The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2024/the-live-edit).
**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.
**John:** This is Episode 651 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, we’ll do a live edit of a chapter for the forthcoming Scriptnotes book and answer a bunch of listener questions that have stacked up. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, card games. We’ve talked a lot on the show about word games and role-playing games, but I have no idea how Craig feels about poker and the like.
**Craig:** Woohoo.
**John:** Woohoo. But now, Craig, we can finally reveal what you’ve been up to, because people have been writing in to say, “Where the hell is Craig? It’s been four weeks since Craig has been on the show.”
**Craig:** Where is Craig?
**John:** Where is Craig? I think we can say this. We can’t say everything now, but we can say you were cast on this next season of Survivor, and so you’ve been off on an island in Fiji. I obviously can’t tell how you did, but wow, Craig, I’m so impressed.
**Craig:** Got voted off first. Did I just ruin the show? There is nothing less likely than me being on Survivor. Maybe Love Island. That might be slightly less likely.
**John:** I bring this up because Jon Lovett, who’s the host of Lovett or Leave It, a show that you were on, he went on Survivor, and that was crazy.
**Craig:** Wait, he did the whole thing?
**John:** He did the whole thing. He disappeared off the face of podcasting. It was like, where the hell’s Jon Lovett? Matt Rogers, who had filled in for you one time before, was filling in for him. Everybody was filling in for him.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** They revealed, oh, he’s on Survivor.
**Craig:** Wow. I had no idea. My new neighbor, because I live near you now, and my across-the-street neighbor is Jon Favreau, not the actor director, but the podcaster, Pod Save America guy. He didn’t mention this. Was it a secret?
**John:** It wasn’t a secret that he was on it. It was a secret that he was going on it. But once it was revealed that he was, basically, once he showed up in a promo for the new season on the Survivor season finale, everyone was like, “Oh my god, that’s Jon Lovett.” And so then the cat was out of the bag.
**Craig:** Just to be clear, he wasn’t on the run of the season? He just appeared once?
**John:** No, he’s going to be on an upcoming season of Survivor. He was gone for four weeks to be on Survivor, just like you were gone for four weeks. Apparently, that’s the official canon explanation of what Craig’s been up to.
**Craig:** We’re getting there.
**John:** You’ve been busy making a TV show. You’re making a different TV show.
**Craig:** Making a different TV show.
**John:** Honestly, just the same way that people get voted off of Survivor, not every cast member is going to survive your season of The Last of Us. That’s no spoilers. I suspect that’s going to happen, because it’s a show where bad things do happen to people.
**Craig:** If anybody watched the first season, they know that death is in the air. People are going to die. Of course people are going to die. We killed almost everyone in Season 1. We really did.
**John:** Absolutely. If you want to think the time jump, yes, that really did kill almost everybody.
**Craig:** That killed really almost everybody. Then of the remaining people, anyone that we featured, whose name we gave you, there’s a decent chance they’d die.
**John:** The clock starts ticking the minute they have a name. Craig, since you’ve been gone for a minute, I want to catch you up on what’s happened on the podcast since you’ve been gone, because I know you don’t listen to the show.
**Craig:** True.
**John:** Last week, Mike Schur came back on.
**Craig:** Great.
**John:** Mike Schur was fantastic, so good.
**Craig:** Terrific.
**John:** We talked a bit about locking pages and color revisions and that stuff, because he just finished a show for Netflix. We did all that. It never really occurred to him that he could just say no. But I want to keep this ball rolling in terms of just saying no, because you brought up before, maybe your next season you just won’t do those things anymore.
**Craig:** I won’t. Interestingly, one of our first ADs, Paul Domick, listens to the show. He listened. He knows everything. He knows.
**John:** He tells you what happened [crosstalk 00:03:45].
**Craig:** He tells me the things I said, which I forget. He said, “You want to unlock pages?” I’m like, “Yeah.” We had a conversation. Basically, the upshot was yeah, there’s really no reason to keep pages locked anymore, and there are a ton of reasons to keep them not locked. As long as the scene numbers stay locked, there is no reason.
I’m not sure there is a reason even to assign colors to revisions at this point. Revision 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Just do levels. This way, you don’t have to come around to double color or something. You just go, “Oh, we’re at Revision Level 28.”
**John:** I think we can accept that locking pages and color revisions were a very clever solution for the issues that were a problem 30 years ago. They’re not the solution we need right now.
**Craig:** Brilliant solution, actually. I remember thinking, “Oh, this is so smart. Instead of having to print everything, we just take these two.” Yeah, we’re done with that. It’s over.
**John:** What I would propose is, if you are a showrunner who is thinking about stopping locked pages and stopping color revisions, write in to us and let us know what you’re thinking and what your concerns are, or if you are a person who is responsible for production, so in feature films, the line producer, the first AD who is hearing this and excited or terrified, write in to let us know. What are we not thinking about? I want to make sure this momentum keeps building so other people feel like maybe we can stop this silly thing that we’re doing.
**Craig:** We are stopping. I’m stopping. I’m just saying, it’s going to happen. I didn’t even realize that until this moment while we were talking that revisions in everything else are enumerated. Revisions for cuts, for visual effects shots, “Oh, we’re on V219.” Scripts should just simply be Draft 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on. Why would we not?
**John:** You know what else is enumerated, Craig?
**Craig:** What?
**John:** The literal slate that claps in front of a take.
**Craig:** That is enumerated. There’s time code on it. There are scene numbers on it. Everything has numbers. It is true that we assign letters sometimes.
**John:** We use some letters. It’s true.
**Craig:** But nobody else does colors. Nobody, period, the end. It was only because of different colored pages. That it. It’s over. We’re killing it. This is now what I do. Killing that.
**John:** Part of our conversation about this idea of moving past locked pages and color revisions was really about this notion, like, there needs to be a central source of truth, like, what is it the hell that we’re shooting?
John in Chicago wrote in with his experience working locations in Chicago. “In locations, we are responsible for informing production, the location, the public, and the police and the government of our parameters. One can easily see how a lack of centralized information puts us in a precarious position. The amount of time I spent hounding departments for exact information is incalculable. But more nefarious is the general disorganization, such as, no one told us that we were using simulated gunfire at 1:00 a.m. in the most dangerous neighborhood in America. People who actively use disorganization to avoid us knowing what we are doing, thus putting the crew and public in real danger, while knowing it is me, not them, who is responsible for the repercussions. In an industry so competitive, one major instance like this can make all the difference. My advice to producers with an assistant is to have them take minutes at all meetings, pack them up into single documents sorted by filming day, and distribute daily to departments.”
