Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/god-doesnt-need-addresses).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 82, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, you’re sick. I’m so sorry to hear that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think it’s terrible. You know, there’s two kinds of viruses you get. There’s the kind that starts with sore throat, and that’s always the worst one. And this one, I just am kind of stuffy and headachy and I want to sleep — just sleep — that’s all I want I do.

**John:** I’m sorry, Craig.

We’re shooting — not shooting — we’re making Big Fish, the Broadway musical, and we are in Downtown Chicago. I am in the Oriental Theater lobby as we speak. I’m upstairs near the balcony in this one little door that I thought no one would go in or out of, except that people keep walking in and out. So, we’ll have guests in this podcast as they walk past me.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** So, this part of the process, I think you might be interested in and some listeners might be interested, is completely different than anything you actually sort of do in movie land. This is called “tech.” And what it is is we’ve already rehearsed everything in a room, a rehearsal hall, with sort of like minimal props and stuff. This is putting it on the real stage and you do all the lights and you do all the sound effects, and the projections. And it’s incredibly tedious. It’s sort of all of the tedium of production in a movie, plus post-production at the same time, because you’re doing small color changes in lights.

It’s exhausting. It’s great. It’s wonderful. But it’s great.

And one of the things I was always curious about is, like, how do you work in a theater? Because theaters are designed for looking at things, for like people sitting in wheelchairs to be in the audience, but how do you actually work in the space? And I felt like, do they take out all the seats, or what do they do?

The answer is they take these giant boards and tabletops essentially and put them over the rows of seats that are angled in a certain way so it creates a flat surface. And because that’s at such a high height, they take these padded boards that go on the arm rests of the chairs, and that’s what you sit on. So, you use the same space, but just completely differently.

**Craig:** What are they doing there in that space?

**John:** So, it looks like NASA control, because you have these giant monitors at the different stations for the people who are doing the automation, sort of like how things move in and out, how the sets move. You have another station which is designed for all the sound effects. You have another station which is for the music department. I’m at this table with the swings who are all the people who can fill in all the individual spots, so they have to watch every footstep and be able to step in on any place.

Another person is doing the projections. And then upstairs in this balcony where I’m doing this stuff they are handling lighting things. So, it’s very complicated. And we sort of have this policy of not taking photos inside the theater so we don’t spoil any set stuff, but it really genuinely does look like NASA. Like you could launch some sort of craft from here.

**Craig:** Well, you should take pictures. I mean, you’re privileged.

**John:** I am sort of privileged, but at the same time I don’t want to set a bad example. Because I’m a good boy, Craig; I think we’ve established I’m a good boy.

**Craig:** I know. I would break that rule. Do it!

**John:** You would break that rule. I’ve taken some photos, I just haven’t tweeted them.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** So, maybe I’ll send you a photo if you promise not to send it out.

**Craig:** I promise not to send it out.

**John:** But, anyway, Chicago has been great. And so thank you Chicago for being so nice and wonderful. It’s really cold, but the people are warm.

**Craig:** That’s a lovely sentiment that has never been expressed more than 14 million times.

**John:** That’s the hope.

Today on the podcast we are going to focus on some Three Page Challenges. We have always a big giant stack of them, a folder of them, I don’t know how Stuart actually organizes them, but he gets a bunch of them every day. And he reads them all and he sorts them into special little piles. And so we asked Stuart to give us some samples of what he’s read.

So, for listeners who are new to the podcast, we do this thing called Three Page Challenge which we invite or listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay or their teleplay, but it’s usually a screenplay. And we will read them and offer some feedback on them. And our listeners can also read these samples if they’d like to. So, if you go to johnaugust.com/podcast you can download these PDFs that these people have bravely and generously agreed to share so we may all learn by their example.

So, we have four of them today. And I just read them. I actually had to run to the theater partly because I left my microphone here, but partly because I don’t have a printer in my room so I had to be here in the theater. So, I’ve just now read them. They’re all very fresh in my head. Craig, do you have any preference on which one you want to start with?

**Craig:** No, no. Do you want me to just start? I can just start and I can do a summary of this first one?

**John:** Oh my god, I would so love a summary.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. I’ll do all the summaries if you want.

**John:** Oh my god. It’s like living in the future. I love it. Thank you, Craig, please do.

**Craig:** All right. So, this first Three Page Challenge is from Justin Adams. And it begins with a couple of quotes, one about the person who green lighted the Aztek, that’s a General Motors VP quoting about the Aztec and how he would fire anybody willing to admit that they green lit it. And then a quick review quote from a Car Talk listener that runs down — that just insults the Aztek.

And then we fade in on — we’re in Michigan. We’re in a two-bedroom ranch. Bit of a monotonous suburb. And we find it is morning time: Coffee makers and clothes and so forth. And we find Matt Carver, he’s 46, he’s praying, and then he kisses his wife and heads off to the GM truck and bus plant.

He’s sitting in his truck with his friend, Wayne. And the two of them are drinking beer. And they’re talking about Matt’s son, who seems like a smart kid, unlike Matt, I guess, is the joke. And then a whistle blows basically. They all get out in the rain. All these guys are getting out in the rain heading towards the factory and they start talking a little bit about sports. And then we’re done.

**John:** Yes. So, a lot of things to talk about here. First off, I would say let’s talk about starting with quotes. Because quotes are a nice way to sort of set up the idea of what your script is about, or sort of what the themes in your script is going to be about. So, most scripts shouldn’t have them, but I kind of like these quotes.

And it was interesting that it took longer for you to summarize what the quotes were, more than the actual quotes.

**Craig:** Yeah. I should have just read them.

**John:** Here are the quotes:

“We’d fire the guy who green lighted the Aztek if we could find anyone willing to admit it.” That’s Bob Lutz, Global VP for Product Development at General Motors

The second super is, “It looks the way Montezuma’s revenge feels,” a Car Talk Listener, 2005.

So, I like those as framing devices. I would generally not put them on the first page of the script. I would put them on a page between the cover page and the first page of your script, which is just kind of like a dedication kind of page; sort of sets the stage for things. But, for the Three Page Challenge I think it’s great and fine that they’re here because it helps set the stage.

It made me — it put me in a “Made for HBO” movie kind of world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s not a bad thing. Or, something that Steven Soderbergh would direct. That kind of thing is how I was feeling about it.

I liked some of the writing. I liked sort of — yes, it’s kind of cliché to start with, like, “now we start in the morning, and the light is dawn and we’re at a place and things get started.” But, some of the writing was nice. Things like, you know, “More jeans, more undershirts, more underwear, all stacked up in columns, separated by painter’s tape.” That was specific. I liked the use of short repetitive phrases to sort of establish regularity. Kind of a nice thing.

“A coffee maker pops and sputters on a faded linoleum countertop.” Yeah, I get that.

“A Stanley thermos and two quarters sit nearby. The shower stops. The coffee maker beeps.” So, these are small little images that give you a sense of what this daily life is. Now, is it a daily life that is probably kind of familiar? Sure, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing to start your story in a familiar way so you can have some sort of surprise later on.

Craig, what were you thinking as you started reading this?

**Craig:** You know, the painting of the pre-wake up section was fine. It’s the sort of thing people will scan past. I forced myself to read it. But, you know, there was a little over-description here. For instance, “We pan left and look down the endless asphalt street. It is lined with hundreds of identical brick ranches and an occasional functioning streetlight.”

I’m not sure how we’re going to know that some of the streetlights are not functioning and how far are we looking that we could see that many street lights and so forth? I mean, I guess I see what he means is that he meant some of them are on, some of them are off.

It’s fine. I don’t necessarily need to know that. Just because, you know, these pages are precious, these early pages. They’re just so precious. This time is required to do a lot.

So, you know, it’s fine to have a little bit of that, but then we also have two sections where we’re looking at folded clothes. I’m not sure we need two folded clothes sections. The shower, and the coffee, and then the shower stops, and the coffee maker beeps. There was just a lot there to read. It was all well written, but maybe thin it out just a touch to get to what we care about, what the reader is going to care about, which is our hero.

**John:** Back at page one: “EXT. TWO BEDROOM RANCH – 4:30AM.” So, that 4:30AM is written in sort of where we usually see day or night. And that’s fine. You can do that. It’s absolutely valid to stick a time in there if it’s useful.

I would like to make the argument for if you kept that as “DAY” or “DAWN” or “PRE-DAWN” and we can lose that whole “PAN LEFT and look down the endless asphalt street,” and if you actually used that as a super, if you said like, “4:30AM,” that puts us in a frame of mind like this is something that’s… — There’s a reason why you’re watching this day.

And hopefully there is a reason why. Even though the setup is so generic and we sort of are used to it, there’s a reason why we’re watching this day. And so the 4:30AM puts us in that frame of mind, like, okay, here we are right now in this moment.

Because of the layout of this page, because we had those two super quotes, it feels read to have an extra super. But if those two super quotes were on a previous page, then like that’s the first thing we’re sticking on the screen with specific information; that would have a little bit more weight.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah, also 4:30AM tells us that this person wakes up very, very early. If we don’t see an indication of time, for instance even if it’s just the clock in a kitchen, or on the coffee maker, we don’t know if it’s 8:30AM on a wintery day, or it’s just the low light. Knowing that this person wakes up that early is information we probably, I think, our author — Justin — wants us to know. So, that’s a good point.

There’s a moment where he stands up, and this is one of those things that I don’t personally like in scripts. “He stands up. His joints CRACK. He’s an attractive man who, at 46, still doesn’t know it.” That’s impossible for anyone to portray. It’s impossible to convey through film. The fact that he’s attractive but still doesn’t know it is not anything we could ever possibly know. So, why say it?

**John:** Yeah. I think people put that descriptor in because they sort of want an attractive actor to think that, “Oh, this is a part for me.” It feels appealing to an actor’s vanity and their sort of false humility. But, it’s actually not a very useful thing. So, if you’re going to use half of a sentence for something, pick a better half sentence.

**Craig:** And it’s not even that it’s taking up space. Things like that tend to annoy me because it’s cheating. You’re attempting to put a little spin there that will not be available to any actor or director. And I know also that part of it is like, “Well, everybody writes attractive person, or good looking, or beautiful because all actors are,” generally, unless you’re casting against that. And so you want to be clever, put a spin on it. But, you could just as easily say, “He’s an attractive man. He was once a gorgeous man but time and sun have taken their toll.” Just things that we can see.

You know, he kisses his wife on the back of her head. “‘I got you babe.’ Walks away. The camera lingers.” That’s okay. You know, that line may not even be necessary. It may be later, but that’s fine.

And then we get to this scene in the parking lot. Now, what did you think about this?

**John:** It went on for a long time about sort of minimal chitchat. And so here’s the thing is that you’re establishing the normalcy of the day or sort of what happens. If it’s just sort of walla walla, let’s get out of the walla walla a little bit faster, because it just felt like we were sitting for a long time and I just can’t believe that this is actually going to be important information because they’re talking about uniforms, and schmucks on the field. Well, they’re talking about sports. And so you might as well just put up — it’s like the lorem ipsum kind of dialogue of let’s talk about sports. It felt like filler to me.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, there’s two interesting things that come out of this. One is — well, first of all, I guess he’s picked up Wayne, his buddy, so he’s driven him there and that’s fine. There are two interesting things that come out of this. One is that these guys are drinking before working.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is a great little touch. I wasn’t quite sure how he opened his window and tossed the empty back into the cab, because I was trying to do the geography of that. He’s in a truck. And if you open your window, how do you toss it into the back? You’ve got to kind of like curveball it into the back. I didn’t quite understand. I mean, maybe there’s a window in between?

Anyway…

**John:** Yeah, I think he’s talking about the back window in the cab of the pickup truck. That slides.

**Craig:** Oh, it slides?

**John:** It can slide.

**Craig:** Okay, so he slides it and tosses it into the back. It’s just a little weird, but that’s fine.

**John:** The fact that it stopped you is a problem.

**Craig:** But it clanged against dozens of empties, so hopefully these guys haven’t drank dozens of beers this very morning and these are old ones. And I think that that was a good touch.

Frankly, I would save that for the last thing. A couple of guys drinking a beer a piece in the car before they go into work is interesting. Then I think you actually get a laugh and an “Oh!” if you end the scene with them tossing it into the back and realizing, “My god, there’s dozens of empties back there. This is what they do every morning.” That’s a great little button for the scene.

The other piece of information that comes out is that Matt’s son has gotten a job, and it’s a real job programming ECMs. I don’t know what an ECM is. But, he’s programming it and apparently that’s impressive, so the son is sort of doing better than the dad.

I don’t generally like things like this:

“My boy starts today.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah. Up at the country club.”

I would never say that to you. If you said to me, “Oh, my daughter is going to pre-school today,” I wouldn’t just immediately say her name. [laughs] And, also, it’s such a strange first line. “My boy starts today.” You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, that was a little clumsy. But, they have a little joke. I do agree that we could cut the entire discussion of what I assume is a discussion of the Detroit Lions. It’s three-quarters of a page that you just don’t need. I would end with the reveal of the beer cans and then a great image of all these guys emerging from their trucks in unison, in the rain, covering their heads with the Free Press, heading towards this factory that’s about to make the world’s ugliest car.

**John:** Yeah. I did like that image a lot. The newspapers over their heads, I think, will be a nice thing.

So, I would say I’m optimistic about the idea. I think that Justin can write. I think there are some things that can be tweaked and improved. Just make sure your spending your words the best you possibly can. But, I was excited to see it. Well done, Justin.

**Craig:** Yeah. Really. This is good. I think this could be a really cool script. And everything we’re saying here I think is the sort of — I see things like this in scripts I write and then change. And I see things like this in scripts that friends of mine write and change. These are not “Oh my god, was it this?” errors. They’re very common.

One little tiny formatting thing: Your page numbers are not in Courier. They’re in a different font, which it’s not the end of the world or anything, it’s just jarring because the numbers seem like they belong in a different script.

**John:** I would also say the numbers are also at the bottom of the page which is bizarre.

**Craig:** Yes. They’re supposed to be at the top right. That’s where they belong on screenplays. Bottom middle is for term papers.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right, so…

**John:** Next up, what do you have?

**Craig:** I’ve got The Answerer, written by Ben W. And that’s such a great — I love the title, The Answerer. And I also love that it was written by Ben W. Everything is mysterious about this title page.

**John:** It reminds me a little bit of The Rural Juror, which if you watch 30 Rock you would know is a recurring joke that Jenna Maroney, the Jane Krakowski character on 30 Rock, was in a John Grisham knock-off called The Rural Juror.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] And eventually she sings a song about it which is just the best.

**Craig:** The Rural Juror. That’s perfect. So, this is The Answerer, written by Ben W.

We begin, “INT. FUNTIME TOYS BUILDING – ELEVENTH FLOOR… efficiently-sized offices, all polished mahogany and frosted glass.” And we land on the Product Assessment Division. And this is a very kind of almost robotic sort of office. Lots of buzzing, and rattling, and dinging. And we land in Nicholas Snellard’s office. Snellard is 40 and balding. And he sits at his tidy desk.

And he looks at a toy assessment form, one of those exploded-view diagrams with technical detail, but he seems to understand it perfectly. And all of this is related to a little tin toy, a monkey in a clown suit on a unicycle. And Snellard has this sort of review quality checklist. And he checks everything, winds the toy up.

The toy remarkably — is amazing — it juggles. The monkey can kind of ride on a unicycle and juggle two little balls. And when it ends the monkey stops, but one of the little balls dingles away onto the floor.

— That’s my word, “Dingle.”

**John:** I was going to say, dingles is an impressive word.

**Craig:** Yes. It dingles away on the floor. He is considering whether or not to reject or allow this. When he gets a new thing that comes through his pneumatic tube, or his dumbwaiter, and it’s The Answerer, Executive Desktop Edition. And it’s basically just a Y, and you have a little ball that says yes or no. You write a question down, you put it in the ball, and you drop it in and it ends as yes or no.

So, the first question he writes is, “Does this thing work?” And it comes down yes. So, then he changes it to, “Does this thing not work?” And it lands on no. Huh, very good.

And he’s about to approve it when he realized that his ink has no pad. — I’m sorry, his pad has no ink. And the last shot is he sees “a framed wedding photo sitting in the drawer of his desk, a young Snellard with a pretty bride, both in horn rimmed glasses.”

So, John, what did you think of The Answerer?

**John:** This read to me like a short film. It read to me like a clever little snapshot. People may not appreciate if they’re not actually reading the page, there’s no dialogue in any of this. This is all just a series of images, and I thought honestly kind of nicely done images. It was very, very full. I mean, it was kind of a slog to read through some of it, although I will say breaking it, Ben W., you did a nice job of breaking it down into little snippets so that I was never too intimidated to read the next bit of the script.

So, it either felt like the start of a short film, or it felt like the start of Up, where it’s just like one sort of montage that was going to initiate a bigger, different kind of movie, that there’s some sort of bigger adventure that’s going to happen, but this was just the setup for something else.

But I enjoyed it. I sort of enjoy that sort of like clockwork Coen brothers setup of things. I mean, it’s a heavily stylized world. And even without seeing the outside of this office you got a sense of what this would be.

**Craig:** Yeah. I really liked it. I mean, before I talk about the way that the writing was done here, let me just talk about the idea. Because this is something — I have to confess — I suspect that this movie is one in which this person realizes that The Answerer actually works. That any question he writes that’s a yes or no question, he’s going to get a true answer to, including, you know, “Does this woman love me?” “Does she not love me?” And so it’s this kind of high concept supernatural comedy idea. I actually had — I was going to write a short story to for Derek’s site that was very similar, but it wasn’t a device. It was that somebody would call in the middle of the night and basically say, “I’ll answer any question you have.” And the answer always turned out to be right. And what do you do with certainty?

It’s a really good theme. I like the idea, obviously, because I’ve been thinking about something similar. I know at this point Ben W. is like, oh god, “Oh god, he’s stealing my…!” I’m not going to steal your idea.

So, I’m kind of curious to see how this would turn out given that both the concept is very high and the world is also quite a bit pushed. But that’s okay. I mean, that’s the choice here.

I actually thought this was very well written. The little drama of the tin toy monkey was fascinating to me, actually, that it worked. And I really like that Ben W. has a sense of where the drama is in this little thing. That the monkey surprises us with how complicated it is. Even when it stops a little kickstand comes out. So, my god, this thing is almost perfect. And then it’s just slightly imperfect. And that, I suspect, is going to be a nice little metaphor for Mr. Snellard’s life. Mr. Snellard is the monkey who is almost perfect.

All of that stuff is great. That’s very intentional writing. Good stuff here. The movie already feels incredibly antiseptic, which could be wonderful, could be oppressive, I don’t know.

The only thing I wish were different were the framed wedding photo sitting in the drawer, which is a very kind of stock way of introducing the notion of a loved one who is no longer there.

But that aside, I thought this was fascinating. This is the kind of writing that is so consistent to itself and so very much a product of control that I don’t want to nitpick at any of it. I would rather Ben just keep going. I’m sure he has an entire script. But this was very good. This was one of my favorite Three pages.

And in particular I also liked the way that Ben is not afraid to play around with formatting in a way that you don’t even notice. So, he’s going to center things like “THE ANSWERER – Executive Desktop Edition” is centered. The questions that he’s filling out he tabs in, as well as step one.

When he says, “Does this thing not work,” he’s going to add “not” in with a carrot. and Ben even did that. And stuff like that is just so — it’s so nice to read when it’s done right and when it’s part of the intention. So, this may be my favorite Three Page yet.

**John:** I think one of the reasons why you really liked this is because it’s actually set in Courier Prime.

**Craig:** Oh, really?

**John:** As far as I know it’s the first of the Three Page samples I’ve seen that is set in Courier Prime. And what gave it away is on page two, the “but he is essentially juggling. While riding a unicycle.” And see how it goes into italics?

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Those are true Courier Prime italics. And one of the giveaways that that is really our italics is they look better, but also the lower case A in Courier Prime has no ascender on it. It’s round.

**Craig:** Should I ask what an ascender is?

**John:** You know how a printed A often has a little sort of hat on it? So it’s a bowl and it has a hat on it? It has no hat.

**Craig:** It has no hat. Now, why shouldn’t it have a hat? Because the other ones have a hat.

**John:** It doesn’t have to have a hat. I mean, if you wrote an A you wouldn’t write a hat on it.

**Craig:** Yeah, but if the A that’s not italicized has a hat, shouldn’t it be consistent?

**John:** Italics are often either a more casual or a sort of script version of the type face. And that’s what we’re really doing with Courier Prime is that we modeled it after italic faces on typewriters, which there were italic typewriters for a period of time. And they were designed for writing correspondence, like writing to your loved ones. So, they were sort of more gentle and that’s sort of how we…where we pulled the forms.

**Craig:** Well, this is a cool script. I would want to read the rest of this script.

**John:** I would want to read it, too. Yet, again, a weird situation where, again, the page numbers are not in Courier Prime, they’re not in a Courier typeface, for some reason I can’t parse. And I like having a period after the page number. It’s just kind of conventional.

**Craig:** Yes. As do I as well. But, yeah, this would be fun for me to read.

Hey, Ben, send me the script. I want to read it. Can we do that?

**John:** Oh my god! Yeah, you can totally do that. So, Ben, if you’re listening, send it in.

**Craig:** Just don’t sue me or anything dumb.

**John:** Yeah, don’t do that.

**Craig:** Come on, Ben. But I really think is very cool. I want to read the script. Good job, Ben. You’re the first person who made me want to read a script.

**John:** My god.

**Craig:** My god. All right. Next up. We’re flying through this.

**John:** Two choices. Who is it going to be?

**Craig:** I’m going to go with Abigail Blackmore.

**John:** I was going to say so, too.

**Craig:** Abigail Blackmore. I assume that that is our author and not the title of the script.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, we begin at the First Baptist Church in Allen, Texas, and services have just completed. The congregation is streaming out. Marvin and Patty Feeney, middle-aged couple, are shaking hands with the pastor. He asks after their son, Dex. Patty says, “He’s studying for college entries.”

Well, we cut to Tracy’s basement. At the same time Dex is actually having sex with Tracy. The two of them actually have rough sex. He’s choking her during it. And then when it’s done she crosses off the words Rough Play on a page and next up is Anal Sex. So, they’re making their way through a list.

We then go to the Feeney house in the morning, next morning. Marvin is saying grace. Patty is asking Dexter, her son, about the college applications. She’s found a bunch of college rejections in his room and he has an argument with her about basically the fact that he was waiting to get an acceptance and then he would surprise her with it.

So, that’s Abigail Blackmore’s Three pages. John, take it away.

**John:** So, it’s a classic sort of — almost kind of like a record scratch. You have one setup and then you go to exactly the opposite of it. So, it’s like, “Boy is it cold in here,” and then you cut to something blazingly hot. It’s that kind of joke where we start in sort of a religious context. And he’s studying for college entries and then he’s having passionate love with this woman.

I liked that it got really dirty really fast. I always enjoy that in a script.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I just like that it got nice and filthy. It was broad in a way that wasn’t — I wasn’t encouraged by how broad it got so quickly though. And when we got back to the normal family and sort of the around the breakfast table, I was a little bit nervous about sort of how stuff was going to proceed. Because it went from the churchy speed, to let’s have hard core sex, back to churchy table scene, without a sense of sort of why it was fun to be placing those against each other, or why it was going to original to be placing those things next to each other.

**Craig:** Right. Right. Yeah. I agree with you.

The beginning of this has a little bit of the same problem we saw in our first three pages where, “My son started today.” “Luke?” You know, same thing here:

“Wonderful sermon, Pastor.”

“Patty, Marvin. How’s Dex? Not seen him in church lately.”

So, first of all, he’s a pastor. They just said something nice to him. I would imagine, “Thank you,” would be the normal thing a pastor would say. Not to simply announce their names to us and then immediately ask after the son. It’s just too jammed in. It just feel unnatural.

**John:** Also unnatural is, “He’s studying for college entries.” I don’t know what that sentence really means.

**Craig:** Yeah. What does that mean?

**John:** How do you study for college entries? “He’s getting ready for college,” maybe.

**Craig:** Well, “college entries,” even that is a weird phrase.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And also, he’s not, because he’s been applying, he’s got rejection letters, so what is there to study for? We’re already beyond that.

So, that was a bit clumsy. The sex scene I liked. I thought there was interesting touches. In the room the wall is covered with posters of dead movie stars. I thought that was really funny. And it’s the kind of thing that a lot of people wouldn’t even get, you know, but many people would in that quick moment.

The sex itself was very sort of, you know, you can see HBO’s Girls starting to infect things, not necessarily in a bad way, but apparently two people screwing isn’t enough anymore. You know, they have to go even further. And that’s fine. There’s something modern about it.

It was a little weird. I don’t’ know if I believe it necessarily. I don’t know if I believe this woman.

**John:** It reminded me a little bit more of Showtime’s Shameless.

**Craig:** Mm, I’ve never watched Shameless, but is that sort of the vibe?

**John:** That’s the vibe I sort of got out of that. I forget that you don’t watch any television at all.

**Craig:** I don’t, I know, and I should because our friend Nancy Pimental is the head writer on Shameless. But, I think that the — it’s pushed, you know, so tonally the notion that they’re going to work their way through sexual, I don’t know, like a hit list of sexual practices. It felt, I don’t know, I don’t believe it really happens. There is something funny about “Next up, ‘ANAL SEX’.” And then “Tracy, croaky, ‘Wednesday’s anal.'”That’s a very funny line. Plus, she’s croaky because he was choking her. I mean, I you know, it was funny. I thought it was really well done.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’s cool, you know, I liked that.

The Marvin and Patty scene, this however, I got a little whiplash. So, there’s this very cool scene in Tracy’s basement. But then back at home with his mom and his dad, it felt a little like I was just watching a summer stock production of a parents and generation gap drama. Where, you know, I just — it was boring. I don’t know what else to say. I’ve seen it, you know.

**John:** Someone on Twitter this morning mentioned that like there should be some sort of drinking game every time we mention specificity, but I think specificity is the problem I’m having here is that the parents feel very generically, oh, they’re churchy Baptist people.

And if they’re going to be important characters, give them something specific that is not just template stock character churchy Baptist people. And you can say, like, “Oh, but we’re only on page two.” But we’re on page two, so give us some sense of what’s unique and special about this family versus any other sort of family, because you were very specific on the sex scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, and it was pointed. So, make everyone else in the world at least as interesting if they’re going to be a crucial part of your script.

**Craig:** Yeah. It almost feels like the sex scene was written by a different person, because the sex scene was visual. It wasn’t overly dialogued. And then when we get back to the kitchen, it’s just people talking. I mean, she tries to touch his hair. He flinches at her reach. There’s the hair cutting thing. Look, all of the stuff where he’s a child, but they don’t get that he’s really grown up. But he’s lying to them.

I don’t know. It was sort of boring. I don’t feel like a kid that’s doing what he’s doing with Tracy really gives a damn about what his parents feel, you know. I don’t know. There’s just something so whiplashy tonally about this stuff. But, I really liked the Tracy’s Basement scene.

