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Scriptnotes Transcript

Scriptnotes, Episode 700: The Live Call-In Show, Transcript

September 10, 2025 Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 700 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we are doing something we haven’t done since 2020, a live show with our listeners on Zoom and on YouTube. Hello, listeners. Like a lot of things about the pandemic, we only half remember what we’re doing. [laughter] While we’re still an audio-first podcast, we are going to be doing some things in this episode that benefit from being able to share screens and look at things.

If you’re listening to the audio version at home or your car and happen to be close to a screen, consider going back and watching some of this later on YouTube because there’s actually images to see. We’ll also be answering listener questions live on air, including a few in the bonus segment for our premium members. To help us celebrate 700 episodes, we are joined by some Scriptnotes champions over the years. Let us welcome to the podcast, Stuart Friedel, our very first producer of the show.

Craig: Stuart.

John: Stuart.

[applause]

Stuart Friedel: There we go. Hi.

John: Oh, my God. Look at that background. Stuart Friedel.

Craig: Oh. Such a good background. Classic.

Stuart: I need a Scriptnotes poster or LP or something to put on the back.

John: Yes. We’re going to release the whole show on vinyl. It’s a lot of vinyl, but it’s worth it. I’m just to have that for that perfect audio quality.

Stuart: It’s a weight. It’s for working out.

John: Absolutely. We have Megan McDonell, Scriptnotes producer. Megan McDonell, welcome back to Scriptnotes.

[applause]

Craig: It’s Megan.

John: Oh, my gosh. We’re so excited to see you.

Craig: Another good background.

Megan McDonell: Thank you.

John: Megan, you were a crucial part of the professionalization, I think, of Scriptnotes because when Stuart first came on board, it was– [laughter] We were just winging it. We were just trying to figure out what it was. We didn’t know how long it was going to go.

Craig: He’s right there.

John: He’s right there.

Stuart: It is true. It’s absolutely true.

[laughter]

John: You were a crucial part of that and also helped me out so much with the launch podcast, which we were, again, figuring out along the way. How are you, Megan?

Megan: I’m great. It’s nice to be here. Thanks for including me.

John: Of course. Drew, do we have Megana?

Drew Marquardt: We do.

Craig: We always have Megana.

John: Megana Rao is the producer who people first heard on the air. I think she was the one who sort of crossed the barrier and became like, “Of course, it’s Megana. She’s talking on the show.” Megana, it is always a joy to have you here. Oh, my gosh, it’s Megana.

[applause]

Megana Rao: Hello.

Craig: Megana, she was really the first star, right? Maybe the only star. I don’t really think you or I qualify, but Megana gets stopped on the street. I’m sorry.

Megana: I hate that you can see my face.

[laughter]

Craig: You look beautiful.

Megana: Oh, I just want to cower.

Craig: You have such great hair. Look at this.

Megana: Wait, where is your beard?

Craig: Oh, I got rid of it.

John: He got rid of his beard and the hair on top of his head. He’s basically just trying to steal my look.

Craig: I did. I do like it when people are like, “Where’s your beard?” I’m like, “Where do you think?” Yes, it doesn’t come off in one piece.

[laughter]

John: Ripped it off. Yes, absolutely. Is this with hair and makeup? It’s back in the van. Megana, thank you again for being awesome on the show and for joining us here today. If Stuart was the originator of the show, he was the one who got the train running. Megana sped it along and got us figuring out a little more stuff. You were the heart, the soul, the smile, the laugh of the show.

Megana: Oh, thank you.

John: Then there’s Drew, but whatever.

Craig: It’s just really hard to work for John. That’s what I’m getting.

Drew: Grinds you down.

John: Now, the very first episodes of the show were edited by either me or by Stuart, but at a certain point, we’re like, “Somebody who don’t know what they’re doing should be doing this.” That’d be Matthew Chilelli. Matthew Chilelli, cross from post-production into production. Join us here on the Zoom as we celebrate 700 episodes.

Craig: Ooh.

[laughter]

Matthew Chilelli: I beamed in somehow.

John: Oh, wow. Yes, Matthew. He had to pipe in a studio background so it would feel really impressive. That’s actually where you do all the work on the show. It’s like this high-tech launch center for the show.

Matthew: Absolutely. It’s so you can’t see my husband working behind me.

John: Yes, there is that.

Craig: I like that Matthew works in a studio that is carefully painted to be blurry.

Matthew: Yes.

John: That’s good stuff. That’s a highly selective focus. 700 episodes, guys. Thank you so much for getting us here. I have to say, 700, Craig will attest to, that was always my goal was to make it to 700 episodes. [laughter] I said that from episode two. It’s like, “My goal is just to make it to 700 episodes.”

Craig: Had you said that, I would have been gone within minutes.

John: Yes. As we talked about in episode 100, I was hoping to make it to 100 and had no instincts beyond that point. It’s crazy that we’re here now. With a book coming out, so many people on this Zoom were so crucial to getting this book in good fighting shape. Drew, we’ve been getting a bunch of people sending in their receipts from the pre-orders. Thank you to everybody who’s ordering this book. It’s out December 2nd worldwide. People should order it now so that there’s enough copies so that everybody can enjoy the book for the holidays.

I have a topic that I want to discuss with this group before we move into other things, which is how do you talk about a movie or a show without spoilers and where is the boundary between, “Okay, this is just a thing in popular culture we need to talk about,” versus, “This is a spoiler and I have to be really careful to discuss this thing.” The specific thing is the movie Weapons, which I really enjoyed, and it went in without any spoilers at all, which was fantastic. I managed to not know anything about the movie.

Yet there’s, I think I want to talk about on the show in a very specific way that I think won’t ruin things, but what is our feeling about talking about a thing without ruining a thing for other people? Craig, start with you. What’s your instinct when it comes to a spoiler?

Craig: I think I’m pretty good about this. There are things that I feel like, okay, if you know this, it actually won’t ruin any surprise. In fact, you’re going to hear about this or find out about it as part of the general setup of the movie or story. I’ve been trying to get everybody to watch Hunting Wives, and it’s worked because it’s the number one show on Netflix, I assume because of me.

John: Yes, absolutely. You are the salesperson for it.

Craig: Yes. When I talk about it, I’m like, “Okay, none of this is a spoiler. It’s going to sound spoilery. You’re going to hear about this as part of the setup.” I feel like setup is fair game. Once you get past setup, then you get into that territory of, “Are you ever going to watch this or not? Because then I’ll just tell you what happens.” [laughter] I keep it inside of setup. I think that’s safe.

John: Stuart, what’s your feeling on spoilers?

Stuart: I think it’s context dependent, and it is dependent on the person hearing to make their boundaries known. If you want to talk about a movie on a podcast that’s educational about movies and how to make movies, I think you just need to tell the audience, “Tune out now,” and then go ahead and talk. Don’t hold back the efficacy of the conversation because you don’t want to offend somebody who had the opportunity to push stop.

John: Now, Megan McDonell, you’ve been working on a lot of shows that are either under NDA, so of course, you can’t talk about those things. Even a WandaVision, you know what’s coming up. You have a sense of what it is. When on WandaVision, did you start talking about– was it only after an episode dropped or after you made sure that people had a week to watch it? What’s your feeling about it?

Megan: Stuff I’ve worked on? I don’t know. I still don’t talk about it. [laughter] I’m context dependent. I’m one of the people that spoilers don’t affect me at all. Like, “Oh, he was dead the whole time?” This does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. [chuckles]

Stuart: What movie would that be?

John: Stuart Little, which is so surprising. I had no idea that mouse was dead the whole time. It was dead?

Craig: That would have been an improvement. No offense to E.B. White, but that would have been awesome.

John: Now, Megana, you and I are chatting a lot about things, and I feel like we have a good shorthand. We have a friendship where you can say like, “Oh, have you seen this thing? Are you going to watch this thing? Can we talk about this?” How about you with your other friends and people around you? How do you communicate about what you want to know and what you don’t want to know?

Megana: I’m like Meg and Stuart, especially working in this industry. Spoilers are just craft. If there’s a big twist coming up and you tell me about it, it’s like then I’m watching it with a different lens, being like, “Okay, how did they set this up? How does this work?” I do try to be respectful for people who don’t work in film and entertainment and not spoil things for them. I feel like as soon as you land at LAX, spoilers are free game.

Craig: Wow.

John: Yes. I also feel like there’s some time limit that happens where Mike hasn’t watched Severance, but it’s like, I might watch Severance. It’s like, oh, well, I can’t talk about anything Severance-wise in your presence. On work Zooms, just for daily office stuff, we do have to have a conversation about like, “Okay, are we going to talk about this thing or not talk about this thing, or people will mute themselves during part of it,” which can be rough.

Specifically, the thing I want to talk about in Weapons, which I really genuinely think we can have a good conversation about without any spoilers, is midway through the movie, a character is introduced for the first time. I thought it was a really smart introduction in that an assistant comes into the office and says, “Your two o’clock is here.” He’s like, “Okay, send her in.” She just lingers a bit to set up, “Do you know who this person is?” This is so strange and weird. There’s a lot of screen time spent on what would just be, you could cut out the scene, but it was so important because it sets up this expectation of the audience.

It’s like, “Who is this person coming through the door?” Without it, we would not have an appreciation for, like, “Oh, wow, that is just so odd.” It made me believe that we out of the world more that like this assistant was like, “This is a strange situation that’s about to happen.” I just really enjoyed that. To me, it doesn’t feel like a spoiler. You’re going to encounter that moment, and you’ll say, “Oh, John talked about that,” but I didn’t ruin anything for you, hopefully.

Craig: Feels ruined.

John: I’ve ruined the movie for you?

Craig: Yes.

Megana: I’m holding back tears now, actually, I really am upset.

John: I’m sorry.

Craig: That’s Megana’s upset?

[laughter]

John: A giant beaming smile.

Craig: Yes.

John: Matthew, did you see Weapons, and do you know the moment I’m talking about?

Matthew: No, I haven’t seen it yet, but I still feel like that’s fine to talk about and also not that this is a judgment at all, but editing this show so many things have been ruined for me [laughter] plot-wise, and then I just keep it inside and turn it off and don’t share with anybody, but it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of movies.

Craig: You just let it out. You just shared it. Now everyone knows. I feel terribly guilty. Here’s why I feel guilty. I never even considered that. I took you for granted, and I’m sorry. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep doing it. At least now, I’ll be guilty along the way instead of just suddenly all at once on YouTube.

John: Yes, there’s two things I’m realizing now that we’re doing this live, is that first off, all the mistakes that Matthew cuts out, and it’s mostly my verbal mess-ups that Matthew fixes that he can’t fix on a live stream, which is great, good for the world. Second, there’s so many cases, not every episode, but every second or third episode, where Craig and I will say, “Oh, Matthew, you have to cut that out. What I just said cannot be in the air.” You know as much stuff that is sealed in the vault. So good.

Craig: Because Matthew’s so good about cutting all this out and you rely on him, what people don’t know is that John and Drew have the exact same thing they do when they do a verbal flub. Matthew, can you do it for us? I know you know what it is.

Matthew: Oh, right, yes. It’s almost the sound of a tape rewinding. As a person, it’s like, you’re in the middle of something, it’s like, “If you don’t put it up, blah, blah, and then you go back to the beginning. [laughter]

Craig: Yes, it’s [onomatopoeia]. It’s like that.

John: I listen to the Slate podcasts, and when their hosts mess up, they must be trained to go, “3, 2, 1,” and they read the line, and so it works for them. Every once in a while, a 3, 2, 1 will make it into the show, and like, love it, oh, just, it so reveals the process behind stuff.

Craig: That’s what lets us know it’s not AI.

John: Yes, before we get to our main topic here, we have two little bits of news. Drew, we have a new video in the ScriptNotes channel. This is on Breaking Bad, it’s Vince Gilligan’s interview, and it’s really well cut together.

Drew: Yes, it’s a really good one. It’s him just talking about how to be a good showrunner and running a room, and it’s really great.

John: That was a great episode. You have a new Weekend Read collection up this week.

Drew: We do, we’re back to school.

John: What are some of the titles in the back-to-school collection?

Drew: We’ve got 10 Things I Hate About You, Big Little Lies, Bottoms, Clueless, Dead Poets Society, Dear White People, Easy A, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Friday Night Lights, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, Never Have I Ever, School Days… loads. Wednesday.

Craig: Do you have Back to School?

John: The Rodney Dangerfield classic?

Drew: Ironically, no.

Craig: What the?

John: Some of those scripts are really hard to find, Craig. For some reason, there’s not a staggering demand for people trying to find those scripts.

Craig: That script actually is a really well-structured.

John: Oh.

Craig: It’s very well done for like a classic comedy. The structure was actually quite smart.

John: While he’s going to hype up Back to School, I’m going to hype up Bottoms just for folks who haven’t seen Bottoms for whatever reason. It is gonzo, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s why these people are stars.” They’re just so well done. All right, a topic for the group. Since we have a screen that we can all look at together, and our listeners can look at the screen together with us, I wanted to talk about the challenge that all writers face about how we describe the things we see in our head, so that the readers are seeing the same things in their heads.

Today, this exercise, Drew put together this slideshow of images we took off of ShotDeck. These are all from different movies and TV shows, or documentaries, all that we’ve pulled from there. What I want us to do is work together to figure out how would we describe this thing in a screenplay so that our readers are seeing the same thing that we’re hoping for them to see. We’re calling this People, Places, and Things. We’ll start with four different people, and we’ll talk about who these characters are and if this was the first time we’re showing them on screen, what would we talk about?

Because Craig, I know you love to talk about hair, and wardrobe, and makeup, and all those things, and help us get character details. Let’s start with our first image here. For folks who are just listening at home, again, you should really look at the YouTube for this so you can see what the images are, but it is a woman in an office situation. Craig, you’re looking at this. Who is this woman? What are we seeing? What are the details that you think might make it into a scene description for her?

Craig: Depending on where we are, if this is the beginning of the scene, I would probably make a point of saying intentionally whether or not this is how it actually turns out. Medium close on Brenda, 50s, standard office attire, practical short blonde hair, sitting in an office populated by late ‘90s, early 2000 equipment. She looks appropriately tired for a nine-to-fiver.

John: Those are all things I love about that. I love Brenda as a name for her. It feels like it puts her in the right decade. I get what that is for her. There’s something about her expression that I feel is good to sell, and you can give that one sentence. She has a face that she’s always looked like she just smelled something terrible. [laughter] There’s something uncomfortable about her. I like standard office wardrobe, but also, it’s like sort of a fun pattern underneath a blue blazer that she’s trying to inject some spark there under this.

Craig: And failing.

John: And failing, yes. If we were talking about the overall thing, it’s like flat office lighting is doing her no favors. It’s not a glamorous look. Stuart, Megan, Megana, do you have any more suggestions for things we might talk about with this woman if this were the first time we were seeing her on screen?

Stuart: I’d say something like, in a happier life, she’d be a school librarian.

John: I like that. It’s sort of the “as if” or the replacement thing gives her a sense of who she is.

Megan: I might mention something in relation to who she’s talking to. If she’s talking to her main character, maybe something like– and she is not pleased to see this guy.

[laughs]

John: Yes, I like that a lot, because it gives you a sense of relationship to the space around her and to what’s actually really going to happen in the scene. Megana, anything else jumping out for you about her?

Megana: Just a suit jacket that doesn’t quite fit. Shoulder pads that extend beyond the shoulders.

Craig: Maybe that was her look.

[laughter]

John: It’s probably clothes that she’s had for the last eight years. She has a standard uniform and hasn’t updated it with time. That feels fun. Drew, show us what this is from. It’s the Snowtown Murders, written by Shaun Grant. Jenny Hallam is the actor we’re seeing there.

Cool. Next up, we have another young woman in this case. The image we’re seeing, if you’re not watching this, is a young woman. She’s sitting on the grass. The wind is blowing through her hair. She’s looking over her right shoulder. It is a beautiful painted– it feels like a painted backdrop, but it’s outdoorsy grasslands. Who wants to start with this image? It’s so striking, but I want to know if this was the first time we’re seeing this character, how do we describe her?

Craig: If this is the first time, I would say something like, again, medium-close on, let’s call her Anita. I’m going to say late teens.

John: Yes. Age is ambiguous in a way that I think is worth noting.

Craig: Late teens, staring off at everything and nothing at the same time. She sits in a windy field somewhere in the great plains. Her hair blows in the wind, as beautiful, messy as it would be done up.

John: Yes. The wind catching her hair is such a striking thing about this. We have to establish that her hair is long. That feels important. I think we need to acknowledge her race, and as the writers, we can choose what we want to say here, but mixed race. I think we need to acknowledge that she’s not white because there’s that default white thing that happens.

Craig: Isn’t that the default white thing? We didn’t talk about the last lady being white. I don’t know if her race is relevant here. It’s hard to say. I don’t know.

John: Yes. Choosing Anita doesn’t tip us one way or another, but if we could pick a name that would obviously it’s still on race.

Craig: Why did I say Anita? Is anyone named Anita anymore?

John: No.

Craig: No. Possibly it’s cool. [laughter] I don’t know. I just went with Anita.

John: Stuart.

Stuart: You bring up a good point here that I think applied to the last one, too, with era and decade. There is a little bit of context that informs what’s important about the character and what happened at casting.

John: Yes. That’s a great point, too, because we haven’t been talking so much about character here, but I think Craig was noticing that she’s looking off to the side. Basically, she feels like an observer. She’s constantly surveying things. What I see there doesn’t feel like an extroverted character, it feels like someone who sits at the edge of things and observes, as perhaps like a sniper energy rather than a driver. Megan, Megana, other thoughts?

Megan: Back to the air thing, I feel like there’s a little bit of a timelessness about the scenario, which I might mention if it’s worth mentioning.

Megana: There’s something nice about how she’s holding her knees and holding herself together, but seems very comfortable outside with this windswept hair.

John: Let’s talk about wardrobe because of at least what we’re seeing with wardrobe, because I thought it was so helpful with our previous example. She’s wearing a tank top. Megan, Megana, what would you describe that as? At least as far as what we’re seeing.

Megana: A spaghetti strap.

John: That could be jean shorts, it could be jeans. We’re seeing a bit of denim there.

Craig: Jorts. I’ve never typed the word jorts in the script, but I’m tempted. It’s hard to tell exactly.

Stuart: It seems like an outfit that could be like out of any time and any place, but depending on the time and place would inform if it were a hipster getting ready to go to the mall, or like in modern day, or if it was something from the thrift store bin in a small town, or not even a town, in a rural–

Craig: Also, I think in an image like this, one thing I never shy away from is just saying, she’s beautiful. Because I believe that beauty should be an intentional thing. Meaning, we don’t just, everybody, it’s like, okay, there are shows where everybody just happens to be beautiful, it’s part of the tone of the show, I get that. In something that’s a little bit more grounded, not everybody is beautiful. Beautiful people are beautiful, and they’re notable, and so someone like this, I think you need to point it out. It feels relevant.

John: Yes, we’re talking about her and trying to describe her, but if we were describing the overall scene, I feel like I’d also want to call out the watercolor sky behind her. Everything feels painterly, and she feels like she’s in a painting at every moment. Craig, your point about, like, she’s beautiful, especially within the context of this world, is notable, because anybody who would see her in this world would acknowledge that she’s beautiful.

Stuart: It’s a beautiful shot. If it’s the first time we’re meeting her, too, I don’t want to direct on the page too much, but it does feel like a very intentional placement within the frame where she’s looking and where she’s looking back.

Craig: It’s hard to call those things out. It’s hard to call out placement of frame, but what I do think you can do as the advocate for always directing on the page, if it’s important here, John mentioned this watercolor sky, is to say, she’s somewhere in an open plane that stretches on forever. Long lens turns the background into this beautiful watercolor blur.

John: That helps me see what I’m looking at. Drew, show us what this is from.

Drew: This is not the first time we meet her, but I included from the script, the first time we meet the character.

John: The actor is Taylor Russell. This is from Bones and All, screenplay by David Kajganich. First time trying to pronounce that. We have a description from the script. It says, “Maren, 17, mixed race, haltingly plays Sibelius’ Swan of Tuonela. She wears a cardigan big enough to be her father’s and no jewelry or makeup. Sherry, 17, comes in looking more like an American teen in 1988. Oversized top, lip gloss, and bangs.” That oversized cardigan feels right. It feels like it’s not what we’re seeing on screen right now, but it feels like the same clothing vibe.

No jewelry or makeup also feels like what we’re seeing here.
Craig: I was pretty close with Anita. Maren, Anita, very similar.

[laughter]

John: The script did call out mixed race for her, which I have not seen the movie, so I don’t know whether that becomes an important plot point. It very well could. All right, our next example, let’s take a look at a gentleman here. [chuckling] For folks who are at home and can’t see this, we have an older man looking just off center of lens.

Craig: [laughs] Oh my God. What did they do to Scott Glenn?

John: They did a lot to Scott Glenn because it’s not Scott Glenn.

Craig: That’s not?

John: No. That’s Ed Harris.

Craig: Oh, sorry, it’s Ed Harris. You know why I do that? I do this all the time because Ed Harris was John Glenn in The Right Stuff, I believe, and so I just Scott Glenn Ed Harris constantly. What did they do to Ed Harris? They turned him into the Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, I cannot look at this without seeing Crypt Keeper, and I feel like you’re going to go for it, and why not?

Craig: Just say Crypt Keeper.

John: A very tan bald man with long pale brown hair hanging like a broken crown. You have to describe that he’s both bald and has long hair.

Craig: Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: It’s right there.

John: It is.

Craig: I would say it.

John: Yes, I think you say Crypt Keeper. The glasses also feel important. He’s wearing almost like Bjorn Borg glasses. They feel like very ‘70s thin-framed glasses. His shirt is specific and wonderful. It feels like a rare find in the ‘80s bin. A lot of it’s just great.

Stuart: I’m always cognizant of trying to match my prose to the tone of the script, so I wouldn’t necessarily say this in everything, but I think he looks like Dave Gruber Allen’s mean older brother.

John: I wonder if we could marry Crypt Keeper and how tan he is. He’s like a South Florida Crypt Keeper.

Craig: Yes, weathered skin, Crypt Keeper style hair flows from his otherwise bald head. He has the strange panache of an aging hippie who is now stuck as a motel clerk in Tallahassee.

John: It’s worth noting that you were able to read Motel Clerk just because, in the background, we see a bunch of keys hanging on a board and just shows how economical you can be in terms of setting up where somebody is and what a place is. Those keys did the job.

Craig: Unless he’s a key maker.

John: Megan, Megana, any other thoughts on our Ed Harris here?

Megan: Not really. There’s something about his eyes that feel worth mentioning. I don’t know if they feel like wet or something, but there’s like a sparkle, maybe that I would mention.

John: Yes, I think that’s a good point because they do still catch the light even though they’re sunk pretty deep in there, and they’re hidden behind the glasses.

Craig: I would also add, even though he’s not Scott Glenn, you can’t help but feel like maybe something about him.

John: A Scott Glenn presence. Also, granted, we know this is Ed Harris, but even though I didn’t know this was Ed Harris, I have a sense of what his voice probably sounds like, which is like a raspy smoker’s voice. You sense the age in it. Show us what this is from, Drew. This is from Love Lies Bleeding, written by Rose Glass and Weronika-

Craig: The great Rose Glass.

John: -Tofilska. All right, our last person. This is actually two people. What we’re seeing is two kids on a basketball court. The one on the right is holding a basketball. He’s walking next to his friend, who is counting something emphatically on his fingers. How do we talk about these boys? How do we set them up individually and together? Let’s assume that they are principal characters in a story, and this is the first time we’re meeting them. All of our attention goes to the one on the left because he’s counting and he just has an energy to him.

He has this purple sweatshirt that feels great and iconic to him. The way he’s counting, making his points on his fingers, he talks with his hands clearly. It feels like a thing you can establish early on about him. He has gold-framed glasses. They both have high and tight hair, so I don’t know if that establishes them well. The one on the left has a rounder face. What else are we calling out about these two?

Craig: On the page, since you have to do this before you get here, right? We have two kids, about 10 or 11 years old, on a basketball court. Let’s call Brian taller, thin, quieter, nervous. Walks holding the ball with his friend. Let’s call him Anthony. Shorter, stockier, constantly talking, emphatic, bright colors. He’s smaller, but he’s the one who stands out.

John: Yes, smaller but a giant personality, a giant presence.

Stuart: Feels like LeBron and Maverick Carter. [laughter] Anthony focuses on the stats so that Brian can keep his focus on the game.

Craig: I like that.

John: Megana, what are you thinking?

Megana: There’s also something about their expression which lets you know that these characters have this conversation or this argument several times a day.

John: Yes, we want to hear that in a scene that follows. The first lineup needs to be from, we’re calling him Anthony on the left, and just him listing all the points of things. It just feels so right. Yes, you can get some of that in the description, but the first bits of dialogue are going to tell us a lot about what their dynamic is. Let’s just show what this is from. This is from He Got Game, written by Spike Lee. I would say Anthony on the left feels like a Spike Lee character. I feel like I see him, and I love to see him in these movies.

All right, so that’s people. Let’s talk about some places. These are some settings for actual movies that have happened. This first thing we’re seeing, they’re islands. There’s cliffy islands in a very blue sea. Let’s be more specific about where we are. If this is a setting that we’re traveling to in the movie, imagine this is a helicopter shot bringing us in here.

How are we describing this? Megan, let’s start with you. If this is a thing that you’re putting into your story as an establishing shot, how might you describe what you’re seeing?

Megan: I would call it like an untouched island in a beautiful blue sea, not a person or a building. I don’t know. I feel like dinosaurs should be here.

John: Yes. It feels super vibrant. One of the challenges with the island is my default goes to survivory desert island, and this is not that. To me, this feels like Greece or Thailand, but high cliffs are what really establish it, that it’s like a forest atop cliffs over this vibrant blue sea.

Craig: I’d probably go for a sprawl of islands just so that we get the sense it’s not just one, because that’s what people go to, sprawl of islands, high-cliffed islands, covered with low, dense clumps of trees. They sit amidst the peaceful blue water. We’re not in the open ocean. I hate describing shots like this, personally. I hate it, it’s just–

John: People skip it.

Craig: Yes, because like–

John: Because nothing happens.

Craig: Right, the truth is, in a shot like this, just looking at it as a picture, because the drone isn’t moving, this isn’t a moving picture for us, but would be in whatever it is, it just feels like a tourist, like a pamphlet cover. If it were moving, then maybe something would be happening, but really, it’s just sort of establishing.

John: Yes, it is establishing. Any more thoughts? Megana?

Megana: Okay, say this is the first shot of your movie, and you are establishing tone through this, there’s something so glossy about this image. It makes me feel like this is going to be like a fun rom-com or a screener sort of thing.

John: Yes, I feel like Meryl Streep is going to be singing a song at the edge of one of these cliffs.

Megana: I was just going to ask, like, how you guys would describe this image to set up the tone of that.

Craig: I wouldn’t. This is not to me, like you can’t set up the tone of a movie with this, because you might as well just say opening, fairly conventional shot of beautiful islands. [laughter] This is going to be one of those. You don’t want to do that, you don’t want to undermine your own cause.

John: Craig, I’ll say, like, if you’re talking though about bright, joy– I don’t want to say joyful sunlight, but a sense of, like, it’s bright and sunny and fun and poppy, that feels like a certain thing. Describing the weather and the tone and the mood, because these same islands in the middle of a rainstorm would feel very different and feel very dark. Establishing the tone of a place, you can do.

Craig: I would want to connect that to people.

John: Yes, I agree.

Stuart: It feels to me like this is the flyover shot before we get to the layer of the bad guy in an Austin Powers, like a parody of a spy movie.