**Craig:** I’m a little puzzled by this, I gotta say. John in Chicago is suggesting this as if this isn’t the standard operating procedure for everything and always has been. We have production meetings. In movies there’s a big production meeting, but there are tons of meetings for prep. The ADs will go through the script scene by scene with all the departments. Everyone will ask their questions. Everything like, for instance, gunfire and things like that are printed on the call sheet, especially when we’re dealing with firearms, blanks, cold guns, hot weapons, etc, all of this is documented at length across multiple, multiple meetings. I’m not sure what production John is working on, but yikes.
**John:** This feels like a yikes to me. My guess is it’s not one of the Chicago shows, not one of the ongoing series, because they would have a whole protocol for this. My guess is that it’s some indie feature or something else that was shooting there and did not have its act together. I want to be sympathetic to John in Chicago. This was a bad situation. It puts you at risk, can put other people at risk. It should’ve never happened. That said, I feel like an ongoing production would recognize this and address it. This is the kind of thing, it would absolutely be on the call sheet.
**Craig:** Yeah. There would’ve been a meeting where the locations department would’ve been present, along with special effects, along with props. Props typically handles weapons. It would be understood that there would be gunfire. Locations would be aware. They would take their own notes. It is not up to the producer’s assistant to document things for the locations department.
I do not know what’s going on here, other than to say I don’t want anyone listening to this to think, oh, that’s how it goes, just people running around going, “Wait, we’re shooting stuff tonight?” No, that is not how that works.
**John:** That’s not how it works. Also, while you were gone, Simon Rich came on the show.
**Craig:** Brilliant.
**John:** Simon Rich, delightful, so funny. We talked about his new book that’s coming out or actually will be out by now. We talked about really the differences between a story/sketch and a movie or a novel, because a person who’s writing short stories, he has to have a premise and development and a conclusion. The amount of energy going into it is just a very different thing. It’s a very different structure behind the comedic premise. It was a really good conversation.
**Craig:** He’s a brilliant writer, super funny. I’m sorry I missed him.
**John:** Aline was here, which is a “this kind of scene,” where we did farewell scenes, which was nice. It was also just looking at the whole range of farewell scenes and whether characters know it’s the farewell at the start of the scene. So often, one character knows it’s the farewell and the other character’s learning about it in the course of it. Characters are also aware that they’re in a farewell scene moment and that there are expectations built upon movies that they’ve seen themselves that they know they’re in. It’s a meta situation whenever you have a farewell.
**Craig:** No question. That’s an interesting discussion. I’m sorry I missed that one.
**John:** Also, we finally launched AlphaBirds. This is a game you played a bazillion years ago.
**Craig:** Oh my goodness. In Austin, with you, I believe.
**John:** Absolutely. Back then, it might’ve still been called Sparrow, but it’s now called AlphaBirds. We got the full trademark on it. If people want to play it, you can buy a copy at alphabirdsgame.com. We’re also on Amazon. We’re finally out there in the world, which feels really good. The final version of it is in a nice little box. It has little wooden tokens that you move on your cards. It turned out really well. In a world of Wordle and Scrabble and other things like that, it’s just a good game to play with friends. I will send you a copy up to Vancouver so you can play it with people on breaks.
**Craig:** That’s fantastic. I love that. I’m looking at your website. By the way, the artwork and the style of the name is adorable and catchy. Well done there.
**John:** Thanks.
**Craig:** This looks like a great game for an airplane. This looks like such a good airplane game. Very cool. Exciting.
**John:** Things have been getting done. Let’s do a little bit of other follow-up here. In Pay Up Hollywood over the course of years, we’ve talked about the need for assistants and support staff to be paid a living wage, pushing up to $20 an hour, $25 an hour. There’s reasons why it’s impossible to actually live in Los Angeles at California minimum wage. Hilary wrote in with her experience, which is unfortunately not what we want to see.
**Drew Marquardt:** Hilary writes, “I’ve been working as an assistant for two years now, and I’m also a screenwriter. I finally purchased a Premium membership, and upon diving into the glorious backlog of episodes, I was enraptured by your discussion of assistant pay. Unfortunately, not much has changed. I can tell you both that I am still not making $20 an hour as a busy, dedicated, hardworking literary management assistant. I love my boss, and I like a ton of parts of my job, but it’s quite harrowing that I’m stuck at $19 an hour as I see my friends at some other agencies in other roles taking $23 an hour or more.
“I started at $17 an hour two years ago when I came on board, and there were assistants making less than me who had been there for years. Now the tides have changed, and newer assistants are making more than me. We’re lucky that our company pays for our health care. I know of another management company that offers their assistants either a higher hourly rate with no insurance, or insurance with a lower rate. At a year or so, it’s traditional to get a bump, but there are other rules and politics that have kept me from asking for more. The higher-ups take note and do look down on you for asking for said raise. I have to say, I still consider myself one of the lucky ones, since my boss is so wonderful, but god, it sucks being paid so poorly.”
**John:** Oy. Hilary, this is not exactly advice, but I want to contextualize what you’re feeling. To be frustrated at being paid $19 an hour is genuine and real. You should be paid more than that. The fact that you’re getting health insurance is a really good thing. I’m sure that’s what you’re weighing is how much per hour is that health insurance worth for you, is it worth searching for a different job that could pay more per hour but wouldn’t give you health insurance.
If you’re 19 years old, that’s great. You’re at this period in time where you can live a ramen lifestyle. But the point we’ve been trying to make with Pay Up Hollywood throughout is that this shouldn’t be survival work. This should be the first rung of the ladder that lets you start climbing. It doesn’t feel like you’re being paid enough to start climbing.
**Craig:** Hilary, I’m glad you’re listening. Now I feel bad that you’re paying $5 a month. I’m glad that you listen to those back-episodes. We never thought that we could impact Hollywood in such a way that every employer would hit the $20. I think we were saying $20 an hour was what we were going for. But I think a nearly direct result of our work was that the large agencies did increase their rates. Yes, when you know the other agency’s $23-plus an hour, that’s a sign that things can change, because that was not the case, what, four years ago, five years ago. The fact that assistants that are coming on now are getting higher rates, also a sign that there’s positive change.
I’m a little concerned that you find yourself in a strange nook. You’re a little circumspect about it. It’s hard to tell why you just mentioned politics and other rules.
But I think it’s fair to say, “My boss is wonderful, but also I should get paid more.” If your boss really is wonderful, she or he will stick up for you. Here’s the deal. If you’re making $19 an hour and you’re looking for another $4 an hour, and you’re working let’s say 60 hours a week, that is not an amount of money that is going to send your employer into red ink. It’s just not. I think it’s a fair thing, especially because you’re hurting. It’s not even just financially hurting, Hilary. I can tell that you’re also just – this doesn’t feel fair. That’s going to impact also how you approach the job and how you work there.
You can say you’re one of the lucky ones, but I don’t think we should say, “Hey, my boss is a good person. That makes me lucky.” That’s supposed to be standard.
