgets, all the way down from like $1 million or even less than $1 million films, to the $200 million, $300 million behemoths.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, if you only have a billion dollars, you’re probably not going to want to make too many $300 million movies.

**Craig:** Well, no one is going to let you make a $300 million movie. Once you have a movie of that size, there’s no studio that isn’t going to want to own a part of it. That’s sort of the point of making those giant movies. But they are always looking for co-financing. And that’s a different situation.

**John:** So, let’s talk about what co-financing is. So, often times as the movie credits start to roll you’ll see Warner Bros. and you’ll see the shield. And then you’ll see like some other company, like often it’s Legendary, or it’s Village Roadshow. Those are co-financers. Those are people who are putting in a tremendous amount of the budget and therefore get to have their own little animated logo playing in front of that movie. And those have become incredibly important for the bigger tent pole movies recently.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hollywood tends to want to distribute risk. You say it — as budgets started to escalate, probably in connection with both the escalation of A-list stars and gross point participation, but also the escalation of the costs of visual effects and the audience appetite for visual effects, you saw studios start to do something that they had actually kind of avoided in the past which was sharing risk. Usually you wanted to own everything. That was kind of the fun.

And I remember the first movie where it seemed like it was a big news story was Titanic. Titanic was a Fox movie and they just started panicking that it was costing so much. And in the middle of production, I think, brought on Paramount as a co-financier and basically, I’m not sure how they broke out the costs of the movie, but Paramount essentially got the international profits, and Fox got the domestic profits, so the story goes.

**John:** Yeah. And both of them prospered hugely by doing that.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** Now, most of these co-finance people — Well, I shouldn’t say most. There’s a huge range in sort of how they work. Some of them actually have their own distribution mechanisms, like Paramount would have, or they are the big distributor in a territory.

So, Village Roadshow, I think, owns Australia and they would have their own relationships, so they would own the movie for Australia, perhaps.

But a lot of times they are just big pools of money. And usually it’s not one individual. It’s a company that has aggregated funds from a lot of different places and is therefore able to invest in these movies — these big giant movies.

For our internet billionaire who just wants to have fun, that’s probably not the best place to start. I mean, yes, you get to go and see a giant Christopher Nolan getting made, so maybe that’s exciting. You’re about to get your name on that Christopher Nolan movie, that’s kind of exciting, but really ultimately that studio is going to have a tremendous amount of control over things. You’re going to have to actually run a business. You’re going to have to do a lot of sort of — it’s going to be a lot of work to do that.

**Craig:** It’s not a bad move, I mean, I’m just thinking about the sort of person who is a billionaire. It’s not a bad idea inasmuch as you are immediately trading on the thing that is of most value in your life, all of your money. When you come to Hollywood no one is particular interested in what you think a good movie is or what you think a good script is or any of that.

You’re just a big — you know, like in the cartoons when they would look at somebody and they would turn, like the sheep would turn into a cooked lamb. You know, they look at you and you’re just a bag of money.

So, you get to be involved in the movie business, and you get to meet people and read screenplays and get to know actors and all that, and you get to enjoy the glamour of it all, which I would imagine is part of it for a lot of these people. But, no, you’re not actually producing, choosing, making creative choices and putting the movies together.

So, I think for some billionaires it’s actually a great fit, but then you have interesting people like Megan Ellison who seems far more interested in actually making movies.

**John:** That’s what I was going to get into is that I think there’s the level below that that’s not the incredibly expensive movie, but not the cheap movie either, where you are spending your money to make movies that would actually have a very hard time getting made otherwise, either because of their subject matter, or because of the filmmaker like, you know, it’s a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson who is incredibly talented but when you’re making The Master on a huge — on a significant budget — that’s a risky movie to get made.

Where if you are coming in with a tremendous amount of money and you kind of don’t care about making your money back, you can just go for it.

**Craig:** Or if you don’t care about making a lot of money.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** There are some movies — there’s one movie, I won’t name the movie or the studio, but there was a movie that had a great script, a great director, and a real movie star attached to it. This was a few years ago. And it was at a studio. And they looked at it and the movie was going to cost $40 million to make, and the director, and the script, and the star more than justified it. And they said, “You know, we’re going to let it go. It can go to another studio.”

And I remember talking to the director and he was so confused why they let it go. And the movie went on to be a very big hit.

**John:** Oh, I know exactly what this is. We can say what this movie is.

**Craig:** I don’t want to. Because I don’t want to talk about the studio, it’s not fair.

**John:** All right. That’s fair.

**Craig:** But my theory was they let it go not because they thought it would lose money, but because they thought it wouldn’t make enough money. That the effort required just wasn’t going to justify the profit, or rather wasn’t going to be justified by the profit.

If you’re a billionaire and you’re coming into town and you want to make movies, you can make the movies you want to make and you can also make money. You just might not make that much. You know, you might spend $30 million or $40 million and in ten or twenty years you will have recouped plus 20%. It’s not great. But, you know, you’re doing what you love.

**John:** So, let’s talk at the very low end, because these inexpensive movies, I mean, that’s honestly, like, pocket lint could pay for some of these small movies.

**Craig:** Sure. The Jason Blum kind of million dollar horror films, you know.

**John:** Absolutely. And where I would caution the young billionaire on those is that you may end up doing a tremendous amount of work just to make that one little tiny movie. And if it’s artistically satisfying, that’s awesome. And maybe you’re going to be able to make ten of those movies and one of those goes on to become either a huge hit, or wins an Academy Award. So, you’ve created some art in the world. So, that is certainly a possibility.

But, in some ways I feel like it’s, I don’t know, it’s creatively riskier to make some of these little small ones, because they could be giant time sucks and not be especially rewarding.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** On the movie business I would say if you’re interested in making movies I would honestly pick a filmmaker who you want to make their movies and just make his or her movies.

**Craig:** I’m with you on that one. Back ’em.

**John:** Because I think honestly if you love Rian Johnson’s movies, just like go to Rian Johnson and say like, “Hey, whatever movie you want to make, I’ll pay for it. Done.”

**Craig:** Pretty much. That’s a pretty good way to approach it. You know, there are filmmakers that seem to know what they’re doing and deliver movies that people like. And enough people like them that it’s worth them continuing to make movies.

Now, what you’ve got to watch out for is sometimes new people show up in town and they back somebody who then uses that as an opportunity to make the movie that they don’t normally make. And then you suddenly get stuck with the dramatic, the overly dramatic movie from the comic star, or the —

**John:** Dragonfly would be an example.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or you get a comedy from somebody that’s just not funny, because nobody else is willing to give them that shot. And that’s part of it. You know, you don’t want to be the sucker.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe make the third movie of a really talented filmmaker.

**Craig:** Who is making the kind of move that, you know, so that’s something to look out for. You just don’t want to be that sucker who is sitting there at the end of the night and they’re the ones with the money in their pockets and here come the call girls. But, if you are committed to your own sensibilities as a billionaire in this business and you think that there are filmmakers you have a rapport with and you know how to read a screenplay–

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Then you’ve got a shot to at least, I would think, make a pretty good profit actually. Movies still make a lot of money despite the fact that according to Warner Bros. neither of the Hangover movies will ever turn a profit, but… [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Oh, studio accounting. It’s so delightful.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** But what I would say in a general sense is looking out how this billionaire is going to get involved with the business, none of us are talking about like now you open up your own shingle at this studio where you get a first look deal at this place and you hire on a staff to do all this stuff.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I’m not convinced that’s going to be the best way to get stuff done. Because what you’ll end up doing is having a bunch of employees who will try to develop movies and that may not — you end up spending a lot of time trying to develop stuff and not actually make stuff.

**Craig:** I totally agree.

**John:** I honestly think that you’d be much better off looking for who are the filmmakers we want to make their movies and get involved in making their movies.

**Craig:** And they will come to you.

So, the idea is that you don’t want to be the place of last resort. But you have to also be aware that if somebody can get — if you’re Chris Nolan and you can get Warner Bros. to give you your budget for Inception, you’re going to do that. And you know now that you don’t have to worry about distribution or marketing, it’s built in.

So, you are getting people that may bring you things that are off the beaten path of the studio, and that’s okay. So, what you’re waiting for are people who have terrific movies that studios simply don’t think they can make enough money on. As opposed to people bringing you distressed movies that people aren’t making for a good reason.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** That’s tricky.

**John:** Let’s talk television, because I would say television has been a hard thing for an outside third party to get involved with and actually make. And there have been exception like 3 Arts — is it 3 Arts? What’s the big, or Brillstein-Grey.

**Craig:** Yeah, Brillstein-Grey.

**John:** I’m sorry. Brillstein-Grey was a classic… — They made a lot of comedies, which was terrific. So, there has been some outside money, but in general it’s been hard to be the outside people making television because you are so dependent on the relationship between the studio that makes a television show, the network that releases it, which increasingly have become the same thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, classically it’s been very hard to come in with your billion dollars and say, “I’m going to make a bunch of TV shows,” and have that be a meaningful thing to do.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s changing I would say overall. You look at Lionsgate and sort of what they’re able to do. Granted, they are really a studio, but they’re essentially new money to television.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I think with the rise of Netflix and sort of other direct subscription services, it may be possible for someone to just say like, “I’m going to make this TV series and you know what? Netflix will take it.”

**Craig:** Yeah, you’re right. There is a new channel for distribution that is more, I don’t know, it’s just more accessible to independent money. And when I say independent I mean not affiliated with studios, not like small arty money.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For television, for network television and basic cable television and pay-cable television, the problem is you’re investing in something that you might never even see on the air.

**John:** Absolutely true.

**Craig:** Where you make a movie, you made a movie and you’ll sell it. Even if it doesn’t get theatrical distribution, you’ll sell some copy of it somehow. Pilots that don’t make series, they’re gone. You’ve got nothing.

**John:** Yeah. Yeah, I think if you were going to be this billionaire you would essentially have to commit to just making the whole series, because that pilot that doesn’t get set up is just burned money.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Whereas if you wanted to have an eight-episode series, that could be like the first season, I bet you could go to a Netflix, to a Sundance Channel, to an IFC, to one of the other sort of premiere kind of places and get that thing set up as a special thing set up. Because they’re essentially getting kind of a free show, or the money that they’re having to put out for this programming is probably not especially high.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. There’s an interesting distinction in evolutionary reproductive strategies that is, believe it or not, somewhat relevant here. There is the strategy where you put a lot of resources into one child, because you believe that that’s the best chance that child has to grow up and move along. And you see that often in environments that aren’t really dangerous. And then there’s the other strategy of make as many kids as possible because most of them are going to die.

**John:** Yeah. The locust strategy.

**Craig:** Yes. And rats do that. So, elephants have a kid. Rats have a thousand kids. And television requires a little bit of the rat strategy. If you’re making television you need to make a lot of it to get one or two that live. But in movies, you know…

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Especially from our billionaire’s perspective where he or she doesn’t really kind of care if they lose money as long as they made something they wanted to make. It’s really a different motivation for making things because studios have to be thinking about making a profit. This billionaire doesn’t necessarily need to be thinking about making a profit, or it doesn’t have to be her primary concern.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She might be worried about sort of making art, making something that changes the world in its own little way. And that’s a great luxury.

So, speaking of unprofitable ventures, there’s Broadway. So, Broadway, most shows classically lose money. And some shows that do succeed do succeed tremendously well. So, if you are Book of Mormon, or Wicked, or one of those giant monster hits, you are making so much money, it’s fantastic.

But what I will say my experience going through with Big Fish is that if you have some money in your pocket that you want to spend and you can really afford to lose it, we talked about sort of getting to go the movie premiere for this big giant movie that you made. You get to do that all the time on Broadway, because most of Broadway is really funded by the same kinds of people again, and again, and again.

So, there’s block of names you see above the title in Playbill, and those are people who put in some money. And sometimes on certain shows that might be $100,000, in certain shows that might be $1 million, or $2 million, or $4 million. But, the shows are — an expensive show would be $12 million. That’s not a big cost to a billionaire.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And you get the hands-on involvement. If you’re writing a $4 million check you get as much hands-on involvement as you sort of want in a show in a way that you could never get in a movie or a television show.

**Craig:** Well that’s the magic for me of Broadway compared to film is the intimacy of it and the fact that it is a performance as opposed to a fixed work. You know, movies, once they’re done, they’re done. And they do not change and they just exist in a permanent frozen state. Broadway is a living thing. And the casts change and the performance changes. And they get re-launched. And they appear in different cities at different budget levels. It’s just a living, breathing thing. It’s very — it’s just a much more intimate process.

So, no question, when you invest money in a movie, mostly everybody wants you to just be quiet, [laughs], so they can make their movie and then you’ll either get profits or you won’t. But with a show, with a musical, you become part of this thing that’s alive. It’s interesting.

**John:** And I would say for the glamour to dollars ratio, I think Broadway is honestly your best bet. If your goal is really to get invited to fancy parties and have people be nice to you, I think Broadway is actually a really smart choice.

I think movies are a more expensive threshold to get in. Television is sort of new for people to be able to invest this way.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Classically, though, I would say rich people, they invested in the arts but they invested in sort of like the big classical arts. So, people invested in the ballet. They invested in opera. Things that sort of would have a hard time sustaining themselves if it weren’t for really rich patrons. And it’s certainly a choice. It’s just I feel like if you’re Mark Zuckerberg you maybe don’t care about the opera.

**Craig:** Well, it appears he doesn’t. [laughs] I mean, based on his lack of participation in the opera. But, that’s always been a fascinating aspect of New York in particular to me is the confluence of enormous wealth and high art. Even Broadway, which is popular art and mass entertainment, is still considered higher art than what you turn on TV, I guess, or movies. It’s fancier. I don’t know how else to describe it.

**John:** It is. It’s fancier.

**Craig:** It’s fancier. And I think there is a rich history of wealthy patrons of art and I love that it’s there and I appreciate wealthy people who pay for us to do what we do.

Frankly, there is — you know, when I did a lot of work for the Weinsteins, look, lots to say on both sides of that coin. But one thing I always liked was how it was immediate. That really there was a patron and the patron for better or for worse was the one person that I was dealing with.

And it wasn’t a corporation. And I never had somebody say, “I personally love this. Unfortunately, the council of the Committee of Blankety Blank was told by some software that I can’t do it.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And there were some problems on the other side of the equation, but… [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] There were many challenges dealing with the Weinstein Company.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes you actually prefer the robot telling you what to do.

**John:** On the topic of robots, we left out sort of one other big aspect of the entertainment industry which is, of course, video games, which are in some ways a bigger industry than any of the other ones we described. I would say — so, it’s likely that a young billionaire got his money through some sort of digital means and so therefore they think, “Oh, video games will be a natural extension.”

Having made two video games, I would say that’s actually a challenging way to enter into — a challenging and risky way to enter into the “I’m going to make something market.”

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Because while you’re going to be able to make a video game absolutely certainly, the chance that you’re going to be able to make something that is going to be groundbreaking or incredibly profitable is slim. And the companies that make the huge things are huge because they make the huge things. So, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to make Grand Theft Auto. I guess you could for a billion dollars make Grand Theft Auto. But I think the odds that it’s going to become Grand Theft Auto are very, very remote. So, I don’t know it’s the best use of your billion dollars.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. And you have to look no further than former Red Sox and Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling who ended up losing his shirt doing exactly that, creating a video game studio to make a competitor to World of Warcraft and failed.

**John:** I don’t even know what that is. So, give me some backstory on that.

**Craig:** So, Curt Schilling, not a billionaire, but certainly quite wealthy. One of the best pitchers to ever play and had a long career. He was a big gamer. And he founded a company in Rhode Island to create a game called Kingdoms of Amalur, I believe is what it was called.

**John:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** And it was designed to be sort of a better than Warcraft Warcraft, to out-Blizzard Blizzard. Somewhat controversially they were partly funded by the state of Rhode Island which was seeking to sort of become more attractive to corporations and business.

And it just didn’t work. They ran into trouble and they started running out of money and they ran into delays. These things happen all the time. And eventually they just ran out of cash. And they couldn’t get more. And Curt Schilling pretty much lost everything and the state of Rhode Island certainly lost their entire investment.

The game exists. Apparently it is out there and somewhat playable. And, you know, I’ve read things about it that sort of say, well, you know, it’s actually not bad. Or, you know, it could have been great or whatever. But it unfortunately is kind of a cautionary tale.

They did everything as if they were Bethesda, or Electronic Arts, or Blizzard, or Square, or Ubisoft. They just didn’t have the money to support it. So, they are actually when you were talking about the billionaire that comes in and makes the $300 million movie, that’s kind of what they did. They kind of came in and said, “Okay, we have all this money. Let’s just spend all of it now.”

But the second you hit a speed bump, you know, and they just couldn’t get it done. If you look on Wired they have some amazing breakdowns of the Kingdoms of Amalur tragedy.

**John:** I’ve always loved reading the stories on Duke Nukem —

**Craig:** Oh boy, yeah.

**John:** And the endless journey towards a reboot for Duke Nukem and sort of everything that could go wrong that went wrong again, and again, and again, which was like a cursed brand.

**Craig:** When I read about, I mean, at last the game finally came out and we were all spared more articles about how it was the King of Vaporware, but when I read those stories about Duke Nukem I would start to get anxious, physically anxious because there’s this terrible thing — you’re on this treadmill where you’re delayed. You’re now behind two years and you turn around and games are lapping you. Now you’re developing a game for five-year old technology. Now you’ve got to start again. But now you’re three years behind. And it’s just quicksand. I would honestly, my heart would start racing when I would read those stories. I had to stop reading them about Duke Nukem because it would freak me out.

And I felt so bad for all the people making that. Even just the world of first person shooters have sort of just gone away by the time that, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s like everything was gone, and then they showed up. Oh, gosh, oh, I feel flushed.

**John:** I will say, not to completely disparage the possibility of involving yourself in games, is that, again, if you’re excited to lose some money, like you don’t really care about making money back, it’s a chance to maybe do something brand new and to do something that is sort of unlike anything else. But I would say like trying to chase a popular idea, like trying to the next World of Warcraft, is probably not going to be a very exciting or good use of your money, or rewarding your money.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But if there’s some genius who has the idea of like it’s this transmedia thing that’s going to do all this stuff and it’s only going to cost you $20 million and you feel like going for it, if you’re a billionaire, maybe. Because it’ll be one of those ideas that completely breaks out of everything that will catch probably and be the right use of your money.

**Craig:** Yeah. I always wonder like the guys who do the Elder Scrolls game and the Fallout games, Bethesda, ZeniMax Bethesda. I always wondered–

**John:** They’re brilliant.

**Craig:** They are amazing. But prior to Elder Scrolls were they kind of just small and then they just made an amazing game. I guess Morrowind was sort of the one that captured everyone. But, in other words did they sort of build themselves from small to huge?

**John:** That’s my belief but I don’t know that to be true. I think it is like Grand Theft Auto where it’s just, you know, they had a hit and they kept rolling that money back into the next one and into the next one and into the next one.

**Craig:** Got it, okay.

**John:** Yeah, it’s incredibly though.

**Craig:** It is. It’s amazing.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s wrap up our discussion for young billionaires and our guide for young billionaires.

So, if you are a Mark Zuckerberg who decides to sell Facebook and you want to make movies, make some movies, but maybe pick your favorite filmmakers and make their movies. You know, if you love Wes Anderson, make all his movies. Woody Allen classically had one person who was making all his movies for all that time. That’s great. Do that.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If you like television, you could probably invent a new television series and just fund it yourself because why not? And there’s going to be a home for it now in ways that there wasn’t before.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** If you like Broadway, the easiest way to spend your money. Lose your money, yes, but you’re not going to lose all of it, so there’s something. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Worst advice for billionaires ever.

**John:** I mean, but here’s the thing. My advice for billionaires is like you already made your money somehow, so you know how to make more money probably. So, if you’re not interested in like — if you’re not obsessed with like making money just do this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because, really, if your choices are between making more money, donating this money to a worthy cause, and worthy causes are great, but perhaps your worthy cause is actually creating art, then I would say there are filmmakers who make art, there are television shows that are genuinely art, there are Broadway shows that are genuinely art. And if profit isn’t your number one concern, those are all good possibilities for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you’re welcome, billionaires.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Jerks.

**John:** Yeah, jerks.

**Craig:** I mean, what have I have ever gotten from you people?

**John:** Ha!

**Craig:** I think any billionaire actually listening to this, and I’m serious, if you are a billionaire, a legitimate —

**John:** I bet we have at least one or two billionaire listeners.

**Craig:** Right. So, I speak now to those. To those men and women who are legitimate billionaires. If you listen to this podcast frequently and you’ve listened to all this by now. You, frankly, should send John and I each $1 million.

**John:** Done.

**Craig:** And I pledge to donate half of it, but I’m keeping the other half.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I’ve earned it.

**John:** You’ve earned it.

**Craig:** This is really good advice we gave.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, man, I hope it’s $1 million. I feel like we might get —

**John:** Oh, wouldn’t that be so great? Yeah.

**Craig:** I feel like we could.

**John:** So, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. No, so —

**Craig:** And you better tell me. [laughs] Don’t hide my $1 million from me.

**John:** Because Craig never actually reads the email. He only reads the ones I forward.

**Craig:** I know. And then —

**John:** Even then he claims I don’t actually email him when I do.

**Craig:** You did not email me that one time. I swear.

**John:** So, let us go to our real advice of the episode which is to the three people who have been brave enough to send in Three Page Challenges.

It’s been awhile since we’ve done Three Page Challenges. So, if you’re a new listener here’s how this all works. We solicit listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay. Sometimes it’s television shows, but it’s usually screenplays. And we will look at them. We will discuss them. We will summarize them. We’ll discuss them. We will post those PDFs on the site so people can read them. And, these were incredibly brave and generous to send these through. So, even if we are negative or harsh at times, it’s only because we think they’re awesome for sending in their stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, god, you sound like an abusive husband there.

**John:** Oh, yeah. This has been the day of Craig Mazin abuse.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, “Hey, just, you know, we may hit you. But it’s because — ”

**John:** It’s only because —

**Craig:** We love you.

**John:** You deserve it. Oh, yeah, that’s right. We love you.

**Craig:** We love you.

**John:** If you would like to send in your own Three Page Challenge, there is a link called johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and that will give you the instructions for how you send the stuff in because there’s like boilerplate language that goes there so you won’t sue us and things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** First one up, let’s do Blake Kuehn. How’s that?

**Craig:** Blake Kuehn. Yes, this is the one that opens with the college town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

**John:** It does. This was actually our first entry that we’ve talked about on the air which is written in Fountain. So, they actually just sent the Fountain file which is so exciting for me. I can summarize this one if you want.

**Craig:** Go for it.

**John:** So, Blake Kuehn’s script opens in a two-story country house where we hear a news anchor talking about a student who was brutally murdered. We meet Raina Finley. She’s twenty-something. She’s doing yoga while Facetiming with her tanorexic friend. They sign off. Raina is getting ready for a date. We see her in the bathroom. She’s text messaging somebody. The text messages sort of float away in the air in a very Sherlocky kind of way.

There’s a new Twitter follower message from @onegoodscare. Raina is in the shower when the lights go out. And that’s when our three pages end.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Craig Mazin, talk to us.

**Craig:** Well, I sense that what we’re looking at here is something in the vein of Scream. Tonally it seems like we’re doing a self-aware horror movie. I think Strode University, I believe, Laura Strode is the name Jamie Lee Curtis’s character in Halloween, although I could be [crosstalk].

**John:** That sounds familiar.

**Craig:** I’m not huge on my horror sort of classics. I’ll be honest about that. I’m an Exorcist guy, but I’m less a slashy movie kind of guy.

At first I thought, okay, we’re getting at least some interesting description. I like the way that the trees were shivering in the gusting October wind.

I was not quite laughing along with the characterizations here. We meet two characters. Raina Finley is basically, it says here “beautiful, but deep as a puddle,” which I thought that was quite good. And she’s obviously really, really sexy. But, you know, she was coming off as a kind of sexy cartoon that I’ve also see before So, I wasn’t — if you’re going to give me sexy carton girl, sexy dumb bimbo girl, maybe something new.

This felt very — it’s just very familiar. Curiously, she’s talking, she’s chatting with a friend of hers who at first I thought was a man. I got a little confused because the voice is a raspy, it’s very raspy, and then douchey Tanorexic Ed Hardy trucker cap, I just, but then she takes a drag off her cigarette. I was a little confused by what I was looking at. Maybe that’s the point.

But, what I don’t like is trying too hard. Let me discover, let me enjoy that this woman is gross. The problem is that you’ve overloaded her with literally a hat on a hat. She’s over-tanned. She’s got terrible makeup. And she’s got an Ed Hardy trucker cap. And she’s smoking. And she’s drinking Monster Energy Drink. It’s just like you couldn’t, other than putting the word douche on her forehead, you couldn’t do more, so there’s too much. I’m not even listening to her anymore and I don’t consider her real because I feel the screenwriter telling me what I want to feel instead of showing me.

They have a little back and forth banter. It just feels like kind of a waste of a scene. And then there’s sort of a Twittery thing of a mysterious stalkery kind of guy that she doesn’t get is mysterious and stalkery, but she’s going to die soon.

I feel like I’ve just seen this before. What did you think? How about you?

**John:** I thought these were overall competent and I felt that like you this was an attempt to sort of figure out what is the Scream for today. And that’s a valid thing to be trying to write. Good on that. And it got me into the genre quickly and competently and that’s good.

But some things didn’t work for me. So, I’m going to start, because I actually had a hard time even getting the script. And so let’s look at those first couple lines.

Okay, but what are we actually seeing? Because I don’t know what that is that you’re showing me. A college town like are we seeing streets, are we seeing — I see college town, but then we go to “EXT. HOUSE.” Well, “a two-story country house with a sprawling lawn.” I would actually be much better off if I hadn’t gotten that first line of a college town somewhere.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because it made me think like, wait, is she in a sorority house, is she in her parent’s house? I just got confused right from the very start.

**Craig:** I also was confused about the sorority issue myself, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Because the next block down:

But, are we — is she in a college dorm room or is she in her home bedroom? And that got me confused because those are very different things and especially different things for a horror movie. In horror movies we really need to know kind of what we’re looking at and sort of how safe is she, is she alone, so I was confused where this is.

“The documentation of an exceptional life and an imminent failure to launch.” But, I don’t get that based on what you actually showed me.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a valid sentence, but I just don’t actually get that point —

**Craig:** I’m going to go a little further. I don’t think that’s valid. I don’t think that’s valid screenwriting. Similarly, “framed confidence-boosting missives.” I don’t know what that is. Nor if you showed it to me will we be lingering on it long enough to get that. I think that we’re cheating.

**John:** Yeah. “Confidence-boosting missives,” you know, just tell me what the actual statement is. So, is it a Hang In There kitten, or is it one of those Confidence, or one of those like generic art things?

**Craig:** Even a missive is a letter, you know. Isn’t it?

**John:** Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So, maybe it’s like a framed letter from her college —

**Craig:** I don’t —

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** I don’t know. I just thought that that whole paragraph was cheating.

**John:** Yeah. And I also had a challenge with Raina Finley’s introduction. So:

So, it’s a run-on sentence that’s not helping us and I really think “deep as a puddle — flows through a series of Yoga poses,” the puddle and flows are not helping us, because that one puddle is about sort of her being shallow, sort of emotionally shallow, but then flowing through yoga poses, we’re still in a water context and trying to connect those but they’re not really supposed to connect.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I don’t know why yoga is capitalized. It just stopped me so many times.

**Craig:** Although then I got to the fact that that she was in a — that her “nubile figure strains beneath her sports bra and boogie shorts,” and then I was okay.

**John:** But if that were a separate sentence it would be even better.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I’m just saying that it eliminated the other sentences for me. [laughs]

**John:** All right. [laughs] Very good.

**Craig:** The pages were sexy. Actually really I was into it.

**John:** Yeah. I think they were sexy, too. So, I’m pointing at the things that didn’t work because I think a lot of stuff was nice. I think the idea of a Twitter follower as the bad guy is actually interesting. And I think it was Steve Healey on Twitter actually mentioned or posted that will the first Craigslist killer be someone who kills somebody off of Craigslist, will it be the person who’s responding to the Craigslist ad or the person who posts the Craigslist ad.

Because you know there will be a Craigslist killer, but it’s like which one is it going to be.

**Craig:** You know what would be a cool movie if there’s somebody is trying to — he’s answering a Craigslist ad because he’s a serial killer and he doesn’t realize that the person that posted this particular ad on his eighth try is looking for somebody to kill and they meet each other — somebody should write that.

**John:** Yeah. I think our friend TS will write that.

**Craig:** Oh, TS. That’ll be sexy, too.

**John:** So good. So, I like the general idea of this. I thought there was a lot of writing that needed to be cleaned up in it, but I have hopes that Blake can do that. He or she. I’m assuming Blake is a man, but Blake could be a woman, too.