**John:** I did, too.

I want to talk about the Tracy’s Basement scene, though. Page two:

So, that’s the button on a scene. That’s the, like, okay, the scene is over. It’s like he’s walking out the door. I feel like that scene is probably stronger without the button.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** And so if you say that croaky for, so, “Wednesday’s Anal,” that’s…

**Craig:** That’s the end. There isn’t an editor in the world who would not cut the rest of the scene. I think, you know, if you really wanted to show the idea that he had to leave through the window, what I would do is:

You know what I mean? Like it’s a new thing. But you wouldn’t have just him climbing out from interior.

**John:** And I just want to talk also on page two, Dex, and Patty, and Marvin are all capitalized again.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s not a common style in screenplays these days. And it went through a phase where probably it was more common. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** Also, if you have — personally I wouldn’t capitalize the word “Grace” for the prayer. But if you feel the need to out of some sort of religious deference, be aware that people are going to think it’s a name, especially when you have all these other names. It seemed a little odd to me.

The prayer itself, too. I just want to say this feels very clumsy to me. “Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this good food and for our continued good health.” So, there’s two goods, but fine, it’s grace. “And please spare a thought for the Winchester family at 1216.” What?! You know, god doesn’t need addresses. That just felt like either you were trying to be cute and it just didn’t work, or it’s just stilted, you know. I wonder if the Winchester family is Tracy.

Oh, no, she’s Tracy Keach, so it’s not. I don’t know. So, Tracy Keach, huh? It’s like Stacy Keach, the actor.

Regardless, anyway, it’s weird. I just feel like two different people are writing this script. And I like the writer that wrote Tracy’s Basement.

**John:** I would also say that if you’re going to keep that prayer, a good time to introduce that prayer would be over Craig Mazin’s climbing out the window. Because that’s a great pre-lap.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Because we know what a prayer sounds like. If we start hearing that before we actually see the people doing it, it’s a great way to save yourself some time. You can establish the neighborhood a little bit if you wanted to.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That can be a useful thing to do.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Okay, so, a mixed bag there, but, nice to see some good.

And last we have something from Ed Stahr. S-T-A-H-R. Star! And it’s The New Normal, “Pilot.” So, this would be a pilot for a show called The New Normal that’s not the actual show The New Normal that’s on TV.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s have a little sidebar conversation before we even start.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because I was like, “Wait, whoa! Someone’s giving us a pilot for a show that’s on TV.” [laughs]

**John:** So, it sucks when someone takes your title, but it happens all the time. And if you’re sending something out to somebody and it has the same title as something that’s on the air, or is a movie that currently exists, that’s going to be really confusing.

So, the fact that their thing already exists and yours is a script, sorry, you’re going to need to pick a new title for your show or for your movie. That’s just the breaks.

Also, at the bottom of this page Ed has his WGA registration number. You don’t need it. No one cares. He also has Copyright 2011. Well, you know what? It’s already copyrighted because you wrote it. And Copyright 2011 tells me that this has been sitting on a shelf or in a drawer for awhile.

So, these are not useful things to be putting on your script.

It is accepted practice to — something that’s old that you’re sending out again, and you do want to put a date on it, put it on the bottom right hand side, and fake it. Just change two things in the script so that it’s a new script and put a newer date on it. That’s my advice.

**Craig:** Right. That’s great advice. This sort of bric-a-brac, yeah, first of all you’ve got to change the title. No question. I guess in TV it’s okay to call a pilot, “Pilot?”

**John:** It’s actually common practice.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** The joke in one of the TV pilots that I did that we actually produced was the pilot was actually about the death of a pilot, so it was just kind of fun that the pilot was about a dead pilot.

**Craig:** [laughs] I like that. And did it become a dead pilot? No, it didn’t become a dead pilot.

**John:** Everything dies eventually.

**Craig:** Everything dies.

**John:** You know Lost? Lost died. Hugely successful, and then it died.

**Craig:** This is why drama is interesting. Death.

And, yeah, we don’t need this WGA bric-a-brac. We don’t need Copyright 2011. It just makes you sound like somebody that’s going to sue somebody.

So, let’s do a quick summary here of The New Normal Pilot. Stan Dobbs, a 37 year old man, is sipping coffee from a travel mug in his kitchen. Steps out of his wife’s way. She’s Jen Dobbs, 35. And she’s bringing a skillet of scrambled eggs to the breakfast table.

We meet the kids, Chelsea, 4, cute, and Peyton, 14, a little too much makeup. Pierced ears. And the kids are asking daddy Stan to stay with them, but he has to go to work. And Peyton is annoyed by this. And she thinks it’s because it’s more important than they are. And she, in a teenage way, takes her plate of eggs to her room. “I’m going to eat in my room.”

Stan tells his wife he has to go to work. She says don’t work too hard. But then we reveal that he’s in his car. He’s got a laptop, and documents, and notebook, and he’s leaving a message with someone about trying to get a job. And clearly he’s been out of work for a bit and he’s been lying.

He’s now in a playground, alone, eating a hot dog. Back in the car, he’s talking to a credit card rep about the fact that his payment is late. And while he’s talking to her about the fact that he owes money, his wife calls in and asks if he could pick up dinner on the way home. He hopes that maybe there could be something in the freezer but she says no. She’s been going all day. Obviously she has no idea that they are in financial bad straits.

So, John, let’s discuss The New Normal Pilot.

**John:** Let us. I think we have to start with the first paragraph. So, I’m going to read the first paragraph but it may not give you the sort of full impression as to why it’s a challenging paragraph.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** STAN DOBBS (37, with greying well groomed hair, a hint of a gut and business clothes) takes a sip of coffee from a travel mug, then steps of out JEN DOBBS’s way…

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Sorry, I already messed up.

**Craig:** You’re already making it better than it is.

**John:** …steps of out JEN DOBBS’s (35, attractive, with a pony-tail and sweat pants) way as she carries a steaming skillet of scrambled eggs to the breakfast table.

So, that was five lines, and there are so many dependent clauses in here that you can so easily get confused.

**Craig:** It’s a jungle. It’s a jungle.

**John:** It’s a jungle.

So, here’s the actual action that’s happening? Stan Dobbs get out of his wife’s way while she has a skillet of eggs. That’s what happens in the actual thing. But, here’s all the information that’s being crammed into this paragraph: He’s 37, he has well-groomed gray hair, a bit of a gut, and business clothes.

What are business clothes? Is it a suit? I don’t know.

**Craig:** I guess?

**John:** Jen Dobbs is…

**Craig:** Wait, wait, you forgot. He is sipping coffee from a travel mug.

**John:** Oh, I forgot. I was just going to talk about the descriptors, but sure. The actual action is he is sipping coffee, getting out of her way while she has a skillet full of scrambled eggs. Those are the actual actions.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** But Jen, she doesn’t just have this, because she has to be something, and so in the parenthesis she is 35, attractive, with a pony-tail and sweatpants. That’s just…it’s just too much.

Here’s the information you could stick in here: Stan Dobbs, 37. You can give us the rest of him in the next paragraph. You can give more information about in the next paragraph if you want to. Jen Dobbs, 35, fine. And then you can actually maybe follow the action that’s happening in that paragraph. The action isn’t interesting at all. It’s not a great first way to start your story.

**Craig:** No, no. Let’s really talk…

Okay, first of all, the first paragraph as John described is tortured writing. It’s nearly impossible to read. It required three passes through for me to understand what the hell was going on.

That aside, here’s the real crime of this first paragraph: It’s static for the actors. We’re opening on people standing and then a woman moves across another person to bring eggs to a table. In and of itself it just feels like it opens on people standing and a woman walking.

So, if Stan enters and he walks through, grabs coffee, she’s dishing out eggs, the kids are doing whatever it is, but somehow we’re just opening on a man standing, sipping coffee from a travel mug. And then getting out of somebody’s way as she carries a steaming skillet of scramble eggs to the breakfast table. How tiny is the set that he needs to move out of the way, that she can’t take the eggs to the table?

So, we start off really clumsily.

**John:** Let’s play with this and say like well what if that was really the intent, is that he is a man who is frozen, like deer in the headlights kind of frozen, and she has to say, “Stan, move.” That’s a completely different thing.

**Craig:** Oh, great.

**John:** But then you’re starting on in the image of one person and you’re giving his description, and he’s just zoned out in his own space. And then she has to sort of get his attention to get around him.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s meaningful. That’s the purpose to why you’re doing that.

**Craig:** And, I would push that a little bit so that he moves to maybe get out — she tells him to move, he tries to move, and now he’s in his daughter’s way, and now he’s in the other daughter’s way, and he doesn’t know where to put anything. And he’s about to put his coffee down and somebody else puts something down in its place.

If you want to create the intention of somebody who’s out of place or in the way, that would be great. If you want to create the intention that this is somebody who is stuck and can’t move, that’s fine, too. But this is just — I think you’re just trying to set a domestic scene and there’s no value here. Sweatpants is one word. Not “sweat pants.” Yeah.

And these parenthesis is no way to do this. Break this paragraph up. This is not a good opening.

**John:** It’s not a good opening. The next real paragraph: “CHELSEY (4, cute, with a pony-tail and wearing pajamas)…”

“Pajama-wearing CHELSEY” would be a way to sort of establish that she’s in pajamas and she’s four. Don’t stick those giant parenthetical things in there because we lose track of what the actual purpose of the sentence was.

**Craig:** Yeah…

**John:** It’s just trapped in this parenthetical clause.

**Craig:** Yeah, look, “Chelsea, 4, pajamas.” That’s what I would do. I mean, you’re telling me a four-year-old little girl on TV is cute. Really? Oh, okay, because that’s a change of pace from all the ugly four-year-olds they put in television shows.

**John:** [laughs] I really want someone to write that. “The ugliest four-year-old you’ve ever seen.”

**Craig:** I would. I know.

**John:** And then I want to go to the casting call for that one. Which parents are bringing their kids in for like the ugly role?

**Craig:** Can I tell you, it’s so funny you bring that up. You know, there are oftentimes when you have to write characters — the point is that they’re ugly. And I always do think about these casting calls where people are like, “Oh, finally. Finally! This is perfect.” Or their agent calls, “Have I got something for you! I’ve got it. They need an ugly person. They need somebody who’s atrocious.”

You know, you’ve seen Cry-Baby, right, the John Waters’ movie?

**John:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** I love Cry-Baby. I just think it’s such an underrated film. And Hatchet-Face. I just love that the woman’s name is Hatchet-Face because she’s so ugly. And they found a spectacularly, I mean, obviously they made her uglier in the movie than she really is in real life. But she’s got an odd face. And I love how she’s like, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Oh, it’s so cool. I just love that. Anyway…

**John:** Let’s continue. Let’s flip the pages because I think there’s a useful thing on the next one. Well, first off, in Stan’s car: “…documents line the dashboard and envelopes ret in his lap.”

Okay, this script has been around since 2011 and on page two you didn’t catch a typo. That’s not showing a lot of attention to detail. And I also want to talk about — this could be kind of useful — phone conversations. Because this script tries to have it both ways. General rule: Either we hear both sides of phone calls or we hear one side of phone calls. Both are okay. We can do it. But originally the first call that we’re on with Stan, we only hear his side.

**Craig:** I think he’s leaving a message in that first one.

**John:** Well, I didn’t read it clearly. So, I apologize.

**Craig:** But there’s no way to know that he’s leaving a message exactly, which is an issue. If the intention is that you want him leaving a message, we should hear the beep so that we aren’t confused.

**John:** But I will apologize, because I should have — once you get to the end of the thing you realize that it is that, but general rule, I would say, either we hear both sides or we hear one side. Don’t cheat.

Or, a phone can be put on speaker so we deliberately know that you’re hearing both sides because it’s actually happening in the space, but if we have both the character’s point of view of sound and the scene’s point of view of the sound, you have to be consistent throughout your movie with that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Before I get to Mr. Streebig here, I just want to say that this initial conversation around the eggs is not good. He is heading out to work. The four-year-old cute girl is saying, “Stay daddy.” Well, that makes sense. My daughter still says that to me and she’s eight.

“Daddy has to go to work Chelsey.” “Why?” And then Peyton, the 14-year-old says, “Because it’s more important than you are.” This is faux teen outrage. Teenagers are going to get angry about all sorts of stuff. They can’t get angry about their dad going to work. That’s just bizarre. They have to go to school anyway. I don’t…it just doesn’t…I mean, even if it’s a Saturday or whatever, I mean, if the point is that it’s Saturday, then say that. But, I just — that just is fake, you know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s fake. And there’s no real reaction to it. And then Jen’s description, you know, “Daddy goes to work so that we can have money.” You know, the whole thing seems really weird like we’re explaining this weird notion of work. Yeah.

**John:** I want to stop sort of picking on the script because I didn’t think these pages really worked. But I want to sort of speculate on intention behind it. Because, in calling this The New Normal, and it sets up with this idea of this unemployed guy, I’m trying to figure out where I think it’s going as a pilot. What is the TV show here?

It’s a family drama. It starts out with an unemployed guy. Maybe he gets some sort of minimum wage job? Or the wife goes back to work? But that doesn’t particularly…

**Craig:** I was thinking that maybe it was just that he was going to admit to her that he’s been out of work and he’s having trouble finding work. And they’re going to have to deal with the fact that they’re going on welfare, or food stamps, or whatever is sort of changing their lifestyle to become financially-challenged people.

**John:** Because it’s a pilot, I’m trying to figure out what the arc of the show is. Where does the show go and what is the show week-to-week. And, yeah, it’s only three pages in. I get that. But, I was trying to visualize what that was going to be.

**Craig:** Well, I’m not sure. It is hard to tell obviously from three pages. We can’t really fault Ed for that. But, I guess the only other bit of advice I would have for you is it’s okay for people to use contractions when they speak.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** “This is Stan Dobbs. I am calling to follow up on the interview I had with you. It has been three weeks.”

**John:** American speakers will contract almost everything there.

**Craig:** Yeah. Everything. “I am asking you to waive the fee and move my bill date.” It’s all very strange.

Ed, I think that this needs a lot of work. I’m not quite sure what to say. I don’t mean to be super mean about it, but this level of writing, this quality of writing is not going to get you work. So, I’m hoping that since this was written in 2011 that your skills have developed since then. And I would urge you just to read some pilots of shows that you really love and take a look at how they’re doing things, because I don’t think you’re quite there yet.

And that was the last one of our group.

**John:** I want to thank all four of our Three Page Challenge submitters, because that was very cool and brave of you to share what you did and let us talk about it and tell you the things that we thought were fantastic and the things that could be even better.

Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week? I know you’re sick, so I don’t want to push you too hard.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, you know, I often don’t have one when I’m feeling well, so I do. It’s so narrow and so I’ll be very fast about it.

But, for those people who have Teslas, there is this wonderful site called the Tesla Motors Forum where Tesla owners help each other figure things out. It’s the coolest site And I had like a little tiny issue with the charger for my car, and there’s a guy on there who is an amazing electrician. He goes by FlasherZ. I don’t know what his real name is. But he helped me and problem solved.

I like when there’s a little community dedicated to one tiny little thing, but everybody is really passionate and helps each other. So, thank you Telsa Motors Forum for existing. And thank you, FlasherZ.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is a book I’m reading right now on the Kindle. It’s called Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, by Victor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier.

What I like about it, a couple things. It talks about — I think you had even brought this up in an early podcast, like Google Flu that actually tracks sort of flu outbreaks based on like how people are searching for things. So, just like the CDC collects data on how the flu is spreading, Google collects data and they can often figure out faster than the CDC where the flu outbreak is happening and sort of what people are doing based on how people are searching for it.

The argument and the central premise behind Big Data, the book, is that simply by being able to look at huge quantities of data we’re able to find things that we wouldn’t otherwise find, because we’re always — classically we’ve always been sampling. We’re taking little slices of data and trying to generalize out based on that because all we could process was the small little things. Now you just take all the data and crunch it, and smush it up, and you don’t look for perfect data. You just look for the most data possible.

When you’re looking at little samples, you’re always looking for causes. Causation is sort of what the goal is. Here you can just look for correlations. So, Google doesn’t even necessarily know why these things tend to — these search patterns tend to — indicate that flu is happening there. They just know that it does. And so sometimes you don’t actually need to look for causation. You’re just looking for correlation. And that’s really fascinating.

So, I feel like many of our nerdier listeners will enjoy this book. It’s a good, simple, fun read. And then thing I appreciate kind of more than anything else is they use data as a singular and they don’t try to say “these data,” which “these data” just drives me crazy.

**Craig:** Yes. Or resort to “datum.”

**John:** So, you may feel free to disagree with me. It’s one of those where I take great umbrage at, is that people try to make English be Latin exactly, and it just isn’t. So, if you want to disagree with me you’re welcome to. I have a whole blog post about it.

**Craig:** We should link to — I’ll send Stuart the link — there’s this great Mitchell & Webb sketch that has a terrific ending that is specifically about this whole Latin/English thing. It’s one of my favorite sketches. I’ll send it to Stuart so he can link it up.

**John:** Fantastic. Well, Craig, I don’t know, but I feel like maybe you started feeling a little bit better over the course of the podcast. I felt some strength returning. So, I hope by next week you are at 100,000%.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what? I think Ben W.’s script kind of gave me a little kick…

**John:** A shot in the arm?

**Craig:** …a little kick in my step. A little shot in the arm, yeah.

**John:** Well, you are a robot, so maybe it turned a little [crosstalk] in your heart.

**Craig:** I’m not the robot and you know it. [laughs] You know it. Somebody was talking on Twitter if Scriptnotes were a movie, here’s what the movie would be: A robot befriends a human boy with emotional problems. That’s what our movie is.

**John:** [laughs] It will be like that Frank Langella movie where he has like the robot assistant that people talked about for awhile and then it just went away.

**Craig:** I know! It was a great trailer. I never saw the movie. I feel bad. I should go see it.

**John:** Robot & Frank.

**Craig:** Robot & Frank. There you go.

**John:** I haven’t watched it. Craig, feel better, have a great week, and I will talk to you next week.

**Craig:** Talk to you next week, John. Bye.

LINKS:

* How to [submit your three pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage)
* Three pages by [Justin Adams](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JustinAdams.pdf)
* Three pages by [Ben W.](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BenW.pdf)
* Three pages by [Abigail Blackmore](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/AbigailBlackmore.pdf)
* Three pages by [Ed Stahr](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/EdStahr.pdf)
* The [Tesla Motors Forum](http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/forumdisplay.php/47-Tesla-Motors-Forum) and the very helpful [FlasherZ](http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/member.php/9819-FlasherZ)
* [Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544002695/?tag=johnaugustcom-20), by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger & Kenneth Cukier
* Mitchell & Webb’s [Grammar Nazi](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IvWoQplqXQ) sketch
* OUTRO: [Fell on Your Head](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7QiR2Go0Lg) by Francis and the Lights from Robot & Frank

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/veronica-mars-attacks).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 81, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. So, Craig, your goal is to drag out your “I am Craig Mazin” as long as possible during your intros? I’ve noticed that’s a pattern.

**Craig:** You know, what I’m thinking lately is that I’m going to alternate. So, my next one will probably be very, very short. But my new goal is to do it differently every single time. And then someone somewhere will make a meta-edit of all of them, and it will be ridiculous.

**John:** It will be ridiculous.

**Craig:** Ridiculous.

**John:** I respect that you’re trying to add some variety to it, because I know do exactly the same introduction every week.

**Craig:** Well, not only do you do the same introduction every week, people don’t know that you do the same pre-introduction every week before we hit record.

**John:** As if you’d never done one of these before. I actually talk you through exactly how we’re going to do it. It’s therapy for me.

**Craig:** Listen, I don’t question. Frankly, it’s therapy for me. We do a very difficult job, so it’s nice to have a little bit of stability, predictability, consistency. I’m for it.

**John:** Cool. We have so much to talk about, Craig. I want to cut our chit chat short and get right to it.

**Craig:** Fine! Fine!

**John:** Three things I want to talk about today. First off, Veronica Mars, and Kickstarter, and how it completely transforms the industry, or doesn’t.

**Craig:** Nothing will ever be the same again.

**John:** Highland, which was the endlessly-in-beta screenwriting editor and PDF melter that I’ve made for Quote-Unquote Apps…

**Craig:** Nothing will ever be the same again. [laughs]

**John:** …which is finally shipping. And it could potentially change some things.

**Craig:** Yes it will.

**John:** And then I want to look at three points from those Pixar Story Rule by Emma Coats, that list that she made, because three things actually became really useful to me this last week. And so there are 21 points on that list. We’re only going to talk about three of them this week, but there will also be a link to all 21, and also everything we talk about on the show today will have links to it. So, as I cite people, and quotes, and things like that, if you go to our show page at johnaugust.com/podcast you will see this podcast episode and you will see links to the things we talk about.

**Craig:** Go, go, go.

**John:** First, I have some follow up. I don’t know if you have any follow up. But last week on the podcast I had mentioned, as my One Cool Thing I did Untitled Scripts which was a Tumblr of screenshots of some person who is trying to write a script. And the scenes always go off the rails in a bad way. What I really meant to link to and talk about was Untitled Screenplays, which is also a Tumblr of screenshots of scenes in like Final Draft that go off the rails.

And I don’t honestly know which one came first. I really meant Untitled Screenplays when I said Untitled Scripts. They’re both funny; they’re just funny in very different ways. So, I would actually encourage people to look at both of them, because they have a different kind of comic conceit beyond the “this is a Tumblr full of screenshots of Final Draft.”

**Craig:** It’s not exactly as egregious as when I confused Jeff Wells with Ron Wells, but thank you for the correction.

**John:** I think for the people who make those Tumblrs, I think that they would like to have there be some differentiation between the two of them.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Second, last week I talked about the unlock code for the balcony seats at Big Fish and a lot of people bought them, so that was great. I get these updates saying like, “Oh my god, we sold more seats!” And everyone is happy and delighted.

There are still some seats, and if people want to come to one of the first four performances of Big Fish, starting April 2, please come and enjoy. There’s a special code that gets you, I think it’s $26 balcony seats rather than $70 balcony seats if you enter the code SCRIPT on the very first screen of Ticketmaster when you go to Ticketmaster in Chicago.

So, come see the show then, or come see it anytime during our run. We’re there for five weeks. I am packing up all of my stuff tonight so I can travel to Big Fish land in Chicago.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** And if you are coming, let me know. So, you can send me an email. You can send me a tweet saying, “I’m going to this night and I’m sitting in these seats.” And if there’s not like a huge fire that I have to put out, or something is disastrously wrong, I will come find you, because I love to meet people.

**Craig:** It’s going to be a little weird for the people who do come to see the show, sitting there waiting for you, and suddenly realizing with dawning horror that something has gone terribly wrong.

**John:** Yes. You never know what backstage drama could be afoot. Or, maybe I’ll just find somebody who looks sort of like me and just send that person out just as my little proxy.

**Craig:** [laughs] As you pointed out, there are a lot of people who look like you.

**John:** I am a very familiar face. And I think it’s lovely that people want to say like, “Oh, I have a friend who looks just like you,” but kind of everyone says that because everyone has a friend that looks just like me. Take almost any white person, shave their head, they will kind of look like me.

**Craig:** You know who you look like to me? I don’t know if you had these commercials in Colorado, but when I was growing up Hebrew National Hot Dogs had a spokesperson. And their spokesperson was Uncle Sam. And he made a big deal about how they answer to a higher authority, that their standards were even more stringent than the US government’s. God himself was specifying how these hot dogs would be made.

And that Uncle Sam dude, you remind me of him.

**John:** Very nice.

**Craig:** And he had a hat on, so it wasn’t about bald, it was about his face.

**John:** Yeah! Weirdly I’m the kind of person who whenever I do like on the Wii and you need to make an avatar, or really any sort of system where you need to make an avatar, it’s very easy to make one that looks like me, because basically I make him sort of white and skinny and then take off all the hair, it sort of looks like me.

**Craig:** Yeah, so you’re a “mii.”

**John:** Yes. Quickly I want to point out and take a little sidetrack to talk about Uncle Sam. I read a fascinating article that I’ll put a link into that there used to be a female equivalent of Uncle Sam called Columbia. And so she was the female personification of America. And so it persisted through the turn of the century, and then it just sort of disappeared. But like Columbia Pictures, that’s because that was like Uncle Sam Pictures. It was very much a character that we just don’t use in our modern culture anymore.

But she sort of looked like the Columbia logo. That was meant to be America. So, back in the time that Columbia Pictures was formed, Columbia Pictures really meant like American Pictures. Isn’t that weird?

**Craig:** Kind of in the back of my head I feel like I knew that. That Columbia lady, by the way, the woman holding the torch, she’s kinda hot. I like her. I’m into her.

**John:** She looks a lot like Annette Bening.

**Craig:** She does. And there’s a slight matronlyness to her, but it’s not really. She’s like kind of MILF-y. She’s kind of MILF-y.

**John:** Yeah. And so you see the pictures of Columbia back at the time that they actually used her as a personification, it was — it was MILF-y in that she had — she was a little voluptuous in a way that was not the style those days.

**Craig:** No, well, you know, when food was scarce women with a little extra… It’s still hot to me. I’m into it.

**John:** So, let’s get to our topics today. First off, Veronica Mars. Here’s the backstory, in case you’re listening to this in the future or there is a time machine and this hasn’t happened yet in your time stream:

So, Veronica Mars was a television show on the UPN network that lasted from 2004 to 2007. And it had some really ardent fans, but it never was a big show and it got canceled. This week the show’s creators, Rob Thomas and the other producers and Kristen Bell, announced that they were doing a Kickstarter to raise $2 million to fund a feature film version of Veronica Mars and that Warner Bros. had agreed to distribute the film if they hit that goal.

Essentially, Rob Thomas and everyone was responsible for raising the money to actually make the movie but Warner said, like, “We promise we will release it if you make the movie.”

So, in just one day they actually hit their $2 million target, and as we’re recording this they’re at like $3.3 million.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it raised a big discussion of whether this was a good thing or a bad thing for the industry, for Kickstarter, for a lot of things. Here’s a sampling of comments and then I’ll ask you, let you weight in.

So, James Poneywisic of Time — I’m just going to say his name quickly so I can mispronounce it — he called it, “An important experiment, not just for this particular movie but for movies and TV in general.”

John Rogers, who’s a writer and producer, does Leverage, and a blogger, he called it, “A mixture of exploitation and empowerment,” which I liked.

And Suzanne Scott, sort of the most negative of these critics, called it, “A tipping point that encourages the media entities to ‘exploit’ their fan bases in a way that is pernicious and ultimately unsustainable.”

**Craig:** Eh, okay.

**John:** Craig, where do you stand on this? I’m curious because I’m not sure we are in agreement here, so I’m fascinated by this.

**Craig:** Well, I think that John Rogers is probably closest to the truth. It is a mixture of — what did he say? Exploitation and…?

**John:** Empowerment.

**Craig:** Empowerment. This is not a watershed moment. I don’t think of this as a watershed moment. I don’t think this means much beyond itself. Let’s just talk about does it mean anything for the way movies are financed?

No. This is a very specific situation. There are few shows that have this kind of rabid fan base that also aren’t particularly popular. And when I say popular I mean popular enough to say have stayed on the air. Another show that comes to mind is Firefly. And they did make a movie of Firefly and that didn’t do particularly well. But, the people who like Firefly, and I’m actually of them — I really love that show — they’re rabid.