**John:** Agreed. It’s a good reminder though, so I thank her for writing in, because it’s a reminder that things can improve. It doesn’t mean it improves for everyone. It doesn’t mean improves across the board for all parties.
**Craig:** That’s right, especially, as is always the case, the smaller employers are always going to be the harder ones to get. There’s downsides to working for large mega corporations like CAA or something like that. But on the plus side of the large mega corporations, they probably do pay a bit more than some of the mom-and-pop shops.
**John:** Hilary was looking through the back catalog. We’re doing the Scriptnotes book now, which is a look through well over 13 years of Scriptnotes, and putting it in book form. Craig, at some point when you are done shooting your show, you will get the whole manuscript to read through and do your edits upon. I thought I might take advantage of your intention at this moment to just do a little bit of a live edit of one of the chapters, so we can talk through how we go from transcripts to actual prose and sentences that make sense in a book. I’m going to share a screen here. This is going to be your first time looking at the chapter.
This chapter comes from a couple different episodes we’ve talked about. In the book, we’ll probably link in a little sidebar to what episodes this came from. This I believe was a topic that you really wanted to focus on, because one of your frustrations has been that so often we talk about character as if they are a person by themselves, when really it’s their relationship that we care about. I would say maybe do you want to start reading and then we’ll stop at some point where you have a thought?
**Craig:** Sure. “Harry and Sally. Buzz and Woody. Watson and Holmes. Indiana Jones may have his name in the title, but it’s his relationship with his dad that carries us through the third film.”
Oh, right there, for instance, I’d probably say, “Indiana Jones may have his name in the third Raiders title.” Oh, I see, “carries us through the third film.” I see. There’s something odd about two names, two names, two names, then one name all of a sudden.
**John:** Oh yeah, I see that.
**Craig:** “A dozen different things can convince us to sit down and watch something, but we stay in our seats for the relationship we see on screen.” Then there’s a quote from me. Should I read the quote?
**John:** Read your quote.
**Craig:** “So often when I skim through screenwriting books, they talk about characters and plot. They don’t talk about relationships. I don’t care about character at all. I only care about relationships, which encompasses character.” Continue. I was just wondering, should it be “which encompass character.”
**John:** It’s one of the continuous choices Drew and Chris and I are making as we’re going through even our direct quotes, because you say things differently than you would actually write them in. “Which encompass character.”
**Craig:** Yeah, I think so. You can think of a relationships as a singular concept and then it’s okay. That’s probably what I was doing when I was talking. But this feels a little neater.
“Studio executives make this mistake.” I would say, “Studio executives make a mistake.” “Studio executives make a mistake when they talk about character arcs. I hate talking about character arcs. The only arcs I’m interested in are relationship arcs.”
**John:** Do you stand by that sentence?
**Craig:** I do. Then it continues off the quote. “Consider the word chemistry and how often we apply it to the actors performing these relationships.” I don’t know if you can perform a relationship.
**John:** Embodying these relationships?
**Craig:** Engaging in these relationships?
**John:** Yeah, but it’s-
**Craig:** But they are performing it, aren’t they?
**John:** But they are performing it.
**Craig:** How about this: “How often we apply it to the actors bringing these relationships to the screen.”
**John:** “To life on screen.”
**Craig:** Yeah. “When chemistry is there, what do we… ” Oh, that should be, “How do we describe it?” “How do we describe it? Sparks. We feel that energy bouncing back and forth between them. And when it’s not there, we feel nothing. Chemistry is fundamentally the combination of elements that by themselves would be relatively stable. When you put them together, they create something volatile and new. That’s what we’re really talking about in relationships, that fresh substance created when characters are interacting and challenging each other.”
That’s pretty good. Not all chemicals put together create something volatile, but I think they certainly create something new. If you were stuck with actual commenting – it depends on how far you want to extend the metaphor. I get what’s going on here. I think maybe some chemistry teachers in high school might get a little grouchy, but that’s fine.
“Writers are emotional chemists. We select and combine characters and scenes, then apply heat to create something exciting, unstable, and potentially explosive.”
Maybe I would add in heat “or pressure.”
**John:** “Then apply heat and pressure to create something new.”
**Craig:** Yeah, “and pressure,” yeah, because sometimes it’s heat and sometimes things are squeezing them. That’s good.
**John:** You’re feeling a good launch into the relationships chapter?
**Craig:** Yeah, this feels great. Should I finish with the rest of the page?
**John:** Sure.
**Craig:** The next thing says, “Establishing relationships. How do you get the audience up to speed on relationships that began before the movie started? Literally, how do you let the audience know the way these two people are related?” I don’t know if we need the word “literally.”
**John:** Unfortunately, without the “literally,” we’re starting two sentences with “How.” You see that stack there?
**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Let’s fix that. “How do you get the audience up to speed on relationships that began before the movie started? What methods do you use to let the audience know the way these two people are related? Are they siblings? Are they friends? Are they a couple? Are they ex-spouses?” Should we say “partners”? Is that more inclusive?
**John:** Spouses can be partners too.
**Craig:** I’m with you.
**John:** It’s not gender-specific.
**Craig:** Couple of married guys are like spouses.
**John:** Spouses.
**Craig:** “We have this wonderful opportunity when a movie begins. The audience is engaged. They’re leaning forward in their seat. They haven’t yet decided that this movie stinks. This is your invitation.” That sounds like it’s an invitation for us as opposed to the audience.
**John:** It’s an invitation for the screenwriter to have fun.
**Craig:** “This is your opportunity,” I think, “to have fun, to tease, or misdirect what relationships are.” Probably “the relationships,” right? “And then reveal them in exciting ways. Too often, as we read through Three Page Challenges, it feels like the screenwriter is working hard to establish relationships when it could be done more effectively visually.” It’s always tough when you got two L-Ys next to each other. “Could’ve been done more effectively-”
**John:** “Through visuals.”
**Craig:** “Visuals” is always tough. Maybe, “When it could’ve been done better visually.”
**John:** “When it could be done better visually.” That?
**Craig:** Yes. That’s parallel, “When it could be done better visually.” “Consider the following snapshot. You see four people seated at a table in an airport restaurant. They’re all African American. There’s a woman who is 35 and putting in eyedrops. There’s a man who is 40, a little overweight, who is trying to get a six-year-old boy to stay in his seat. There is a girl who is nine and playing a game on her phone. Your default assumption is this is a family.” I would probably put a “that” instead of a comma.
“Your default assumption is that this is a family. They’re traveling someplace. That’s the mom, that’s the dad, those are the kids. That visual gave you all that stuff for free. Therefore, you can spend your time in dialogue doing interesting things with those characters, rather than establishing that they’re a family.” Maybe the word “now” instead of “therefore.”
“You don’t need to have a character say ‘Mom’ or ‘Son’ or any of those annoying things that hit us over the head.” This is going to be a very good book, I think.