**Craig:** Well, it could be either one. My greatest concern is less the cheaty and some of the awkward phrasing and a little bit more that this does not seem to have moved the bar enough. I mean, Cabin in the Woods sort of —

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** It just took the Scream, what Kevin Williamson so brilliantly did and kind of took it to the next generation, the next level. And this feels a little bit like I’m watching Scream again. And that’s been done. Repeatedly. It’s not only been done by Scream repeatedly, but it’s been done by lesser imitators repeatedly. And you don’t want to be in there. So, I don’t know.

I don’t know if that’s what this is or if it’s going to go somewhere else, but that was the…

**John:** But, Blake, I really hope that we’re going to have some scene where a girl is like taking a selfie and in the selfie she sees the killer right behind her.

**Craig:** Ooh, I like that.

**John:** That’s going to be a great moment.

**Craig:** That is a cool moment.

**John:** So, that’s our first one. Do you want to do the next one?

**Craig:** Sure. Which one would you like?

**John:** Do you want to do the…

**Craig:** C.L. Stone? Alone or Canary —

**John:** Let’s do Canary in a Coal Mine. Let’s do that. It’s a very different tone.

**Craig:** We’ll break it up. Exactly.

Canary in a Coal Mine by Steven D’Arcangelo. I love that name. Steven D’Arcangelo. It’s a Donnie Darko kind of…

Okay, so we are in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1937. We’re in the dusty Appalachian Mountains and we’re in front of a coal mine. And an old codger is sitting there and he calls quitting time and miners emerge from the mine and they are all carrying little tiny cages with canaries. And this is where I should sort of give it away: it becomes quite evident that we’re in an animated film. And the canaries are sort of work-a-day canaries in the coal mines. And they, where the miners go to their homes, the canaries go to a big aviary. And in the aviary we meet Bobby and Cole.

And Cole and Bobby sort of give us a little tour of their town and we realize it’s sort of Bug’s Life style town except instead of bugs it’s birds, you know. But it’s an anthropomorphized little bird town. And all the canaries citizens worship “he who cares for us” which is a boy who gives them water and such.

And it’s a big day for Cole. Cole is heading towards something. “Good luck, Cole.” People are wishing him luck. Poor Bobby, who is Cole’s sidekick, is also auditioning but no one seems to care. And Bobby is a bit of a klutz. And they enter this gilded cage which “looms above the community like a castle in the sky.” And in that cage is a council of elders who are auditioning canaries a la American Idol. In fact it’s Avian Idol.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right, John. What do you think?

**John:** So, having written many animated films I felt like I didn’t know that this was animated quite soon enough. And so I started reading it and everything — I thought like, Oh, I’m in 1937, Scranton, Pennsylvania, so I think I’m watching something real. And then it becomes very clear like, Oh, the animals are talking to each other, so that is not real.

I felt like I needed to be tipped off, even if it doesn’t say like “animation,” give me some sense of sort of what this world feels like because I’m having a really hard time from page one getting clear visuals on what things look like.

So, you referenced Bugs, which I thought was a very good choice for sort of what this is sort of trying to be. And yet they’re anthropomorphized sort of beyond what bugs can do. Because Bugs made very smart choices in the sense of like they had hands so they weren’t so scary looking where they only had feet. But, so they could pick things up. But everything they picked up was real and everything was tactile, whereas here there’s like newspapers being delivered. And it says Avian Idol as it lights up.

So, the world is pushed beyond sort of what I’m expecting. And that’s okay. I just didn’t — I wasn’t getting into the movie the right way because it was feeling so pushed. And because we started off so — I believed realistically that my mind immediately was going towards Bugs and it was actually much further than Bugs.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** And here’s an example, and it’s writing that confused me. “Behind Cole paces BOBBY, an anxious canary the same age who wears Coke-bottle glasses made from real Coke bottles.” So, that stopped me for about a minute because I’m thinking like, wait, so how big is he? Because Coke bottles are big.

**Craig:** It’s an enormous bird.

**John:** But wait, are they actually like vertical Coke bottles? I don’t understand what this is.

**Craig:** Or the bottom of Coke bottles? But even if they were the bottom they’d be too big.

There are multiple issues here. I agree with you that it takes a little too long to figure out what’s going. In part I think it’s not that it takes too long as much as that the reveal that we’re supposed to be paying attention to the canaries is mundane. I mean, I think if you’re going to tell a story about the unsung heroes of mining and their secret world, then you’ve got to get us into it in the proper way. We’re in a mine. They’ve found coal. Something is going on. What’s going to happen?

And then you realize — and there are voices in the dark talking about it — and then you realize they’re canaries and they just get picked up and brought down to the mine.

But somehow or another we need to get into this in a way that’s fascinating, and visual, and interesting, and somewhat ironic, I would think.

The world, go ahead.

**John:** I was going to say that we start with this old codger, this human who is sitting in a chair rocking, and that feels like that’s tipping off that the humans are important. If the important characters are the birds I would honestly say start with the birds.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so see the work. And so you look at Frozen, which I absolutely loved. They start with these, and not everything has to have a song, but they start with this song that sort of sets up the world and these ice harvesters. And you see what the work is and then we’re able — but we don’t actually focus on any faces — and then we find the boy and his reindeer who are important characters who are going to be following through that. It’s a very good job of setting up like what’s actually important in our world and our movie.

This, I feel like, well, the humans are the important thing, so I’m looking for miners. I’m looking for what the conversations are. And so by the time I get to the birds I’m like, huh? What?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, if the birds were one of the first things I saw then I would know I’m in a move about birds.

**Craig:** Or, if you start with the humans, you’re just looking at their feet, you know?

**John:** Yes!

**Craig:** They’re not important. I totally agree. And the first line of dialogue from the old codger is, “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.” And I’m already kind of checked out because it’s just so broad.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And goofy, you know? It’s just not… — And if that world is goofy, then oh my god, the secret world is going to be triple goofy. So, there’s a tonal issue with that.

**John:** Because we’re starting, the first thing we’re seeing inside the coal mine or near the coal mine are pick axes and shovels outside the mine entrance as we’re seeing people leave. Well, maybe show us the inside of it. Show us what it’s like in there —

**Craig:** I think so.

**John:** So we see that work and see them like coming up the elevators. Show us that journey to sort of set up our world and get us situated as an audience into the story you’re about to tell.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can even start with danger. I mean, animated movies have great success sometimes starting with danger. But it doesn’t really improve when we get inside the aviary. There isn’t a sense of a revelation here. We’re not having that moment where the doors to Oz open, or the moment when Andy leaves his bedroom and the toys come to life. There’s no excitement to this reveal. It’s actually very like here we are. We’re in an aviary.

I couldn’t really get a grip on what this place looked like.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I know there’s the notion that it’s a town. And there are streets, I guess, and a square. But I can’t quite figure out, because I’m not really sure how an aviary works, like where they sleep? Are there houses? Do the humans know that this aviary looks different than they think?

**John:** That’s what I was most curious about. Because you look at Bugs as a secret world and you believe that humans just weren’t sort of noticing was there. But here like the birds are dropped off at this place, so like it’s a real place that humans kind of know about, too.

So, the description of what this town is like, “Houses (nest boxes), police precinct (donut box), bank (piggy bank), movie theater (View-Master),” and that feels — and then it says, “You get the idea, right?” It’s that in-scene description. That feels like Bugs — A Bug’s Life.

**Craig:** Yeah. But in Bug’s Life they put an entire carnival inside garbage. You don’t see it. They’re really clear about that. You just don’t see that world. You’d walk by it and just think it was a paper bag.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But here’s a boy actually coming over and putting water into this thing, so I’m confused. Maybe there is no confusion in this world and everybody gets that birds talk. But then I’m kind of curious to see how that develops. It might.

And they literally say, “All hail He-Who-Cares-For-Us,” and the boy lovingly pets them. But does he — I need to know, can he hear them talking, or does he hear them just tweeting?

These are these questions that animators really suffer over and think about. And that hasn’t quite been worked out here.

**John:** Yeah. I thought Frozen did a very nice job with the animals talking. Essentially the animals don’t talk and yet the one guy can talk with his reindeer who understands him and it’s really clear that they understand each other but they don’t actually talk to each other.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that makes sense and that can work really well. But this is clearly mostly a movie about the birds. I should back up and say I think it’s a reasonably good idea to make a movie about these birds if there is really enough story here, but that’s an interesting world. I think the idea of a mining town, and the birds, and birds who fly versus birds who are underground, which is sort of unnatural. A caged bird singing. There’s lots of potential here. I just got really confused what movie Steven was trying to write.

**Craig:** I agree. And any time you’re talking about canaries and coal mines there’s going to be death and there’s going to be drama. And there’s lots of interesting stuff and it seems like we are looking at an underdog story, which frankly we get a lot of I think in these kinds of movies, but so be it.

I will lastly say that I got really thrown off by this Avian Idol/American Idol rip-off, because at this point now I’m like, okay —

**John:** Feels stale.

**Craig:** Now, I’m in total goofy spoof territory. Like even more strange than the spoofs that I used to do, because those were at least, you know, that was live action.

But you start putting spoof of pop culture, current-ish pop culture, in a movie that’s set in 1937 that’s animated, and they’re birds, I am just so confused by what’s going on and what I’m supposed to believe and feel is real. Yeah…

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, I think that this, Steven, is not an uncommon problem. It’s a problem of tone. And you can pick a lane but you’ve got to stay in that lane. And some lanes are better than others.

**John:** Yeah, I would say tone and also just visual storytelling. And just letting us know what it is that we’re going to be seeing in this world because we just get too confused right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. Go ahead and be dramatic about how you reveal things. All the reveals in these three pages are just we see this, we see this, we see this, we see this. Let us find it. Make a big deal out of it if it’s interesting. If you’re going to change our perspective or inform us that the world is not what we think, be dramatic.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Let’s go to our third one for this week. Our final one. This is Alone by C.L. Stone.

So, we meet Zoe, who is 28. She’s in an abandoned supermarket. And it’s really abandoned, so like dirty windows, possibly post-apocalyptic. She has two German Shepherds with her, Dino and Hulk, or Dino and Hulk, I don’t know.

She’s loading up on food and as she’s leaving she has this little — she finds a mouse in this box and leaves some poison for it. When we’re outside we see we’re in the City of London, which is similarly abandoned. She has an encounter with this menacing feral dog. She drives it off with a super soaker.

She visits an overgrown cemetery where we see gravestones of Loving Mother, Mary Last, and Taken Daughter Pollyanna Last.

At Zoe’s house there’s a vegetable garden growing out front. As she enters we sense that something is wrong, but that’s the end of three pages.

**Craig:** Right. Well, there’s a lot of interesting writing here. There’s some that’s a little clumsy. As an overall note for C.L., I would say I’m not sure you needed three pages for what you delivered here.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The deserted supermarket, for an audience — and this is again a somewhat common thing. I still do it, and I watch myself doing it. We get things faster than you think we get them. So, once I see:

In my mind I go we’re post-apocalyptic or we’re zombies or we’re something. But that’s the deal.

I get that already that fast. And this is working really hard to convince me of it. And I don’t need to see her select every single thing from the supermarket. You did leave out this in your summary, “Whizzing happily past the aisles, there is a blurred glimpse of a dark figure stood at the end of one.” [laughs]

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Which is one of the worst sentences I’ve ever seen in my life.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But, assuming that it’s just a typo or just a grammatical stroke moment, the idea is, okay, a-ha, there’s dark figures. Are they ghosts or are they zombies? Are they bad? Whatever they are, that’s our element that we’re going to be dealing with. And then it’s gone.

That’s good suspense. The problem is it’s not revealed suspensefully. And then once she decides it’s not a big deal, it’s gone anyway. And then she’s bothering with mice and so forth.

And, you know, it gets a little — we see City of London, the street is abandoned. Then there’s a dog. She water soaks the dog to make it go away. Okay, so she’s resourceful. I get that. And now she’s in a cemetery with mom, I assume what was her mom and her sister.

There’s another sentence that just took me — I understand what C.L. means, finally, but it took me awhile. And I took it as a challenge. And I want to know if you got it faster than I did. “Zoe sits, tearing up grass to split down the middle of the blade, keeping company with the dead.”

**John:** Yes. I did finally get it. And I think it’s actually a beautiful image, it’s just a very bad sentence.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, that’s the idea of like where you take your thumbs and you split apart a blade of grass. And that’s actually a great image. And it’s a very hard sentence to —

**Craig:** Correct. To the point where I started wondering is C.L. Stone, is English their first language, because that syntax is so tortured. Because at first I was like, what blade? And I started looking for a sword. [laughs] And then I was like, what is she doing? Why is she tearing up grass? And then I realized what she meant.

So, you’re right. It actually is a very beautiful image and I like the peacefulness of it. It just needs to be written better.

**John:** Yeah. I’m guessing C.L. Stone is British or a non-American just based on some choices.

**Craig:** Trolley.

**John:** Choices on trolley and tins.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so even an American writer who is trying to write something set in London would probably say cart.

**Craig:** Yes. And cans.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah and also it is —

**John:** And there were other things that I thought were actually really terrifically done here though. I really thought that little rat poison moment was kind of nice. So, essentially you find this mouse and then you’re like, screw it. So, she shakes some rat poison on the shelf. I thought that was kind of an interesting thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I love — I mean, abandoned supermarkets are sort of a familiar territory but they’re also really — I could immediately see it in a way that’s helpful in these things. I mean, we were talking about Bethesda earlier, but Fallout 3 has great abandoned supermarkets.

And I immediately saw that and it put me in the right place. I agree that it just went on too long.

**Craig:** It just went on a bit too long. And similarly when she walks into the house, something’s going on and I feel like, well, we’re here at the bottom of page three and we’re just repeating what just happened on one.

I almost wonder if it’s better to, well, here’s what I’m missing more than anything from these three pages. I know that Zoe’s mother and sister died. I know that she’s resourceful when it comes to dogs. And she’s scrappy because she can go collect food and such. But I don’t know what scares her. I don’t know what makes her sad even. I mean, even the blade, grass blade. I’m not getting that one thing that I want to hook in that makes her interesting to me and not just girl in post-apocalyptic London. I’m looking for that character thing.

**John:** So, first I need a theater, but if I only had these three pages to work with, and wanted to rearrange it and do something that I think would work a little better, I would probably actually stat at the cemetery and start with that blade of grass splitting and sort of looking up to the clouds and so we don’t know sort of the full context.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Then go to the supermarket. It’s like, oh, we’re actually in a post-apocalyptic world here. And then go to the house. Because right now it’s a little bit strange that we like start with the supermarket and the cart and then we stop and she just like hangs out at the cemetery for awhile. And then eventually goes home. Like once you get stuff in the cart, you should use the cart to take it home.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s sort of the narrative logic that would seem to make sense.

**Craig:** I agree. The other way to open is to just see this girl in a store just looking at rows of cereal. And then she picks a box and looks at the ingredients and considers it. And then is like, eh, I could get this one. [laughs] And then she finally picks on. And she starts walking away and you pull back and you see: oh my god. This person is making choices about cereal and she’s alone.

**John:** Yeah

**Craig:** But, yeah, there is a little bit of a missed opportunity to kind of, again, dramatic reveals of the world around us. And they don’t always have to be misdirections. But, you know, the deserted supermarket is a little bit of a trope, frankly, at this point.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, making something special out of it or finding another way. But, there is really good imagery, there’s good writing. I liked that it’s quiet. And I like the challenge of writing without dialogue. Some of those sentences though we’ve got to — we don’t put sentences in there like that one sentence. [laughs]

**John:** I would agree.

Also, I would say if you have stuff that needs to be printed on screen, like Mary Last, Loving Mother, I would have probably put that, I would have centered it. I would not put spaces in between those lines, and just kept those together as blocks. I honestly probably wouldn’t have put in all that information because when I see dates I start to do math on dates, and you don’t ever want your audience doing math. You don’t want them to think about anything you don’t want them to think about.

So, I think you can be in the cemetery and just sort of show names, like Loving Mother, but don’t worry about dates.

**Craig:** I didn’t mind in this case. I know what you mean. But 2000 and 2008 is such easy math. And it does tell us how young this girl was when she died, which is good.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But then there’s also a picture of a girl, so that kind of covers that. But I do agree you want to maybe bold that, center it, do something, make it interesting.

**John:** And in my proposed reordering of things we may not need to have that residential street. But on page two we go to:

“Zoe whizzes past a street sign. Underneath the name it reads ‘City of London’. The street is abandoned. Almost.”

The street is abandoned, but that’s not telling me enough. Like you’ve done this whole supermarket thing to set up some sort of world, but like what is that abandoned street like? Are things burned? Is everything untouched? Is it overgrown? It really does matter. Like are windows smashed out of cars? What is it like?

**Craig:** Yeah. You never want to say something like “the street is abandoned,” because that’s facts not in evidence. You just want to show me what I’m supposed to see and let me determine that maybe this place is abandoned. But there’s such a different kind of abandonment on a street where there are overturned cars and they’re all burnt out, or a street where everyone is still parked, neatly.

**John:** Yeah. Agreed. So, she gave, I don’t know if C.L. is a man or woman, but abandoned is just giving us an adjective. Give us some nouns. Give us some things to look at that will help us build the scene and sort of know what it is that we’re looking at in our head. Because adjectives alone won’t do it.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Cool. So, again, three interesting, very different Three Page Challenges. Thanks, Stuart, for reading all of these entries.

**Craig:** Thanks Stuart.

**John:** And picking these three to send us.

**Craig:** And thank you to our writers. And whatever we’ve said here, take it to heart, or kick it to the curb, but keep working.

**John:** Keep working. Craig, you have a One Cool Thing that you’re excited about sharing, so I don’t want to hold you up any longer.

**Craig:** I’m so excited. I should have been on top of it but I wasn’t and then someone sent me a tweet and I got all crazy. The Room Two is out. The Room Two.

**John:** Holy Cow.

**Craig:** It’s out for iPad. Not The Room, the movie, the Tommy Wiseau film. No, The Room Two, the sequel to the extraordinary game for iPad, The Room. It’s my favorite game that I ever played on the iPad. It’s one of my favorite games period in my life. And the sequel is out. I’m super excited.

**John:** Have you played through it yet?

**Craig:** No. I’ve only played about ten minutes of it this morning and then I had to go, but it sounds beautiful. It looks gorgeous, I mean, just gorgeous. The attention to detail these guys do is amazing.

**John:** So, for people who aren’t familiar with The Room, it is a sort of Myst-like in many ways I think where you have this box, at least in the original, you have this box that you need to figure out how to open. And it’s incredibly challenging to figure out how the different pieces connect and how you’re supposed to get the next part of the box to open up.

**Craig:** And it’s very tactile. You’re constantly turning things, hitting switches, pulling on things. You’re feeling it. It’s really beautifully implemented for the iPad. You can tell it was designed for touch. It is one of the few games I’ve ever played where I just thought this could not be done without touch at all in any way, shape, or form. It’s beautiful that way. And so this seems so far so good. So far so good.

**John:** And I’m excited to see what they did in terms of building out the narrative. Because in the first game of the room there’s a sense that you have gotten this box because an uncle or somebody else has died and/or has disappeared and you are following these instructions to figure out what he was getting into. And it’s super creepy. It’s like The Room, not The Room, like The Ring kind of creepy.

**Craig:** Yes. Very Ring-like.

**John:** The Ring or Hellraiser. There’s some dark forces that he was investigating, Lovecraftian forces perhaps. And that’s awesome. I love that when it’s done so well.

**Craig:** Yeah, they seemed to have picked up that narrative and I can’t wait to see where it goes. And I think it’s $5. It’s ridiculously cheap.

**John:** It’s a steal.

**Craig:** I mean, honestly, if you have an iPad and you haven’t bought the room, you’re nuts. And if you have and you haven’t bought The Room Two yet, run, run, run and do it.

**John:** I agree.

My One Cool Thing is also a software solution. So, I’m working on this movie that I’m hoping to direct this next year. And so one of the things I needed to do is find some location images. So, not necessarily the locations that I’m going to be shooting in, but some sort of visual references for things that I — sort of for the world where this movie takes place. And Google is your friend for that, so Google Image Search is incredibly useful for finding, you know, you type in the search terms and you find those sort of interesting places.

But I wanted to store them in some place. And so Evernote is really good for that. And Evernote plus Skitch is a really good combination. So, what I’ve ended up doing, which has worked out really well, is I’ll find something that’s correct and it’s up on my screen. I’ll hit the command key for Skitch which is this image annotator that partners with Evernote. And so you select the part of the screen that has the image and it saves it to Evernote along with whatever notes you have for it.

And so I’m able to build sort of location files for the things that I’m looking for for this thing. It’s been incredibly useful because classically what I would have done is like drag the image off and stick it in a folder and remember where that folder is, or stick it into iPhoto. This was a much better solution for me.

I’ve tried to lean into Evernote a little bit more for this project for keeping all the notes about a project together so that I can tag them all the same way. And then if I’m looking for something, be it a video, be it a website, be it an image, it’s right there, or notes on projects.

**Craig:** You’re like a handyman. You’re like a Mr. Fix It except for these things. You know, there are people that go around their house like, huh, I don’t like the water pressure coming out of my shower. I’m going to open up my walls. And you’re that guy, but for this stuff. You really are.

You’re just like, “I don’t like the way things are going. I’m going to just make stuff and fix it.”

**John:** Yeah. So, Evernote plus Skitch I think is a really good solution for that. Evernote is kind of free. I think above a certain amount of storage you have to pay a monthly fee, but it’s been really well worth it. And Skitch I think is a free add-on for Evernote. So, I recommend the two of them together.

**Craig:** Sweet.

**John:** Sweet. So, standard boilerplate here at the end of our show. If you have a question for Craig or I —

**Craig:** For Craig or me.

**John:** Oh my god. I can’t believe I just did that.

**Craig:** You did it. Keep it. Keep it. [laughs]

**John:** I’m not going to change it. No, we’re not going to edit that out. Yeah, for me, for I, that’s one of those frustrating things, and especially you hear it in lyrics where they’ll make the rhyme because they want an I or they want a me —

**Craig:** Say a Little Prayer for I, that’s the one that just makes me nuts.

**John:** Yeah. If you have a question for me or for Craig, if it’s short, Twitter is your friend. So, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Longer questions or notes to explain why were wrong about something we said on the show are ask@johnaugust.com.

If you want out the notes for this episode or any of our episodes or the links of things we’ve talked about, you can always find those at johnaugust.com/podcast.

We also have an app now that people are downloading and using.

**Craig:** So cool.

**John:** Which is exciting. So, that’s for iOS and for Android. Totally optional. You don’t have to use the app. You can just go through iTunes if you like to. But if you like to use the app, you’re welcome to. And it also gives you access to all the back episodes.

If you’re on iTunes, leave us a rating and a comment because that helps people find the show. And I think that is it.

**Craig:** It’s a good thing, because I really got to pee.

**John:** Go! Craig, enjoy your week.

**Craig:** Thanks, John. See you soon. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS

* [Company, Making of Original Cast Recording](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVf78joLfSg) part 1 of 6, on YouTube
* Boston Magazine on [Curt Schilling and 38 Studios](http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/)
* The [Development of Duke Nukem Forever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever) has its own Wikipedia entry
* [How to submit your Three Pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage), and [Stuart’s post on lessons learned from the early batches](http://johnaugust.com/2012/learning-from-the-three-page-challenge)
* Three Pages by [Blake Kuehn](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BlakeKuehn.fountain)
* Three Pages by [Steve D’Arcangelo](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/SteveDArcangelo.pdf)
* Three Pages by [C.L. Stone](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/CLStone.pdf)
* [The Room Two](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-room-two/id667362389) is available now
* [Skitch](http://evernote.com/skitch/) and [Evernote](http://evernote.com/) are great together
* Download the Scriptnotes app for [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scriptnotes/id739117984?ls=1&mt=8) and [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.johnaugust.android.scriptnotes) devices
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Andreas Hornig

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/my-girlfriends-boyfriends-screenwriter).

**Disclaimer:** Hey, this is John. Two things about today’s episode. First off, this is one of those episodes where Craig swears a little bit. So, if you’re in the car with your kids, standard warnings there. It’s not terrible, just a few f-bombs, so they’re near the backend of the episode.

Second off, we now have an app for Scriptnotes. There’s an app for iOS and for Android. So, I talk about it at the end of the show in the One Cool Things, but in case you want to listen to this episode through the app, you can. It’s available right now for iPhone, for Android devices, however you want to find it.

On iPhone it’s in the App Store, so just go to the App Store on your phone and you’ll find it there, Scriptnotes.

For Android, I don’t know how you find Android apps, but it’s there wherever you find Android apps it should be there.

A few things about the app and how it all works. Scriptnotes is always free and it will always stay free so that the most recent episodes will always be free the way they always have been. The app is going to let us sell the back episodes. So, it’s a subscription that you can get all the back episodes you want, sort of the Netflix model, all-you-can-eat. Nothing has really changed except that if you want to listen to it through the app, or to go to those back episodes, they’re all available now.

So, if you like your current setup, don’t change anything. Stay awesome. Stay cool. And enjoy this episode of Scriptnotes.

[Intro tone]

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

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

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

Craig, you are in my house. We are doing one of those rare episodes where we’re actually live in the same room together.

**Craig:** Yeah. And as always there’s a certain frisson. There is a je ne sais quoi.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a little bit different when you’re here.

**Craig:** I noticed that everything that I said was very positive and what you said was studiously neutral to negative.

**John:** It’s good to have you here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, we will just do a little bit of quick follow up on our last episode. People tweeted us saying like, “Oh, I’m a reader at CAA and what you said about coverage was not accurate. It was only half true.”

**Craig:** I noticed that. Now, did that individual follow our invitation to explain? [laughs]

**John:** No. That’s the reason why we’re doing follow up. So, if you listen to our podcast and somebody says, one of us say something that’s actually incorrect or you disagree with, that is an ideal opportunity to write in and say, “You were wrong about this thing.”

And so I would invite this person who said I was wrong about coverage to email me and tell me how I was wrong, because that’s the only way we can grow is by being corrected.

**Craig:** We’re not particularly sensitive about being wrong. We like learning.

**John:** I love to learn.

**Craig:** There was another person who wrote, who tweeted both of us, and said something like, “I really liked how John and Craig said they didn’t know anything about drugs and then spent 40 minutes talking about drugs.”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I actually know a lot about drugs. And I’ve done drugs.

**John:** I know quite a bit about drugs. Yeah.

**Craig:** And you’ve done them.

**John:** But we’re just not doing them now.

**Craig:** Just right now. All we were saying was don’t do them while you’re writing. Why did that get — I didn’t understand that. Sometimes people are mean.

**John:** Sometimes people are just irrational. And I think Twitter brings out the worst characteristics of that where it’s just like it’s 140 characters, “I’m going to send it off.” Not as bad as like comments on a blog post, like reading below the fold of the post.

**Craig:** YouTube comments are the Mos Eisley of the internet.

**John:** They really are.

So, the third voice you hear in the room with us today, laughing occasionally, is Mike Birbiglia who is our special guest.

**Craig:** Woo!

**John:** And so Mike Birbiglia is a writer, director, performer, what other — ?

**Mike Birbiglia:** Yeah, sure.

**Craig:** Standup comedian.

**John:** Standup comedian, yes. Performer, that’s sort of a catch all category for that. Now for people who can’t think of who Mike Birbiglia is off the top of their head, he was in the second episode of Girls and he was —

**Mike:** In the first season.

**John:** That’s a very crucial point. So, you were the guy who she was interviewing for a job at some sort of publishing company?

**Mike:** Yeah. I don’t remember! [laughs]

**John:** Anyway, you were a guy at a desk.

**Craig:** Method actor. You were really into it that day.

**John:** He was deeply into it.

**Craig:** “I don’t remember.” What’s your character’s name? Uh…

**Mike:** But it was a fun scene. I loved shooting the scene.

**John:** I honestly feel like that scene kind of codified what her relationship was going to be towards work from that point forward. It was a really crucial moment. So, this is Mike Birbiglia and Lena Dunham in their first meeting in Girls.

[Girls scene begins]

**Mike’s Character:** I think the only other place that you’re allowed to brag like that is on your online dating profile. Not that I have one.

**Lena’s Character:** Oh, no. Of course not.

**Mike’s Character:** Mm-hmm. So, you live in Brooklyn. Is it Williamsburg?

**Lena’s Character:** No, I live in Greenpoint.

**Mike’s Character:** Oh.

**Lena’s Character:** You know, big difference, Williamsburg/Greenpoint.

**Mike’s Character:** Oh sure.

**Lena’s Character:** Are you in Brooklyn or?

**Mike’s Character:** Yeah. On Cobble Hill.

**Lena’s Character:** Oh, that’s like grownup Brooklyn.

**Mike’s Character:** Yeah. I’m like a real live grownup. Can’t you tell?

**Lena’s Character:** [laughs] So, in your neighborhood do you ever drink at that place Weather Up?

**Mike’s Character:** That’s a little bit hip for my taste.

**Lena’s Character:** Are you kidding? You’re very hip. But I do object to any bar that calls its bartenders mixologists.