Craig: To me, I feel like this is midway through a rom-com, they’ve arrived at this beautiful lagoon. Then this is the shot revealing how beautiful it is, although there are no boats here. Who the hell even knows? [laughs] I don’t know.

Stuart: In any of those contexts, there are different ways to do a one-line, quick establishing. If it’s a parody of a spy movie, I’d say the craggy cliffs of a Windows default background. If it were a rom-com, I’d say uninhabited seas, we might be the only people for miles. One, it doesn’t even go on the line two, but either way, quick and snappy.

John: Everyone thinks this is something funny or it’s a rom-com. It’s not, it’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Screenplay by Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely.

Craig: This is why we were struggling. This isn’t even on earth.

John: Yes, it’s not.

Craig: This is Narnia, you guys. Really, the way I would describe this is, Narnian Islands in the great whatever sea. Beautiful Narnian Islands.

John: Cerulean seas, yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s Narnia.

John: It’s Narnia, dude.

Craig: Of course.

John: Of course. All right, we’ll be getting back to Narnia with Greta’s new movie. I’m excited to see that happening. All right, next setting. Speaking of villain’s lair. In the shot we’re seeing, there’s a very overcast, a storm, but we’re seeing this, I guess we can call it brutalist, but brutalist modernist building that it’s all concrete and glass. We’re seeing soldiers or police people approaching the front doors of it. How do we talk about this? To me, it feels like a Tetris piece that’s turned into a house. I think you want to talk about the square angles of it all. It feels like some sort of discarded piece of a puzzle.

Craig: To me, this would be all about the movement. A single file line of SWAT team members move guns out, pointed forward towards the glass wall of an angular, concrete, and glass modern home, two stories, sitting in the middle of this absurdly perfect lawn under gray skies. The house is actually not– it’s John Wick house, basically. It’s like a smaller John Wick house. Oh, actually, there’s a whole other row of soldiers. Sorry, there are two lines of soldiers. It’s hard to tell because the other ones were blending into the background.
Yes, I would just say SWAT soldiers in two streaming single-file lines move towards an angular concrete and glass home.

John: Yes. I might also, clad entirely in black. There’s something futuristic about just how black and minimalist the police officers themselves are. Megan, Megana, Stuart, other thoughts on describing this shot?

Megan: I got to go talk about that hedge. It’s extremely perfectly manicured.

John: Yes, it’s all straight lines in this space. All right, let’s show what this is from. Mickey 17, written by Bong Joon Ho.

Craig: They haven’t seen it.

John: Yes, I saw it and it’s a little, I don’t remember the shot in the movie, but it is delightful, and it feels of like a part of the movie.

Craig: It’s on earth. It’s not on Narnia, so it’s fair.

John: This one is on earth, and it looks like– What we’re looking at is a shot of what seems to be a Middle Eastern city. It is all tan, multi-story buildings jammed incredibly tight together. This is a very long lens that is making everything seem incredibly compressed. Buildings nearly fill the frame with just a tiny strip of white sky at the summit of this. Hey, if you put this shot in a movie, we know we’re someplace Pacific in the world. I do like this as an establishing shot. How else would you describe this? What’s interesting to say about this?

Craig: One road, there’s one road.

John: A single multi-lane road bisects an incredibly dense city of all yellow concrete buildings.

Craig: What city is it? That’s what I would do. I would say, da, da, da, and then point out a compact sprawl of hundreds of squat yellow buildings. They all look the same.

John: Yes, the uniformity of it is, I think what’s so striking about the image. What was this from, Drew?

Drew: This is from War Dogs.

Craig: Oh, yes. My boy, Todd Phillips.

John: Do you know what city this is supposed to be, Craig? I feel like this is probably Jordan, maybe?

Craig: I can’t remember, I’m going to guess Middle East. I don’t know where it was set versus where they shot it, but sounds right.

John: Great, but that was fun. We’ve never done that on our show before, and I liked it as an exercise to go through this. Let’s do some listener questions. We have some listeners who have joined us on the Zoom, and so bring them on. I’ll have them ask their question. All right, first we have Eddie.

Craig: Eddie.

Eddie Hamilton: Hello. My name’s Eddie Hamilton from London. I’m a film editor. I’ve listened to every single episode of Scriptnotes since the show started.

John: Incredible.

Eddie: I started around episode 40, and I listened to the back and listened every week. It’s the only podcast to listen to every week. My question is, John and Craig, please, would you briefly discuss your experiences of rewriting and restructuring your own scripts and advising other filmmakers while in post-production? Editing is the final rewrite. Every movie I’ve cut has been refined enormously once the shoot is over, and the editorial adventure begins after the first assembly, and I would love to hear your perspective on this, please.

John: Yes, it’s a great question, Eddie. My experience with movies, specifically in post, where I’ve not directed the thing, generally I’ve gotten them up to production, and then I’ve walked away and done other things. Then I’ve come back, and I’ve seen that first assembly, that first cut or first audience screening, and I find where I’m most helpful is coming in with a set of notes that is really responding to the movie that I saw, that it has a memory of what the intentions were behind those things, but it’s not trying to get us back to the script that I wrote.

It’s really reflecting, this is the experience of watching the movie now. This is where I was curious, where I got confused. These are the opportunities I see, and I try to be the first person with the most clearest notes. I give those to the director or the producer. They agree with what they agree with, and then they bring those to the editor and start working on the next cut.

Eddie: Are you always invited in?

John: I am not always invited in. In the movies that have turned out well, I’ve basically always been invited in to do that function, and I feel like in many cases, like on Go, I was there for every frame shot, but in movies where I wasn’t, like Big Fish, being able to have some fresh eyes was so important because I could have the memory of, like, this was the intention, but this is what I’m actually seeing was really helpful because editors, obviously, they’re finding all this footage. They know what they have and what they don’t have.
I’m just looking at sort of, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s where I’m engaging. Craig.

Craig: Actually, I was talking about this last night with– I did an event with Tim Good, who is one of our editors on The Last of Us and is yet again nominated for an Emmy, and we talked about this very thing. Once I get into the edit, I’m really trying to work with what I know we have, which is, it’s different. There are times where I will watch an editor’s cut and go, “Okay, this scene, I’m not going to give you notes on this scene. I’m going to give you the script back, read it. Go back to the script now, because you edited what you saw, but the script had more information.”

I want you to go back and conform this, not moment by moment, but feeling by feeling, speeds, adjustments, tempos. It’ll give you a sense of when to get close, when to further back, and then we’ll go from that. Usually, it’s pretty close. What you’re talking about, Eddie, that does happen sometimes, is you will watch and you’ll go, “Okay, structurally, our theory was incorrect.” I’ll give you an example. Our second episode of season two, for which Tim is nominated for an Emmy, initially, there’s this battle that’s taking place at Jackson, and then there’s this encounter that’s happening in a ski lodge.

We go back and forth between them a few times, and what we found was once Kaitlyn Dever says to Pedro Pascal, “I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you,” we can’t leave. We really can’t leave, and so we did some restructuring there, which worked, and there’s a lot of problem-solving to that, and it’s a joy because you understand you’re doing the right thing. You have to be as open to the new possibilities as you can be, and you also have to be as respectful of what led you to that point as you can be.

If you can have both of those in balance, then you are able to steer back towards the plan when needing, and you’re able to steer away into something better when you are needing it.

Eddie: That’s great. When I saw that episode, as an editor, all that intercutting and the structuring of the battle, I could feel how hard that was because I’ve done that on many films, and so I contacted Tim on Instagram. [laughter] I gave him a massive thumbs up and said, “Dude, that episode rocked, and congratulations. Just editor to editor, I wanted to let that your hard work was seen and understood, and appreciated from another post-production expert who’s sharing your pain. When I’m watching that episode, I can feel the amount of work that went into it to balance all the plates.”

It was astonishing, it was really great. The episode that you did about giving notes to producers or producers giving notes to writers applies to editors as well, and I make careful notes. I quite often tell my assistants when they ask me about getting notes in the edit and how to respond, don’t lead with your personal pain, all that stuff you said, Craig, it’s totally valid for editorial as well. If anyone is working with editors, please have a listen to that episode. Anyway, thank you so much for your time.

John: Thank you so much for listening to all the episodes, it’s incredible.

Craig: It’s amazing.

Eddie: My pleasure.

John: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you, Eddie.

Drew: Next question is from Ruta.

Craig: I may be wrong, but I believe we have a Lithuanian in the room.

Ruta: It is true.

John: Ruta, thank you for joining us on this live show. What question could we try to answer for you?

Ruta: Thank you so much for having me as a person with a question on the show. On episode number 626, I think Craig mentioned that accents are a little bit like actor bait, and it can become a trap for them. I was wondering if you know of any production designer baits. Is there anything you’d like designers not to do when bringing your scripts to screen?

John: Oh, it’s such a good question. Man, I could go on for a long time about this. Let me talk about like great examples of production designers who just got it and ran with it. I’m like, “Oh my God, thank you so much.” On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alex McDowell and his team would e-mail me with like, “This is what we’re thinking about for the newspapers on the wall of Willy Wonka’s father’s house.” It’s like, “Great, that’s a thing that I can engage with, I can help out with that.” What you’re showing me is, oh, you really do get, like, who this person is, and that is fantastic.

Where I have had issues in the past with production designers who will take a scene they see in the script and create a whole new setting for a thing that doesn’t exist. Or there was an animated project where I delivered a script, and they were showing me scenes that did not exist in the script. That’s not helpful for me. I think you’re going too far with the world-building. You’re trying to paint way outside the lines of what this project needs to be. Craig, bait for production designers.

Craig: One thing that comes to mind, when you have a script where there is a town, oftentimes it’s a fantasy or it’s science fiction, but there’s some sort of place. What ends up happening is production designers working within the framework of the space that they have in the footprint will often over-design the street. There’s like a street of 12 things, and everybody walks the set and goes, “Oh my God, look at how great this is.” You’re like, “Yes, but what’s down the street? What’s on the next street over? Why is every scene only on the street?”

Suddenly, even if you extend it digitally, the town feels very small. Over-designing portions of a thing that you’re going to be stuck in over and over and over. When we made the Boston QZ or when we made Jackson, I was like, “Let’s not throw all of our resources onto one street.” Give me a little side streets. Give me little alleys. Give me little tiny things that we can do because we’re going to want variety more than anything. It’s more important than the one big “ooh-aah” shot variety. Spread it out a bit and let’s see what we can do.

Sounds like maybe, Ruta, you are a production designer or you work in an art department?

Ruta: That is the truth. I am a production designer, yes.

Craig: Great. You know what I’m talking about.

Ruta: Yes.

[laughter]

Craig: Generally speaking, production designers these days do a very good job of integrating with the visual effects supervisor to work hand in hand with production to make sure that they are building enough practical for the actors to be inside, but also leaving space then for visual effects to complete things beyond that. Poor Ruta knows that everybody in the creative side wants the production designer to build the world, and then somebody from the production manager’s office comes in and says, “You have 12 cents.”

The compromise is always there. That one street B, that’s what I would call it.

John: Last bit I’ll say is that really great production design, and I think the point I was trying to get to in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that it’s specific and that it feels specific to the needs of the scene and who that character is who would live in that space. That is the right instinct. The only danger is sometimes they can spend so much effort to create a character that doesn’t exist or doesn’t sort of mean anything, that you’ve wasted some time.

I would always prefer a specific place rather than a place that is just looks cool and doesn’t actually resonate, doesn’t tell me anything about who the people are who live and work in that space. Ruta, thank you so much for your question.

Craig: Great question.

Ruta: Thank you so much. I love your podcast.

Craig: Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Drew: Next up, we have Caroline.

Craig: Caroline.

****Caroline:**** Hello, long-time listener. I guess since 2020, really.

Craig: That’s a while.

Caroline: Yes, I guess I’ve been doing a lot longer. My question is a bit existential. It’s what do you think of people that leave the film industry? I’ve been working in it for almost 10 years and have found it to be quite detrimental to my mental health and with the lack of routine, low pay, long hours, high-stress environments, slimy, unprofessional producers. I work in posts. I have kept plugging away for the next gig, hoping it’ll be better, but I’m just not sure if it makes sense to keep going on the roller coaster that is having a job in film.

I’m sort of damned if I do. Have you ever had your own doubts about the longevity of having a career in this industry, and how do I work smarter and not harder in this line of work? How do you rationalize it all?

John: Oh, Caroline.

Craig: Ooh, I said brief question. The answer is no, yes, maybe three. The answer is three.

John: First off, this resonates with me because I’ve just been having this conversation so many times over the last few years with people who are like, “I don’t know whether to stay or to go, whether to, what actually makes sense.” What I like about your question is you are trying to face this honestly and look at what is best for you in this moment and what is best for you long-term. You aren’t making assumptions about how things are going to shape up and how it’s all going to be like, that you’re one job away from everything being perfect.

I love working in the film industry, but the film industry and the television industry can suck. Your job is not who you are. Your job shouldn’t be your identity. It sounds like you have other things that probably are considering, at least for what you would do if you weren’t going to do post. It’s worth taking those things seriously. We don’t know what the future is going to hold, but if you’re relatively young in this industry, you’ve been doing this for a while, it’s okay to leave if you decide you want to leave.

You don’t need my permission or Craig’s permission or anybody’s permission, but you need to be able to feel okay about going on because it doesn’t mean that you failed. It means that you recognize it wasn’t for you if that’s a choice you decide to make. Craig?

Craig: Yes, the very first question you ask is, what do you think about people that lead?

John: Hear us. Yes.

Craig: No problem. There’s no judgment whatsoever. The same way I feel about people that were in real estate and decided to make a switch, also. It’s whatever’s– This isn’t like, “Oh my God, she couldn’t hack it.” She couldn’t hack it, would be a thing if you were trying to be a Navy SEAL, I guess?

John: Yes.

Craig: No. This is a business like any other. John’s absolutely right. You can transition to something else whenever you want, as you wish, but I can tell that you– Well, I can’t tell. I suspect that you don’t want to. I suspect that you would like to stay. I suspect that you love it. I suspect that the problem you’re dealing with is the frustration of not being able to do the thing you love in a way that feels good.

We’ve been there, all of us, every single person who does this. That’s in different ways. We have all gotten it in different ways. There’s ways that the business treats you poorly because of your gender or your race. I always like to say like, and then underneath that, because you’re there. A lot of people will just treat you bad because you’re there, which is brutal.

Show business is one of the few things that people are so passionate about, they are willing to bear an enormous amount of bad behavior in order to keep going. What I think is important is that you’ve identified that you have a limit. Setting up boundaries is important. If in your mind, you’re giving yourself permission to go, you will immediately feel quite a bit freer.

See, one of the problems is when we feel trapped, that’s when we feel powerless. You’re not trapped, ever. You can get up and go. Yes, it may mean that you’re not able to do the thing that you really want to do, but you might find that just knowing you can get up and go will give you a little bit more confidence to go, “I’m good at my job. I love being here. This is my boundary.”

What the bullies know is that there are systems in place to keep them from bullying. Those are real. I think you should take advantage of those if those moments come. The difficulty of getting work, that is the cross we bear.

John: Yes, that’s the structural problem of what we’re in.

Craig: That is. I wish I could tell you that there was a moment or an event or a thing where you will wake up one day and go, “Oh, I’m in this business now forever. They’ll never let me go,” which is what happens when you’re good at what you do and you get to that place where suddenly they realize it.

The most frustrating thing is you were you all along. You’re just waiting for them to flip their own switch to get it. In your circumstance, with my guess, I would say don’t quit yet. I feel like you don’t want to. Give it a go as best you can with your boundaries firmly in place. If that doesn’t work, then you know what? There is an unfelt joy that is waiting for you in something else. I do not believe we are meant for one thing in this world.

John: Caroline, one of the things that this is reminding me of is that there’s so many books about, oh, transitioning careers, or moving from this job to that job. They are always focusing on people who show up and go to work at a normal job.

The things that we do, which is scape work and we are imposed or us as writers, piecing together a bunch of different things to create enough of a career, is just so challenging and so different. If you decide that you love this work in post, but you don’t love going gig to gig to gig, it may be worth looking for, like, what are the positions that let you do the things you love that are more like a job rather than this?

You can actually not have to stress about the next gig, the next gig, the next gig. Working at a post house or a place that is like a longer-running thing, so you’re not constantly seeking the next thing, might feel better. I think Craig’s advice, on the whole, I think is really good. Is this resonating with you? Is this helpful at all?

Caroline: Yes, it’s a bit heavier than the other questions. It’s almost quite spiritual in a way, to have to think about this like existential question and to really just be in touch with myself and know what I need.

John: Yes, and listen, there aren’t great career coaches for stuff like this. There’s not an industry for that. I think just having a structured conversation with somebody about, these are my priorities and these are what I’m setting as my boundaries might also be helpful too.

If you can find somebody like that, it could just be a friend, but it’s where you both hold each other accountable for like, these are my red lines, these are the choices I want to make, that could help you as well.

Caroline: Totally.

John: Caroline, thank you so much.

Craig: Hang in there, Caroline.

John: Drew, let’s do one more question, and then we’ll save these other questions for the bonus segment.

Drew: Sounds good. Let’s do– This next question is from Sarah.

Craig: Do you think it’s going to be Sarah with an A or an H? Quick guess– Oh, too late, it’s H. Oh, it could be either. This could be Sarah Hadelman, or it could be Sarah Adelman. I think it’s Sarah Adelman.

Sarah Adelman: You’re correct. Jew, H, you got to go do it.

Craig: Jew.

Sarah: Yes.

Craig: Jew knows Jew. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to our live show. What question can we try to answer for you today?

Sarah: Sure. I’m Sarah. I’m a stand-up comedian and writer, and I finally sent my first feature script to my lit manager, and she gave me really helpful notes. One of the biggest ones will require redeveloping the male love interest for my female lead.

I originally wrote him as a super naive, big-eyed guy from the Midwest who’s intimidated by my spunky female girl. She has suggested that I change him to be a little cooler so we can root for him, a little less pathetic, for lack of a better term. I really want to make this change, but I’ve lived with this man in my head for a year as I wrote the script.

Should I give him a new name and just totally rewrite him? How do I let go of the original person? How do I make sure that I’m not just adding new traits to someone who already existed, so it becomes like a caricature? How do I deal with that I’m going to miss him even though I want him?

John: Who gave you this note? Was it your agent, you said?

Craig: Literary manager.

John: Manager?

Craig: Yes.

Sarah: Sorry, Craig.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s okay.

John: You know where this is going?

Sarah: I know. I love her.

John: Fire the manager.

Craig: No, you don’t have to fire her.

John: Sarah, you think this note is actually the right note for the script. You think it actually will improve the script. That’s all that matters. No matter where it came from. She thinks it’s the right choice for it.

My instinct, Craig, is she needs to rename the character because otherwise she’s going to try to be gluing things onto the existing character that she already wrote. I think she needs to create a clean space in her head for who this new character is. What’s your instinct?

Craig: There’s something about this character that matters to you. There was something about this character that made him your instinct to pair with her. There’s something about her, therefore, that is relevant here. Get to that. Figure out what that is. That something, hopefully, you can preserve. Also, you don’t need to say goodbye to this guy. You’re making a new guy. What’s this character’s name currently?

Sarah: Milo.

Craig: Milo. Let’s say you’re going to make a new character called Adam. Your female lead, her name is?

Sarah: Katerina.

Craig: Katerina goes over to Adam’s house, and he’s just got to go quickly deal with his idiot brother, Milo, who’s there, and who they can talk about and who may– You know what I’m saying? He doesn’t have to go away. If there’s value to him there, then keep it.

I guess that’s really what I’m getting to, is don’t ignore what your instincts were. They were your instincts for a reason. Follow that thread as you do, but also then really do think, hey, who is this other guy, and how can I get as attached to him and as protective of him because of the way his purpose interacts with hers?

John: My suspicion, though, is, Sarah, you will fall in love with this new guy, too. The old guy’s like, oh yes, I learned a lot from him, but this is the right guy to be in this movie relationship now. I think it’s a really smart question, though, because it shows that you’re thinking about what your intentions are, but you’re also thinking about what’s actually working.

That’s the crucial cycle that we’re going through is rewriting it’s really recognizing what worked, what didn’t work, and how to move forward, and not being too precious about the things you loved. Good luck.

Sarah: Thanks, guys.

John: You got this.

Sarah: I love you.

Craig: Thanks.

Sarah: I really love you.

Craig: We love you too.

John: Thank you. Big hugs. All right. My one cool thing is a thing that’s going to seem so obvious, but for folks who are not working in the film industry or theater, you might not know about spike tape. I want to sing the praises of spike tape. Spike tape are these little narrow colored tapes. We use them on film sets and on stage to mark where things belong on stage or on the set.

It could be actors’ marks. It could be where things are placed. You put it down, you take it up. It’s a really stiff tape. It doesn’t leave bad marks, but have some of these around the house because there are things you want to label.

We just did it for, we’re repainting and redoing a bunch of the windows. That’s the noise you hear in the background. We marked this purple tape is for the screens to go in these places. It’s just useful when you need to identify things, and you can write on it. It’s smart stuff. It’s a spike tape. It’s just delightful. You will find yourself using it all the time.

Craig: I had no idea that was– I just called it marking tape because the AC would just come with this marking tape to mark stuff.

John: I’ve always called it spike tape.

Craig: Spike tape.

John: I find it just incredibly useful. I love it.

Stuart: A store on Magnolia and Burbank that has the rainbow of every imaginable color.

John: That’s what you want. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the cheapo Amazon version. I love– God, Megan, I remember when we went to the– We had to get a special light for one of our live shows.

We had to go set up an account to get a light for one of our live shows. It was so fun to be in a place that just had like all the film stuff you could ever want. It’s so great. All the supplies.

Craig, what’s your one cool thing?

Craig: My one cool thing this week is Bridge Base Online. I don’t know if any of you play Bridge.

John: I don’t. Tell us about Bridge Base.

Craig: I’ve played Bridge in the past, and I loved it. My wife and I would play with her parents. We can’t play with them anymore because they’re dead.

John: Yes, it’s hard.

Craig: It just doesn’t work well. They were great Bridge players. They were competitive Bridge players in New York in the 60s, like ranked and everything. They were really good. Melissa and I were more like, we learned in college, and we would play. There was like a bunch of people in our little eating clubs, which is a stupid Princeton term, that we’d play Bridge.

I played easy Bridge. I learned quite a bit playing with my in-laws. Melissa and I haven’t played forever. The thing about Bridge is you need four people. It is a fantastic game. It’s a game that is very simple to understand in terms of the rules, but all the complexity and joy is in the bidding and the strategy.

There is a website called Bridge Base Online that is just this massive venue for, you can play against the computer, you can play 1,000 hands, you can do practice sessions, you can learn bidding conventions. You can also play pickup games with about 14 trillion people. The reason I started looking back at this is because Melissa’s been playing a lot herself on her phone.
Then our friend, Dave Shukan, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, puzzle master, lawyer extraordinaire, and exceptional bridge player, no surprise, had been talking to us. He’s been playing quite a bit himself. If you are interested in learning how to play Bridge, or you just feel like doing a little solo practice, bridgebase.com.

John: I love it.

Craig: Yes.

John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced, as always, by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Oh, thank you, Matthew Chilelli, right there. Matthew, for this week’s outro, pick one of your favorite ones from the past, one of the ones you’ve done, and let’s play that again.

Craig: One of yours.

John: One of yours. It has to be one of yours.

Craig: Yours.

John: If you have an outro, you can send a link, blah– See, that’s what I did.

Craig: See, that’s it.

John: Blah, blah.

Craig: That was it.

John: That’s what I did.

Craig: I’m so glad it happened.

John: It happened live. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes. We have t-shirts and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about in today’s episode. With the email, you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Oh my gosh, thank you to all our premium subscribers. We sent out the notice to them about this live show. Drew, how many questions did we get in from those?

Drew: Hundreds of questions. I woke up with hundreds in my inbox. They were all great. It was so hard to pick.

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, at least one of them was bad.

Drew: Not a single one.

Craig: Mmm-hmm.

Drew: Mmm-hmm.

John: We’re going to be answering a few more of those live in the bonus segment for premium members. We’re also holding on to those questions because so many of them were so good, we’ll save them for future episodes.

The one coolest thing, so at least four of the coolest things are already on this Zoom right now, which are our previous Scriptnotes producers and our editor, Matthew Chilelli. Megana Rao, Megan McDonald, Stuart Friedel, Matthew Chilelli. Thank you so much for all your hard work on this.

Drew, thank you so much for your hard work every week on this show. You guys are the best. Thank you everybody who watched us live on YouTube. That’s so exciting. Bye, guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Let’s answer another question, if we can.

Craig: Yes.

Drew: Okay. We have Ben Adams coming up.

John: What a great name. Ben Adams.

Craig: Ben Adams.

John: It feels like a founding father, a merged founding father.

Craig: Founding father’s ne’er-do-well brother.

John: That’s what it is.

Ben Adams: That’s exactly right. Funny, because I always get picked for jury duty with that name, because I’m like a founding father’s name.

John: Yes. That’s good stuff.

Craig: I’d pick you.

John: Ben, what kind of question might we be able to answer for you today?

Ben: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m so thrilled. My question is, a little preface here, I’m going to be shooting a short film rom-com next month with some friends. My script, I feel like, is ready, but I keep hearing things about having alt lines or alternative lines on set.

I have so little experience with that, and so I want to know how many alt lines are good to have for jokes. How many is too many? I want to give my actors room to improvise, but at the same time not lose the meaning of the scene. I just am trying to figure out a good middle ground of how many to have on set.

John: That’s a great question. We had Brittany Nichols on the show a while back, and she was talking about Abbott Elementary. They do come to set with like a whole series of alt lines they’ll go after they’ve gotten through a take, and they’ll practice other things for specific stuff to replace.

I think it’s good for you to have those in your back pocket. I wouldn’t share them with your actors ahead of time. I would say really look at what’s happening in front of the lens in the moment before you change setups, and then see what feels good to explore.

That’s a chance for you to, okay, here are some things I’m thinking. Let’s see if any of these work or land, and then that opens the door for them to try some different things themselves, in the Apatow sense of, you shoot a couple clean and then you get messy. Craig, what’s been your experience with alt lines?

Craig: Never wrote them for the comedies. When I was working, like for instance, on the Hangover movies, Todd and I would write the lines we wanted to hear. Then on the day, first of all, you’re going to have funny actors, and you’re also going to feel things, right?

You may feel in the moment like, eh, it’s not quite working, is it? Then you just do a little powwow. What would be better? Or why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try that? An actor may just toss something out in the moment. You’re like, “Ooh, that was great.”

Todd and I used to have Zach Galifianakis repeatedly would come up with the best lines after we had turned around and the camera wasn’t on him, and we’re like, “Zach, got to go do this, too, when the lens is pointing at you.”

Also, a guy like Zach, it’s every take, he could have a new line that’s amazing. You find those there. There’s something that is so wonderfully spontaneous about those. If you prepare them– First of all, you’re inviting people to go, “Well, I don’t want to say this, but I will say that.” Remember also, lines interact.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: If somebody is going to get an alt here, the response is going to be different. We would let that happen on the day.

John: Here’s what I think, going back to the Abbott Elementary example, when she has alts for things, when a person has a funny name for a thing or a funny thing they call the other person, having alts for that snipers those comments, because then, it’s not inviting a different response back on the other side.

It’s a little more clean. You can see what works. I would say on your list of priorities for what you should be thinking about going into this rom-com shoot, it’s pretty low on that list of priorities. Really think about all the other stuff and making sure that you have all the materials to make the best possible scene.

Craig: Agreed.