**John:** I think this is going to be a really great book. What I wanted to talk for a minute is how we go from you and me having a conversation to something that feels like a synthesis of both of our voices, because there’s moments in here which I read as your voice and a little bit more my voice, but we’ve tried to find an effective middle ground. Things like, “They haven’t yet decided this movie stinks,” that was your voice. That’s literally taken from transcripts, from you. But on the whole, I think it feels like a synthesis of both of us talking.
**Craig:** I agree. This feels informative. I can see here that this book is not trying to do what the transcripts do or what the podcast does, which is for two people to relate to folks at home in a personal way through conversation. This is a proper book that has, we’ll call, a neutral teacher voice. This is good. This is a good book.
**John:** I think it’s going to be a good book. Even as you’re going through your edits there, what you’re finding is those moments that feel like that’s a little bit too much spoken John or Craig and not quite the written version of John and Craig. That’s really been some of the slog of this.
This is a chapter that I’ve been poking at for two or three days to get – not full-day sessions – but to get stuff feeling right. Chris and Drew and Megana have done a heroic job assembling stuff together in a flow and a document, but then actually getting it to read like us is a more challenging thing. That’s been most of my job here.
**Craig:** You guys are doing great. Finally, there’ll be a good book on screenwriting.
**John:** I’m excited. This draft that we’re talking through right now is going in to the editor on Monday. Then we’ll get notes back from that. There’ll be more revisions. But the goal at this point is August 2025 for a book in people’s hands.
**Craig:** That’s amazing. What you’re saying is Christmas 2025. What a great gift.
**John:** Part of the reason why we picked August 2025 is it’s a good time for this kind of book, but we also believed that it’s going to be a time when you’re going to be available to promote it and I should also be available to promote it, because we would love for people to actually buy the book.
**Craig:** I will indeed be available to promote it. What do we do to promote a book? I’ve never done that.
**John:** We do some live events. We’ll probably do a live show where people can buy a ticket and they get a book as part of that. We might do a live show in Los Angeles. We might do one in New York. We’ll probably guest on a whole bunch of other people’s podcasts. We’ll do stuff to get it out that will try to seat it with the right smart people, who will review it and give us good reviews.
One of the things we talked about off mic is who are we going to get to write the introductory chapter, the little preface from some other famous person. We’ll find who that person will be.
**Craig:** I had some ideas.
**John:** We’ll continue to discuss. I don’t want to spoil them on the air when we don’t get James Cameron to do it.
**Craig:** He’s not going to do it.
**John:** I don’t think he’s going to do it. We haven’t even gotten him on the show yet, so that’d be hard.
**Craig:** He’s busy.
**John:** He’s busy. The ideal person would be somebody who was like, “Oh, wow, they got that person,” but also who would listen to the show or at least know about the show. Craig, how often do people that you talk to in professional settings, they’re like, “Oh, it’s so weird hearing you in person, because I listen to you on Scriptnotes,” or, “I love Scriptnotes.” Do you get that a lot?
**Craig:** I do. I’ve said this many times. Every time it happens, I’m shocked. I will be forever shocked. People generally seem to now know my face a little bit better.
**John:** Yeah, also because when you do the after-the-episode interview things, that’s how people recognize you.
**Craig:** Yeah. Now I’m quasi on TV for a little bit out of the year, so people are familiar with my face now. I never know how to take that. It’s probably not good. You remember when everyone was wearing a mask, we would just emotionally, mentally, visually fill in a blandly handsome or beautiful face?
**John:** Yes, totally.
**Craig:** Then you would see somebody without their mask and go, “What the hell?” I feel like that’s probably…
**John:** Your mental auto-complete was much better than the actual text underneath that mask.
**Craig:** I think people’s mind-image impression of you and me, it’s probably a disappointment when they meet us.
**John:** I’m more often recognized by voice in those situations. We’ll be out at breakfast someplace, and I’ll be talking with Mike, and he will clock somebody who will turn in their seat like, “What?” He’s like, “This person’s coming over.” They’ve heard my voice, and they’re coming over to say hi, which is fine and lovely, all good.
But then I’ve also been on a lot of Zooms lately with executives who I’m meeting for the first time. It’s like, “Oh, it’s just so weird seeing a face with a voice.” Like, “Yeah, there’s actually a human being here. Now, I’m going to pitch you a movie. Please buy my movie.”
**Craig:** It would be nice if the romanticization of you carries over and they just start writing some checks. You like my voice so much, wait until you see my writing.
**John:** I think I did actually say on a pitch this last week, I was like, “Yeah, and now I’m going to use that voice to tell you a story.”
**Craig:** Nice.
**John:** Let’s answer some listener questions that will probably be in the sequel book.
**Craig:** Great.
**John:** We’ll start with Carly, who asked a question about personal stories.
**Drew:** Carly writes, “I have recently started writing a series based on my own life events. It’s not exactly the same but includes some similar themes and such. I’ve run into the problem of who the other characters will be in this series. I’m finding it a creative struggle to make up brand new characters and relationship dynamics. Alternatively, if I choose the similar-to-my-life route, I worry I may accidentally paint real people in bad lights. I feel very inspired to write this series, but this debate has been getting in the way of my brain. Do you have any insights?”
**John:** Craig, always valid to write about your own experience. But your own experience doesn’t involve people around you, and so you have to make choices about how much you’re going to portray them in any story that you’re telling.
**Craig:** Carly, you’re right to be a bit terrified here, because you have two obligations. You have an obligation to the people that are around you. You also have an obligation to the truth. Truth is obviously something that goes through a process when you’re fictionalizing something. But you’re still going to have to see somebody, look them in the eyes, or if they are no longer with us, look their children in the eyes, and say, “I did this.” It is very tricky to do.
I think everybody’s followed the hoopla and controversy surrounding the Netflix series Baby Reindeer. We especially now have to be concerned about this, because back in the day, you’d put a movie out, “Oh, it was real,” and then 20 years later somebody would write an article in The Atlantic saying, “Not really.” 20 minutes after something becomes popular, people are investigating.
It is a very tricky thing to do. I would start with the question, am I sure I need to do this? You may be inspired to do this, but do I need to do this? Am I maybe giving this extra weight because I feel like I know a lot of it already because I’ve lived it, as opposed to trying to do something else? I would weigh it very carefully. Then if you commit, commit.
**John:** We’ve had some great guests on previous episodes who I think are worth going back to revisit. I’m thinking about Mike Birbiglia, Alex Edelman, both talking about how they use their own stuff that actually really genuinely happened to them in their writing, in their work, and yet they’re also careful to keep their own real-life people out of their stories to the degree it makes sense to. They’re also up front about the fact that they are re-framing certain events to have them make narrative sense. They’re not trying to be documentarians. They’re not trying to fact-check every little thing. What they’re really doing is they’re telling a story that is inspired by things that actually happened to them. They’re not trying to literally do journalism. That’s the balance you need to find there.