**Mike’s Character:** Exactly.

**Lena’s Character:** And they wear tiny vests.

**Mike’s Character:** I know!

**Lena’s Character:** If I’m going to drink in your neighborhood I want to go to Washington Commons —

**Mike’s Character:** — Washington Commons. Oh my god! I love that place.

**Lena’s Character:** Hands down.

**Mike’s Character:** I like a bar where the median age is about 55.

**Lena’s Character:** I like a bar where the average patron would be described as crotchety.

**Mike’s Character:** Crotchety is good.

[Girls scene ends]

**John:** Welcome Mike Birbiglia.

**Craig:** Mike Birbiglia!

**Mike:** The part they don’t hear devolves into this really awkward rape joke.

**John:** Yes.

**Mike:** She makes a rape joke kind of flippantly and then I say, “That’s really not work language.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Mike:** That’s not — off is okay.

**John:** What was so great about that scene is it happens in a very natural romantic comedy kind of way. Like, oh, this guy is going to be a love interest. And then it so abruptly curtails in a way that I think is a remarkably good scene.

**Mike:** That was so fun. That was the most fun day of work I’ve ever had.

**Craig:** Aw.

**Mike:** It was the easiest, most fun day of work. I love Lena.

**John:** So, can you come back and do another arc on Girls?

**Mike:** I’d be thrilled. Yeah. I don’t know that it’ll ever happen, but that character kind of discounts himself by the end of the scene as being anyone she’d ever want to run into again.

**Craig:** Just like your real life.

**Mike:** [laughs] Yeah, exactly.

**John:** So, Mike is here because you are in town doing big legitimate shows. So, you just did Jimmy Kimmel. You’re going to be doing Conan.

**Mike:** Yup. Conan Monday and then I had tweeted at you guys I’m fans of you both and I listen to the podcast aggressively.

**John:** Wow. So what does that mean? You actually get yourself really pumped up and you start pen in hand?

**Mike:** I think it’s one of the favorite things in my life is listening to the podcast.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** Holy cow. That’s some high pressure.

**Mike:** You know what it feels like? I’ll tell you what listening to the podcast feels like. I said this on Twitter, but it’s like hanging out with really smart people and talking about writing except you don’t have to talk.

**Craig:** That’s very nice.

**Mike:** And I love not talking. Because I talk for my living and after awhile you’re just like, “I just like listening to people who are really smart.”

**Craig:** I’d like to get that deal where we could do the podcast but not talk.

**John:** That would be fantastic. Craig, that’s called listening to a podcast.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** But because you don’t listen to any other podcasts, you have the joy of the monologue that you don’t have to be a part of.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, I don’t… — How many podcasts are there at this point, like four or five now?

**John:** There might be at least six or maybe a dozen podcasts out there.

**Craig:** I just don’t have the time.

**Mike:** I mean, once it gets to ten they’re going to just stop making —

**Craig:** They’ll stop making.

**Mike:** Yeah. I’m sure. We’ll all have the good sense to do that.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** But I’m just a big fan of the podcast and as a guest I just want to say up top, I want to discount myself and say I am the least pedigreed of your writer guests admittedly, but I’d like to think of myself as a writer/listener who like won a contest.

**John:** [laughs] Indeed.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re a little better than that.

**John:** Yeah, underneath your seat at Jimmy Kimmel there was a little note saying like, “You get to be a guest on this podcast.”

**Mike:** It was part of a gift bag.

**John:** I first met you at the screening of your film Sleepwalk with Me. And so that was the Writers Guild Foundation, I think, did a thing at the Writers Guild Theater. And Joss Whedon hosted a Q&A afterwards. And so you and I were up there. And so we talked very briefly in the lobby beforehand about Lena and how awesome things were.

Congratulations on Sleepwalk with Me.

**Mike:** Thanks.

**Craig:** Great movie.

**Mike:** Thanks.

**Craig:** Great movie.

**John:** So, it’s a movie that people can find on iTunes and Netflix and it came out last year and had the indie release, the big thing you were sort of marketing was to make more than Avengers did.

**Mike:** Yes.

**John:** And how did that go?

**Craig:** You got close.

**Mike:** Here’s what we did. Opening weekend we had the highest per screen average of any film that year, higher than Avengers. The one caveat is that we were on just the one screen.

**Craig:** Right. Of course.

**Mike:** And Avengers was on the 2,000 something screens. And so we did beat them in that category. In the overall I think they did close to $1 billion. We did about $2.3 million.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Still, that’s close.

**John:** Yeah, that’s right. I mean, with a margin of error.

**Mike:** They both have the word part “illion.”

**Craig:** That “illion.” A lot of kids who haven’t yet gone to second grade will flip the billion and million.

**Mike:** Yes, exactly.

**John:** That’s the original thinking. Generations —

**Craig:** For that age group you have done better than The Avengers.

**Mike:** Absolutely. And, honestly, it’s thrilling. Jokes aside, it’s thrilling to be able to make a movie that eventually gets to an audience. And people who love it, love it, and then people who hate it, hate it. And that’s fun, too.

**Craig:** I don’t know how anyone hates this movie. I mean, I don’t know why people hate movies in general anyway, but —

**John:** Positive moviegoing.

**Craig:** Positive moviegoing right here.

**Mike:** I loved that episode by the way.

**Craig:** Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And we’re talking about, you know, the guy, the Hulk, Hulk Film Crit, And Hulk Film Crit, one of his things is he had this amazing encounter with Quentin Tarantino who sort of lectured him on never hating a movie, which we’ll get to that later.

But I want to talk to you about your movie because the truth is you’re not any less credentialed than anyone. You wrote a screenplay and you directed your own screenplay and you made a movie. And you made a great movie.

As far as I’m concerned there’s no other credentials required. What’s fascinating about that movie is that it is, I think, unique in the history of adaptation. I don’t know if anyone has quite done what you’ve done, which is to take what is essentially a well crafted standup act in the vein of a one-man show kind of standup act, and adapt it for film and not just do kind of…forgive me, the guy who did the one-man show and then committed suicide, which is probably where you’re headed.

**John:** Spalding Gray.

**Craig:** Spalding Gray. So, before you Spaulding-Gray yourself, just know that even what he did, he shot himself talking to an audience. You dramatized the whole thing. So, my first question for you, if it’s not too early with the questions…

**John:** Go. Go.

**Craig:** Is how did you do that?

**John:** What was the genesis? I don’t know sort of how Sleepwalk with Me came about.

**Mike:** The genesis was I studied screenwriting undergraduate and I was very serious about it. I went to Georgetown and I was with a bunch of peers who were very serious about it. Jonah Nolan was in my class. Jordon Nardino. A lot of really great writers who went on to be working Hollywood writers.

And then I was not able to figure out how to come to Los Angeles and be a writer, and I was pursuing standup comedy at the same time. And so I was like, well, standup comedy at least, similar to the character that I play in the film, Matt Pandamiglio, not unlike Mike Birbiglia —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Mike:** I was working at the DC improv comedy club and I could see that there was a business model to standup comedy that I could understand. It’s a meager business model, but it’s a business model. You drive somewhere, you perform for 20 minutes, they give you $50. Like it made sense to me. And because I’d been on both sides of it at a comedy club I understood that. So, I pursued that for many years and at the same time I simultaneously started merging the dramatic playwriting standup, or playwriting and screenwriting elements with my standup comedy. And that is what became the one-man show Sleepwalk with Me, and then subsequently My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And then what I really wanted to do was make a film. And then there was a company that was interested in adapting that into a film. They paid us to write it. They didn’t like the script. They didn’t see it. And I asked them if I could take it from them and make it myself. I was going to — we made it for about $1 million, which in film is nothing.

**Craig:** No, that’s a challenge.

**Mike:** I know people think it’s a lot of money, but in film it’s almost nothing. And so that’s how it happened. I mean, writing the one-man show took about seven years. And then the adaptation took about two or three years.

**John:** But so let’s talk about writing a one-man show, because I see you doing things that sort of look like standup but you actually look at what that show is, or what My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend is, and they’re much more structured experiences where they’re clearly like and now we’re in a flashback where we’re telling this kind of thing. And they have rhyme and they have structure to them.

What is the writing process like for this? Are you thinking about like this is that story and this is how I can get that story to hook into the next thing?

**Mike:** Well, I was very lucky. Early on when I moved to New York City I started seeing all of the one-person shows on and off Broadway. I saw I Am My Own Wife. I saw Bridge & Tunnel. And then the one that really hooked me emotionally was this one called the Tricky Part.

And if writers are in New York, by the way, see cheap theater. It’s totally available.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** See tons of it. It’s so educational. You can go on these like BroadwayBox.com and there’s all these like Broadway deals if you Google just like “theater deals cheap tickets.” You can get cheap tickets and see a lot and learn a lot.

I saw this one called The Tricky Part, directed by Seth Barrish, and starring Martin Moran. It’s this very dramatic story but had a lot of levity to it as well about this guy who was sexually abused by a clergy person in his church growing up. But it was very funny.

**Craig:** Not a rabbi. I should point that out.

**John:** You never hear that, do you.

**Craig:** You do, but less.

**Mike:** But there was so much humor to it, and it was so — how do I say — very conversational the way he told the story. You felt like you were talking to a friend. And I thought, oh my god, I got to talk to that director, Seth Barrish.

And I really like sent him a letter. I sent him my comedy CD. And I said, “This is what I’d like to do.” And I sent him the script for Sleepwalk with Me, an early draft of it, the one-man show, and he was not so interested but he listened to the CD and he said, “It’s funny, but it’s not quite there yet. And I’ll teach you sort of how I approach one person theater.”

And what he taught me, and I think this applies for film, I still use it for the films I’m writing right now, and he and I still use it when we work together with our one-person shows, is finding a main event that the whole film or play builds towards. And if that main event is interesting enough, all you have to do is build backwards to it so that secretly, as a writer, your little trick is that you know that no one has any idea that where you’re going is pretty fascinating.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And I feel like that’s been the guiding principal for all of me and Seth’s work.

**Craig:** In the movie, it’s the wedding.

**Mike:** I can say what it is.

**Craig:** We can give spoilers. It feels like it’s the wedding to me. Or the —

**Mike:** Yeah. I think we can say, I mean, I feel like it’s been out so long that we can say what it is.

**John:** It’s the jumps through the window.

**Mike:** Yeah, I would say —

**Craig:** Well, the jump through the window is sort of the breaking point.

**Mike:** Right.

**Craig:** But so that’s like, I understand what you’re saying. There’s a surprise thing that happens that you never see coming.

**Mike:** Yeah. In Sleepwalk there’s two simultaneous. One is the wedding. Or one is us getting engaged and the wedding plans. And then jumping through the window. My sleepwalking getting so bad that it nearly kills me.

And then once you have that, that interesting main event, I feel like you can build backwards towards that. I feel like it’s something you guys talk about all the time is finding your ending before you begin.

**Craig:** You got to know what your ending is.

**John:** Now, talk to me about writing this stuff, are you perceiving yourself as a character or are you perceiving yourself as I am just the —

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the part that I find so fascinating that you would —

**John:** The boundary between who you are as an actual person, Mike Birbiglia, and who you are as this character playing. Because in the one-man show version of it, is it Mike Birbiglia or is it Matt?

**Mike:** Yeah. In the one-man show version it’s me. Definitely me.

**Craig:** And why did — I’m stacking questions.

**Mike:** I get this question a lot.

**Craig:** What’s the point? [laughs]

**Mike:** Of changing the name?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Mike:** So, two of the models when I was writing the film, two of the models for the film were Private Parts by Howard Stern.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Mike:** And Annie Hall by Woody Allen.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Mike:** And in Private Parts Howard Stern keeps his name, Howard Stern. In Annie Hall he’s Alvy Singer. And I thought Woody Allen is a career that I like to emulate. He’s made some 30 or 40 films at this point.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** Howard Stern is doing a great job in radio but he doesn’t want to make more movies. And I just want to make a lot of movies. And so I thought I don’t want to set myself up for this odd paradigm where people are expecting to come see Mike Birbiglia do Mike Birbiglia things over and over again, because I just honestly don’t have enough stories for that.

**Craig:** Your life is not interesting enough to support the entire career.

**Mike:** By no means.

**John:** And people, I feel like they set up their lives in ways just so they’ll have interesting stories. It’s like they’re deliberately seeking danger and seeking these crazy events so that they can have that.

**Craig:** Which is one thing I love about Mike and his story is that you seem like the kind of person who is, in watching your film, incredibly resistant to anything happening to you that’s exciting.

**Mike:** True.

**Craig:** And that, in fact, it is only when you’re sleeping that the exciting things happen, totally against your will, and I love that.

**Mike:** Thanks.

**Craig:** I think you’re a great character for somebody to have written. Granted, in real life it’s got to be a huge pain in the ass.

**Mike:** Also it was really challenging dramatically to write a character who is incapable of doing most things.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** Because so much of drama is based on action and his character is based on kind of inaction.

**Craig:** But then there’s an action that comes out, I mean, the first sort of — well, it’s not the first one. But the first time in your movie I got fooled, obviously I don’t get fooled when the sleep doctor is talking to you. I get what’s going on there. But I got fooled with that woman in that room until she gives you the pizza neck roll.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because I thought it was happening.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, you kind of trickily were able to be active. It’s kind of the point really is that you’re active when you’re not guarding against being active.

**Mike:** Yes.

**John:** Now, a question about the writing process on that. Were you able to incorporate like bits of stories into your act, into your standup, to figure out sort of what was funny?

**Mike:** Yes.

**John:** And that’s a unique thing that a normal writer wouldn’t have the opportunity to do.

**Mike:** Yeah, very much trial and error based. And that’s the thing that I love about standup comedy is that as a writer I can write, I can put something on stage that night and I can get a sense this either works or doesn’t work, or it needs work. And in my screenwriting process, like I’m writing two scripts right now, and I’ll just invite my actor friends over and we’ll just do readings of it.

**Craig:** Great.

**Mike:** And it’s so helpful.

**Craig:** Isn’t it? I mean, it’s amazing. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this. Even if your acting friends are terrible actors, it’s okay. Just to hear it out loud is so informative.

**Mike:** I encourage it so much. That was actually the thing — I made a bullet point thing of what I actually could talk about on this podcast that could be helpful and my biggest thing is DIY. Which is just people wherever you are, if you live in Washington, DC, you live in Cincinnati, you live in a suburb of Nebraska. You can develop a community and you can do readings and you can shoot shorts on really inexpensive cameras. And you can learn things on your own and kind of get better.

**John:** One of the things that I think is so fascinating about filmmaking is that everyone feel like, well, I would never be able to be a director. I could never do all of these complicated jobs. But I guess I can write a script. And so they write their scripts in secret and in private and then they get frustrated like, well, what do I do next? Well, you have to do something. You have to do something beyond just sitting at your computer.

You have to like get it out there in the world and let people see it and do things. So, readings are great. Shooting short films are great. People need to experiment with what it is that they made on the page and what it actually feels like out there in the world.

**Mike:** And failure is great.

**John:** Failure is wonderful.

**Mike:** Failure is the best thing that can happen.

**Craig:** That’s good news, because it’s here constantly. [laughs]

**Mike:** [laughs] This is the town of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It walks hand in hand with all of us, doesn’t it?

**Mike:** Well that, when I was in college I directed my first short. It was actually called Extras. It was in the late ’90s, before the TV series, and it was about three professional extras who were roommates and two of my friends played the other parts. And it was a complete disaster. I lost like thousands of dollars, but I learned so much from it.

**John:** Yeah. That’s your film school. It’s really trying stuff out and seeing what works.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And, you know, it’s interesting because in your film, when you look at the character of —

**Mike:** Matt.

**Craig:** I was just going to say you. I’m saying you.

**Mike:** Yeah, yeah, my character.

**Craig:** Look at you. Everything you’re doing circumstantially would make me not like you. Right?

**Mike:** [laughs] Yes.

**Craig:** And you very candidly turn to the camera and say, “Before I get to this next part, remember, you’re on my side.” But we are on your side. And the reason we’re on your side is because you are in a very kind of modern, confessional way sharing with us your failure. We watch you fail. We’re watching you fail at work. And we’re watching you fail at home with your parents, and your girlfriend. Just the negotiation of the apartment is a failure.

Everything is a failure. The awesome woman — who is the woman who plays your manager? She was hysterical.

**Mike:** Sondra James. A wonderful actress.

**Craig:** Hysterical.

**Mike:** She’s on Girls sometimes.

**Craig:** Oh, okay. Great. I mean, she was just pitch perfect. There is that amazing segment of just incredibly old, food coming out of their mouth, managers. But you’re failing everywhere and so we love you. And we love you so much that we’re kind of doing, we’re peeking through our fingers sort of in fear because we know you’re doing the wrong thing.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which is so interesting to me. It’s hard to ask you these questions, “Is that intentional?” It’s what was true.

**Mike:** Yes.

**Craig:** But was it also something that you were aware of as you were writing that you were doing something that you would have to do anyway if it were a fictional character?

**Mike:** I’m not sure what the question is.

**Craig:** The question is, if you write a character who is agreeing to marry somebody that they don’t want to marry.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I don’t like that guy. We need to do something about that character to make us connect with him so we are on his side.

**Mike:** Yes.

**Craig:** And experiencing his journey. So, when you were writing were you aware of that?

**Mike:** Well, one of the things that’s odd about the process of the film is that the monologues that are in the film where I’m driving and talking to camera are in the past tense. And I look and I say before I tell you this part of the story I want to remind you you’re on my side, etc, etc.

When we filmed it, we filmed it in more of a Ferris Bueller style where in the middle of a scene I would break and look to camera and speak to camera. When we got in the edit we were like, “Oh, this doesn’t work at all,” because it’s actually too sad what’s happening.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And it needs to be in the past tense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Mike:** It needs to be tragedy plus time to be funny. And because we need to know that he’s okay. And so when I’m driving and I’m looking at the camera you’re like, oh, he’s all right. He’s telling us the story and he’s telling us in the past tense, so he’s clearly okay. He’s not dead.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** He’s figured it out. He seems like his mood is okay.

**Craig:** There’s a happy ending somewhere.

**Mike:** So we did that and we picked that up in post as a past tense thing. And it actually fixed the movie. The movie was tanking with our test audiences before that point.

**Craig:** Right. And then you take that out and you see this big jump.

**Mike:** Yeah, because people were like, “It’s just too sad. This story is so sad. This guy keeps failing and he’s messing up other people’s lives. And we’re not okay with it.” That’s how people were when they first saw it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Well, getting back to the sort of the losery persona of the main character here, I would say we identify with a lead character who is trying. This goes back to Lindsay Doran’s argument. If you came in as being really cool we wouldn’t kind of care about you because we wouldn’t have —

**Mike:** [Crosstalk] …it’s like my least, it’s my biggest pet peeve.

**Craig:** Right. Cool characters.

**Mike:** Cool characters.

**Craig:** I got a note, my favorite stupid note I ever got was can the main character be a hero in the beginning.

**John:** That’s one of the worst possible notes.

**Craig:** Sure. Absolutely. How long would you like to shoot — we can shoot it in a day and put it out. It will be called Nothing Happens.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And just a guy will come in, punch a bad guy, and then roll credits.

**John:** Definitely. That’s a trailer. You get to make a trailer.

**Craig:** You can’t even make a trailer.

**John:** That’s true —

**Craig:** You would run out of time. You would never get to the point where James, what’s his face, sing’s I Feel Good. Yeah, you would never get there.

**John:** It would be very rough. So, we need to see your character trying.

**Mike:** Sure.

**John:** And it’s great that your character fails and fails a lot, but able to pick himself up and dust himself off. And so shooting those extra bits that put it all in the past tense let us know like he is going to be able to pick himself up and dust himself up. So, even though things will get worse, they’ll ultimately get better. There’s a happy ending there at the end. You created a bookend for it that let us know we’d be okay.

**Craig:** So, you’re sitting there in a movie theater. The movie is done. And there’s a focus group and they’re saying things like, “This guy Matt Pandapiglia is just an asshole. And I hate him. I hate what he does. He’s a jerk. This character sucks. Why is she with him at all?”

And you’re sitting there like, It’s me!

**Mike:** It’s even worse after the movie comes out.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Mike:** Like I think there was a Jezebel article that came out after the movie came out.

**Craig:** Oh Jezebel.

**Mike:** And they said —

**Craig:** They’re angry.

**Mike:** Well, they said, and I like the site. I like some of the writing on the site a lot. I consider myself a feminist. They said, “Why Matt Pandamiglio is bad for your relationship,” or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. I might get it wrong. You can look it up if you want. But something to do with the fact, like this kind of personal jab. And I just disagree. I disagree. I think this movie is about these two characters who are not together at the right point in their life and at the end they go separate ways and it’s better for both of them. I truly believe that.

**Craig:** She’s since gotten married.

**Mike:** She’s wonderful. She’s doing great. [laughs]

**Craig:** And you’ve gotten married.

**Mike:** She’s married. I’m married. We’re both very happy. We’re very close.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And very happy. Like when she saw the movie, we had an opening night screening in the Opera House at BAM. She came to the screening. She was crying afterwards. She said it was like so moving to see that part of our lives documented.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And for people to criticize it for that, I just, it was really disconcerting.

**John:** Well, okay, let’s talk about this aspect of autobiography, because you can’t write autobiography without other people and other real people being involved in that. So, as you’re figuring out the standup, the one-man show version of it and the movie version of it at what point did you have to figure out much you’re writing the real people versus the — this is the real person and this is what the person is in the drama —

**Mike:** That’s a good actually and that’s part of the reason I changed the names. I didn’t want my dad to be my dad. I wanted it to be Gary Pandamiglio. I didn’t want it to be Vince Birbiglia, I wanted him to be Gary Pandamiglio. Interestingly, and the same with my mom, and the same with my girlfriend.

I think there’s a degree to which you really need to protect people in your life, even if it’s just changing names, things like that. That’s just how I feel. What’s amazing is my parents saw the movie and they had no sense that it was based on them at all. They thought it was entirely fiction.

**Craig:** This is very common.

**Mike:** Didn’t recognize any —

**Craig:** People don’t see themselves.

**Mike:** They didn’t recognize any qualities that they have.

**Craig:** [laughs] While they were probably exhibiting those qualities —

**Mike:** With some direct quotes.

**Craig:** The direct quotes. They did not recognize. Well, you know, famously Dr. Evil is just an impression of Lorne Michaels.

**John:** Yeah. And he doesn’t see it at all.

**Craig:** Did not notice. In fact, as the story goes, Mike Myers takes Lorne Michaels for a walk before they’re going to show the movie —

**Mike:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** And he goes, “I just want you to know, so you don’t freak out, but Dr. Evil is basically you. But don’t, you know…” And he’s like, “Okay.” And then he sees the movie and he goes, “I don’t see it. I didn’t really see it.”

**Mike:** That’s so good.

**Craig:** But you also get a license to push the characters a little bit, I mean, by changing the names. I mean, I’m sure that they are exaggerated and —

**Mike:** Absolutely. And that’s what I want to do moving forward with my next movies, too. But while we’re doing impressions, I want to do my impression of you guys.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, he’s got an impression of us.

**Mike:** I don’t do impressions. I want to preface it with that.

**Craig:** I’m so excited.

**Mike:** But I feel like, so we just have to name an object and then we’ll have me do John and Craig talking about the object. So, like this is a coffee cup.

[as John] Yeah, I’m holding a coffee cup. So — so this would be like, so today we’re going to talk about coffee cups. And, I think, I love coffee cups. I think we that we should give coffee cups a chance.

[as Craig] What are you talking about? This coffee cup is garbage. They’re giving you something that’s practically garbage. There’s almost no coffee in it. You’re going to hurt your hand. It’s scalding hot. There’s no insulation.

[as John] Yeah, but, I think we should all — let’s give coffee cups a chance.

I feel like that’s the show in a nutshell.

**Craig:** Which one was which? I don’t know, was I the first one? [laughs]

**Mike:** That’s the show in a nutshell.

**Craig:** Yeah, pretty much.

**Mike:** And I love that. I love the scenario. I don’t do the voices, but it’s the essence of the show.

**Craig:** The essence of it, yeah. Well, you know, John is from Colorado. He’s American. And I’m from New York. [laughs] And I’m an ass. But for New York, I think I’m a nice New York.

**John:** You’re on the nice side of New Yorkers.

**Craig:** Yeah, it can be much worse than this. It could be much, much worse than this. That was disturbingly accurate.

**Mike:** I identify with both, so the yin and the yang of that. Like when I hear you points I’m like, oh, that’s a nice bit of positivity about that. And then when I hear your points I’m like, yeah, these motherfuckers.

**Craig:** Ha! [laughs]

**Mike:** Fucking idiots.

**Craig:** Yeah, come on, man! Right?

**John:** So, to transition to the next film you made, which was much more like a Spalding Gray, sort of one man talking in front of an audience thing, this is My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. So, was this a monologue you had already, or a one-man show you’d already put together before you had done? Tell us about the history of this.

**Mike:** Yes. It actually is. It’s a concert — it’s now a concert film that’s on iTunes and Netflix if people want to see it. And it’s an album on iTunes. And it’s a one-person show that Seth Barrish, again, directed. And that we worked on starting — I did a piece on This American Life. People might know me from that as well. I’ve done a handful of stories over the years on This American Life. And Ira Glass, who co-wrote my film, and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend was based on this incident I had. The main event is that I was hit by a drunk driver in Los Angeles. And then in a really strange turn of events made to pay for the other driver’s car.

It was $12,000. And it was infuriating. And the parallel story in that is that my wife and I, my now wife and I, were going through this really hard situation where we were deciding whether or not we were going to get married. And neither of us really believed in the idea of marriage but we were getting pressure from all sides.

And so — and I have this problem where when I think I’m right about something, it can be a real issue. A little bit maybe like Craig, where I just want to be right. I’m like, “Argh,” I get really riled up and it’s like, “I’m not paying for this car! And I’m not getting married! And I’m not going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

And the whole show, and the concert film, builds to a head where I’m dealing with both of those things at the same time and it’s —

**Craig:** Like most good stories, the object is to be less like Craig. Ultimately to get over that.

**Mike:** It’s not always written that way, but it’s the subtext.

**Craig:** The subtext is don’t — that I am the pre-actualization character.

**John:** Yes. Let’s listen to a clip from it. This is from My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, and this is as you are first meeting — you’ve met this girl Jenny who you have a crush on and you agree to sort of go out on a three-person date and hopefully not have it be a three-person date at the end of the night. So, let’s listen to a clip.

[Clip begins]

**Mike:** We’re at the pub and it had taken so much convincing for Andy to get Jenny to come out there. By the time she came out she thought she was on a date with him. Yeah, that wasn’t the idea. And so I had to convince him to fall away as the night went on, like the red rockets and the space shuttle. And eventually she realized she was on a date with me. And she was not happy about that.

But, she warmed to me as the night went on because she was drinking and like, no, by the end of the night we’re laughing and having a good time and I caught a break which is we shared a ride back to our hotel with one of their friends. And she and I were stuffed in this little backseat together. It was really quiet, so I could hear her soft voice. And she told me she had just come off a long difficult breakup.

And I told her about my breakup. And for a moment there in the backseat it felt like we were holding up two halves of a broken paper heart. And we get back to the hotel and I offer to walk her to her room and she said, sure. And we get to the door and I didn’t want this night to end. And so I build up the courage to lean in to kiss her and she says, “Oh, no thank you.”

[Clip ends]

**Mike:** It’s entirely true that story.

**Craig:** “No thank you.”

**Mike:** Oh, no thank you.

**Craig:** That’s one of the greatest responses to an attempt at a kiss ever.

**Mike:** Yeah.

Craig. “Oh, no thank you.”

**Mike:** [laughs]

**Craig:** “It was nice.”

**John:** I want to talk about the visuals you built in there because actually it’s much more sophisticated than a person might guess at the start.

**Mike:** Oh thanks.

**John:** The visuals of this crowded Irish pub. And then being in the backseat of the car. So, by telling us specifically they were in the backseat of the car we have an image of the two of you guys together there. The image of like the broken paper heart, holding up the two halves of the broken paper heart.

The hallway. We’re seeing these places that you’re putting us and it’s very specific and it’s very — it’s writerly. And it’s not simply just a joke. You’re actually creating — you’re painting a scene which is a crucial thing that we don’t think about people doing in monologues. But it’s so smart.

**Craig:** Yeah. And while you’re painting the visuals, you’re also telling us something about your internal life which is that you are a romantic but you’re also anti-romantic. You’re anti-romantic enough to make fun of the idea of holding up two halves of the paper heart. And yet you thought of that. You know? And that’s a great human kind of real romanticism which I love.

**Mike:** Yeah. I think that — I actually think, and that’s why I’m saying I encourage people to make things. I feel like by making and directing Sleepwalk with Me I actually — this show became better. I had started this show and it was Off-Broadway before I made Sleepwalk with Me. And then I toured with it after Sleepwalk with Me to about 100 cities around the world, London, Australia, Canada, 70 cities in America. And it actually — I rewrote it, and rewrote it, and rewrote it, even after it had closed Off-Broadway. And then by the time I filmed it, like you said, it had become more cinematic.