Ben: I have my shot list, my storyboards, my script. I have all my actors, and everyone agreed to do it for zero dollars, which is great. I have good friends. I called in all my favors. Really quickly, I invited my friend, Tom, who’s now a SAG actor. He was starring it, but he’s like, “Sorry, you got to pay me now.” I go, “Oh, do you still want to come on set and be funny?” He goes, “Sure.” He’s going to maybe help me riff. Do you recommend that? Is that cool?

John: There are people who that works out great for. Behind the scenes on a lot of the Apatow movies, they were just finding people around who just did stuff. If your friend’s helping you, great. If you’re finding it’s not actually helping and it’s slowing stuff down, you can send your friend away, or you can go grab pizza or something.

Craig: That said, ethical point of view, if he’s in the Writer’s Guild, no. If you’re a Writer’s Guild member, you can’t work for free. You can’t work for free.

Ben: Okay. Got it. Yes. As far as I know, he’s not. He just got his SAG card, and this was like– We were talking about doing it together. Then he said, “Hey, sorry, I got this feature,” and I’m like, “Oh, okay, cool. Let’s do it right.” I’m still figuring that out because I’m new. Thank you all so much. This was such a thrill. This kind of thing makes me a guest, right?

John: Yes, you’re now a guest on Scriptnotes.

Craig: Yes.

Ben: All right. Thanks, all. Appreciate you.

Drew: Two more. Next one is from Katie. Hello, Katie.

****Katie:**** Hello. Hi. Thank you guys for having me on.

John: Thank you very much for coming on and for waiting to ask your question. What can we help you with?

Katie: I was wondering, how do you guys, with your fingers in so many pies being projects at once, how do you handle working on multiple projects? Whether you have something that you’re pitching while you’re working on something being developed while you also are in production or even distribution on another project, how do you find brain space to not forget about one?

John: It’s a great question. Increasingly, I’ve had a bunch of stuff recently that I’ve had to. On a given day, I may be pitching on one project, having a meeting about a different project, and writing the other thing that I’m writing. It can be tough to switch gears, except they’re all in clean lanes.
I try to prioritize, this is the thing I’m writing, I need to block out this time to actually do productive work. The stuff that I’m pitching on or meeting on, I find in the half hour before thing, I can get my brain back up to speed on what that thing is. I’ll go back through the notes, find the stuff, and get myself there.

I’ve said this on the podcast many times, I’m sure, over the years, but with a new project, I’ll try to make myself a playlist in music for, like, these are the songs that remind me about it. Sometimes playing that will also get me back in the mood for something.

There’s times where it’ll be like two months since I’ve thought about this thing. Hearing those tracks gets me excited about it again and reminds me like, “Oh, that’s right, this is what this project feels like.” Craig, you’ve had to do this.

Craig: Sure. There are some people who really are producers at heart, and they love working on lots of things at once, because there is an entrepreneurial aspect to their character. There are other people who are a bit more monk-like, I think.

John: I think you’re monk-like, I’m more produce-y, yes.

Craig: Yes. I’m a full focus-on-a-thing guy. I do still– There are things that I help develop with other writers and filmmakers. When it comes to what I’m doing, I can write one thing at a time, really, because I put everything of myself in it, 100%, all the way tunnel vision-y. That’s just one of the ways that our mental architecture is expressed, and everybody’s is different.

If you find yourself really struggling to do that, it may just be that your brain is attuned to the narrow lane. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just follow the path of least resistance because it’s hard enough. Why make it harder by moving against? If you’re a righty, don’t throw a ball with your left hand.

John: It’s such good general advice, is so much of this is recognizing what are your patterns and not trying to label those as bad habits or something like, no, this is just how stuff works for me. The first couple of projects you’re writing, you’re still learning what actually works for you.

Sure, try some different things, see what– Maybe you write first thing in the morning, maybe you write last thing at night. Maybe you are a person who can juggle a bunch of different stuff, and you enjoy that. The cross-pollination between the things is helpful for you or it’s not. If you recognize what works for you, then you can really pursue that.

Katie: Awesome, thank you guys.

John: Katie, thank you so much for the question.

Katie: As a Tallahassee native, love it being thrown out there. Thank you, Craig.

Craig: Felt good, felt good.

John: All right, last up, we have Kathleen, yes.

Craig: With a K.

John: It is with a K. It’s very rare to see a Kathleen with a C. It’s not impossible, but I’ve seen very few.

Craig: Yes, there’s not a lot of Cathies. Kathy, you’ll see.

John: Kathy, a lot, for sure.

Craig: Yes, but no, Kathleen, I agree.

John: Hello, Kathleen with a K.

Craig: Hi, Kathleen with a K.

Kathleen: Hello from the Jersey Shore.

Craig: Hey, what part, where?

Kathleen: I’m in Ocean City right now, but–

Craig: Nice.

Kathleen: Yes.

Craig: Freehold.

Kathleen: Thank you, guys. I’m a longtime fan of the show.

John: We really appreciate you being here. Thank you for joining us.

Kathleen: Thank you for having me, John. I appreciate it. This is a question I have about options. I’m a novelist. I’m not a bestseller. I’ve had a couple of projects optioned in the past. I never expect anything to get made. I’m just happy to have interest from Hollywood. My last project was optioned in 2022 for about two years.

Then, around the same time, Netflix was developing pretty much a very similar show over the same period of time. It came out last month. It was our number one show. It’s already renewed for a second season. Then I was told by people in the industry this happens all the time.

I know ideas are not copyrightable. I’ve heard that from you guys many times, and I’m totally in agreement with that. I guess I’m wondering, do studios option projects just to kill them if they’re very similar? Is there a line that’s crossed?

Craig: Not really.

Kathleen: Is it–? Not really.

Craig: Not really.

John: No. It’s not one of those sorts of like catch and kill situations with like sexual harassment lawsuits or anything like that. It’s not like, “Oh, that’s the thing out there. Let’s take that off the market.” I genuinely believe that does not happen at all.

In your situation, I think one of the things that is exciting is that you wrote a book that’s like, “Oh yes, that should be a series.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, that should be a series.” There’s now evidence that would be a great series. It may mean that what happened was too close to this other hit series that people aren’t going to want to adapt your book.

I got to feel like it helps put you on the radar. I don’t know whether your Goodreads reviewers and folks who are enjoying your book are pointing out that this book existed before this, and it was effing great. People should read this if they want a book in the same spirit. I would take it as a win if you can find a way to take that as a win.

Kathleen: Yes, I think I’m trying. I think it’s my family and friends who are watching it and saying, “This is so close, this is pretty much your book.” Then they’re saying, “If you litigate, that costs so much money. Do you reach out and just say, what’s the deal here?” It’s always my time to sit back and do nothing, but–

Craig: Of course, we have to guard against, a sense of passivity or doormatism. We don’t want to be a doormat. I don’t know the book, and I don’t know the series. We don’t know the details. All I can tell you is that, no, Hollywood generally does not option material to not make it, or because it’s too close to something else.

They’re not worried about something that’s too close when it’s fiction in particular. There’s already been something that’s been a series like that seven years ago, and there’s going to be another one eight years from now. The similarities will occur, particularly if you’re writing in a genre space.

Yes, family and friends who love you have a focus bias because they’ve read the book carefully, and now they’re looking for comparisons, and they will find them. When you read a lot of the lawsuits that get filed, it does consist of a lot of like. “This is almost the same. All they changed was this or this,” which you can do.

I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t seek legal advice. Since you’re asking what our instinct is, our instinct is almost always no, that people are not looking to steal your book at all. Was it the same producer that optioned the book and made the show?

Kathleen: It’s the same studio, so it was under.

Craig: In particular, if it’s Netflix, they make 14 million shows. There’s probably 12 other novelists who are like, “Hey, you know, that’s not–”

John: Kathleen, I want to focus on this win you have. I bet there’s a bunch of people who’ve written books who are like, “Wait, she’s had multiple things optioned? I’ve never had anything optioned. That seems pretty great.” What have been your conversations with those producers?

I have to feel like they must feel some validation of, not only was our instinct right that this was a good thing, I want to see what her next thing is. Second question is, they optioned it, but was there ever a script? Where did it get to? Were there other writers? What happened on that front?

Craig: Yes. Was there a script?

Kathleen: There was a script. I opted not to be involved in writing the script because I don’t like to get in the way of something being adapted. I was like, if it’s going to get made, then I’ll stay out of the way. There was a script. There was a team attached to it. There was a showrunner.

John: Oh, so, Lord, they did not kill it. They spent some serious money. I’m sure those people are all heartbroken, too, that the series didn’t move forward. No, they were intending to make that show.

Craig: Yes. If, for instance, they optioned a novel for a low amount of money. Let’s say they get away with like, hey, what, we’re making a show, but there’s this other novel out there, and you said it wasn’t a bestseller.

Right off the bat, if it were a bestseller, maybe they’re like, “Oh my God, we’ve got to go get that out of the way.” Then they would have to spend a lot of money on the rights alone. For something that’s a smaller amount, why would they spend a dollar more?

John: Here’s the scenario that I feel is plausible, is that we want to make a movie in this space. They’ve read your book, and they’ve read something else, or whatever the other project was. Let’s get some R&D, basically, and do this stuff.

They’re like, “Okay, we have two things we can do. Which of these two things are we going to do? Who do we like the elements of better? Which one has more momentum?” That’s the one they picked. It sucks when it’s not yours, but you’re talking to two folks on this podcast who’ve had 60 movies not made. We can tell you that it’s par for the course.

Craig: There was a WGA writer writing a script. The WGA also is careful about chain of title. For instance, if there were some sort of co-mingling or shenanigans, then the Writers Guild, the writer of that script, based on your novel, would be like, “Excuse me, you guys took my stuff, clearly.” Then the Writers Guild would say, “Yes, you guys have co-mingled two chains of title, and now you have to deal with credit issues.”

John: The producers who are different producers would also be fighting over that. It would be a bigger mess.

Craig: Everybody would be fighting.

John: Yes, it wouldn’t just be your fight.

Craig: Yes. I think you can tell your family and friends, “Thank you, I love you, I appreciate you guys looking out for me.” It sometimes feels worse when people are trying to convince you that you’ve been done dirty.

John: Yes.

Craig: You can start to feel like a doormat. You’re not. You’re a professional. You went through a professional process. The outcome that occurred is common. You keep moving forward. Your job is to write books.

John: Yes.

Craig: Not to dwell. You keep writing books.

John: Kathleen, it’s a great question. I’m really glad we sort of had this discussion on it. It was great. Congratulations. It’s–

Craig: For real.

John: I’m not just waving it away. For any novelist to get their feelings, not just optioned, but they went and hired people and got a script, and they got a show together, that’s really far down the process and the pike, and will set you up for the next time because I think you’re on more people’s radar because that book went that far.

Kathleen: Okay. That makes me feel better. Thank you.

Craig: Good. Good.

John: Thank you all. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, everybody who listened to the live stream. This was really fun.

Craig: -and watched.

John: and watched, and watched. Drew, thank you for putting this together. This was a lot of new, first-time things for you, so thank you for doing it.

Drew: Thank you, guys.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. This was really fun.

Drew: Thank you.

John: Last time we tried to do this in 2020, man, it was a scramble. This felt really good.

Craig: This was great. We’ll do it in episode 1400.

John: Yes. Perfect. Established. Whoever’s taking notes–

Craig: I’ll be so withered.

John: You’ll be at Harris with a cryptkeeper.

Craig: I could theoretically do it.

John: You could totally do it. Honestly, either one of us could do it. We just need to get the wig appliance.

Craig: Actually, you can do it. I think your hair–

John: I got that base.

Drew: It would work.

Craig: Your hair grows straight.

John: Yes, it does grow straight. It’s true.

Craig: I would just get some sort of curly. It would be very Hasidic.

John: Yes. All right, guys. Thank you both. Bye.

Craig: Bye.

Links:

  • Watch episode 700 on YouTube!
  • Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonell, and Megana Rao
  • Weapons
  • The Hunting Wives on Netflix
  • Vince Gilligan YouTube video
  • Our Back to School collection on Weekend Read
  • Play along with People, Places and Things: Woman one, woman two, man one, kid duo, oceanside, house, and city.
  • Scriptnotes Episode 399: Notes on Notes
  • Spike tape
  • Bridge Base Online
  • Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
  • Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
  • Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
  • Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
  • Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
  • Craig Mazin on Instagram
  • John August on Bluesky and Instagram
  • Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
  • Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

Scriptnotes, Episode 699: How to Talk About Yourself, Transcript

August 22, 2025 Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August and you’re listening to episode 699 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, before you begin pitching a project, you need to be able to pitch yourself. How do you do it without sounding like an egotistical jerk? We somehow spent nearly 700 episodes without really digging into this topic. Luckily, it was brought to us by one of our favorite returning guests, the wonderful Pamela Ribon. Welcome back, Pamela.

Pamela Ribon: Thanks. It’s always nice to be back.

John: Now for folks who don’t have their cheat sheets open, let’s remind them of the projects you’ve written on including Moana, Nimona, and your Academy-nominated short film and a wonderful thing many times, My Year of Dicks. Let’s also talk about underemployment because this is something a lot of our listeners are encountering now, especially our writer listeners. My friend Ryan suggested we discuss some of the pernicious effects that not working has on our choices but also the opportunities that are presented by the times that you’re not working. Especially if you know you’re not working for a certain period of time, that can actually be liberating. We’ll dig into that.

We have listener questions. Since I have you and our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk a little meta conversation about podcasts because you are a podcaster yourself. I am looking at your podcast set up here on the Zoom and I’m so happy to see it. As we approach episode 700, we’re talking about making some changes around here and I would love your thoughts on that. We have Scriptnotes episode 700 coming up next week and we’re going to do a live show on YouTube. It’s happening tomorrow, Wednesday, August 13th at 10AM Pacific Standard. If you want to watch us live on YouTube, just subscribe to the Scriptnotes podcast and you’ll get a little alert when it’s happening.

Pamela: I love that I’m on the odometer rollover. The 699. We’re getting there.

John: It’s the eve of the 700. It’s setting us up for success. Drew, we have some follow-up.

Drew Marquardt: We do. Some listeners wrote in that a former How Would This Be A Movie article from way back in episode 348, the Rent-A-Family industry in Japan. It looks like it’s being made into a movie. It’s called Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser.

John: Great. We’ll put a link to the trailer in the show notes. I watched the trailer and I think that’s what we expected, although I wasn’t expecting it to be a white guy in Japan doing the thing. I thought that we would move the whole concept over to here instead it’s a large white guy serving as a token white guy in this movie. They’re addressing it in the trailer that he’s the one American who’s being placed into these family situations.

Pamela: Awesome. One of the co-writers here, Hikari, was my cohort when I did the film Independent Director’s Lab.

John: Oh my gosh.

Pamela: She’s awesome. She actually made the film that she went into the director’s lab with. It’s called 32 Seconds. I don’t remember how many seconds. It came out a couple of years ago. I also tried to get this project. I had a pitch. I was thrown in the mix. I was in the thing. It’s very scripted.

John: Can you tell us more about this because this is being released by Searchlight, but what was the process behind this?

Pamela: First you let people know like, “Hey, I found this article. I think it’s going to be a thing and I’d like to see if I can be involved in however it’s getting adapted.” Then they–Boy, this is so long ago so I’m trying to remember how it went this time. Sometimes you just hear like, “Oh no, Lucky Chap has it.” You’re like, “Okay. Bye. Thanks. Of course.” I think in this one, it was like, “Do you have someone that you could attach to with this? Is there a company already that would do this with you?” Because I’m nobody. I can’t remember because this one went very quickly. By the time I was interested in trying to gather a group, there were big people going out with this.

I think that eventually it was just I didn’t move the needle enough to be in the runner-ups for the next top screenwriter. Here it is.

John: It seems like it was probably a long journey to get there. It’s based on the same article but you don’t know everything that happened along the way behind the scenes. Maybe as it comes closer to getting released, we might get some more backstory. I’m just curious what the journey was and how it got to Hikari.

Pamela: I just remember thinking like, “This is such an interesting concept.” I’m sure mine was more in the vein of her or something like that where it was like, “You don’t really care for your life anymore so why don’t you just go be the person that other people need at these moments?” I remember pitching like, “Please, can you fire this person for me? I don’t want to do it.” That kind of stuff.

John: All right. Let’s get to our main topic, which is the topic you brought us. We actually have a question from a listener that sets this up perfectly true.

Drew: Charles writes, I’ve written a pilot and I’m fortunate enough to have gotten some general meetings from it. For all intents and purposes, I’m no one and they know nothing about me. What are the best practices or tips for starting a meeting? You sign on to Zoom and you’re suddenly met with a face and now you have to be interesting. When you’re no one, you can’t count on them knowing anything about you and it’s weird if too much about them. What are some general tips to ease into the general meeting?

John: Pamela Ribon, you’ve actually done workshops on this, like how to talk about yourself as a writer. I’d love to see this conversation to you if you want to direct us here.

Pamela: Sure.

John: What is your best advice for someone in Charles’s situation and really any writer who’s going into a situation where you have to talk about yourself.

Pamela: I like to talk about this topic whenever it’s film festival masterclasses or whatever because this is the thing that you have to do first. Sometimes before you’ve even written something, you have to talk to people about writing and if you want to write or that you have written and what are you going to write next? I find a lot of people start by apologizing for even feeling this way, for having a dream or for having accomplished a script and they’re like, “It’s just this thing. I don’t know. It’s whatever. I don’t know. It’s dumb.” Even in this question, it’s weird if you know too much about them.

You’re having a meeting. Knowing a lot about them shows that you did your homework. You’re excited to meet them. You’re equipped. I know we talk about like it’s a first date but it’s not. We’re not going to keep dating. There’s not like, am I attracted to this person or is that how they always dress? It’s more about how does this flow fit? When they ask me a question about myself, do I feel comfortable answering it? When they answer a question that I have, do I feel like they’re looking at me and talking to me? Do I feel like a real person in this room? These are basic questions that– In a general you can get yourself too hyped up to even bother to look for.

John: Somebody said there, I really want to pull apart is that you think back to a first date and if someone asks you about yourself on a first date, you’re going to come out with a set of answers that make you look good along a certain axis. You’re not going to get the same answers in a general meeting that you would on a first date. It’s a positioning thing you’re trying to do. You’re trying to explain to them who you are, what you’d like to write, why you wrote this thing, why you’re there. It’s good to practice this. If you’re giving a masterclass, you’re talking to people about this, what are your first bits of advice for the things they need to come into the room ready to say?

Pamela: What I usually do is we just have a general in front of the rest of the class. Someone brave enough to go first, I say, “You’re going to walk in here and I’ll already be seated, you’re going to come in like you’ve walked into my office.” Then you just do it because they figure it out. You walk in, you’re like, “Hey, how are you doing? Do you need anything? You want some water? Did anybody get you coffee?” You sit down and then you small talk. Was it hard getting here? Oh, it’s hot today. All the things we do at the top of a general, which at the top of a Zoom– Just so I’m also modern.

It’s the same way you make sure that you’re looking at the green light every once in a while so that you’re making the closest eye contact as you can make. You make sure that you’re comfortable, that you have water, that you have all the things you need. You start with whatever. Like we did when we first logged on of, here’s what traffic situation I was just in and here’s how things are going. Then, you gradually find yourself moving into the topic of why are we really here? Sometimes they start it where if they’ve read something of yours or someone recommended they meet you, that’s a kindness that they may do but you may start because a lot about it and you can start with, “I just saw this, I loved it.”

That’s enough to get things going. If they’re not giving you anything back, this isn’t a great room and you can learn very quickly. I don’t have to sweat here. We’re not going to work out. Like you said, you’re not going to give the same answer as on a first date but I know enough that when people go, “I don’t know anything about.” You can say, “Oh, I can do that.” I moved around a lot. I went to 13 schools and then I moved my way into the early internet and the older net. Then, that started me getting into rooms and I did comedy rooms and sitcoms for a while until I got the call from Disney. I just did so many years.

John: Some good at heavy lifting there. I liked as it showed a journey and it showed like, “Oh, if they’re curious about any bits of that, they can jump back to talk about that.” What were those early rooms like? What were you doing in those places?

Pamela: What shows or where did you end up? What was your last school? We can start by Austin. People in LA really like to talk about Austin.

John: They do.

Pamela: You can do that. Sometimes you’re talking about people you know in common. That thing of like someone said I should meet you or I saw that thing and it was great.

John: Or I see that you’re working with this director. I had a great experience with them or what this is. In some cases it’s the subtly coded like, “That director’s challenging for these reasons. I hope you’re having a great experience.” I love them. It’s also challenging on this thing.

Pamela: Finding your mutuals is a nice– When you have found your mutuals, you learn a lot about them too. Like, “Oh, I love her. She’s great. No, I haven’t met him.” Even just the things you’ve seen. They often ask, what are you reading right now? It’s not quite small talk, it’s medium talk because it’s small talk with cues of, do we think that one day when we’re arguing over a plot point, we’re going to get to a place together because we actually are on the same wavelength. Sometimes that just flies by and all of a sudden an hour has happened because you ended up talking about anything from Taylor Swift to some new app you’re playing with.

You never know where it’ll go. Being flexible with the time or just being free to explore wherever this conversation’s going to go and not get nervous about what you did or did not talk about. You don’t need to put that pressure on yourself. You can have an agenda of I really want to make sure I mention this one thing but you can’t script it.

John: Many episodes ago, Craig and I were talking through this article and we’ll try to find a link to the actual original article. The writer was talking about how good conversations have doorknobs and handles. Basically, there’s ways you can open and keep going. It’s about making sure that you’re providing them things like your bio of all the schools you went to, all the things. You’re giving them handholds that they can pull on and actually keep the thing going. In some of the early general meetings I had, I just didn’t get the flow of it quite right.

I would answer questions without lobbing it back so that they could do the next thing or really that I could ask questions about what it is that they’re looking for. Because if the meeting’s going well at a certain point it does transition into like, “Here’s what we’re working on and here are things that might be a good fit for you.” That’s the dream situation. Other cases it’s just like, “What are the general areas in which we might have some overlap there.” Things that they’re looking for, if it’s an actor’s production company, like what is that actor seeking? If it’s a director, what things never cross the line for that director? That place you’re hoping to get to in these conversations.

Pamela: I used to always have prepared screenplays I wish I had written.

John: For sure.

Pamela: Because that lets them know and let it be varied if it’s varied. Now I know myself well enough, please forgive me if I’ve already said this on this podcast, but I will say, I just am not into dragons, politics, or when people pay money out of a pouch.

John: Great.

Pamela: That’s it. I know it. It doesn’t matter. You can put other things in that pouch, jewels maybe or secret but not farthings.

John: Nimona had dragons and pouches for sure.

Pamela: I turned it down the first time it came around. 100% I was like, “It checks every box I don’t like.” Then they came around again and they were like, “The thing is you don’t have to come all the way out to Connecticut anymore because of Zoom. What if we come to you?” They were like, “They’re punk rock dragons. I don’t think we have to have any pouches.” I was like, “Okay, let’s try it.”

John: All right. My list for that, it’s not a thing I would often say in meetings, but I would definitely tell my reps is like, “ No gnomes, elves, dwarves or Christmas.” I just like no. People will still come to me with Christmas but it’s like, “No, I don’t care about Christmas as a concept.” Even there was a good documentary that was about Christmas trees in New York and the whole business of Christmas trees in New York City. It’s is actually fascinating but it’s also, “No, it’s Christmas. No, it’s just bah humbug.” I just don’t want to do those.

Pamela: Really does help them immediately go, “Oh, we’re going to put down a number of these things.” It may make them say, “What is it that you like?” I think with me in particular, they’re not always assuming what it is that I like because they’re– Now that you have produced credits, they’re like, “Oh.” There have been times when I’m like, “Do you think I’m a cartoon person? Is that what you’re doing?” They’re like, “Yes. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that.” People have a way of learning about animation that is limiting.

You’re always having to show your other sides and the dynamics of you. Often, I’ll tell you what, we end up talking about roller derby.

We end up trying about what I do when I’m not writing and your hobbies, your family, whatever it is. In those generals, I’m always talking to this person until we find that thing that lights them up. Then I know we got it. Sometimes he’s like, “I collect trains.” I was like, “Tell me more.” Then, you watch them become the person they want to be in front of you because they’re talking about their passion.

John: Absolutely. You may not give a rat’s ass about trains but the fact that it is interesting to them, there’s going to be something there that’s fascinating. There’s something that’s driving them about that.

Pamela: They have stories because of that. That’s when you see the storyteller come to life.

John: Again, I’m forgetting exactly where I learned this but Rod Stewart apparently is a big model train builder and collector. I appreciate Rod Stewart so much more now just recognizing that he has an obsession, a hobby that has nothing to do with music or songwriting. That’s fun. That’s nice. Let’s talk about part of the general meeting is talking about what you’re working on right now, which could be a delicate subject because it could be in flux. It could be like, there’s a director on, director’s not on, there could be an NDA. How do you best do that? I think sometimes in animation where we’re under NDAs a little bit more than we are in live action but talk to us about that.

Pamela: For a while I would be like, I’m working on things I can’t tell you about for years and that would be enough. It depends on the room. Sometimes you can realize you’re at a Disney meeting or you can be like, “We’re all in the family here. I’m working on Moana.” If you’re in a position where you can’t really– Let’s say right now I’m working on Emily the Strange for Warner Bros Animation with Bad Robot. That’s all I can say about it.

John: It was announced in the trades. You’re safe there.

Pamela: I’m safe there. I’m talking about who I’m working with and I focus on the great things about it because we have hard days, and I try not to launch right into like where it hurts and just talk about where it’s working and what’s great and what we’re still excited about. Because really the NDA is often so that you don’t like talk about stuff that they wouldn’t want in a press release and you know that in your heart. There’s things that are set up that aren’t quite happening yet. I have a spec that went out this week. Here’s something, you guys. I’ve never sold a spec before, ever.

John: I’ve sold exactly one. It was Go. That was the only spec I’ve ever sold.

Pamela: Good for you. That’s amazing. Tell me what it’s like. I’m excited but I don’t know what’s going to happen and maybe nothing will happen. I have a little piece of news this week that I have a spec that’s going out, which if I were in a general, they’d be like, “Can you tell me about it? Can I get it? Can I get it on that list? Can I read it?” That’s the mystery. You can use an NDA to your benefit of a mystery. You’re working. I’ve got a project at FX. I’ve got something going on at Disney TV Animation or whatever. These things take forever and they all have their own timeline, you bounce around to being– I genuinely like to balance a bunch of projects at once.

I try to talk about the one that either is the closest to next that anybody could see but you also know that a lot of stuff you work on maybe no one will ever see. You try to talk within what is the you of it, not the all of it. I’m working on this project. It’s really fun. We’re putting some stuff together. You can sometimes say where you’re at in it but I just try not to get into what’s not my business.

John: If I can bring it back to my process, that’s also a useful thing too. I can say I’m writing this movie right now for this company and it’s under NDA but I can say– It was one of the rare cases where I needed to write the outline first and it’s just actually such a luxury to have a really big fat outline because as I go to my daily work on doing the scene, it’s like, “Oh, what happens in this? Oh, exactly. This is what happens.” It’s like so many of the fundamental questions have actually been tackled in the outline form. It gives me a chance to talk about myself as a writer, which is nice.

Pamela: Oh yes.

John: Another point of commonality I’m thinking is business affairs. We say like, “Oh, there’s this thing.” Business affairs is so slow. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s like everyone will just nod because business affairs is crazy and it just takes forever to get contracts done. Something will be sold at a place and eight months later, you’re allowed to start writing because the contracts are finally done.