What is it about this story that’s inspiring you to tell it? Is that central character, your protagonist, really you or is it a person who is like you? If it’s not literally you or a person like you, likely the people around that central character are not going to be the same people that existed in your real life. Just give yourself permission to let go of some of those anchoring points of, this is exactly how it really happened.
**Craig:** It sounds like Carly’s struggling with that very issue. She’s struggling to figure out how to fill in those gaps where she removes the reality of what occurred and replaces it with, as she says, brand new characters and relationship dynamics. It can very quickly turn into this strange fish with feathers. It’s real. It’s not real. It’s partly real life. People will be able to tell if there are seams between what feels effortless and true and what feels contrived.
All I can say is I commiserate. I’ve thought about writing some things that are connected to my personal experience. I’ve had the same debate in my brain. This is a natural thing. I would think twice, measure quintuply, and cut once.
**John:** Corey has a question about cold opens.
**Drew:** “Over the weekend, I saw two summer movies. Both had me thinking of how features use cold opens. One starts with a five-minute montage establishing the protagonist’s family history and life-changing moment that defines her character flaw to be overcome. The other took an hour before the lead actress appeared on screen to drive the film to its narrative end. This left me thinking, how much backstory is too much versus what’s essential to get to the film’s main story? Also, are there any screenwriting tools or tips or tricks to make sure we’re not bloating our story with unnecessary context or visuals or what have you?”
**Craig:** John, it’s an interesting question Corey’s asking, because there’s two aspects. One is, where should the backstory go? The second question is, how much is too much, and how do we slip that stuff in there in a way that feels informative and valuable?
**John:** I wonder if Corey is mistaking backstory for really the first act. It says, “It took one hour before the lead actress appeared on screen to draw the film to it’s narrative end.” I doubt there was really a full hour of backstory. It was a first act that took place in the past, but it was the same character moving forward, and that was the nature of how it works.
At a certain point though, you have made a contract with your audience that this is the story I’m telling you, that this is not just the past, but it’s actually the question I’m proposing to you. This is the thing the character’s going after. You’re saying this is the engine of the movie, and you’ve revealed that to the audience.
It’s not going to be generally an hour into your movie. It’s going to be pretty quick in, because we’ve talked so much on the podcast about how you have those first 10 minutes or so where the audience will go with you anywhere. But at a certain point they’re going to say, “I don’t know what’s happening here. I don’t know how to watch this movie.” Too much backstory that feels like it’s not connected to a forward-moving plot, it’ll become a problem.
**Craig:** I agree with you. I think Corey is conflating a couple of things here. There’s background, which is different than backstory. Background is, okay, what is the context of this person’s life? The first 10 minutes of a movie, traditionally, you meet the character in their normal life. You get their background. Shrek begins with an understanding that he’s an ogre, he was driven away, he lives in a swamp, he’s alone, everybody hates him. That’s background. Backstory to me is something that is told to you after you already know somebody, and then they reveal something about their past that recontextualizes for you who they are right now. That’s very different.
Screenwriting tools, tips, and tricks. The number one tool, tip, and trick I have for you is to make it interesting. If it is interesting, then people will like it. It will be particularly interesting as backstory if it makes us see somebody in a very different way. I wrote an episode of Mythic Quest called Backstory.
**John:** Yes, and starred in it.
**Craig:** I don’t know if I would say starred in it, but I had a small part. But the purpose of that episode, Rob McElhenney wanted to tell a story about a character who is part of the comic cast, one of the broadest characters they had. That’s an interesting idea, to take somebody that really does work as a full joke character who doesn’t have dramatic stories built around them, and then go, “Let’s actually tell a dramatic story about this person.”
We have a running joke about how he’s an alcoholic. We have a running joke about how he lives in the office, in a closet. We have a running joke about how he’s basically an emotional wreck and lonely. Now, what if we took that all seriously? We certainly have this endless joke that he’s a pompous writer who is obsessed with giving characters backstory in a hacky way.
That inspired the idea of saying, okay, what if we told the story, so the next time you see that character, as ridiculous and over the top as he is, you’ll see a human being there. That’s interesting. It’s less interesting to get backstory on people that you know plenty about.
**John:** Agreed. I think one of the reasons why backstory gets a bad name sometimes is that, done poorly, it has just stopped the forward momentum of the plot and the story. It’s just like, okay, we’re going to take a pause here and just watch this thing and then come back to where we left off. If it has not changed the dynamics of the present tense, there’s really no reason for that. It’s not serving a purpose in your story.
**Craig:** That’s right. Typically, backstories are relayed from one person to another. It’s not done as a little mini movie. You’re on a date. You’re walking around. You say, “I never told you about blah da da da,” and that’s relayed. But there are times where the backstory is kept from other characters and is only relayed to us in the audience. None of the characters on Mythic Quest were there to see the backstory of that character. We were. We have a privileged view at that point forward. We feel a little bit more sympathetic or empathetic with that character than everybody else around them.
**John:** We have a question from Football Dummy about sharing credit.
**Craig:** Great name.
**Drew:** Football Dummy writes, “I recently pitched a show to a major studio, and they want to move forward with developing and purchasing the show. The idea is one I conceived about a decade ago and have been nurturing it over the years. But at a certain point, I recognized that I needed a potential collaborator due to the fact that it is partially set in the world of football, which I am not well versed in. But the other aspect of the show is loosely based on personal experience, which is really the heart of the show.
“My collaborator has been great, and he asked if I’d be willing to share a co-created by credit with him. The truth is the football beats of this pilot do need to be punched up. Should I share this credit with him? I’m having a hard time quantifying how a 10-year endeavor can be shared with someone who’s just been in the arena with me for a year. I’ll say that he has been instrumental as a producer in moving the show forward and aligning me with the studio to begin with.”
**John:** Fundamentally here, the question is, at what point is someone helping you out versus being a fully ampersanded collaborator that they deserve co-created credit with you on this thing. There’s no magic formula. This isn’t even an arbitration-able kind of situation. This is what is the nature of your relationship? Are you boyfriend and girlfriend? Are you going to get married? What is this thing between the two of you? You have to make a decision. They have to make a decision. You have to figure out together, is this a partnership you want to fully engage in to make this into a show?
**Craig:** There are a lot of ways to go about this, but boils down to basically are you the sort of person who’s going to go along to get along, or are you the sort of person who’s like, “No, that doesn’t feel quite fair.” The problem that you have, Football Dummy, is that you do need help. You can’t do it on your own. You cannot create the show on your own, because you’re missing quite a bit of knowledge and insight about something essential to it. It’s set in the world of football.