**John:** So, structurally the show works as an extended flashback, basically.

**Mike:** Yes.

**John:** So, quite early on we’re establishing like who you are as a character in this story that we may be hearing. That there’s a girl. That there’s going to be this car crash. And you have a very specific rhyming element that you say for the car crash. It’s T-boned. And it’s not actually even that funny, so it’s basically the car gets hit from the side and being hit in the side is called being T-boned.

And I thought it was so smart because I noticed it when you first did it. It’s like, that’s a strange — it’s not getting a laugh, and he knows it’s not going to get a laugh, so it much be there for a reason. And the reason why it’s there is because at the end of the show you’re going to come back to T-boned and it’s like, “Oh, we’re back in that same moment and this is all — this extended flashback is now over.” It was very smartly done. It felt very cinematic in a way.

**Mike:** Thanks.

**John:** It’s like, you know, this was the signal that we were out of this flashback and now we’re back into the present time.

So, talk about touring around and doing things, because when you say you rewrote it does that mean that you have — the show is not on index cards. It isn’t like joke cards anymore.

**Mike:** No, I do do it on index cards also. I have a running document which is, you know, at this point I probably did 30, 40 drafts of that show. And then —

**John:** What does it look like to you? Because since it is just you talking, so is it —

**Mike:** It’s just a Word Document.

**John:** It’s just a Word Document where you have it in paragraphs?

**Mike:** Yeah. A lot of times if it’s a joke it’ll be it’s one paragraph and that kind of thing to give it a tempo feel on the page. But, yeah, I keep rewriting and rewriting. And there’s a lot of things where I feel like the best movies and plays as well are things where you’re laughing, you’re laughing, you’re laughing, you’re laughing, and then at the end you go, “Oh my god, it’s a fucking story.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Mike:** And that’s what really lured me into like the stuff that I sort of model my own stuff after is like James L. Brooks’ films, Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment. Like you look at a film like Broadcast News which I’ve probably seen 10 or 15 times, and it’s just — I’m just laughing all the way through. And then when it just punches you in the gut at the end of the movie you just go, “Oh my god, this is why we see movies.”

**Craig:** Well, laughing opens you up. You know?

**Mike:** Yes, that’s right.

**Craig:** You’ve lost your defenses and you’re expecting to laugh again. So, nobody sees it coming, you know? I remember talking to David Zucker and Jerry Zucker about the first time they screened the movie Airplane! for a test audience. And in their minds everything was jokes. They were just obsessed with how the jokes would play. And they were just thrown on their heels when at the end of the movie the plan finally lands and the audience bursts into applause.

**Mike:** Oh, that’s amazing.

**Craig:** Because they cared that the plane would land. You know? And they just thought, “It doesn’t matter. We’ve told them in every possible way this is not a real plane.” It is to them. It matters. And so the human desire to give a shit is not defeatable.

**Mike:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, you might as well work with it, which you did. I mean, you really did it beautifully in your movie. It’s even interesting watching you — if you were to say to me here’s a movie by a comedian about his career in which he gets up and starts getting laughs I would go, “Wow, that sounds kind of like a douchebag scene.” And it’s not.

**Mike:** Totally agree.

**Craig:** It’s not because you earned it, you know, because I watched you suffer. So, I totally agree. I know exactly what you mean.

**Mike:** Yeah. Well, one of the obstacles of that in the writing process and we really struggled with this is there were certain drafts where it was how do we show that he’s doing better. And it would be like, “Well, the audience applauds more.” And it’s like, nope, it can’t be that, because the audience watching it in the theater, if they disagree with the applause then you’re screwed.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** The movie is over.

**Craig:** The movie is fake. Right. It’s self-congratulatory.

**Mike:** How many movies have we seen about performance where you’re not applauding when the characters are applauding and you just hate it? And so we were like — I love the movie Once, the film Once, I really love. And I thought that that’s the perfect treatment of performance which is at the beginning he plays covers and this woman convinces him to play originals. And then he plays originals and we get it. We don’t have to like the originals.

**Craig:** But he’s grown.

**Mike:** We just get that there’s a growth happening. We can relate to the growth.

**Craig:** Well and even then, in your moment, the turning point, you see a guy laugh. I mean —

**Mike:** Exactly.

**Craig:** I mean, you were kind of close on one guy.

**Mike:** I’m glad you noticed that.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then I see you going, “Holy shit. Someone laughed.” You know.

**Mike:** I can’t believe someone laughed.

**John:** Your reaction is more important than his reaction was.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And it was great that it wasn’t like [loud laughter], you know, it was just one guy going, ha! [laughs] And you’re like, huh.

**Mike:** The guy laughing is our producer, Jacob Jaffke. He’s the audience member.

**Craig:** Yeah, he’s kind of just slouching.

**Mike:** Yeah, it was a great moment.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was very smartly done.

I have sort of a question that’s more about your style of comedy.

**Mike:** Sure.

**Craig:** Partly it feels modern to me because it is confessional. And I think there is a spirit of confession in modern comedy, you see it with Louis C.K., and you see it with Patton Oswalt. And you see it with a lot of guys.

**John:** We see it with Lena Dunham. You see it with —

**Craig:** Absolutely. Yeah.

**John:** Or, were you talking about this on stage?

**Craig:** I’m talking about on stage. And it’s not like that that’s new because Richard Pryor was doing it, too, but it’s very au courant. But you’re also very old fashioned actually in a way. You don’t curse in your act, so very kind of Seinfeld in that regard, or Cosby. And like Cosby, there’s a craft. You’re not winging it. But you’re not delivering something that feels over-workshopped or stale either.

Where do you see yourself sitting kind of in the continuum of comedy?

**Mike:** It’s funny you should say that because my new tour, which if people are interested in seeing me, for exact time/tour dates, you can see thirty cities, it’s going to be 100 cities, which is like I haven’t really told people.

**Craig:** Oh, we’re breaking news. Nice.

**Mike:** Yeah, breaking news. And it’s called Thank God for Jokes. And it’s all about what jokes mean to me. And I think what they mean to everyone. Which is to say that I feel like the moments in my life where I felt closest to anyone, to my family, to my wife, to my friends is when we share jokes.

And I feel like culturally we’re not really allowed to tell jokes at work. We’re not really allowed to tell jokes to strangers. You can do it, but there’s a real risk to it. And I think that the reward of comedy is worth the risk, like taking a chance and making a joke with someone actually payoff in this way that’s kind of amazing.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And makes you feel really close to people. And I actually talk about cursing in the show because I have four albums out there at this point and none of them have curses on them, none of them have explicit lyrics. And the reason is — I’m not proud of this reason, but it’s true — is that when I started doing comedy my mom was so ashamed that I was doing it that she said, “Just don’t become one of those dirty comedians.”

**Craig:** Ooh.

**Mike:** And I said okay.

**John:** Oh little Mike.

**Mike:** She goes, “You don’t have to use words like that. I mean, for example, Oprah is very funny.” And I was like —

**Craig:** Hysterical. [laughs]

**Mike:** So be kind of Oprah.

**John:** You need to be more like Oprah.

**Craig:** You are almost as funny as Oprah.

**Mike:** Yeah, I’m working on it. But so I didn’t curse.

And then oddly it ended up being this really good turn in my writing because even if you think about, you don’t want to really as a writer say any word 75 times more than another word. If I walked on stage and said “avocado” 75 times in an hour, after awhile people would be like, “This guy talks about avocados a lot. Is he selling us guacamole?”

And it ended up being a really good thing. In this new show I do curse a few times, but it’s with real purpose. And so, yeah.

**John:** So, this new show, is it more like standup, or is it more like a one-man show?

**Mike:** Right now it is standup. The way my shows have evolved over the years is by the time I film it it probably will have more of an arc to it. I have in mind an arc, but I want to let it evolve.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about what else you’re going to be doing because you said you’re working on two screenplays, so these are things for yourself to direct or things for other people?

**Mike:** Those are two films for myself to direct and I think in one of them I play a big part and one I play an ensemble part. And it’s really funny because a lot of times people go, “Who are you writing them for?” And I’m like, “I’m writing them for me.”

I feel like it’s almost old Hollywood in a way to say, to brag and say I’m writing this for New Line. It’s like I feel bad when people say stuff like that. I’m like, “Oh, too bad about you.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Mike:** How’s that going to get ruined.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s my life. Okay.

**Mike:** I’m sorry!

**John:** And do you see yourself sticking to films? Are you going to try to do some television? If I were a television executive I would say, “Well, let’s give him a show.”

**Mike:** I feel like, and I get that phone call quite a bit, more than one would think, and I don’t want to do that. Because I don’t think I have a lot to contribute to television and I feel like — I look at Louis and Lena and I just go, “You guys got it. You’re doing it. Way to go.” And I just don’t think that I have much to add to that conversation. But I think in film I — I think you got to do what you love. I love films. I feel like that’s why I like the podcast so much because you guys do, too.

There’s something about that 90 minute to two-hour experience that you cannot compare to anything.

**Craig:** And one story that resolves that exists in its own space. I’m with you. That’s always been, you know, that’s what I… — I mean, I talk about television all the time with people and I don’t, I think that’s the best way you just put it. That’s what I’m going to start saying instead of, “Uh…” which is my usual answer. I can just say, “I don’t think I have anything to add to that conversation.” That’s exactly right.

I think in terms of — and you clearly do as well, which is interesting, because standup comedy is very segmented. It’s serialized. And you can see how somebody like Jerry Seinfeld was able to just serialize it. But you really do tell encapsulated stories with conclusions. So, it makes total sense.

There’s something, you know, you said you love movies. And you seem like a very positive person, which I love, and when I was watching your movie there’s that scene where you talk to that other comedian and he’s so pissed off.

**Mike:** Yeah. Marc Maron plays the character, Marc Mulheren.

**Craig:** Well, no, not Marc Maron.

**Mike:** Oh, Alex Karpovsky plays the guy, yeah.

**Craig:** Marc Maron actually was very kind of avuncular. I liked his spin. He was sort of like, “Hey kid, it’ll get better. Now let me go bang this chick.”

Why, I think as somebody that works in comedy but would just be terrified to do what you do, to go on stage and do this, it seems so hard and it seems so raw and vulnerable. Why are comedians so mean to each other?

**Mike:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Can’t they just love each other?

**John:** Are they mean to each other? Or is that just one perception?

**Mike:** I think Craig’s right. I’ve been doing, at UCB Theater in New York, I’ve been recently doing an improv show. I was in an improv group in college actually with Nick Kroll who is another actor.

**Craig:** Yeah, funny guy.

**Mike:** Yeah. And I’ve been doing this show in New York called Mike Birbiglia’s dream. It’s a long form improv show with Chris Gethard who is super talented. And sometimes Vanessa Bayer does it, and Aidy Bryant, and Christina Gausas, and Tami Sagher, and all these really great people. And I love the camaraderie of it. That’s why I do it.

With standup comics, a little less camaraderie there. It’s a little bit — I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a Rat Packy thing. People break each other’s balls a lot.

**Craig:** Sure. But that’s different. I sense that there’s a —

**Mike:** Yeah. But I agree with you. I don’t know what to say about it. I think it’s a very lone wolf profession.

**John:** Yeah, is it because of the lifestyle? Is it because of the touring and because you’re always on your own and you don’t have your own group?

**Mike:** Yeah. I think you spend a lot of time alone and there’s just, I don’t know.

**Craig:** There’s that sense that people are clawing for some diminishing resource that’s being dangled in front of them, you know, when in the movie he says, “All my friends, they’re hacks and they’re getting sitcoms.” You know, that idea that there’s some closing window of success.

**Mike:** Yeah, I agree. And I think on your episode about positive moviegoing, the title of the episode Positive Moviegoing, I really liked how you guys were talking about screenwriters want other screenwriters to do well.

**Craig:** Largely. [laughs]

**Mike:** For the most part.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Mike:** Cinephiles, I mean, I consider myself just a lover of movies. I just want movies to be great. Like this year, I love Spectacular Now, and Frances Ha, and I love Gravity. You know, and those are three very different types of films. And I loved that they were all made. And I want more made. I want more great movies.

**Craig:** Yeah, screenwriters, maybe it’s because it’s not us, it’s our work. We write screenplays, we hand them over. They’re made. We make them sometimes. But you guys, it’s you, it’s your faces. It’s your voices. And it becomes very personal. I could see that where it’s sort of like, okay, if John hands me a script or I hand him a script and we go back and help each other and say, “Well what about this? What about this?” That’s about the work.

If John walks off a stage and I’m like, “No, no, no. Your face — your hands, what are your hands doing buddy?”

**John:** Yeah, everything is wrong. Let’s talk about from the perspective of a 20-year-old college kid listening to this right now. And so he’s like, “I want to do what Mike Birbiglia is doing, that thing where I’m writing for myself and performing stuff.” How would that kid get started? What’s the roadmap for him or her?

**Craig:** Sleep disorder. [laughs]

**John:** Figure out what your biggest, strangest tick is and really dwell on that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Mike:** It is a really hard thing to say. And I think, I’m sure you guys have this with screenwriters all the time where it’s like, so I always feel like saying, “So the path is there is no path. And I’m sorry about that.” And you have to figure out what it is by studying what other people’s paths are. There’s tons of books on it. There’s this podcast. I would honestly say listen to every episode of this podcast to people who are aspiring writers. It is a wealth of information and it’s free.

**Craig:** There’s our promo. There it is. [laughs]

**Mike:** It is really a service. And what writing comes down to, being a performer, too, a writer-performer is you have to write and you have to perform. And that means you have to write anything and you need to perform anywhere. And because it’s about the ten thousand hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about. You have to get on the stage for ten thousand hours. You have to write for ten thousand hours.

**Craig:** You drove around from town to town. I mean, that happens.

**Mike:** I hosted lip sync contests. I performed in the center of a walkathon for lupus in a gymnasium, you know. I mean, these are real life stories. This is still my life. I mean, I get booked at corporate events where I’m performing for bankers. And I have to do it. And, like, it sucks. It’s not fun. But it’s part of my job.

**Craig:** You should open with that. “This sucks.”

**John:** “I resent being here.”

**Mike:** This isn’t fun!

**Craig:** Yeah. “This is not fun. It’s part of a job. But you guys understand what it’s like to do something that sucks, that’s not fun. You work for AT&T.”

**John:** Yeah. And in about two hours I’m no longer working for AT&T and you’re still stuck working for AT&T.

**Mike:** You guys are really good at this.

**Craig:** I can’t believe that half of you haven’t killed yourselves by now.

**Mike:** You guys are coming up with great ways to not get the check afterwards.

**Craig:** We’re really good at that.

**John:** That’s how it works. But what you’re saying in general is what we kind of say on the podcast about screenwriting in general. There’s no one path that sort of goes through it. And so you can’t get started until you get started. And you have to write. And in this case of performing, you have to find places to perform. And whatever those places are you have to do it. And just make that leap and trust that you’re not going to — you will fall on your face, and that’s okay.

**Mike:** Yeah. I remember in Washington, DC when I was starting out, I would go — there were not — this is in the late ’90s, there were not standup comedy open mics. I would go to music open mics and I would sign up. And then they would say my name and I would walk up and I would do standup comedy. No one is expecting standup comedy.

**Craig:** Right. The guy says, “Um, that was a comedian.” [laughs]

**Mike:** And a lot of times it’s pushing a square peg into a round hole, or whatever that expression is, and it sucks.

**John:** People always forget that Lena Dunham made two movies before she made Tiny Furniture.

**Mike:** Yes.

**John:** And so she just started. And she didn’t ask for permission. She just went and did it.

**Craig:** Well, you know, people ask us how do you get started, how do you break in, da, da, da, tell me how you…

And I’ve done it. We’ve done it. We’ve both told the “how we got started” story. But always with the caveat this could have only happened to me.

**Mike:** That’s right.

**Craig:** There’s no one else that could possibly succeed following the Mike Birbiglia plan. Not possible. Even if you replicated all of it and jumped out of a window, you can’t do it. The only thing that we individually have to offer is what’s unique to ourselves, which means that we’re going to all start differently.

The only thing I see that is common throughout all these stories, other than some — hopefully some — level of talent and some level of drive, is honesty with one’s self.

**Mike:** I agree.

**Craig:** I just don’t know how delusional people can make it. And there’s a lot of delusional people out there who substitute delusional confidence for substance.

**Mike:** I always say that when I go back to the screenwriting class, I studied under this guy, John Glavin, taught me screenwriting in college. And whenever I go back I always say as a writer all you have to give is yourself.

**Craig:** That’s it. That’s all you’ve got.

**Mike:** And if you’re not willing to give yourself, go home.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Cool.

It’s time for One Cool Things. Did you come prepared for the One Cool Thing? You can take a pause while we —

**Mike:** Yeah, I can pause. I’m going to pause.

**Craig:** I got to pull mine up on my thing here, because I wrote it down in my thing.

**Mike:** I want to do the one that you guys did a few things ago, like Knock Knock, where you knock your phone.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. That’s great. I use it all the time.

**Mike:** That’s so cool.

**Craig:** It seems like it might have updated.

**John:** It did update.

**Craig:** It’s getting much, much better. They must have listened to me.

**John:** They listened to Craig complain about it enough.

**Craig:** They must have listened to the center of the world. Yup.

**John:** So, while Craig and Mike are figuring out their One Cool Things, I will tell you my One Cool Thing is actually a podcast One Cool Thing is that we finally have an app for Scriptnotes.

**Mike:** Oh, great news.

**Craig:** What?!

**John:** I sent you the link to this and you didn’t even open it.

**Craig:** No you didn’t. You totally did not send me the link to this.

**John:** Okay. Well, I’ll show it to you on my phone.

**Craig:** How dare you make an app and not tell me.

**John:** So, there’s now an app. The whole reason why we switched to our library over from where we were hosting to this new thing which was complicated was because there was this hope of being able to offer an app so people could listen to all the back episodes and all the episodes we’ve done on one handy app.

So, if you are listening to us on iTunes, that will continue to work great, and our last 20 episodes will always be free for people to listen to and that’s great. If you have the USB drive and want to buy the USB drive with the first 100, that’s always an option.

But what the Scriptnotes App lets you do, it’s available for iOS, for your iPhone and for Android, it lets you listen to any of the episodes of the show. And if you want to listen to those early episodes there’s a monthly subscription which is — we’ve already talked about the monthly subscription.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But it’s $1.99 a month and it lets you listen to any episode from anywhere back. The Netflix model of all you can eat. So, if you want to subscribe for a month and listen to 100 episodes and then cancel, that is absolutely welcome. And you can do that.

**Craig:** Does this charge recur?

**John:** The charge recurs.

**Craig:** Oh, so we’re like porn now?

**John:** We are basically.

**Craig:** Oh, well, it’s worked for them.

**John:** It’s worked great for them. So, cancel after a month if you have caught up and don’t want to listen to more.

**Craig:** No one is going to cancel.

**John:** No one is going to cancel.

**Craig:** They’re going to find these $2 charges on Grandma Tilly’s bill in 2070. And I love it.

**John:** So, if you would like the Scriptnotes App it is available right now in the iPhone App Store.

**Craig:** I’m so excited. The best thing about doing the podcast with John is that I know no more about what’s happening than anyone else listening.

**John:** So, Craig, you will check your email and you’ll see it’s there. So, this is what the little app looks like.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m going to check my email. You totally didn’t send that to me. You totally did not.

**John:** I totally did.

**Craig:** You totally didn’t.

**John:** And so here’s all our episodes.

**Craig:** What?! Oh, come on, that’s awesome.

**John:** So, it looks a little iOS 6-y because it’s actually the Libsyn people who do most of the podcasts in the world. It’s really their app with our sort of content in it. So, it doesn’t look as good as Ryan Nelson, our own programmer had done himself, but it works. So, it’s there for you and it’s available on iOS and even on Android because we don’t want to be just —

**Craig:** Snobby.

**John:** Snobby Apple people. So, that’s my One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** All right. That’s pretty freaking awesome.

**Mike:** I got one.

**Craig:** All right. Let’s hear it.

**Mike:** Well, actually I did a really small part in this film this fall called The Fault in Our Stars. And it’s with Shailene Woodley and a bunch of really great actors. But the cool thing is it’s based on a YA novel by John Green of the same name, The Fault in Our Stars. And I guess, I have to say before I read it I had never read a YA genre book, because I thought it wasn’t for me. But it’s like this really compelling book about these two kids who have cancer and they fall in love in the cancer support group. And it’s about their journey.

And I just think it’s one of the best books I’ve read in years. It’s really touching. For any age.

**Craig:** YA novels are actually — one of the things I love about that genre is that they are still dedicated to storytelling, to proper storytelling.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They don’t need to soak you in a —

**John:** Wild conspiracies. The Dan Browns of the world.

**Craig:** Or just confuse me. You know, like a DeLillo novel. You’re confused, you know, or Pynchon. They’re not aspiring to that. They’re just trying to tell a good story. And there is something nice about a good well crafted piece of mainstream narrative.

I remember reading the Hunger Games books, and I struggle sometimes reading first person books, but I was like these are really well put together. So, all right, that is cool.

This is kind of a One Cool Thing in advance of Christmas because people are looking for gift ideas. And I try not to put things that are like super expensive, but this is kind of like $300.

**John:** That’s expensive.

**Craig:** It’s expensive. Okay, so it’s $300. All right. But it’s Christmas.

**Mike:** Okay, yeah. So, maybe your one gift.

**Craig:** I love karaoke. I love singing. I love karaoke. But the home karaoke modules and things —

**John:** Are terrible.

**Craig:** They’re terrible.

**John:** You shouldn’t use those.

**Craig:** They’re awful. Until…there’s this new thing now called Singtrix. And it’s pretty cool looking because basically they have a pretty good speaker and then they have this module that lets you actually properly affect your voice. You can add some reverb, or this or that, and they’ve broken out also the different parts of the music so that you can adjust it and make it sound good, so it doesn’t sound terrible. And then their library is enormous, but it’s based on, it’s through an app.

So, then you mount your iPad there. It comes with your microphone. And if your family or your friends love karaoke, and you have $300, you have more money than sense, Singtrix!

**Mike:** Singtrix.

**John:** The model of this, is it a razor and blades model? Are they charging your per song also?

**Craig:** No. I believe that you have access to their library as part of your purchase of the $300 exorbitantly expensive Singtrix.

**Mike:** But that could be for the whole family.

**Craig:** That is in fact for the whole — so that is a gift that the family got for itself that really is just about the one person in the house that wants it, imposing it upon everyone else, and then angrily insisting that they will enjoy it, which is what will happen in my house with me, explaining to my kids.

**John:** “No, it’s your turn to sing a song. You will sing the song.”

**Craig:** “I said we would do things together as a family which means you’re all going to sit there and listen to me do something for myself.”

**Mike:** [as Craig] You will sing the song!

[as John] I think that you should sing the song.

That’s John.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sing it!

**Mike:** [as John] I think that you should sing the song.

**Craig:** Just sing it.

**Mike:** [as John] Well why not sing the song.

**Craig:** Ugh, sing it already.

**John:** There’s nothing better than when you sort of force your kid to like play a board game as a family and like they resent every role of the dice.

**Craig:** Any time a parent says to a child, “We’re going to do something together as a family,” the child knows they’re about to do something they don’t want to do.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nothing is more anti-family than family activities.

**John:** Except half an hour into it they’re totally enjoying it and you can remind them, by the way, you did not want to do this.

**Craig:** You’re the worst dad ever. That is the move you should never do. “By the way, if you go back a half an hour ago you will see that you were acting like an asshole.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you’ve lost them again.

**John:** Noted.

**Mike:** I also want to say, I know this doesn’t count as my One Cool Thing, but my friend Mike Lavoie who was a producer on Sleepwalk with Me and worked with me for many years, like seven or eight years, introduced me to your website many years ago. He was the one who introduced me to it. And so I want to say hi to him.

**John:** Very nice.

**Craig:** A little shout out.

**John:** A little shout out. Mike, I am so glad you came in here.

**Mike:** That was awesome.

**John:** You’re a fantastic guest on our show. For like a damn near stranger, I can’t believe how well this —

**Craig:** He’s a super fan.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** A super fan.

**Mike:** Avid listener.

**John:** And that helps. It does help a lot.

**Craig:** Writer, director, actor.

**John:** But talk about things we didn’t even know about, the performance stuff, the standup stuff. It was great.

**Mike:** It was all the insecurity I had as we were going through is that people will go, “They’re assuming as they talk about it that we like his movie, too, and we hate it.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean the people at home listening?

**Mike:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, they may very well hate it.

**Mike:** Yes. So, if you are writing in the comments, don’t write like, “Hey, by the way, I hate it.” We know. I know you exist. You don’t have to write about that.

**Craig:** Yes, we’re aware that some of you out there. No, if you hate this movie —

**Mike:** Then maybe it doesn’t apply to you.

**Craig:** Yeah. And also I hate you. Stop listening.

**Mike:** [laughs]

**John:** Thank you all so much and join us again next week. Oh, we should do our normal boilerplate here at the end. So, if you have questions for me, or for Craig, or for Mike Birbiglia, we’re all on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust.

**Craig:** I’m @clmazin.

**Mike:** I’m @birbigs.

**John:** And @birbigs would be a great place for you to find out more information about his upcoming tour and for new dates. You’re going to see him all over your television on various talk shows as well, so tune in for those.

**Craig:** Yeah, lesser shows than this, like Conan.

**John:** But while you’re on iTunes leaving us a comment about our show, you should also check out his movies and specials and comedy albums.

**Mike:** Yeah. Sleepwalk with Me. My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.

**John:** They’re both there as movies and then also your albums are there as well.

**Craig:** Buy all of it. Just buy all of it.

**John:** Just buy it. Don’t think about it.

**Craig:** Don’t bust my chops over here. Just buy everything.

**John:** Buy it all.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Cool. Great. Thanks Mike.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

LINKS

* Write in and [tell us if we’re wrong](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com)
* [Mike Birbiglia](http://birbigs.com/), and on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Birbiglia), [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1898126/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/birbigs) and [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mike-birbiglia/id25234092)
* The Tricky Part [write up in The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/nyregion/a-map-of-the-soul-combines-two-one-man-shows.html?_r=0), and in book form [on Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307276538/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* Use [BroadwayBox.com](http://www.broadwaybox.com/) to find discounted shows in New York
* Download the Scriptnotes app now for [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scriptnotes/id739117984?mt=8) and [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.johnaugust.android.scriptnotes) devices
* [The Fault in Our Stars](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0525478817/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by John Green
* [Singtrix](http://www.singtrix.com/) home karaoke
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Cole Parzenn

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/lets-talk-about-coverage).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 120, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, are you high right now?

**Craig:** No, I’m not at all high right now. Not right now.

**John:** And that’s something we’ll be talking about on today’s episode is writers who get high a lot, or somehow use some other substance in order to allow themselves to write.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And the pros and cons of doing that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Today we will also talk about the upcoming WGA negotiations. There may have been a template set by the DGA negotiations, so we will talk about that. But first, we wanted to talk about this infographic that probably everyone on Twitter sent to us this last week.

**Craig:** I mean, there’s got to be some service, someone would make millions, if they could create a service that let people know don’t send this to someone because the rest of the world has already sent it to them.

**John:** Well, let’s think about that. because it wouldn’t be that hard for Twitter to actually build that in. So, essentially if you were trying to @-message somebody this link, when you send it to them Twitter could come back saying they already got that. Are you sure you want to pester them again?

**Craig:** That is a great idea. Twitter, please! Just because you and I have a very specific kind of podcast. Probably more specific than 99% of the podcasts out there. And what that means is when something hits our specific topic, everyone sends it. Everyone.

**John:** I like that Craig knows that our podcast is more specific than every other podcast…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Considering he listens to exactly one podcast, this podcast.

**Craig:** I’m using the process of — I’m using induction.

**John:** [laughs] Induction.

**Craig:** Induction. I’m inducing this. Because how could you be more specific than what we talk about?

**John:** Oh, there are whole podcasts about grandfather clocks.

**Craig:** What?! That’s crazy. [laughs]

**John:** Well, if you think back to the prototype for our show, something like Car Talk, where they’re just two brothers talking about cars. And that’s a very — seems like a very specific topic. Granted, it’s more general than screenwriting, although we’re talking about screenwriting in movies overall, so movies are not more specific than cars, are they?

**Craig:** Well, screenwriting is. But you’re right. I’ll notch it back. We’re not more specific than 99% of podcasts. We’re more specific than 9% of podcasts.

**John:** We are fairly specific. And so the bigger point being that people do send us things like this infographic a lot. Probably because they like the show. They think this graphic is interesting. And we would probably want to talk about it on the show. And you know what? Let’s do it right now.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** So, this was an infographic that was put up on Reddit but a guy named profound_whatever. I think that’s his handle. If his actual name was profound_whatever…

**Craig:** Coolest guy.

**John:** He’d be kind of cool. Also, you wonder about his parents. It just tells you a lot about who the parents could be if they named their child profound_whatever. This person wrote, “I’ve covered 300 spec scripts for five different companies and assembled findings into a snazzy infographic,” which is linked. And it’s a huge infographic.