So, when you have this interesting smaller group of very passionate people, and there’s this enormous pent up demand for a movie because they have an emotional attachment to it, I understand that this sort of thing happen. The amount of money they’re raising, frankly, is not particularly significant. I think that’s something that’s been sort of lost in the shuffle. It’s not easy to make feature films for that amount of money for $2, or $3, or even $4 million. Anything under $10 million, it’s tough.

And obviously everybody involved is therefore doing it as a labor of love. You rarely see labors of love that are also preexisting IP that is completely controlled by a studio and is an original but derivative of a television show that was on a network.

So, here’s the positives and the negatives. Positive: A lot of people really wanted to see a Veronica Mars movie. I don’t blame them; it was a great show. Kristen Bell is awesome. A little love for Ryan Hansen who I have a connection with and I think is a great guy.

And so they donated money. And they donated money to make it possible. And Warner Bros. said, “Okay, well, good for you guys.” It’s a bit like the letter-writing campaigns of the 80’s that saved Cheers, and so here’s a movie. That’s positive.

On the negative side: Sure, Warner Bros. basically is, [laughs], basically a multi-billion dollar corporation that just made people cough up $2 million in donations and will charge them again for the privilege of watching this on digital distribution. So, that’s a little weird. And so Rogers is correct — empowering, exploitative, sure.

But, I think it’s such a specific thing, and I also feel like anyone who really believes that this is going to be a trend doesn’t get how the internet works. I mean, people aren’t dumb. It’s not like studios can say, “Well, we’re going to put a gun to the head of all these other things that you want to see, and you have to raise money or we’re going to shoot it.” Well, people get pretty savvy after awhile. They’re not going to keep kicking money out to things just to see them happen.

So, I’m kind of interested what you have to think, and then I’ll say the part about it that kind of annoys me the most, that’s a point that no one is really making because it’s a separate point and a larger point. So, what do you think?

**John:** Rob Thomas is a friend. And so this is sort of the full disclosure that he’s a friend, and Dan Etheridge is a friend who’s a producer on that show and produced The Nines for me and has been a friend for a long time. So, I actually knew about this before it was announced and I knew it was in the works. And I was excited to see what could become of it. And so I was a big cheerleader behind saying, “Yes, that would be amazing if it happened,” without having to put a lot of thought into what does it really mean, what’s sort of the outcome.

And I think Rob is very, very smart and he’s been very smart about being kind of upfront and transparent about like this is, “I want to do the Veronica Mars movie in all the normal ways, and I couldn’t get it done in all the normal ways, so this is why we’re doing this here.”

And Kickstarter was clearly very interested in figuring out is there a way we can make a bigger studio feature with you guys. And so that partnership and navigating the relationship between the creators of the show and Warner Bros., who owns the IP, and Kickstarter is a fascinating thing. So, I think that’s a fascinating movie and story to be tracking as well. One of the things Rob said, today I think, was, “I never wanted it to be perceived as a charity.” And he felt it was very important that people felt like for the $50 they were sending in they were getting something.

So, they were getting a script. They were getting a digital download. They were getting a t-shirt, which is true, and which is very much the Kickstarter model that you should always be getting something, that you’re not just chipping in, and that it’s different from a letter writing campaign in that sense that you are really trying to — you are giving something back for the effort that you spent.

But I think it’s weirdly kind of too apologetic in that the reason why people want to spend their $50 isn’t because they’re going to have a share of the profits of this thing, it’s because they get to make something in the world, something that wouldn’t exist otherwise will exist now because they and everybody else chipped in some money to do it. And that’s the empowerment aspect of this is that the world is slightly different because I put in this money to make this thing happen that I wanted to see in the world.

You know, you’re not a creator in the bigger sense, but you are helping to make something. You’re bending the world a little bit in your direction.

Some of the criticism I have seen is, “Well, you don’t even get a copy of the movie.” It’s like, well, I feel like we’re almost in this sort of post-asset kind of time where like who cares if you get the DVD or the movie. You can always buy the DVD or the movie. The fact is the DVD wouldn’t even exist. And so it’s not about getting cash back or getting that movie in your hands, or getting a free ticket. It’s that that thing that you want to exist, that dream that you had is real because you were able to send in $50.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, that is the nice part of it. I’m giving you the less nice vision of that in a second, but I do want to acknowledge that it is cool. Fans who want to see something and are able to make it happen, and who do it out of love, I think that that’s something that’s respectable.

And, you know, there’s a slightly strange thing here where, I’m a capitalist, you know, and I believe in Capitalism to a large extent. I think it’s a good thing. So, part of me thinks, well, you know, could you have gone and found some sort of financial backer that Warner Bros. was willing to kind of take on and actually then pay back? And I guess the answer is no, so then it’s nice to see, okay, people just step in and altruistically — you know, not completely altruistically, they want to see the movies. So, they’re saying, “Look, we’re willing to basically way overspend.”

A digital downloaded movie costs, I don’t know, let’s just say the price point is $10. I’m going to spend $40. Well, actually even $60 maybe. Or I’m going to spend $100, or as in the case of one well reported Kickstarter, $10,000.

And, yes, you get some doodads and things back like scripts, which, you know, you can get the script anyway I suppose. I mean, ultimately that’s not really what it’s about. It’s not about the exchange, it’s about the donation.

And that part I guess is the part that sort of gives me a slightly queasy feeling on the other side. And so it’s not about this; it’s not about Veronica Mars. It’s about Kickstarter in general. I don’t quite get it. I mean, I get it, but I don’t get it.

Let’s put aside Veronica Mars, which is a nicer example, people passionate about a work of art and they want to see more of it. I don’t understand why anyone is giving any money on Kickstarter to things like the company that’s going to make the paper E-ink watch. That’s a business. You don’t donate money to for-profit businesses. I don’t get it at all. I don’t understand the mentality.

And I suppose you could say, “Well, what’s the harm?” I don’t know; the harm is that maybe you should be giving your money to something else that’s a little more worthy. If you feel like donating money, there’s a billion charities out there. And I know you’re philanthropic, and I’m philanthropic, and I believe in these things. And I like donating money.

My particular cause is education. I donate a lot of money to education. And I like that. And if I didn’t have a lot of money I would donate a little bit of money to education. And there’s another thing that I like to give money to that I’ll talk about in my One Cool Thing. But, I don’t know, I have nothing against this Veronica Mars thing; I just don’t understand Kickstarter. I’m not quite sure what the mentality is there.

I prefer to see businesses stand or fall on their own based on the time-tested principles of the marketplace.

**John:** So, I actually had a conversation with Yancey Strickler, I had coffee with Kickstarter’s founder Yancey Strickler about The Remnants — this is almost two years ago. So, The Remnants, for people who don’t know, was a web pilot that I shot during the strike. And people liked it and there was all this talk about sort of like, okay, we could get some sort of brand in, like Pringles or somebody was going to come on and sponsor it.

And we had sort of our budgets. We figured everything out. And then it wasn’t just going to work right. And so I had the conversation with Yancey Strickler about sort of, oh, maybe we could Kickstarter this. And this was pretty early in the Kickstarter days.

And it clearly was going to be possible and he was fascinated by the opportunity of doing it, but it just was never going to work out time wise. It was never going to be worth my time to not do all the other stuff in order to go and do this thing, this labor of love for no money. And so I have been fascinated by the possibility of doing a show through Kickstarter for a long time.

Here’s where I think you and I disagree. I do not perceive this as a donation. And two pronged points here. First off, donation implies that you’re not getting anything back out of it. You’re just truly doing it altruistically. And that’s not really quite what this is. You are trying to change and effect the world through your donation. It’s almost like paying to a political party, or paying for a candidate, because you want the world to be a little bit better. You want to fork the universe into a way that is going to go your direction.

And, secondly, just talking about donations, well you could be spending that money on education or giving a donation to some other worthy charity. Well, any money you spend, anything, that sandwich you bought, you could be spending on charity, too. So, I just never feel like that’s a fair complaint is like, “Well, if you’re going to spend $50 you should give it to a homeless person or some sort of soup kitchen.” Well, then you shouldn’t buy those shoes. You shouldn’t do anything. We should all sort of spend every available cent on helping the people who need it most.

This is something that people want in the world. And in this case it’s Veronica Mars, but in other cases it’s, you know, the Kickstarter things I’ve funded was this gay documentary that looked really cool called Atlantic. Or this Pebble Watch, like that’s something that I would love to see maybe.

And, so, I get why people want to do that. And in their case they’re essentially pre-ordering this watch. They’ll have the first chance to get it, and it’s something they want to exist in the world. That’s Kickstarter. And I agree that it’s not quite the capitalist model where you say like, “Well, if somebody wants this thing to exist than there should be investors who put in their money and they are rewarded for their investment by being paid back.” They are getting paid back, but not in money. They’re getting paid back in the universe being slightly different and having this thing in it.

**Craig:** Allow me to retort.

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** First of all, your analogy of political contributions is a pretty good one. I have in the past made political contributions and I quickly realized that there was only one kind that was of any value. — Sorry, two kinds that were of any value. The first kind is an enormous contribution that buys you some sort of influence or access. And the second kind is a contribution that is made very locally, because you are impacting something immediate and frankly smaller donations are far more impactful when they’re local.

So, for instance, I don’t donate to presidential campaigns, senatorial campaigns, congressmen anymore, although I have sort of dabbled in a tiny way in the past with that. But I do donate, for instance, to my local city hall candidate in La Cañada, where you win with under 3,000 votes. I donate money to the school board campaign.

So, I’m actually fairly consistent on this. I don’t think people should be giving $10 to political candidates. I think it’s dumb. But, that’s a whole political discussion. We’ve been so good about not being political in here. But, I totally disagree on your whole, “Well, then you can’t buy a sandwich thing.” Of course, you buy a sandwich because you want a sandwich. The existence of philanthropy does not require you to not purchase things that aren’t philanthropic. You are getting a sandwich when you pay for a sandwich. And you’re eating it.

What you don’t do is pay for a sandwich so that the sandwich can be made so that you can buy the sandwich. And that’s what I don’t like about Kickstarter. I mean, at the very least, if you put in money to make the Pebble Watch, you should get a Pebble Watch! If you give a certain amount of money, I mean, look, if they do that, then I get it.

But I just don’t understand this thing of “I’m going to give you a bunch of money so you can make something so then you can charge me for it.” I do feel like that is exploitative and circumvents the natural selection of things.

**John:** Here’s where I disagree with the “you should be able to get something for it,” is what is “it” in the case of a movie or a piece of entertainment? Because there’s not a thing at the end. So, Pebble Watch, I sort of get that. You’re sort of pre-ordering it. So, why would you bother putting in any money to it unless you were going to actually get the watch at the end? That I sort of get.

In the case of Veronica Mars or some other TV program that you want to exist again, no one cares about that little DVD disk.

**Craig:** No, it’s not the object.

**John:** Everyone cares that it exists it in the world. We’re sort of in this asset-less time where I don’t really want to own these things. I just want them to always be available to me when I do want to see them.

**Craig:** I agree with that. But, let me ask you a question. And I’ll talk about the “it” is in a second. But, when you donate money to the Veronica Mars project, do you get a download? Do you get the right to watch it without paying more money?

**John:** I believe there are digital downloads at some price points.

**Craig:** At some price point, okay. Now, to me, if you’ve donated more than what they’re selling that thing for, the “it,” then you should not have to pay for “it” again. I just don’t like that. I just think it’s weird.

**John:** You should not have to pay for it any form or you shouldn’t have to buy a ticket for it at the movie theater?

**Craig:** No. You shouldn’t. You’ve already done it. You’ve paid for it. It’s crazy.

**John:** Well, Craig, that’s not consistent though with how movies actually work. Like, buying a ticket to a movie doesn’t give you the DVD at the same time for free.

**Craig:** No, no, I totally understand. What I’m saying is the “it”… — For instance, when you buy a DVD you’re not actually buying the movie. Here’s what you’re buying: You’re buying a piece of plastic and then you’re buying the right — you’re essentially buying a license to exhibit that movie for your own private use. You are not buying anything beyond that.

Now, in this case with Veronica Mars I would imagine it would be very similar. You’re buying a download. You’re licensing the right to view that. So, this is why, for instance, when you buy a DVD or you purchase something on iTunes, you can’t set it up in an auditorium and then charge admission for it. That would be a violation of your license because you don’t own it. You just have licensed the right to enjoy it privately.

That’s why there’s a whole thing about the sharing of these things that’s coming up with Amazon and that will be interesting. But, I guess my point is if I give $50 towards the creation of the Veronica Mars movie, I feel like at the very least I should also in return get the right to enjoy what I have helped create in the privacy of my home, without paying more it.

I just think that that’s.. — And I know why they can’t do that, because then at that point it’s sort of like, well, we’ve kind of cannibalized the marketplace that we’re doing it. And I love that, listen, I love that people are kind of pricing that in and they’re saying, “Well, okay, I know it’s going to be $5, so if I donate $50 what I’m really saying is I’m paying $55 to see this Veronica Mars movie.”

And that’s their choice.

**John:** I think what you’re really buying is emotional ownership of something that you love.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I get that.

**John:** That’s true, too, for anything that you want to buy or collect that isn’t necessarily worth what you’re paying for it.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. And the one thing that is true about the marketplace is that this is part of the marketplace. So, in a way, Kickstarter does sort of say, “Here’s a lot of people who are incredibly passionate who are willing to overpay for something. So, it is worth that. And therefore it is worth this.” And it’s a great situation for Warner Bros., obviously.

It’s a great situation for the creators of Veronica Mars. And it’s a great situation for the fans. So, I can’t really find fault with that.

My whole thing with Kickstarter is really more about these people who come on Kickstarter and say, “I have an idea for a company. It’s going to manufacture widgets. We’re going to make an enormous amount of money if the widgets are successful. Please give me a bunch of money so that I can do this because nobody else whose job it is to determine if this sort of thing is a good business or not seems to think it is.

“So, therefore, could you please give me your money? In return, I’ll give you a bunch of nonsense. And then I’ll make this, and then you’ll buy it again. Or not. Or maybe I’ll just disappear,” as was the case that was publicized — highly publicized incident.

So, I don’t know, Kickstarter to me is just weird. And I’m not a fan. But I do think that this is a good thing for the Veronica Mars people and I can’t argue about that.

**John:** Let’s talk in general about the film and TV industry, because crowd sourcing is sort of beyond necessarily our purview, but film and TV, I feel like we’re always looking for outside money. If you look at sort of how we make even our most expensive movies, we go to Village Roadshow or we go to Legendary Pictures.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Well, that’s just a big pile of money that’s just sitting there that had nothing to do necessarily with the film industry. I guess Village Roadshow is technically an Australian theater chains that have different rules than what we have here.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Legendary is just private equity money.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** There’s always been those rich people with piles of cash that can make cool things. Like, The Master was made with somebody with a pile of cash, and that’s a good thing.

I would say looking at Kickstarter, it’s like it’s a pile of cash, it’s just that the pile cash is from a bunch of different individual people who all have love or intensity about a certain thing and are willing to chip in some money.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And if it’s faster for the Pebble Watch person or the person who is making the various weird documentary to get that money through them than through traditional financiers, that’s great to me in some ways.

**Craig:** Eh, not great to me. Because, here’s the thing: Legendary is a big pile of money. And it is rich people with a pile of money and they make decisions about what to invest their money in. And for it they get ownership and the potential for tremendous profit, and that’s fine. And if they lose, if the movie bombs, then they lose their money, but they made that decision; there was a reward in place, a financial reward.

There is something unsavory to me about a business that is designed to maximize profits for its shareholders, because that’s what corporations do, sort of tripping into the sort of blissful commune of the internet and saying, “We’re awesome and sweet just like you. Let’s all talk in these kinds of platitudes of sharing and changing the world, which we know you guys are into. And we’ll talk less about how we’re actually a corporation with accountants and designed to maximize profits.

“And you just give us your money, and you’re going to get nothing of true value back. And if we make $15 billion off the $5 million you guys give us, you’ll get none of it, but we will. And I will live in an enormous mansion with cars and five wives and yacht. And you get the joy of giving me more money again to buy the thing that you helped me make.”

I do find that exploitative. I find it unsavory. These aren’t rich people we’re talking about. A lot of times they’re just people who have a good intention, and they do have a great joy. While I am a capitalist on one hand, I’m also a regulationist on the other. And I believe that capitalism works best when there are rules in place designed to preserve fair play. And where people decide fair play is, well, that’s the great debate of our time. And we’ve been talking about that since TR and trust-busting, all the way to now and Wall Street, and banks, and “too big to fail,” and all the rest of it.

But, I do believe in protecting what I believe is essential to capitalism and that is fair play. And I just think that this is something — if you really want to know what gets me going about Kickstarter, it’s that I feel it’s not exploitative of people’s money, because they’re giving $50 or $100, they can afford it whenever and they won’t miss it. Very few people will in the long-term.

The exploitation I don’t like is the exploitation of philosophy. There’s something about companies going to people and saying, “Let’s be anti-capitalistic. Let’s circumvent business as usual and the fat cats. And let’s do this in the spirit of togetherness.” And that’s, frankly, bullshit. They’re just trying to make money. And if I’m starting a business and I need $10 million, and somebody comes to me and says, “I’m a venture capitalist. I’ll give you the $10 million in exchange for 30% of your company.” And then Kickstarter says, “Or, you can just have $10 million,” I’m going to Kickstarter. And I’m taking their $10 million. And they’re getting nothing for it because it’s so much better for me.

It’s just greed. And I believe greed motivates all of this. So, because I think people are bad, whereas you probably think they’re good…

**John:** Yeah. I think we’ve hit the fundamental distinction between the two of us. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] I think people are bad, so I feel like Kickstarter is a playground for bad people to take advantage of good people by being wolves in sheep’s clothing. Now, again, I just want to be super clear: I do not think that’s what’s going on with Veronica Mars, at all. I really do think Veronica Mars is a sheep in sheep’s clothing coming to other sheep and those sheep are saying, “Let’s all watch a movie together because we love it.”

And that’s okay. Believe me, I’m not going after these guys at all. Nor do I think it’s a sign of any great change to come, because Veronica Mars is special. And I give them credit for having this amazing connection to their audience.

I’m really talking about the Pebble Watches and the light bulbs you can control with your iPhone and all this baloney on Kickstarter. And I’m sounding like grumpy old man. But, anyway, that’s, [laughs], that’s what I think. That’s what I think.

**John:** I do want to jump ahead to the future, but I will cede points to I do believe there is potential for exploitation in the Kickstarter model that we have to watch. And I’m interested and also troubled by whatever sort of regulation could come about these multi-million dollar corporations who are using Kickstarter now to do certain things that is not really the intention. The Kickstarter is very much meant for sort of self-driven, self-generated projects. And so it does change the question. So, I do think it’s going to be fascinating to watch what happens.

What I want to talk about though is the future, sort of what else could be done in the Kickstarter model, because obviously the first question is all these, you know, Pushing Daisies, all these other TV shows that had people who loved them but didn’t come back.

I don’t know that that’s really necessarily going to happen, but probably because I’m completely in Broadway theater mode, I definitely think there’s a case to be made for some of these musicals that never get staged being staged this way. Say like we really want to stage this obscure thing which no one ever does, but we can do it. Well, Kickstarter might be a model for doing that kind of thing.

I also feel like some comic book properties have that kind of passionate fan base that could make that movie. I mean, The Preacher I wrote for Columbia is too expensive — way too expensive to do for a Kickstarter model — but that has rabid fans. And with the right director and the right Jesse Custer in there you could make that movie and people would be very, very excited and those fans might show up to fund it.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only downside here is if the studios decide to engage in a — like I put it — a “gun to the head model,” where this baby that you love, we’re going to kill it if you don’t give us this amount of dollars by this date.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And that’s gross.

**John:** I think that will spark outrage. That will self-correct.

**Craig:** It will self-correct. Exactly. I just don’t see this happening in a wide variety of circumstances. This is a special one, I think. But, my favorite law is the law of unintended consequences. So, let’s see what happens. But, for the Veronica Mars specific situation, I think this is a good thing for them.

I just don’t like Kickstarter. Because, I like people, and I feel bad for them, like what are you doing? You’re giving money to businessmen.

**John:** Come on! You’re sort of equating them with like hucksters and…

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** …church preachers. And I don’t think that’s the case at all. And here’s the other crucial thing. No one is promising them anything other than the fact that this thing might exist.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** And some of these people will go belly up and it won’t happen. But these aren’t investments in the way that people think grandma is going to be taken to the cleaners.

**Craig:** I get it. But the fact that they’re being honest about what I do believe is a certain level of hucksterism doesn’t excuse the hucksterism. It’s still businessmen.

You know, Google made its bones early on by saying, “Don’t be evil.” That was their corporate model. They’re so evil! Of course they’re evil.

**John:** I completely agree with you.

**Craig:** And you know why they’re evil? Because people are evil. And this is when you know you’re getting lied to when they tell you that “we’re not evil.” That’s step one. That’s step one of a march to evil.

You know, our thing here — here’s how you know that you and I aren’t evil — we don’t charge a dime. We don’t ask you for anything. We don’t even have a sponsor. We don’t even have Weiner Schnitzel coming on at minute twenty to talk about their new… — I don’t even know what’s on the menu. Well, hot dogs.

**John:** Well, part of the reason why we don’t have a sponsor though is that you and have had that conversation and it just feels gross that…

**Craig:** Gross! Thank you.

**John:** You and are both comparatively wealthy people, so for us to break into, whatever. So, there may be ultimately some things down the road that people want to buy or download, they can, because I know our back catalog is costing us a fortune, but no, it’s not worth… — No, we’re not trying to make money that way.

**Craig:** But don’t you think that a lot of these people who are putting things on Kickstarter, not all of them, of course, but a number of them — they have some money. In fact, oh god, if you think about it, just take a step back.

I’m going to put up, let’s say I have $1 million. I could put $1 million into my business, or I could put in $20,000, raise $980,000 on Kickstarter and have the exact same amount of equity in the business. Now, that is the definition to me of exploitation. This is why I also don’t like churches, but boy, now we’re really going to get into it aren’t we. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Okay. I feel like we could go on for another hour on this. But I do want to get to other topics and keep a sort of reasonable podcast.

Second topic is Highland which is the plaintext screenplay editor.

**Craig:** Highland is crap! I’m against it!

**John:** I’m so happy because we can have another debate on this.

**Craig:** No, no, it’s good.

**John:** So, here’s the backstory on Highland. So, Highland has been in beta for months, and months, and months. And what Highland does, it is a plaintext screenplay editor, so it works in Fountain, which is the plaintext screenplay format, and you can type a brand new script in Fountain and it will format it as a PDF or let you send it out to Final Draft, or keep it in Fountain if you want to stay in Fountain.

It’s meant to be sort of lightweight. The one kind of magic thing it can do is you can take a screenplay PDF, throw it on Highland, and it will melt it back down to editable text which is kind of magic. And Nima Yousefi who is our coder just worked some crazy magic to make that happen. That is cool and useful. It raises troubling questions about, you know, it’s always been really safe to send a PDF to somebody. And now it is no longer safe, so I do want to talk about that.

But, it was also interesting that we were talking about Google, and Google being, you know, “Don’t be evil.”

**Craig:** Evil!

**John:** Evil! Because this was also the week that Google Reader, which was the premier sort of RSS platform, which is how I sort of read most of the blogs I read, they announced they were going to be shutting that down. And suddenly this monoculture that had formed around Google Reader suddenly is struggling because there is just one huge dominant player that by being free and by being a big thing, no one could sort of grow around it, and now it went away.

And so I want to talk about monocultures in screenwriting and screenwriting apps, too, and sort of what we can do better.

**Craig:** Well, I had a chance to play around with Highland and I used it — and not the beta version but your new almost ready to ship version, your final. Your Gold Master as they say in the business.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And I used it precisely the way I would use it. And precisely the way I think a lot of people will use it, which is specifically to melt — I love that term — to melt a PDF into an editable document. Because I’m very happy to write in Final Draft, and I’m very happy to write in Movie Magic, and I even like writing in Fade In. Eh, I’m comfortable with that. I don’t need a new version of that. But, I do love the idea that I can take a PDF of something and convert it back and make it editable.

And I found that that function worked extraordinarily well. The only issue it has, and it’s acknowledged in the software, is if you’re dealing with a document that has asterisks, it doesn’t quite know what to do with those. And maybe down the line Nima will solve that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But barring the asterisks, it was remarkably accurate. Much better so than the beta version was. And I personally don’t see any ethical issue here. I don’t think PDFs are any safer than anything. The truth is the only difference between a PDF and an editable document when it comes to safety is a $13/hour typist. And so personally I don’t really think that there is any — if somebody wants to change something, they’re going to change it. The PDF isn’t a force-field that protects that.

So, that function is awesome. What does Highland cost, by the way?

**John:** Highland is $19.99. For the first month it is $9.99, so half off. And it is designed — we really talked a lot about the price because I wanted it to be a price that makes you actually think about buying it before you just randomly buy it. I find sometimes people will buy something before they really should buy it. And those are the people that take a tremendous amount of support burden.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because then they write in saying like, “This doesn’t do what I wanted to do.” It’s like, “Well, it doesn’t do that. Maybe you should have actually read and seen what it should do first.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s also why we offer a free demo version. So, if you go to quoteunquoteapps.com you can download the demo version that does everything that the real thing does, it just puts a watermark on it if you’re trying to melt a file down or send it out.

So, $9.99 is the price here at launch.

**Craig:** I think that’s a good price. And initially when you started talking about this many years ago, it seems, I thought, “Oh man, $9.99 or $19.99 seems really high,” but the world has changed. And what used to be — because the initial download app culture was entirely driven by iOS, and that culture was in and of itself driven, I think, a bit by iTunes where people had become accustomed to paying $0.99 for things. And this was the step one of weaning them off of the sharing teat as it were and getting them used to buying things.

And then they started selling apps and they were like, “Okay, well people are used to $0.99, so let’s sell apps for $0.99 up to $2.99, or $3.99.” And then as you went forward and people started getting used to the idea of purchasing all of their apps in this way, for instance Mac OS has built in the App Store where essentially now you never purchase software in any other way. Suddenly now you were exposed to premium apps that were all the way up to $100 or more. And so $19.99 doesn’t seem wildly out of whack at all for what is unique functionality.

I hope you’ve patented it and protected it.

**John:** There’s actually no way to patent or protect it.

**Craig:** Oh, well, in that case. [laughs]

**John:** It’s protected in the sense that it’s very difficult to do. That’s the protection.

**Craig:** Okay. All right. Well, hopefully you don’t get cannibalized and you stay ahead of the evil corporations that will attempt to rip you off, perhaps by raising money through Kickstarter. But, that aside, $9.99 is a deal. So, I’ve spent far more than that on apps that did far less.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, I love it. I think ten bucks for the next month to get something that converts PDFs effectively. Oh, and here’s the other thing. I did run the asset test, for instance, for translation, lingual translation software is to take something in a language, run it through the translator, and then run it back out and see if it’s identical. And it worked, so I ran that on Highland. I took a PDF. I converted it to the text — I guess it’s Fountain is your proprietary text — and then I exported it back out to Final Draft, and it was perfect.

**John:** Great. Hooray.

**Craig:** So ten bucks for that, sure. $19.99? Absolutely. Well done. Good job, Nima. And you did not do this with Kickstarter funds.