Let’s use the example of Ted Lasso. If you have an idea about a positive person coming into a workplace and using the power of positivity to inspire people around him, even though the traditional environment in those situations is someone abusive and demanding, and you want to set it in the world of soccer, but you don’t know anything about soccer, it’s probable that, yeah, the person that comes to help you set it in the world of soccer is co-creating it with you.
It’s important to understand, co-creator is a credit that’s there and then it’s just sort of there. But it is not an ongoing writing credit. The scripts will need to be written. There is going to be an executive producer or many who are running the show. Also, as is the case with almost every television show, one or two people ultimately will be recognized as the prime movers of the show, regardless of the credits. For instance, if I were to say, “Who are the co-creators of Silicon Valley?” you’d probably say Mike Judge and Alec Berg.
**John:** Berg, yeah.
**Craig:** But they’re not. The co-creators of Silicon Valley are listed as Mike Judge, John Altschuler, and Dave Krinsky. But shortly after the act of co-creation, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky I think left, and Alec Berg joined. Alec and Mike ran that show, wrote lots of episodes, directed lots of episodes from that point forward. It’s a credit that indicates the moment of birth.
I’m not sure in your situation it’s worth going to war over this. Feels like this person is a good collaborator. They are helping. The fact that you worked on it for 10 years – you said, “It’s an idea I conceived about a decade ago,” and then you say “a 10-year endeavor.” It’s not quite the same, is it? Then also, “someone who’s just been in the arena with me for one year.” One year’s a lot. Also, this isn’t a quantity game. It’s a quality game. My instinct would be to be generous here.
**John:** I think generous is the right instinct here. We don’t have all the information about who this collaborator is. If this person is not really a writer but is actually just a person who knows a bunch about football but cannot write a scene, that gives me a little bit more pause. The fact that Football Dummy pitched and set up this show without this person does make it a little more cleanly his or hers, but I don’t know. I think you have to really look at what is going to be the right choice for you and for this show. My instinct is to probably be generous. If you think this person has been helpful not just to this point, but helpful going forward. A question from Daniel.
**Drew:** Daniel writes, “As someone who’s just had their first taste of professional success writing a feature for Lifetime, I’m fearful of mismanaging my next moves and stalling out or getting trapped in a loop of financing my own short films in between non-union romantic comedy rewrites. How can I capitalize on this minor inertia I’ve generated for myself?”
**Craig:** This is an interesting one, John, because Daniel’s defining a loop that I didn’t quite know was a thing. But I guess the bigger issue is he’s done a feature for Lifetime. How do you convert? How do you capitalize?
**John:** Listen, you’ve had something made. You’ve had something produced. It was for Lifetime, but still, it counts. Your name is on a screen someplace. When you’ve just written scripts and nothing’s been produced, it’s like, can my work even stick to the screen? There’s this weird sense of am I even producible? You now know you’re producible.
It sounds like you’ve made short films yourself. You presumably have reps. Talk to them about what rooms they think they can get you into, who you can be meeting with so you can get that next job and the next job and the next job, in places that can be beyond the Lifetime. Get into the Netflixes. Get into the other places, because having some success, a little bit of heat is really good. This is a moment to capitalize on it.
**Craig:** I would suggest, Daniel, that it’s important to stop doing non-union work. First of all, you really aren’t allowed to. Pretty sure. So stop. If you are in the Writers Guild, you are not allowed to do non-union writing in areas that the Writers Guild covers. If you want to go work on an animated film, sure, the Writers Guild doesn’t have full jurisdiction over stuff like that. But romantic comedies that are made for television or film, if they’re being done here in the United States, you in fact are definitely not allowed, per the Writers Guild working rules, to do that stuff. Step 1, don’t work on non-WGA stuff. It’s bad for you, and it will undermine your professional status.
**John:** Absolutely. We’re assuming, Daniel, that you are an American writer working on a US-based production. If you’re Irish and you did an Irish movie for Lifetime, different rules.
**Craig:** Different deal. Then the way to capitalize, I guess, on this minor inertia is to use the opportunity now to show people some of the things you’ve written. Hopefully, you’ve written some other things.
If you need to pay your bills, as almost everyone does it would probably be better – hang on, Daniel, get ready – to write another feature for Lifetime than it would be to finance your own short films or work on non-union stuff. Financing short films is a fantastic way of lighting somebody on fire. We’ve talked about the short film thing before. If you can make a little short film and it costs you, I don’t know, 1,000 bucks, and you happen to have 1,000 bucks, great. Spending real money of your own on a short film, that’s bad.
**John:** I think you have to look at anybody that’s spending on a short film as like, “This is money I’m spending that I know I’m not going to get back, in the pursuit of some greater goal.” If your greater goal is to show that I can direct, then that’s a valid goal. But as a way to show my writing ability, no.
**Craig:** I agree. Also, Daniel, again, hang on. You wrote one Lifetime movie. The next one will be better. There is no shame in any Guild-covered work, as far as I’m concerned. Your craft will get better. You probably learned a lot seeing your first work on screen. It will make you a better writer. Convert that. Make some money. While you’re making some Lifetime money, use the fact that you’re a working writer now with representatives, that are probably pleased with the fact that you’re generating income for them as well, to try and get some of your own work through the door or get some pitches in or get some open writing assignment meetings and just work it.
**John:** My friend Rex writes children’s books. He writes middle-grade and some young adult fiction. One of the things I admire so much about Rex is he has his list of here are the 30 things, here are my 30 ideas, here are the 30 books that I want to write. He will, with his reps, go out and figure out homes for each one of them. He’s always stacked up with four books he needs to write. But he gets some written and he gets them in, there’s always something under his fingers.
That maybe needs to be what Daniel is thinking about is, what are the movies that I want to be writing? Who are the places I should be meeting with and just going in there and systematically finding homes for those movies. Because if you have written a thing for Lifetime, Lifetime seems like its own brand, but Netflix has a whole department that is just that. If you get in there and you’re talking with them, you have five things to pitch them. Find the one that they want to hire you to do, and do it for them. You may not want to do this for the rest of your life, but getting a few things under your belt to show that you can make stuff is going to be a huge service for yourself.
**Craig:** Agreed. Agreed.
**John:** Let’s take one last question. Zach in Toronto.
**Drew:** Zach in Toronto writes, “Have you ever written a script where you strongly disliked your protagonist or one of the major characters of the piece?”
**John:** Craig, I can think of one example of this. It’s a movie I wrote for the wrong reasons. I wrote it just out of pure anger about some career stuff that was happening and as a middle finger to certain forces around me. I really did not like the central hero. I was trying to prove that I can write in a genre that I was not being considered for. I guess I did dislike the protagonist. Spoiler, it didn’t turn out great.
**Craig:** Was it me?
**John:** Yeah, I think it was. Actually, it was all about how Craig disappears off the grid for a while, then he comes back, yes.