So, before we get into this I thought we could talk about what coverage is, because for people who are new to our podcast or to screenwriting, they may not be familiar with coverage.

So, Craig, describe coverage for us.

**Craig:** Great question. In fact, there was somebody on Twitter recently who was asking this very question and they seemed a little, they just seemed a little at sea about the notion of it.

Coverage is simply the process by which people who are interested in whether or not they should pursue a script ask somebody else to do the work for them. And the work meaning reading the script, summarizing the plot of the script, offering opinion about the quality of the script — relative quality of the script — and then giving it some sort of grade.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It sounds a bit awful to say that people whose job is to evaluate screenplays don’t do the reading, they essentially farm out the reading of these scripts. But they have to. They just don’t have a choice. There are so many more screenplays than decision makers. And so the decision makers need some sort of filtering system. And that’s how Hollywood has evolved. There have been readers forever. And they get paid, you know, sometimes they get paid okay. Sometimes they don’t get paid much at all. It’s a classic job for somebody that’s starting out.

You yourself did it.

**John:** I did.

**Craig:** And you kind of — you just hope that you get good coverage. And everyone has it. Agencies have readers, and studios have readers, and producers have readers. They’re everywhere.

**John:** Great. So, let’s define some terms. A reader is somebody who works for a producer, a studio, an agency, and someone plops a script down in front of this person and says, “Please read this and write coverage on it.” Coverage is both the process of covering a script, basically like to write out this report on a script, and it’s also the report itself. So, it’s the object and it’s the process.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, coverage can best be thought of as sort of like a book report about a script. And so it has a summary page and it sort of lists the very basic things about it like who wrote it, how many pages long it is, so the quantifiable data. Some grades in different categories, like characterization, or setting, or different things.

**Craig:** Plot.

**John:** Plot. Which would be scaled from like poor to excellent. And then usually three possibilities: “consider” or “recommend” are sort of interchangeable terms; “pass with reservations” or “consider with reservations,” sort of like that maybe grade; and then “pass,” which would just be no — you should not consider making this as a film or pursuing this any further.

**Craig:** Right. Recommend, consider, and pass are like green light, yellow light, red light.

**John:** Exactly. So, this person wrote coverage on 300 different scripts. When I was reading at TriStar, by the time I left TriStar, I had read 110 scripts and books and written coverage on them. And it’s very common to sort of keep at least your title pages of this in like some sort of database. And so it’s actually easy-ish to generate some kind of report and that’s what this guy apparently did.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, out of 300 total scripts, he recommended eight.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** 89 scripts received a consider. And 203 scripts received a pass. I found the 89 considers really, really high. Did that strike you as high, too?

**Craig:** No, because consider is — you have to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. I’m not sure who he was reading for, but you usually know for whom you’re reading. You will find screenplays sometimes that either have a high quality to them, but you don’t think are something that your employer, the person asking you for coverage, is looking to make.

And sometimes you have the opposite problem where, okay, well this is exactly the kind of move they want to make, it’s just not very well written. So, you kind of have to give it to them and let them know, at least, because it may be something that they want to be rewritten, or maybe a writer that they love that they want to put on something else.

So, that didn’t shock me.

**John:** That’s actually — those are very good points. And consider may also be, depending on the studio or what the venue is that you’re reading for, consider might be consider this is a writing sample. Basically like I don’t think this movie is something you’re going to want to make, but this writer is good, so therefore you should take a look at it.

**Craig:** Yeah. But the number that should give everybody a little pause is eight scripts out of 300. So, we’re talking about roughly, what, 2.5% success rate there.

**John:** I will tell you that when I was a reader for TriStar, I recommended — by the time I was done with 110 scripts I had recommended four.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I can tell you on each of the four scripts I recommended I got called to the mat for recommending them. They’d say like, “Why are you wasting our time recommending this script?” And so it’s one of those things where as a reader a lot of times you’re more rewarded for not recommending something, which is a sad thing but a true thing that people should keep in mind.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because the thing is when you recommend something you’re saying, “You are going to spend three hours on your weekend reading this.”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And if they hate it, you wasted their precious time.

**John:** Exactly. You took time away from them and their families and their second wife.

**Craig:** [laughs] Second wives!

**John:** Let’s take a look at page count, because I thought you would be very excited by this page count graph. Basically he’s charted from the very shortest script to the very longest script.

**Craig:** I was excited, yeah.

**John:** The average script length was 107 pages. But Craig recognized a very familiar pattern from his psychology days.

**Craig:** The pattern of like the double hump.

**John:** The double hump. At first glance it is a bell curve, but then as you dig in a little deeper, there’s sort of two places where it also pumps up.

**Craig:** Yes. This is not a clean bell curve by any stretch. And the average script length here, I think, is less interesting probably — he’s using the mean. I’m kind of more interested in mode or median perhaps. But, yes, there’s this cluster of, I mean, it’s really small on my screen on this particular — oh, there we go.

So, there’s this cluster that occurs kind of around 95 to 100 pages. There’s a cluster that occur around 106 to 112. Then there’s a cluster that’s 117 to 122. A weird little spike, like in the mid 120s. But I was interested, and I was actually pleased to see this, there’s kind of no real average here. When you look at it you realize that there’s pretty remarkable diversity of page length in the range of 95 to 126 pages.

**John:** Yeah. The highest number of scripts he read had 106 pages rather than 107 pages. Also, I recognize now on the very right end of the chart, it goes up to 147, but it doesn’t fill in all the little steps in between. So, it’s misleading out there on the edges of the chart.

**Craig:** Yeah, he didn’t do the little squiggle to show that the graph was breaking numerically, which makes sense, because the 147 would have just skewed the graph and made it look stupid.

I mean, let’s give — what’s his name, proper_whatever?

**John:** profound_whatever.

**Craig:** profound_whatever has done a quite beautiful job graphically here. I just wanted to give him or her credit for their visual sense. I like the color choices and the fonts and everything.

**John:** Here’s what I would say, a useful thing to take from this. Anywhere between, you know, I’d say 98 pages and 120 pages, you’re going to be in a pretty safe zone. Most of the scripts you’re going to read are going to be in that zone. And so if you’re outside of that zone, you should really think twice.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you still see, I mean one of the more popular page counts in his infographic is 95 pages, which surprised me that there were that many. You know, I’ve never turned in a script that was fewer than 100 pages. I don’t think I’ve ever turned in a script that was more than 120. I’ve always landed somewhere in that 20 page zone depending on what the story called for.

But, I could see, okay, if it was a great 95 pages, no one is going to throw tantrum. If it’s a great 128 pages, no one is going to throw a tantrum. But, you will start to stress people out as you drift away from. I mean, however many standard deviations away from whatever they say — I would just say 110 is a nice number to call middle zone.

**John:** Let’s take a look at heroes and villains. Here he’s charting whether the hero and the villain were male, female, and how it all works. So, by far the bulk of scripts were a male hero and a male villain. That’s not surprising to me at all.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Male hero/indistinct villain is the second highest number. An indistinct villain is a forest fire, zombies, himself/herself, a haunted house, the Nazis, society, etc.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So that man versus something that’s not another man.

Female villain, there’s only 16 scripts. Male versus female villain, 16 scripts. Female villains altogether only accounted for 33 of the —

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** That’s a not very high number.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Female heroes were 33 out of these scripts. Sorry, total of 50 if you count the male and female villains. Not that huge a number.

**Craig:** No, this may be a function of the fact that more men are writing these screenplays than women. It may be a function of society or god knows what. You know, I always hesitate to draw conclusions from these things. But one thing is clear. This is a very statistically significant finding.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And the 300 scripts is actually a pretty decent population upon which to draw statistical analysis. That stories about men opposing men are wildly more popular than any other kind of story.

**John:** Nearly half of the scripts that he covered was a man versus a man.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Let’s take a look at the writers. So, of these 300 scripts —

**Craig:** Oh, well there you go. [laughs]

**John:** 270 were male writers.

**Craig:** There we go! That probably has is a big part of it. Yeah.

**John:** 22 were female writers. Eight were a male/female duo. Solo writers accounted for more than two-thirds, 223. Writer duos or trios accounted for the rest of them. Only four trios.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I know very few writing trios. So, if you have three names on a script, that’s usually someone has come in to rewrite it. It’s not that you were a writing team of three people. Do you know any writing teams of three people?

**Craig:** I do. The most famous and longest lasting writing trio probably in Hollywood is Berg, Schaffer, Mandel.

**John:** You’re absolutely right.

**Craig:** But they are an anomaly. No question.

**John:** Let’s take a look at the miscellaneous section. Heroes/villains with macho action movie names, 25.

**Craig:** “Stacker Pentecost.”

**John:** Scripts based on a true story. 18 of those.

Pun titles…

**Craig:** [sighs]

**John:** Yeah. Oh, he didn’t count how many were like a bad word in a title, because that’s always like one of those icebreaker things where you have filthy words in the title.

**Craig:** Where is that?

**John:** It’s not there.

**Craig:** Oh, he didn’t count that.

**John:** It feels like there would be more of those than pun titles.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because that’s a thing that people do. They throw some word you could never actually use in the movie title —

**Craig:** But so many pun titles. I mean, Last Vegas is out in theaters right now. People love pun titles. I don’t know why.

**John:** They do. Found footage scripts, 11. Zombie scripts, 10. Attempts at the next Sherlock Holmes, like historical revision.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Manic pixie dream girls, only four.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s nice to see.

**John:** But three uses of the scorpion and the frog analogy.

**Craig:** Well, it’s everyone’s favorite analogy.

**John:** It’s the best little analogy.

**Craig:** And look, I like that he puts here, “We get it, some people are born bad.” I know, but you know, like what if it’s in a good script?

**John:** I would take exception to that. I don’t think you can use that anymore. I think it can be a fantastic script, it would only hurt a fantastic script to actually call it out. Even Drive, with his scorpion jacket, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I get it.”

**Craig:** Well, what if it’s in the script in action and it’s not meant to be seen or heard? Like what if somebody says something like, “Jim shoots Dan. Dan looks at him. Of course, the scorpion and the frog,” but not like dialogue. Is that okay?

**John:** Yeah. It wouldn’t bug me nearly as much. I think it’s still absolutely a valid idea that a character cannot change his basic nature. That’s an absolutely valid idea, thematically resonate now, for the next 100 years.

**Craig:** But you can’t say it.

**John:** You can’t say it aloud.

**Craig:** I totally agree with that. That would be ridiculous at this point.

**John:** So, of the 300 scripts that he covered, he or she, I’m just assuming it’s a he, but that’s not necessarily true, 49 were horror/slasher.

**Craig:** That’s so crazy to me that there’s that many.

**John:** So many.

**Craig:** And you know, interestingly, so that was the most popular genre. And perhaps specs lend themselves to horror/slasher genre. Or perhaps a sort of cottage industry of amateurs love horror. But, horror movies are actually not that — they don’t get made a lot actually.

**John:** See, I think people will see that those scripts are selling. And we’re making at least ten of those a year. So, I think if you’re a first-time writer who is trying to sell a script, it might be the thing you write though.

**Craig:** Sure. But, I mean, look at this —

**John:** It’s not a bad —

**Craig:** There’s comedy, I mean, every month there’s two comedies, no matter what, without fail. And there are only 31 out of 300. 10% of the scripts were comedies.

**John:** That seems crazy to me.

**Craig:** It just seems crazy, right? Whereas almost 50 were horror movies. That was very, I mean, listen, great. Less competition. Please, more horror movies.

**John:** But here’s a thing I’ll say. If you are a funny person why are you not writing a comedy script? Well, maybe you’re writing a comedy TV half-hour. Maybe that’s where they’re actually spending their time. But if you’re a funny person, you have so much less competition on the spec level for those reads.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, maybe there just aren’t that many funny people.

**John:** Now, it could be a reporting bias. Like maybe this guy is known as like not having a sense of humor whatsoever, so he doesn’t get sent those scripts. That’s possible. When I was at TriStar I got sent certain scripts and not other kinds of scripts and I will never know why, but that’s possible.

**Craig:** Oh, all right.

**John:** The other genres are less represented. Drama, only 23. Drama that’s not a thriller or crime and gangster. So, that is sort of an eccentric way of breaking that up. Coming of age is broken out separately, so you never quite know what that —

**Craig:** Right. I mean, 13 science fiction post-apocalyptic. 12 mysteries. I liked “extraordinary romance,” 12 scripts. I’m not sure what that means. I guess, does that mean like — ?

**John:** I think it’s Twilight.

**Craig:** Oh, that means almost like supernatural romance?

**John:** Supernatural romance.

**Craig:** Oh, okay, I thought extraordinary romance meant like, wow, they really love each other. As opposed to those other movies where they kind of love each other.

**John:** I will point out that later on in this chart which I didn’t recognize, action-adventure comedy is listed separately as a category as six scripts, so there’s some of your comedy people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Black comedy is listed as four. But black comedy is really it’s own thing. Like black comedy is not joke-joke funny-funny usually.

**Craig:** Yeah, black comedy is truly its own thing.

**John:** And there’s seven scripts listed as family, and family is a little bit more likely to be comedy.

**Craig:** You never know. It could be, or it could be sort of mopey.

**John:** Time period, story set in the past, 55 scripts. Story set in the future, 12 scripts. The vast majority of stories were set in the present. That makes sense. As it should be, unless there’s a reason to be somewhere else.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** The endings. Good triumphed over evil in 229 of the scripts. Evil triumphed over good in 32 of the scripts. And there were a lot of horror/slasher movies —

**Craig:** Right, setting up the sequel.

**John:** Yes. Open-ended or even-handed. A little of both but not enough of either. 39 scripts.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So, I was thinking of my own movies applying to this and it’s like, well, good triumphs over evil. Well, like Go didn’t really have evil to some degree. I guess it’s a happy ending because no one that you cared about died, so —

**Craig:** Yeah, maybe yours would have been “even-handed.”

**John:** Yes. All right. Settings. How many scripts were set in each of these different locations. Totals will not add up due to scripts with multiple locations.

So, he has a very nice little map here that shows the locations where a lot of things are set. Obviously things tended to be set more on the edges of the country. So, west coast, east coast, some Texas, some New Orleans, very little in — well, there were four scripts in Denver, Colorado, which has been a weird thing I’ve noticed recently. Because both of your last two movies had a Denver connection, didn’t they? Or, no, your movie and Rawson’s movie? Identity Thief did, but also Rawson’s movie had.

**Craig:** The reason why is because studios, particularly when you’re dealing with the, we’ll call it mid-budget studio comedy that’s around $30 million or so, which is where We’re the Millers and Identity Thief both landed, they almost inevitably shoot in Atlanta. And you can’t make every movie actually set in Atlanta. Denver, as it turns out, is a kind of — for the rest of America, it’s considered a generic city. Nobody really knows what it looks like. You can kind of get away with it.

And so I have a — that’s why they did Denver, at least for us, and I suspect it was the same for Rawson because he was shooting in Atlanta, also.

**John:** So, considering that so many movies are shooting in Atlanta right now, not one script was set in Atlanta.

**Craig:** I know. Which is really interesting.

**John:** I would say the south overall is hugely underrepresented in this sample. So, Houston, there’s only two. New Orleans, there’s five. Miami, you really can’t count Miami as the south. Nowhere else in the south.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is odd. When I look at, for instance the original setting for Identity Thief was a road trip from Boston to Portland. So, in this case I would have been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, three scripts, which I assume were Harvard stories, and Portland, Oregon, two scripts. But, when you look at the way people basically write, New York — 43 New York. 32 in LA. 12 in Chicago. And then everybody else is just running behind.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** People love writing movies in New York and LA.

**John:** They do.

This next category, the undisclosed locations, some of our south is made up here. So, there were 11 scripts set in the deep American south. But, not specifically one southern place or another southern place, which as someone who has made Big Fish, I will tell you that you’re going to find great differences between Alabama, and Kentucky, and Tennessee.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, it strikes me it might be a lack of specificity to use our commonly used term here.

**Craig:** Or to be fair to these writers, he may have not — when it says “Undisclosed — the deep American South,” there may have been some indication that it was in a state or something like that. But he’s done these by city, so.

**John:** Yeah. We also don’t know — he presumably didn’t go into this planning to do exactly this infographic chart. And so usually in coverage you would not necessarily list every little detail that could help build this kind of chart.

**Craig:** Right. I didn’t like seeing though that 46 scripts were in some anonymous small town and then 40 were in some anonymous big city. That’s unacceptable. And I have read many, many scripts where you are in “a town.” What town? How town? [laughs] Please, give me more than “town.”

**John:** A town in Montana and a town in Arizona are going to be very different towns.

**Craig:** I mean, this is not a stage play. You know what I mean?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You can get away with Our Town on stage, but not on film.

**John:** So, this next section is recurring problems. And this is where it’s really his judgment, and so you should take it with a grain of salt. Like this is his opinion. But, the reader is basically giving his opinion in writing this coverage report anyway.

Usually coverage will have a title page which will list all the sort of quantifiable facts. And also give you the pass/recommend/consider. The second page or couple pages of the coverage will be a synopsis which will basically — just like a book report, like summarizing what actually happens in the plot. The last page of coverage is usually comments, which his basically this is what I actually genuinely think of the script. And this is really the meat of it. And this is where you’re pulling these recurring problems. So, these are the problems that he found in scripts and we’ll go from the most common to the least common problem.

The story begins too late in the script.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. You see that a lot.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, I don’t know what to — this is a little hard for me because I’m not sure how to evaluate this exactly. Maybe I disagree with him, and you and I have talked about how —

**John:** Because you like long first acts.

**Craig:** Yeah, and you — we both like long first acts. This guy may just be like, “Start,” you know.

**John:** Well, here’s what I will say based on what he’s putting in his little sub heading here. If it’s not even clear what kind of movie it is until like midway through the script, then you really have a problem.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, even in these long first acts we’re talking about, they’re setting you up for, like, this is what the world of the movie is. This is what we’re going to follow and see. So, even if the fuse hasn’t been lit so quickly, we know that there’s a bomb.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We know sort of what the world is.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have a feeling that if we were to talk to the person that did this, he or she would be able to look us in the eye and say, “No, no, no, trust me. This story began way too late.” And so I’m going to say, okay, yeah, I get that.

**John:** Scenes are void of meaningful conflict.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Yeah. We know this. So, far too often you have scenes where characters are either doing the next thing the story needs them to do, and they’re just doing it, or they’re telling another character something that happened that we already saw happen. Like, you have to look at like what is the conflict within every scene. And if there’s more than one character in the scene, there’s probably some conflict. Hell, if there’s one character in the scene, there’s got to be something that she needs to do that is a source of why there’s an engine in this scene.

**Craig:** You will also see this a lot in screenplays written by people who are attempting to dramatize their own lives, or things that have happened to them that they think are interesting or funny, but they’re not. All they read like is lunch with three people jabbering.

**John:** Yup.

The script has a by-the-numbers execution, 53 scripts. Yeah, so if you can predict exactly what’s going happen the next ten scenes from now, that’s a problem.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** The story is too thin. That’s a little bit generic. But he says 20 pages of story spread over 100 script, stuffed with tone but light on plot. Well, yeah, with bad execution, certainly.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** There’s lots of movies I love that are actually kind of light on story, but that’s part of their charm that there’s not that much that happens. The French film with the old couple and she has the stroke.

**Craig:** Amour.

**John:** Amour. Great. That has 20 pages of plot over a two-hour movie. But you would not want more in there.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, there are movies where the joy is the journey. And I have a feeling, again, that perfidious_whatever…

**John:** profound_whatever.

**Craig:** profound_whatever would say to us, “Uh-huh, no, totally. Trust me. None of these were Amour. None of these came close to that. I, in fact, wanted to kill myself with a pillow after reading a number of them.”

**John:** The villains are cartoonish/evil for the sake of evil. Yeah, that’s really tough. We talked about villains in a previous episode. You have to have — every villain is a hero. You have to look at the whole story from the villain’s point of view. And it has to actually really make sense.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They can’t just be doing it “just because.”

**Craig:** That’s right. Now, there are times when you write a villain and part of their charm is that they are kind of — they’re kind of monologue-y and a little pretentious because that’s who they are. I mean, he writes, “The best villains are those who think they’re the hero of their own story, i.e.,” I think he means e.g., “the Joker, Hans Landa, Anton Chigurh.” Well, the Joker and Hans Landa, in particular, are incredibly snarky, and smirking, and sinister, and have affected dialogue, and pretentious monologues.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** So, you can’t have it both ways, Whatever. You got to pick one. So, I think the answer is if you’re going to go for a villain like that, make them interesting. And make them actual human beings who are understandable.

**John:** Also, let’s look at, you know, so many of the things he covered were horror/slasher things, which is going to be much more likely to have this as a problem.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We’ve come to accept in certain kinds of genre, slasher movies, that the villain is just a psychopathic villain. And there’s something really terrifying about that, but that is sort of evil for the sake of evil.

**Craig:** And he’s calling out hit men, serial killers, and gangsters. And those three areas are rife with awfulness. No question. The too-cool-for-school hit man. The Hannibal Lector rip-off serial killer. And then gangsters. There’s just, you know, we’ve been doing gangsters since they figured out how to shine light through celluloid.

**John:** Yeah. Character logic is muddy. Yeah. Often lack of character consistency or a logically unsound villain plot.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Every character actually needs a reason. Why is he doing this?

**Craig:** Yes. Your characters don’t behave like human beings.

**John:** That’s where I describe where we should be able to freeze the movie and point at every character in the scene and say, “What are they trying to do? What is their goal? What’s happening here?’

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And if you can’t answer that question you need to stop and actually rewrite your scene.

**Craig:** And do they pass the human test. Would a human react this way to this?

**John:** Absolutely.

The female part is underwritten.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** A common complaint.

The narrative falls into a repetitive pattern.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Yup. The conflict is inconsequential/flash in the pan.

**Craig:** Right, low stakes.

**John:** And sometimes it’s really just that you can feel the conflict is just being spread on. it’s not inherent to the actual situation. It’s just like people are shouting at each other just because you need them shouting at each other.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then there’s a problem and it just gets done. There are no obstacles. It’s not interesting. You don’t feel like anybody had to struggle or sweat. There is no significance to what the heroes are tasked to do.

**John:** The protagonist is a standard issue hero. So, basically based on the genre or the kind of movie it is, it’s exactly the kind of hero you have in this kind of movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s a fair criticism. If it feel generic because it just sort of comes with the territory, that’s not going to be a helpful thing for you.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** The script favors style over substance. Well, yeah. I don’t know, there’s scripts I really enjoy reading that are written very stylishly and have a lot of flourish to them. That can be great. But if it’s not great, it’s not going to be great.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m not quite sure I understood the little sub-header here. “The rule of cool for action movies. The rule of funny for comedies. The rule of scary for horror. No depth, just breath and flash.” What are these rules? That they should be those things?

**John:** Yeah. The rule of cool I kind of get, which I think is going back to that sort of Shane Black action style is what I think they’re trying to get to.

**Craig:** Hmm, okay.

**John:** But I don’t know what the rule of funny is. What’s the rule of funny?

**Craig:** That it’s supposed to be funny? I don’t know what this meant. [laughs] I got confused by that one.

**John:** The ending is completely anticlimactic.

**Craig:** Ooh, that’s bad.

**John:** That’s a problem.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Think of your ending before you start writing, folks.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Characters are all stereotypes. Sure, that’s not going to work well.

Arbitrary complexity. “Cluttered and complex aren’t synonyms.” Well —

**Craig:** I know what that means. Sometimes I read scripts and I think the person who wrote this, you know, like Richard Kelly was talking about scope creep. And sometimes you read a script and you think this script has all the invention that only an autistic writer could have put in there, but then also a level of complexity that is bordering on autistic as well. I’m being asked to work too hard to enjoy it.

And now that obviously changes depending on who’s reading it and who’s watching it. And, listen, people went to go see Primer and were like, a lot of people thought it was amazing and some people were like, “Oh, my head.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, most of these rules I think all have to fall under the biggest rule of all which is unless it’s good. [laughs]

**John:** Unless it’s good, yeah.

**Craig:** And then it’s Primer and it’s cool.

**John:** The script goes off the rail in the third act. Yes. That happens probably most of the time where you start to read it and it’s like, wow, that’s not just where I wanted to end up with this story.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes writers who have not planned their story in such a way that the ending has relevance for the beginning and vice versa, they just replace — they substitute noise.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, everyone is going to run around, stuff is going to blow up, I’m going to flash lasers in your eyes, and then roll credits.

**John:** I honestly believe that most of the problems with scripts’ third acts is because it’s the last thing you wrote. You were just desperate to get it done. And you just didn’t write it with the care that you could have. So, yes, some of it may be plotting. You may not have actually had good ideas for how you were going to wrap stuff up. But, honestly, just the words on the page are much worse than they were in the first 15 pages because you haven’t rewritten it as much as you’ve rewritten those first 15 pages.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was sort of the last in, last out. And you kind of were rushing and you were tired.

**John:** Yeah.

Script’s questions were left unanswered. Sure.

The story is a string of unrelated vignettes. Well, that’s a problem.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s bad.

**John:** The plot unravels through convenience or contrivance.

**Craig:** Yes. You get one coincidence per movie.

**John:** Agreed. And so Peter Parker can be bitten by a radioactive spider, but that needs to be it. You can’t have a lot more coincidences there. You can have the one that’s sort of without this coincidence the plot wouldn’t have happened. That’s great. That’s starting you off. That’s like why you’re watching this movie, with this character today. But it can’t be happening again and again throughout the course of your story.

**Craig:** I would actually say that Peter Parker getting bitten by the spider isn’t a coincidence. That’s a random act. The coincidence that they got in that movie was that Peter Parker’s best friend is the son of a guy who is going to become a super villain. That’s convenient. That is a coincidence. And I think you get one of those kinds of things.

Then, you know, if it happens again and again, like I just happen to be here, and I happen to be going through here, then people start getting really angry because our feeling as an audience is you’re not doing the work that’s required to entertain us. You’re just cheating.

**John:** Well, we start to disbelieve the world.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because we know that the real world is not that coincidental. Things don’t happen that way so often.

I would say you can sometimes get an extra coincidence if it’s something that helps the villain. And so if it’s the kind of thing where it’s like out of the blue the villain gets something that actually sort of really helps his side, that’s kind of great, too.

**Craig:** Right. Agreed.

**John:** Luck. Yeah, if it feels like just luck that helps them get there.

**Craig:** If luck hurts your character I think it’s okay. [laughs] It just can’t help them.

**John:** How are you making things worse for your characters? One of those fundamental questions you should be asking with every scene.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** The script is tonally confused. Okay.

**Craig:** Sure. See it all the time.

**John:** The script is stoic to a fault. Let’s see what he says by that. “Nothing rattles the characters or the script. Characters don’t react to moments of drama. The script can’t deliver emotional/dramatic beats successfully. Dramatic beats fall flat, even when characters are dying.”

**Craig:** See this all the time. That’s a great one.

**John:** That’s actually a really good observation. It’s not something I’ve ever singled out, but I think it is a real problem where it’s another way of saying the character is not responding in a way to these events as real human beings would.

**Craig:** That’s why when I say to somebody, “How would a human being respond?” We had that Three Page Challenge a few weeks ago, the really good well written three pages, but there was a moment where somebody after murdering somebody kind of quips. And that was a stoic moment that shouldn’t have been there. It was too stoic for what had just occurred.

**John:** That was the western.

**Craig:** Yes. Exactly.

**John:** The protagonist is not as strong as need to be. Ooh, that’s a bad sentence.

**Craig:** The protagonist is not as strong as need be.

**John:** As need be, oh yeah, sorry.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s still not a good sentence. The protagonist is not strong enough is the proper way to write that. We’re now doing coverage of the coverage of the coverage.

**John:** [laughs] It got very meta here for a second.

The premise is a transparent excuse for action. Well, yes, but that’s not all together bad. There’s a whole genre of movies that are a transparent cause for action. And it’s really the same way we have musicals which are just an excuse for musical production numbers. There can be something lovely and delightful about that in the right kind of movie.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** So, yes.

Character back stories are irrelevant or useless.

**Craig:** Well, irrelevant and useless is bad in all circumstances. [laughs]

**John:** So, a thing is where it’s just like the obligatory “here’s my character backstory” but it doesn’t actually matter at all, don’t do that.

**Craig:** Yes. That would be bad.

**John:** Supernatural element is too undefined.

**Craig:** Uh….well. I don’t know. I mean, sometimes I kind of like it when the supernatural element is appropriately undefined because it’s supernatural, you know. Like when it’s like a very clear, well drawn ghost that explains what his problem is. That’s the one way of doing things. But the idea of some cloud, some evil, some presence, some thing actually matches a child’s understanding of what the dark is, so I kind of like that.

**John:** I do like that, too. I go back to The Ring, and it’s never really quite clear what’s going on with The Ring, but you are freaked out. And I love that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Totally.