Pamela: Sometimes you are like that. The deals are taken. There’s a lot of heavy hitters in here. We’re waiting on some stuff. You can also say lawyers. These things take time but your excitement stays the same. You really get to talk about how you got– Even talking about how you got that job or how you met everybody, how you ended up with it. That’s a good one.

John: If you can sell the enthusiasm that you– If you’re excited to write this thing for them and they want to see writers who are excited to engage. I can imagine like Charlie Kaufman is a great writer, but I don’t imagine he’s great in a room in terms of being really enthusiastic about this thing he’s doing. It’s like, if you come in as a curmudgeon, maybe that’s true to your authentic personality but it’s not going to be like, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to work with him.”

Pamela: That being said, you do not have to fake, like some of us like going outside and meeting other people. Some of us do not. I think sometimes the pressure is on of do I have to be someone else in this general? Do I have to lie and be a fundamentally different person? Sometimes you have to fake a little bit the confidence to be yourself. Then, that’ll get easier. The more that you’re like, “Oh, I was myself and nothing bad happened.” You just do that again and do that again and get used too. Sometimes it takes them a minute to get used to me. Even as the extrovert that I am, I can tell that I’m like, “Hey, I’m very excited.”

I can say like a little bit too much coffee, a little bit haven’t been outside in a while. Give me a second to settle. I’m not so much nervous as I am jittery. I think all of those things of, “I am shy. I’m really happy to be here but you should know that I haven’t had that many generals. I’m a little shy.” Just be a person. Be a person and that makes everything easier on both sides.

John: 100%. I was on a pitch this week and usually there is the ramp, the warmup, getting into things. Everyone logs in and they’re like, “Great. Let’s go.” It’s like, “Sure.” I’m there and I’m pitching away. It went fine. It went great. You also have to be prepared. Sometimes there’s just not that on [unintelligible 00:20:22] and you’re just like, “Go. Okay. Great, I’m doing it.” Be ready for it. That’s why I think if you are actually pitching a project, really rehearsing that first minute or two, just so you feel really comfortable with how you get into it is going to be a huge help because it could just suddenly happen.

Pamela: I don’t record myself and watch it again but I do record myself sometimes for the pitch so that I don’t have to do that part.

John: You’ve talked about this on the show, I think, before, where you actually will send them a link to a pre-recorded pitch.

Pamela: People now are more able to be in the Zooms or you might be pitching knowing it’s being recorded for someone else who’s not in the Zooms, so you do have to be your game face on. If they do say go, like you just did, you’re like, “Oh yes, this is happening?” It’s totally fine to do that and be like, “Here we go, hold on. I’m going to pull up my draft and I’m ready.” I’ll do disclaimers at the top of you can totally stop me for questions. I hate pitching to mute buttons so whatever you want to do, we’re all people here and I’ll just get through this pitch together.

I find that they, in the Zoom room, when you’re pitching, they do sit back like here’s a little TV show. In a pitch where you’re with people, they are probably more likely to go, “Oh wait, did you or that’s funny.” Because you’re people.
John: You’re people rather than being little boxes with faces in them. Post-pandemic, how many pitches have you done in person, where you’ve gone in? How many general meetings have you been in, like a cross run person and then pitches in person?

Pamela: One?

John: One or two for me. This one studio has wanted me to come in in person twice. I’m looking at Drew to see if he can remember other times, but two or three times. Basically everything has been a Zoom since the pandemic. I’ve talked to some friends who was like, “I don’t know that I could pitch in person anymore because I’m so used to having my slideshow deck. I share a screen and I go through my slides and to do that in person, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Pamela: One of my friends said, “This is terrible because I’ve learned a key component of liking me is the third dimension.” All credit to Don Todd. That one that I did in person, it was really early pandemic. It was literally the first time I had gone into a room with someone. I said to her when I sat down, she was a big, important person. I sat down, I was like, I can’t believe that we’re taking masks off. I’m like, “What is happening? Look what I’ll do for my career.” That’s still it. I’ve had a room where we all got together for a kickoff. I’ve done some of those kickoff in the room but not this type thing that we’re talking about. They’re all–

John: The kickoff stuff, I was in a room and meeting everybody in person but the initial things have basically all been Zoomy situations. This one that I did this week, I didn’t have a deck. There was no images. I just talked for 15 minutes and described it and it went great. I’m so used to having the fallback of like, “Here’s the next image, here’s the next image and [unintelligible 00:23:31] to not have that.” I’m sure we’ve said this on the podcast before but if you do have notes and you’re doing it on a Zoom, move your notes to the very top of the screen up by your camera so you’re not looking down, you’re looking closer to the lens. Just so you’re making more eye contact.

Pamela: I actually, I put the Zoom in the tiny little bar with the people I want to be pitching to under the green light. Then, my pitch notes are right below that. I have no choice to be looking into that little corner and I can read how they’re doing if they’re listening.

John: It’s good. Another hint is if you have somebody in a second for somebody who’s on your side, they can talk without the facts. You can see how are people actually responding? Because people’s faces are small, it’s a little harder to read the sense of the room afterwards.

Pamela: They can also do the flipping for you if you want so that you are only doing your talking part.

John: All good choices. All right. This is helpful. Any last wrap up on introducing yourself, how to talk about yourself, how to not to be a jerk?

Pamela: We have on here, how to not be a jerk but we have what is too personal and how do you feel confident about your work that you don’t sound apologetic for being in the room. I just want to say that my first general happened the day after my father passed away. I was like, “I’m not canceling this general. I’ve never had one before. I’m not going anywhere today.” My dad had entered hospice. He was like, “I’m going to go outside and I’m going to go do this career thing.” It was the very beginning of all of this. Trauma and time have made me not remember everything but I remember it was the Disney old animation building.

I sat down and she liked the script, which is about my different family members, but about generational trauma and such in a comedy. I don’t know. We just at some point started talking about families and I told her what had happened last night. She ended up talking about her dad. I do remember that we both at some point were just crying a little bit sharing stories with each other. Then that was it. I think that was a really good general. Even though that’s not– Most people are like, “No Pam, you take the day off. What is wrong with you?” I know that but I also know that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what he would have probably suggested I do, just go out there and talk.

Sometimes you bring the day in with you and that general is what I was trying to say about what’s too personal and what’s not. If there’s no getting around it, that your day is with you end up having some pretty profound general sometimes because you’re not doing this checklist of things and you’re just some people talking to each other. If they didn’t get around to the thing they wanted to talk to you about, they’ll call you again. You’ll have a follow-up or it becomes the beginning of something. The too personal, I think the line is you don’t owe anybody your story.

You don’t owe anybody the worst things that have ever happened to you in order to validate being able to talk about whatever you want to talk about. I think sometimes we get worried that we have to spread our hearts open and then give everything on that first try. You’re learning what they deserve to.

John: For sure. All right. Let’s move on to our second topic here. This comes from Ryan Knighton, who is a guest who’s been on the show several times. He’s a writer who lives in Canada who comes down to the US to write sometimes. He sent in this voicemail.

Ryan Knighton: In answer to your question, what would be advice I would give about being unemployed as a writer. I was thinking about it. One of the things that I’ve experienced at least is that unemployment can make you incurious as a writer. The anxiety of the unemployment can pull you towards the middle of things, towards the safe and what you might think is predictable way of doing your work or the subject matters you take or the approach you take. That’s on my experience is that I start to chase what I think people might want instead of following an investment in my own curiosity and hoping that it will connect somewhere in the road in some form.

I battle against the pull to the middle, to the pull to the safe and work I don’t think I would enjoy but I would enjoy if I took a risk, not riskier, that’s not the word. I think you get what I mean.

John: I do get what he means.

Pamela: I’ll never sound as beautiful or wise as Ryan.

John: He’s got a great voice.

Pamela: Oh man, yes.

John: You and I both know a lot of writer friends who are not working as much as they should be working and that’s always the case, but it feels increasingly so now just with the other fewer shows, staffing fewer writers and there’s a lot more scrambling. In that scrambling, it resonates what Ryan’s saying in terms of this pull towards safety, not taking risks. When you stop to think about it, the better instinct should be to take some risks now because it’s a chance to grow and do things that are breaking out of the box.

Pamela: It’s some form of a pandemic again right now with that kind of stuff. A lot of us during the pandemic became pioneers again and baked bread and learned the piano. I’ve taken up embroidery and all of those things that are important to keep your mind moving, learning a new language or whatever. We all have this confident delusion, hopefully that we will work again, this is temporary. If you’re not deciding am I retired or not? You’re waiting for that next opportunity then it has to feel like a hiatus. When you’re working in television, you have hiatus so it’s like–

Or you’re between gigs and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have another one but you don’t know when. Do everything that you’re going to miss when you’re busy, pack in family time or alone time or a stack of books or whatever. I know that doesn’t feel like you have that luxury when you’re feeling like I’m unemployed. That’s different that you’re running for safety. I understand that’s like taking care of your own and your future but your brain, I think that where Ryan’s worried, like am I ruining my risk-taking brain? Then there’s these other things that you can do. I’m making a documentary that’s crazy. I was like, this is some downtime. If I don’t fill it, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know that I would have thought of it the way that Ryan’s describing of moving toward some– It’s almost like he’s saying I don’t want to be basic or something. He’s like, “Am I going to be less awesome the more this goes? Am I going to lose the me-ness of me?” Am I getting that right of what he means?

John: I absolutely do. I think you’re getting it right. That question of should I change my shape in order to fit this world, to make it easier to get through these doors and the limited number of jobs that are available to make myself more appealing to that? Should I write the thing that is more conventionally commercial? That is simpler to see like,” Oh, I get what this is.” I’ve gone through that at times in my career too. I remember just being frustrated that other movies were getting made that weren’t my movies. Maybe I can write that kind of movie too. Just like, I’ll write that movie. It was a waste of my time because it wasn’t the best thing for me to have been doing.

Pamela: I would imagine that no matter what you were doing, you were still making your version of that kind of a movie.

John: I was. Listen as you know every script you write is months of your time that you could have been doing something that is just truer to your own experience. When Ryan uses the verb chase, that is a thing you see yourself doing sometimes. You’re chasing a project and wait, is that a thing you’d actually even really want to write. Maybe not, but it’s something that’s out there. It’s a thing you could do so therefore you feel like you should do it. If you were to see that somebody else in the trades got this thing, it would be frustrating to you.

Pamela: I see that. That sometimes you only know that when you go a little on that journey. Then there’s just a moment where they want you to do another round of notes or another meeting where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to. This won’t feel good anymore. If I take that meeting, I hate myself.”

John: I try to pass quickly on a thing where it’s like, “No, that’s just not for me.” On the Christmas tree thing I was like, “No, that’s not for me.” There’s been other things which I feel over the years have engaged on more than I really should have because it’s a thing I could do but it’s a question, is it the thing I should do? I try to get back to the algorithm of just heck yes or no. Either absolutely 100% I’m going to do this or I shouldn’t do it. I think like, “Am I the person who should be writing this movie or is there five other people who are clearly better suited to be doing this movie?”

Pamela: You learned all that going through flirting. You learned all that the hard way, I’m guessing.

John: Yes.

Pamela: There’s a little bit of that here but I also think, in the little for me, little for them of how to do stuff, sometimes you’re like, “Man, I think I can get that one. I think I can get it quickly. I think I can do it quickly.” Then, that’s going to make me feel better about the rest of the year and next year and then I can go back to the thing I want. If you’re feeling that unsure about stuff and you can grab a fish maybe. You just know this is for this reason.

John: Being honest with yourself about that I think is important. You don’t have to be honest in the general meeting and say like, “I would do this for the money.”

Pamela: Can you imagine? It’s in the general feeling. You guys need anything back there. I’ve got like two weeks for you.

John: I used to do a lot more weekly rewrites. In that process it was just fully mercenary. I see what the problems are, I’ll becoming in and solve these problems. I’m going to deal with these difficult personalities and get through this thing. This is not my movie. It’s not my dream. It’s not my goal. I’m here to help out to maintain some relationships, but mostly you’re paying me cash. That’s fantastic.

Pamela: Maybe you think of it as money. It’s in the list but you still have to go to that job. You have to think like, “I can be helpful here. What can I do?”

John: Sometimes it’s really nice just to be able to use your craft to be able to do a thing and to just to recognize a problem, and solve a problem feels great because so much of what we’re doing as writers is so amorphous. I’m like, “Did that actually make it better? Is that even going to be a thing?” It’s also nice to write on something that actually gets made because so often the things we do just disappear. I’ve done so much work to contribute to a thing and then it just never happens.

Pamela: You should remind me what I do. I start mentoring. I volunteer for things. I try to mentor. Because when you’re talking to the people who are spending their whole day trying to figure out how to be where you’re sitting, it does remind you of where you’re at and how far you’ve gone and what you want next. It helps with goals and dreams and it helps reposition yourself into thinking like, “Oh, it’s not over.” I’ve been here before in some version. It just feels different now because I have a hundred more responsibilities or whatever your reasons are.

John: I was talking with Drew this week about– There’s a situation I’m finding myself approaching and I’m reminding myself that this always happens and it always feels this way and it’s going into it. I’m going to feel this way and we’ll get through it and it’ll be fine. There was this anxiety approaching. It’s like, “Oh yes, but I know what this is. It’s nothing new.” To get back to Ryan’s question here is that the anxiety that you feel when you’re unemployed is that, will I ever work again? That’s the thing that is so frustrating, which makes it so different than a writer on hiatus between two seasons of shows. Do all the things because you know you have a job to go back to.

Pamela: Usually. Sometimes.

John: Sometimes you don’t. Is there any advice we should give to writer listeners who are hearing this and thinking about so what should I write? Should I write this commercial thing that my manager wants me to do? Should I write this thing that has been a passion project that I’ve never allowed myself to do because I’ve always been busy writing stuff for other people? What guidance can we give to our writer listeners?

Pamela: I’m the kind of person who might try both at the same time and see which one is winning because maybe they’re right. Maybe you can crack some code and because you’re you and you’re thinking differently. I know when I’m on these pitches, the first thing I usually say is, “This is not going to be what you’re expecting but you called me so here we go.” In the end, they’re like, “You’ve given us something to think about.” It’s something I hear a lot. I also know that that’s just what is going to happen and if I wanted to be more of a sure shot, I would really be having to use different muscles of how I break things.

You can try that but probably what it’ll do is lead you back to the thing you were like, is this worth my time? I want to write this thing that’s in my head and feels more me.

John: Always a great time to remind people that as a writer, you have this amazing power that you can just go off and write. No one has to hire you to do anything. Unlike an actor or a director who has to be put onto a project, you can just do whatever you want to do at any moment. I think the worst thing for you to do during a period of unemployment is nothing. You’ve got to find something to write, whether it’s commercial, whether it’s something for yourself to keep those muscles going.

Pamela: It also doesn’t necessarily have to be a screenplay because you might find a play in you or a song or a book, all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, I’m writing a novel that I will eventually adapt into a screenplay with success.” Not deciding, unless you’re like this is the break I need to get back to my painting, the clay, the garden, the something. Just something that allows your brain to keep processing all these thoughts instead of thinking, this is useless, I’m useless, I’m nothing, I’m yesterday because that’s just not true.

John: All right. Let’s get to some listener questions.

Drew: We’ll start with Marie in Brussels. I’m telling the story of a couple. My main narrative point of view is that of a man and we begin with him, finish with him, and above all the main question addressed by the film is driven by him but at many moments throughout, I write from the point of view of the woman. The story’s about motivations and I would like to fully understand her. I listened very carefully to your episode about point of view, episode 358, but could you explore in more depth how to alternate point of view? What do we need to pay attention to and how can you make the alternation fluid?

John: Great. Marie thinks she’s writing a single point of view story and it feels like it might be more of a two-hander. I think she’s asking the right questions. I’m excited to just see where she’s going with it. I’m not nervous on her behalf, but I understand her question because she wants to make sure that it really does feel like the movie is centered around this man even if he’s not in every scene.

Pamela: I have a script like this but I want to say it’s unproduced. Maybe part of it is the problem. I’m doing it because one is a realist and one isn’t, and so I also want the audience to be a little unsure. I want them to believe in both of them actually. That both of them have a valid point in their way through the world and they both could be true. I want to understand her without making guesses. I use his point of view to ground us. If it’s mostly about this man and she’s not the B story, when you move into her point of view, it has a different feel. My writing has a different feel a little when we are in her point of view. It allows for the magical realism of her life.

When we’re in his point of view, the things that he’s doing, the world that he’s in, the way that it’s written is more clipped. It’s his practical point of view. Your script can feel like your characters and maybe that helps with that fluidity you’re looking for.

John: The movie’s about Edward Bloom but the Will character, the son, does have a lot of storytelling power. He drives scenes by himself but it’s in an effort to understand his father better. It makes sense that you’re switching POVs between those two things. This also made me think about The Brutalist, which is all about Adrian Brody’s character, yet sometimes you’re switching to the wife’s point of view or other characters’ point of view. about the scenarios that’s happening here. There’s scenes that he’s not driving. It’s absolutely doable. I think just be mindful of when you’re shifting to a different character’s point of view and make it count. Make sure that the scenes where you’re shifting point of view there really is a good reason why you’re doing it.

Pamela: That it’s very clear from the beginning we’ve changed point of view. That we’re not just waiting for him to enter and be the scene.

John: Such a great point. As an audience, we don’t know what’s going to happen in a scene and so if we’re just standing around waiting for him to show up, we’re probably not paying attention to what you’re trying to get us to see in the scene. Our next question comes from Brandon.

Drew: I recently wrote a script that used the word sinister three times. Is that too many? Would you feel comfortable using the same adjective three times in a script?

Pamela: Is it a five minute piece?

John: I would throw the script across the room if I saw it. On the third time I saw it, sinister didn’t have it.

Pamela: Wait, is it called sinister? Is one of the characters named sinister? I guess why? If there’s a reason, if it’s like Act one, Act two, Act three and sinister means something different, is it thematic? Why? You already have flagged it. Is it too many depending on what you’re trying to do?

John: Brandon, if it feels weird to you, then you’re using too many. If you’re noticing it, then sinister is just not a was or a house or a common, it’s a rare enough word that for it to show up too often, it’s worth addressing and finding a good synonym there to avoid it.

Pamela: For me, it would need to be– I’m going to notice it too and so you want me to notice it. Every time it’s something different is happening here. That’s why we’re using the word sinister.

John: Agreed. English has so many words. It’s so many words. You have your choice. If you’re writing in Esperanto, I could see the problem here. It’s a much smaller vocabulary set but you got so many, tons. Let’s do one more here from Ryan.

Drew: Ryan writes, I’m currently outlining a period biopic feature with no shortage of fun and memorable scenes. The anecdotes play well in a room whenever I tell them aloud but in a film form, I’m finding the whole and then of it all is working to the detriment of my story. It doesn’t add up to something substantial like I’m hoping for. Any advice on how to confront this linear stringing out of events and bend them into a more consequential series of scenes and sequences?

John: We’re nodding here. Just to make sure everyone is hearing what he’s asking in this question is, there’s a moment, there’s a scene, and then there’s a moment, there’s a scene, and then it doesn’t feel like there’s a causality between things. It’s just a bunch of stuff happens without feeling like there is a purpose, a drive, a natural flow of cause and effect between them. That’s where I think, Ryan, you need to step back and think about– There’s the real version of stuff and then there’s the movie and you got to write the movie and the movie is going to have causality. Our main character has to be causing these things to happen in a pursuit of some goal of theirs.

Pamela: Just change and then to because and see what happens. At this point, you want to track the emotional journey of your story. All these cool moments that happen in real life not only because of this happened, because of this she went this way and because of this he got married. How do you want the whole thing to feel? You also don’t necessarily have to tell it in the order of the way you’ve been pitching these fun scenes. The one that gets everybody hooked that might be somehow even first and you end up doing a Stewart special. Whatever it is that you’re tracking, how’s the movie going to make you feel from the beginning to the end? Then, you know and it’s because I felt this, that I was able to feel this and then this happened and because that happened, this very terrible thing happened and then you have the flow of your movie.

John: You’re starting with an advantage because you have these moments to do play well in a room, and so you know that there’s something to those moments. It’s making sure those moments really feel earned in your story and that we’re getting into and out of those things in the right way. It’s why setups for jokes are so important. It’s making sure that it really feels like you’ve led us to this place where we get to have this experience and then we can use that energy to get to us to the next place. It’s the right stuff. I would say stop writing scenes for a moment and really look at an outline and really look at what the overall shape of this is best served us.

Pamela: Motivations. Now, where are they trying? How come these scenes feel like achievements? These moments that you can pitch, like what did they try to do that got here? Because they got here, they had to go try something else or had a setback or whatever.

John: Be careful of things that happen to your character rather than because of your character. All right. It’s time for our one cool things. My one cool thing is something that has actually been around for a long time but I just found out about it this week. Pam, you grew up in Texas. You are used to thunderstorms, I’m assuming. I grew up in Colorado. We had some thunderstorms. In California, we just never get them. If I did get thunderstorms here in Los Angeles, I would use the Real Time Lightning Map. This thing is really cool. On this website you see, basically all the lightning strikes happening in the world, especially in North America because of these sensors they have places.

What’s cool about it is, if you are someplace in the middle of a lightning storm, you can look and see where lightning strike was. It’s timed in a way that you’ll see the radius expand. You’ll hear the thunder at the same time that the radius expands to wherever you are. The timing is built that way. We live in an age of wonders.

Pamela: I’m afraid of lightning, so I don’t like this map. I used to just tell people, “Do you know lightning strikes the earth 100 times a second?” Now I can see it.

John: Now you can see this.

Pamela: It’s terrifying.

John: There’s some lake in South America that has a thunderstorm every night. Literally every night. Don’t go there. It’s my recommendation to you. Pam, no.

Pamela: Spent a lot of time in the deep South, there’s a lot of lightning.

John: Pam, what’s your recommendation? What’s your one cool thing?

Pamela: I started with what turned out to be a rerun. I’m glad I got to find the second one cool thing. You mentioned Texas, so this is a nice segue. Segue man to studentsengaged.org, SEAT it is. Man, it’s amazing. It’s one of those things where you’re like, “Why didn’t we do this?” Gen X thinks they’re so awesome but this current generation that is like, “We want a seat at the table.” This is a group of young people throughout Texas who are trying to have any school board has a student representative on board. They go to the Capitol and they introduce bills. They speak on legislation.

They stand up for their rights, and they also have a bill of rights to help other young people know when their rights are being violated. How to get involved at the Capitol building and how to get your community involved, how to make politics personal and get them empowered. I’m just so proud of these people. I hope this is everybody’s future because as we’re all learning, the entire country is Texas now but they are teaching each other how to be leaders not later, how to be leaders now, and how to bring people along.

Just the basic decency of tampons being free and available in every bathroom in school because you shouldn’t have to go to the nurse and you shouldn’t have to miss class and nobody should be embarrassed about basic private body functions. Why didn’t we think of this? We thought we were so cool. The Breakfast Club should have said, “I would like a seat at the table, please, to make my own rules about detention.” Anyway, studentsengage.org, you can get involved, you can donate to their work, you can just go see what they’re up to and what they’re doing. I hope it inspires a young person or you in your own life.

John: I want to celebrate what they’re doing and give us and Generation X a little grace because we were doing this at a time before internet, at least early internet, so it was hard to mobilize people. You had the people right around you, so within a high school you might be able to affect some changes. I remember I was a student leader so of course I was doing some things inside of my high school, but it was tough to mobilize and see the bigger picture around you. You couldn’t find all the other teens.

Pamela: Did you think that you could go to a school board meeting?

John: I went to school board meetings.

Pamela: You went to city council and talked to the big room?

John: I was in Boy Scouts so I had to for a merit badge.

Pamela: Oh. We just had student walkouts that would give you maybe detention.

John: We are in an age of horrors but it’s also nice to see that there’s some bright spots there and people who are pushing back against the horrors. It’s nice to see. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. We love our outros and our larder of outros is getting a little bit lean and so we would love some more outros from our listeners. Ask@tjohnaugust.com is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing and pre-orders on the Scriptnotes book. The book comes out December 2nd. If you pre-order your book, thank you, and you just send that receipt to ask@johnaugust.com. Drew is collecting all those, and we’re finding a very fun thing to send you via email before the book comes out. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Your premium subscribers are the absolute best. You are going to be getting an email about our live show we’re recording tomorrow, the day after this comes out, the episode 700 live show, but everyone is welcome to join us on YouTube. That’ll be next week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the present and future of podcasts. Man, this was a very good present podcast. Pamela Ribon, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Pamela: Thanks, anytime.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Pamela Ribon, you have been in various kinds of media, online media. You were early on the recapping world. You were early in podcasting too. How long have you done podcasts?

Pamela: I loved being a professional guest. It took a long time before I had my own podcast. Legally, we all have to have one.

John: We’re required now.

Pamela: We’ve been doing Listen to Sassy. I don’t know. We don’t really count it like that. Are we in our fourth year? Maybe. Yes, it doesn’t feel that long. Before that, I would just guest anywhere.

John: You’d guest anywhere. You’ve followed podcasts but talk to me about what you perceive as being a podcast because if there’s two people talking on YouTube, is it a podcast?

Pamela: Now it is, I guess because people want to watch their podcasts. I asked Tara and Dave, I was like, “Are we not ever going to do one of these even as a bonus for our subscribers?” They were like, “Never. I don’t want anyone to see me doing this.” We would do watch parties where we’d put a movie on and then we all chatted while it was on. We said hello before and after. My friends, they don’t want to be public facing.

John: I hear that. We’ll put a link in the show notes to two articles, one from The Wrap and one from The New York Times, talking about how so much of the podcast market has moved on to YouTube. 30% of podcast listeners play the video in the background or minimize rather than just the audios. It’s like people are listening, watching podcasts on YouTube. Just my daughter who’s 20, she will say like, “Oh yes, I watched that podcast.” I’m like, “Wait, that’s the wrong verb. You’re listening to podcasts.”

Pamela: I think when the comedians all got involved– It’s just a stage. First we were like, however I get in your ears, I’ll put it in a podcast. Me and my buddies talking about being funny. Then you’re like, “This is the show of it all.” Let them see us. That’s now I have my own show. I get that. My kid also would prefer just watching YouTube to listening to things. We just like looking at people doing things. We like looking at windows where things are happening, like the zoo. Oh, the Panda Cam. It’s the original podcast.

John: The New York Times article interviews some people about it. They’re saying they want to be able to look at the screen, even if they’re not mostly looking at the screen. Just like us Gen X’s, sometimes they’ll start a podcast and they’ll do their dishes. They’ll do other stuff while the podcast is playing, but they’re not necessarily looking at it. Which raises the question of should Scriptnotes be recording video for our podcast? We’re on Zoom right now so we could use this video. I went on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast. For that, they do shoot three cameras of video for the whole thing. They edit that and they put that up on YouTube.

It seems like a lot of work for us to honestly be doing. Matthew’s busy enough cutting the audio and making it sound good. To have to think about the video too is an extra factor.

Pamela: Is his show like on Wondery or something? I always assume that’s what happens when you’re getting paid to do your podcast. They need to put it on TikTok and all these little clips that get people driving to more clicks. You have to be like, “I guess I’ll wear my good shirt.” Other than that–

John: Mike’s podcast does have ads but the YouTube version of it does not have ads. I guess they’re getting some monetization off of YouTube in general. I don’t believe he’s part of a bigger network behind it.

Pamela: He’s a comedian. I just think that’s it.

John: It’s driving people to come see his stand up. It’s probably part of it.

Pamela: Part of him is his physicality. You’re only getting some of it if you can hear him. Why not?

John: You got to go get a hold of Mike Birbiglia a package.