**Craig:** That MF-er. I have to say, Zach, I don’t think I have. I have written some characters that are awful. Thinking, for instance, of the character of David in Season 1 of The Last of Us, who’s just horrible.
It seems to me the only way to write any character to be engaging and interesting and challenging is for that character to believe in what they’re doing and saying. They need to make an argument. They need to make a good argument, at least an argument that feels correct to them. They need to be committed. That means as I occupy that space, I turn certain values off and I turn certain values on.
There are people out there that are wearing MAGA hats and stuff – a lot of them. I don’t like that. I’m not like them. I don’t want to be like them. But I can write that character. I could get in their head, and I could turn things off and turn things on. Of course, as a human being, I know that in almost all cases, when they put the MAGA hat on, they’re not doing so out of this dry political analysis. They’re doing so out of emotional response, needs, and drives. That’s universal to us all. How does the fear in you turn into putting a MAGA hat on? It’s not even a question of like or dislike your protagonist or the antagonist or any character. You have to be that person when you’re writing them. You just have to be them. It’s funny; I’m not a good actor. I’m fine.
**John:** You’re a fine actor.
**Craig:** I’m fine. No one’s nominating me for anything. I watch good actors all day long up here on our show. I’m watching Pedro Pascal. I’m watching Bella Ramsey do what they do. I’m watching Kaitlyn Dever. They become people in an incredibly thorough way, in an incredibly believable way. I can’t do that like them. But I can do it with words. That’s where I do it.
I would say, Zach, if you strongly dislike your protagonist, I think you may have not gotten under the hood of why they are who they are and why they want what they want.
**John:** I also wonder, why are you writing this? It’s such a fundamental question. Why did you choose to write this thing with this character you don’t want to be with? Because you’re going to be with that person for months and months, you’ve got to learn to find what’s interesting about that, watching and having a space with that character.
It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article that I was going to save for a How Would This Be a Movie, but there’s not a story there. But it’s really interesting. This is Max Bearak writing for New York Times. Headline is “AI Needs Copper. It Just Helped Find Millions of Tons of It.” It’s about this new deposit of copper ore that they were able to find in Zambia. It’s a mile underground. Copper is, of course, essential for making all the electronic stuff that we need to make a lot more of; for batteries, for computers, for everything else we need to do. The article talks through how they’re actually tracking muons, these subatomic particles that pass right through the earth. But by looking at how they’re displaced, you can find big sources of underground metals, including copper.
We crap on AI, I think reasonably, for all the crappy things it does. That’s generative AI that is taking potentially work of writers and artists for their own purposes. But the truth is, AI can be really good at finding patterns in things that humans can’t spot. This AI system can find these weird fluctuations that reveal, oh, there must be a giant pile of copper a mile underground, and now we will find ways to dig it out.
All that said, this is in Zambia, which is one of the poorest nations on earth. It’s a real question, how do people of Zambia benefit from this giant amount of copper that was found in their land. It embodies all of the issues of the future and the past and colonialism, all in one nice little bundle here. The article scratches at it, but it’s just a fascinating space I think to look at this moment that we’re in.
**Craig:** First of all, I guess, a tip of a hat to this company’s name, KoBold.
**John:** That’s the other reason I want to talk to you about this. KoBold, of course, is the mining character, the little mining monsters in Dungeons and Dragons lore.
**Craig:** These guys are clearly dorks, although we knew that already, because they were using AI to track muons to find copper, but certainly our kind of dorks.
I think the use of AI here feels like an extension of the kind of analysis that we first were able to do when the original computers were set up. People were running punch cards into computers to get things done faster that in theory could be done if you had a billion years. That makes sense to me.
It’s really interesting to see – just looking at the images in this Times article, you are immediately struck by what’s going on here, which feels like an all too familiar story. There are fresh-faced White people looking at computers and screens and whiteboards, and then there are Black people who are lugging stuff around. They don’t look like they own anything, nor do they look like they’re going to benefit at all.
The state of Zambia owns 20 percent of this mine. But African governments are not generally known for their stability, nor their service to the people that they govern. The article is questioning how that 20 percent ownership – 20 percent of what they’re saying could be billions of dollars – is in fact going to benefit the people of Zambia, or will it merely benefit the people that run the government of Zambia, or at least the state mining company. If past is prologue, this is not going to go well. But maybe, fingers crossed, it could work well for the people of Zambia. It is a very poor nation.
**John:** For a different project, I was having to do some research on copper mines. The copper mines are fascinating, because it’s not the surface strip mine thing that we’re used to. It’s a very, very deep shaft. It doesn’t actually require that many people. There’s a lot of automation behind it. It’s not going to be a great work-maker for the people of Zambia. It’s really going to be about the ore coming out and the money coming out that’s going to be benefiting the country, rather than people with jobs.
**Craig:** It literally would be, “Okay, we’re going to use all this money to build better schools, better hospitals, raise the wage, the minimum wage for people who do work, and just improve quality of life.” It wouldn’t take much in a country like Zambia to do that. I hope that the people that run KoBold are, like so many of us who play DnD, kind.
**John:** Craig, a little sidebar here, KoBold, which is the name of this company but is also the little lizardy dragon-worshiping creatures in Dungeons and Dragons, you realize that KoBold is actually the same word as “goblin”? They’re actually etymologically the same way. In certain countries it became goblins, and in certain countries it became kobold.
**Craig:** I only knew this because you’ve told me this. You’ve told me this before. That’s fascinating. It’s also a little upsetting, because kobolds and goblins are not the same.
**John:** They’re so different. They’re little creatures, but they’re very distinct in DnD lore.
**Craig:** Different stat blocks, guys.
**John:** Different stat blocks.
**Craig:** Different stat blocks, linguists. But it makes total sense.
**John:** What do you got for a One Cool Thing?
**Craig:** John, every now and then, I do a little One Cool Thing for my diabetes friends out there. Protein bars are often disgusting.
**John:** They can be.
**Craig:** But they’re very useful. The useful kinds for people who are trying to manage their blood sugar are the kinds that are, of course, low in sugar. Those are the ones that taste the absolute worst. There is one brand – and I don’t know if this is in the US, but it’s definitely here in Canada – that is fantastic, I think. I think the brand is Love…
**John:** Love Good Fats, I think.
**Craig:** This bar that I’m looking at is Love Good Protein. It’s cookie dough flavor. It’s actually really good. You can hear the wrapper going crinkle, crinkle.