**John:** No, it was the Bank of John August. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the different projects because a lot of this has been just sort of my slow master plan response to what I sort of see as a monoculture problem that happens in screenwriting is that Final Draft is dominant. Movie Magic is sort of a second place. And those are sort of your top premier powerhouse screenwriting apps.

And they do some things that are genuinely pro-features that Highland doesn’t even try to do. So, things like keeping track of starred revisions, colored pages — those are beasts. Those are actually really difficult things to do. And I want to make sure that we can sort of protect the big apps that can do that kind of stuff, because without them my life would be much, much less pleasant.

But, I don’t actually find writing in them, first drafts, to be especially enjoyable. And I’ve tried different things. I’ve used Scrivener for a script. I used this unannounced script that’s a Fountain editor that’s great — it’s coming out soon — for my ABC pilot. And I’ve used Highland for a lot of stuff. And I find that for most stuff that a new screenwriter is doing, or at least through that first draft, it’s actually in some ways a better, more freeing experience to not be looking at the final formatted page. You’re just looking at — it’s just words. And that can be a very useful thing.

But what I don’t want to imply is that like this is in some way a Final Draft killer, because I don’t want to kill Final Draft. And I sort of want to make that really clear. The stuff I’ve been trying to do over the last couple years — Fountain, which is the open source plaintext formatting screenwriting format, is designed so that Final Draft files, you will always be able to open those files. You will always be able to open a Fountain file. Will you always be able to open a Final Draft file?

Well, who knows if Final Draft will be around in five years? I hope it will be.

**Craig:** I’ll give you the answer to that. The answer is no, because Final Draft itself can’t open old Final Draft files.

**John:** It can’t open the FDR files.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Which is the original format. And to be fair, the FDX file, which is the current format for Final Draft, it is in XML format, so it’s possible to parse it, but it’s just I’ve been in the situation where I’ve looked through old disks and found like WriteNow files, and you try to open them and you can’t. Nothing can open them. And they’re just a mess.

And so I want to make sure that there’s always a way to sort of get stuff in and out. Fountain is always plaintext. And so even as we were in beta there would be times where through miscommunication we wouldn’t send out the next beta, and so the current one would expire and people couldn’t open their files in Highland. But like you can always open the files because any text editor in the world can open these files and that’s a useful thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The second thing we did was Courier Prime which was Courier in Final Draft is Courier Final Draft, and it’s just not as good as it could be. And it is proprietary to Final Draft. And so we made Courier Prime on an open font license. Anyone can use it. We use it in Highland, but other apps have started using it now, too.

So, I just want to make sure that there are many tools out there to be making screenplays that don’t have to go back to these big powerhouse apps that I hope are always around but I’m not sure are always going to be around.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think you’ve done a great service and you’ve done it the right way. And you’ve created something that people will want. And it’s a good thing.

Personally, where I differ from you is that I do hope Final Draft dies because I think it is a cumbersome piece of crap that is unwieldy, ugly, and is an extension of a, you know, a desire to sell a culture more than a piece of software. You know, it seems like the corporation is far more interested now in convincing people that they got a shot in their contests and baloney and less concerned with actually saying, “Here’s a gorgeous piece of software that exceeds your expectations.” It doesn’t.

Plus they charge for tech support. I just hate them. I do. I hate them.

**John:** I will say, like, I wouldn’t be scared about Final Draft dying if I saw a competitor that could do the kinds of things it does and could do it better than it does it. That would be fantastic. I’m not going to be able to make that, and that’s not our intention. So, we made something smaller and lightweight that can do most of that stuff. [Sirens]

**Craig:** Look at you with sirens in the background.

**John:** I know, it’s New York City, man.

**Craig:** How does that feel, brah?

**John:** And next week I’ll be in Chicago, so I’ll be hearing the Chicago fire trucks that pass all the time.

**Craig:** Oh, Chicago Fire.

**John:** Because the one thing I’ve learned from Derek Haas’s show is that Chicago is constantly on fire. [laughs] I’ll be choking from smoke because that city is always burning.

**Craig:** That city is on fire. And the men who put those fires out are hot!

**John:** Yeah, they’re pretty sexy men when they take off those uniforms.

**Craig:** They are hot. And the women are hot and lesbian. Oh!

**John:** It’s so good.

**Craig:** Boy, I almost want to just move to Chicago and start lighting stuff up.

**John:** [laughs] Derek will inspire a whole culture of arson just so that we can get those firefighters to come and fight those fires.

**Craig:** How about that show, by the way? Just how about that show?

**John:** I just can’t, I mean, I’m so, so, so, so happy for Derek. I’ll confess that I’m a little bit surprised — not that Derek wrote a great show, but you never bank on a show really clicking or working. And so you’re like, “Oh, they’re going to give it a college try,” but they’re doing great.

**Craig:** Well, I got to say, when he talked about the show I’m like, “Okay, sounds good, sounds like a TV show.” And then he said it’s going to be a Dick Wolf show. And I thought, well, when was the last Dick Wolf show that just fell apart and didn’t work? I mean, that guy has got a pretty good track record. He kind of knows what he’s doing, you know.

**John:** You know, I can point to one Dick Wolf show that didn’t work.

**Craig:** What…oh, your Dick Wolf show.

**John:** Yeah. And so to be…

**Craig:** Boy, I walked into that one, didn’t I?

**John:** So, I will say that Dick Wolf and I did not get along especially well on this TV show that I created called DC that was Dick Wolf. And the better show would have been us yelling at each other across sets.

So, I was nervous for Derek going into it that he would have the same experience I had with Dick Wolf, but he has not apparently had that experience, so again, happiness and joy.

**Craig:** Does anyone in the world have a better name than Dick Wolf?

**John:** It’s an amazing name.

**Craig:** Dick Wolf.

**John:** Yeah, it’s good stuff.

**Craig:** So cool.

**John:** And that’s not one of the Pixar suggestions, a really cool name for a character, but there were three — I’m going to segue here, there were three rules…

**Craig:** We have to do a podcast on segueing, apparently.

**John:** Yes. There were three rules from this list of 21 story rules, we probably talked about it in a general sense on the podcast before, but there were three that really stuck out at me as I looked at it again this week. And so I want to talk about them.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** First rule. “You admire a character for trying more than for their success.”

**Craig:** Great rule.

**John:** What a really good rule, and something that people don’t realize until they’re sort of deep into it is that it’s not about winning the game. It’s not about scoring the touchdown. It’s about, classically as Lindsay Doran would say, it’s about kissing your wife. It’s how hard the journey was to get there and all the times you could have bailed on the journey and all the times you stuck with the journey that make this a victory.

You could lose the game, but as long as you had achieved something as a character, that’s better than winning.

**Craig:** Success is not dramatic. I guess that’s the best way I can put it. It’s actually kind of boring. Success is the rote delivery of what must happen so that you feel satisfied that the meal has ended, but it is only satisfying because it was difficult to achieve. And in and of itself what it signifies is the end of drama. Drama, to me, is entirely about failure and difficulty and effort and sweat and misery. That is what we find interesting about success.

Failure doesn’t require success to be interesting. But success requires failure to be interesting. Nothing is more boring than putting yourself in God Mode on a game and just killing, you know?

So, that rule is a terrific rule. It is why — even when you look at superhero movies that are about people who are overpowered, they are in God Mode, the movies then work overtime to make it really, really hard for them. And so Superman must have Kryptonite and Batman must be savagely beaten by people that are bigger and stronger.

**John:** Yeah. What I also like about her rule here is you admire a character. And what a good word “admire” is, because it’s talking about what your relationship is with the character, what the audience’s relationship is with the character. And admire is exactly what you sort of want. Yes, you want them to be loved, but you also want them to say like, “Oh, I see what that character is doing and, good, I’m so proud of that character.”

That’s one of the things when I first pitched Charlie’s Angels and I was talking to Drew about sort of what this movie would be, I describe that I wanted to be proud of the Angels, which seems like a weird thing to be talking about in an action movie, but it’s a rare situation, like when you’re really proud that they actually did this thing. I described them as like your dorky kid sister who somehow wins the Olympics.

You can be annoyed by them at time, but you’re also really proud of what they were able to do. And that relationship with the character and the audience is unique and special in situations where you can feel genuinely proud. Even dark characters or antiheroes, you can sometimes have that click with them, where you see what they’re able to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was talking to an educator recently. I’m sorry, to be more honest, I was listening to him speak. And he mentioned that there is a study recently done that identified this quality that is a better predictor of future success in life than other things like test scores and so forth. And for lack of a better word it’s grit. It’s learning to prevail when things are very hard. It’s learning to get back up when you’ve been knocked down.

And when we watch characters do that we find it honorable. That’s why “admire” is a good word. It is worthy of honor. It is a wonderful value. And we instinctively as humans sympathize with someone who is getting back up against very, very difficult odds. We like people who have grit. And your character can’t have grit unless they’re in a situation where grit is required.

**John:** I agree. Her second rule is, “You got to keep in my mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.”

Such a good rule. It’s something that I honestly struggle with at times because I will sometimes find myself writing a scene a certain way because it’s just a more interesting way for me to write the scene, or I’m just bored of the conventional way to write that scene, but is it really the best version of that scene? Or am I being clever to be clever because I want to entertain myself in writing it or to have other people say like, “Oh, what a clever scene it is you wrote.”

It struck me, you know, so often we talk about screenwriting being like architecture. And I think I see that with real buildings, too. You look at, so two Disney examples. I think of Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall, which is the shiny thing in Los Angeles. And you look at it, it’s just a marvel. And so you go up to it, you kind of want to touch it, you want to see it, and even inside it’s really fascinating. I just love that building.

And then you look at the Team Disney Building on the Disney Lot.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, the Team Disney building is the one that has the dwarves holding up the ceiling, holding up the roof, and you sort of look at it, it’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s kind of clever, that’s kind of cool.” And then you go into that building…

**Craig:** It’s the worst.

**John:** That’s the worst building.

**Craig:** Worst building. I mean, people that are running this massive company and they’re meeting with fabulously wealthy individuals, and actors, and they’re all crammed in these cubicles. Cubicles! And there’s this enormous hallway that looks like it’s out of Egypt or something, which is actually beautiful. But then the actual space where people are doing their work is dreadful.

**John:** I hate that hallway out of Egypt, also, because there’s these weird sort of like fat/thin pillars that you can’t really do anything in there. I guess you can use that space to throw a party every once and while, and you could light it differently, but if you go in there in the afternoon it’s just like this dark vertical tunnel that you have to walk through.

And so you have to walk through two sets of double doors that are out — you have to go outside twice to get to where the elevator bays are.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** You never… — You know, it’s one of those things where I was always tempted to say, “Oh, it’s indoor/outdoor space,” but no, it’s just a horrible space.

**Craig:** It’s dead space.

**John:** Dead space.

**Craig:** And actually the part of that that I like is that it’s so — it’s weirdly gothic. It’s so out of place for a movie studio to have this strange cathedral-ish hallway of ruddy stone. And it is so useless. And so you’re just — it does inspire a little bit of ooh-ah as you walk through it, and then you get through it and suddenly you’re in a low ceiling crappy lobby with an elevator that takes you to crappy offices with bad carpet. It is wildly screwed up.

**John:** I don’t know what the last time is you went there, but they did redo some of the offices and they’re much, much, much better. So, I had a meeting with Disney, and it was vastly better, but it could have been in any building because it wasn’t part of this Michael Graves sort of vision for what this thing was to be.

And to me that’s an example of like, “God, wouldn’t it be so funny if we had the dwarves holding up the roof?” Like that’s a great idea. But they didn’t actually think about what you were actually trying to do, which is to make a building that people would want to be in.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that what really it is with movies. It’s like, well, what is the movie that people want to be in? And it may not be that fancy vision. It may be something that’s actually quite a bit more conventional, but just a better version of conventional. And so thinking of that as you’re thinking about what movies you’re writing, how you’re writing your movies. Think of it as an audience, not as a writer.

**Craig:** Agreed 100%

**John:** Her 13th point, so we really do skip ahead a lot here, “Give your characters opinions. Passive or malleable characters might seem likable to you as you right, but it’s poison to the audience.”

**Craig:** Hmm. Well, I think that’s a good idea. I mean, I’ve never… — It’s a little bit of an odd point to me because in some ways I feel it’s a little self-evident. I don’t know how to write a character that is opinion-less because I don’t know what to write. Have you ever encountered yourself writing…?

**John:** I have. And I think it’s also tied into…two things. First off, you tend to sort of put yourself in your main character. And so especially in early scripts your main character sort of talks like how you talk. And you want to be liked. And so you want your characters to be likable. So, you don’t want them to say too mean of things. You don’t want them to be too pointed. You want them to get along with everybody else. But, getting along isn’t the goal. I mean, the reason why you’re making a movie is because this character is in a unique situation. So, make the situation unique and have them stake out some opinions.

**Craig:** I don’t think anybody is surprised by the fact that my instinct is to not write characters that get along with people. [laughs] And you have wanted people. I mean, isn’t that classic?

**John:** Early on I had to fight against my tendency to do that. And once I recognized it then it worked out really well. People ask me like, “Oh, are you any of the characters in your movies?” And so here’s the honest to god truth:

I’m the Katie Holmes character in Go where I’m the girl who is trying to put a damper on things, saying like, “No, that’s not a good idea, that’s not safe,” but who ultimately sort of has the best time of everybody because I sort of got drunk and let go and slept the drug dealer. I’m that guy. I’m also Will in Big Fish. So, I’m sort of the bit of a wet blanket who is skeptical, but ultimately can be won over by the romance of it all.

Who are you in your movies? Are you any characters?

**Craig:** Yeah, the only, yeah, I mean, Sandy Patterson in Identity Thief. That’s definitely me as the sort of guy who follows the rules and believes in the rules and is not adventuresome. And who maybe sometimes suffers from a — I don’t want to say a lack of imagination, because I think I’m imaginative, but a little bit of fear sometimes of wandering away from the reservation. And who gets frustrated by people who are irrational. And so that is the closest I get, I think.

**John:** You know what? I think Sandy Patterson would also hate Kickstarter.

**Craig:** Oh, for sure! Oh, I guarantee it. Sandy Patterson literally would not understand Kickstarter. And he would feel bad… — That’s the other thing is that the Sandy Patterson thing is that he’s very logical and very rational, but then he feels bad for people because he feels like they’re getting fooled, you know? And that’s my whole Kickstarter thing is I just think people are getting fooled.

I’m not angry at the people who give money at Kickstarter. I’m angry at the people who are taking money at Kickstarter. Money takers!

**John:** How dare they.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things. So, my One Cool Thing is actually an app as well, but it’s an app that we’re using every day on Big Fish and it’s called StageWrite. It’s for the iPad. And what it is — it’s very clever, and it’s a professional app — an expensive app but a professional app that’s designed for choreographers and for directors of theater pieces. And at a glance it sort of looks like Keynote, the presentation manager.

But what it is, it’s for keeping track of choreography in a scene. And so you sort of get a top-down view and you can put your set on it. And then you can keep track of all the characters on the stage, how they’re moving, and where they’re moving to. And so you set up these scenes and it’s a way of being able to remember how the choreography is for something, but also how to share the choreography. You can send it from one iPad to the other iPad so the different choreographers and directors can talk about sort of what actually happens.

So, it was actually designed by our Assistant Director, Jeff Whiting. And it’s just really great and amazing. So, not many people who listen to this podcast will probably need this app, but it’s fascinating to see something that’s built for specifically — you know, they’re scratching exactly the itch they have, which is sort of what I did with Highland. And so I just applaud that effort.

**Craig:** Well my One Cool Thing is something that everybody can do. And if you are, say, on Kickstarter and thinking about sending $20 to the guy who wants to make a video game console that he will then charge you for, consider Kiva instead. And we haven’t talked about Kiva on here, have we?

**John:** I don’t think so. I like Kiva as an idea though.

**Craig:** Yeah, well Kiva has been around for a long time. This is a cool thing, but it’s certainly not a new thing. Kiva basically is a microloan concept. It is a non-profit company. And the notion is that all across the world — if you’re not familiar with the idea of microloans — all across the world there are individuals who are running very, very small proprietorships. We’re talking about women in Peru who are trying to open a food stand, or men in the Ukraine who need a new tractor for their field.

And they simply don’t have access to bank loans. They are either geographically separated from it, or frankly they just aren’t in a position where they can get a loan. And they register through field agents. Kiva has field agents that sort of go around, and take applications, weed out the people who are obviously nuts or not cool, and then put these profiles on Kiva.com.

And they basically say: here’s the money they need. And what’s so startling is that the amounts are so small. And they are life-changing for people. So, suddenly a woman needs $300 to open a store to help pay for her son’s education and to have a life separate from a husband who has left or passed away. And everybody can chip in. And you can chip in whatever you want. You can give her a dollar, and then when it hits $100 she is fully funded, whatever her amount is, she’s fully funded.

And then they pay the loans back. And I love that because this isn’t just freebie stuff. They are saying, “Look, I actually can pay this money back, because this is a business.” And it is in the vein of teach-a-man-to-fish as opposed to give-them-a-fish.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s not major charity focus. I don’t donate a lot of money to it, but that’s sort of the point is that you don’t need to. And I’ve been paid back every time. And I love that. And when you talk about the notion of changing the world, I would much rather see one lady in Ecuador have her shop than the Pebble Watch people, but that’s me.

And so, anyway, I urge you guys, if you do have a little extra cash lying around, and by little I mean anything — twenty bucks, all the way to whatever you want. Register at Kiva.com and you can select your creditees — creditees/creditors? No, we’re the creditors. Whatever, the people you loan money to. You can filter it out by location. You can filter it by gender. You can filter by the loan amount. You can sort of pick and choose as you wish. I kind of just do it randomly because I don’t have any particular selection matrix. And you just start making your loans.

And then you get this email saying, “You’ve been paid back.”By the way, I’ve been reloaning the same few hundred bucks for years. That’s the cool part. [laughs] So, I put in a bunch of money, I loan it out, they pay me back, I loan it again. They pay me back, I loan it again. It’s very cool.

So, if you’re feeling Kickstarty in life, how about that.

**John:** All right. Cool. Craig, thank you again for a fun podcast. I said at the start but I shall say it again, all of the stuff that we talked about this week will be in links at the end of this podcast, so either if you’re reading this on your iPad, it’s probably at the bottom of the post. But, if you need to go to johnaugust.com/podcast, you’ll see the whole post there with all the links. Stuart does that; god bless Stuart.

If you are listening to this show on some device and have access to iTunes, give us a rating on iTunes because that helps other people find the show.

**Craig:** Yeah. That would be great. And one other thing. If you don’t like what I have to say, and I know a lot of you won’t, that’s okay. But if you have large opinions on this, send them to ask@johnaugust.com. Don’t put them on Twitter because it’s very hard to have any kind of realistic discussion on Twitter, or productive discussion. And also we could read those and then I could respond.

So, if you’re angry, just put your anger in an email.

**John:** Yeah, and send it to John…[laughs]

**Craig:** Send it ask@johnaugust.com which will become a repository for ihateyou@craigmazin.com.

**John:** Exactly. And Stuart goes through that account and we’ll send those through to Craig.

**Craig:** Poor Stuart will just be crying, like, “They’re so mean.”

**John:** [laughs] All these terrible things. Like, “How dare you Kickstart me!” Craig, have a great week and I’ll talk to you next week from Chicago. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Untitled Screenplays](http://untitledscreenplays.tumblr.com/) and [Unfinished Scripts](https://twitter.com/UnfinishedS) are similar but different
* Use the code “SCRIPT” to unlock [discounted seats](http://johnaugust.com/2013/big-fish-previews-and-special-unlock-code) for the first four Big Fish performances, and [let us know you’re coming](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com)!
* One of John’s many doppelgängers [as Hebrew National’s Uncle Sam](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf2j-YzZRAA)
* [The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/when-america-was-female/273672/) on Uncle Sam’s “older, classier sister” Columbia
* [The Veronica Mars Movie Project](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project) on Kickstarter
* James Poneywisic of Time [on Veronica Mars](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/13/why-the-world-needs-a-kickstarter-veronica-mars-movie/)
* [The Hollywood Reporter](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/has-veronica-mars-kickstarter-campaign-428903)’s coverage, including a quote from writer/producer John Rogers
* Luke Pebler’s [guest post on Suzanne Scott’s blog](http://www.suzanne-scott.com/2013/03/15/guest-post-my-gigantic-issue-with-the-veronica-mars-kickstarter/)
* [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/), the plaintext screenplay editor for Mac, half-off through March 31st at the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?ls=1&mt=12)
* [Emma Coats’s](https://twitter.com/lawnrocket) 22 story rules on [The Pixar Touch](http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html)
* [StageWrite for iPad](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stagewrite-for-ipad/id504168392?mt=8) at the Mac App Store
* Give a loan and change a life with [Kiva](http://www.kiva.org/start)
* Direct your umbrage [here](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) instead of Twitter
* OUTRO: [Kickstart My Heart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4h-BqwlXI) acoustic cover by whipsy

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/rhythm-and-blues).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 80, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Episode 80! That’s just a lot of episodes.

**Craig:** A lot of talking. I don’t know about you; I was sure that by episode 5 it would just be awkward silences punctuated by an occasional cough.

**John:** I would say actually the early episodes had the biggest number of awkward silences because it took awhile — I think, honestly, especially for me — to find a rhythm for us talking. But, we’ve made it to 80, so if we made it 80, I think there’s a very good chance that we’ll make it to 100. And we need to start thinking about what we’re going to do for our hundredth episode.

**Craig:** So funny that you bring that up. Because I was in the car the other day, pondering this very topic. And you and I had talked about maybe doing a live podcast here in Los Angeles. Hopefully you’ll be back by then. It’s 20 weeks from now.

**John:** Yes. It is this summer. So, actually in our staff meeting — I have staff meetings now.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** Yeah, I know. I don’t want to blow your mind, but with Stuart and Ryan, there’s actually enough stuff that we actually have a weekly staff meeting. And even while I’ve been here in New York we do staff meetings via iChat or Skype or whatever.

And we were talking about it in the staff meeting, and so I asked Siri, “Siri, what is 20 weeks from today?” And she told me it was this summer, like July 23 or something, which is a time that I’m going to be in Los Angeles. So, yes, I think we should do a hundredth episode live. I’m going to say it right here on the air: I think we need to do a live episode.

**Craig:** I think so, too. And it’s going to be a celebration. We finally get to look upon all of the dorky faces of the people that listen to us. They can look upon our dorky faces. It will be a massive dork out.

**John:** Listeners should know that we are starting to talk with venues and finding a good place for us to do this, preferably a place where people could actually drink alcohol if they chose to drink alcohol and make a little party out of it.

**Craig:** Yeah! It will be the best podcast ever.

**John:** Best podcast, by far.

Now, Craig, I am still in New York, but tomorrow I’m so excited because I get to fly home for just a long weekend, which is so blessed. Because, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I get really, really homesick. It’s just one of my things — I get really homesick.

And I was describing to a friend that I think homesickness is actually not something that you accumulate. It’s like you have a reservoir of non-homesickness, and it depletes. And eventually it just runs dry and then you’re just insanely homesick.

**Craig:** When you say homesick, homesick for Los Angeles or homesick for your family?

**John:** Homesick for my family. I miss Los Angeles, but I really miss my family. And seeing them on the computer is just not the same.

**Craig:** It’s not. I am with you 100%. And we’ll sort of actually talk about a related topic shortly in this whole — you know, we moved to Los Angeles to be in the movie business, and then they keep sending us places. And, of course, you’ve made a choice to do this other business that is naturally somewhere else. But, it’s very hard for me to be away from my family.

Two weeks, I start to go a little crazy. I don’t know what your threshold is.

**John:** Yeah. Two weeks is where it really kicked in for me.

**Craig:** Plus, also, I mean, I don’t know if you get these calls. There’s the, “You have to talk to your son,” call. And so then you’re doing this parenting and you can already detect the resentment that you’re not there from your spouse. “Why did you leave me to deal with this?” [laughs] No good comes of it. None.

**John:** So, hopefully the only good thing that will come of this long protracted period is Big Fish, which is actually about a father’s issues with his child, and all of those sorts of family issues. So, hopefully that will be the good thing that does come out of this protracted time. And today we were actually staging through the end of the show which is one of the weepiest things I’ve ever encountered in my life.

And so I’ve spent the last two days crying, which is not helping to stop up that homesickness thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I get to get on a plane and go home tomorrow and I’m so excited.

**Craig:** Well, I’m very glad. One of the cruel ironies of our business is that — any storytelling business — is that the theme of the father who does not spend enough time with his wife, husband, or children crops up constantly. And all of those stories are put together and produced by people who are not spending time with their spouses or their children while they do it.

**John:** Indeed. And one of the things that I mentioned on Twitter this week is I get to show this Big Fish finally to people in Chicago. And I asked people like, “Hey, do you want to come see this thing I’ve been working on?” And people said yes. And I asked, again, like, “If I could get you a special discount promo code so that you could come to those first early performances, would you come?” And people said yes enthusiastically.

So, I have good news. People can actually come see this show of fathers on the road, and sons, and dysfunction, and come see me in Chicago because I would love to see you. And I would feel less homesick if I knew that my listeners were out there in the audience.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So, here’s the actual deal. There will be a link at the show notes at johnaugust.com. But, it’s honesty simpler if I just tell you to Google “Ticketmaster Big Fish.” The first thing that’s going to come up is tickets for Big Fish in Chicago.

So, here’s the deal I made with producers. The first four previews, which is a Tuesday through Friday, April 2 through April 5 at 7pm, if you use the promo code “Script” as you’re checking out, you can get tickets for $30 rather than $100.

**Craig:** Whoa! Nice.

**John:** It’s $70 off. So, that’s pretty great just for being a Scriptnotes listener. So, if you would like to come join me in Chicago to see Big Fish, I would love to see you. I genuinely honestly would love to see you. I’m going to be there at least through opening. If you do come, whether you’re coming on those first four days and you’re using special promo codes, or if you’re just coming some other time, or group tickets, or whatever, if you know you’re coming to the show and you want to tell me that you’re coming to the show, just send me a tweet @johnaugust and let me know what show you’re coming to, what seat you’re in.

And if the world isn’t crashing down and I’m not needed to do something to fix something, I’ll come say hi because I’m just going to be in Chicago and I’ll just come say hi.

**Craig:** And that is priceless.

**John:** That’s the kind of personal service you’re not going to get from, I don’t know, the Nerdist Writers Podcast.

**Craig:** Or any podcast, let’s face it.

**John:** Let’s face it. So, anyway, if you want to come join me in Chicago, it’s an open invitation to listeners. And to you, Craig, if you find yourself in Chicago. Derek Haas is going to be there. Derek has to come see Big Fish.

**Craig:** I know. He’s shooting his wonderful show Chicago Fire there. You know, I ran into your producer, Dan Jinks — your wonderful producer Dan Jinks — at a party a couple weeks ago. And he also extended a lovely invitation to me. And I would love to go. I just don’t know how I’m going to get away to Chicago at that time. But, I will try.

I know that in the back of my mind what I know is that it’s going to be successful, it’s going to be on Broadway no matter what. So, I’m going to see it.

It’s interesting — it’s a challenge — I mean, I actually can see you running into it. We’re in the movie business, we’re in the television business. We never have to worry about people seeing it. You know, it’s like just go down the street, you’ll see it. Or, walk into the room and you’ll see it. But this is tough. It’s like a destination entertainment thing. And so I have to plan it.