Pamela: There’s a reason that I’m asking Tara and Dave, can we turn the cameras on? I want to.

John: Absolutely.

Pamela: The third dimension. That’s how he’s used to communicating with his audience. I get that.

John: I think what we’ve been talking about is when it gets closer to award season, that’s when we start to have filmmakers and directors and writers coming on the show. We have to deal with publicists to get stuff going. We’ve had Christopher Nolan on. We’ve had Greta Gerwig. It’s lovely to have them there. I think we do a great job on the audio of those things. It would make sense honestly to record video for those situations. To record video in our setup, it’s a really tiny little space and pulling out the cameras to do all that stuff feels like a lot.
We’re considering for the episodes where we do go video, we’ll just rent an existing studio to do a situation. We’ll go to a place that just records podcasts and just rent it by the hour or whatever to do that. We have video for just those ones where we decide to do it.

Pamela: The events. That’s fancy because you could just record the Zoom.

John: We could just record the Zoom for the ones that are on Zoom. We actually have those people in person. Christopher Nolan actually showed up here.

Pamela: Oh, that was fancy.

John: That was fancy. We have like Julia Louis-Dreyfus came to our office and she’s sitting at this shitty little table and it would make more sense, I think, to do it in a professional place.

Pamela: It depends on however you get the actual vibe of your show. If moving to that studio makes you guys more formal and weird and it’s actually funny to watch you guys just be at a table with Julie. I want to see you with them, particularly when we find out, “Oh, you guys are friends.” We’re going to see that better in a less formal situation.

John: That’s true. Basically we need to create an artificial space that’s well lit that seems like it’s just hanging out at our place. That’s what we’ll do.

Pamela: That’s what the garage is for.

John: That’s what the garage is for. We have to have the lawnmower hanging there on the wall. It all feels fun and random.

Pamela: Honestly, it’s just getting to watch you interact. I don’t know that you need to worry about if the quality of the sound is good and we can see all three of you. If all three of you were in the same room with three different Zooms, it’s still going to get that feeling of you’re looking at each other and talking to each other like a general. I don’t know. You throw some money in and it gets fancy. Now you’re going viral on TikTok.

John: Absolutely.

Pamela: Here you go.

John: We’ll see what ends up happening. It’s weird to be 13 years into a podcast and seeing-

Pamela: The growth.

John: -the medium itself evolve and figure out like, “Oh, are we going to still be doing the same stuff we’ve been doing? Is the official version of an episode the audio?” To me, it always will be. The video may just be a little fun bonus.

Pamela: You’re evolving your podcast into the next version of it. A lot of times it’s just people looking like this sitting at their desks. It looks like when behind the scenes of a radio station. It looks like Frasier.

John: You in particular, you’re sad because of the louvered blinds behind you there. It feels like, “Oh yes, she’s at a radio station.” Some drive time traffic there.

Pamela: I’ve got all kinds of sound effects over here. I’m ready to hit. It’s just a peek at your humanness. I don’t know that you should worry about it looking like a big production because it’s just a hang. It’s a good hang.

John: It’s a good hang. We’re going to hang. You are a fantastic hang. Pam, thank you so much for bringing a great topic at just the right moment. Craig couldn’t be here today, but it’s so nice to see you and so cool to hang out with you.

Pamela: A lot of fun. Thank you so much.

John: Awesome. Thanks.

Links:

  • Scriptnotes Episode 700 – LIVE
  • Pamela Ribon
  • My Year of Dicks
  • Rental Family trailer
  • Japan’s Rent-A-Family Industry by Elif Batuman for The New Yorker
  • 37 Seconds
  • Good conversations have lots of doorknobs by Adam Mastroianni
  • Real Time Lightning Map
  • Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)
  • Who Is Watching All These Podcasts? by Joseph Bernstein for NYT
  • Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
  • Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
  • Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
  • Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
  • Craig Mazin on Instagram
  • John August on Bluesky and Instagram
  • Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
  • Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

Scriptnotes, Episode 698: Movies that Never Were, Transcript

August 19, 2025 Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 698 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we discuss movies that never existed, from high-profile projects that got shelved at the last minute, to our own experiences with unmade projects. Then, it’s time for some listener questions covering multi-language dialogue and multi-part movies, among other things.

In our bonus segment for premium members, if no one paid us to write screenplays anymore, Craig, if they would never get made, would we continue to write them as a form?

Craig: Uh. [chuckles]

John: Yes, you have an hour to think about that.

Craig: I don’t know if I need an hour, but all right.

John: We’ll talk about the pros and cons of the screenplay format. It’s a literary thing independent of a way to make a movie. Craig, this last week, I ran the San Francisco Half Marathon.

Craig: Congrats.

John: Which was really fun. I’d done the second half of it six years ago. This week, I did the first half. As I was running it, I was thinking like, “I wonder if Craig knows these things.” How do they know when a racer crosses the finish line? How do they know the time of a racer?

Craig: If I had to guess, I don’t think it’s as fancy as like an RFID tag in a bib.

John: It is an RFID tag in a bib.

Craig: Oh, it is? It is as fancy as that.

John: The day before the race, you go and you pick up your bib, and that’s the thing you have paper-clipped onto your shirt, or we have little fancy magnets now because we’re fancy. On the back of that bib is an RFID tag, and so as you’re running the race, you’re constantly passing through gates that are tracking that you ran through. There’s an app that you install on your phone-

Craig: For friends and family to follow on.

John: -to find you, but also, it tells you in real time what your pace is.

Craig: Oh, so you actually carry a phone with you as you’re running?

John: I do carry a phone with me as I’m running.

Craig: Because that’s extra weight.

John: It’s extra weight, but it’s fine. Most people are, I think, are running with phones these days.

Craig: Running with phones, yes. It would be rough if you were tracking this, your loved one is in a marathon and they just stop.

John: Yes.

[laughter]

Craig: They stop for a long time, then you hear sirens. It’s rough.

John: It’s not good.

Craig: No.

John: It’s helpful for your friends and family because that way, they can figure out where you are on the race, so they can come and cheer you on on a certain place.

Craig: Yes, that makes absolute sense. It’s a nicer scenario than the one I suggested.

John: The whole idea of RFID and tracking leads to a bigger question because earlier this summer, I was on a cruise in Alaska. On this boat, you wear this little medallion that has an RFID with you, and it’s super handy because, again, you pull up the app and it’s like, “I want a cup of coffee.” Wherever you are on the boat, [crosstalk] press one button, they find you, they bring you this stuff. It’s nice.

Craig: Oh, they’re bringing it to you?

John: They bring it to you, not to your cabin, just to you-

Craig: To you.

John: -directly, wherever you are.

Craig: Yes, right now, I guess our phones are that thing, but eventually, we’ll all be chipped at birth.

John: Both the race and the cruise ship were cases where that kind of constant surveillance I liked, but I don’t want to have it everywhere all the time. I don’t want to be forced into it.

Craig: No, I don’t want to have a situation where a corporation can track me wherever I go, although, currently, that is the situation I have. Let’s face it.

John: It is, yes.

Craig: They know everything. I was just thinking in my mind, if you did start to chip human beings at birth.

John: Yes, because you’re a parent who wants to know where your kid is.

Craig: Let’s say the state has decided. In our rougher scenario, every human shall be chipped. I’m trying to think biologically where to put this so that it won’t be dislodged by growth. I’m struggling. I think everything grows. Nothing is fully sized when you’re born, not even one little tiny thing.

John: Yes, your eyes are bigger, proportionally bigger, but the eyes are still going to continue to grow.

Craig: Everything grows, so I don’t know where to put it.

Drew Marquardt: With animals, they’d put it under the skin and it sits on top.

Craig: Animals grow, yes, and they don’t grow as much as we do. Humans are ridiculous. We’re born so stupidly small compared to–

John: Early because–

Craig: Early, because of our dumb heads.

John: Otherwise, we wouldn’t fit through the birth canal.

Craig: Yes, but I think you could put it under the skin, I suppose. I just wonder if it would get irritated, or it could move, it could shift.

John: Yes, you might swap that at a certain point.

Craig: Yes, maybe you do like a little baby tag. Then you do a kid tag. It’d be great. Kids would love it.

John: Oh, fantastic. Alrighty, the issue of tracking your kids and turning on Find My Friends and Find My is a thing. I remember talking with you at a certain point, and we realized that I think our daughters are at the same concert in Boston. You’re like, “Let me pull up,” and was like, “Oh yes, she’s there.” You did that. I didn’t do that because I sort of have an unspoken thing that I don’t find my friends when she’s not in Los Angeles.

Craig: Oh, that’s interesting. I never have to look at it, but when Jessie was in school in Boston, I never went to go look for her. I would look for Melissa, like, “Where’s my wife?” Always at the tennis. The tennis is where she is. It has a list. It’s like, “Melissa is 8 miles away. Jessica is 3,000-something miles away.” Then I’d be like, “Oh yes, look, there she is in Boston somewhere.”

John: I only share location with family. I don’t share with

Drew. That feels like–

Craig: I share my location with Drew, which is weird.

John: It’s just strange. Yes.

Craig: I just want him to know. No, just family. Just really, just actually, not even my full family, just Melissa and Jessica. You know what I don’t use enough? When you are meeting somebody somewhere in a large public place, you can share your location with them, which obviously Drew and his generation does constantly. I’m like, “Oh yes, I forgot.”

John: Yes. I will do that temporarily, but I don’t do it with friends. Drew, do you share your location with any friends?

Drew: I only do the temporary. Even me and my wife don’t share. We don’t have Find my Friends.

Craig: What? Oh wow.

John: Wow.

Drew: Pure trust.

Craig: It’s not about trust. It’s not like I think, “Oh, she’s going whoring again.” I–

John: To me, it’s always like, how close is Mike to being home?

Craig: Yes, exactly. If I’m going to order food, should I see if she’s going to be here or–?

Drew: I don’t know. It feels like a threshold that because I haven’t crossed it yet, I don’t want to cross it yet.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: You’re up to something.

Drew: [laughs]

John: It’s all– [crosstalk]

Craig: I am absolutely [unintelligible 00:06:01] Drew is up to something.

Drew: I’m whoring.

Craig: You’re whoring?

John: Absolutely.

Craig: I love whore as a verb–

John: He’s a secret assassin. He’s out there killing people.

Craig: Not anymore.

John: Not anymore. Some follow up. Hey, remember we wrote a book?

Craig: Oh my goodness. We wrote a book, and John, I have an author page-

John: On Amazon.

Craig: -on Amazon, which as you can imagine is populated with almost nothing. It’s got my picture.

John: Yes, got your picture. People have been sending Drew their pre-order receipts, which is great.

Craig: Amazing. How are we doing? Are we going to be doing a lot of signing?

Drew: We have about 150 so far.

Craig: Oh, that’s pretty good. Of just people that sent receipts?

Drew: Just people who sent receipts.

John: Oh. A reminder, if you pre-order the book from wherever you order it from, so not just Amazon, but any place– [crosstalk]

Craig: Sure, anywhere.

John: Send your little receipt through to Drew, ask@johnaugust.com, and we will send you something cool. We’re not quite sure what it’s going to be yet. It could be a bonus chapter. It could be some successful video report.

Craig: It could be a brand new car.

John: It could be something cool, but we’ll send that out well before the book comes out.

Craig: Do we have any sense, other than the receipts that you have received, does Amazon tell you how many people are buying it or–?

John: Pre-ordering it? I think Crown, our publisher in the US, has had this,-

Craig: Oh, they got– [crosstalk]

John: -and so at some point, they’ll tell us.

Craig: At some point they’ll give us the bad news.

John: They’ll say, “We’re really worried, John, Craig.”

Craig: [laughs]

John: No, I think they’re happy with almost anything.

Craig: Wow.

John: No, because here’s the thing, it’s–

Craig: That’s a low bar.

John: There are books that need to be giant hits out of the gate and needs to hit those lists. We are a catalog title, where there’s like, we’re evergreen.

Craig: We are not the latest Stephen King novel.

John: Yes. Questions that I got off of Reddit and other people asking, audio book. Yes, if you see, there’s a listing with a little button for audio book, there’s plans for an audio book. There’s nothing to announce yet, but there’s going to be an audio book. It’s not me and Craig talking.

Craig: Should we just get Ryan Reynolds to do it? [laughs] Just hold Ryan down and force him to do it at some point?

John: Yes.

Craig: It’ll be fun.

John: Yes, good.

Craig: Because occasionally, in the middle of an audio book, you get the sense that the person reading it is a hostage. [chuckles] They try and run, and there’s scuffle, and then they come back and resume reading.

John: For the podcast, they did lauch about the [unintelligible 00:08:02] books. The episode I did about the audiobook was actually really fascinating because I met the guy in LA, who actually recorded the book, and just his whole process was great and crazy.

Crown came to us and said like, “Hey, do you and Craig want to record the audiobook?” I’m like, “No. We record a podcast every week, and that’s plenty. No. No, thank you.

Craig: Yes, it’s too much reading.

John: It’ll be great to have a real professional do it.

Craig: Yes, terrific, so Ryan Reynolds?

John: Or somebody like Ryan Reynolds.

Craig: Yes, somebody bigger.

John: Yes.

Craig: Tom Hanks? [chuckles]

John: Yes. Crown said we should go for Tom Hanks.

Craig: Tom Hanks would be great.

John: Yes.

Craig: is he doing stuff? We’ll check into it.

John: I’ve heard that the Britney Spears biography that is read by Michelle Williams is incredible, so maybe Michelle Williams should be the choice.

Drew: That would be perfect.

Craig: That’s kind of amazing.

John: The person who I think is actually going to record it, is actually listening to the podcast right now, and he’s so upset that–

Craig: He’s like, “I’m an effin’ person.”

John: He’s an effin’ person in the world.

Craig: I’m an effin’ person.

John: Other questions were about the international versions, and so, there are no plans right now for a translation, probably because if you’re listening to this podcast, you speak English, you can probably read English. People ask about like, “Oh, I want to buy it in Europe. I want to buy it in Asia. Where do I get it from?” I asked, and the real answer is, wherever you get your English books is where you should go, so go to whatever bookstore or whatever online site is that you buy books in English, because they will have it. They’ll either get the US or the UK version. They’re both basically the same.

Craig: Yes, it’s an interesting question. I suppose that the marketplace will determine these things, if there’s a clamoring from a particular country. I’m looking at you, Brazil.

John: Yes, my agent was saying that there are cases, you’ll be in India, and you’ll see the US and the UK version side by side on a shelf. That’s just what happens.

Craig: Does just that color is spelled differently?

John: No. Honestly, the UK version is not changing our spelling.

Craig: What is the difference? Page size?

John: I think page size and slightly different pricing.

Craig: Oh.

John: Because of imports and–

Craig: What, tariffs?

John: Tariffs and things.

Craig: What? What? What?

John: What? What? What? Books are physical things that are printed in places. Other bits of follow up. My game Birdigo that I made with Corey Martin is out now on Steam. It’s a whopping $8.49.

Craig: Oh my God.

John: It’s a huge burden.

Craig: Ugh.

John: Ugh. We’ve gotten so many good reviews in the press,-

Craig: Great.

John: -and we’re currently 100% positive on Steam itself, which is great.

Craig: Only 100%?

John: Only 100%.

Craig: If I go in there just as a jerk, I can get it to 99%? [chuckles]

John: Weirdly, it would actually help us a little bit because how Steam ratings work is that it’s based on total number of reviews. We’re at the threshold where we’re listed as positive, but once we get to the next threshold of reviews, which is 50 or 100, then it becomes very positive.

Craig: I see.

John: Then it becomes overwhelmingly positive.

Craig: I see.

John: If you are a person like Craig who has played the game and enjoyed it and want to leave us a review, leave us a review because it actually does help.

Craig: That makes sense because if you put something on there, you could say, “Hey, I’m going to get 50 of my friends to do a review.” They need to know that it’s more than just the friends and family. I get that.

John: Yes, so that’s what–

Craig: That’s fantastic.

John: Yes, that’s good news.

Craig: Birdigo.

John: More follow up. Last week, we talked about Solar Storms as part of How Would This Be A Movie. Drew, what did we hear?

Drew: Multiple people wrote in that it sounded very much like the novel Aurora by a former Scriptnotes guest, David Koepp.

John: David Koepp, that hack.

Craig: Koepp, what can he do? By the way, David Koepp has quietly crushed the Summer Box office. Everyone was going on about Superman and Fantastic Four. Meanwhile, Jurassic, Jurassic-ness?

John: The Jurassic World Rebirth.

Craig: Jurassic World Rebirth has done better than both of those movies. It’s just massive.

John: Massive. Massive.

Craig: It’s like it’s grossed like almost $800 million globally. That’s David Koepp still doing it.

John: Also, Presence, a movie that Drew and I both saw, directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Drew: Black Bag too.

John: Yes, Black Bag also.

Drew: Black Bag is great.

John: Just killing it.

Craig: Just Koepp, just–

John: Keopp it in. Koepping it real.

Craig: You cannot beat David Koepp. Also, side note, and we’ve had him on this, one of the loveliest people. Just incredible guy. Love him.

John: Love it. I should not be surprised that he saw the scientific thing that exists in the world. It’s like, I should–

Craig: Of course he did.

John: I should write a book about this.

Craig: Yes, he’s sort of casually predicted that we would eventually get that and fumble it. Although, if you have a David Koepp novel, and it has not yet been turned into a movie, that is an indication that it should not be a movie because you know people must have tried.

John: Yes. What’s wrong with a book that it’s not–?

Craig: I think the book is probably great, it’s just that it’s not movie-ish.

John: Maybe.

Craig: How does that not happen?

John: He’s so angry now listening to this podcast.

Craig: I hope he is.

John: Yes. We were talking back in Episode 675 about lost genres or genres that people should see at least one example of a movie in. A bunch of people wrote in with recommendations for genres that people need to at least see one thing in. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Andrew writes, “Yakuza films, they are more often than not just as economical as noir films, but even more stylish, cynical, and tragic.” He recommends Pale Flower from 1964.

John: I’ve not seen any of these in the genre, and I think it’s a good recommendation.

Craig: Sure.

John: What else do we got?

Drew: John James recommends giallo, which is Italian horror.

Craig: Of course, yes, no.

Drew: Dario Argento’s Deep Red.

Craig: No.

Drew: No?

Craig: No. Not for me.

Drew: Not for you?

Craig: I’ve seen some of it. It’s not for me. It’s gross.

John: I’ve seen an Argento movie, and I do understand it as a genre. It’s just nothing for me. Either too, but it’s–

Craig: Right, other people, sure.

John: Should see it.

Craig: I think Suspiria-

John: Suspiria, yes.

Craig: -that’s the one to see, and then you would know.

Drew: I think nerds say that that’s not quite a giallo for some reason.

John: Oh.

Craig: No.

Drew: That would be my pick.

Craig: Nerds say that?

Drew: Yes.

Craig: I’m not going to listen. Let’s see if some of them write in. [chuckles]

John: What if we said like, David Koepp’s genre is dinosaurs, and then it’s just like, “Oh, but I also made Black Bag.” There’s no dinosaurs in Black Bag.

Craig: Black Bag’s not quite a dinosaur film. Then we’re like, “Yes, it is, nerds.”

Drew: [chuckles] Absolutely, and they just get angry.

John: Because this is about old spies and young spies.

Craig: Yes, it’s dinosaurs.

Drew: Dwayne writes, “Post-Michael Moore Americana documentaries, featuring cheeky editing, eccentric people, and small stories about the alluring weirdness of pre-9/11 Middle America. Documentaries like Hands on a Hard Body, or American Movie, or Wonderland.”

Craig: You know what? I’ve seen two of those movies. Yes, they were both interesting snapshots of a time.

John: Yes. Also like a style in editing. It’s good to point out what it is. It’s not that Michael Moore’s sort of like, “Here’s a broad statement about a thing.” It’s very specific on people and behaviors.

Craig: Hands on a Hard Body probably got 40% of its audience just from title confusion. Just brilliant.

John: Love it. So good.

Craig: Do you know what Hands on a Hard Body is though?

John: Absolutely, it says something about–

Craig: Oh, you might have seen even the show. They made a show.

John: Yes, they made a Broadway show of it.

Craig: Yes, I saw that show.

John: I never saw the show, but how are the songs? Were they–?” [crosstalk]

Craig: I remember there was one great one. I remember that. There was one really good, like eleven o’clock-ish kind of number.

John: How was the truck? Was the truck good?

Craig: The truck was great. They had it on a turntable, and the cast had to keep their hands on it. Although they were allowed to sort of like astral project forward to sing their solos and then move back to the truck.

John: Oh yes, that makes sense.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes. Did you ever see Waitress either on stage or-

Craig: No.

John: -the musical version? It’s one of the rare cases where they captured the Broadway version and really filmed it in a way that’s impressive. I’d recommend it for people who want to see it. Last one.

Drew: Last one is Aldo says, “If John likes Memories of a Murder, he’ll probably dig Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa in the Japanese horror genre.

John: I don’t know very much about Japanese horror, and that’s another good recommendation for me. If we could combine Yakuza horror,-

Craig: I’m sure that’s good.

John: -that’s has to have– Oh my God. As I said the sentence, like that one can happen.

Craig: Japanese horror is pretty cool. I had a pretty cool moment. Then Korea came along and just ate its lunch-

John: Yes, crazy.

Craig: -for East-Asian horror films. Kairo, aka Pulse is Japanese, they tried to– Well, they attempted to adapt it here in the US. Didn’t go well, but that movie has one of the scariest single scenes in it where basically, nothing happens. Totally worth it for that. Just the scene of a ghost walking down a hallway. It was very cool.

John: Love it.

Craig: If you know, you know.

John: Some more follow up. We had Scott Frank on and we’re talking about writing education.

Drew: Tim says, “I’m a high school film and TV teacher, and I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of teaching structure as a shortcut to storytelling, mostly because I don’t get much time with my hundred plus students before we need to move on to the rest of film and TV production. The conversation about craft versus voice really landed.

The Scott Frank school of screenwriting seems to emphasize practice as a path to discovering voice, which also helps to answer a question I’ve been wrestling with. Why teach students to write screenplays if AI can do it better than most of them? The answer is ChatGPT doesn’t have a unique voice, we do. This year, I hope to shift my focus to helping students find their voice and maybe a little less on the proper use of a parenthetical.”

Craig: Oh, wonderful. That sounds great. Because structure and all the rest of it, these parentheticals, margins, rules, format, all that stuff, you can pick that stuff up in three days if you feel like it. What you can’t pick up in three days is knowing what to write. I could certainly see a class where everybody has to write the same scene, and they have to rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it, until it’s something special. This is how you find your voice.

John: Love it.

Drew: More follow up, this one from Kate. “I’m a playwright and I teach theater at a small high school. I actually had to step into this job mid-year when the other teacher had to leave unexpectedly. I was so excited because in addition to my theater classes, I’d be teaching a screenwriting and playwriting course. The previous teacher had focused a lot on pitching outlines and working on index cards. Students wanted to talk about their ideas, but had trouble putting anything on the page.

I often got the feeling that students felt stuck or afraid when it was time to write their projects because they had an outline that they had to follow. Almost like they were afraid to write a scene because it may be wrong or different from their original outline. When you suggested writing short scenes with no pressure to be part of a larger script, I was practically fist pumping in my car. Yes, short exercises give young writers permission to experiment. Be messy, make mistakes. This is how we learned to write.”

Craig: Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Look, we may be changing things one teaching program at a time. Again, here’s your assignment, a scene. Write it, rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it. Have your classmates perform it. Rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it. If you could take a class where you end up with one great three-page scene, you’ve come so far, baby.

John: Absolutely. Because you would probably have started this class thinking, “I cannot do this thing. I have no idea what this looks like in my head,” but the ability to actually visualize, “Okay, this is what’s happening in the scene, that I can picture the whole thing. I can hear the whole thing. Now I’m going to capture it down on paper in a way that makes sense,” is so crucial.

A thing I did for myself when I was in high school, I think, is I had an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I had recorded on probably VHS. I just went and transcribed it, and then actually tried to write what the actual scene would look like on the page. That’s a good practice too, just like how do you– You see a thing, but what does it actually look like in words on paper?

Craig: Yes. The iteration, I think, is an incredibly important thing. I think that that’s not given enough attention. Being forced to rewrite the same thing over and over, it sounds bad, except you write a scene and then you share it. It is exposed. You learn how it’s landing. People give you feedback. Are we bored? Are we interested? Do we have questions? This doesn’t make sense. Or I’m just bored. What else could you do here? How could this be richer? What does the room smell like, look like? All those wonderful things we do. Then you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite. At some point, you’re going to find something.

John: Yes. As you talked about in the episode, acting classes are so helpful because that paradigm of just like, you have to be on your feet and doing a scene and you’re getting feedback on it. It’s just like, you just have to do it.

Craig: You have to do it.

John: You can’t talk about acting a lot.

Craig: Because you’re performing the scene, you are required to think about the things that happen in between your lines. Where were you the moment before? Massively important. How did that statement land with you? Are you lying? All these wonderful things need to be in the scene you write when people are learning how to write. If they’re concentrating on hitting the fricking midpoint, whatever the hell, they’re just not going to get it.

John: All right, let’s go to our main topic today, which is movies that never were. I’m not quite sure how this idea came to me. It could have been an article I read, but this week, I got thinking back about giant movies that never happened, things I sort of know about or I’ve heard about, but it never actually became movies that we saw in the theaters.

A lot of these are superhero movies. There was the Tim Burton version of Superman with Nicolas Cage.

Craig: Yes, I remember that.

John: McG Superman that had a script by JJ Abrams. Okay. James Cameron’s Spider-Man. I’d actually read that script a zillion years ago.

Craig: Oh, okay.

John: It was a, Spider-Man versus Electro. There was like a–

Craig: Oh, which they ended up doing anyway.

John: Yes. There was a Justice League that was supposed to be directed by George Miller.

Craig: Oh.

John: Yes. I think it was around the time of the earlier Record strike. Of course the Batgirl movie that was actually shot, but then it got shelved.

Craig: It got shelved.

John: Which is a really rare situation. Superhero movies are really common for this, but also Jodorowsky’s Dune is sort of legendary. There’s a documentary about that. Then Mouse Guard, which was the very expensive adaptation of a beloved children’s book or middle-grade book that Wes Ball I think was supposed to direct. They pulled at it the very last minute.

Craig: There are also these movies that I’m sure you either wrote on or somebody asked you to write on them that have been floating around seemingly forever.

John: Yes. Did you ever work on Bob: The Musical?

Craig: No, but I know that Alec Berg did.

John: Yes, I wrote on it. The amount of money spent on scripts for that movie, it’s got to be astronomical. Real composers did songs for it.

Craig: There are things like this.

John: Here’s the good scene of Bob: The Musical, a man who hates musicals wakes up and discovers he’s in a musical and has to get out of the musical. It’s a comedy in the world of a Liar Liar or those kinds of things.

Craig: Sure. Which it sounds like the premise of Schmigadoon!, which obviously came after the 800 years of development of Bob: The Musical. Yes, they’re just these movies. I remember in the ‘90s working on Stretch Armstrong. There are movies that they really wanted to make out of a toy or an object. Eight Ball’s been floating around for a while, the Magic Eight Ball. Then Monopoly. Monopoly–

John: Oh, yes. There have been so many versions of Monopoly.
Craig: I think they announced a new one recently. Every year, a new Monopoly is going to not happen.
[laughter]

Craig: It’s actually kind of amusing that that’s the property that people lose so much money on. [laughs]

John: Let’s just talk about the pure development projects. Because Monopoly, as far as I know, never went to pre-production, never spent that money. It was probably just on scripts.

Craig: Yes, endless development.