**John:** The plot is dragged down by disruptive lulls.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Breaks in story where nothing happens. Momentum is lost. Well, momentum is lost is really the key thing here. How are you going from one scene to the next scene and really propelling your story forward? And if you have this little chunk where nothing is happening, that’s going to hurt you.

**Craig:** That’s got to go.

**John:** The ending is a case of deus ex machina. Oh, am I pronouncing that right?

**Craig:** Machina.

**John:** Machina. It’s a hard “Ch.”

**Craig:** Deus ex machina. Yes. People have been complaining about this since Aristotle. No question.

**John:** The gods come in an rescue you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Or something like the gods.

**Craig:** And, by the way, they’re not even right about — Lord of the Flies doesn’t have a deus ex machina because there is no rescuing. They are lost and broken permanently. Forever. [laughs] But, so I don’t even think of that — to me a deus ex machina is, well, we’ve seen them. We know. We know it when we see it.

**John:** Characters are indistinguishable from each other. We’ve talked about this a lot.

**Craig:** Yes we have.

**John:** Simple things, like your character’s names, will help you out a lot, but every character needs to be more than a name. They need to have defining characteristics so that one character’s dialogue couldn’t be said by another character.

**Craig:** Correct. If you give somebody an accent, nobody else gets that accent. If you give somebody a clipped way of speaking, nobody else speaks that way. Everybody must speak very, very differently.

**John:** Yeah. The story is one big shrug.

**Craig:** Well that would be bad.

**John:** That would be bad. I think that’s actually a fair comment. When you get to the end and you’re just like, “Yeah, okay.”

**Craig:** Right like, “Well, that was perfectly well done. I wouldn’t watch it. I don’t feel anything from it. It ticked off all the boxes. It just doesn’t ultimately deserve to be seen.”

**John:** Yeah.

Let’s power through the rest of these. Cheesy dialogue. Potboiler script. I don’t even know what potboiler means.

**Craig:** Me neither.

**John:** Oh, the airport novel of scripts. Yeah, okay, that’s fair. I guess, but it also just means not well done.

**Craig:** Sometimes those are cool, yeah.

**John:** Drama conflict is told but not shown. Yes, show don’t tell. Great setting isn’t utilized. Well, that’s an interesting complaint. Yes. A great setting is worth making the most out of. Emotional element is exaggerated. Well, okay, but maybe sometimes that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Dialogue is stilted and unnecessarily verbose. Sure.

**Craig:** Hurts the flow. Okay. [laughs] I don’t know, unless you’re watching a Tarantino movie, and then it’s amazing. I don’t know.

**John:** Then it’s fantastic. Emotional element is neglected. Well, so, this reader has some perfect little zone of emotion where it’s not too much, not too little. The Goldilocks zone is not achieved.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, and we’re getting angry at this guy. Screw you, man! [laughs]

**John:** The script is a writer ego trip —

**Craig:** Well, this one actually did piss me off: includes excessive camera directions, soundtrack choices, actor suggestions, credit sequences. How dare you writer that has invented an entire world, and narrative, and characters, and place, and theme, and purpose, how dare you have an idea of where the camera should be looking, or what music should be playing, or who should be playing the person. Or what could even go in the credits. How dare you! That’s the job of the director.

No, dude, that’s old school. Listen, when you say excessive, all I hear is “too much for me” and I don’t know what that is. Now, finally, at this point in the podcast I’m getting a bit shirty. All right, listen, here’s the situation. I don’t believe there are any scripts that have excessive camera direction or any of this other stuff, unless it’s so excessive that it’s stopping you from reading the script. But in and of itself, this notion that writers aren’t allowed to touch this stuff needs to die.

**John:** I’m going to stick up for this guy halfway. So, I think “writer ego trip” is a terrible headline for what he’s talking about here. But things like actor suggestions is — actor suggestions don’t belong in a script. That’s breaking the script to say like, “It’s a Will Smith character.” No, don’t do that.

**Craig:** Not in the script.

**John:** But everything else, not in the script. So, he’s talking about a script. So, if that’s in the script, that’s crazy.

**Craig:** Okay, that one, fine.

**John:** And too many music choices. I think you can get away with like one music choice in your thing. More than that and it’s like you’re reading liner notes. Stop doing that.

But camera direction we’ve talked about on the show. When you do camera direction correctly it feels like you are helping — you’re creating the experience of being an audience member watching it. And that can be fantastic.

Credit sequences are fine. They’re good. I think they’re a useful thing to script if they help tell your story.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, don’t stop.

**Craig:** And let me just stick up for soundtrack choices for a second. No, you don’t put in soundtrack choices if it’s just background music while a car is driving. But, if you’re building a sequence that is married to music, and there’s a song that you feel will impart what your intention is for this section, then yes, I’m okay with it. And if you need to do it four times, do it four times.

If the music specifically important to what your trying to say, if in fact you’re using the music to say something you would otherwise have to say with words, then it’s okay.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Anyway, I got a bit shirty. Okay.

**John:** The script makes a reference but not a joke. A pop culture reference still needs a punch line.

**Craig:** Uh…

**John:** Uh…I don’t really quite get that. I mean, I’m sure that he was noting situations where that was annoying, but as a general rule I can’t say that I agree with that general rule.

**Craig:** It’s about the characters. I mean, there are characters that speak that way. If the idea is that you’re trying to make people laugh just by citing it, then no, I agree, that’s annoying.

**John:** But I could imagine things where you’re making like a cosmopolitan joke, sort of like very Sex and the City, and so like if someone now orders a cosmo thinking that it’s really cool, I can see you having them do that and that be a pop culture reference, but making the joke about it would just be a hat on a hat. So, in some ways I think there’s times where you make the reference and you don’t try to make a joke out of it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Or you don’t acknowledge the joke.

**Craig:** Exactly. The point is it’s just a reference which gets made.

**John:** Last one is the message overshadows the story. Well, yeah. I can think of movies that are…yeah, earnest, where you are left with a message but you don’t really care about the plot.

**Craig:** Yeah. Some people like those. I mean, if you’re making a message movie and there’s, I don’t know, I don’t write movies like that so I can’t judge.

I did want to say, have you ever seen that thing from Essanay Studios?

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** So Essanay was an old movie studio. I think it was an old movie studio from the silent film days. And someone found this thing on the internet that has been passed around. It is authentic. And it is a rejection slip from Essanay studios for your screenplay. And so we’ve just gone through all of these things written by some man or woman in 2013. Now let me read you, very quickly, this.

So, they list 17 things and they put a check mark next to the ones that apply.

**John:** That’s so wonderful.

**Craig:** So, Essanay: Your manuscript is returned for the reason checked below.
1. Overstocked
2. No strong dramatic situations.
3. Weak plot.
4. Not our style of story.
5. Idea has been done before.
6. Would not pass the censor board.
7. Too difficult to produce.
8. Too conventional.
9. Not interesting.
10. Not humorous.
11. Not original.
12. Not enough action.
13. No adaptations desired.
14. Improbable.
15. No costume plays or story with foreign settings desired. Illegible.

And last but not least:

16. Robbery, kidnapping, murder, suicide, harrowing death-bed, and all scenes of an unpleasant nature should be eliminated.

Yours very truly, Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois.

**John:** That’s pretty fantastic. So, Craig, when I was in grade school, maybe early junior high I, well, it probably was junior high, I wrote a short story which I hoped to have published in Dragon Magazine.

**Craig:** Hmmm.

**John:** Dragon Magazine being the official monthly magazine of Dungeons & Dragons.

**Craig:** I remember it well.

**John:** And so they published some short fiction. Not every month, but every couple months they published some short fiction. So, I wrote this short story which was sort of hopefully, appropriately sort of sorcery-ish. And so I sent it in and I was so hopeful. And I got back that kind of letter. It was a one-page thing with like a checkmark.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** If I remember properly, though, I think it was just like, “Does not meet our needs at this time.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, it was at least a useful thing on that since it was like, well, they liked it, it just didn’t meet their needs at this time.

**Craig:** [laughs] I like that you thought that. You were like, “Hey, dad, great news. They loved it. It doesn’t meet their needs at this time, but that’s sort of like saying it will meet their needs at another time.”

**John:** And what’s amazing is I think they actually did send it back to me, because that was a time where I was sending them a physical object and they sent me the physical object back because they did that at that time. Just the idea of somebody mailing something back to you at this point is crazy.

**Craig:** I know. I know. Well, just the idea of departments of people that are getting these things. Although, you know, it still happens. You ask anybody that works somewhere where things are submitted and packages still show up. There are people out there sending cassette tapes out.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It’s a wild world.

**John:** Even at the Austin Film Festival, some young musician was like, “I want you to hear my demo thing,” so gave me like a CD. I’m like I have nothing to play this in. A CD? I haven’t touched a CD in a long time.

**Craig:** Did you make a cool CD-shaped USB drive? Is that was this is? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Because that would be really useful. Ooh, you say you actually printed a URL on a business card. That would be vastly more useful to me.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. I’m not going to listen to this.

**John:** Or like this is my Sound Cloud account. Oh, I know what that is.

**Craig:** Somebody should go make CD-shaped of things that aren’t CDs. I like it.

**John:** [laughs] Done.

**Craig:** Done.

**John:** Our next topic is this WGA negotiation that’s coming up. So, essentially this past week the DGA make their deal, or they — so, I don’t want to overstate what they did. The DGA goes into negotiations with the AMPTP which were the people who run all the major studios. And generally the DGA goes in and is the first group to talk with them about the things they would like for the next three-year contract.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And they came back with some decisions and now the membership will vote on the deal that they have reached.

**Craig:** Yeah. Actually historically they haven’t been the first ones to go in. Historically they’ve gone in very early, but the way that the union contracts were staggered the Writers Guild often went first. Sometimes the actors went first. One of the biggest losses that came out of our strike with the companies in 2007/2008 was that we fell out of cycle and the DGA officially did become the first to negotiate.

Technically we are still — we still expire before they do, but it’s so close that, you know, the DGA will literally go in eight or nine months early. So, they are now in the driver’s seat firmly which is where they’ve always wanted to be and that’s where the companies want them to be. The companies know that the DGA is the most likely union to make a deal. They don’t strike.

**John:** So, next up will be the Writers Guild and the actors will have to go in and negotiate their deals. And the whole idea of being on one of these committees that negotiates these deals is horrifying to me, because why would any sane person ever want to be involved in these negotiations. But, of course, this year I actually am on the negotiating committee, so I was asked to be on this.

It’s weird. I can’t talk in any official capacity about these negotiations, but what I can do is listen to Craig Mazin describe what happened in this last deal and what the things are that we in the negotiating committee might be having our ears open to as we go into this next round of negotiations.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, the deal is that when a union arrives at one of these agreements, what they’re basically arriving at is a memorandum of basic deal points. It’s a little bit like when you and I get hired to do something. There’s something called a deal memo. And the deal memo basically says this is how many drafts we’re hiring you to do guaranteed and this is what we’re paying you for each draft.

Then there’s this long form contract that the lawyers have to write up that goes into all the nitty gritty like how much do I get paid a week if I have to travel with the production to Paris and so forth. That will still happen. The DGA still has to do that long form. But the deal memo is the important part.

We’re still kind of picking out the details from this, but here are sort of the big ones. They got some wage increases for one-hour programs on basic cable, what they call “out of pattern.” Basic cable is a big, big issue for the writers because we know that the explosion of employment on basic cable dwarfs what is currently available on network, which is where our bread and butter was back in the day of three channels or four channels.

We have a ton of people that are working in cable. And, frankly, cable is a little bit of the wild west. Some of the cable shows aren’t even union at all, which I don’t understand. I don’t understand how we let WGA writers work on those shows. That’s another topic. But they got some sort of little increase. We’re not exactly sure what.

They are continuing to work on new media in small ways. They’re coming up with residuals for things like shows on Netflix, or shows that run on Amazon. So, they’re starting to get into that business.

**John:** We should clarify, this is original programming for Netflix or for Amazon.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So, things like House of Cards or any of those, or Betas, or any of those things.

**Craig:** Correct. And this is one of those areas where no one seems to know how much money there really is. And they’re trying to figure out how to create a formula that doesn’t turn around and bite you in the butt later. The Writers Guild has, in the past, vehemently argued for formulas that then turned around later were not great for us. So, we have to basically get the details on what’s been done there.

Similarly, they’re covering things in ad-supported streaming and cable video on-demand stuff. Set top box streaming. And these things were uncovered before.

**John:** Yeah, can you explain cable set top box streaming in a way that might make sense? Because I think that’s video on-demand. That’s what I think of as video on-demand. Isn’t it? Or is it a special case of video on-demand?

**Craig:** I think it may be that it is that, that it is basically, but it’s not pay-per-view, it’s different. It’s streaming through, you know what I mean?

**John:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** So if you’re streaming directly from maybe, I don’t know.

**John:** Here’s what, so once I get into this negation I’ll —

**Craig:** You’ll find out. You’ll tell us.

**John:** I’ll find out what these terms really mean. Here’s what I think it might mean. And there are some movies which are free to watch through cable. Like they’re basically video on-demand, but they’re free.

**Craig:** Oh, they’re ad-supported. That’s what it is.

**John:** Yeah, they’re either ad-supported or it’s part of a subscription. Basically you get that as part of a subscription. So, those things are free to watch because they’re buying a block of movies that you can watch when you want to watch. So, you’re not paying individually for each movie. My guess is that is the kind of thing which needs to be figured out.

**Craig:** Right. That we get some residuals based on the ad revenue. And they also, a lot of this stuff, the company is building these free windows where they’re allowed to show things without paying residuals for a little bit just to get people’s interest up and then — and apparently the window for free streaming there was reduced.

To me, the big, I guess this is the big one. The big one really is that traditionally there would be a 3% increase in our scale pay rate. Most screenwriters aren’t dealing with scale. And the 3% increase there isn’t that much anyway. The reason that was always important is because television residuals are in fact tied to minimums, to scale. So, when we would get a 3% increase over the life of the contract, that meant that residuals in perpetuity we’re going to paying out at a higher rate for television.

In the last negotiation the companies successfully worked that number back down to two. And it looks like the directors have gotten them to now over the course of three years work it back up to three again. It’s sort of like, okay, everybody recognized that the marketplace went crazy but that crisis is over and we need to get back to three again.

So, it looks like that happened. I’ll tell you that all this stuff is done. In other words, when the companies come to the Writers Guild, the terms that they negotiate with the directors will be the terms that you guys get and they will not be altered in any important way. There are some areas where things are unique and can be massaged. And for this next negotiation a lot of that has to do with the relative state of health of the pension and health funds at the different unions.

The actors have a whole bunch of issues over there. And we all have our own issues. The writers traditionally have had very strong health and pension funds. I don’t know how Obamacare is going to affect us. I have suspicion that it’s going to. And so I think part of the negotiation is going to be about protecting health and pension from perhaps an increase in taxation or penalties or something like that.

**John:** Yeah. I think not knowing any specifics about our pension plan and negotiations, the general discussion I’ve heard about Obamacare is that the Writers Guild health plan is considered like one of those luxury plans.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** It covers a whole bunch of things. And because it covers a whole bunch of things it may have different tax ramifications.

**Craig:** There’s no question. And the thing is what you start to find when you go through a negotiation process is that the companies really look at these contracts bottom line as a number. And it all gets divided up in various different ways. But when they say, okay, well we gave the directors this amount. We’re going to give you this amount. And it’s going to come in terms of an increase in residuals and this and that. And also you can move things around for health and pension.

So, I think this is going to be a fairly boring negotiation. I think it’s basically been negotiated with little areas here and there that we can fiddle with. But this is life in the world of the directors going first and I think we are going to have to get used to it.

**John:** Let’s go to our third topic for our show this week which is something you suggested which is something you suggested which is, I think was a conversation you had with a fellow writer?

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I met with a writer, he was a younger writer and he just wanted to get some advice. And obviously no names here. Terrific, terrific person. But he mentioned to me that — he was describing the various struggles that he faced as he was learning his craft and practicing his craft. And a lot of them were very familiar: finding the right amount of time, and self doubt, maybe partnerships that didn’t work out.

And then he brought up this other thing which was getting high. And, you know, you and I, we’re the old guys now. People just get high a lot. [laughs] They get high a lot.

**John:** You’re saying the younger generation gets high a lot, or our generation gets high a lot?

**Craig:** I think twenty-somethings just get way higher than we ever did. They just —

**John:** That may be true.

**Craig:** They just get high all the time. Our generation obviously got high and still gets high. And drinks. And drank and still drinks. But weed in and of itself, when we were in our twenties you could get arrested, you know? [laughs] Like I had to hide it. You really can’t now. There’s not a — and I actually like that. I believe that marijuana should be legalized.

However, I also believe that if you want to be — and this is what I told this person — stop getting high. If you want to write a screenplay, stop it. You want to get high Friday night through Sunday afternoon? Go for it. But this is a job that to me at least requires an enormous amount of sobriety. Even the famous writers who were notoriously drunk —

There was an interesting article recently. A lot of them found that they were most productive when they were writing through hangovers. It was in the aftermath of the drinking and the abuse. But, it’s romantic to think that you can get high and write the best stuff of your life.

I don’t think it works at all.

**John:** Well, in a general sense let’s talk about writers and drugs, because I think it’s actually a fascinating topic. The writers who get high because getting high reduces their inhibitions and makes the words flow or whatever, that was never me, and it’s not the experience I’ve noticed from any of my writer colleagues who sort of of my cohort. So, it’s entirely possible that this next generation that’s rising up to replace us, they are tremendously successful at writing while high and I’m just completely missing it. That same way that like I kind of didn’t understand why anyone would have a manager, then Justin Marks explaining why writers have managers.

So, it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. But I kind of don’t think I’m wrong. Because my experience of being around people who get high a lot is that either you can do two things. You can use it as a crutch. Basically like, well, I can’t write because I’m not high, and I’m always high when I write. That’s tremendously challenging when you’re in any situation where you can’t get high. Where you’re actually in a room working on something and that becomes your thing. It’s like having this weird thing where you can only write when the sun is streaming through the window one certain way and any other way it won’t work. That’s bad. That’s not going to be useful to you.

The other thing I would say is that most of the people I know who get high a lot, their ambition just sort of dissipates a bit. And without ambition, I don’t think you’re going to be able to generate the quantity and quality of work it’s going to take to really make a screenwriting career.

**Craig:** I agree. I think that it’s important for me to point out that my experience of my cohorts is exactly the same as yours. I don’t know one single successful writer who has maintained a career who continues to abuse drugs or alcohol. I know some that have, and gotten over it, but I don’t know any that continue to do it as a matter of practice and can still function through it. I also think that the problem with writing while you’re high is that you’re not writing. The whole point of getting high is to alter your consciousness, which is fun.

It’s totally fun. Drinking is fun. And getting high is fun. I get it. But it’s about expanding your consciousness, and letting go of who you are for awhile, and when you come back from it, perhaps you can come back with something that you’ve learned about yourself. But then you’re not writing. There’s a you and it’s the sober you. I don’t know how else to put it.

**John:** I would agree with you. Writing is really hard. And so I think some of the instinct behind using something like pot or people who are using Provigil or Ritalin or other sort of stimulant things, helps them sort of focus in on what they’re doing, it’s an attempt to make something that’s inherently hard feel easier. But in making it feel easier, it’s unlikely that you’re going to find great success in that solution.

If you’re on one of these, if you take Ritalin or whatever, you may pile through more pages. The odds that they’re going to be awesome pages are very, very small.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** And I would also say the same with pot. You may write a few good sentences, but it’s unlikely you’re going to get the work done that needs to get done.

**Craig:** No, screenwriting is rigorous. It requires enormous attention. To me, writing while altered is right up there with directing while altered. Or driving. And I’m taking away even the aspect of how dangerous that would be for other people, yourself physically. I mean to say your just not very good at it.

It’s something that requires focus, and attention, and intention, and thought. And the whole point of getting high is to make some of that stuff go away. You know, beyond caffeine and, you know, cigarette, you know, if you feel like hurting your lungs.

But, yeah, just no. Don’t. I think culturally speaking I was a little taken aback, not in a judgmental way, but more in a, huh, I think this is probably going on more than you and I realize.

**John:** I would agree.

**Craig:** So, advice here is stop. I don’t think it’s going to help you.

**John:** Yeah. And so I want to phrase it as this is not a moral judgment about sort of whatever substances you want to consume. Just in my experience looking at sort of historical record of people I know who have succeeded and got stuff done, none of the people I know who have succeeded and really gotten a lot of stuff done have been using stuff frequently to do it.

**Craig:** Totally.

**John:** Beyond the exact examples that you list, which are caffeine, which is getting you up and getting your focused through that next bit. And some people do smoke. But not that many people smoke now. Even Craig Mazin doesn’t smoke now.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s an occasional, you know. The guy that needs to smoke a cigar every day while you’re writing. Great. Worked for Mark Twain. And really caffeine and nicotine or sort of two peas in a pod. But, you know, totally agree with you. This is not judgmental. I believe all drugs should be legal. I’m very libertarian about that. And I don’t care what you do when you you’re not writing. But, I do want you to be writing, not high or drunk you.

**John:** Yeah. That’s very important. And I will also say that I’m not discounting the fact that some people have special challenges and their brains are not working right, and so this is really talking about an otherwise healthy person who is trying to write a screenplay.

If you are a person who is sort of not overall healthy in life and needs some other antidepressant or whatever else, go do that and take care of yourself first. So, that’s not like a blanket statement against all drugs or any medication that could help a person.

But specifically taking something in order to get yourself to start writing is not my advice to you.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Cool. Craig, I have a One Cool Thing. Do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Great. You go first.

**Craig:** This flows out of this last discussion. When I was thinking about it I realized that it would probably be a good idea if people who were out there who maybe were struggling with this as writers, is there something for writers who are struggling with substance abuse. And I found this. I can’t necessarily vouch for it, because I don’t have a substance abuse problem. And so I don’t have any personal experience. But there is an organization called Writers in Treatment. And they even have scholarships and things. And they’re an independent California non-profit company that basically was started by writers, for writers, here in Los Angeles, to help people recover from alcohol, or drug, or substance abuse, or self-harming probably, or any of these other things that writers get stuck in.

So, I don’t know if you are somebody out there who is struggling and you feel like, well, I would like to recover but I’d like to do it with people that are doing the same thing I’m doing. Then there are some resources for you. This is one. But like I said, I can’t vouch for them. Look around.

I guess the point is they’re out there.

**John:** Agreed. So, we’ll have a link to that.

My One Cool Thing is called Screenflow. And this last week I’ve been recording some different screencasts on Fountain and Highland and why I like to write in Fountain mostly. And Screenflow is the app I use to record my screen for doing those screencasts. And it’s actually just a terrific application.

In the way that we’re all probably used to taking screenshots of things so we can show like what’s going on on our screen, this is recording the video of your screen and the app is very smart at being able to let you zoom in on parts of the screen. And it very much works like Final Cut Pro in the sense that you’re able to cut between different scenes to get your point across. But it’s a terrifically well designed app that has been a pleasure to use. I’ve probably spent 25 hours in it this last week. And it’s great. So, I highly recommend Screenflow. It’s on the Mac App Store.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** So, Craig, if people wanted to tweet to you or to me, I am @johnaugust. You are @clmazin.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you want to subscribe to us, go to iTunes and click subscribe for Scriptnotes. Just search for us and click subscribe. If you are there you can leave us a comment. We like those comments.

Next week we should really read those comments. We should go through those because it’s been awhile since we’ve responded. That’s great when people leave comments.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And I think that’s it. Oh, if you have questions about stuff that we talked about today at johnaugust.com/podcast you will see a list of all the episodes we’ve done and links to the things we talked about on the show.

**Craig:** This was a packed podcast. Dense. The dense fruitcake of a podcast.

**John:** It was a long episode. It started with that dense infographic and I think it really sort of took its tone from there.

**Craig:** We’re saving lives, John. We’re saving lives. [laughs]

**John:** Perhaps.

**Craig:** I want to believe that we’re saving lives.

**John:** I do want to believe. Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

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

LINKS:

* profound_whatever’s [post on r/screenwriting](http://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/1r5y6l/ive_covered_300_spec_scripts_for_5_different/) and its [accompanying infographic](http://i.imgur.com/T22gGBO.png)
* Deus ex machina [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina)
* [Directors Guild of America Board OKs New Contract, Triggering Member Vote](http://variety.com/2013/film/news/directors-guild-of-america-board-oks-new-contract-triggering-member-vote-1200874949/) from Variety
* [WGA Announces Contract Negotiating Committee](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wga-announces-contract-negotiating-committee-655750) from The Hollywood Reporter
* [Writers in Treatment](http://www.writersintreatment.org/)
* [Screenflow](http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/) for Mac, and John’s video and post on [why he likes writing in Fountain](http://johnaugust.com/2013/why-i-like-writing-in-fountain)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 119, the Positive Moviegoing episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

And we are so lucky because we have our very first guest, the sort of guest who set the template for a guest on Scriptnotes would be like. Aline Brosh McKenna is here in the studio.

**Craig:** Woo!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Woot-woot-woot!

**John:** How are you, Aline?

**Aline:** I’m doing well. I’m doing very well. I’m happy to be here.

**John:** Now it’s almost Thanksgiving. Do you have big Thanksgiving plans for you and your family?

**Aline:** We don’t. I don’t cook. We go out to dinner.

**John:** How very nice.

**Aline:** It’s great. I really love it.

**Craig:** [Long Island accent] “I don’t cook.”

**Aline:** No, it’s too much for me to do.

**Craig:** “We go out to dinner.” Where can you even go?

**Aline:** [Long Island accent] You got to set up the order.

**Craig:** Where do you?

**Aline:** We go to a lovely place in the mountains near Malibu where they cook game and you eat game.

**Craig:** Oh, you don’t do the normal Jewish thing of just Chinese food? [laughs]

**John:** I thought that was only Christmas?

**Aline:** No, that’s Christmas. Christmas is Chinese food and a movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** What are you doing, Craig?

**Craig:** We have some friends coming over and another lovely half-Jewish, half-super not Jewish family in La Cañada. And we are going to have an excellent Thanksgiving. We’re going to be making all of our own food. I’m cooking multiple desserts and side dishes. And the, actually, you should know this guy, John. I mean, you don’t know him, but you should meet him. He’s great. His name is Josh and he does lighting design for operas and musical theater. He’s worked down at La Jolla and up at Santa Barbara Opera House and Minnesota. And he’s a cool guy.

So, anyway, we’re having a combined Thanksgiving and —

**Aline:** I love that Craig, who lost a titanic amount of weight, is the expert pie and cake maker.

**Craig:** Ain’t that the way it goes?

**John:** I, too, am having a bunch of people over for Thanksgiving. I’ll be making pies. I’ll be making the turkey. It’s the one day a year that I sort of go back to the full Martha Stewart mode. My former assistant Dana Fox and I, she and I every day would watch Martha Stewart Living, back when it was the filmed show, not that horrible live before an audience thing. Back when it was the true Martha Stewart. We would watch it. And that’s the day that my inner Martha Stewart comes out and I cook hard.

**Craig:** Mmm. I know. I love cooking hard. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Today, on the podcast, we are going to be talking about a lot of topics. Aline brought two. I brought one. Craig brought one. But first we have to talk about the Live holiday show. We are recording this on the Wednesday that the tickets went on sale and I think we’re kind of sold out. We’re not fully sold out, but a lot of people are coming, which is great.

The live show is December 19. It is at the LA Film School. It is a benefit for the Writers Guild Foundation. There’s a few tickets that have been held back. So there’s a chance that even if we are completely sold out on paper we will be releasing some more tickets. So, do follow us on Twitter and we may announce that there’s still some more tickets left.

But out lineup for the show is incredible, including Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Craig:** McKenna!

**John:** Derek Haas.

**Craig:** Haas!

**John:** Kelly Marcel.

**Craig:** Marcel!

**John:** Richard Kelly.

**Craig:** Richard Kelly!

**John:** Rawson Thurber.

**Craig:** Thurber!

**John:** Franklin Leonard and Lindsay Doran.

**Craig:** Leonard and Doran! Leonard and Doran, I think, was a great boxing match. Wasn’t that — ?

**John:** Yes, it’s a classic —

**Craig:** Was it Doran? Well, it was Durán, but anyway, I’d like to see the two of them fight. Money is on Doran.

**John:** I think the fight is going to be epic. So, that will be a fun show.

But, today on the show we’re going to talk about four topics. Aline suggested we talk about outline failure and why it’s important to befriend other writers.

I want to talk about this article about going broke in your 50s.

**Aline:** Oh, you sent it to me. I should have read it. I didn’t read it. You’ll tell me what it is.

**Craig:** We’ll summarize.

**John:** We’ll fill you in on the details.

**Craig:** “I don’t cook. I don’t read.”

**Aline:** [Long Island accent] I order. I order.

**Craig:** “I order.”

**John:** And Craig wanted to talk about positive moviegoing, which I’m not even sure what it means, so Craig start us out. What is positive moviegoing?