**John:** One of the things I’ve noticed this week is I was trying to describe the process to people who come from the movie business. And it’s like we’re in preproduction, production, and post all simultaneously on the same thing. And so we’re in preproduction in the sense that we’re using temporary props and we’re sort of blocking things and getting things to work, but we’re also in production because we really are finishing up numbers and literally getting every foot stepped down to exactly where it is.

But this last week we started doing the orchestrations. And so it was very much like the experience of like film spotting, where you’re trying to figure out where the music is going to go, or like color timing. You’re doing these really technical things.

And when we get to Chicago, it gets even more technical because there’s like lighting and tech and all that stuff. And, so, it’s a whole new world for me, but it’s also all these things happen simultaneously.

What’s most honestly genuinely terrifying to me is all of the variables that I can’t control, which is literally like that tech thing that doesn’t work right. Or, the audience is live there in the theater. And so what happens when that guy has the heart attack, or just weird stuff happens?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s exciting, but it’s also just terrifying to me. Because the worst thing that can happen when we have a movie released is like, oh well, a print can break. But then they fix the print and they just keep going. It’s not, you know… — Things are finished in a way that they can just never be finished in theater. And it’s lovely but also frightening to me.

**Craig:** There’s also this other thing that I think about with live theater and that is film, when it’s finished, that is the film that every single person who sees the movie will experience. But every night is a different performance. Every night, sometimes the performers will have a great night. Sometimes one of them will be off. One of them is sick. That whole thing is just fascinating to me.

You know, every time you invite somebody to see a show you must be wondering in the back of your head, “I hope tonight will be a good version of the show.” Crazy.

**John:** Yeah. So, for every role in Big Fish we have understudies and we also have the swings. And their responsibility is to be able to fill in for these certain tracks of roles. And so if that person is out, this person can slide in, and there’s this whole logic math problem about, like, how you can cover every role in the show so that the curtain can go up?

So, as I’m watching the show with the people who I’m expecting to be there, also in the wings — and sometimes swapping-in in front of me — are swings who are going to take over for that part. Or, we’re also teaching the understudies every line so that they can do the show. It’s just a completely different thing that doesn’t exist in the movie business.

**Craig:** Wow. I love it.

**John:** Great. So, let’s get to our real business today which is I wanted to talk first off about the challenges of the visual effects industry. And Rhythm & Hues, which is going bankrupt, so we’re going to talk through that. I also want to talk about some reader questions because we’ve gotten a whole bunch and it’s been a long time since we’ve gone through the viewer mailbag. So, this time we’re going to actually share it a little bit and you’ll read some questions so it’s not just me…

**Craig:** I feel like you have an illness and you’re not telling me. And so you’re like a dad that runs a store and you keep giving your son more and more responsibility. And he’s so excited, but other people are sort of nodding sadly at him, like, “Yeah, it’s good that you know how to do the cash register now.”

And I think, “Well, it is good, of course. I’m a big boy.” And then I hear you coughing and I don’t get it.

**John:** I cough a little bit, and there’s a little blood in my handkerchief?

**Craig:** Yeah. The little blood in your handkerchief and you pat me on the shoulder and say, “You’re going to do fine.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I will do fine.” And the old lady that does the books is crying and everything is so confusing to me. But, I feel like a big boy.

**John:** Yeah. I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last night, and Big Daddy, that’s the state he’s sort of in. It’s sort of the opposite — everyone knows that Big Daddy is dying, and big daddy doesn’t know that he’s dying, so everyone is treating him strangely and he catches wind of, “That’s right, I’m dying.”

But, let’s get started. Let’s start with visual effects, because I sort of saw during the Oscars there was controversy over Life of Pi and the guy accepting the award for the visual effects of Life of Pi got cut off during that time. And it started this sort of firestorm. And I’ve noticed people’s twitter badges were green suddenly. And I’m like, “Wait, is it Iran again?” I didn’t know sort of what was going on.

And I saw the YouTube video, it went kind of viral, of what big movies that you have seen would look like without visual effects, and of course they look terrible.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But I want to talk through that because the issues are actually really complicated. And it’s not a thing you can sort of boil down to one thing, but it’s difficult to make a living as a visual effects artist for certain reasons. It’s difficult for an American company to stay in business. And all the stuff that’s happening in visual effects could happen in other parts of the industry, including what writers do.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a tough situation. Let’s just wind back to the Oscars. The gentleman who was part of the team that won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, his speech was too long, and they — I thought it was very funny that the play-off music this time was the theme from Jaws. I thought that was hysterical. But, he got cut off just as he was about to talk about the loss — or potential loss — of this company Rhythm and Hues which has been around forever. Well, at least as long as I’ve been in the business.

And they recently filed for bankruptcy and they’re in real trouble. And this is one of the A-list top visual effects houses. First, I just want to say any controversy about the fact that the guy got cut off is ridiculous. Everybody who goes to the Oscars is told you have this much time. So, if it’s really important for you to make a statement about Rhythm and Hues, you know, plan and time your speech — just a thought — because frankly it’s kind of obnoxious to go over time. I really do think so.

Okay, that aside, here’s what’s going on: Rhythm and Hues is a visual effects house. So, movies and television shows, when they do visual effects shooting the production itself doesn’t complete the work. 9 times out of 10 what we’re talking about is green screen stuff. Green screen has become the most common visual effect, maybe I guess second only to like wire removal and stuff like that. These are somewhat simple things, except that they’re not simple. And the take time to do right.

And so outside companies like Rhythm and Hues do all of that work. Some of it is rote and some of it is not at all rote. When you talk about creating visual effects, for instance the Tiger in Life of Pi, that’s a big deal. Now you’re talking about true artistry; you’re not talking about rote work.

What’s happened to the visual effects industry, just as it has happened to general production, is that movie studios and other visual effects supervisors have basically been outsourcing it to overseas because it’s cheaper. And when we say overseas I think people immediately jump to the notion of a sweatshop full of kids in China that are painting out wires.

But it’s actually — Canada is a huge problem for us here in the United States in that regard. And the way it works is pretty simple. There are two ways that we get outbid by international companies. Their labor tends to be cheaper. And they offer tax incentives. And the tax incentives come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but it’s always some version of this: If you hire people here in Canada they get a salary here in Canada. Part of their salary, of course, goes to tax here in Canada. We will collect that tax and we will not keep that tax. We will send it back to you in the form of a rebate. So, you get to write that part off of your overall bill.

And even though we’re not as a state profiting off of the work through taxes, the fact that these people are being employed, they’ll spend money and it will help improve the economy. That’s the whole theory.

**John:** Let me pause right there. Because what you’re generally saying about tax incentives also applies to actual feature production or to television production. That’s one of the draws. That’s one of the reasons why you shoot shows in certain parts of Canada, or you shoot in certain states is because either that state or the country provides tax incentives that makes it really attractive to shoot in New Mexico, or Michigan, or…

**Craig:** Atlanta.

**John:** …whatever the state is that has that kind of thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, Georgia is a big one now.

**John:** Georgia is a big one. And so that happens in movies and television overall, but there’s also some special things that are kind of unique about the visual effects situation, which is that because it’s not right during the middle of production, it’s this thing that goes on afterwards, different companies are bidding against each other to try to do the visual effects for this project. And some companies have the advantage of the tax rebates. Some of them have other advantages of being overseas. And it’s a crazy situation of a race for the bottom to see who can submit the lowest price to do that work.

**Craig:** Everybody is racing to the bottom. The companies are racing to the bottom. And curiously the people who are providing these tax benefits and lower labor costs are also racing to the bottom.

And this is the trick: Nobody seems to really be sure if these tax rebates are actually beneficial to the people that offer them. It does seem that certain states try them and then go, “Whoa, we lost money.” And then they stop them. And, of course, you always have an issue with the quality of the labor you’re getting.

Let’s pick a state. North Dakota could suddenly decide we’re going to have the best rebates in the business. But, are there crews there? Because that’s part of the deal; you’ve got to hire local crews, otherwise it makes no sense for North Dakota.

So, we’re dealing with the stuff. Here’s where it gets rough — really rough — with visual effects. When we’re talking about the artistry that we think of, the creation of that tiger, the movement of the tiger, the installation of emotion into the eyes, these things that truly are amazing — we think of highly talented visual artists who combine technology and craft to create something wonderful on screen.

But then there are times when the visual effects are a man in a car parked in front of a green screen, and somebody goes and shoots plates, and then they comp the plates behind that man. But the man has long hair, and so fifty people in South Korea spend a week going frame by frame roto’ing individual hairs against the plates.

And, frankly, that’s not artistry. That is labor. I mean, there’s some craft to it, but it’s the kind of thing where suddenly companies are like, “I could do that for $8,000 in a week, or I could spend $30,000 here. I think I should probably spend the $8,000, because the work ultimately will be similar enough.

Those are the choices that are being made. And it’s tough because, you know, I want all movies to be made in Southern California, frankly, and I want all production to be here. I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m frustrated from a writing point of view that when I write movies half the time they tell me, “And it will be shot in Georgia.” Then everything looks like it’s in Georgia all of a sudden. It’s a bummer.

Identity Thief is a road trip that takes place entirely in the state of Georgia. It makes me nuts. You know? I had this whole nice road trip planned out state by state with a map that went from Boston to Portland. That was the first thing that got torn up. I had to argue so that it wouldn’t be just Miami to Atlanta which is a four-hour drive.

**John:** Yeah. A four-hour drive that has to take the entire movie.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** I share your frustration here. So, let’s talk about this situation in visual effects and how it applies to things that are listeners may be doing, which is screenwriting.

We talked about the difference between artistry and craft. And one of the lucky things about screenwriters, at least as its perceived right now, is it is still falling in the artistry camp, and that it’s a — what I can write is going to be different than what you can write, which is what that third person is going to be able to write.

So, there’s some unique special benefit to hiring this person versus hiring that person, which is not applicable to this wire removal technician versus that wire removal technician. That’s very much you are doing one specific kind of job. The same way like I think back to the old Disney, they’re painting in the cells. There was a person who had to draw everything. That was remarkable artistry. The person who was painting in the in-between cells, that took real talent, but it wasn’t the artistry in the same way that the other jobs were.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, right now we cannot be replaced by international labor. We can’t — they could hire Canadian writers to do things, but they’re not finding the quality of Canadian writers that can do what we can do. So, for now that’s really good.

What can happen even in the absence of that though is a race to the bottom. And what keeps us from hitting all the way to the bottom is scale, is that we are organized as a labor union, and because of that no writer is able to say, “Well, I’ll do it for less than that amount of money.” That’s one of the lucky things we have for feature films in the US right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that is why the things that worry me the most from a writing standpoint are any of the cultural shifts that threaten that. For instance, we talk a lot about the toxic combination of one-step drafts and producer-steps and free drafts. Because, what happens is — and I’ve said this directly to the heads of two studios now — if you’re paying somebody $1 million for a single draft, and you’re not happy and you want four more weeks of work, eh, what am I going to do, stamp my feet here? Okay.

If you’re paying somebody scale for one step, or close to scale for one step, and then you ask them for another four weeks of work, you’ve obliterated scale. Now it’s half scale. And the more that that becomes entrenched, the more that ground beneath us loosens. If we lose scale, everybody suffers and it truly is a race to the bottom. The one thing I know about screenwriting is there are, I’m going to guess, 500,000 people in the United States alone that would like to be professional screenwriters. And if you said, “Warner Bros. will hire you to write a screenplay for $5,000,” 490,000 of them would say, “Great!” Possibly all of them would say great.

And that’s super bad. Super bad for the professional status of screenwriters and it injures the value of what we do. Not super bad that people want to do it, but the potential for that is super bad, that the economics would shift on us like that.

So, the Writers Guild, for all the stuff that they panic over, that’s really the only thing they should be panicking over in features as far as I’m concerned. So much more than over residual formulas or anything like that. It is protecting our scale.

**John:** The other way in which our scale can be threatened is by reclassifying the job that we normally would do in features, or in television, as a different kind of job that doesn’t need to be covered. And that’s one of the things were always eternally vigilant that writing sort of a proposal or a treatment, that they’re not going to ask you to do other kind of work that’s actually really functionally a screenwriter’s work and not pay you screenwriter money for that.

So, not just extra drafts, but like saying, “Oh, you’re writing this for our digital division. It is a promo thing for this,” and trying to find a way to create things that don’t have to fall under the WGA auspices.

**Craig:** Yeah. And something funny — television and screenwriting developed along two different tracks. And it’s kind of fascinating to see how they divided.

In television, what they did with writers was they said basically, “Look, we’re going to pay all of you roughly scale for things. We’ll even base your residuals on minimums. But what we’ll also do for those of you who are the primary writers of shows, the creators, the showrunners, we’ll make you producers. We’ll pay you all the money that you would expect to be paid as a producer. You won’t pay dues on that,” which is great for them, “and also we will give you access to the big prize which is sharing in the true profits, not the fake profits, but the true profits of the work.”

So, somebody like Chuck Lorre who creates hit television shows is worth more than any screenwriter will ever be. Period. The end. He makes more in a month than any screenwriter probably makes in 10 years.

Now, on the other side you have screenwriters who at the highest levels get paid so much more for a script than any television writer does, but don’t have any access to that big profit number. And, frankly, that’s why success in television has always been so much brighter and sparklier, but success in screenwriting seems to be a little bit more accessible in some way.

Now, if they successfully erode scale for screenwriters, the way that they have successfully eroded scale for visual effects, we lose the only good part of being screenwriters. [laughs] And then we got nothing. And that’s scary.

**John:** The other danger is to look at — and so far Netflix seems to be a largely good thing in terms of creating more opportunities for more people, but if a Netflix-like model of you’re doing a show for Netflix, or you’re doing a show for Amazon that is not sort of a networky kind of show, it’s not even a cable show, when you’re in that Wild West territory you could theoretically be writing something that sort of feels like a television show but they don’t have to pay you any of the money that they would normally have to pay you for a television show.

And, if that model were to really take off then that could sort of explode what we are counting on for getting paid in television. So, that’s the other thing to always be truly vigilant about. I’m genuinely optimistic about Netflix or Amazon or the other people who are trying to do television-like things. I’m just worried that their business model isn’t going to include paying writers.

**Craig:** I am genuinely pessimistic. I think that the instinct of any new business arriving into the content creation industry is to not get hung on the hook that the studios are “hung on,” which is to pay this kind of scale and residuals and all the rest of it.

When the Writers Guild…uh…umbrage…umbrage is coming. It’s been awhile. It’s been awhile, John, so let me just uncork for a second here: One thing that makes me nuts about the Writers Guild is that in its anti-corporate zeal, and I get it, I get it that the Writers Guild does not like these companies. The companies negotiate with them every three years and they stick it to them. And the companies do stuff that’s just wrong.

And so the Writers Guild gets angry, angry, angry. And then you combine that with the fact that the constituency of the Writers Guild tends to be very liberal and progressive and very anti-corporatistic, and I understand that, too. What that creates unfortunately is this knee jerk reaction that anybody who is going to hurt the companies is our friend. No!

This is ridiculous. That is such a mistake. To look at these guys out there like Google and say, “Well, we should help Google compete with these companies because then we’ll have another buyer. And that will stick it to the man and make more money for us.” No! No. No, no, no.

It will be a race to the bottom. When these companies come in, they will dig out that floor. They will try and go below it. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. Look at the way they run their business. Look how they pay their coders. Open your eyes. I love saying stuff like “open your eyes,” because now I sound like a lunatic, but that’s okay.

I’m a pretty sober person, normally, but now I’m saying, “Open your eyes.” And once they do that, these competitors that we are cheerleading, “Come on in, come on in,” well, then the studios will go, “Well, now we’ve got to compete with these guys.” Generally speaking, I would say 7 times out of 10 the Writers Guild ends up shooting itself in the foot. I’m just going to ballpark it at 70%. Whatever the name is for the rule of unintended consequences — I don’t know if there’s a Moore’s Law type of name for it — they should chisel into the concrete facade of that building so that everyone who works there and sets the policy at that place has to read it every day when they arrive.

**John:** In no way trying to diminish your umbrage or actually re-stoke the fires of umbrage, but what I will say is that the ground is changing regardless. So, no matter what the Writers Guild were to try to do, that kind of stuff is going to change. And Netflixy business models will kick in. And so while I agree that we don’t want to sort of burn the house down just to burn the house down, we have to recognize that this stuff is going to happen and try to be as smart as we can about shifting our strategies to deal with how this is going to be.

Because our current business model probably can’t be directly applied to it. It’s just a different thing. And we need to figure out how to do that.

**Craig:** You’re right. And I guess my point is that we should, as much as it pains us, just to look at the person that keeps poking us in the eye and say, “You may be the best friend I have. Maybe we should consider it.” Because, the people that keep poking us in our eye aren’t slapping us in the face, and there are a bunch of face-slappers out there waiting.

And I would encourage as best as we can as an organization — I would encourage the health of these five companies because they pay us the most.

**John:** Yeah. I would also say the other people, we can’t even go on strike against them.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** We can’t go on strike against YouTube.

**Craig:** Oh, they would love that.

**John:** They would love that.

**Craig:** Oh, please, “Good, go on strike.” Yeah, what do they care? Do you know how many unions there are at Google? Zero. They don’t have unions. They don’t believe in it.

Have you noticed that Pixar is non-union? That’s the culture up there. They don’t believe in it. Period. The end. Umbrage.

**John:** Done. Let’s get to some listener questions.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, we have a bunch, and it’s been awhile since we’ve done this, so let me start with the first one. This is from Alexander in Los Angeles. And I’m going to start and stop because there’s a few things along the way.

“Way back in 2008 I wrote into the blog at johnaugust.com to ask for some advice on taking phone meetings, back when I was a fledgling writer living outside of Los Angeles. Since then I landed a manager from my Nicholl placement and relocated to LA, writing, shooting, and networking as much as possible.”

Well, congratulations Alexander. Good for you.

“Over the past few months a spec script of mine started getting some traction. I had a shop around agreement with a pair of well respected producers.”

And I’m going to pause here and define a shop around agreement. What does that mean to you?

**Craig:** You know, I think it means basically that you’re giving the producers the exclusive right to take it to places. It’s kind of an option, isn’t it the same thing?

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of like a handshake option. It’s like, “Yeah, you control it, at least for these places.” And it’s pretty common with specs where if you were officially sort of going out on the town you might say like, “Okay, Producer X, you can have it for Paramount, and you have it for these certain places where I know you have relationships and that’s great.”

And so when Go went out as a spec we assigned it to certain places and Paul Rosenberg who ended up taking it to Banner, that was one of the few places that we sort of gave it to him, but he had a shopping agreement that he could take it there.

A shop around agreement could also mean like for a certain period of time it’s okay to expose it to certain places, just sort of negotiate it on the fly as it came out.

So, he had a shop around agreement with a pair of well respected producers. “And we were going after directors. One director in particular really connected with the material and he flew in from Europe to discuss his vision for the story and necessary rewrites to shoot in his home country. And now, after meeting with the producers and the director, a studio exec is interested in the project, which is awesome. But, there’s a downside.

“The studio exec doesn’t feel the script is quite in the right place. The director is flying back to LA for a week so we can all sit down and discuss what needs to happen to the script for the studio to take the next step. In short, I’m kind of freaking out. Basically I’ve been told to come into the room and just ‘be brilliant.’ And this particular exec I’m pitching to is notorious for having a huge slate of projects in development, with his attention constantly divided between all of them. So, there’s that. No big deal.

“Any advice you guys would like to share with me and your other listeners in this situation?”

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I have a bit of advice. When people tell you in advance of a meeting that you have to achieve a certain thing specifically like that, “be brilliant,” “impress this person,” “make them feel this,” “do this,” please tell yourself that they don’t know what they’re talking about, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Because the truth is nobody — there is no magic formula. There’s no “be brilliant.” There’s none of that.

Half the time they are trying to control something they have no control over. And the currency of people who don’t create things is to appear in control. That’s their currency, to appear as if they have some sort of knowledge or inside track on the future, which of course, they do not.

Agencies are famous for this. “Nobody’s buying this kind of thing,” until they do and, okay. “Be brilliant in the room.” They don’t even know what that means. I don’t know what it means. Go into the room and be confident and present yourself and be a grownup and listen and see if you have a connection with the person.

**John:** I would say that “be brilliant” is a useful codeword sometimes to say, “This is a really flexible situation and we just kind of don’t know how this is going to go, so you need to be ready to go in a lot of different directions.” And it may be worth having some pre-meeting to talk about what are the range of flexibilities you’re willing to talk about for this movie or for this take or how you’re going to do it. And who’s going to be responsible for following the lead of the exec if the exec starts to go in a certain direction.

I can recall some of my earlier meetings where I went in and I pitched one executive on a project I really wanted. I’d already met with the producer. We went in there. And he was sort of notoriously sort of hard to please and hard to sort of peg down. But, I went into the room and he showed me like, “Oh here, I’ve got to show you this.” And he showed me this trailer for this movie that he had coming out. He’s like, “That’s coming out the same weekend as your movie Go. We’re going to crush you.”

And I’m like, “Well, that seems like a great movie, and this is getting off to a really terrific start.” That’s a brilliant way to start a meeting.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I mean…

**John:** When they say “be brilliant,” it’s basically like be ready to be quick on your feet and negotiate some difficult turns there, but since you already have a director on board, make sure that there’s a range of options that you’re all willing to go to or talk about. Or, have language that you’ve already figured out in terms of, “Yeah, we’ll think about that.”

**Craig:** Yeah, but here’s my problem: That’s always the case. You should always be brilliant. Sure, it’s like this advice is along the lines of “be good and achieve your goal.” It’s not advice. And all it really serves to do is freak you out, which mission accomplished, apparently.

And the worst possible outcome is that you cease to be your natural self and attempt to orchestrate this meeting towards some sort of synthetic brilliance. And I guess really I just want you to calm down. There’s a part of the script that you love that is worth protecting. And if the vibe in the room is we-would-all-like-to-bargain-that-away, and you don’t want to bargain it away, don’t.

Hard advice to swallow, but don’t. On the other hand, be open to the thought that perhaps there is another way that you could succeed at and also be pleased with. Always be on the lookout for somebody else’s suggestion that could turn into something that you would not only be able to do, but would do so well that that would be the new thing you want to protect.

But, just take a breath and relax. In the end these people are just people. This man who’s very, very powerful is meeting with you because he needs movies. So, you have a power, too. Be aware of it. Be humble. Be nice. Be charming. Be confident. Look him in the eye. Remember, nobody wants to hire somebody that seems sweaty, shaky, and scared. They want to hire somebody who seems confident, in control, and pleasant to work with. The rest is up to you.

**John:** So, one last bit of advice I can offer in terms of being brilliant is sometimes if you need to stall or think through something, because sometimes they’ll make a suggestion and you have to sort of ripple through your head all the stuff that it’s going to do to your script if they actually were to take this thing, and sometimes you just need some time.

Two options. First off is to ask sort of a clarifying question. A question that sort of seems like I really am listening to what you’re saying and here is a smart, clarifying question that will buy me another 30 seconds so I can think of a better answer for that.

The second thing to do is to talk about what’s important to you. And phrase what’s important to you in what’s obviously very important to them. And so I will do this in meetings where what’s important to me is that we can really track this character through from the start and what the character wants and walks into, and it sounds really obvious and sort of pedantic, but you’re making it clear to the person you’re talking with that your priorities are also their priorities.

And if you can be smart and specific about it, you can at least sort of get them on the same way. It’s like sort of mimicking somebody’s body language. You’re saying back to them the things that they are saying to you.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the last bit of advice I’ll impart to you — because that’s excellent advice — is to talk about the movie as much as possible as opposed to the script. They’re not thinking about a script. They can’t sell tickets to a script. So, talk about the movie. And when they talk about things, and when you talk about things, never get trapped in the position of defending a printed document. Always defend the movie. Talk about the audience.

It will put you in the same goal state as these people in the room.

**John:** Definitely. So, why don’t you take our next question?

**Craig:** Yeah, very good. Dad, are you okay? Are you okay, dad?

**John:** [laughs] I’m doing just fine. I just want to make sure that — I think you’re ready now. And so I think…

**Craig:** Gee, thanks Dad.

**John:** You’ve learned how to do a lot of things, and I’ve taught you how to load the gun, and we talked about some reasons why you might need to fire the gun, but many reasons not to fire the gun.

**Craig:** [laughs] Why is mama crying? Okay. Gosh, dad’s cough is getting worse. I hope he’ll be okay.

All right, this is from Nick from Long Island. [New York accent] Hey, Nick, how you doing?

“The script I’m writing deals with a kid hanging with rock bands backstage during a festival. He attaches himself to one band throughout. The kid also lingers around with three other bands who have lines but are few and far between. Currently I have the band members’ names such as Beating Hearts Number 1, Beating Hearts Number 2, etc, and the Uninspired Number 1, the Uninspired Number 2.” I assume those are the names of the different bands.

“I know it is best to not give true names to these characters, 12 of them in total, so there isn’t an overload of names to remember. I was considering writing each band name and a trait to go with it, for instance, Beating Hearts Number 1 (Mohawk); Beating Hearts Number 2 (Grumpy), and so on.

“I would like the band name to stick in order to group certain characters together, but I’d also like to differentiate them in some form rather than using a bland Number 1, Number 2 type setup up.” John, how would you address this conundrum?

**John:** Nick is definitely thinking along the right lines. If you can possibly avoid it — which really honestly you can always avoid it — don’t do Number 1 and Number 2, because it doesn’t help anything or anybody. Some sort of descriptor to go with these minor characters is really helpful, so some adjective that separates this person out from every other person in the script.

The parenthesis is going to get really tiring, to sort of like say like Band Name (Grumpy), but if the band were The Dwarves, for example, then like Grumpy Dwarf, Tall Dwarf. Then that would be a natural way to do it. I think two-word descriptor names for these kinds of characters are fantastic.

Most of my scripts have a couple characters who are just like Hot-Blooded Shotgun Toter. And that tells you everything you need to know about that character. And next time you see that person come back in the script, well it’s funny, because like, “Oh, I remember that from before.” And so it gives you a visual. You don’t have to do anymore work on it. So, that’s my suggestion for band members.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right in line with what I’m going to say. I will, however, caution you that when it comes time to make your movie, the first thing that the producer is going to do is come back to you and say, “Uh, is there any way we could not have 12 people say one line a piece?” Because every time someone opens their mouth on screen they cost more.

And if they are not key characters in the movie, then ideally you’d be able to get away with maybe, say there’s the Bleeding Hearts band, maybe it’s just the guitarist that does the talking and the other guys are just sitting around. Is that possible? So, really think about: is there a way for me to consolidate some of these things down, not only for looking at it to production, but just for the reader so that they’re not constantly trying to… — Every time you introduce a character, subconsciously or not, the reader will attempt to visualize that person in their head. And that’s actual mental exercise. And you’re just going to tire people out by the 12th person.

And when you have 12 such individuals in a compact temporal space, the trick of Grumpy, Sneezy, Dopey, etc, is going to start to wear thin. It’s actually going to get annoying.