John: The endless development things, sometimes it’s all with one company. Therefore, it’s one property that has hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of script fees against it. Some cases, which I suspect is the Monopoly case, they didn’t set up this place or that place or this place or that place. Those all become new projects, essentially.

Craig: The rights lapse.

John: Therefore, the studio burned a certain amount of money on a script, but they can’t make the property anymore.

Craig: Clue they’ve been trying to redo again. Risk is one that was going around for a while. What are you supposed to do with that exactly?

John: No. Yes. There’s a version of that movie that could have been terrific, but we never saw it.

Craig: Board games are not a great idea to adapt. I understand why everybody went for them.

John: Yes, it’s a recognizable title.

Craig: Clue–

John: Clue is a better idea than most. It actually has characters.

Craig: The Clue that was made is a cult classic and I love it. It is probably the one that’s most– Because there’s a narrative to it. Someone killed somebody with a thing in a place. Monopoly, Risk, they’re just words we know.

John: Here we’re talking about the IP that is just like, is that even a really good idea for a movie? In other cases, like they are good ideas for movies that are based on a really good book.

Craig: They just don’t seem to be able to happen.

John: Absolutely. Let’s talk about the things that don’t happen and why-

Craig: Sure.

John: -they don’t happen. Sometimes there’s a piece of talent who was keyly involved in getting it set up and getting the momentum going on it. Like a Will Smith. I’ve been on a couple of really expensive projects with Will Smith that didn’t go forward. He loses interest or another thing comes up in front of it. When a director or a star has like 10 projects, nine of those aren’t happening generally. Sometimes you’re one of those things. People are gambling like this is going to be the one that they’ll say yes to.

Craig: Sometimes there’s projects where everybody, it feels like, is tight. The pressure to make it, the costs of the rights, some sort of window to get an actor or a director makes everybody tight. Everyone’s tense. Everything is overexamined, overthought, overanalyzed, and nothing can survive that generally. Nothing is natural about that process. Everything is hyper-coordinated, and you end up with a hyper-coordinated script, which nobody wants to make.

John: Some cases it’s not the script that was ultimately the problem though. It was that to actually make the movie, it just became impossibly expensive.

Craig: There is that BioShock.

John: Yes, so BioShock is a great, great property, but the world building in it is so expensive that it’s hard to justify making that as the movie. They’re trying to do it as a series now, we’ll see what that is, but those are real issues.

Craig: I think now in the era of these big streaming shows, it’s doable to do BioShock, for sure. I do remember being on the Universal lot. There was a building that used to be Ivan Reitman’s company, Montecito. It’s a big building, and they had all this great Ghostbusters stuff in there, and then–

John: Was that the big blue house or a different one?

Craig: No, it wasn’t big blue house. It was more like this squarish modernish building. It was pretty cool. It was near the big blue house. Then it got taken over by Gore Verbinski when they were well on their way to making that BioShock. I remember going in there, I think to meet with Gore, and there was a big daddy– I don’t know [unintelligible 00:26:23] Just this big oldie timey diver suit with a drill hand, full life size in the lobby. I’m like, “Oh, this is going to be awesome.”

John: Then, it didn’t happen.

Craig: Then, it didn’t happen.

John: Let’s talk about that because more than I think the money you’re spending on scripts, that kind of R&D where you’re actually starting to really go into prep, that’s where you’re spending some real money. There was a project I was on a few years ago that I finally asked, “What actually happened?” I realized and I was told, they spent tens of billions of dollars that I did not know they were spending on storyboards and everything else.

That momentum, it’s a weird thing. You think, “Oh, it’s a sunk cost policy, so therefore, they’ll make it because we have to keep going because we already spent all this money,” but at a certain point, they realized like, oh, no, no, that the movie itself is going to be too expensive to make and we have to stop.

Craig: One of the things that is true about Hollywood, and I’m not sure it’s quite as true in other industries, is that there’s much more turnover. Now, Hollywood has actually been a fairly stable place leadership-wise over the last few years. When you look at how long Donna Langley has been running Universal, Bob Iger came back to continue to run Disney.

Generally speaking, every three, four years, somebody got kicked out and a new person got put in, and that was the point where they would sit down, look at stuff and go, “This isn’t my Concorde fallacy.

John: No.

Craig: -this thing is absolutely turning around.” They would just drop the axe on those things knowing full well that they couldn’t be blamed for the money that was spent. They could only be rewarded for not spending more money. In that regard, Hollywood had these weird safeguards against the sunk cost fallacy.

John: I’m sure there is a corollary to the sunk cost fallacy where if someone just recognizes it doesn’t matter how much we’ve spent before. With the project I see right now, is there a way to go forward and have this make sense?

Craig: Yes, that’s the fallacy part, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: Somebody else comes in and goes, “Oh, I see we’ve all been engaging in the sunk cost fallacy on this. It’s over.” That’s a traumatic thing. When we talk about storyboards, and a large statue, and rooms of people that are trying to find locations. There’s a lot of jobs. A lot of those jobs at least used to be here too. Now, those too start to go away.

John: There’s other issues that come up. Once you think you’re making a movie, you’re starting to reserve a stage space, and so you’re like, “Oh my God, we need to shoot this in Australia. We need to shoot this in London. We need to scramble to get these things,” so you’re putting holds on things. I remember talking with a producer who coming out of the pandemic, it was like, “We have to reserve stage space, but I think we’re going to be okay to start shooting, but I’m not sure we’re going to be–“ Just having to make these calls, because it’s like, you can be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a stage that you’ve rented that you can’t actually use.

Craig: Stage space is probably the largest pressure behind ratings for any network streamer to decide if they’re going to renew a show. They may be on the fence ratings-wise, but while they’re there, somebody from that show is going to say, “If you don’t renew us in the next week, we won’t have stages and we won’t be able to make the show.”

John: No.

Craig: “Are we going or are we not?” Stage space is the thing that makes some places– As attractive as the tax credits may be. For instance, in Australia, not a ton of stages.

John: No.

Craig: UK, amazing tax credits but not as many stages as you would think.

John: When I was shooting my one and only TV show up in Toronto, it was at a Canadian boom. There were so many things shooting in Canada, we couldn’t find stage spaces, so we ended up having to shoot like a warehouse.

Craig: Warehouses.

John: That was not really meant to be this. I’m sure you ran into similar situations like Calgary was not intended to have as much production as you were doing.

Craig: No, Calgary had one facility that was actually constructed to be stage space. The other large facility was two massive warehouses that they had retrofitted, but barely. In Vancouver there are both kinds, but there are a lot. Part of our thing, we’re going to be up there I think going side by side with Shogun this time, so Justin, and Rachel, and I are like, “Hey, are you using this person?” “Yes.” “Can I have that?” “No.” Where are your stages? Who’s your makeup person? It’s been a lot of that.

They have constructed more stage space there. When you look at other places the other issue is size of stages. Northern Ireland built quite a few stages during the Game of Thrones boom, but size like sometimes you need an enormous. Then there are the specialty stages, like at Warner Brothers, which has 20-something stages that are currently sitting mostly empty. Just tragedy. They have one, I think it’s stage 16, with the floor actually, you can remove the floor and it’s got a pit, which is very cool for all sorts of interesting things.

John: Let’s talk about this from a writer’s point of view and how this matters and what to think about with this. Some of the properties you mentioned early on, like the superhero movies or the things that are based on titles, the reason why a screenwriter might pursue them and take them is because they will pay you money to do the thing. It’s not like some wildfire. They’re actually going to pay you your quote to do a thing, and that can be great and that’s fantastic. I always go into those jobs knowing it’s like I might so naive to think like I’m the one person who’s going to crack the Monopoly movie that everyone else has been trying to do.

Craig: Yes, absolutely. I remember I think somebody had asked Ted Elliott around the time that the third Pirates movie came out, and they were saying, “How do you pick projects? Because people come to you and offer you things. What kind of movie do you want to write?” He said, “Movies that are getting made.” [chuckles] That was it.

John: That’s always been my answer about what genre- [crosstalk]

Craig: Genre is movies that are getting made. Yes, when you take one of those jobs, you have to know I am seventh in a line of 14.

John: You have to go in both hoping and expecting that it’s going to work, and then also, holding your heart a place that like, I understand why it could not work.

Craig: Yes, it’s a job. Yes. Everyone’s looking at it that way too. Sometimes the executives are like, “We don’t know why somebody made some deal with a wraith and we have to make this film or we’ll be cursed forever. We don’t want to, so we don’t really care.”

John: I want to distinguish between those two things. Listen, this is the luxury of where I’m at in my career, that I don’t pursue those things that I just don’t care about. Like Drew will say, like a lot of stuff comes my way, and it’s like, “No, that’s not for me.” I’ll often say like, “That’s not for me, but there’s a writer out there who will love that, and I’m so excited for them to do that adaptation of–

Craig: Monopoly.

John: Yes. There’s somebody who said that’s their favorite property at all time, but I try not to approach those jobs with such cynicism. For a weekly, if I’m just going on to fix a problem for a person–

Craig: Yes, I’ll do anything for a week.

John: Yes. Oh I know some of the movies you’ve worked on.

Craig: I’ve worked on just Extraordinary Girl. I’ll work on anything for a week. What do I care? You know what? I can’t make it worse.

John: No.

Craig: I try, I do my best, I make sure to listen to everybody, and I improve it. I really do.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: I do the job I’m paid to do. What I know is, and I’ve said this at times to them, I’m like, “I just want you to know I’m making this corpse okay for an open coffin funeral. That’s what I’m doing. Just so you guys know. This is not a patient I can cure, but you’ll be able to look at it.”
[laughter]

Craig: They’re like, “Great. We thank you. That’s what we were hoping for. We just want mom to be able to see her boy there in his little suit. Sometimes that even that’s hard.

John: Yes. Sometimes there’s just this fundamental problems.

Craig: Yes, but I’m always honest about it, but yes, for a week. To actually do a movie– When I started out, there are movies where I’m like, It’s job. A job’s a job.

John: A job’s a job.

Craig: I got to to it. I need money. You know what, I will learn along the way.

John: I did.

Craig: I did. I will also gain fans along the way. People that hire writers. Everybody calls everybody and asks. They all have their lists. Writers move up and down the list.

John: I was on Zoom this week with an executive who I’ve known and then talked about parties and had meetings with for 30 years. I’ve never worked with him or for him, but like, “Oh it’s great to catch up with you, Michael. I’ve not seen you.” I’ve not had a chance to do it, and it would be great to be able to do this project with him.” Going and knowing like it may not happen, and it’s okay also it doesn’t happen.

Craig: Sure, yes. There are some things you can just sort of smell the curse on them.

John: Yes, and I will run away from those. I’ve also learned, it’s like, “Oh, there’s this terrible person who’s attached to this intellectual property.” I will never touch it because that person, I cannot have in my life at all.

Craig: Correct. There are things where people start talking about them, and I think, “Oh, this is– Oh. Oh.”

John: Sure, yes.

Craig: “I wonder why this hasn’t–“

John: Absolutely. I remember loving that book and like, “Oh that guy.”

Craig: “Oh, this person’s involved.” Goodbye.

John: All right, let’s get to some listener questions. What do we got first, Drew?

Drew: Vanessa writes, “I’ve been listening to your podcast for a while now, and every time the intro comes around and the chime starts playing, I think I’ve heard that before. This email is asking if the chime is fully original or inspired by a movie or something like it.”

John: That is the “boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.” That is a thing I wrote originally for my short film, The Remnants. I thought I just needed a quick little intro that I sort of felt like The Office, but even quicker than that. I think it’s original, but you can actually find it in other things. Over the years, people have said like, “Oh, I found this theme from the ‘70s, which actually that has the same chord progressions.” It’s so simple that–

Craig: Yes, I know, it’s five notes. It’s five notes. Of course. It’s five notes that resolve. Yes, it will be in other things. It’s not like an identifiable jingle from any popular thing. Yes, but sure, you can find a five note progression before. There’s no new five note progression.

John: I will say, as we come up to episode 700, one of my favorite things about the show is that our incredible listeners starting with Matthew [unintelligible 00:37:03] who did so many of the incredible early intro, but just have taken those five notes and just done remarkable things with them. I’ll have a new one this week and every week. Please keep sending in your interpretations of the intro to make our outros.

Craig: Love it.

Drew: Larry writes, “”What’s the best way to watch a movie to put money back in the pockets of the people who made it? I half remember at one point that renting something out iTunes was better for y’all, but I feel like perhaps that’s out of date.”

Craig: No, that’s in date.

John: In date. We’re talking about the rental on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you rent those things. That rate is actually really good for us.

Craig: That is the best residual rate we have of anything. We got that all the way back in 2000. Yes, 2000, I’m pretty sure it was, or 2001. I think we got it mostly because the companies hadn’t really caught on yet. They were like, “What are you? Okay.” I remember the deal was that they refused to do sales. It was they were just like, “We’ll give you rentals. We’ll give you a great rate on rentals.”

John: If I’m this is a movie that I want to watch and I feel like I’m going to watch it once, I will rent it. If the movie is like, I think I may want to watch it again or if there’s something like an adaptation, I’ll buy it off of iTunes. Listen, there’s times where it’s like, “Oh, it’s got to go be streaming someplace,” and it’s like, “Sure, I’ll spend like two minutes to look see if it’s streaming someplace,” but just buy the movie or rent the movie because it’s just, I just have it.

Craig: I will say too that is very nice that he’s asking, but the truth is, the nicest way to watch anything, assuming you’re not pirating, is to watch it however you want. Rent, buy, stream, add support, doesn’t matter, just do it. Then, if you like it, tell other people to watch it too because the that’s the best residual rate we get is popularity. Spread the word, and that’s as best you can do, but you don’t need to be too concerned about the ethical viewing. [chuckles]

John: Yes, as long as you’re not pirating it, you’re making ethical choices. My movie The Nines, I think it’s it showed up on streaming every once in a while, but it’s basically always been a purchase or download, and so just like it’s cheap, it’s like $3.99 to rent the movie. Just watch the movie. It’s a good movie.

Craig: Just watch that.

John: Just watch the movie.

Craig: It’s all good.

Drew: Jeremy writes, “As a non-american, I’m horrified to watch what’s happening in your country, and my screenwriter brain was wondering how you would go about writing it in a humane, empathetic way. How do you write scripts in the era of neo-fascism that won’t dehumanize those who suffer most?”

Craig: I’m not sure I understand the question.

John: Yes, I think we may be some language barriers here, but I think I take this to mean like recognizing that your country’s is falling into fascism, how do you go approach writing movies, and does that change how we’re thinking about the stories we’re trying to tell and the choices we’re making?

Craig: if you’re writing a story that touches upon themes like that, then yes, you would want to touch on things, the part that I’m not quite getting is the, how do you be humane?

John: Humane. I think, from the context of the whole email, it’s something along the lines of like, if you’re writing about these big things, making sure that you’re thinking about the people who are affected by these big things.

Craig: Isn’t that what you would be writing about?

John: Here’s an example I can take from my own life. A project that we’ll see if I can end up getting it set up, but there’s a big military and international cooperation aspect of it, and it’s like, oh, it’s a different movie now than it would have been three or four years ago.

Craig: Sure.

John: Just because our allies are not our allies again. Europe isn’t necessarily on our side, and so those things change. You have to understand that, but in pitching it, it was actually nice to be able to say, “No, this is actually a moment where international cooperation becomes incredibly important, an outside threat unites us all together about a thing,” and that felt good and useful. In terms of, I’m not writing, I don’t have an extra appeal writing something dystopian and bleak, I think because I’m living in a bleak, dystopian moment, and I also know that I’m not going to get joy from writing that, but I also know that no one’s going to want to make that.

Craig: Right. I guess people have been writing about fascistic regimes, terroristic regimes, repressive regimes forever, whether they live in them or not. We are all, as artists, impacted by what’s going on around us. I don’t think it should be a challenge for anybody to write victims humanely.

I think sometimes there is an undertone of fear in some of the questions we get, and I don’t mean fear of fascistic regimes, although we should have that and quite a bit of it, fear that we’ll make a mistake in our writing. You use the phrase, make sure to, which is a very defensive position when you’re writing. I just want to make sure that I don’t blank, or I want to make sure I don’t blank. Make sure that you write something good, true and honest. If you do, some characters are going to be ugly, and I mean ugly on the inside, and like all of us, some victims will be imperfect. That’s part of what makes it true, interesting, and upsetting.

The weird attraction that Spielberg gave Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List, that strange hypnotic power he had, made that interesting more than just, there’s the dickhead Nazi. Because he understood that the truer that person gets, the scarier he gets. Yes, I wouldn’t worry so much. I would just write what’s true.

John: Absolutely, and I also need to recognize that your movie, when it happens, will resonate with the culture of the time that it comes out. The most recent Superman movie really resonates with this moment that we’re in terms of world crisis, and yet it was two years ago, three years ago, that it got put in motion. It wasn’t actually responding to the moment that we’re in, it’s just because of when it comes out, it resonates with the world that it’s actually in.

Craig: Yes, things take on stuff. I wasn’t thinking about, Donald Trump wasn’t the president when I started working on Chernobyl. Truth wasn’t necessarily under global attack at that moment. If you write about things that are evergreen concerns for humanity, and you write them truly, without fear of making a ‘mistake,’ then I think you’re off to a good start.

John: Let’s go to this question here from John about stamina.

Drew: “I’m quite fortunately a consistently working writer who has had a handful of produced credits, and I feel like I’m firmly in the prime of my career. I’m suddenly becoming very aware that my stamina as a writer is nowhere near where it used to be. I’m starting to have more anxiety over whether this means I’m losing my love for the job, or that sometime soon I won’t be able to do it at a high level anymore. Then I stress over the actual work itself. Do you have any tips for how to keep your energy for the job up when you know that you’ll never be the version of yourself that you were 10 or 20 years ago?”

John: Oh, for sure. Yes, I nod with all of this, and I do recognize it. I think, John, you already have the insight of that you’re just never the same person you were at 20 or at 30. Because on those, I could stay up to like four in the morning writing a thing, and my life was just different. It was before I had kids. We often talk about how kids are just career killers.

Craig: Vampires.

John: Vampires sucking away at your life and your time, and yet, I’m still productive. I still get a lot done. I think if you actually look at the output of work that I’m able to do now, it hasn’t really diminished much. I have found my habits changing, and I do write in shorter sprints and get stuff done, but stuff does still happen. You can both recognize that your stamina has changed and not panic that it makes it incapable for you to write stuff.

Craig: This is one of those areas where– first of all, John, I’ve felt all of those things that you’re feeling, and I feel all of them. The other day, I had lunch with Brian Johnson the other day, and we were both talking about how like, “Are we just slowing down?” It feels like we’re slowing down, but the work keeps coming, so the problem is feels like. It feels like it sometimes.

I think part of it is because, okay, John says he’s in the prime of his career. What that tells me is he’s done enough work now at a professional level, seen enough of it go in and out of the machinery to have improved. As you improve, it becomes harder to write because you can’t write garbage the way you used to. When you start out, you’re just wee, right? I’m awesome. Because you don’t know enough to know that you’re not. You’re freer. It’s a lovely feeling. Then later, after life has beaten that a lot of you, but also after you create a little bit more of a sense of inner scrutiny, then the crucible of your own judgment becomes much hotter.

Yes, then it is a little harder, and it can feel like you’re losing stamina, but you’re not. You’re just more exacting, so you know more. You have the burden of knowledge, John. Your anxiety is normal. Just make sure to not draw any conclusions from it. You’ve made a mistake of drawing a conclusion from it. You think because you’re anxious, you are in trouble. You are not, you’re just anxious.

One of the things I’ve really tried to accept as I’m getting older now is that part of why I do what I do is because my brain is attuned to scary things. Everybody that we write about, we’re usually writing about somebody that’s afraid of something. We have very fear-attuned minds. No surprise, I’m afraid all the time. I just have to accept that is part of the package of doing what we do. What you’re feeling right now is incredibly normal. It’s actually a fantastic sign that you are a good professional writer. If you felt as free now as you did when you started, oh boy, I don’t know what to say. Something’s wrong with you.

John: If you were a professional athlete, you would have the same kind of questions, like, I don’t have the same stamina as I did earlier in your career. It’s like, well, that’s true. That’s objectively true. You can actually measure those sort of things. What we would have is experience, technique and all the other things that make it worthwhile. Unlike a professional athlete, there is no forced retirement date. You’re never going to break your back and be unable to play again.

At a certain point, you may decide you don’t want to keep doing it, which is great, but that’s not what I’m hearing in this letter. I think I agree with Craig, it’s just anxiety and fear.
Craig: Yes, you’re not at the place yet where you actually are slowing down and preparing to stop. That will be a different feeling. I don’t think I’m at that place yet.

John: A friend of mine did retire and he actually is a writer friend who worked in TV for many, many years and it’s just like, “Yeah, I’m done.” I love it for him.

Craig: Listen, in the throes of certain phases of making a large TV show, I fantasize about just pulling the old ripcord, but I know that it’s not time yet. Really what I’m reacting to there is this is hard.

John: It’s hard.

Craig: When things are hard, there’s a little boy or girl in us that wants to quit. Then there’s our memory of our mom, dad, coach, older sibling, somebody saying, “You can want to quit, don’t yet, don’t.”

John: In the time of doing this podcast is when I started distance running. I will say that it’s been a useful metaphor for some of this stuff because it’s like, you just want to stop running. You just want to stop and just walk for a while. It’s like, no, but you actually, you really can just keep running and you just keep running.

Craig: You’ll be fine though, John. You’re in a good spot, actually, weirdly. It’s an encouraging question.

John: Let’s take two more questions, first from Kat here.

Drew: I wonder if you could settle a rumbling question for my university peers and I.

John: We can.

Craig: For my university peers and me.

John: Sure.

Craig: I’m just going to correct right away. For me, object of the preposition.

John: We understand that it’s standard to render non-English languages as English on the page with the indication in parentheses that it is in Mandarin or whatever the language is, potentially mentioning whether or not it should be subtitled. Then along came Celine Song, who, as you’re aware, used Korean text on the page in past lives, setting an industry precedent by writing bilingually with all Korean translated into English.

My tutor has said that for the purposes of the degree with Celine’s industry precedent, I can use Chinese in my script. I would very much like to use this. Characters speak in their native language unless noted otherwise. Where rendered in English, the dialogue will be subtitled. Where written in Mandarin or Taiwanese is the intention not to use subtitles.
My cohort feels this would be unacceptable. to the industry. I could be getting the characters to say all sorts of nasties, unbeknownst to the producers.

What are your thoughts on the wider industry acceptance of having small parts of the script unintelligible?

Craig: The answer is in the question. Celine, by the way, one of the best people. I like that when she did that, it became an industry precedent and therefore is now allowable at universities. That just tells me how broken the university instruction system is around screenwriting.

John: Because if there’s one movie from a filmmaker that was successful, now, I guess, sure.

Craig: What was the point of all of that dogmatic nonsense to begin with? The answer is do whatever you want. Clearly do whatever you want. She was nominated for an Oscar. Why is this person worried about what the university will think?

John: All choices you’re making have pros and cons. It’s the question of like, is it a problem that certain blocks of text in your script will not be intelligible to a person who only speaks English? It could be, but maybe it’s absolutely fine. You won’t know until you try it. Yes, if it makes sense for you, you should do it.

Craig: The whole point is to say to an English reader, you won’t understand this. Isn’t that the point?

John: Yes.

Craig: So, do it. The idea that you would be putting in stuff that so like, after the movie comes out, they’re like, oh my God, one of those characters said the Holocaust didn’t happen. That’s not a thing.

John: That’s not happening.

Craig: It’s not happening. That’s such a not worry. Who asked this question?

Drew: Kat.

Craig: Kat, listen, you write this however you want. If you are a good writer, Kat, who is going to succeed as a screenwriter, you are already beyond the concerns of this university. You have already escaped its surly bonds. If you’re not, you’re not, so it doesn’t matter. You write whatever you want.

John: Last question here from Henry.

Drew: A few big films recently are the first of a multi-part series, and while I’ve enjoyed watching them, I always leave the theater feeling that I’ve only seen half a movie. I think there’s something off with the structure here, where they’re basically making one really long film instead of discrete parts that can be watched on their own, because I don’t feel this way with, say, The Empire Strikes Back or The Fellowship of the Ring. Do John and Craig have any insight into what’s going on here?

Craig: Money.

[laughter]

I mean money’s going on. Harry Potter, the seventh book, was broken into two books, because it was very long, and I think they looked at it and they were like, okay, so on the one side, a very long movie. First of all, people don’t like to see very long movies, so we’re going to lose some people. Two, fewer showings per day on a blockbuster, we’re going to lose some money, or we split into two and we get two hit movies.

John: Let’s say, hypothetically, there was a screenwriter who was approached with the property of Wicked, and was just like, so Wicked, you could do it as one long movie.

Craig: Somebody smart.

John: Somebody smart would say like, no, and actually, let’s approach it from the start, saying like, what if at the act break, we actually split it into two movies? How do we make sure that the first movie is as rewarding and successful as possible, and the second movie is as rewarding and successful as possible? I think Wicked made completely the right choice.

Craig: Oh, I’m sure they did.

[laughter]

John: Now, Henry, I will say that there have been some movies recently where I did feel a little bit of that, what, because I wasn’t expecting it. That rug pull can be a thing. I felt a little bit on the last Spider-Verse movie, where it was like, oh, wow, I really thought we were going to resolve this, and we didn’t, it’s just a cliffhanger. Same thing happens in the 28 Years Later, where the movie resolves nicely, but then there’s a code that’s not a post-credit scene, that just basically sets up the whole next movie. I’m like, wait, what?

Craig: Right. Certain things have built-in dotted lines that you could see yourself folding or tearing the page. Wicked is obviously one of them. It has a huge intermission, and the last song before the intermission is Defying Gravity and as I recall, someone saying to the people there, “How in God’s name can you sit around after Defying Gravity?” Defying Gravity happens, roll credits, go home. There are certain circumstances where it makes absolute sense.

There are movies like Harry Potter, where you’re like, look, you’ve been on this ride for six movies. Let us give you a larger feast for seven and eight. Henry, I do know what you mean, and I think sometimes there’s been a little bit of indulgence. It’s that same indulgence I see in limited series sometimes, where it’s like, oh, this is a seven or eight episode limited series. It should have been a five episode limited series.

John: There’s some padding and some, oh, yes.

Craig: It’s just some sort of stretch and pull and froth, and yes, I can see that is sort of happening as movies try to accomplish some of the things that television series can accomplish. In television, we can just work with a bigger canvas, and movies want that, but I know what you mean, and I think we all smell it when it’s happening.

John: The Avengers finale, which was a split over two parts, I enjoyed the entire experience, but I really couldn’t tell you what happened in one part versus the other part. It’s just like, it was a big two-part thing.

Craig: Again, if you have successfully laid out another sequel, I don’t know how many movies we’re talking about at any given point in that one. I think it was four total, right? Then, okay, if you want the finale to be a big, big finish, sure. If you’re just starting and you’re like, hey, or if it’s part of a series, but it’s not really like, each one of the series is its own thing.

For instance, I don’t know how many James Bond movies we’re up to, but if the next James Bond movie, just being made by Denis Villeneuve, it’s going to be awesome. If the next James Bond movie did that, it wouldn’t necessarily be earned because James Bond isn’t like, okay, it’s one, two, three, done. Avengers, I got that. They want to do a big finish. [crosstalk] Yes, I’m cool with that.

John: I’m cool with that, too. It’s time for one cool things. My one cool thing is actually on the back of my phone right now, Craig, I’m going to show it to you.

Craig: Great.

John: It’s called the Mott Magnetic Wallet Stand.