**Craig:** Well, it’s this thing I’ve been thinking about lately because this is the time of year when all the so-called “good” movies come out. And a lot of them are actually good movies. But I noticed that there’s — I think it’s just we live in a time of snarkiness and suspicion and nobody seems to want to like anything. People a lot of times go into theaters with their arms crossed, especially in Los Angeles. We’re all in the business. And I think people go to movies and they’re already — they’re demanding to hate them. And they’re prejudging them. And you could do it for — you name any movie and I could just sort of come up with some pretext for hating it.

And so what I really have been trying to do is when I go to movie to go wanting to love it. And accepting everything about it for at least 20 minutes. So, I don’t care what happens in the first twenty minutes. I am on board. I will accept it and I will attempt to enjoy it as best I can. I will give myself to the movie.

And then at some point, okay, you know, listen, sometimes you just don’t like movies. Sometimes they disappoint. Sometimes they anger you because you hate them so much. And that’s okay. I’m not denying that that can happen. But I’ve really been trying to just give myself over to movies.

So, I went and I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And I went in, just gave myself to the movie. And I loved it. And I think I would have loved it anyway, but I think it helped that I wasn’t judging. I just decided nobody else goes to movies to judge. Why do we go to movies to judge? Can’t we just enjoy them?

Anyway, that’s my thing, positive moviegoing.

**John:** So, what you’re describing is almost like — I can picture the body language of it. It’s like you’re sitting down in your seat. You’re not crossing your arms in front of you saying like, “Okay, impress me.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You’re saying, “I’m here. I’m eager to be entertained. I will follow you wherever you go. And take me on a journey.” That’s the message you’re trying to send to this movie.

**Craig:** That’s right. Sort of like meeting somebody at a party and they start to tell you a story. You’re standing there. So be nice. Listen to it. Give it a shot, you know. I just get so depressed when I see people ripping movies apart before they even see them.

**Aline:** Yeah, I agree. I think it’s easy to hate things and to bag on things. I think it’s just, it makes people feel fashionable and intellectual. And it’s harder — it takes more effort to go out there and say, “You know what? Even if it wasn’t perfect, even if things aren’t prefect, sometimes things that you love are the imperfect perfect thing.” But going in there with an attitude of like, “I’m going to enjoy this. I paid my money to enjoy this, not to find something that I can sit down with my friends later and pick to shreds?’

**Craig:** Yeah. And it will happen that we will encounter movies that infuriate us. And we will pick them to shreds. And we will pick them to shreds. And if you’ve earned that experience, so you’ve earned it. But there is something to be said for letting yourself be entertained and not attempt to make yourself feel better by pushing a movie away.

And frankly even the feeling that, okay, it’s not perfect. Yeah! [laughs] How often does that happen? You know?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, movies win Oscars and people go, “Oh my god, that piece of crap won an Oscar.” Perfection is irrelevant, you know.

I almost think, okay, mistakes aren’t really mistakes. It’s just, you know, no more than I got from here to there on a road and it was a really enjoyable journey and there was a pothole. It’s just part of it.

**Aline:** And I also think it’s very Christmas-y.

**John:** It’s very Christmas-y.

Now, on some level are we talking about expectation? Because I find that a lot of times the movies that I enjoy most were the ones where my expectations were not set too high going into them. And that’s why I love to see a movie during its opening weekend before everyone has sort of told me what I’m supposed to think and feel about it.

Because when I come into a theater with a set of expectations, nothing can surprise me. And I’m sort of preconditioned to think this is how I’m supposed to feel about this particular entertainment.

**Aline:** Yeah. I miss the days of just going to see a movie and knowing nothing about it.

**Craig:** Right!

**Aline:** My parents would drive us to the Paramus Park, we used to call it the Millionplex. It had 14 theaters. And they would just drop us off there and we would see the 7:30, whatever it was, and just be happy. That’s how I saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure which, you know, pleasantly surprised us. We laughed. Fell out of our chairs laughing.

We also saw Yor, The Hunter From the Future that way.

**Craig:** Yeah. Good one.

**Aline:** And just you don’t have that surprise anymore. You’ve been so inundated with media before you go to see a movie now, that I miss the days of just thinking like, “I just want to see a movie. Let’s see what’s out there.” I miss that.

**John:** Yeah, I remember seeing 9 to 5 that way. So, I was a kid dropped off at the theater and the theater we were supposed to go to — they dropped us off at the wrong movie, essentially. So, we saw 9 to 5. I was far too young to see 9 to 5, which is the best way to see 9 to 5, because they’re smoking pot, and having sex, and all these things.

**Aline:** Stringing people up.

**John:** I also remember in college going to see, we ended up seeing The Handmaid’s Tale because the other movie we wanted to see was completely sold out. We had no idea what the movie was. And that’s so incredibly rewarding when you sit in, the only information you have is what the filmmakers are giving you frame-by-frame as the story unfolds.

You had that experience of positive moviegoing because you weren’t preconceived with what we were supposed to feel. There was no expectation about what to —

**Aline:** And you haven’t checked a review aggregator that’s giving you 60 opinions before you even set foot there.

**Craig:** Yeah, or your Twitter feed, or comedians teeing up. Or whatever, anything. Or even articles that are insisting that it’s the most important thing of all time.

It’s funny. 9 to 5 was the first movie I think I saw, I was dropped off to see on my own. I remember it was like a weird triple date, like a weird triple fifth-grade date. What were our parents thinking? But, you know, I really make an effort now when I sit in the movie theater before the movie starts to blank my mind completely. I just say, go ahead movie, ride all over me and let’s see where this goes.

**John:** Some of my favorite experiences are actually like when you see the three trailers, or the four trailers, and then like the real movie starts and you’ve forgotten what the movie was that you’re supposed to — you have to check the ticket to see what movie is this. Oh right, it’s the Muppets! But it is very exciting.

Now, let’s talk for a second as filmmakers, as screenwriters, is there anything we can do in those opening pages or in the opening minutes of a movie to get people in the positive moviegoing experience. What is that like from our side as writers to hopefully foster that good spirit?

**Craig:** Well, I do have one thing that lately I’ve been tending to do, and that is write a credit sequence. It became out of fashion. All movies — well, originally movies used to have these opening credit sequences that includes even the credits that we now call end credits, you know, where there are logos and rosters of people. But then the standard opening credit sequences, that became out of fashion. And for a long time all the credits went in the back of the movie. So, you just started the movie.

I really like credit sequences. I like opening credit sequences. The opening credits for Mitty are beautiful. And I think that that helps kind of get everybody situated and in the mood. So, I’ve been doing that lately.

**John:** I will also write credit sequences in movies where I feel it’s appropriate. More than anything I try to make sure that the reader and therefore the viewer feels confident. Like, trust me, this is going to be a ride that you will enjoy taking with me. You’re going to feel rewarded and smart on this journey. We know what we’re doing. Everything is going to be okay.

And I mean that shows up in sort of your word selection on those first pages, but also just making sure no one is confused in a bad way in those first pages. Making sure that there is — if it’s a funny movie, you need to have something funny happen really quickly, so everyone sort of gets what the world of your movie is.

**Aline:** My husband has a thing where we’ll go to see a movie, and sometimes movies take forever just to get going, and he’ll turn to me at some point and say, “When does the movie start,” 20 minutes into the movie. Because sometimes it just seems like, especially because we do know what movies we’re going to see, it does seem like if you’re taking 15 minutes to get us acquainted with what we’ve seen on the poster, that makes me a little itchy.

And I think our attention span for that has probably changed a bunch, too. But I think it’s great to see if you can get to the heart of the matter so the audience knows what movie they are seeing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I think that’s a great segue to a talk that you proposed, which is outline failure, because what we’re really talking is the structure of the story and when things are happening. And structure is really when stuff happens. So, talk to me about outline failure and what you mean by outlines failing.

**Aline:** Well, you guys I know have talked about outlining a lot on the show, and it’s always very interesting, and it’s something that people will always ask on panels and such is about outlining. And I think we all outline in different ways. But I think — I don’t really know any writers who don’t outline at all, or few.

And some outline after the fact. Some write a draft and then outline. But what I think is interesting is I do do outlines. I try not to do written outlines, submit written outlines, because I find that people get bogged down in the details of a written outline. But I do spoken — I will pitch an outline and I will pitch an outline to everybody. And before I start writing I tend to try and pitch an outline to as many people as I can, the producer, the studio, anybody who will listen to the outline so that I can tell it like I’m telling a story.

And often when you’re telling it you realize, oh, that’s not good, or that’s boring, or this patch needs to go here or there, or that doesn’t make sense.

But what never ceases to amaze me is, you know, it’s one of those phenomena when you’re writing which is you want to try and break it down into math. And you want to break it down into cards. And we all want to feel like we have control over it. And it never ceases to amaze me that you’ll outline something, you’ll go see six people and pitch to them, you’ll put it on cards, you’ll sit down and start writing, and it’s usually page 65 is where it happens, where you start looking at your outline and you’re thinking, “This is crazy. Like why did everyone let me do this? Why didn’t everyone know that this is riddled with flaws and the character has just changed on a dime for no reason.”

I’ve always contended that 70 to 90 are the rocky shoals, the rapids, where your movie either comes together and moves out into the next plane, or you start to realize that you’ve got some inherent flaws. But what is really fascinating is you can’t really tell until you write it. And as long as I’ve been doing this, I have found some outlines I’m going through, congratulating myself, and just thinking, “Wow, I really planned this out.” And some I’m thinking like, “Oh, I don’t know.”

But, at some point you always get to a point of thinking like, “Who are these people who I work with who allowed me to think that these were good ideas?” You actually get angry. And I don’t really know, I don’t know what the cure for this is besides writing through there. And I think it’s funny, because I just moved, and it’s kind of a similar process. You think, you know, we’re going to put the couch there. We’re going to put this ottoman here, we’re going to put this here. And then you show up and you put it there and you’re like, “This is hideous. This is ten times too large. Why did anyone think this was going to fit here?”

And I guess it just shows planning is — it’s just plans. And so you really do feel like you go into a war, you top off your canteen, you take as many weapons as you can, and then you get there and the enemy has gone on the run and gone into the bush. They had flying robots you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden you have to change your game plan. That’s one of those things that kind of separates the way I write now from the way I did in the beginning which was in the beginning I would really get very disheartened and think, “Why has this happened? What is the critical flaw in my process?”

And now I just accept, you know, okay, we’re experiencing some problem with the hydraulics in the outline. And need to make adjustments on the fly. And sometimes that process of trying to figure out why your outline has crumbled beneath you, often those are the critical — that’s the critical passage where you find out what your movie is really about, because 70 to 90 is where you’re sort of on the upslope to figuring out what problem is this person really solving. What problem is this character really solving? And you may have the wrong problem. And you may have the wrong thematic. And sort of that’s where you figure it out.

So, I’ve learned somewhat to try not to beat myself up about it, but for those out there who are staring out their outline, ripping their hair out, it happens.

**John:** I’m outlining something right now, and I do find that as I go through previous episodes of trying to outline these movies I will have so many beats figured out so precisely in that sort of first half of the movie, and then there’s a stage in which I’m just sort of like waving my hands and saying, “And then we get to this last thing.” And it’s that hand-waving section that you’re like, there’s really no connective tissue that’s getting me from that point to that point. And if characters are having to make these big jump transitions that don’t really make sense — you find characters who are doing things because I need them to do that, not because it’s the natural thing for them to do.

**Aline:** That’s a really good point. And I think Craig has talked about this, too. When you pitch a movie, let’s say you pitch for 15 minutes, you probably spend nine minutes on the first 35 pages. And one of the other rookie mistakes I would make is you end up, the first part of your script is like a finely scrimshawed piece of bone that you have added all these details to. And then when you get to 50 it’s like, “Yeah, and then some stuff happens, and then some other stuff happens.” And that’s endemic to the storytelling most of the time is spent on the setup.

**Craig:** Well, this is why I outline actually. I don’t outline for the beginning of the movie, or the first half of the movie, because you’re right — I think we have an innate sense of the world we want to build and the person we want to put in it. And what the problem is. And that big wrecking ball that comes through the wall that changes everything.

I outline specifically to avoid the hand-waving section. Really, I will spend most of my outlining energy on page 60 to page 90 because I won’t start if I don’t know how the movie ends. I can’t start if I don’t know how the movie begins. But, that are right in there, that’s where you’re absolutely right, Aline. That is where all the gunk, the sub-textual character gunk starts to burble out. And the character as we understood them is breaking down dramatically and violently and then being put back together again by themselves.

It’s a scary area in every movie. And if you do it well it’s the best part of every movie. So, that’s why I outline.

Now, that said, of course — you know, we write a screenplay and then somebody has to go make it a movie. Well, that experience of turning a screenplay into a movie is a bit like the experience of turning an outline into a screenplay. And somewhere along the way the experience of doing it starts to change how you feel about it and what you understand about it. You have to remain flexible. And you can’t afford to let your outline become your boss.

The fact that other people don’t see these pitfalls and can’t warn you about them is not shocking is it? I mean, if you didn’t see it, what were the odds they were going to see it?

**Aline:** So, let me ask you a question — oh, sorry.

**John:** What Aline describes though in that process of pitching things, that is the natural way you pitch things. And you pitch very much like the setups of everything, and then you sort of rush through the other things. And that’s just the natural way you pitch things. So, that’s what you’ve been doing as you’ve been describing these projects to people is that stuff. And it’s natural to sort of rush over to the other things. But the mistake we often make for ourselves is not realizing like, “Oh, you know, I did rush over all those things. I really haven’t figured out what some of those moments are.”

And so while there’s technically an outline for what those beats are that happen here, they’re not nearly as fleshed out and nearly as focused as the rest of it is.

Also, I think what you said at the start that’s really key is that sometimes the only way to know how to write something is to write something is to write it. And it’s like you’re trying to write the screenplay before you’ve written it, and it can only be a rough approximation of the journey you’re going to take. It’s like you have this map that’s showing you how to get from point A to point B, but you really don’t know where all the mountains and all the hills are and where the rivers are that you’re going to have to get yourself around.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, you have to allow yourself the luxury of saying, “This is not what I thought it was. Given where I am at, what is the most interesting way to get to the places that I need to get to next?”

**Craig:** Yeah. And, you know, to me an outline is really good for a couple of things. It helps you organize your work, which matters, because you’re not going to get done otherwise. And the other thing that it does is keep you from being absurdly self-indulgent. We all have a tendency to be absurdly self-indulgent. We’ll just wander on. And when people say, “Well, I don’t really write my scripts. My characters write them for me.” Shut up! You write them. Don’t blame it on your characters when you’ve just spent 40 pages blithering.

That’s you blithering. And outlines help keep us —

**Aline:** Well, one thing, sorry.

**Craig:** Go ahead.

**Aline:** You guys don’t interrupt each other. I’ve noticed that.

**John:** We’ve gotten much better about being able to do that not interrupting thing. But, no, go.

**Aline:** Now you have two-thirds Jew, so.

**Craig:** So much Jew. We’re at peak Jew.

**Aline:** One thing that I’ve learned to do to avoid the scrimshaw, the first act scrimshaw, and I know Craig doesn’t do this, but after I have the outline I will write the whole script very quickly. And I will write like an 85, 90-page draft as quickly as I humanly can, to test. And what I’ll do is hop into scenes and I’ll see how I feel hopping into those scenes. And that’s the best way for me to test the outline is to hop into scenes and think, “Oh, there’s nothing happening here. No one is speaking in here. Oh, I’ve walked into a room and everyone is silent.”

So, I go really fast and I test the whole outline by building a very kind of provisional popsicle version of the script. And then I go back and I add my sheet rock and my paint and my ottomans. I do it that way. I build it in layers. And I know some people don’t do that. Some people build it good all the way through. But for me, to test the outline, I have to get all the way through the story.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve always wanted to do what James Cameron would do with the scriptments, which essentially is a very long outline that’s basically all the scenes but without the dialogue. I’ve always wanted to be able to be the person who did that. But the dialogue is by far the most fun thing to write, so therefore I always want to write that. I feel like I don’t really know the characters until I hear them talking to each other.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**Aline:** I don’t know if the story is going to work until I know if the characters will talk. And that’s what I think, for me, is the difference between an outline and a screenplay. You know, you think this is going to be a good scene, and then you get into the scene and you realize, like this has happened to me where I had an outline where there were two characters who were in opposition to each other for a good amount of the story. And that stuff was easy to write because they had a lot of conflict and countervailing points of view. And then there got to a point where I had them align their interest, and man, every time that happened that was like stabbing the inflatable.

I would just get to those scenes where they were supposed to both be pursuing something, and you know, the air, you just audibly hear the air go out of the movie because these characters didn’t have any interpersonal conflict. So, I ended up reconfiguring the outlines so that their interest continued to be at odds until 105 or something, so that I would maintain that conflict. But in the outline phase it seemed like, “Why not? They team up, they become a team here. That makes sense.” And I really didn’t know until I got into those scenes and they could not speak to each other. They had nothing to say. They were saying like, “This looks good. Yeah. This looks good.”

**Craig:** That sounds like great work.

**Aline:** Great scene.

**John:** There’s nothing less dramatic than agreement.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Just like, “Sure. That’s great.” They might as well be sitting back, reading the paper together.

**Aline:** “We should get the bad guy.”

**Craig:** “We should. Let’s do it.”

**Aline:** “Good. Let’s do it.” [laughs]

**Craig:** “Let’s do it. You want lunch?” Yeah, I want lunch” “Let’s have lunch first and then we’ll do…”

By the way, I do these —

**Aline:** “Pizza?”

**Craig:** I am the scriptment guy. I write scriptments. Because I love writing dialogue, so again, I feel like if I know exactly what the circumstance is, and I feel comfortable in it, then I get to have the fun of writing dialogue towards something that I think is correct. You know —

**Aline:** That’s the other great thing when you’re writing comedy, about comedy, is the test of your outline is whether people start saying funny things. If they’re not saying funny things, something is wrong with your scene.

**Craig:** Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong!

**Aline:** Mm-hmm!

**Craig:** Flying robots. I’ve been counting all of your metaphors. We’ve got furniture, flying robots, hydraulics.

**John:** Scrimshaw.

**Craig:** Scrimshaw.

**Aline:** That’s a big one.

**Craig:** Bone. Layers of construction.

**Aline:** Inflatable.

**Craig:** Inflatable. But my favorite is flying robot.

**John:** So, this project I’m working on right now, because I’m working on a spec, and Aline, you just finished a spec. I’m actually at the stage where I’ve written some scenes and I’ve paused for a second because I’ve realized like, oh no, there’s going to be trouble ahead.

Where I fundamentally — I have some mission creep happening, where the story was getting bigger than it should sort of — than it wants to get. When Richard Kelly was on the show last week, he talked about that with his movies, Donnie Darko, and you could definitely see mission creep happening in those things.

I’m trying to make something lean and it just keeps getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. So, I’m trying to sort of whittle back at the outline stage right now.

So, for the thing that you wrote for a spec, did you pitch to a bunch of people first and describe it, or was this an entirely internally-generated process? Did you outline on paper first?

**Aline:** Well, what I’ve done is I’ve written something that I want to direct. And it’s pretty specific to me. And so it was something that I mulled for a really long time. And there was a lot of freedom in not, you know, because I don’t often write just for myself. So, there was a lot of freedom in not having to be accountable to — making the process whatever I wanted the process to be.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** So, I probably outlined it a little bit more loosely. But I did find a producer to work with after I had sort of an idea of what it was and what the basic structure was. Because I worked with a director once who said, we were having a meeting and he said, “You know, I think with my mouth open,” meaning he knows what he thinks as he’s saying it. And I’m very much like that. And so for me I needed and I like to have collaborators that I can talk to.

So, I found a producer who would work with me on spec, because I need to do that process of telling a story. But that said, it was really great to be able to just make adjustments, attack, and move however I wanted to without feeling like I was accountable to — as accountable to an outline. It’s good.

**John:** Let’s segue to our next topic, which you brought up also, which is why it’s important to be friends with writers. Because my recollection, and my early days in Hollywood, I was friends with a bunch of people who were starting out in Hollywood but they weren’t necessarily writers. I went through a graduate film program, so everyone was trying to become a producer, a film executive. Some people became writers, but I didn’t necessarily seek out other writers. What is your history going —

**Aline:** Well, I feel really strongly about that. I mean, and I think that people sometimes misunderstand what the idea is. The idea is not to be friends with writers who are going to network for you, or who are cool, or who are writing, or who are employed. That’s not really the critical thing. The critical thing is to have friends who do what you do and are engaged in the same kind of work that you are.

And I have, you know, a couple of my writer friends are from the very, very, very beginning of our career before we had any success or barely any work, and we don’t have work places in the way that, you know, my husband works at a mutual fund. He has a workplace. He has coworkers. We just, we don’t have that. Even when we do for a specific project, they’re just for that specific project.

My ongoing workplace, my Cheers, my group of people that I check in with are my other writer friends that I talk to on the phone periodically, or have lunch with. And we’re kind of —

**John:** Aline, you talk on the phone?

**Aline:** I talk on the phone.

**Craig:** Who talks on the phone?

**Aline:** I do.

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** And so we can check in on what we’re doing and say, “Hey, I was working on that. What do you think of this? Is this a good idea? What do you think of this person?” That network is invaluable. And you will grow with these people.

So, it’s less important to seek out people who you think are going to connect you with a job and more important to seek out people whose process you find productive. And Gatins refers to it as lab partners, you know, finding a lab partner who does their homework and has a neat notebook is important. And then —

**John:** I don’t think Gatins has a neat notebook. I think Gatins’ notebook is one of those folders that he’s like sort of half colored in as he fell asleep.

**Aline:** But it’s so —

**Craig:** Gatins’ notebook is like — it’s like a folder that you open up and it looks like it’s full of stuff, and you open it up and there’s nothing in there.

**Aline:** But it’s brilliant. It’s so brilliant.

**Craig:** It’s all in his head.

**Aline:** And it’s like a workbook where he didn’t do any of the math, but around the margins are those amazing drawings and thoughts. He’s a good example. He’s a great lab partner.

And also something another friend of mine said, which is easier said than done, we were talking about having your friends read stuff. And I said, “Who do you go to for that?” And he said, “It’s very simple. Send it to someone who roots for you.”

**Craig:** Perfect. He’s exactly right.

**Aline:** And I don’t know. It was like something I hadn’t really thought of in quite that way, because I think we all have friends that we love, but maybe we have other friends who we think root a little harder.

**Craig:** You mean to say, “Maybe some of them are rooting against us.” That’s what you mean to say. Which I think is real, by the way.

Listen, it’s human. It bums me out, but I sometimes sense it. Same thing about the positive moviegoing, you know.

**Aline:** I have the opposite of that which is I really like everyone around me to be really successful because I think it makes me look better.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**Aline:** And it gives me more names to drop. But, sometimes it’s even on a specific project. Sometimes you can have a friend who is really supportive but they don’t like an idea that you have. Like I remember when I was — there was a friend that I had that I pitched him a few things I was working on, and one of them he just thought was a terrible idea. And so that’s not somebody who I would ever go to and say, “Do you want to read this?”

So, it’s just find somebody who really wants to see you do well, or find someone who really roots for that specific project, because that’s positive moviegoing. You want to share your work and share your career with people who are going in with the best possible intentions.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** And we generate enough of our own schadenfreude towards ourselves in this process. You don’t really need it from other people. But finding people who can be your — and I have lots of friends who are producers, and executives, and agents, but your writer friends — and actors too — but your writer friends understand your struggles and your travails and they can really be there for you. And, you know, I think if you look around you can find people to kind of link arms with. And you will all come up together.

**John:** My friend, Andrew Lippa, who did the music for Big Fish, he has this group of composers, lyricist and composers, and they get together once a month and they have to show the work that they’ve been working on. So, as a group they have to perform the thing and like they talk about it, which just seems amazing. And there are obviously screenwriter groups that can do the same kind of thing, but it’s different to show your written pages versus actually performing something. And there’s a trust element that kicks in.

You were talking about you might have directors, or producers, or other people who can read your stuff, agents, but all of them have some vested interest in maybe how they’re going to associate with this project. The great thing about another writer is the writer is just the writer. Like they’re not trying to take your project. They’re not trying to do anything.

While there’s still sometimes that, it’s not even schadenfreude, but that realization of there’s only so many musical chairs and that sometimes you’re competing for the same spots, in general we can be very supportive of each other because we’re not trying to do the same thing. We’re all working on our own projects.

**Aline:** Yeah, and it’s interesting, because I know you guys have talked about this too, but the three of us all met at different phases in our careers and —

**John:** We should talk about how you and I met, because that’s a strange version of how you and I met. So, let me try my recollection of it, because I’m really kind of curious to hear your version of it.

So, Aline and I met on the phone because I was coming in to rewrite a project that she had written as a spec, correct?

**Aline:** No, I wrote it on assignment for New Line. And then John rewrote it and he cold called me and said, “I want to make sure it’s okay with you that I’m rewriting this.” And I said, sure. And then John did a draft of it, never to be heard from again that thing.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** John, you killed her movie.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** I probably killed her movie. So, the backstory —

**Aline:** But that was definitely, John was like, you know, they were bringing in the big guns and I got pushed down the stairs. And John was the first person — I think might have been the first person ever to call me and do the gracious thing.

And I remember, I was outside on my deck and I remember he said, “Is it okay with you if I do this?”

**John:** And I remember you also saying like, “Well, somebody is going to do it, and I’d rather you do it than somebody else,” which is honestly the reality of most of the situations. The answer is not going to that they’re going to go back to you, the original writer.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** If they’re looking for another writer, they’re going to hire another writer, so you want the writer who actually has the ability to make the movie be good and not ruin the movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So, those are the situations you want to have. That was a strange project because the reason why I was able to get a hold of you is because we both had John Gatins as a friend. And so I called Gatins to get your number and said like, “Is it going to be cool if I call?”

**Aline:** Oh, that’s nice.

**John:** And so it was this movie that you wrote that I really liked. It was just a really good idea. And suddenly Dustin Hoffman was attached, and so I went to this lunch — this crazy lunch — with Dustin Hoffman. And suddenly like, well, this is a movie, and then it just…disappeared.

**Aline:** Yeah, it got complicated in that way. Those things do. But, we — you meet at different. Wait, so we already knew each other, and I knew Craig already when the strike happened. But the strike was really the thing where writers really connected in a different way. And I think it was sort of the convergence of the strike plus the internet. And all of a sudden people really got to know each other in a way that I had not experienced previously in my career where, you know, people really know each other now in a different way than they ever had before.

And I really think it’s for the good. And I always find it funny when you’re talking to an agent, or an executive, or a producer and you say, “Oh yeah, I talked to so-and-so about that project. Oh, yeah, she did a draft on that. So-and-so is directing it.” And they’re like, “How do you know that?” And it’s because, I think, we know each other more now than we did.

**Craig:** We know more than they know sometimes. We know so much more than they think we know. We talk to each other… — You know, I have a lot of writer friends. I like writers and it’s been a wonderful thing for me for the last, I don’t know, six or seven years to get this coterie of writers around me that I admire and that I trust and that I can learn from.

And we share and talk about everything. And I think we do so in a way that is informed by our experience of being safe with each other. That over time we haven’t screwed each other over. That the narrative that we just kind of feed off of each other and compete with each other and undercut each other is essentially bullshit. And that, in fact, we are supportive of each other because the pain that we feel is the most salient thing about the job we do.

So, when we see somebody else feeling it, naturally we just want to help them. I have found — there have been a couple people here and there, but for the most part I have found screenwriters to be incredibly generous and incredibly empathetic, and sweet and encouraging, to me at least.

**Aline:** I’ll tell you a good story. I had, on this spec that I was working on, I wanted to give it to somebody who didn’t know me and didn’t know the situation and didn’t know anything about it that I could give to, who I really respected. So, I gave it to a writer who I really, really respect but don’t know super well. I mean, I maybe hung out with him a dozen, no, half a dozen times. And I sent him the script and then I didn’t hear from him for awhile which is always the thing where you’re like, “Oh god, he hates it and he can’t figure out how to tell me.”

And then I get an email from him that says, “Look, my dad was sick, he was in the hospital. And so I’m just about to read the script.” And I was like, oh no. And then a couple days go by and I get a set of notes, seven pages of notes —

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** That are the most amazing thoughtful, heartfelt —

**Craig:** You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

**Aline:** [laughs] Well thought out. Just, you know, including like, “Page 26, you could be doing this. Page 43, you could be doing this.” And written in this way that was like, you know, sometimes you get notes from people and it’s like they’re fighting what the movie is. And this was just a writer understanding like, “Oh, this is what she’s trying to do. You are trying to do this. Let me help you. You’re trying to get to such and such a place in five hours. Let me give you the best directions on how to get there.”

And I was so moved when I got that notes document that I was in my office that I like — tears sprang to my eyes. I know how hard it is as a writer to turn your attention from your own imagination and delve into another person’s script. And that he would do seven pages of these incredible notes really blew me away. And it’s professional camaraderie. And, man, the more of that you can find the better. And it doesn’t have to be somebody famous or — it can be, you now, if you’re 23 years old, it can be somebody else that you know who wants to do this, who will read your stuff and put their heart into it.