One thing you can do is just use the natural discrimination that exists here, and that is to just go by instrument. If it’s really just one line, Beating Hearts Guitarist, “Who is this kid?” would be fine. It depends on the context and if they really are so specific in their characterization then I think you definitely want to think about limiting how many of them are actually talking.

**John:** Yeah. We’ve talked before in a podcast about when you have groups of people. And there’s a certain number of people in a scene that just becomes too many to really handle. I think we do sort of like a mental tally of like who’s spoken, who hasn’t spoken. And you can do that a little bit on the page, but when you actually see it on the screen it’s like, oh my god, there’s just too many people who could potentially speak.

So, I think Nick’s instinct was right to try to keep the bands lumped together. But your instinct is probably more helpful in that if there are a couple of funny things to say, make sure it’s the same person in that band saying them each time so that’s the actual mouthpiece of that band and that that’s the only person we have to sort of put any mental energy into following and tracking through the scene and from scene to scene.

**Craig:** There you go. All right, next question.

**John:** Next up, Gabe. I’ll start with this because it’s my turn.

“The good news, I just got a short film accepted to play at the Aspen Film Festival.” Yay, Gabe. “The bad news: I have been asked to provide a short bio. I’ve had to write bios for myself before. I’ve always leaned towards being funny or absurd, not taking myself seriously. I can’t bring myself to do that again. But writing a straight bio about one’s self feels icky, like being a door-to-door salesman. What have you guys done in the past?”

**Craig:** That’s a really good question. I have to congratulate you, Gabe, on feeling icky about it. It’s a sign that you are a normal human who isn’t a sociopath. Sometimes I come across these Wikipedia entries or IMDb bio entries that are so clearly written by the person and they’re the most grandiose, epic, multi-paragraph pans to their amazingness, and that is icky to read.

Yeah, it does feel icky. I generally recommend however that you just bite the icky bullet and do it, because funny bios are never funny. I have never laughed at a funny bio. Frankly, they themselves feel a little icky because it’s like, “Look, I’m too cool to be just normal.” Just write a real short simple sweet bio and be done with it. That’s my advice.

**John:** So, I agree with you. And I actually just went through this again because I had to do my Playbill bio. For Playbill, which will come when you sit down with your seat for Big Fish, I had to write the little bio for that. So, this is what I wrote, and I decided not to go funny. So:

John August (book) received a 2004 BAFTA nomination for his screenplay for Big Fish. His other credits include Go, Titan A.E., Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Corpse Bride, The Nines, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for which he received a 2006 Grammy nomination for lyrics. His most recent film is the Oscar-nominated Frankenweenie, for which he wrote the screenplay and lyrics. He is a graduate of Drake University and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. On Twitter @johnaugust.

So, they gave me a certain number of words that I was allowed to use to fit in, and I had to decide, you know, am I going to thank god? Am I going to thank Mike? Who am I going to thank? Am I going to dedicate this to my father? And I decided to go sort of straight with it, but also it’s definitely a bio written for a theater listing rather than something else. And so I lead with BAFTA nomination for Big Fish because that’s what we’re sitting down to do.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s the show.

**John:** I put the Grammy nomination, which I wouldn’t normally do, but just to tell people like I’m not kind of new to music and stuff like that. I put in Frankenweenie because it’s recent.

So, I would say, in general I’ve kept like a bio, a relatively well updated bio that’s always sort of sitting in Dropbox which I can sort of throw at places, but I kind of always have to keep redoing it.

The same way like if you had a resume, like if you were in a kind of job that has a resume, you don’t send the same resume out to different people. You should always kind of customize that resume for what the situation is.

**Craig:** Agreed. Yeah. I mean, I have a bio that the PR firm that I’ve used a couple times has put together for me. And then I tweak it depending on what’s happened. So, for instance, Identity Thief came out, it’s a big hit, that goes in the bio.

But, what I liked about your bio was that it was short, sweet, dispassionate. It’s just facts. “Just the facts, ma’am,” you know?

**John:** Yeah. A great bio, depending on what the audience is for, it can feel good that it sounds like it was written by somebody else rather than written by you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, if you’re doing a bio that’s going to be intended for like a workshop or for like, you know, into the Sundance Film Festival, like not the festival part but for like the labs where you’re going to be seeing these people, that’s a great time to be like a little funny or be a little more personal or get into that kind of stuff.

If it’s just sort of going out into the world in a general sense, you have to think about, like, this is a person who’s sitting down in a theater seat reading this — what do they want to see?

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

All right, well, next question is from Gustavo in Jersey City. [Jersey accent] Yah, I got all my guys back home writing in. They got questions. No problem, Gustavo. I got ya.

[laughs] This is how we talk.

**John:** Evidently this is how you talk.

**Craig:** This is how you talk if you’re in…

**John:** If the podcast were this way every week, I would — there wouldn’t be a podcast.

**Craig:** You would end yourself?

**John:** Or I would find some sort of filter that would make your voice not be that.

**Craig:** [New Jersey accent] Hey, come on, John, it’s a good question here. Come on, I’m talking. [laughs] It’s the worst. This is how I grew up on Staten Island. Oh, hey, where you going? All right, Gustavo, here we go.

“I’m finally taking the leap and working on my first screenplay after years of working as a musician. My question is, would you be able to describe the key differences between the ‘inciting incident’ and the alleged,” I’m adding the word alleged, “plot point one. What considerations should you make for each? How dramatic should the inciting incident be versus PP1? I’m starting off with outlining but I’m finding conflicting definitions on line of what each should do for the story.”

**John:** So, this is — I included this question because it’s a very classic sort of like, “I’m just now for the first time approaching screenwriting, and I’m hitting this term and I don’t know what it means and I’m paralyzed by not knowing what this term means, these terms mean.”

I don’t know what “plot point one” means. I think it means different things in different people’s schemas. Inciting incident is a thing that you will hear talked about, a lot, and so it’s worth knowing what people are talking about when they say inciting incident.

Inciting incident is what’s beginning the plot of this movie. Like, without this inciting incident we would not be watching this movie happening here with these characters right now. So, the inciting incident is how we’re starting off our story, not just like how we’re meeting our characters, but what is the fuse that has been lit that is beginning our story.

But things like plot point one, or plot point two, or plot point 17, those are schemas that different people have different ways of doing it, so I wouldn’t freak out over that at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah, I mean inciting incident — the idea is the first few pages of your screenplay you’re presenting a character and she’s in her life, and here is what her life is like. And then something happens. And that something is going to change her life.

It doesn’t mean that it’s now Act 2; it just means suddenly a thing happens. This whole “plot point one,” “pinch point,” blah, blah, blah, you’ve been suckered like so many before you into thinking that there is a calculator through which you can run ideas and out comes a screenplay and you just simply calculate your way to success. There is no faster, easier, simpler way to arrive at failure then attempting to calculate the process of screenwriting.

The books that have been written are being written by people who have failed at screenwriting, possibly because they were over calculating, and now they offer you the gift of the very process that failed them. I am not a fan of this nonsense.

There is nothing that these people can teach you that you can’t learn yourself by watching movies, reading screenplays of those movies, reading screenplays by professionals, and then writing, and writing, and writing. Simply, the rigidity that they prescribe is seductive. Of course it’s seductive.

What is more horrifying than the threat of a million choices? And which one should I choose? Well, that’s life, buddy. That’s screenwriting, Gustavo, unfortunately. So, put the books down. Chill out about the terminology. You’re not fitting your story into any box at all. You’re going to write from your heart and you’re going to learn from the structure that has been provided to you by the movies you love and the screenwriters and the scripts that you love, as simple as that.

**John:** Yeah. I’m wondering if we can boil it down to the minimum number of terms you actually need to know about structure, just in terms of what you will hear when you are working in the industry. So, inciting incident is one of those things that I think it’s worth knowing what people are talking about with that, because you’re going to hear that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You’re going to hear first act, second act, third act. Here’s all it means is the beginning part, sort of the beginning 30 pages, the second act is all of the middle 60 pages kind of. The last act is the last 30 pages kind of, so, in a 120 page screenplay.

That’s worth knowing what people are talking about.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you know climax.

**John:** But the danger with something like a climax is you’re going to think like, “Oh, that has to happen on a certain page.” No. I mean, a climax, you’re talking about a sequence that goes up to and reaches its most biggest dramatic point, that’s important to know that that kind of thing happens, but it doesn’t happen on a specific page.

**Craig:** Watch movies, Gustavo. I’m telling you, it’s all there. They are flimflamming you, buddy. They’re flimflamming you.

**John:** Next question comes from Kate in Los Angeles.

“My writing partner and I are writing a script centering around a brother and sister duo. Do we need to make one of them the clear protagonist, or is it all right for both of them to be the hero?”

So, heroes and protagonists. It’s a classic conversation. Craig, what’s your opinion here?

**Craig:** One of them is the protagonist. The idea of the protagonist, traditionally, is that our capacity for drama as humans and such that we prefer — we prefer — that once character is the focus of internal change. One character is going to have an epiphany and a catharsis and a transformation.

But, another character with them can be instrumental to that. Another character with them can change, also. Another character can change in such a way that changes the protagonist.

I mean, there are a lot of movies where we think the hero is one person, but it’s another. It seems like the hero of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is Johnny Depp, is Captain Jack Sparrow. He’s the one we come to watch. He occupies space in the movie. But, the protagonist, for instance, in the first film is Keira Knightley’s character. She’s the one who changes.

The protagonist sometimes isn’t the biggest one, or the most heroic one, but they’re just the one that changes. So, think about it that way. And just remember, we will be trying to — we will be connecting with somebody’s change. And if two people are changing we want to know which one is primarily changing.

It’s just sort of ingrained in the way we experience story.

**John:** In the show notes I’ll put a link to an old post of mine about heroes and protagonists. And we always think of them as the same person, but they aren’t necessarily the same person. Sometimes the hero of the story, the guy where it’s like, “Oh, it’s about him,” isn’t really the protagonist. It’s not the person who changes in the course of the story.

Examples being, in my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka is the protagonist. You actually see he has an arc that he goes through in the whole movie. And Charlie, who it seems like, oh, well he’s the guy it’s about. It’s the guy whose name is in the title. He is the antagonist. He is the one who is causing the change. He is the person who does that.

In terms of dual protagonist, it does happen. Big Fish is a dual protagonist story, but the protagonist structure is happening in sort of different spaces. You have Will, the son, is a protagonist who is going on this journey to figure out who his father was and understand this change. And so he’s a changed character over the course of it. We’re following Edward Bloom’s entire life, and he is a very classic sort of Joseph Campbell kind of hero mythology protagonist change, complete with like denial of the call to adventure. He does all that sort of great Joseph Campbell stuff.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, that does happen. There are situations like that. But if it’s like a brother and a sister duo, if it’s a You Can Count on Me, which was a brother/sister duo, that’s not that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And they both could change, but You Can Count on Me, she is the protagonist, he is the antagonist who has arrived to change her life.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. I think some people might think that in Identity Thief Melissa McCarthy is the protagonist because she seems to change, and she does, but Jason Bateman’s character is the actual protagonist. That’s the one who has to actually learn a lesson about his life in a way that she learns a lesson, but our emotional connection is to his life.

It’s a very… — You just have to know this stuff when you’re doing it, and you have to figure it out, but you can’t divide your attention. You have to actually — you have to know.

The audience, by the way, doesn’t need to… — You ask most people on the street who’s the protagonist of Pirates and they’ll tell you it’s Captain Jack Sparrow. No problem. Didn’t seem to diminish their enjoyment of the film. You need to know, though.

**John:** You’re next.

**Craig:** Oh, god, this is so good. We’ve got Dave in Columbia, Maryland. I have no accent for you.

“Is it okay to give captions in titles explaining quick blubs for historical context so the audience isn’t lost? I know I should try and get those kinds of things in dialogue while trying to avoid being on the nose, but that can be really difficult sometimes.”

Captions and titles. Quick blurbs for historical context?

**John:** Rarely are they good and appropriate. Where I will say, like sometimes you need to place a certain year, or you need to say like, “Near Lexington,” or you need to establish where we are in the world. So, a caption can sometimes be useful. And like in the Bourne movies you’ll see like where we are in the world and sort of like 16 hours later. There’s a certain style of movie in which it can be completely appropriate.

But I’d be really careful because nobody goes to movies to read. You have to find ways to tell your story visually so that the audience doesn’t need to know that information.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can situate time and place, essentially slug line information anywhere you want in a movie, just as long as tonally it seems acceptable. The one place in a movie where you are allowed to put a pamphlet on screen is the very, very beginning. Star Wars seemed to get away with it just fine.

You can open up and people… — The first ten minutes of a movie-going experience I call “grace period” because the audience is completely open and accepting. They haven’t gotten grumpy yet. But, hopefully they don’t get grumpy at all during your movie, but they’re willing to sort of go along with your little adventure here for five or ten minutes on faith alone.

And so you can do it right off the top if you want — still a little risky — but at no point else in a movie would I ever try and pull that number on anyone.

**John:** Agreed. And if you’re going to do something with captions or titles or I would say you need to do that really close to the start. You can’t be like halfway through a movie and suddenly then be throwing up those little tag things, because that was not the contract you made with your audience. First, I agree, that grace period. You’re sort of establishing what the contract is between the movie and the audience. And like as long as you’re consistent with your audience, they are going to have faith in you. But if you start just wildly changing things, they may decide that you’re not honoring your contract and they will get up and leave the room.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Next question comes from Matt in Boston.

“I recently received coverage upon submitting a feature script to a screenwriting contest. The script contains three fairly explicit sex scenes.”

**Craig:** Oh yeah!

**John:** Oh yeah!

“It was mostly favorable feedback, but one critique the reader had was that the explicit nature of the descriptions of the sex scenes may be a turnoff to actors, investors, agents, and producers. He said that if I could tone down the sex the script would be more readily accepted by readers. Though the sex scenes are admittedly rather explicit in nature, they are not gratuitous and they are important to the story and in developing the characters involved.

“How can a writer go about portraying a heavily erotic sexual encounter without scaring off potential investors or talent? Would including a note at the beginning of the scene help?”

Craig?

**Craig:** Well, obviously we don’t have the pages so I don’t know quite how explicit this is. I would caution any writer to overreact to one reader’s comment. The fact of the matter is that the only person whose scruples matter here is the person who will potentially purchase this script and produce the movie, not this one reader.

In general, I tend to believe that it’s the scripts that do stick out and make themselves known unapologetically that attract attention. You say here, kind of nicely for us, because this would be what I would say — this is what I would ask — that they are not gratuitous and they are important to the story and in developing the characters involved.

That’s it. You’re done. You don’t need to do anything now. No notes. No apologies. That’s the script you wrote. And if somebody out there is squeamish about the sex then it’s not for them. But it’s sort of a strange thing. the stereotype is the producer that wants more boobs, so I think that you can just go ahead and just in your mind silently and politely thank this reader for their opinion, but you believe in what you wrote.

**John:** I agree with you. There’s two things I would say.

First off, sex scenes are like fight scenes in that you don’t want to describe blow-by-blow [sighs] what’s happening.

**Craig:** Ha-ha.

**John:** But, you want to give a sense of what’s important about the scene and what’s different about sort of other scenes like it we might have seen.

One of my favorite sex scenes in any movie is in the first Terminator, which is just a great movie for so many reasons. But I remember seeing that sex scene and thinking like, “Man, I want to have sex. That looks great!” And so if you look at the actual description of it, it’s there, but it’s not like gratuitous, but it’s clearly what needs to happen in that scene. And if that’s what you’re doing on the page, that’s fantastic.

Second off I would say about sexual content in movies overall is if it’s honest, and if it’s interesting, keep it. I mean, don’t run away from it just because R movies right now tend to be less sexy. Well, maybe yours will stand out because it actually has some sex in it. It can be a good thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. In general keep this in mind: Things that are noticeable in scripts, that are not run-of-the-mill, that are maybe towards the edges, the boundaries of extreme, there are certain types of people who just react to that stuff by saying, “Oh, well, I noticed it therefore maybe tone it down.” Their instinct is to tone everything down.

I will tell you that the audience’s instinct is for everything to be toned up. They don’t want the soft-edged movie. They want something that is interesting to them. Quentin Tarantino’s entire career is a testament to this. He continues to defy our own expectations of what we will laugh at, what we will be entertained by.

And more importantly, the people who say yes are attracted to things that are out of the ordinary. The people who say no, yeah, of course, they’re like, “Why don’t you put it more in a box so it’s safe for me to say yes to?” That’s why they don’t run studios. That’s why they don’t direct movies. That’s why they don’t write movies.

So, don’t be afraid to break a few dishes while you’re writing a script.

**John:** I agree with you fully.

Let’s let that be the end of our questions and let’s do our One Cool Things, okay?

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is really simple. And it’s this great little Tumblr called Unfinished Scripts. — Wow, that’s a hard thing for me to say. — It’s this great little Tumblr called Unfinished Scripts, which is basically screenshots of somebody who is writing these scenes that inevitably go horribly, horribly awry.

And what I like about it is, first off, it’s very screenwriter-oriented. But I love that Tumblr and Twitter to some degree — eh, both Twitter and Tumblr — have created this thing where there is sort of like an imaginary user. And so by seeing a collection of tweets or posts you’re sort of like getting the idea of who this person is, this imaginary character who would actually write all of these things.

So, I love that that exists in our culture. And I really liked Unfinished Scripts as an example of that.

**Craig:** Sounds cool. I will check that out for sure.

I have for all of you today a pretty cool thing that’s a little bit of a game. It’s a lot a bit of a game, but it is also connected to my favorite little thing which is the brain.

So, at MIT there is a specific department called the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department. And they’re dealing with this problem of trying to map the connections between all of the neurons in the retina, and I actually spent an entire year in college just learning how vision works from literally photon all the way to our sort of conscious understanding of sight.

So, I’m fascinated by all of this. They have this — this is an area where one technology has outstripped another. They have the technology now to map, I think they’re using rat retinas actually for now, they can map all of this stuff. But it still requires computational power to figure out what’s connected to what, because it’s all in slices and it’s basically a game to figure out, okay, is this thing connected to that, or connected to this? And once they essentially color in all the connections so that this chunk over here is the same color as this chunk, and is continuous, then they’ll actually have a complete map of all of the connections of the retina, which is pretty amazing.

How do you do this? Well, the geniuses over there at MIT, and this is sponsored by the National Institute of Health, have created a game. And they had this brilliant idea that we’ll just put this game online and people can play it. And it’s basically a coloring game. And the way it’s set up is that the game is smart enough to tell you if what you’ve colored in does make sense as a connection or doesn’t. So, you’re basically doing the hard work of just filling in these connections. And the more you play, the higher your points or whatever, but you’re also helping the medical community map the retina!

It’s fascinating. And so I played the game for awhile. It’s incredibly calming. It’s super Zen. And if you want to play, obviously it’s free, it’s web-based. It works particularly well with the Chrome browser on either PC or Mac. And it’s called EyeWire. And so you can sign up for a free account and play the game yourself at eyewire.org.

And know that for once in your miserable little lives you are not wasting time playing a game, you’re actually helping advance the cause of neuroscience.

**John:** Great. So, Craig, thank you again for a fun podcast. I never actually talk about our outro music, and I usually just pick outro music after the episode is done and I just pick something that seems relevant to what we talked about. But this week I actually know what the outro music is. It is Andrew Lippa’s overture to Big Fish, which you can actually hear in person in Chicago if you choose to come.

And, again, if you want to come see me and the show in Chicago, starting April 2, we will be there. And Ticketmaster, Big Fish.

And, Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** See you next time. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Big Fish in Chicago](http://www.ticketmaster.com/Big-Fish-Chicago-tickets/artist/1781632?tm_link=seo_bc_name) at Ticketmaster
* [Green Scream: The Decay of the Hollywood Special Effects Industry](http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/oscars-vfx-protest/)
* [How to handle a phone meeting](http://johnaugust.com/2008/how-to-handle-a-phone-meeting)
* [Unfinished Scripts](https://twitter.com/UnfinishedS)
* [What’s the difference between Hero, Main Character and Protagonist?](http://johnaugust.com/2005/whats-the-difference-between-hero-main-character-and-protagonist) on johnaugust.com
* Play [EyeWire](http://eyewire.org/) and help map the brain
* OUTRO: Big Fish prologue by Andrew Lippa

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/rigorous-structured-daydreaming).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, episode 79, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, how often in your daily life does somebody say, “Oh, I listen to your show,” or, “I like your podcast.” Does that happen to you very much?

**Craig:** It’s been happening more and more. In fact, I was at Paramount a couple of weeks ago for a meeting and they didn’t have my pass to get on the lot. And they send you to a little security hut. And in the security hut I had to give the guy my name. And there was a woman there who was also a security guard. And she said, “Oh, you do that podcast. I listen to the podcast.” And then we talked about the podcast.

It seems like it happens three times a week now.

**John:** That’s great. I’ve been in New York, so it doesn’t happen to me quite as often in New York because it’s not a film town, but weirdly in the cast of Big Fish no one seems to listen to the podcast in the actual cast, but two people have friends or loved ones who listen to it.

So, Kate Baldwin, who is a part of our cast, her husband listens to the show. So, I am going to embarrass him publicly by mentioning him, calling him out. And also Bobby Steggert has a friend who listens to the show. So, that’s just odd, because these aren’t film people. But they do listen to the show, or they know people who listen to the show which is just odd, and strange, and small town-ish.

**Craig:** It is. It is strange. And it occurred to me that you and I have been screenwriting for many, many, many years. And this is sort of the screenwriter’s lament: The second we do something that is vaguely peripherally performance-oriented, suddenly we are noticed and we get attention. It’s just one of those things. There’s nothing like being onscreen or on the air. There’s no substitute, if your goal is to be noticed or recognized in any way — and mine is not, I don’t think yours is either.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** But it is an interesting sociological observation.

**John:** Yes. So, today Craig I thought we would take a look at this old post of mine that suddenly got a lot of attention, it got on Reddit this last week for kind of no good reason, but it kind of had relevant stuff that we should talk about on the podcast anyway.

And then we would do some Three Page Challenges because we hadn’t done those for awhile.

**Craig:** Yes. I’m excited. And I’m prepared.

**John:** Let’s do it.

**Craig:** I even have One Cool Thing today.

**John:** Oh my gosh, you are just so prepared!

**Craig:** Yeah, well, ever since you embarrassed me.

**John:** Yeah. That’s nice. Embarrassment is actually a good motivational tool. It’s not really a carrot or a stick; it’s its own kind of third thing.

**Craig:** It is. And I am particularly susceptible to shame.

**John:** Oh, good. See, we’ve learned so much already in the podcast.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Now, we’ll start with this post that I did which actually was way back in 2007. I wrote this post called How to Write a Scene, which was a post on johnaugust.com, and it was just 11 little steps of, like, these are things you need to be thinking about when you’re writing a scene.

And so it was sitting up there for a good long time. And this last week a guy named Ryan Rivard made a little graphic version of it, basically made the list and sort of nicely types up the list. And it just sort of got kind of weirdly viral. He passed it around and linked it to me on Twitter. And I said, “Oh, that’s nice,” I linked it back out. And then last night it showed up on Reddit on the front page.

And so our music coordinator from Big Fish emailed me, said like, “Hey, you’re on the front page of Reddit,” which is just really strange.

And so if you read through the comments on Reddit they’re kind of maddening because it’s a lot of people who are sort of writing in with like their reactions to the graphic version of it rather than the full version of it.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, Reddit is definitely chaotic.

**John:** Yes. But you sort of embrace the chaos of that. And some people did link to the actual real post. And so I wanted to get back to the actual post. And so if you are going to read along at home with us there will be a link to this on the show notes at johnaugust.com.

So, this is the post. And I asked sort of 11 questions. And I thought we would talk through it and see what you agree with, what you don’t agree with, and sort of elaborate more fully.

**Craig:** Let me give you a preview: There won’t be much fighting today.

**John:** Okay. It’s not going to be one of those cantankerous ones?

**Craig:** No. There is almost no umbrage to be detected.

**John:** Great. But we could maybe push further. Maybe even find a 12th or a 13th point.

**Craig:** I like it.

**John:** The first questions I always ask is what needs to happen in this scene. And this is deliberately a reaction against sort of the classic advice which is always to be thinking about what does the character want, what does the character need. To me character want and character need are hugely important, but they’re hugely important in like the macro sense.

They’re important in the what is the actual goal of the story, but when it comes down to the individual scene I find that it’s not a very useful question to be asking because, well, you could say that that character wants to get this piece of information out of somebody. Well, yes, that’s sort of the point of what you’re actually going to do in a scene, but if you want to say that character wants recognition, or that character wants love from her father, that’s not going to be an achievable thing within that scene.

**Craig:** Right. Very true. We had said a few podcasts ago that one way of thinking about the scene that’s about to follow is not “and then” but “so then.” The scene must be required or it will be lifted out of the movie for sure.

One thing that I do when I outline, you know, I have my card that says “What happens in the scene?” and then I do a card next to it that says “Why it’s happening?”And if you can’t explain why it needs to be there in the story then maybe the stuff that’s happening in that scene is unnecessary or should be folded into another scene. Nothing wrong with a combo.

**John:** Well, that anticipates point two on my list which is the question, what’s the worst that could happen if this scene were omitted? And that’s really the point of your second card is that if you can’t say clearly and definitely, “This is why this scene must be in the film,” then that scene probably won’t be in that film. If you’ve actually gotten some movies made you’ll recognize that. A scene could be perfectly lovely, but if it’s not advancing your story in a way that needs to happen, or it isn’t integral to the point of the story, it’s not going to last in your movie.

And so if you have things that are funny, or great, or meaningful, or emotional, make sure those are happening in a scene that actually has to be in your movie. Because if you look at director’s commentaries or like DVD versions of movies that have deleted scenes, you’ll say like, “Oh, that’s a fascinating scene,” but you’ll also usually say, “I can totally see why they deleted it because it wasn’t integral to the story.”

**Craig:** Yeah. I was talking to a friend a couple of months ago. He showed me an early cut of a movie that he had made. And there was one scene that I thought should just come out because it was doing precisely what we’re talking about, not moving the ball forward.

And he said, “Well, you know, that’s a good point. And the good news is that we could lift it right out and nothing would change.” And I said, “Ah-ha! That, my friend, is not a happy accident. That is probably why you should lift it out.” If you can, and nothing is disrupted around it, well, we have point two of your excellent list.

**John:** Great. I want to sort of go back to both of these points and look at them together, because in looking at what needs to happen in the scene, sometimes you will have an outline. And sometimes you’ll be able to look at your outline and say, okay, this is the two-sentence version of what needs to happen in this scene.

But a lot of times I find writers are approaching the scene with a bunch of ideas, it’s sort of like a bucket of, like, “These are the kind of cool things that could happen in this thing,” or “I just get the characters talking and I sort of listen.” Okay, that can be a good way to hear characters’ voices. That’s generally not a good way to get the actual purpose of the scene achieved. Like, a scene tends to be as short as it possibly can be to achieve its goal. And if you just get stuff started you’re unlikely to come out with a really meaningful scene.

So, you have to look at like why is this scene here. Because sometimes I’ve — this is my own personal introspection — but sometimes I’ve written some really nice scenes that are just really nice scenes that don’t actually achieve the purpose I need to achieve and I’ve wasted two hours of my time.