Craig: This is very much in my interest.

John: It is a little thing that magnetically clips to the back of your phone, and it magnetically clips down, so you can have it be a stand vertically.

Craig: I didn’t think that was going to be what it was.

John: Or horizontally.

Craig: Okay, that is cool. For what that is, what I thought I was getting shown was one of those back of the phone wallet replacers.

John: It is awesome. In that little slot, you can put two cards.

Craig: Two cards?

John: Only two cards now. If you want more than that, you’d need a different thing.

Craig: This is very slim.

John: It’s slim, and I don’t use a case on my phone.

Craig: Really?

John: I’ve never used cases on my phone.

Craig: Interesting.

John: Not for a very long time. I also use it, just I loop a finger through it and just to help hold my phone, so that I’m not bending my pinky– I’m not holding the weight of it on my pinky.

Craig: What would you call the color of that, out of curiosity?

John: I would call it–

Craig: I have a color in mind, but I don’t know if I’m right.

John: Purple is probably the closest, but I think purple is a scrappier than that.

Craig: I’m going to say mauve.

John: Mauve, okay, yes.

Craig: But is that right?

John: That was my go, Mauve. Mauve, yes.

Drew: Mauve.

John: Yes, it’s a good color, I like it.

Craig: It’s like a grayish purple.

John: Yes, I like it. If you’re looking for something to help hold onto your iPhone, the Mott Magnetic Wallet Stand, it’s like $28.

Craig: That’s fantastic. Oh, 28, that’s not bad. Just a little bit more than that, and you can get the Scriptnotes book.

John: Yes, delivered to your home.

Craig: Really, if you had a choice, I would say Scriptnotes.

John: I haven’t put it out, but as soon as I put it, it’s also available as a e-book. People are like, oh.

Craig: Of course, and that’s even cheaper, I assume.

John: People ask about the paperback, and there’s not currently plans for a paperback. We’ll see.

Craig: If it does well, there will be a paperback.

John: Probably, but there’s also increasingly some books are just never going to paperback, because-

Craig: Because the e-book sort of takes that place.

John: It does, and it’s also, our D&D books are never paperbacks, because they would rip apart. For something that you’re referring to a lot, it could be useful.

Craig: Sure. I remember my Syd Field book was paperback, and I’m sure the many Save the Cats is paperbacks.

John: Yes, are paperbacks.

Craig: My one cool thing this week is a podcast that I appeared on as a guest. I don’t know if it’s– it must be out by now. The podcast is called Total Party Skill.

John: I’m guessing it’s a D&D podcast.

Craig: You know it, a little take on Total Party Kill, and it is a Dungeons & Dragons podcast that is, I wouldn’t say hosted the podcasters, are Gabe Greenspan, Dylan McCollum, and the delightfully named George Primavera. George Primavera, by the way, sounds like a bad character name, like– [chuckles]

John: Yes. Oh, 100%.

Craig: Yes, like Gene Parmesan from– [laughs] George Primavera, and all three of these guys were absolute gentlemen and scholars, all three deeply, deeply well-versed in Dungeons & Dragons as players and DMs. They’re just fun.

John: That’s great.

Craig: We had a fun–

John: You’re not playing the game, you’re just talking through stuff?

Craig: The topics, one topic was just, “Okay, it’s been a minute since we’ve got the 2024 rules. Now that we’ve had a chance to play with them for a while, what are the things that we really love? What are some of the pain points of things we don’t love?” We had a pretty good in-depth discussion of that.
Then they did a little fun draft where we were drafting classes.

John: Right.

Craig: The question was, you’re drafting classes to survive an apocalypse. Then, I think they’re a Patreon thing. One of their Patreon subscribers wrote in to say, “Oh, here’s a name of something. What would you home brew this thing to be? Item, spell, weapon, what would it be?” It was just a joy talking with those guys talking with those guys.

John: Love it. Sounds great.

Craig: Check it out, Total Party Skill, on wherever you get your podcasts.

John: I listen to so many podcasts, and deliberately have not added any D&D podcasts, because that’s just too much. I’m sure there’s so much good content that would just eat up more of my time.

Craig: You know I don’t listen to podcasts, but I actually will listen to this podcast.

John: That’s great.

Craig: Not the one I’m on, the other ones.

John: For Craig to start listening to a podcast is a pretty big deal.

Craig: It’s got to got to be about D&D, basically.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, and edited by Matthew Ciarlelli. Outro this week is by Steve Piotrowski. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also a place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

You will find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this show each and every week, along with our videos and other things.

You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those backup episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record on whether we would still write screenplays if we weren’t going to sell screenplays.

[laughs]

Thank you for pre-ordering the book. Pre-order those books and send those receipts to drewaskatjohnaugust.com, and we will send you something cool. Thanks, Craig. Thanks Drew.

Craig: Thank you.

[music]

John: This bonus topic came from a question. Drew, would you read us the question?

Drew: Your recent Scott Frank episode wrapped up with a bout of brutal honesty concerning the likelihood that any of us will have a career in screenwriting. I realized this was in an effort to encourage folks to be unique, advice I think I need myself, but I’d love to hear your perspectives on the idea of art for art’s sake. If, for whatever reason, nobody could ever pay you for a script again, would you still write them?

Craig: I wonder if Fraser– it feels like Fraser’s really asking this for themselves. Do I have permission to write screenplays if I’m not doing it professionally? The answer is, absolutely. I think for me, it’s a different question because I’ve written 4,000 scripts now and drafts and versions and things, and so, would I want to do it just for fun? No. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore. I would always want it to have a purpose just because I would.

If I hadn’t done so much screenwriting, I could see absolutely doing it for enjoyment.

John: I take this more as a question about the format of screenwriting as a worthwhile literary pursuit or a thing to spend your time on if it weren’t in the pursuit of actually making it into a movie or making it into a TV show. I agree with you. If I hadn’t done this job for so long, I could start writing screenplays.

I enjoy the form. I think it’s a great form, but it’s not a very shareable form. It’s not a form that other people are going to read and enjoy with you. I think having written books, and I have a graphic novel coming out next year, having written other things, I think there’s better stuff to write that for people out there in the world to read. You don’t have to write for other people to read stuff. You can just write for your own purposes and your own self.

Given what I like to do, I think I do like to write for other people to read it. I think books or stage musicals, or other things would be a better– it’s how I would spend my time.

Craig: One thing that this prompts is the idea that people pursue artistic expression for its own sake because it makes them feel good. It is part of our behavior as humans. We want to express ourselves creatively and artistically. I think it’s important that anyone give themselves permission to do so, as long as they acknowledge that they are not entitled to an audience.

If you want to write songs to make yourself happy, just don’t force your family to listen to 12 of them. You can play one maybe at Christmas, see how it goes. If you want to write a book or a poem or screenplay, great. Don’t make everyone read it. If people want to, great. I guess my point is, if you’re doing it for yourself, do it for yourself with no expectation because I think sometimes people say they’re doing it for themselves. What they really want is for everybody to tell them how great they are, and that’s a different thing.

John: It is. I feel like Fraser’s question is especially relevant in this era of increasingly powerful AIs that can generate things that look like the work that we’re doing, and just do it with seemingly effortlessly. Why even bother spending the emotional time and energy to write a thing when I can just generate a thing?

I still think there is meaning and value, and there’s discovery that happens when you’re actually trying to write a thing that is unique and wonderful. Those moments when I’ve written something, even if no one read it, I felt really good to have written it. Yes, fantastic, but I don’t necessarily need that to be a screenplay form. It could be something else.

Craig: It’s its own pleasure, right? If Fraser wants to write a screenplay because he enjoys writing screenplays and he’s able to accept that perhaps he may not write professionally, but that’s okay, he just likes writing, then that’s fantastic. There doesn’t need to be any reason to do that because there’s really no reason to do anything if we consider our mortality. What’s the point of anything? There is none. You die, so really, do you need to paint that painting? No.

We do it because it feels good. It helps us figure ourselves out and it might help us connect to one person. Beyond that, yes, just lower the requirements.

John: I always love the stories when they find some person who died and they find all this incredible writing or all these paintings that this person did. It’s like, oh my God, this person would have been a known artist, but they just chose not to do it or whatever circumstances, they didn’t. The work still is valuable and if they still enjoyed doing that thing, they did it for their own.

Craig: It’s not valuable for them anymore.

John: Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. They did it because it was meaningful to them.

Craig: Absolutely, it felt good. Then there’s the counterpart to that, which is the Kafka situation where while Kafka’s alive, he goes, “You know what, I hate all of this, I’m burning most of it.” No, don’t, and he did. That can happen too.

John: It can.

Craig: I think, make a good point, there are authors that are discovered posthumously, there are artists that are discovered posthumously, but it just doesn’t matter, actually. If you’ve decided it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Certainly, I would say, give yourself permission for it to not matter.
I wish I liked writing screenplays enough to just wake up and go, “You know what I’m going to do today? I’m going to write some screenplay. Make myself feel good.”

John: Yes, that’s not me.

Craig: It’s not me. That’s the way I approach solving puzzles.

John: Playing D&D.

Craig: Playing D&D. Playing D&D, what’s the point of that?

John: No, it’s absolutely pointless.

Craig: Fellowship.

John: It is fellowship.

Craig: Fellowship, and it feels good. It’s fun, it’s interesting.

John: It’s problem solving.

Craig: It’s problem solving, but it’s creative. We get to–

John: Collaborative.

Craig: It’s collaborative, it’s creative. We get to express ourselves, does all these things. For its own sake, we are not critical role. Look, if we wanted to go, hey, some platformer, even if we went to the critical role people were like, hey, it’s me and John, and we’ve got Tom Morello and Dan Weiss and Chris Morgan, and all these cool da-da-da, Phil. Hey, we’re going to go ahead and just do it. Yes, they’d be like, yes, we’ll do it. You can make money off of it.

John: It would ruin it.

Craig: Of course, it would ruin it.

John: It would ruin it.

Craig: It would be horrible.

John: Also, the things we say around the table would get us canceled immediately.

Craig: I don’t think we would make it past a minute, but even if we could, the point is we’ve never even considered it because we don’t need it.

John: No.

Craig: Not because it’s that we don’t need money, it’s that we just don’t need to do it for a reason. It is ontological.

John: Also, we’re happily amateur D&D players.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Yes, and so I want to shout out to community theater because community theater is pointless, and also amazing and wonderful.

Craig: It is professionally pointless, but it fills people’s spirits and souls. And Waiting for Guffman, if that is not the most beautiful love letter to community theater, I don’t know what is.

John: Love it. Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Drew.

Craig: Thanks.

Links:

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Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

Scriptnotes, Episode 697: We Wrote a Book!, Transcript

August 6, 2025 Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 697 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, it’s a new round of how would this be a movie? We’re going to look at four stories in the news and examine their cinematic essences. In our bonus segment for premium members, let’s talk about kindness, Craig. The quality I feel like we’re undervaluing and sometimes confusing and conflating with other things is niceness and politeness. Kindness is different.

Craig: Yes, it’s sort of out of fashion, isn’t it?

John: Yes, it is. I think it’s an evergreen value. We’ll talk about kindness.

Craig: Sure.

John: Most crucially and fundamentally, we have big news today. We are officially announcing the Scriptnotes book. Long spoken about on this podcast, but it is now available for pre-order starting today as you’re listening to this podcast.

Craig: It’s an actual book.

John: It’s an actual book. You’ve seen the PDF of it in this typeset.

Craig: Oh, yes. The book is an object you could now hit somebody with in the head. It’s real.

John: It’s real. I don’t have a physical book in front of me, but underneath the laptop here, there is a copy of the German edition of Arlo Finch. That is the size and dimension of the book.

Craig: Perfect.

John: That’s what it’s going to feel like.

Craig: It’s a real book. For a long time, we bemoaned the state of screenwriting books. Yes, I think of all the screenwriting books on the shelf, at the store, the virtual store, I think ours is the best. I really do.

John: I genuinely do too.

Craig: Yes.

John: Our book is 43 chapters.

Craig: 43?

John: Yes.

Craig: But they’re short.

John: Yes, they’re short, but they’re important chapters.

Craig: Great bathroom book.

John: Yes, great bathroom book. It says so in the book that if this were to become your bathroom book, we would no higher flatter.

Craig: Thrilled.

John: Absolutely. 43 chapters, 335 pages. Responsibility for this, we have to acknowledge. It fell upon Drew Marquardt, our producer, Chris Csont, Megana Rao, our former screenwriter and producer, and Halley Lamberson, who was our former intern. They wrestled through a thousand hours of transcripts to pull chunks together to figure out what this was and then get it into a prose form that is not me talking or you talking, but it’s us talking, which was a difficult thing to do.

Craig: It’s like a duck press. Are you familiar with the duck press?

John: Tell me about a duck press.

Craig: It’s a little disgusting, but it’s very French. Duck press, you basically can put duck inside of this and squeeze. It’s like a huge lever and it squishes [crosstalk] all the juices out. It basically pulls out the most basic, concentrated form of script notes. We’ve put it through the duck press.

John: Oh, okay.

Craig: Certainly, you deserve acknowledgement. You’ve done a lot of work on the book.

John: I had this fantasy that between the four of them, they’d be able to get a written tone that feels right. Now I did have to run my fingers through everything and do it.

Craig: I deserve no credit, other than the fact that I talked for a lot.

John: You did talk for a lot.

Craig: A lot.

John: You created credits on the front of the book.

Craig: Listen, talking is really important. It is the essence that comes out of the duck press.

John: Let’s talk through what is actually inside the book. We have the topic chapters. There’s 21 of them and there’s guest chapters, which are 20. Should we just read through them one by one sort of what the chapters are, so people know what they’re going to be getting?

Craig: Sure, that’s quite a few chapters. We’ll talk about the top. My goodness, 21 topic chapters. I’m almost tempted to just rattle these off to overwhelm people.

John: We’ll alternate.

Craig: Oh, you want to alternate?

John: Yes.

Craig: I love it. The rules of screenwriting.

John: Deciding what to write.

Craig: Protagonists.

John: Relationships.

Craig: Conflict.

John: Dialogue and exposition.

Craig: Point of view.

John: How to write a scene.

Craig: Locations and world-building.

John: Plot and plot holes.

Craig: Mystery, confusion, suspense.

John: Writing action.

Craig: Structure.

John: The beginning.

Craig: The end.

John: How to write a movie.

Craig: That’s a good one. Pitching.

John: Notes on notes.

Craig: What it’s like to be a screenwriter.

John: Patterns of success.

Craig: Appropriately, a final word. John, that covers everything.

John: The goal was to cover the craft and the business. It’s more craft at the start and it gets more business towards the end.

Craig: Great.

John: Just the psychology of what it feels like to be a screenwriter. You’ll recognize some of these titles within titles of episodes, but nothing is basically just one episode, except for how to write a movie is very much your talk that you gave at Austin, which you did as an episode, which is in prose form.

Craig: It’s basically, you can just go boop with that one. I can see how a lot of different episodes have been combined and refined into these things. It is true that it’s impossible, really, to listen to all of the episodes of Scriptnotes at this point.

John: People do it.

Craig: It’s impossible to do it in a way where you would retain everything. This is pretty awesome that you could just go, or here, read this and then start listening to the show for the next 5,000 episodes and see where we go.

John: Published by Crown Books. One of the things that makes me excited about being at a big publisher is they have a whole academic arm, which is just about getting the book into universities.

Craig: Oh.

John: That feels good, because I feel like for a film student, this is a thing that you could use in a class.

Craig: Are they going to do that thing where they charge $5,000 for the book in a university?

John: No, it’s the same price as it is a list.

Craig: What is that?

John: It’s just nuts. It’s a special academic edition or something.

Craig: What do you mean? My God. What a scam.

John: What a scam.

Craig: Going back to the Scott Frank discussion, but we also have these amazing guest chapters where we boil down the best hits of so many great people that we’ve interviewed.

John: One of the fun things about the guest chapters was finding ways so that they are interacting with the chapters around them. If we’re talking about a certain topic, they’re generally related to that or there’s things they’re saying that are-

Craig: It’s like there’s a Segway man.

John: Built into the book.

Craig: Making sure– yes, makes total sense.

John: All right, let’s go through who our guests are.

Craig: All right. We got Christopher Nolan.

John: Michael Schur.

Craig: Lulu Wang.

John: Lorene Scafaria.

Craig: Sam Esmail.

John: Greta Gerwig.

Craig: Justin Simeon.

John: David Koepp.

Craig: David Benioff and Dan Weiss.

John: Damon Lindelof.

Craig: Rian Johnson.

John: Christopher McQuarrie.

Craig: The Daniels.

John: Aline Brosh McKenna.

Craig: Lawrence Kasdan.

John: Eric Roth.

Craig: Seth Rogen.

John: John Lee Hancock.

Craig: Mike Birbiglia.

John: Mike Birbiglia and Ashley Nicole Black.

Craig: What a lineup? Except for Mike Birbiglia, that is an incredible lineup.

John: Yes, just really all-stars and Mike Birbiglia.

Craig: Also- [laughs]

John: He’s so angry right now.

Craig: No, but he’s just like, okay, guys. I could see his face like, huh-huh, okay. We love Mike Birbiglia.

John: We love Mike Birbiglia.

Craig: Maybe more than anyone. When I say more than anyone, I don’t mean more than anybody else that’s on our show. I mean more than anyone on the planet. I mean more than his wife loves him, his child.

John: The shrine you have in your house to him is just a little bit creepy at times, but also, the way you pours the milk, it works.

Craig: A lot creepy all the time, but you know what? Love him.

John: Love him. There’s two special chapters. There’s a deep dive on Die Hard.

Craig: Oh, great.

John: We have that. It’s both our initial conversation and our subsequent conversation with one of the screenwriters of it and an oral history of Scriptnotes with Julia Turner. Remember that 10th anniversary episode?

Craig: Sure.

John: From behind the scenes.

Craig: Oh, yes. Great Julia Turner.

John: The book is available now for pre-order. If you go to scriptnotesbook.com, it’ll lead you to the right bookstores for it.

Craig: When will it actually be on sale?

John: If you pre-order now, you get it December 2nd.

Craig: Oh, this feels like a good Christmas gift.

John: It does feel like a good Christmas gift. You could order for yourself or tell your parent to order it for you.

Craig: Right, or tell your spouse, your partner.

John: Yes.

Craig: Honestly, if you are partnered up with a dork, they’re going to want this probably.

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s very cool. I hope it’s a hit.

John: I would say it too. It doesn’t need to be the out-of-the-gate runaway bestseller, because it’s an evergreen title. There’s always been screenwriting, the fact that it’s not going to go out of date.

Craig: No, nor will it be the hot read over the Christmas break.

John: Would it be great if it were though?

Craig: Yes, sure. I’m not expecting to land on the New York Times bestseller list, but I think at a minimum, now there’s a book that’s worth buying. If your kid is interested in screenwriting and they’re in high school and they’re starting, this is just a simple, easy one. What does it cost, John?

John: The U.S. version I think is $32 or $35.

Craig: That’s reasonable.

John: Yes, and the U.K. version, I’m not sure what the final price is.

Craig: £400.

John: £400. It’s U.K., Australia, New Zealand. They all get one version. It’s largely the same. It’s like the format is slightly different.

Craig: Just colors has a U in it?

John: No. We’re actually not doing any text changes.

Craig: Oh, good.

John: Keeping it American.

Craig: Good.

John: Good. Good, but the cut of the book is a little different. We actually had a phone call, a Zoom about this. Basically, their printing prices just don’t work the same way.

Craig: Interesting. Still Gutenberg-ing it?

John: That’s what it is. That’s how it fits. If you are a listener and you are pre-ordering it today, thank you so much. If you send your receipt for it to Drew at askjohnox.com, we will send you something. We’re not quite sure what that’s going to be, but we’ll send you some of the extra thing for you having pre-ordered it.

Craig: Oh, that’s nice. Cool.

John: Cool.

Craig: Like an object or?

John: I think it’s going to probably be some sort of video of something. Some sort of acknowledgement and a thank you for your pre-order, which is nice.

Craig: What if there’s 10,000 people that pre-order it?

John: Drew’s going to be really busy.

[laughter]

Craig: Oh, Drew, Drew.

John: The other thing you can help us out with, if you are a listener of the show, we are going to be doing some press as we get closer to the time. We are making a list of, what are podcasts we can go on? What are live shows we could do in certain places? There’s limited availability, but there’s things we can do. If you have a podcast or a publication, you think like, oh, John or Craig or both of them should talk to them about this, also, email in to Drew and let Drew know, because we’re trying to get together that schedule for things.

Craig: Fun.

John: Fun. Cool. I will be talking more about this at the Austin Film Festival, but for today, just order your book.

Craig: Yes, we’re going to the Austin Film Festival, fantastic.

John: Scriptnotesbook.com.

Craig: We’re back.

John: All right. Our marquee topic today. How would this be a movie? Craig, can you recap this segment or set up the segment for people who are not familiar with this?

Craig: Sure. In this segment, we take some stories that have been in the news. Sometimes they’re news stories. A lot of times they’re essays. Sometimes they’re actually quite technical. One of them is today. We ask ourselves, okay, if we were running a studio and someone said, oh, we just bought the rights to this thing, how would we make it into a movie? This scenario plays out in studios every day, five days a week, year-round.

John: Absolutely happens in studios, but also happens with producers. Producers are reading, they’re talking to their assistants, their creative executives, there’s this thing, what could this be? Who would we get to write this? What does the actual movie feel like if we’re going to try to do this?

The four things we picked today, three of them are about sort of difficult personal things, and one of them is about a big scientific thing, which is a palate cleanser. Let’s start with A Mother’s Revenge. There’s several articles we could link to for this. The one we’re going to link to is in Slate. It’s as told to Christina Cotterucci, but it’s actually a first-person interview that’s been turned into prose form. It talks about Charlotte Laws, and she has a 24-year-old daughter named Kayla whose email was hacked.

Kayla had a topless picture in her email, which she never sent to anybody, but when she sent it to her computer to save it through her email, that topless picture ended up on one of the most notorious revenge porn sites, isanyoneup.com. Hunter Moore, who ran that website, called himself a professional life-ruiner.

Craig: Great.

John: He put that out there. The mother, Charlotte Laws, wants to get the picture taken down. She calls the FBI, tells her to file a report, so she takes it on herself. She calls everyone, including Hunter’s mother, trying to get this picture taken down. After nine days, it’s finally taken down. They think they’re done, but Charlotte continues to take on the cause of bringing this revenge porn website to justice and take down Hunter Moore.

Finally, the FBI does get involved. Hunter attacks Charlotte online. Anonymous steps in to dox Hunter, and Hunter is ultimately arrested.

Craig: Everybody doxes everybody.

John: This is the account that’s told the slate. I’ll also put a link in the show notes to a Guardian article that has a little bit more on the Hunter side of it all. Craig, what did you take of this situation, this place, and is there a thing about her specific story that’s interesting to you? Tell me what you’re thinking about.

Craig: Yes, this feels very sort of modern Erin Brockovich. A parent or an individual who isn’t necessarily empowered within the justice system, takes it upon themselves to force everybody that is to pay attention to something that’s a real problem. There is also a don’t mess with mom vibe to this, which I love. It is also interesting because it begins when this initial crime occurs. It’s 2012, so it’s a different time.

John: It’s a different internet.

Craig: She actually makes a really interesting point here. There is a ripple effect from what she did. One of the things that we’re always looking for when we’re saying, okay, like how could this be a movie, is how is it relevant? It’s relevant because the work that she did starting with this one picture, which in modern terms almost seems quaint.

John: It does.

Craig: One topless picture? I feel like everyone has everything [chuckles] I don’t.

John: Yes.

Craig: It’s like, it’s so much out there.

John: In a world of AI generated fake images.

Craig: Right, but because of that one picture and her, I think, brave pursuit of justice, eventually laws are created. There were no laws anywhere. Now there are laws in all 50 states against revenge porn.

John: You can imagine the end title card of the movie. It’s like, this law is now the law in 50 states.

Craig: Yes, and it’s got a great villain. You would have to figure out a little bit more about the villain, just so it’s not– I mean the thing is, from her point of view here, she’s talking about this, Charlotte Laws is relaying the story. From her point of view, she literally describes him as a monster and portrays him as such, and it sure seems like it from this account. Of course, as writers, we’re like, but who are you, Hunter? Why are you doing this? Who hurt you? To sort of just figure out who the other person on the side of this is, without taking away the villainy, it’s just really just more like making a real character.

It’s funny because sometimes I think in real life, people are mustache twirling villains. It’s just that we don’t like them as much in our stuff.

Great crusade at the heart of it. I’d want to also dig in a little bit more of the daughter because she almost seems like a prop

John: What was interesting is that she’s 24 years old, which seems like if it’s a 16-year-old girl, an 18-year-old girl, then you feel different. A 24-year-old girl, I–

Craig: Things have changed, man.

John: Yes, but I wonder about the agency of Kayla herself and the degree to which her, and that’s actually an interesting point of conflict, the degree to which it’s like, no, it’s done, mom. It’s like, no, it’s not done. It’s like, stop dragging my name into this.

Craig: Yes, and I don’t know how that all went, but it does seem like the relationship there has to be figured out, because it is a part of it and it is a question. Naturally one would say, oh my God, maybe mom, stop, but as long as you could make everybody a bit rounded and no one’s too much of a white knight and no one’s too much of a mustache twirler, there is a pretty interesting story here. Now, it’s small.

John: There’s a Lifetime movie version of this. I think there’s a bigger version of this too. It’s a question of, can it get up to an Erin Brockovich? I’m not sure it can.

Craig: Erin Brockovich was trying to save lives and did. Where this gets interesting is, and she mentions that, there is a woman who’s a victim of revenge porn who commits suicide. Then you start to get real about it. I think the relevance really is now for parents who are struggling to figure out how to deal with this with their own kids, because this is the new playing with matches.

I think people would connect to it, at least parents would, but it feels like you’re going to have to either go all the way over into indie zone or mainstream. I could see a nice, shiny Netflix thing for this. [crosstalk]

John: Netflix makes sense for that too. We’re talking about this in the Erin Brockovich mold where this is based on a real person. We would likely get the life rights to Charlotte Laws. Basically, you’d want to have some ability to portray her and there’s a question of how you can handle Hunter Moore and to what degree, you don’t need his life rights, no. You don’t want his life rights, but there are going to be liable concerns about what you’re saying about him. You have to be able to back up everything you’re having him do with reality.

Craig: Doesn’t seem like it would be a problem, because in real life, he did all of this. He left a public record behind, like a trail of posts and tweets and all the rest and emails, and so forth and he was convicted. As far as those concerns, it’s as close to a layup as you’re going to get.

John: Now, if you were to do the fictional version of this where you didn’t have to use any of the real people’s stuff or you weren’t using any of the real people’s stuff, I think elevating Kayla over Charlotte and having the girl herself take the initiative in this thing feels probably right. It feels like it’s the more direct way to handle this in the sense of coming into ownership of your own story. Because in taking these photos yourself and then having them laid out there, you’ve lost the narrative and sort of reclaiming control over your life feels like an important version, if I’m not bound to reality.

Craig: Sure, you could absolutely argue that the value of the fictional version comes down to, I’m going to punish the person who punished me. Revenge against the revenger. Also curious, his site was a revenge porn. It didn’t seem like it was revenge, he didn’t even know Kayla. I think that also, there is something unique about mom going out there fighting on behalf of.

John: It doesn’t show in this article, but the other article, she’s physically small. She’s like Kristin Chenoweth’s size, and that feels right too.

Craig: Always interesting. There is something just about how powerless you can feel as a parent and how I can see as a mom just how fierce you can be. That is sort of the thing that makes this special, I think.