**John:** Absolutely.
**Craig:** When we look at the nutritional information, in one bar there are 21 carbohydrates, but the good news is that two of those carbs are fiber, 16 of those carbs are sugar alcohols, which are altered sugar molecules that we cannot digest. There are two grams of sugar in this bar, which is negligible. It actually tastes good. I don’t know how they do it. Sometimes when I eat these things, I think we’re going to find out later. But this one is-
**John:** The input is delightful; the output is not.
**Craig:** I haven’t had stomach problems. It’s really good.
**John:** Good.
**Craig:** If you’re watching your carbs for any reason, Love Good Protein, cookie dough flavor, outstanding.
**John:** Sounds great. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Tim Englehard. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions.
You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and hats. They’re all great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. If you want to get a copy of AlphaBirds, you’ll find that at alphabirdsgame.com.
You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record on card games. Craig, it’s a pleasure having you back.
**Craig:** So good to be here.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** Craig, so this topic, in a roundabout way, came because I finally got a Steam Deck, which you had recommended a Steam Deck, because there was a Steam game I wanted to play, that I could not play on the Mac, or I couldn’t play on the Mac without terrible black magic stuff that I did not want to do to my Macintosh. I got a Steam Deck so I could play on it.
It’s actually a card game that I’m playing on Steam called Balatro. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it yet. It is a fun card game that is taking the hands of poker but using them in a very different way. You’re trying to build all these poker hands and collect points from it. It’s a very smartly done game. But I realized that you and I have not talked about card games ever. We play DnD every week, but other people play poker, they play hearts and rummy and euchre. What is your history with card games?
**Craig:** When I was a kid, I would play gin rummy with my grandmother. That was her game. She played that with my grandfather. They lived with us. As far as I could tell, my grandparents spent their retirement just playing that one game. They would keep track of who won. I don’t know what for. I don’t know what the ultimate point was. But it was so much fun to go down there and play, particularly with my grandmother, who would get so flustered when she lost. It was fantastic. Grew up playing that.
When the poker craze hit, I started playing poker, and I played a lot. There was a game with some friends. We played every week. I would play online. Mostly hold ‘em, but also variants. Omaha hi-lo is a fun one.
I also learned to play bridge. My wife taught me. Then we would play with her parents, who were extraordinarily good bridge players. In their day, they actually were part of some circuit. They were just frighteningly good. I would usually pair with her dad, and she would pair with her mom, and then off we would go. I got super into bridge for a while.
If I go to a casino, usually I’m going to want to be social and play blackjack. But I’ve gone and sat down at a hold ‘em table and played. It’s fun.
**John:** I grew up playing Casino with my mom, which is a pretty simple card game. It’s not trick taking, but you’re taking what’s on the table. We would play also gin or cribbage, another fun building up to fives kind of game.
Then a certain point I learned to play pinochle. I would play it with my mom, my dad, my grandmother, my nana when she was around, my brother. Pinochle’s a great game. I’m not quite clear that we played the rules everybody else – I guess we did play the rules everybody else played, but I would look it up in books and it would seem vastly different. It wasn’t until the pandemic that I would play pinochle – Mike and I played pinochle with my mom online – and realized this is actually exactly the game that we played before. Pinochle I’d highly recommend to people who have not tried it before. It’s a very smart game.
In junior high we would play hearts sometimes at lunch. Hearts is another fun trick-taking game.
**Craig:** I love hearts.
**John:** Love some hearts.
**Craig:** Spades?
**John:** Spades I didn’t know so well, but we loved hearts. Then in college, for the first time, I learned euchre, which is a very Midwestern thing. Do you even know what euchre is?
**Craig:** I do, although I don’t think I’ve ever played it. But it’s one of those forerunner games like whist.
**John:** Absolutely. This coming week we’re actually having a euchre party at a friend’s house. Megana will be joining us, because also, as an Ohioan, she was indoctrinated into the cult of euchre. We’ll be playing that with her.
**Craig:** Is that the game that her mom plays with all the aunties?
**John:** I don’t think so. I think it’s probably a different game. But I’ll check with her to see what the game is that she plays with her-
**Craig:** Maybe they play mahjong. It might be mahjong.
**John:** They might play mahjong. Here, as we talk, I’m going to text Megana and see what game they play. I’ve never played bridge. My parents played bridge growing up. I always admired what that was like, because they would have bridge tables, card tables they would set up, and then they would have six different couples over. It was the most social I ever saw my parents be. Other than Friday night bowling, it was the most I saw them hang out with other adults.
**Craig:** I think you would love bridge. It’s a little intimidating at first, but it really shouldn’t be. In its own way, it’s a bit like chess, in that, okay, this does this, this does this, this does this. Great. Then you start playing and you start going, “Okay. Okay, I’m starting to see the interesting ways this works.” I think you would be very good at it. You have the right mind for it.
**John:** Absolutely. I know basically in bidding you’re trying to communicate information to your partner with a very strict set of rules behind it.
**Craig:** There are conventions.
**John:** There are conventions. That’s right.
**Craig:** There are certain bids that mean exactly what they mean, and then there are certain bids that mean I need you to bid something back that tells me information. There are contrived bids that don’t mean anything, other than to say, “How many aces do you have? How many kings do you have?”
The fun in bridge really is at some point you’re doing some kind of mind reading with your partner, that plus a little bit of luck, and then careful management of where you start. When you’re in charge of the board, and you’re going to play a card, do I play it from my hand or do I play it from my partner’s hand, if they’re the dummy?
It doesn’t take long to learn. The other thing about bridge which is similar to blackjack is you got a cheat sheet. You can have a cheat sheet. There are these place mats they make for bridge, where you can just go, “Okay, here’s how I analyze my hand. Here’s how I bid, based on this or this or this. Here’s what their response means. Here’s what I should do then,” which helps a lot.
**John:** I texted Megana as we were talking. She says gin rummy.
**Craig:** Oh, gin rummy, so what I was playing with my grandma. There you go.
**John:** Global sensation. Craig, always nice to have you back.
**Craig:** Great to be back. Thanks, John.
**John:** Thanks.
Links:
* [AlphaBirds](https://alphabirdsgame.com/)
* [#PayUpHollywood](https://www.payuphollywood.com/)
* [Scriptnotes Episode 427 – The New One with Mike Birbiglia](https://johnaugust.com/2019/scriptnotes-ep-427-the-new-one-with-mike-birbiglia-transcript) and [Scriptnotes Episode 640 – Can You Believe It?](https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-640-can-you-believe-it-transcript)
* [A.I. Needs Copper. It Just Helped to Find Millions of Tons of It.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/climate/kobold-zambia-copper-ai-mining.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) by Max Bearak for the New York Times
* [Love Good Protein](https://lovegoodfats.com/collections/all-products?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=21152436871&utm_content=&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADAv3w3FMo4d0_swROGon2xFoOpM-&gclid=CjwKCAjwy8i0BhAkEiwAdFaeGDJ83TmFElX9D0vmsTnPV738scSFQZgM37pUQnFDugAwYBpsNqrSBRoC6a0QAvD_BwE)
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