**Craig:** And as screenwriters we have to be not only aware of this in the work that we do, but also aware of it when other people are making suggestions for the work we do. Directors, in particular, can be susceptible to places, actions, scenarios, “cool stuff.” And they want you to put it in.

And you must always remember that simply because somebody thinks it’s cool and wants you to put it in doesn’t mean it ought to be there. So, you have a choice of either saying, “No, and here’s why, but,” or, seeing if you can put something like that in and repurpose another purpose from another scene. But to just shove stuff in… — And sometimes we’re the only people in the room that get that. And so, don’t worry about that; just know that you’re right.

**John:** Yeah. I think I’ve told this story on the podcast before, and in no way am I trying to libel McG who I do deeply adore, although you’ll understand my frustrations as I tell you the story.

McG directed the two Charlie’s Angels movies. And I described our relationship as being like together we are trying to bake a cake. And he would keep saying, “No, no, more sugar, more sugar, more sugar.” It was like, “McG, I have to add some flour. It’s going to fall apart.”

“No, more sugar, more sugar.” And the minute I would turn my back to grab a bowl he would dump more sugar into it. And that was the frustration of like I know the things I need to actually put in this in order for it to do its goal which is to bake properly in the oven. And too much sugar and it just doesn’t actually work.

Some people like things really, really sweet and that kind of break their teeth. That was a point of frustration at times.

**Craig:** But also the inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**John:** Exactly, in some ways.

Point three: Who needs to be in the scene? This is a fundamental question, but I often find people aren’t asking the question when they’re starting the scene. A lot of times they’ll say, “Well, here’s the characters I have, so let me put them in the scene.” And so you’ll end up with like five characters in the scene and you recognize like, “Oh, you know what? This character didn’t actually say anything in this scene, or in the scene before, but we’ve established them in the world so therefore they need to be there.”

I call this the Kal Penn problem because in Superman Returns, Kal Penn is a whole bunch of scenes but doesn’t actually have anything to say or do. And he becomes this weird extra in these scenes.

So, look at who absolutely has to be in the scene, who can do meaningful things in the scene, and if you can possibly help it don’t put anyone else in the scene who doesn’t need to be there unless they are genuinely background — they’re there to make the world complete in that they are lovely set dressing but they are not actually characters.

**Craig:** Great, great point. And it’s okay if you have a character that you’re “stuck with” because they’re very important for a scene here and a scene 12 scenes later, and they’re on a trip. But, give them one thing. Give them a line. Have them drop something. Have them mess something up. Have them make an interesting point. Sometimes the silent person can surprise us by the fact that they’ve been silent. Use that.

I mean, Zach Galifianakis, his favorite kind of scene is the scene where he has one line. And he’s just quiet, and sitting back, and then suddenly, boom, three-pointer, and then right back to the background. Nothing wrong with that. And in the emotional space of experiencing the movie, those little moments sometimes seem to expand in our minds more than just the word count involved.

So, don’t neglect those characters.

**John:** I will say that there might be times where structurally some character needs to be along on some part of the journey, but there may be a reason why you don’t want them part of the scene. And by asking the question and thinking about the question, and getting to this next question of where the scene could take place, you can sometimes separate them off or get them out of that tent so you can have the characters who actually have something meaningful to do in that conversation have their privacy and have their moment just to themselves.

So, you don’t feel like it’s… — Two people can play ping pong. Three people playing ping pong is always going to be weird. And the more people you add in, the harder it is to have any scene have a shape to it.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll give you an example. In the Hangover II there’s a scene toward the end of the movie where Stu, Ed Helms’s character, has given up. And he’s given up even on the idea of being married. And he’s tossed his passport into the Chao Phraya River. And he’s basically saying, “I deserve my fate.” And this is a scene really between him and Bradley Cooper. But, of course, Zach is there.

Well, we just gave Zach something to do, and it was funny. Because here are these two guys dealing with this terrible existential crisis and Zach is merrily eating ice cream and playing Ms. Packman. And it was great. It was a little character moment for him.

So, yeah, go ahead, separate them off. Give them a little tiny piece of something to do. The audience gets it, as long as it seems natural that they wouldn’t be involved in the conversation.

**John:** So, we anticipated this question, but where could the scene take place? And so often you’ll see things that are written towards generic locations just because like, well, they would be in their house because that’s where this would take place, or it would be at a police station, or it would be in a parking garage. And those are almost never the right choices. They are exactly the kind of places we see in movies all the time.

A lot of times you’ll see television shows and they are written towards those locations because those are their sets, those are their standing places where they need to be. But there is no reason why your movie, especially if it’s a spec where it has nothing to do with anything else in the world, it doesn’t have to take place in those boring environments. So, look for what are the interesting locations you could set these stories.

I’ve told this on the podcast before, but one of the directors I’ve worked with, she does not want to see any set twice. And one of her rules is that once something has cleared the stage she doesn’t want to see it again, and she doesn’t want to come back to those places, because subconsciously we think, “Well, we’re back where we were before.” And rarely do you really want to go back to the place you were before. You want to keep moving forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly true. And I’m a big believer in specificity in all things. If you are not specific in your location, well, fellow screenwriter, somebody will be specific on your behalf. But you name is on the script. And while we don’t always get our way, it would be a shame if you didn’t try and get your way. So, be specific.

**John:** Yeah. If something needs to take place in an office, like it genuinely is a business kind of thing that needs to take place in an office, throw us a line or two of color that make this office specific and different from any other office. If it’s a bank, do something with the bank that it’s a different kind of bank than just the generic sort of Savings & Loan kind of thing that we see so often in films.

It doesn’t have to be sort of magical, it doesn’t have to the fanciest richest bank of all time. It just needs to feel like it’s one place in one time. And it’s not just a slug line with no color to it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Question five is probably the most controversial thing in the short version of the list, which is what is the most surprising thing that could happen in this scene? And by this I mean as you start to write the scene, take a second and think, “Okay, I have my outline. I think I know what is supposed to happen in this scene, but let’s step back and say what wouldn’t I expect as a person watching this movie to happen at this moment?”

Answering these other questions — who is in the scene, where it’s taking place — is there something that is genuinely surprising? Because so often I will read scripts where almost everything that happens in a script is exactly what I would anticipate is going to happen in this script, be it a drama, be it a comedy, be it a horror movie. I’ve seen it before. It’s the same pieces, just assembled in a slightly different way.

If there’s something you can genuinely surprise me with, I’m going to be excited and keep reading. Not every surprise is a good surprise, but there should be a couple of real genuine surprises in your film. And always look as you’re starting a scene — could this be that surprising scene?

**Craig:** And obviously there are big surprises that we do in movies, twists and turns and dramatic reversals. But there are also those little tiny, tiny surprises. Nobody expects someone to lean in for a kiss in a romantic moment and knock a drink over. Always look to subvert what is “supposed to happen.”

That is the number one thing, when people say things like, “Well, the scene could just be a little more fun, or a little more interesting,” they never know what they’re asking for. But what they’re asking for is to be surprised, in little tiny ways and big ways.

**John:** So, as you’re doing that last sort of check before you really start writing, think about what do you have in your arsenal. What came before? What’s coming up? And what is in that little space that’s right there that would throw you off your game if it were to happen? And this could be that scene.

Most things won’t be that scene, so I think the danger with this surprise question is you think, well, every scene has to be completely brand new and original and like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Your readers would stop trusting you if every scene goes in completely bizarre different directions that they don’t know what’s going next.

Readers have a sense of expectation. They’ve followed you in this journey and you’re asking them to trust you on this journey. So, you want most of the times the things that happen in a scene should be the kinds of things that the reader would expect could happen in it. But every once in a while you subvert that expectation. It’s the same way that jokes are funny because you build a set of expectations and then every once and awhile you pull out the rug and surpass your expectations.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, there’s this great moment in Due Date where Robert Downey, Jr. on the heels of Zach’s character talking about his late father tells the story of how his father walked out on him. And he never heard from him again. And Zach just laughs in his face and says, “Oh my god. That sounds ridiculous. My dad would have never done that. My dad loved me.” [laughs] And it’s not at all what’s supposed to happen.

And frankly if you look at that scene on a card, there’s no surprise to that scene.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** It’s a very typical dramatic scene where somebody is giving an emotional backstory. But it’s a surprise in how it was executed. And so that’s what we mean by these little micro surprises. They don’t throw you off your story. They don’t knock you out of the formula of your narrative. But they do keep the moments fresh and interesting.

**John:** Yeah. And in that case it was a major character who was doing something you weren’t expecting. But sometimes it can be that minor character, that day player who is basically the cashier. And so we sort of know how the cashier transaction is supposed to work, but if that cashier just suddenly clocked you in the face, that would be surprising. And that’s the kind of jolt that could work in some movies.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Next question is, is this a long scene or a short scene? And this is a trap that I know I have fallen into a lot where I will write like the two page scene of something and realize, like, “Oh man — that really shouldn’t be two pages. That should be three-eighths at the most. It’s really meant to be a transitional moment to take us from this thing to that thing.” And I’ve made a meal out of something that was supposed to just be an appetizer.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I guess this… — All of these go really to the question of preparation. When you sit down to write your scene, do you know what you’re doing or not? So many of these come back to that basic question. I’m not one of these people that sits and just starts typing and where will I go and where will the muse take me. Be prepared.

Some scenes should be short and punchy. And some scenes deserve breadth because what’s happening in them wants to be elongated. You have to know, dramatically speaking, if what is happening wants to be elongated, or wants to be staccato.

**John:** Yeah. And there may be a reason why that certain card on your big corkboard, it’s written as one card, like it’s one scene. But it’s really part of a sequence. Or like you’re going through a series of spaces to achieve this thing. It’s a walk through a restaurant, and a park — it’s a conversation that’s happening in different places, so it’s not all one block of conversation.

Just expect that it’s not going to necessarily be a two page scene, a two page scene, a one page scene, a two page scene. There are going to be a lot of little chunks. And every once and awhile you will get that bigger thing and people will be excited, like, “Oh, we’re actually staying in this moment for a good long time.” And then it’s worth it because you do it. But, you have to anticipate that from the start.

And I will back track a little bit. You said you’re not a person who sits down and just starts writing and sees where the muse takes you. I think that sitting down and writing can be very helpful early on in the process where you kind of don’t know who the characters are. You don’t know what the characters’ voices are, and so I’ll often just like start the characters talking and just listen to them for awhile. But that’s not the finished scene. That’s just sort of work for myself.

Sometimes I’ll except little bits of that or I’ll find little things that are funny from there, but that’s not the actual scene itself.

**Craig:** Correct. Correct.

**John:** Seventh step for me is to brainstorm three different ways it could begin. And the reason why I say three different ways is that so often you will just go with like your first instinct, and your first instinct may not be a great instinct. It may be sort of a very safe common instinct. Sort of the “walking through a door” kind of instinct.

Look for ways to start the scene that isn’t the most obvious way. A lot of times you’re looking for what is the first line that somebody says in a scene and that’s the first way you’re going to start it. But sometimes it’s a reveal. Sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes there is a different way to begin that. And it’s worth pausing for a minute or two to think of different ways you could start the scene.

**Craig:** I have a — I don’t know if you’d call this an additional, but it’s whatever number you’re up to, part B, or part A — and that is to think transitionally, always. Because, again, if you don’t come up with the transitions somebody will volunteer and do it for you.

So, when I’m planning a scene, usually the day before I’ve planned the transition out of one and into the other, which is a great way of thinking about how to start the scene because it’s intentional and it’s editorial and it will help all parties involved.

So, when I’m working on the scene today I probably know from yesterday how it should start. When I figure out how it should end I start thinking about the next scene and how that one should start.

And in this way, hopefully, you create a sense of seamlessness throughout. So, excellent advice to think about beginnings. And I would just add: Think about them transitionally.

**John:** Now, I often write out of sequence, so I will write just a given scene devoid of knowing exactly how the previous scene started, or how the next scene would go.

But, if I’m writing that scene independently, I’m really thinking about how I’m getting into the scene and thinking about how I’m getting out of the scene, and what works best for that scene. By the time I’m writing the scenes that surround it I’ll some idea of — I’ll know sort of what it’s going to go into, and so it will influence the scenes around it.

So, even if you’re writing out of sequence, it’s good to think about how you might get into that and how you might get out of it when you actually get those other scenes written.

**Craig:** Correct. Yeah. Just know that that’s part of your job.

**John:** And be aware of how you’re doing it in other scenes, because you don’t want to do every scene the same way.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You don’t want to always just come in in the middle of a conversation. Sometimes you really do need to walk somebody through the door. Other times you’re going to want to start on an image and go shot by shot. A lot of times scenes are going to be scenes that don’t have any dialogue, where you’re just watching something happen. And be mindful of how you’re doing your scenes and how to vary them so it doesn’t feel the same.

**Craig:** Yeah. Variety is key. There are very simple stock transitions that aren’t to be avoided because they’re common; sometimes they’re exactly what’s needed. Sometimes you just need a shot of a car driving down the road and then we’re inside the car. That’s okay.

But think in terms of audio and visual. Sometimes you can do an audio transition. Sometimes you want the transition to be visual. Sometimes you want it to be a little tricky and a little clever. Sometimes you don’t. Think about big. Think about small. Think about how your scene ends. Does it end small? Try and start the next one big. Scene ends big, start the next one small. Little tricks.

**John:** And big and small, sometimes that means visually, but sometimes it means big sound, little sound. Sometimes that transition is the chime of an open car door, and like that’s the reveal that’s getting us into this next thing. So, be thinking in more than just one sense.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Step eight for me is to play it on the big screen in my head. And I stress the big scene. Literally, you close your eyes. You sort of see what it is that the scene is that you’re trying to write. And sort of visualize what it’s going to look like on a screen.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in that space and I’m just looking around. I’m sitting in the room with the character. Sometimes I’m watching it sort of on a flat screen. But the important part is I’m just watching it sort of happen. And I don’t sort of force it to happen in any specific way. But I’m sort of observing it. It’s loose blocking in a way of like these are the kinds of things that are going to happen in the scene. This is what is going to be talked about. And you just let it loop.

And for me I just let it loop, and loop, and loop until I can start to hear what the characters are saying, if it starts to be, like, okay we’d start here, we’d go to here. These are the things that would happen. And you’re seeing a sort of rough version of it playing in your head.

Do you loop? Is that a way you tend to approach a scene? Or you just start writing on the screen itself?

**Craig:** No, I absolutely do what you do. It is a form of daydreaming. If you’re not fond of or good at daydreaming, find another thing to do. Because that’s what’s screenwriting is. It’s rigorous, structured daydreaming.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so because it’s so important to write visually, you know my whole shower fetish. So, I get in the shower and I start thinking about the scene and I start absolutely building it and watching it in my head. And when you start to watch the scene in your head it forces you to account for things that I think you wouldn’t otherwise account for.

Like what does the room look like, and smell like, and is it bright, is it dark, is it cramped, is it smoky, is it noisy? All the things that you can use inside of a scene are suddenly available to you by requirement because you’re watching it.

So, I don’t know how else you could do it.

**John:** There have been a couple times where I’ve really been slammed on getting something done, and in television especially where it literally was sort of brute force. Like, okay, I sort of know where this is going and I would jam it through. There are times where it’s the one-eighth of a page where you’re literally walking somebody through a room, or it’s just really quick, sort of mechanical writing.

But for any scene that actually has meat and substance to it, where characters are going to be talking, and something is going to happen in this scene that’s going to transform the story, you owe it to everybody to really loop that scene and really get the best version of it playing in your head.

And it doesn’t need to be perfect, and I won’t know every line of dialogue, and I won’t know exactly what it is, but I’ll get to a point where it’s like, “Okay, I can see it, I can see it.” And I get to the next step which is what I’ll call the Scribble Version, where I just make sure to get it down on paper or on screen in just the worst possible form as quickly as possible, just notes for myself so I can remember what it was, and so I can recreate that looped version and I want forget it when I start writing the real scene.

**Craig:** I do that, too. Sometimes after the shower I will go to my computer and type an email to myself that’s just the dialogue, because I know what the dialogue is connected to. The dialogue helps me — that essentially is the spine that I will reconnect all the visuals and the transitions and everything to. But that’s the stuff that’s so wordy it needs to be memorialized or I’m going to forget, particularly if I really like the way I said some line or another.

And then I’ll send that to myself, and that’s basically my cheat sheet for the day’s work.

**John:** Yeah. So, that scribble version — I should stress — it shouldn’t be perfect. And even if you’re writing dialogue, it won’t be the best dialogue. It won’t be perfect dialogue. There is probably some stuff in there that you love, but it’s not going to be perfect, it’s just going to be enough to let you know how you’re getting through the scene. And then when it comes time to write the real scene you will do the laborious exacting X-ACTO Knife work of getting all those words to fit together just right. And figuring out like that tense is tipping this off. You will do all that precise detailing.

But the scribble version is just meant to be scribbling. It’s not meant to be the final version of the scene. And the few times where I’ve tried to make that scribble thing too perfect, I’ve ended up forgetting what my intention was when I started writing it down.

**Craig:** Yup. Exactly.

**John:** In writing the full scene, use your notes. I find as I’m going from the scribble version to the real version, sometimes I will have a better idea. And that’s great, that’s fine. If in writing the more precise version of the dialogue you recognize like, “Oh you know, there’s actually a better opportunity for what I could do in the scene, or a different way I could do it.”

Take advantage of that. Just like you shouldn’t feel lockstep bound to your outline, don’t feel lockstep bound to your scribble version. Just write the best possible scene you could write.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know the first version is not going to make it anyway. It’s funny. I play this little game with myself every time I see one of my scripts turned into a movie. And it’s called the What Words Survived Game.

And the idea is you will write tens of thousands of words. And you will revise, and revise, and revise. Which ones will make it? [laughs] So few as it turns out take the journey all the way from beginning to end. So few.

So, know that and accept it. And suddenly, ah, isn’t that freeing to know from the start that it’s okay that 80% or 90% of the words you’re writing today that you are appropriately fussing over, they’re not your last shot.

**John:** I want to stress that “appropriately fussing,” because it doesn’t mean that they’re not important. They’re incredibly, insanely important. They need to be ready to be shot tomorrow.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** But…

**Craig:** They just won’t be. [laughs]

**John:** …they won’t be. It’s not going to end up being exactly what you thought it was going to be. Things will change. Accept that as well. It doesn’t give you permission to not be great. And that full scene needs to be shootable. And I get frustrated — and some of the samples we’re going to look at today — they aren’t shootable scenes. They aren’t anywhere near what they need to be to get onto the page. They feel more like what my scribble version should be.

**Craig:** Yeah. Think of your first draft like ancestors. If they’re not alive then the eventual chosen one will never be born. So, they need to be crafted correctly because they’re what get you to the next one, and to the next one, and to the next one.

**John:** Absolutely. Every draft along the way should be shootable. You should never turn in something that’s not done. If you are — if you’re writing a scriptment, if you’re writing one of those James Cameron Alien scriptments, god bless you. That’s great. That’s fantastic. That’s a helpful part of your process. Do like the thing where you don’t have full dialogue, you just sort of have big blocks of pieces. If that’s useful to you, fantastic.

But that’s not a screenplay. That’s not a final script. And when you’re writing real scenes, write real scenes.

**Craig:** Yeah, you won’t make it otherwise.

**John:** No.

And my last point was also kind of misinterpreted in the Reddit version. It says: Repeat 200 times. And by that I actually meant that most scripts you’re going to write like 200 scenes for them. People think like, “Oh, it’s 120 pages, so maybe it’s 100 scenes or something.” No, actually most scripts consist of a lot of smaller little moments.

And we think about, like oh, you’re writing those big moments, you don’t recognize that most of the bulk of a screenplay are those little scenes. And you’re going to be doing that again, and again, and again. It’s a much more intensive process than you realize.

**Craig:** Yeah. I guess the 10,000 hours thing applies, huh?

**John:** Yeah. So, by the time you’ve written a screenplay you’ve written probably 200 scenes. You’ve spent a zillion hours on it. And you’re going to spend a zillion more hours on that script, and then a zillion more hours on the next script. And that’s the nature of it.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s what we do.

**John:** That’s what we do. Another thing we do on this podcast is sometimes read Three Page Challenge samples that were sent in by our listeners.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so there’s a frequent question. People who follow us on Twitter will ask, “Hey, are you still accepting Three Page Challenges?” And the answer is always yes, We’ve decided we are having an open, no-deadline for Three Page Challenge.

What you do if you want to submit a sample of your three pages to us, go to johnaugust.com/threepage. It’s spelled out “threepage.” And there are guidelines there for if you want to submit your samples, how you do it, what you need to include, some boilerplate legal text so you don’t sue us. And Stuart takes a look at any of those emails that have the proper boilerplate and picks them out and sends them to me and Craig.

So, I don’t read all of them, Craig doesn’t read all of them, but Stuart — god bless him — does read all of them.

**Craig:** God bless him.

**John:** God bless Stuart. And three of the ones that were sent to us today we will be reading. And let me start with — this is actually a rarity, which is a script by Josh Golden, and one of the ones that does not start on page one.

Most of the times people send in these scripts they’re starting on page one, and so the very start of the script. Josh sent us page 14, 15, and 16.

**Craig:** I liked his moxie. I loved it.

**John:** I loved his moxie.

So, while I loved his moxie, I was also a little confused by how it started, and so I just chose to kind of ignore the first three-eighths of the page on page 14 because it involves monsters, I think. And Drake — I had no context of who these people are.

**Craig:** I tried the same thing. I took at stab at the little remnant of the scene that we don’t see on page 13. It didn’t make sense because we don’t know the context, so I just forgave it and moved onto the middle of the page.

**John:** Great. So, let me give the summary for Josh Golden’s script. We don’t know the title of the script, so it’s a script maybe with monsters in it.

**Craig:** Untitled Josh Golden Project.

**John:** I love it. And big seller on Variety.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** We start in The Summers Home. It’s evening. It’s a ranch house that’s a little bit run down. 37-year-old Sarah Summers, she’s getting ready for a date. She’s being helped by her 18-year-old daughter, Alex. Sarah is concerned she looks “mom-ish.”

Downstairs her date, Nick, maybe it’s not downstairs, but elsewhere in the house her date Nick, who’s 35, is talking with Ben and Maggie. Ben is 13, Maggie is 6, who are apparently also Sarah’s kids. Sarah comes out. Nick brought her a single rose, just like on The Bachelor. And as we leave these pages they prepare to go out the door on their date.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So, in terms of the mechanics of things, the way the pages layout, everything seems quite nice. The descriptions, I thought, were appropriate length. The dialogue sounded natural. I guess this is one of those three pages where I shrug a little bit only because, well, let’s tie it back to an earlier discussion — surprise.

There’s no surprise here.

**John:** Nothing.

**Craig:** It’s pretty much…seen this kind of confrontation a gazillion times. It’s a mother whose husband has died or left, she is off on her first date. She says something woeful that we’ve heard — it’s a version of something we’ve heard before. We have the somewhat precocious teenage daughter who is helping her out. Quite a few pop culture references. And more precocious children who are suspicious of the new guy.

If there’s really any crime here — because all of that sort of rises to the test of sort of general rookie sin of mundanity — the only crime really is that this Nick character who is the guy who is coming for the date is incredibly bland. And since we’re meeting him for the first time his blandness is a huge problem, particularly if we are meant to actually care that he ends up with this woman.

**John:** Yes. I forgot in the preface to say that if you’d like to read these pages with us they’re all at johnaugust.com/podcast and you’ll see all three samples are PDFs right here.

Nick is a problem. But I’d also say I think this is the first time we’re meeting Sarah, and the kids, and everybody else. They’re all capitalized and we’re getting their ages, so this is probably the first time we’re meeting any of these characters.

And so it made me wonder whether their setup kind of deliberately generically so that something bad or funny could happen to them because we’re on page 14. It’s a little bit late to be introducing primary characters, but maybe introduce some characters who are going to be involved in complications along the way.

I agree with you that it was mundane in a way that made me wonder why Josh would send us these pages.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because this felt like they could be pages in any script and there wasn’t anything sort of special or unique about them. There wasn’t anything that says like, “Oh, well this guy is fantastic.” I can say with these pages, like, well this guy knows how to format words on the page and it feels just fine.

The pop culture references, we talked about this on the show before, it really is a frustration to see — there’s a Wisteria Lane reference to Desperate Housewives, Kate Gosselin. It’s like: those are not going to date well in a feature film.

**Craig:** They don’t date well now.

**John:** No. And it’s one of those things where like if you’re doing a television show you can kind of get away with it sometimes because television gets made faster, it expires faster. That’s kind of accepted and okay. But these didn’t work out great.

I also had some challenge with some of the references here. Nick is described as, “Nick, 35, attractive in a scruffy Chicago flannel sort of way.” I have no idea what that means. I don’t know what Chicago flannel is. I don’t know what’s special about Chicago flannel.

**Craig:** Maybe it’s there’s no such fabric as Chicago flannel, I think he meant in a Chicago guy who wears flannel sort of way.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** But then maybe flip the word “scruffy flannel Chicago sort of way.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Maybe like a “Chicago scruffy flannel wearing sort of way.”

**Craig:** Also, one thing that sort of popped out to me, also, was “Clearly uncomfortable, can’t decide which way to cross his legs. ‘So, you guys are Sarah’s kids, huh? How long has that been going on?'”

A couple things. One, that line is just too doofy. Adults don’t make that mistake. It is — you’re setting up precocious 13-year-old Ben to slap him down with an easy comeback line. But, frankly it is such a weird goofy thing to say that an adult would either not say it or would correct themselves upon saying it.

And also you can’t really decide which way to cross your legs if you have the first line in the scene and nothing else is going on.

**John:** The other challenge with that line is it doesn’t pass the logic test. It doesn’t pass the logic test that this would be the line he could say at this point, because how did he enter into the house? It’s meant to establish sort of who these people are in the scene, but it’s not a thing that the character could actually say.

**Craig:** You’re right.

**John:** And “How long has that been going on,” it feels clammy. It feels like I’ve heard that actual phrasing before.

**Craig:** I agree. If you want to set up a scene where people who are suspicious or displeased are looking at someone who is trying to win them over, and it’s an awkward situation, then maybe you just show them all sitting silently. And then one person lifts a glass, drinks a little water, puts it down. More silence. Then…

If the object is to portray awkwardness, portray it. but to just jump into a line, you’re right, it seems quite odd. It seems a little sitcomy, because they don’t have the time for that sort of thing. But these are movies; we do have time.

**John:** One of the opportunities I felt like, so “Maggie, 6, clenching her stuffed monkey,” which she’s a little bit old for a monkey, but that’s okay. Nick could call them, “You seem kind of old for a monkey.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m 6.5.” There’s pointing out sort of the oddness and the awkwardness of it felt like a better opportunity.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I also noticed that Maggie’s age is sort of impossible. So, she’s listed in the scene description as “Maggie, 6, clenching her stuffed monkey.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Ben says, “Well Maggie’s 7, I’m 13, you do the math.” Then, “Maggie nudges her brother and whispers in his ear, ‘My mistake. She’s seven and a half.'”

So, is she 6, 7, or 7.5? It’s been two-eighths of a page and we can’t seem to agree on that.

**Craig:** Certainly for Josh, if you’re going for sort of comic patter, you don’t want to distract with that kind of mistake. It’s okay, it happens sometimes. It wouldn’t be a good deal if it said, “And Maggie, 6, clenching her stuffed monkey,” and a woman says, “Excuse me, have you seen my daughter? She’s seven, she was just here. Oh, I think I saw her over there.”