**John:** Well, it’s also back to the issue of as writers we want movies to be better. And so when I’m advising on projects at Sundance or other places, everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s a tremendous amount of your time that you’re spending.” It’s like, yes, but it’s a chance to make kind of movies better. It’s a way to sort of see what a person is attempting to try to do and help them get to that place that they’re trying to get to.

And so seven pages of notes is above and beyond the call. That’s terrific. But really only a writer could do that. Because only a writer could understand what you were trying to do and provide specific ways that you could sort of get to that place.

**Craig:** You know, I would also say that only a writer can convince you that you’re any good.

**Aline:** Right. That’s interesting.

**Craig:** I had a very nice experience. You know, I started writing a novel a couple of years ago. And, honestly, I wrote two chapters and then stopped, mostly just out of fear that it wasn’t going to be any good and that I wasn’t any good. And I’m no good. And, blah, blah, bah, rotten tomatoes.

**John:** Dennis Palumbo?

**Craig:** No, it’s not Dennis Palumbo. It’s actually, I gave it to Kelly Marcel because she asked to see it. And she’s a really good writer. And she loved it. And, you know, I have to believe that. I can’t — it’s not the same thing…

When we give screenplays, or we give our work to people that are employing us, they’re just as overly optimistic as we are. Everybody is rooting, rooting, rooting. But you always wonder.

Or you give it to somebody, you know, some producer, or agents, or coverage. Well, who’s doing coverage? I don’t know who they are. But if a writer reads something of yours and says, “This is good,” then you need to believe it. And we can’t get that from anybody else.

**John:** Yeah. You want that response of, “I’m so happy for you and also a little bit jealous.” That’s the best feeling you can get as a writer is when another writer says, “This is great and I wish I had written it.”

**Craig:** You know what’s so funny? That’s exactly what she said?

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** She said, I actually think she used the words, “I’m a bit jealous.” And then, see, but now I have this other task master that’s making me write this book, which is terrific, you know, terrific, because we also need that. We need somebody, we need a lab partner.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We need a lab partner.

**John:** And as we wrap up this segment on the importance of writers being friends, we also need to credit Aline because during the strike, I agree that the 2008 strike was a big game-changer in terms of especially feature writers knowing who each other are. You organized these events that would happen during the strike, or like these drink events where we would all get together and sort of mingle. And it was my first chance of actually getting to know faces with names of some of these people.

During the strike you were assigned to different studios where you were supposed to be doing picketing. And because I am the palest person on earth, I would picket at Paramount Studios from 5:30am till 8:30am. So, it would be dark and I wouldn’t get sunburned. And I loved that group of people I was hanging out with. But everyone else was at different studios.

And so the events that you organized, and there were three or four of them, were terrifically helpful because just suddenly all these names that I’d seen in the trades are suddenly in front of you and you’re talking about and a lot of what we were talking about was the strike, but you’re also talking about the work, and you’re talking about how to make things better.

**Aline:** But it came at a critical point. People were really, you know, if you try to do those mixers sometimes it’s hard to get people to go. But people were really wanting to be with other writers then and talk about what’s going on, and what are we going to do, and nobody was working.

And so that really, and you were able to organize them over the internet really quickly, send out an e-vite to hundreds of people. And so there were a lot of people who I knew their names but had never met them. And we all kind of really got to know each other during that experience. And it was a really tough… — And people had really varying opinions was the other thing. And a thing that always amazed me was people were really all over the map about what they believed about this, but by and large people were able to, the camaraderie of being screenwriters kind of overcame people’s different point of views.

**John:** I would say there were different point of views on the strike and sort of what we should be doing on the strike and how long it should go and what we should be fighting for. But a common point of focus in terms of like what our profession is, and sort of what our job is and what our craft is, and so by focusing on the feature writers who are usually completely in isolation, bring thing together, it was a way for us to identify ourselves as a group. Because usually we’re not a group the way that TV writers are often in rooms together and sort of know each other.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** It was a way for us to actually know who these people were.

**Craig:** We also, there’s a certain kind of way that screenwriters interact with each other that is unique. And I love it. And it is a very talky, chatty, low tech, low fancy environment, almost always. We don’t do it the way other people do it. There are few screenwriters I know that sort of love to glam it up and throw parties at nightclubs and stuff like that, but for the most part it seems to me we’re at our happiest when we’re talking somewhere where we can hear each other. And that’s fun.

It’s a nice, real way to be in Los Angeles, a town where just around the corner there’s some place that has convinced you is important and you have to go inside. And if you can’t get inside, and who do you know inside, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and there we are with our jeans and our sweaters and our cigars and our wine and we just — we’re able to be real with each other.

**Aline:** And I will tackle people. I mean, it’s funny, because I won’t do this with any other, you know, I won’t do this with actors, or directors really, but if I see a writer whose work I admire, I mean, I did a panel with Peter Morgan in 2006 and I was so excited he was going to be there. And the video of me is like, you know, a running back approaching, of me literally taking guys and grabbing them by the nape of the neck and chucking them out of the way to get to Pete. I was so excited to meet him.

And I got to him and I was like, “Oh my god, I just came to this thing so I could meet you.” And that moment someone said, “Let me take your picture.” And there’s a picture like 30 seconds after Pete and I meet, and I look like I’m standing next to Santa Claus. I’m so excited to be meeting Peter.

**Craig:** Well that’s, I mean, John, who was my Peter Morgan in Austin?

**John:** Oh, it was Breaking Bad, it was Vince Gilligan.

**Aline:** Vince.

**Craig:** Vince Gilligan. I mean —

**Aline:** That thing, when you meet somebody whose work you so admire.

**Craig:** It’s everything. It’s everything.

**Aline:** It’s so amazing. And I will tackle people. And Kelly Marcel just moved to town —

**Craig:** Did you tackle Kelly Marcel?

**Aline:** I tackled her at the Mr. Banks thing. And she’s new to town so she doesn’t know a lot of writers. And I was like, oh, there’s people for you to meet.

**John:** There’s a mixer in your future.

**Aline:** Right. Yeah. And she went to Austin which is a really good way and, you know, one thing I would say is go to an event like Austin. If you’re somebody who is starting out, and again, we just did not have stuff like this when we were starting out and I would have been there tackling people. But, you know, go to these events where there is going to be other aspiring people and you will find people that you connect to, that you can pitch your movies to, that you can talk about what they’re working on.

You don’t have to be connecting to the fancy people. You can be connecting to people who are exactly in the same stage that you’re in.

**John:** Yes. Everyone grows up together. So there’s lateral things where you’re reading their script, and if you love their script, keep reading their scripts, and keep helping them out, and they will reciprocate. And you will find your people, but you have to sort of look for your people because it’s not you’re a professional football player where you’re just going to be around professional football players.

**Aline:** That’s right.

**John:** You are always going to be isolation unless you choose to make yourself not in isolation.

**Craig:** And don’t be judgy. Don’t be judgy. Don’t think that your friends have to be the fanciest writers in the world, or the most successful writers in the world. Don’t let that get in the way. You — when you fall in love with another writer, you’re falling in love with a kindred spirit and a fellow mind who understands you, who can help you and you can help you and you can help them.

There is no better feeling — the only better feeling than being helped is helping. How is that for Christmas?

**John:** So, our last thing I want to talk about today is an article that Nima had sent me, but I actually people linking to it, too.

**Craig:** Here comes the downer!

**John:** It’s a downer, but there’s a bright side at the end of it, too, kind of, or a brighter side.

**Craig:** Little bit.

**John:** Little bit. So, this is a site called priceonomics. It’s about David Raether who is a WGA writer who was a writer on Roseanne. And so he started Roseanne when he was already in his 40s or 50s, so he’d moved from the coast and got a job writing on Roseanne. And wrote on Roseanne for several years and was doing pretty well. He moved up through the ranks of Roseanne.

During the time he was writing for Roseanne he had a wife and eight kids. And eight kids is a lot of kids.

**Aline:** Mm.

**John:** And at a certain point his marriage was starting to fall apart, so after Roseanne he took a two-year hiatus and sort of got his marriage back together and got his family situations settled. Moved to a more affordable school district so the kids could stay in that. And then started to go back to writing and to go back to try to find a television job and had a very difficult time finding a television job, which is a common thing you hear all the time which is that gap that happens between, you know, when you’re a writer in your 50s it’s harder and harder to be employed, especially if you weren’t the top showrunner person. It gets harder and harder for that middleclass person.

So, David Raether had, you know, a $500,000 nest egg, which sounds like a lot of money, but that very quickly disappeared. He ended up losing his home. In the article he talks about sort of the process by which the sheriffs come and sort of evict you from your home. And his marriage fell apart. His kids ended up moving in with other families. He ended up homeless in a van. And sort of like what it is to hit the bottom there.

And not bottom that we’re used to. We’re used to like drugs and alcohol, or some other sort of internal crazy that pushed you to the bottom. This was just like the floor just fell out from underneath him. And so the article continues on with sort of how he started working again and sort of getting jobs off Craigslist and ghostwriting things for people who couldn’t write stuff. And eventually sort of building his way up so he’s in a more stable place right now.

But it’s really, I think, a useful thing for us to talk about, especially going into the spirit of Thanksgiving, which is to be not only thankful for the things we have in front of us, but also to be mindful that when things get bad it’s maybe not quite as bad as it seems. That even this guy will say that as bad as things got, once you recognize that you can be homeless and you’ll be okay out of it, he’s like much less fearful about sort of the things that can happen.

So, a couple things I think we can talk about with this article is, first off, that gap year, what he describes as the gap years, that time when you’re no longer sort of employable, but your pension hasn’t kicked in. Because this is a guy who has a WGA pension. So, when he turns 65 he’s got that pension and he’ll be fine. But the problem is he’s not 65 yet.

**Aline:** Can’t you take it earlier?

**Craig:** Yeah, a little bit earlier, but at some point they start hitting you with a lot of penalties and things.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** I think you essentially lose it if you start drawing down too early.

**Craig:** There’s a specific minimum age you need to hit, but it’s a really bad idea to dip into it.

**Aline:** Oh, I see. Got it.

**John:** In the beginning of your career, in the middle of your career, as you start to recognize that you’re sort of at the tail end of your career, what are sort of the financial decisions you make? Because I see a lot of people who sell a spec and think like, “I have a million dollars. I’m a millionaire. I’m going to start living like a millionaire.” And don’t seem to recognize, no, you’re not a millionaire. There’s no such thing as a millionaire, really, and you need to buy a more sensible car.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, let me, [laughs], let me do what I do. Just for a moment. I promise I won’t be too mean. There’s a lesson that I drew from this that I have internalized anyway. Which is, you ain’t your job. You’re you. Your job doesn’t make you qualified. Your job doesn’t make you deserving or entitled of anything.

I want to point out something interesting about this guy, and I don’t mean this in the spirit of kicking somebody when they’re down. I’m very happy that he’s pulled himself out of this circumstance. But, he was not in the entertainment business. He was not a television writer. He was not a screenwriter. He had paid none of the dues that people pay for many years in this town to earn those jobs.

He was a casual friend of Tom Arnold’s. And he decided to write a spec script for Roseanne, once it was a hit, and send it to Tom Arnold. And Tom Arnold, who is apparently a very gracious man and likes his friends, said, “Awesome. I’m getting you a job and you’re going to work here.” And when I read that all I could think was, oh, how the people in the room at Roseanne must have felt about that. Like who is this? Are you kidding me?

My point is not to say that he doesn’t deserve to be in that room. He may very well have been the best writer in that room. My point is that just because you have a job as a writer doesn’t mean that you have now broken through some magical thing where you’re a professional writer for life. You’re not. You’re a professional writer right now. And it can go away for me, for you, for any of us, for any number of reasons.

So, you have to protect and save against that. You certainly can’t be so proud and so delusional to think that you can disappear from the one single job you’ve had as a writer, you can disappear for two years and then come back and everybody would just want to give you a job. Even if the market were great, nobody other than Tom Arnold has ever hired you to write before. It just seems so delusional to me.

Please, important lesson here. When you get your big break, it’s not a break. There’s no breaks. You’re going to have to re-break, and re-break, and re-break. It never ends. It never ends.

The other thing is I feel like the story is missing information. I really do.

**John:** It’s apparently a shortened version of like the book. So there’s actually a much more elaborate book that sort of talks through everything that happened. So, what information did you want to know, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, I feel like when you are a married person with a wife and eight kids and a job, and then your life is dismantled to the extent that you are separated from your wife, separated from your children, some of whom go to live in another country and you end up in a minivan, that there are additional circumstance beyond, “Huh, can’t find a gig.”

Whether it is substance abuse, or mental health issues, it seems to me like we’re missing some information here, because things just seemed to happen in this story and I’m not quite sure why. And there are also a lot of things that are available for people that he doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of. So, I don’t know. I was just a little suspicious about the whole thing. And a little concerned when I read it. there was a whiff of flimflam about it.

I may just be a terrible person.

**Aline:** “A whiff of flimflam.”

**John:** Oh, it’s a very good whiff, though. Well, let’s talk about sort of the, I don’t know, the safety net of it all, because one of the challenges of being a screenwriter is that your income is inherently unstable. And so you cannot predict how much money you’re going to earn the next year, which is a challenging thing.

Now, Aline, your husband has a normal job. And so is that comforting in any way, where like there’s a steady income regardless?

**Aline:** Yeah, well he doesn’t just have a normal job. He works for a mutual fund, so he’s very conservative. So, we plan very conservatively. But, you know, there are two things that when I can see them in a writer I get a little uncomfortable. One is writers who really love to write. When you run into people who just love to write, and just I love it, I look forward to it, it’s so enjoyable. That always sends up red flags for me.

My people are the ones who are like, “Ugh, it was hard.” You know, of course you have moments where it’s wonderful, but it’s work. It’s really hard work. And I think people who don’t complain about writing concern me. And then also people who just if you have that attitude of like, “I got one gig. I’m set,” it’s not that, man. It’s getting — everybody has to go out and get a job —

**Craig:** Look at the Jews fighting the Christmas spirit. We just can’t deal with it.

**Aline:** You’ve got to go get a job. A couple times a year, you’ve got to go back out there. No one is set. So, sometimes you do meet people who get some kind of foot hold, some kind of toe hold, and they seem to feel like they’ve made it through some sort of pearly gates, and it’s just not like that. It’s a hustle.

And I really look at it in a lot of ways as being an entrepreneur. And when you’re an entrepreneur, you know you’re going to have good times and not so good times. And you better take — here’s another metaphor for your — you better take your acorns and put them in your tree trunk.

**Craig:** And your flying robot.

**Aline:** And your flying robot. You better take that flying robot and get it some acorns, because this —

**Craig:** When did you become Dan Rather? I don’t understand what happened?

**Aline:** It’s a very cyclical business. And I just think you’ve got to keep your head down and do your work, but you’re not owed anything. There’s so many people who want to do this. So, I say all of this having not read the article because I did not do my homework.

**John:** When I first got paid, my first scale assignment, which was for How to Eat Fried Worms, and then the second thing was A Wrinkle in Time, I would have a spreadsheet. And on that spreadsheet I would track how much money I had and then I would month by month figure out this is what my rent costs. This is what I pay for these different things. And I would sort of watch the money trickle down. So, I could plan ahead, I could see ahead eight months to see like how much money I would actually have.

And that’s a very sobering exercise that’s so useful, because I could see like I cannot be buying anything beyond the bare essentials I need to live, because otherwise I could just run out of money.

**Aline:** I’m just picturing John in his 20s, which everybody else like lying around on dirty sofas, and John somewhere looking at his spreadsheet.

**Craig:** With like that little visor? [laughs]

**Aline:** [laughs] Yeah. And the armband.

**Craig:** With glasses. Right, the armband. And that adding machine that you have to go Ka-chunk to.

**Aline:** Sleeves rolled up. His friends are all like, “John will buy us the beer guys, seriously.”

**John:** I did not buy a bed the first two years I lived in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Two? I think my first bed was my fifth year.

**John:** Yeah, so that’s the thing. We’re basically saying don’t buy a bed. And don’t put your money underneath.

**Craig:** Don’t buy anything. Don’t buy anything!

**Aline:** My friend, Jeff, always had this thing which is your evolution as an adult is how far your bed gets off the floor.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s absolutely true. It’s true.

**Aline:** You basically start off sleeping on the floor. And then you get a futon, which is like five inches from the floor. And then you get a futon frame.

**John:** A frame. Nice. Classy.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**Aline:** Which is 11 inches off the ground. And then at some point you buy a bed frame, but it’s not upholstered or anything. It’s just one of those —

**Craig:** It’s that metal thing.

**Aline:** It’s that metal thing with the feet.

**Craig:** That they give away. Yeah.

**Aline:** And the next thing is you actually get a mattress into a bed. But you’ve got to be — really think like an entrepreneur. And just to go on a side topic for a second, I know you guys have talked with bewilderment many times about why there aren’t more women who do this. And it is easier to understand with directing because the raising of children is not very compatible with being on movie sets. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why there aren’t more female screenwriters and I think it’s this aspect of being an entrepreneur.

You are really running a small business which is you. And you have to put yourself out there every day and wear your sandwich board of like, “I’m interesting. You’re going to listen to me.” And I think that women are attracted to things where they can demonstrate excellence in a somewhat prescribed fashion. That’s why women are killing men in colleges and graduate schools.

But screenwriting is not like that. Screenwriting is a lot like you’re starting a business of making flavored pistachios.

**Craig:** Here we go. Ice cream. Here we go.

**Aline:** [laughs] Flavored pistachios, I don’t even know where that came from.

**Craig:** Flavored pistachios.

**John:** Well, I can see the movements. I thought you were going to go for some Etsy kind of thing. I thought you were going for some crochet —

**Aline:** Or like, yeah, macrame, squirrel hats. I went back to squirrels.

**Craig:** Macrame squirrel hats. And you girls with your flavored pistachios.

**Aline:** [laughs] But you got to go out there and like be an entrepreneur and save your money and really put yourself out there. And I think that it’s not a thing that we encourage women to do from childhood is to really say like, “I’m interesting…”

**John:** Well, I wonder if culturally we have a different expectation about men in their 20s, it’s expected that you are broke, and you are sleeping on couches, and that your life is a disaster, but you’re doing all that stuff and so eventually you’re going to break through. And we perceive a woman who is doing that as being a failure. Because that’s not a viable way for her to proceed.

We are more worried for that woman than we are worried for the equivalent man in the 20s who is living that sort of marginal lifestyle. Is that true?

**Aline:** I don’t know if it’s that. I really think it’s about when you’re coming up as a writer, like I remember I ran into a friend from high school and I had just started being a writer, and I had maybe sold one thing.

And we were at a party and somebody said to me, “What do you do?” And I said, “I’m a writer.” And he looked at me and he said, “Do you really tell people that?”

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

**Aline:** And I thought, you know, I really — it takes a leap of faith and a confidence in yourself to say, yeah, I’m a writer, I have something to say. Because essentially what you do as a writer is you say, “Listen to me. That’s the very first thing you do.”

**Craig:** Well, that’s, and I wonder if this is something in terms of the gender thing that women are trained by the world around them, if not by their parents, to not aggressively go after what they want because they themselves have an inherent desirability. That they are instructed to essentially play hard to get and to let things come to them.

**Aline:** I don’t know. Maybe in a — I really think it’s an adjustment on that which is to go out there and say what you have to do at the beginning of your career which is I have nothing to prove to you that what I have to say is valuable except this: what I believe, my voice, my sensibility, my humor, my intelligence. And it’s just as good as anyone else’s. Probably better than someone else’s. You’re going to listen to me. I’m going to sit in a rom. I’m going to command your attention for 20 minutes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** I’m going to go outside the box. There’s no format for this. You know, it’s a very unscripted kind of unplanned thing.

And what I want to say to women who are listening, and I was talking at a thing at UCSB and what I didn’t know, what I didn’t understand, when I started I thought you had to know people and you had to network, and you had to do all these things which I was really — how was I going to do that? My parents were first generation immigrants. They don’t know anybody. There was no uncle I could call. There was none of that.

**Craig:** “Aline. I don’t know anybody who can help you.”

**Aline:** Right So, I had to really take that. And what I didn’t know is you’ve got to have the goods, be good at what you do, serve that apprenticeship of becoming good at what you do, but you also have to say, “My point of view is valuable. Listen to me. I have something to say.”

And I do find young women, younger women, they just do it. They just, you know, I’m working with this young comedian. She makes these YouTube videos on her own. She pays for them on her own. She’s a great DP and she writes songs and she just does it.

And I think that it really is changing and that young women have now unmitigated access to media. They don’t have to audition for anyone. They can just write their blog, or do their video, or put it out there.

**Craig:** Sisters are doing it for themselves.

**Aline:** They really are. But what I would say is if you’re trying to get into Hollywood screenwriting, which is a more Mandarin, closed system, you have to bet on yourself. And part of betting on yourself is saving money.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** It is. Because every penny you save is money you can spend giving yourself time to write that great script. And that’s why I was really cheap when I started was just, you know, I know that if I get paid, if I can hold onto this check, if I can stretch this check as long as I can, that’s more time that I can spend working.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And if you get your first check and you blow it, you’re going to have to go and get that job which is going to be distracting and exhausting.

**John:** I hear you.

So, let us get to our final thing tonight which is our One Cool Things. So, who wants to start? Craig, do you want to start?

**Craig:** Yes. Because mine is incredibly short. Scroobius Pip. My One Cool Thing is Scroobius Pip. Look ’em up on YouTube. Awesome.

**Aline:** Okay. Wow.

**Craig:** Scroobius Pip.

**Aline:** Wow. Never heard of that.

**Craig:** Look ’em up.

**John:** Actually, I do know what this is because you had linked this on Twitter and Kelly Marcel had pointed it to you. And it is perhaps the angriest song I’ve ever seen.

**Craig:** Ever! It is this song called You Will See Me. It’s the angriest song I think that has ever been written.

**John:** So, what’s great about the song is the first half is so inspiring and it’s like, “Yeah, yeah!,” and then it just goes too far in that way that’s just wonderful.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Most despotic people were probably like really great and driven and you wanted them to succeed until they went just way too far.

**Aline:** Oh, that sounds great.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s sort of like, you know, I Will Survive turns into I Will Kill All of You. Everyone I see is going to die.

It’s remarkable. And it’s so smart. It’s so smart. It really does make You Oughta Know look like a love poem.

**Aline:** Oh, I can’t wait.

**John:** So, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. My One Cool Thing is a book by Keith Houston called Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. I’m reading it right now. It’s great.

And so it talks about a lot of things like, you know, the paragraph symbol, like where did that come from? And like the crosshairs, and daggers, and asterisks, and all those little strange things. Well, who made that stuff up? And there’s actually a history behind all of those things.

Sometimes the word is made up, but an example is like we think about the paragraph symbol as like, oh, it’s like a P, it’s like a special P. But it’s actually not a P at all. It just sort of ended up looking kind of like that. And actually it’s a crossed C with another line beside it. it’s all different than sort of how you would think.

**Aline:** Between this and the spreadsheet, you’re really not James —

**Craig:** Sexy!

**Aline:** Yeah, I was going to say.

**Craig:** Sexy!

**John:** As a type nerd, I was very excited that this book —

**Aline:** Or just a nerd.

**Craig:** Actually, I did think of you. And I’ll try and find the link to this, because it was such a you thing. I can’t believe I didn’t send it to you. I read an article. For a long time people have been struggling to try to denote irony in text.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And, I don’t know, maybe you saw this article where there was a guy hundreds of years ago who invented an irony mark.

**John:** And that is covered in this book.

**Craig:** Oh, it is?

**John:** It is.

**Craig:** And it just never caught on. Nobody wanted it.

**John:** Nobody wanted it. There’s also a whole chapter on the interrobang, which is the question mark and exclamation point at the same time.

**Craig:** Oh, interrobang.

**John:** Which ultimately is just not that necessary? You put the two things together, we got it.

**Aline:** In emails.

**John:** Emails. Yeah.

**Aline:** Have you guys talked about treadmill desks?

**John:** No, so let’s talk about treadmill desks.

**Aline:** Oh, okay, well that would definitely be One Cool Thing. So, I had a GeekDesk, which I think I got the nod from you on, the GeekDesk, which is you can adjust the height. So, I was writing standing up for awhile. And that was sort of okay, but you get into a lot of slouchy, uncomfortable positions when you’re standing.

And so my friends, Susannah Grant, took the leap. She had also bought the GeekDesk at my recommendation, so we both had those. And then she took the leap and got the TreadDesk which goes under the GeekDesk. And then you’re walking and you’re writing.

And it’s really embarrassing and stupid to look at, but what I really like about it is that I’m a kind of gregarious, like to be busy person, and so a writing for me, a long day of writing, I will eventually feel like — ooh, analogy — I will eventually feel like a raccoon with its foot in the trap.

**Craig:** What?!

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** We got to have somebody, please somebody out there illustrate every single one of these that she’s done in this episode.

**Aline:** Oh, that’s good. So, I would feel so trapped by the end of the day. And there’s something about being on the treadmill where you feel like even if I’m — on those days where you feel like I’m not crushing it, at least you feel like I went for a walk today. I did something reasonably healthy. So, I’ve enjoyed it.

And then I emailed Susannah the other day and said, “I’ve taken it to a terrible place,” which is I’ve taken it to dancing.

**John:** You’re dancing on your treadmill desk?

**Aline:** A little bit. So, I think this is going to lead to traction.

**John:** Yeah. It’s could be dangerous. So, your treadmill desk, essentially you’re using your normal standing desk, but then there’s a very flat treadmill that goes underneath it.

**Aline:** Right. They make this thing now. And it’s TreadDesk. You can find it if you Google TreadDesk, you can find it. Because that was the thing. I couldn’t find one that didn’t have the big —

**Craig:** But you can’t write like that?

**Aline:** I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You go very slowly.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a nightmare.

**Aline:** Yeah, you go slowly. And you know what it’s really particularly good for? It’s not great for fine point editing, proofing, where you want to really find, but what it’s really good for is after you’ve gone through a script and you’ve written a bunch of notes to yourself and you’ve written a lot of notes in the margin, that’s what it’s really great for, when you’re implementing stuff that you’ve written by hand. It’s really — like if I have something due, there was a week where I had something due on a Friday and I walked 18 miles that week.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** That’s a good week. I do the same thing with my iPad and the normal treadmill, iPad with the keyboard. And so I can do things like first passes on blog posts. Just doing triage on emails. It’s great for that kind of stuff.

Then when you actually sit down to really focus, then you’re really in writing mode, which is good, too. So, it’s a change in state.

**Craig:** I just like to walk around, outside, and enjoy God’s splendor.

**John:** Yeah, we don’t believe you at all, Craig Mazin. We know you far too well.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** You have more to say?

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Nah. [laughs]

**John:** All right. If you would like to send a question about vocabulary choices or analogies for Aline Brosh McKenna can make for us, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com.

**Craig:** That Aline.

**Aline:** I covered a lot of animals today.

**Craig:** Yeah, Aline. Like two squirrels fighting over a flavored pistachio raccoon.

**John:** What I really want is a Christmas Tree. I know you’re Jewish, but I really want a Christmas Tree with all these ornaments of the metaphors you used.

**Craig:** And Aline Tree. That would be cool.

**Aline:** I love it.

**John:** Aline, are you on Twitter?

**Aline:** No.

**John:** No. Aline is not on Twitter. But I’m on Twitter, @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Our podcast that you’re listening to right now is available on iTunes. And so if you’re listening to this on iTunes and have not left a comment, it’s great if you do that because that helps people find the show. So, you can subscribe there.

We enjoyed having Aline Brosh McKenna on our show today.

**Craig:** As always.

**John:** Aline, thank you so much for coming by.

**Aline:** You’re most welcome.

**John:** And we will get to see you again on December 19th.

**Aline:** Woot-woot! Oh yeah!

**Craig:** Woo!

**Aline:** And that’s when we’re going to have our drink and a half.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes! We will have a drink and a half. And, no, I’m not drinking that foul eggnog.

**Aline:** We’ll see.

**John:** So, I’m not really clear based on this new facility we went to, I’m not clear that there’s going to be a bar bar. But if nothing else we’ll have a flask.

**Aline:** I’ve got a purse.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** And I’ve got a purse.

**Aline:** All right, guys. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you guys. Happy Thanksgiving.

**Craig:** Happy Thanksgiving.

LINKS:

* [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), [second](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [third](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), and [third-and-a-half](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show) appearances on Scriptnotes
* The [Scriptnotes Holiday Show](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday/) is sold out, but follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) to be the first to know if more tickets are released
* [John Gatins](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309691/) on IMDb
* [What It’s Like to Fail](http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-fail/) on priceonomics
* [Scroobius Pip](http://scroobiuspip.co.uk/) and [You Will See Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OS4W3OCESY)
* [Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393064425/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Keith Houston
* [Irony punctuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation) on Wikipedia
* The [TreadDesk](http://asoft11239.accrisoft.com/treaddesk/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Kris Gotthelf