Okay, you made a mistake, whatever. But, if you’re actually doing dialogue based on her age you can’t really get the age wrong in the description. You’re kind of blowing it.

**John:** Yeah. So, I’m giving Josh the benefit of the doubt. The fact that page 14 clearly involves monsters of some kind, I’m thinking maybe the Summers family is going to get eaten and that could be fascinating…

**Craig:** I don’t think so.

**John:** You don’t think so?

**Craig:** No. Because there’s too much time and too much characterization for characters who are merely to be eaten. [laughs] I just don’t believe it.

**John:** Yeah. But here’s the thing: Everything is competently done and I want to stress that that gets you somewhere. Some of these other things don’t achieve competence.

**Craig:** For sure. Look, sometimes we read pages and I think, “Well, this person can’t do this.” And I don’t think that here, Josh. I think you can do this. I just suspect you’re new at it. And you have a facility, which is a wonderful thing. So, build from that facility and now you have a way of writing scenes that seem properly shaped and so forth. Okay, but now really think. Let’s go a little deeper. I suspect that you have better in you and better to come.

**John:** Yeah. And your pages are better than Craig’s pages from a long time ago.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, whose aren’t?

**John:** [laughs] Let’s do Willa next. Do you want to do that summary?

**Craig:** Sure. So, Willa, by Kate Powers, opens on the exterior of O’Hare Airport, also Chicago, at night in Winter and we follow some footprints into the airport. And the footprints are matched with a drop of blood along the left footprint of each footprint. And we follow the track into the airport. We are trailing the blood and the muddy footprints into a public restroom where a cleaning woman is wiping away the blood and finally gets to its source which is behind a locked stall. There are no shoes visible but she can smell a homeless person in there and she leaves.

The homeless woman emerges, filthy, early 30s, she’s wearing rags which we get the sense maybe were once actually nice clothes, but something quite awful has happened to this person.

The cleaning woman and an airport cop are about to head in there to apprehend her. We fade to black and now we are flashed back. There is a title card that says, “Denial,” and we’re flashed back to the control room of a studio for a talk show named Willa which is an Oprah-style show.

The woman in the bathroom now looks quite lovely and nice. Her name is Corey. And she’s with her producer. They’re watching Willa conduct an interview with a woman who had fought off a rapist, and they’re sort of critiquing the fact that Willa is about to shift away from this brave woman to switch to a different guy who’s going to give away gifts to the audience.

How was that?

**John:** That was good. That was a good summary.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** This is, again, competent. There’s nothing in here that was sort of badly done. I have some questions about sort of use of time and use of our attention. So, from the very start we fade in and we’re in italics the whole time. And maybe this was a mistake, or maybe this was a deliberate choice to show that this was in the past, but don’t do that. Italics are just a burden to read. So, don’t do italics.

Italics are fantastic for emphasizing that words are in a foreign language, some special emphasis or unique case. Don’t do it for a page. I got a little bit confused with are we following a set of feet or are we following footprints? And ultimately I decided we were following footprints, but because she was saying “sets” and the way we were tracking, I just didn’t believe that we were following footprints.

And I didn’t know that it was necessarily the right image to be getting us into seeing Corey in the bathroom there. I didn’t fully believe it. I didn’t believe that we would be following these footprints through an airport. And if we’re not believing your first image, then that’s an issue.

The cleaning woman smells her, and it’s like, yeah, you can do that sort of sniff-sniff thing, but I don’t — again, sense of smell is not a movie thing. I mean, if you’re going to see that there’s a person in there, you could always sort of look through that crack and see that there is somebody in there. That felt like a more realistic way to get in there.

But, she’s doing a very kind of classic technique, which is where you’re seeing somebody in a terrible situation, and then you’re flashing back to an earlier place in their life where they weren’t in that situation. That’s fine. That’s accepted. And I suspect that this Denial tag is going to be some sort of Kübler-Ross stages of grief. I think there’s going to be some journey that we’re going on. So, I was willing to buy it sort of at the start.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree with what you’re saying. First, let’s talk about these footprints. Here’s what I got hung up on. It says in the second paragraph, “Footprints march across the ice-crusted sidewalk, mostly headed towards, loved ones, home. But one set heads into…”

**John:** That’s what I got confused about!

**Craig:** Here’s the thing. I wasn’t confused. I understood “footprints march across” implies feet marching across. I was looking at it, okay, I know what she means. She means tracks, not actually feet. What I got hung up on was how in god’s name am I in row 15 going to figure out… — First of all, it’s an airport. People are going in and out of an airport constantly. There’s no airport where everyone walks out and then one set of footprints walks in and I’m supposed to be able to discern the heel and toe pattern of an inward bound footprint.

It is a clever thought, but somebody at some point is going to have to make footprints into an airport. You’re going to be there, if you’re lucky, and no one is going to know why they’re doing it because you’ll never notice. All you see in the audience, because you don’t know — remember, no one hands these pages out to the audience.

Here’s what the audience is going to see: Chicago O’Hare Airport. Night. Snow.

That’s it. They won’t even register the footprints, because footprints are irrelevant. What they will register is blood. Start with the blood. [laughs] That’s my advice. You can have people walking through and you can land down and you just arrive at a little patch of snow with a blood drop. And then you move, and you see this blood drop. And then you start to realize that the blood drop is next to a very distinct shoe print.

Okay, great. Now, we follow the blood drop into the bathroom. And then there’s this woman in a stall who comes out. My advice is get rid of this cleaning woman. You don’t need her. First of all, again, think about the audience because they don’t have these pages. A cleaning woman in a bathroom sniffing at a closed stall is a poop joke. That’s all that we’re going to get, because we don’t even know a person is in there. We don’t know what they can smell.

There’s no reason for this woman to be in there. Of course, when you get to this point in the movie when you catch up to this point there’s going to be a situation where a cleaning woman brings a security guard in. But just do it then. You don’t need to introduce this cleaning woman now. It’s not interesting.

You can have just a regular civilian knock on the door and say, “Sweetheart, are you all right?” “Go away.” So that woman leaves, and then — alone — out comes this woman and she looks in the…

So, there’s just some staging issues here. And there is some disconnect between what you are putting on the page and what we could ever experience.

Yes, for sure, we’re going to be dealing with denial, anger, bargaining, and all that stuff. And that’s fine. I think it’s a perfectly cool thing. And I actually really liked when it faded to black and then a title card came on that said “Denial.” That’s fun. That’s interesting.

**John:** Let me pitch you my opening to do the same thing.

Chicago Airport. Big wide shot. We’re at Chicago Airport, it’s winter.

Next shot — in the bathroom, underneath the stall. The door is closed but there are no feet going down, and blood drops down, and drops down from her foot which is cut and bleeding.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Great. So, you gave us the wide shot, we’re in Chicago Airport. You gave us the bathroom shot — we’re in the bathroom. Here’s our girl and there a cleaning woman, someone else, that scene, that moment can start. And we didn’t need any of that rigmarole of having to track through an airport. Because it’s set up as a Hitchcockian kind of thing, but it’s not a Hitchcockian kind of moment.

**Craig:** Well, that’s exactly right. What you’re doing is you’re reverse engineering a beginning that fits to the scene that we then see. Because the scene we then see feels like a slightly bubbly, maybe even comedic world, but a light world. I mean, the Willa character feels comedic to me. And the opening sequence, which would be the sort of thing you might see with a credit sequence of us tracking a blood trail into an airport bathroom feels like a thriller opening.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, there is a tonal disconnect there, for sure. So, you have to either fix the tone of the Willa studio, which seems to light and breezy for the opening, or fix the opening to be less of a thriller vibe, and more of just the shock of this disheveled woman in trouble.

And, you know, look, and this script is called Willa, so this gives me some concern. The talk show character is deadly, to me. And now this isn’t really a critique of how you’ve written it, it’s just a general thing. It’s so hard to write the fake Oprah, because it just feels fake. The whole thing feels fake.

It’s like fake talk show host. Fake late night host. Fake news anchor. It always feels fake.

**John:** I would like to single out that Kate Powers does hang a lantern on the fact that Willa Lear is an Oprah-like character. This is how she describes her: “Self-help author/TV host, Willa Lear, late 40’s, intensely maternal. And, no, it’s not your imagination. Her clothes, the stage, everything echoes a taste of Willa’s idol, Oprah.”

So, at least you’re calling it out saying, “Yes, I acknowledge this is an Oprah kind of character.” It’s deliberate and we will probably reference that somewhere in the actual show itself. Fine. That’s great.

My bigger concern with the Willa studio here is that we’re coming in Corey Ryan who is this woman we saw in the bathroom, but she doesn’t have anything interesting to do. It’s not about her. And so we get sort of a close-up, but then it’s just all the other studio business for the next two pages, and that’s not interesting.

If she is our protagonist, which you’re definitely setting the expectation that she is the important person to follow because that’s who we started the movie with, she doesn’t get to do anything interesting in this next page and a half.

**Craig:** It says that Willa is her boss. Well, is she Willa’s assistant? Is she Willa’s producer? I mean, there’s another producer there. Is she Willa’s what?

And if she has a job, show me her doing the job.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And, look, here’s my thing about these fake talk show hosts is that inevitably the first scene is a very shopworn critique of talk shows. And we see it right here. Willa is not emotionally genuine. Well, yeah. Yeah, okay. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it, you know.

**John:** Yeah. That you’re going to show us a cruel Nazi.

**Craig:** [laughs] Right. Exactly. Uncaring, venal, ratings-obsessed talk show host, that is not well-mined territory.

**John:** Yes. What I would like to say about Kate’s writing though overall is that she does get it. And she actually can sort of push stuff around on the page in a way that’s nice. I didn’t think everything worked here especially well, but I feel like she can write a script. I feel like this is probably part of a full script, she didn’t write just three random pages. She wrote this whole script and there probably is a thing to it. And she probably has an idea because it’s set up with — the bathroom didn’t work exactly right — but she’s flashing back to an earlier time.

She has some sort of structural idea behind how these chapters are going to work. So, there could be something interesting here. I just felt like it wasn’t the best execution of these pages.

**Craig:** Totally agree. I think it’s a very similar situation to our first writer. Kate is somebody that could do this and was in control of the pages, even when they went wonky. And so it’s just about now asking what is real and what can people see. Even the thing that you cited, “It’s not your imagination — her clothes, the stage, everything echoes the taste of Willa’s idol, Oprah.”

And I in the audience know this how? If I’m drawing my own conclusion than maybe there’s another way of putting that. But, regardless, there is nothing here that jumps out as disqualifying in any way. The dialogue wasn’t clumsy or rough.

So, I think that there’s better yet ahead from Kate Powers as well.

**John:** I agree. I do want to shout-out for Aline Brosh McKenna’s Morning Glory, which features a young producer who gets drafted on to work at first a local TV station and then for a national news program. There was a specificity there that was worth taking a look at. Because we know what all those sort of tropes are, and we’ve seen it in Broadcast News and all these other things. And Aline found new very specific things about those characters in those situations and their worlds. And that’s what the script could benefit from.

**Craig:** Yeah. And Also remember that our first glimpse, when we’re writing about shows, our first glimpse of backstage tells us everything. Is it panicked, frenzied, pathetic, depressed, chintzy? The backstage here tells us nothing about this job, the show. It just tells us nothing.

And so really try and relay a vibe. Give us a little crackle, a little energy, or the opposite, but impart information.

**John:** Yes.

Our third and final three page sample is Another Man’s Treasure by A.H. McGee.

**Craig:** A.H.!

**John:** A.H.! I know an American McGee, but I’m guessing this is probably not American McGee.

**Craig:** I guess probably not, no.

**John:** Probably not American McGee. A summary. So, we meet Bruce Hodges as he drives his Audi through a gated community. He answers a phone call in his car and he hears a struggle on the other end — a woman’s scream and then a gunshot.

A title card comes up for “Last Week.” We’re starting at the Langley building, a big office building, where Rudy Franco, a guard in his 60s, is up in the front. Meanwhile, a new security guard named Rosie Chaplain, who’s in her 20s, is getting into her uniform and she struggles to get her walkie-talkie working right.

Our last scene, Rudy is starting her training, apparently. Maybe it’s her first day, or one of her first days, and they’re going off on training.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, you know, if you guys have noticed we’ve gotten a ton of Three Page Challenges where there is an opening scene and then “Last week,” “last month,” “a long time ago,” “how did we get here.” This is becoming almost routine.

Take note, if you will.

It is fine, but if your script doesn’t need it, it’s a little cheap. It’s getting a little cheap. So, consider that.

**John:** Maybe Stuart just loves when scripts do that and that’s why he picks them out for us. Maybe it could be a sample bias.

**Craig:** [laughs] I just like the idea of Stuart going, “Whoa!,” like every time he reads them he goes, “Whoa! I did not see that coming. Oh my god, top of the pile. Whoa!” And then he does it again, like three times a day, he just shouts “Whoa!” And he’s so startled and pleased by the time shift.

The first sequence suffered a little bit from slug line whiplash. We have, in a car, in a gated community, in front of the home, in the car, right outside of the car, right in the car. I think at some point we kind of get it and maybe we could thin those slug lines out a little bit.

**John:** I think so.

**Craig:** Because it was getting a little bit much. It’s a cool — we don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know who the dude is. And then on top of that we add another mystery, which is the fact that someone is calling him. He knows who it is. He has something to talk about with them. He’s sad about it. And then there’s a gunshot and a crime on the other end.

I almost feel like there’s only so much mystery you can put in my face before I start feeling like I didn’t get anything out of it at all. If I had to guess, I would guess that Bruce Hodges is a PI. I would guess that he is being hired by somebody to track a possible straying spouse.

He arrives at a house, and yup, sure enough the straying spouse is that house. The person calling is his client and he has to sadly tell them. And then there is a gunshot. I’m just guessing.

It would be nice if I just knew a little bit more, because it’s enough of a mystery and enough of a shock that there is a crime on the other end of this phone call, for me.

**John:** I did not get that PI thing at all out of this page and half, which is odd.

**Craig:** I wonder if I’m right. Oh, you know what, I’m looking on the PDF, it’s Andre McGee. A.H. is Andre.

**John:** Oh, I’m so sorry.

**Craig:** No, no, it’s fine. The title page is A.H., but the title of the file is Andre. So, hopefully Andre will check in with us and tell me if I’m crazy or not.

**John:** I was taking it as he was having an affair with the woman on the other side, and that he heard this and then got away.

**Craig:** Well, let’s see. Either way, the point is, Andre, I think you failed — you did such a good job of hiding the ball from us that we stopped caring, you know, because it was just basically like a jumble of stuff that happened and it’s like we…

**John:** We forgot there was a ball.

**Craig:** We forgot there was a ball. [laughs] We forgot there was a game.

Now, when we go to “Last week” — cue Stuart, shrieking, squealing with joy — we meet Rosie Chaplain who I suspect is our protagonist. A nice description of her.

This is a tough one. She’s staring at her reflection in the mirror. And she says, into the mirror, “This is only temporary. Hang in there.” I just…forgot whether or not people do that, here’s the problem: A character that does do that is weird to me. Talking to yourself in that kind of self-affirmational way into a mirror is goofy.

And so now I feel like she’s goofy. And I know you don’t want that. So, in a way you have to figure out how to get across this information that this is her first day. The game of smooth, elegant exposition is one that you need to play. So, I would try another tactic there.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree. I would also try figuring out what words need to be capitalized and what words don’t need to be capitalized. I’m not talking uppercase/lowercase.

**Craig:** Like two-way radio?

**John:** Like two-way radio. But really from the very start, just odd choices in sort of what got capitalized. And the Audi pulls into a “Gated Community.”

**Craig:** Right. Yeah.

**John:** Home is in capitals. The “Mini Van.” It’s just strange, almost like not common English usage of what’s being capitalized and what’s not. And does it really matter? Is it going to affect how a film is shot? No, not at all. But it affects your read because it’s like, “Wait, why is that weird and different?”

**Craig:** It does give one pause. For instance, “The kind of homes Hedge Fund CEO’s go to jail for,” is a cool way of describing this gated community, it lets me know where I am. The problem is that you capitalize, not all caps, but initial capped Hedge and Fund. Why? Why? It’s confusing and it’s disrupting what is otherwise an interesting line. I do agree with that.

**John:** The bottom of page, “The call is on speaker, undulating through his top notch stereo system.”. It’s like, ohh, what, ooh?

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s not a good one.

**John:** We’re already in an Audi. You don’t need to talk about the stereo system being special. Just like, “Call is on speaker.”

**Craig:** And calls don’t undulate. Sorry.

**John:** No. Also, most phone calls don’t happen the way they happen here. “Bruce, saddened, ‘Hey, there’s something…'” So, a call is coming into him and he answers, “Hey, there’s something I want to talk…”

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, people actually do say hello. I mean, if you wanted to do this because of the tick you’re playing here, he answers, “Listen, before you say a word…” you know? [laughs] Come up with some way of doing that.

**John:** Or, “Thanks for calling me back.”

**Craig:** Yeah, “Thanks for calling me back.” But, you’re right, calls don’t happen that way. Yes, it’s kind of a weird movie trick that a lot of times people don’t say goodbye in movie conversations. But to just pick up and just do that is a little odd.

Do watch your over-thesaurusizing, like “undulating.” And also, you know, when Rudy is talking to Rosie, you have her “Two-Way Radio,” again, two and way are capitalized, and radio. “Her Two Way Radio CRUNCHES. She snaps out of her routine.”

“Rudy,” in parenthesis (O.S.) for off-screen, and then in parenthetical (from two-way) and then Chaplain, in italics. So, that would be triplicate. We get it. He’s off-screen.

**John:** [laughs] Oh, Rudy is not actually in the physical space? He’s not right next door?

**Craig:** He’s not hiding in the radio. He’s not a little man who lives in the radio. So, yeah, triplicate, no. Duplicate, no. I think Rudy, in parenthesis, (on radio), would have been fine. And then Chaplain, “Yes, Sir,” capitalized S for sir, not sure why. “Yes, Sir, I’m here getting dressed.” Again, “Rudy (O.S.) (two way),” and this way two way is not capitalized, “Well, you shouldn’t be. Meet me by the main elevators. Move it.”

Why shouldn’t she be getting dressed?

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** I don’t understand that.

**John:** I don’t understand it either.

**Craig:** So, you know, then she looks at her watch. She just noticed that she’s late? There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on in there that wasn’t connecting. “Rudy paces back and forth, shielding his frustration from the public.” Because she’s a couple of minutes late? Or she was dressing? I don’t know.

I was having trouble with this character. Rudy felt fake. She felt a little stock as kind of nervous, disappointed with her life girl who talks into a mirror. We’ve got issues here.

**John:** We’ve got issues here. And a lot of the issues here, I would say, can come back to how we started the situation. Let’s look at how you write a scene and how you start a scene. And you don’t have to take my template for those 11 points, but I didn’t feel like he’d done that work on really any of the scenes we saw here, or any of these moments that we saw here.

Well, who’s in the scene? Where is the interesting thing? What needs to happen in the scene? How could this begin? How are we getting through it?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** These are sort of fundamental questions. And it very much felt like he started typing the scenes and let whatever happened in the scenes happen. And this could very well be a first script and things like the triplicate of O.S., two way, “Well you shouldn’t be,” that feels like the kind of situation where like I don’t know how do to this. I don’t know what the proper formatting is so I’m just going to do all of it. I’m just going to overdo it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Andre, I’m going to give you a suggestion here. This is how I would approach this kind of thing with Rosie and Rudy.

— And by the way, Rosie and Rudy is a little bit of an issue, too.

**John:** Don’t repeat character names if you can possible help it.

**Craig:** Especially when they’re right after another. But here’s what we want to get across, right, we want to get across that this is Rosie’s first day on the job. She’s not happy with this job. And Rudy is kind of a jerk.

So, what I would suggest is lose the whole “I’m late” thing, because you don’t need it. Frankly, don’t give Rudy a reason to be angry. It’s more interesting — if you want to show that a character is a grumpy, grouchy guy, show him being grouchy and grumpy without a reason.

Maybe Rosie is in this locker room and she has — she looks at herself, she sighs, and then she looks down at a security guard uniform that’s like still in the shrink-wrap plastic because it’s just come from the uniform service, you know. And her name tag, she has to peel that plastic off, you know, just to get that she’s opening up and putting this stuff on and she doesn’t like it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then she comes out and then all of a sudden this guy is on her. And he’s like, “I was trying to get you on your radio. Why aren’t you answering your radio?” And then she picks it up and she’s on the wrong channel because she’s new, and “I’m sorry, I’ve never used this.” “Just follow me. Do exactly as I…”

Then, just be a little bit more creative about how we present these facts. And be a little more visual about it. And less worried about two-way radios, and back and forths, and “Yes, sir, I’m here,” and all that stuff.

**John:** My guess is that she is a more important character than Rudy is, and so coming into this part of the sequence we really should have started with her and not started with Rudy outside. Because we don’t care about that lobby. Is something interesting going to happen in this lobby? Eh.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She’s probably your actual character, so starting with her. And I like your idea of the specificity of ripping off plastic and sort of getting started feels really good. So, we don’t need to meet him first. We meet her, and through her we meet the guy who is going to be training her. That’s a nice way to sort of get into a world. So, a suggestion.

**Craig:** It’s also because just like the three pages before by Kate, this is a backstage scene. So, maybe start backstage her. Don’t show the lobby at all. First of all, you’re right: obviously this is going to be Rosie’s story. We don’t care about establishing Rudy. Don’t establish the building at all.

We’re in a locker room. We don’t where we are. Are we at a police academy, at a school, at a jail? But it’s a junky locker room. It’s junky and it’s full of cleaning products. And it’s greasy. And then she walks out this door and she’s in this gorgeous lobby full of very wealthy people who are moving around making billions of dollars.

Find ways to surprise us. The best transition in any movie ever probably is when Dorothy walks out of her black and white little crappy Kansas home and there’s this gorgeous Technicolor fantasy world in front of her. It’s so surprising.

So, go ahead. Find those moments.

**John:** Agree. So, we want to thank all three of our people for writing in with their three page samples, because they’re very, very brave, and thank you for sharing them and letting other people learn from what you wrote, and hopefully from some of the conversations we had about them.

It’s time for One Cool Thing. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** I do have a One Cool Thing. Woo!

**John:** I’m so proud of you.

**Craig:** It’s an app.

**John:** Now, I know that shame is a motivator, but is pride a motivator?

**Craig:** No!

**John:** Does that help? No, I should never say that.

**Craig:** Actually it hurt. God, I don’t want to do it anymore.

**John:** I’m sorry.

**Craig:** What are you proud of me? Ugh, I guess I can stop.

No, no, the shame is perfect.

So, cool app, I love games on the iPad, but I’ve found so few that I truly love. Actually your recommendation of Ski Safari is one that stuck with me. I loved The Room, and that’s such a great game. Have you played The Room yet, by the way?

**John:** Oh, I played it all the way through. It’s amazing.

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** They need to add new levels and new boxes.

**Craig:** I know. Well, they’re working on The Room 2, so I’m super excited about that. And I’ve tried other Room-ish games, and none of them are even close.

So, what ends up happening is I just end up getting stuck with playing the oldies over and over because I’m so rarely impressed by iPad games. There’s so much junk out there. But, very cool interesting game called Waking Mars. Have you heard of this one?

**John:** I have. But tell me everything about it.

**Craig:** Well, it’s real simple. Basically you play an astronaut, a human, who is on this little exploratory mission on Mars, in the future. And you’re moving through caverns. And you move by walking or flying around with your little jet pack which beautifully has no fuel meter on it because it’s so frustrating. I hate crap like that.

If you want me to fly, let me fly. What’s fascinating about it is the game is essentially a puzzle-based platform where you encounter different life forms. And they’re mostly sort of Martian plants. And the Martian plants do different things. Some of them give off little seeds. Some of them give off water. Some of them eat certain other plants, or other animals. And your job is to basically start managing the increasing bio-complexity to create more life to affect your ability to move through the cave and explore Mars. And there’s a sort of macro mystery around the whole thing. And there is kind of clunky voice acting, but okay.

Interestingly, your protagonist is an Asian American which you don’t often see in video games. But, I don’t often encounter a different game scheme, you know? This is a different game scheme. I’ve never played a game where the idea was to figure out what to feed to what. And realize that if you feed this to that it may get you closer to opening the wall, but that thing is dangerous. Whereas if you make a lot of these little things it will take more time and it will be a little more difficult to do, but it’s safer. It’s a very cool game and it’s beautiful. I mean, the graphics are gorgeous on the iPad. Actually put nice music to it.

So, check out Waking Mars. Pretty cool game.

**John:** Great.

My One Cool Thing, there’s not even a possible link to it, because I want to make sort of all of America for not spoiling Homeland for me. So, Homeland is a great Showtime show that I just didn’t watch, and it was one of my sort of broken leg shows in the sense that I figured once I would break my leg at some point, or get laid up, then I would watch Homeland.

And being stuck here in New York, just with my Apple TV, I’ve been able to catch up with Homeland. And I just really appreciate sort of all my friends and everyone else in my life who watched Homeland and said it’s really, really good, but never spoiled it for me. So, this is just a shout-out thank you to everyone who watched Homeland and didn’t run it for me.

**Craig:** What nice friends you have. By the way, John, you know New York is my hometown. Without giving away your exact location, what part of Manhattan are you calling home these days?

**John:** I’m in Midtown Manhattan. I’m pretty close to our rehearsal theater. And I’m actually staying in David Strathairn’s old apartment.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**John:** So, it sounds much fancier than it really is. Essentially when actors or people who need to come to do Broadway plays who don’t live in New York, this is the kind of hotel, hotel-apartment kind of thing, they stick people in. So, David Strathairn was the person who was here before me. And I know that because the guy downstairs said like, “Oh, Mr. Strathairn,” and I’m like, “No, no, that’s not me.”

**Craig:** [laughs] So, you’re right by Times Square/Theater District and that sort of thing?

**John:** I am right in that area.

**Craig:** Isn’t that nice to be able to walk over there?

**John:** It is so good.

**Craig:** God, that area used to be just a cesspool.

**John:** Yeah. And now it’s lovely.

**Craig:** It’s amazing the transformation.

Well, thank you from me to our three page listeners and hopefully you took that all in a positive spirit. It is not too late for you. And good job.

**John:** Well, Craig, have a great week.

**Craig:** You, too. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [@RyanRivard](https://twitter.com/RyanRivard)’s How to write a scene [graphic](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/306566727867711489/photo/1)
* The [Reddit post](http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/19ehyv/for_fellow_aspiring_screenwriters_how_to_write_a/)
* The [original 2007 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2007/write-scene)
* Three pages by [Josh Golden](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JoshGolden.pdf)
* Three pages by [Kate Powers](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/KatePowers.pdf)
* Three pages by [Andre McGee](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/AndreMcGee.pdf)
* How to [submit your three pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage)
* [Waking Mars](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/waking-mars/id462397814?mt=8) for iOS
* Homeland on [Amazon Instant](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008QTV3X0/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [Blu-ray](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LAJ17M/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* OUTRO: [New York (Daviglio cover)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz6QsE1dhfU)