John: I think you’re right.

Craig: But in a fictional version, I think you have to make it about more than just, I’m trying to get a picture down, I’m trying to remove a topless picture. There has to be– in reality, she says years into this process, or it was months or years, it was quite some time, somebody out there committed suicide. I think this is, in a fictional story, that would be something you would realize very early on had already happened, perhaps more than once, which I’m sure is true, so that you understood this isn’t just about taking this picture down. It’s about taking this person down before they hurt anyone else.

John: Going back to the mother at the center of this, is thinking about her as a character, independent of this event happening, where is she starting from and where is she going to? How is this difficult process leading her to a better place or leading her to what they are, essentially? What is it that she is achieving independent of the outcome?

Craig: That’s a great point. You need there to be something wrong before this picture ever ends up on the internet.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Where I would start probably is relationship with daughter. I think if there is a flaw there, because what happens as a parent is you start to feel responsible for everything your child does, and in a story like this, you want to feel like, if only I had been a better mom, and for somebody to say no, but that there is something that is off in that relationship that her pursuit of justice exacerbates, until finally it is confronted and healed along with taking down a criminal.

John: All right, that’s the first one, and I think that feels like there is a movie to be made here.

Craig: Yes.

John: Someone’s going to write in and say like, oh, this actually did become a movie and we didn’t even know. Probably.

Craig: Oh, sure.

John: All right, next up, this is from another Slate thing, it’s in a Dear Prudence advice column. The title is, “Help. My husband’s manic pixie past has become a full-blown threat to my sanity.”

Craig: Here’s what this woman writes in. “My husband and I have been married for 10 years and generally have a happy marriage. He tells me marrying me was the best thing that ever happened to him, but there’s one thing from his past that is threatening to drive me insane, and it recently got a whole lot worse. I’m still deeply jealous of his feelings for his high school friend, Kate. For lack of a better word, she’s his manic pixie dream girl. We’re all on our 30s, but she still acts about 22,” I love the specificity of that, by the way, “and he’s utterly charmed by her. She lives a few states away, so we only see her about once a year, which is the only thing that keeps me sane. Kate is bright and charming and has about a million friends, so doesn’t have much time for my husband anymore. The second she gives him a crumb of attention, he drops everything.

We recently had a party, and she called him in the middle of it,” I love this part, “drunk and bored. He answered and then abandoned our guests to talk to her for 40 minutes. They never dated, but he had a thing for her all through high school and college. Their dynamic seems to be that he will give her money,” money?, oh, boy, “attention, whatever she wants, and she will give him attention when she feels like it.

Last year, we went on vacation together, and she got trashed and pulled me aside to tell me she was uncomfortable with how often he texts her and some of the things he says to her because she likes me so much, and I deserve better. Then the next day, she didn’t even remember having the conversation. What can I do about this?” Then I’m going to add in parentheses, (What can I do about this unbelievable, messy hurricane of a human being?)

John: What I love about this setup is that it has all the characteristics of romantic comedy, but from the Bill Pullman perspective. Basically, our letter writer is the Bill Pullman in a classic Meg Ryan romantic comedy.

Craig: The Baxter.

John: Yes, The Baxter. I think there’s a really interesting setup here. Obviously, you don’t know any of the specific people in here, but that idea of there is a woman from my husband’s past who, on the surface, is super charming, but I recognize how dangerous she is, and that is a threat. To what degree is she overreacting or underreacting? No one is being evil here. The villainy is just people behaving their own natural way.

Craig: Dangerous women have been a staple of cinema since they invented film, and there’s a good reason for that, because dangerous men have been a staple, dangerous staple. We are fascinated by people who are dangerous. Now, dangerous men tend to be violent. Dangerous women tend to be manipulative and cruel, at least that’s how we portray these things in film.
When it comes to situations like this, everyone goes immediately to being close and fatal attraction. It’s the ultimate, but we all have run into people like this.

John: Oh yes.

Craig: We all know somebody like this.

John: It’s also Jolene. It’s the Dolly Parton song, “Please don’t take my man.”

Craig: Sure.

John: The letter writer is questioning her own relationship, her own value to her husband, and the husband is giving her reason to be suspicious. If you take the sex out of it, if you take the, oh, he’s going to leave his wife for this woman, it’s like the annoying best friend who shows up and takes over everything, that’s annoying, but it’s not a threat to the marriage. It’s the, oh, this woman, if she decided to, could flick her fingers and take it over.

Craig: There’s the modern character of the simp, and the whole concept of simping. This guy’s a simp. He’s simping for this lady. Where this lady gets evil to me is when she gets “drunk,” and then says, “By the way–“ She’s going to play both sides of this marriage, because it seems to me like Kate enjoys chaos. You know like that game show they did on Saturday Night Live, What’s My Name?

John: Oh, it’s so good. Yes.

Craig: Then he goes, “Why do you do this?” He goes, “In a word, chaos.” That’s what some people, and they are fascinating people, they are bright and charming and smart. They don’t wake up in the morning deciding to do evil, this is just how they are. Figuring out how to deal with these destabilizing influences in your life is a challenge.

John: Let’s think about, [crosstalk] if it’s a movie scenario, who is the central character? Is it the letter writer, is it the husband? Is it the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, is it Kate? I can see good arguments for each of them. If it’s the husband, then it feels like, then it’s a rom-com, and he has to decide to leave his wife.

Craig: It is slightly rom-com-y. I could see a movie called The Simp. One of the things that’s interesting about situations like this is that the husband clearly has some stuff that needs fixing also, but it is almost certainly in the realm of self-esteem, some sort of damage.

John: If they’re in their mid-30s, it could be that early midlife crisis. He’s yearning for his youth where this girl was in his life more. There’s that aspect of it.

Craig: It’s possible.

John: He wants to feel handsome and attractive.

Craig: There’s something that Kate does for him that he needs to figure out, because it’s not anything real. People like Kate are drugs. They’re fentanyl. They’re not actually lack of pain. A story about a simp figuring out why he’s simping and losing the people that– That concept and that phenomenon, that’s a great title for a movie, by the way. Somebody should just make The Simp. Right? That’s a pretty good title. [laughs]
I could see people going to see that one. Who do we want in this? It’s got to be somebody younger.

John: It’s not Paul Rudd. It’s somebody younger.

Craig: Way younger, yes. Like?

John: It’s not Jesse Eisenberg.

Craig: No. He’s too old too now. We’re too old to know who it should be.

John: Yes, but it’s that guy.

Craig: It’s that guy.

John: Yes.

Craig: It’s that concept.

John: It could be his story. What kind of movie is it, though? Is it a comedy or is it a drama? What does it feel like? If it’s a drama, there’s a Chekhov’s gun there, but it’s not going off yet.

Craig: It’s a comedy, and of course–

John: It’s an act of comedy that we haven’t made.

Craig: Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s an uncomfortable comedy. It’s a cringe comedy. Obviously, the poor woman who’s writing in here is listening to us, perhaps. I doubt it, but she might be going, she didn’t write it to us, she wrote it to, you know, saying like, “No, this is not a comedy, this is my life. I’m crying all the time.” We’re sorry. We’re just trying to make a movie.

I do think that the phenomenon of that will-o’-wisp leading the simp off into– It’s The Sirens, right?

John: Yes, it is.

Craig: It’s a classic. Actually, the whole male simp thing is underexplored, I think, because those are the people we cheer for. Just could you love yourself enough, so that you wouldn’t follow this ding dong? That’s where we’re going.

John: Just to raise the issue, I think it probably is a movie rather than a series because it needs to get resolved, and if it’s not resolved, it’s going to drive you crazy. I could imagine this being an episode of an ongoing series where this central guy and this woman comes back, and that becomes the source of tension within an episode, and you have to close that character off and get rid of her.

Craig: Yes, in the old days of sitcoms, there could absolutely be a character that shows up once a season and everyone’s like, “Uh-oh, here we go again.” She blows into town, makes this one-side character, in the B-story insane and he promises he won’t do it again and then next time he does. I could see that.

John: All right. Third article here. An all-fan remarked about gold bars that secretly recorded upended his life. This is Brent Efron’s boring Tinder date who wanted to hear all about his work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so Mr. Efron talked. If only he’d seen the hidden camera. This is an article by Lisa Friedman writing for the New York Times.

The summary is that this guy is 20s, Brent Efron, goes on a Tinder date with this guy named Brady, who seemed to only want to talk about his job at the EPA. At the time, Trump was on the campaign trail promising to target climate change funding, so EPA was fast-tracking grants. Brent comes up with an analogy that the EPA was a cruise ship that hit an iceberg; they need to launch its lifeboats right away. Then he says, “It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.”

It turns out that Brady was an operative for Project Veritas and was secretly recording the conversation and posted the video online. The political right seizes upon the phrase “gold bars” and uses it to cancel EPA grants by the current administration. Brent lost his job, and as the article is being written, he’s trying to find his footing again.

Craig: I think he quit his job, because the odds of him continuing at the EPA after January 20th were pretty slim. We truly live in the stupidest timeline. This is dumb. Project Veritas, it’s funny, the opposite of Project Veritas is just everything.

[laughter]

Those people, the Trump people, don’t care. They’re like, “Yes, that’s right. I said it. Ha ha ha. LOL.” Then Project Veritas because people on the left, I guess, the concept is that they are more virtuous before they get trapped.

John: The entrapment thing is what’s so pernicious and makes me feel so gross about this.

Craig: Yes, it does.

John: Brent did nothing wrong. It’s that feeling that you cannot trust anybody in any situation. It echoes to me with the first story, in terms of just being fundamentally wrong, the violation that happens, the violation of trust that happens. Even though it is just a blind date, being secretly recorded is so invasive.

Craig: Yes, and of note, this took place in Washington, D.C., which does not have the consent law. You can do a one-party recording, which is creepy. I could see a version here that is also a romantic comedy.

John: Oh, sure.

Craig: The romantic comedy here is a guy goes on a date. He’s basically been baited into this by this other guy who’s working for Project Veritas. The problem for the Project Veritas guy is he’s starting to fall in love with him. You have to have it over a couple of dates, but he’s starting to fall in love with him, but he’s already got this footage that is the Project Veritas people have and are going to release.

This gold bar thing, it’s actually the most amazing analogy, in that it’s that blue dress, gold dress thing. If you look at it one way or the other, and obviously we know what he meant. What happens if Brady actually falls in love with Brent? What do you do now, Brady?

John: Is Brady even gay? Was the whole thing I set up from the very start, we don’t even know.

Craig: Oh, in this story? No. In reality? No way, because they also go after Brent for being gay. That’s all lumped into the same. I don’t think Project Veritas employs a lot of people on the LGBTQ spectrum.

John: Open the gay folks.

Craig: Oh, yes. Good point. They don’t employ a lot of open gay folks openly.

John: Openly, it’s a lot of work there.

Craig: Openly.

John: This is reminding me a little bit of Michael Clayton as well, where it’s just like, okay, this is a situation that happened. A question of timeline and what is the span of time of the movie? This is probably the inciting incident, but this could actually be deeper into a thing, and is this once part of a larger crisis? This could be a beat in a larger story rather than the main thing.

Craig: Yes, and one thing about this, and it comes up in the story about revenge porn as well, is it’s hard to dramatize viral moments.

John: It is.

Craig: Because we all experience them privately in our home, looking at our phone for five seconds, laughing about it through text and moving on. These viral moments are so ephemeral, and portraying them can be really sweaty. Anytime a movie’s like, and then it goes viral, just because you said so? No one knows why things go viral.

John: It ends up being a lot of cuts to cuts to. I’m thinking of the Ben Platt musical, Dear Evan Hansen, which has a viral moment that happens, but you get a song underneath that helps show what they build and they grow, and it’s organic, too.

Craig: It works on stage much better than it works on film.

John: It does.

Craig: It’s just the nature of that, because you can use your imagination, theater of the mind from stage, and then in a movie, you’re supposed to see stuff, and suddenly it’s, what else can you do, but cut to a lot of people looking at their phones and extras, like pointing at their phones and saying, “Look, I didn’t even know about this. It couldn’t have been that viral.”

John: I think it’s one of the things that was devastating to this guy and a small space, but also just think about what’s happened in the last six months. You can’t track anything.

Craig: No, but I do feel, on a personal note, very bad for Brent. He seems like such a sweet guy.

John: He seems like a sweet guy, and also, you can’t Google his name without that’s going to come up first.

Craig: In a way, I think he’ll be okay.

John: I think he’ll be fine, too.

Craig: You know what, Brent? I think you’re going to land on your feet, because you didn’t do anything wrong, as he says. You know what? That’s how I know he’s a good guy, because he repeats this theme a few times, like, “I didn’t do anything wrong,” which tells me that he’s been thinking, did I do something wrong? It’s that, I think good people tend to overestimate their own culpability in things, and bad people underestimate it.

John: My takeaway from this is, I think what happens to Brent is potentially a good first 10 pages of something that’s actually not the story at all.

Craig: What it hacks.

John: Yes, it’s a setup, but it’s not the engine of the story.

Craig: It’s not the meat.

John: Finally, let’s talk about the unseen fury of solar storms.

Craig: Boom.

John: This is Henry Wismayer writing for Noema.

Craig: Noema.

John: Noema.

Craig: Yes, that magazine we all read all the time?

John: 100%.

Craig: Great website.

John: Great website, really well done. This is about scientists at the Met’s Space Weather Observation Center who watch sunspots, solar flares, and solar storms, and they’re speculating on what threats space weather could have on our world. Space weather.

Craig: Space weather, somewhere, Roland Emmerich just sat up and went, “Huh?”

John: Yes. I was definitely like, Geostorm. It feels like that.

Craig: That’s very Geostorm, which was Dean Devlin, by the way, not Roland Emmerich.

John: Oh, I’m sorry, but they–

Craig: Roland Emmerich’s producing partner decided, I can also direct, and then Geostorm occurred. Boom. Storm is geo.

John: Yes, in 1861, there was what was called the Carrington Event, which was sightings of the northern lights were reported as far south as El Salvador, just 13 degrees north of the equator. Then, the southern lights, which I wasn’t even sure was a thing, came up all the way to San Diego. What happens is there’s a little flash and then just giant bright lights happening and things that would normally be just in the very poles you’re seeing everywhere.

Craig: It knocked out a lot of telegraph lines, but then weirdly, there were some Morse code telegraphy lines that were powered mysteriously by nothing.

John: Yes.

Craig: The insane amount of electrons and radiation and crap that the sun can barf on us in one of these massive– it’s like a volcano on the sun going off, basically. Back then, knocking out some telegraph lines, must have been very annoying for a day or two. Unfortunately, now, unplugging the world.

John: Essentially, our satellites have very little defense against this kind of stuff. It’s very hard to defend against that stuff in space. On the ground, we can do some stuff just to protect towers and certain things, but it’s expensive. As we’ve learned recently, people, if they have the choice not to spend money to do a thing, they won’t do a thing.

Craig: Even if they do, this is the weak link syndrome. It’s just one section that isn’t working quite right and the whole thing collapses. We would be flattened by one of these things. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. You can turn everything back on, but it’s going to take a bit.

John: It’s going to take a while because stuff burns out.

Craig: Yes, and people will have to walk outside and talk to their neighbors.

John: Obviously, the supernatural or in this case, natural, but a big giant event happens, the world and everything that’s upended is a staple in our big cinematic universes and in our series where things are happening where, in the pilot episode, something big changes and fundamentally society is altered by it. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not a zombie attack. It’s not a plague, and no one is hurt directly by it. Instead, it’s just all of our stuff is messed up for a while and the systems are broken, kind of like systems were broken during the pandemic, which is just we couldn’t do the normal things. Our supply chains get messed up.

Craig: But we could talk to each other.

John: We could talk to each other, which was crucial.

Craig: I’m still marveling at the fact that video conferencing sort of got figured out right when we needed I, which is amazing. There are plenty of movies where things happen and people can’t rely on the normal systems anymore. Typically, those movies portray people as horrible. This article suggests that people would be horrible and that very quickly things would descend into riots and violence.

John: Because we’re used to a very centralized media system where we just return our TV and we get the answers to things.
Craig: The centralized media system is the thing that seems to be causing problems more than ever before. Taking social media out of the equation, the question is, would it actually go well? I would argue that in a lot of places it would go well. That deprived of the ability to feed off of conspiracy theories and nonsense, no, people will not be running outside to shoot each other and take each other’s stuff. They will try and help each other.

That’s not to say that things won’t go wrong in certain places. They would. There would almost certainly be looting. That’s typical, but looting is not shooting people in the head. I guess the question is, how would this be a movie? My instinct would be very small character study of a tiny neighborhood where everybody has to suddenly meet each other for the first time, which would be interesting.

John: There was a movie that I met on over at Paramount. This is 15 years ago. It’s not an active development. It was centered around essentially peak oil, but essentially, if I’m remembering this correctly, and I don’t know if this is part of my picture or part of the underlying IP, was that basically a microbe had gotten out that had basically just ate oil and just destroyed all the oil. Basically, all the gas, all the oil just went away and society falling down around that.

Craig: Saving the planet.

John: Saving the planet, sure. Dead two sides of one coin. It’s just so interesting because 15 years ago, that was really scary. If that happened now, it’s like, yes, it would be bad, but we’re so much better. We just have the technology to deal with this, like how we had Zoom when the pandemic came.

Craig: Yes, there’s a, I wouldn’t call it anywhere like first tier Stephen King novel of his many, many novels, but I did enjoy reading The Dome. I don’t know if you-

John: Oh, Under the Dome, yes.

Craig: Was it called Under the Dome?

John: The CBS edition of it was called Under the Dome. There was a series.

Craig: Oh, they made a series of it? This is Dome-like.

John: A town that gets cut off from everybody else.

Craig: Exactly. That’s what an EMP would do to a small town. Now, in a city like ours, everybody would be talking to everybody, and we would figure stuff out. It would very quickly become who’s on your block, because that’s who you can quickly talk to. If the phones aren’t working and the computers aren’t working, you’re talking to the people you can actually see. That means people near you.

I think a lot of people would probably, like here where we live in our neighborhood, I could imagine in a situation like this, that we all decide, hey, we’re going to all stay in one person’s house for two days and then we’re going to all go to the other person’s house for two days. We just don’t want to be alone. We can be together and play games or whatever, and hope to God the food doesn’t run out. John, you could bring all of your guns.

John: Not having grown up in the South, I was not aware of hurricane parties, but friends were talking about hurricane parties.

Craig: I could see that.

John: Essentially, you know there’s a storm coming, you kind of know we’re going to lose power, but it’s not going to be so bad.

Craig: How would this be a movie? Avoiding the obvious, oh my God, and then someone like, “Well, you’ve got to get to so-and-so to turn the blah, blah.” I don’t think it’s a movie.

John: I think your approach to, this is the excuse for a hangout movie that otherwise wouldn’t happen, a snow day kind of thing, it’s a potential way in. I can see the pilot getting ordered for this as a series and what happens and the collapse of it all. I just don’t think it’s a successful ongoing thing.

Craig: No.

John: I guess wrong about things. There’s always this Netflix series that I can’t believe that anybody watches that, and it’s in its fifth season.

Craig: Who knows if anybody’s watching it, though?

John: They know somebody’s watching it.

Craig: I guess somebody must be watching it. We say this so many times. At this point now, I’ve given up even being ashamed. People are like, “Have you seen so-and-so?” I’m like, “I haven’t even heard of that.” They’re like, “What?” I haven’t heard of it.

John: I was talking to a 21-year-old woman in front of my daughters, and she’s like, “Oh, my dad loves Pretty Little Liars,” which is the most YA thing-

Craig: That’s so crazy.

John: -you obsess with.

Craig: At least I know about it. I know about that. That counts.

John: I know because it’s a good title, and that’s why I know about it.

Craig: It’s like every now and then, I’ll see something of so-and-so renewed for its 19th season. I’m like, “What? What is that?” Happens.

John: Happens. Let’s do a recap of our four movies here. I think we’re saying a Solar Storm’s, unless we want to make Geostorm 2, it’s probably not a big movie. It’s an interesting premise, at least. It’s a kickoff.

Craig: Yes, it could be used as a plot point.

John: Another thing I’ll say is, if you wanted to do a historical thing where we don’t know scientifically what’s actually happening, the fact that we suddenly have Northern Lights everywhere in a older scene would be spooky.

Craig: It would be a cool way if you’re doing– instead of the frogs raining down in Magnolia, the sky explodes.

John: The sky explodes. The Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, so Brian Efron, I think we think that is a setup to a different movie, or it’s a smaller beat in a bigger Michael Clayton-y story.

Craig: Agreed.

John: My husband’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You think there’s a simp movie?

Craig: I think there’s a simp movie. I think there’s a simp romantic comedy. That whole concept of simping, I think, is sad and true, but also funny.

John: Go back 20 years, and you put Seth Rogen as that guy.

Craig: Michael Cera.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: I’m sure Michael Cera’s like, “Thank you, guys. Thanks. Thank you for putting me right there on the top of your simp list, you jerks.”

John: Finally, Mother’s Revenge, I think we both agree, is the most movie movie in the sense of an Erin Brockovich-y story about this specific thing and what she was able to accomplish against good odds and the fact that there’s a compelling villain figure in it.

Craig: Yes, it’s going to be a Netflix-y kind of thing. It’s going to be a streaming movie. It’s not going into theaters. I can’t imagine.

John: I think you’re right. Cool. Let us go to a listener question.

Craig: All right.

John: This is Brendan, who’s asking, “Way back in Episode 30,” good Lord, “John and Craig discuss emerging technologies like Avid’s ScriptSync and then speculate about when computers can auto-assemble a film and a near future dominated by “screenwriters and teams of robots.” Craig jokingly advocates for scanning actors and making movies “like a factory.” You were joking you were saying?

Craig: I was joking.

John: “Although Craig is obviously riffing here and isn’t serious, it occurred to me how that is now the future we live in. How has your optimism regarding perspective filmmaking technology changed over the course of your careers?”

Craig: So far, so good. Meaning, let’s talk about not perspective. Let’s talk about the things that didn’t exist when we were in Episode 30 that now do exist. So many of them are so great. We’ve talked about lots of them on the show. There have been tremendous advances in all sorts of things, the fact that we don’t need to use film anymore and things still look beautiful.

John: We still have the choice to use film, but–

Craig: Some people can choose to use it. There’s great arguments as to why it’s fully unnecessary, but–

John: You don’t need to email us.

Craig: Yes, don’t email us, Christopher Nolan. We get it. We know. All those wonderful things that we can now do in editorial, things that streamline stuff. There are also things that are frustratingly still stuck in 1990s. A lot of screenwriting software. The stupid schedule we get that the ADs use is still horrible. There are a lot of funky things that we’re still dealing with.

John: I think we recognize that. We still recognize that it’s because institutionalized systems are hard to change because everyone is used to a thing. Because of the weird freelance way we work, it helps to have standards, but those standards are holding us back.

Craig: It’s not exactly a massive marketplace for people to want to innovate in because it’s for 1,000 people and not 10 million. Perspective filmmaking technology is horrifying. Here’s the thing. I choose to not be horrified. I don’t like it. I see what’s going on out there. The question is, really, is that stuff a strange dead end unto itself? Is it actually going to do these wonderful things that people say? I think it’s not. I’m just going to– if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Surely I will be assassinated by AI for this, but it feels to me like it is an increasingly elaborate dead end of stuff. It’s like every time I see, it’s like, “Look what it can do now.” I’m just like, “Yes, but I don’t like that.”

I’m not optimistic at all. I don’t think things are going well I think in part because all the attention and all the money is fixated now on AI and not on things that might actually make our lives easier as human beings.

John: Yes, I would say I’m not as optimistic as I was before. I also want to put things in context of where I think I was at in Episode 30. I went to see 28 Years Later, which I liked a lot. It took me back to 28 Days Later, which was shot on DV. It was like it looked so messy, but it was like that was the aesthetic it was going for. They had that choice to do it. It didn’t mean that all movies suddenly got shot on DV. It was a unique one-time thing. This time they were shooting on iPhones. It was a deliberate choice to do those things.

I think to where I still have optimism is that I think we as filmmakers and as companies that make films still have a choice about what it is that we want to do, and what technologies we’re going to use, and what technologies we’re not going to use. We can recognize what we’re giving up by swapping in technologies that are “good enough.”

I had a conversation this past week about a potentially very expensive tentpole movie. The producer’s like, “If we wait a year, I think some of those VFXs are going to be less expensive to do. I had to say, that’s probably true. That’s probably some of the things that would have cost $10 million, might cost $7 million or $5 million with time. That I can see. I’m torn based on what I feel because I don’t want to spend $200 million on visual effects. I just don’t think that’s a great use of money and time. We can make more movies. I’m recognizing that money spent on visual effects is largely being spent to pay people to do visual effects.

Craig: I think that depending on the visual effects you’re doing, it can really go directly to people when you’re dealing with smaller visual effects houses as opposed to some of the large ones, which overhead and all the rest of it, those are big businesses. Yes, it’s true. There are things that are happening in the visual effects space that will be invisible to us. We won’t know why some things are happening faster and better. The answer will almost certainly be AI because those things are probably quite rote.

John: We didn’t talk about it on the podcast, but maybe it was two years ago now, science fiction film, The Creator, visually gorgeous, but also cost so much less than anything it costs because the director had a sense of how to do things on a budget in ways that were smart. No one’s knocking spending less money on a movie, but it becomes a question of AT what point are we making a movie or not making a movie based on a budget, which we know is the deciding factor so much of the time.

Craig: I guess the long and short of it is, here we are at– what episode are we on?

John: This is Episode 697.

Craig: 697. We’re in Episode 697. 667 episodes later, we definitely scan actors. That’s something we do, but we do not make movies or [unintelligible 00:48:07] the show like a factory.

John: [inaudible 00:48:08] yes.

Craig: In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It is as painstaking and laborious as it has ever been. Maybe even more so because the audience has come to expect a certain scale for so many things. If you’re aiming for that quality segment, oh man, it’s expensive. It is exhausting. We’re not quite– yes, I’m not very optimistic that it’s going to get easier.

John: One of the things that has changed if you talk about scanning actors is, yes, we started scanning actors, and the actors unions pushed back against it. There are now more rules about what you can scan, when you can scan, and how you can use it, which feels appropriate.

Craig: The way we have scanned actors was already in line with what SAG wanted and got, which is we scan an actor for this show. We don’t use it for anything else. We really just use it if we need like, “Okay, in this shot, we’re going to change your face because you’re on fire.” Then we have it, but we don’t scan actors so that we can replace actors. I don’t know anybody that is.

John: I think the times we have heard those issues being raised where an actor will argue like, “I was not in that episode, but my face, it has me saying something.”

Craig: That would be bad.

John: It would be bad. I think we need to raise a stink when that happens.

Craig: I do acknowledge that Hollywood is full of jerks. Then there’s para-Hollywood, which is the worst place of off-Hollywood Hollywood where there are no scruples. There are absolutely people right now who are the same schlockmeisters that always existed, who used to say, “You don’t have to worry about safety. Just throw them in the car and light it on fire.”

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Yes. Right? Those guys are like, “We don’t need to get it. Just get me an AI thing that sounds like them, and it’s good enough.” We’re going to have to be dealing with cockroaches forever. We always have, we always will.

John: To the degree I’m optimistic, I feel like we will acknowledge and wrestle with these situations as they come up and we’ll set some standards or practices around them. Sometimes it’ll be comfortable, sometimes it’s really, really uncomfortable, but we can’t pretend they’re just not going to happen.

Craig: No. Ultimately, there will become some sort of understanding of how to ethically employ AI within the human artistic pursuit. Right now, no one knows what the hell that would be. No one. Everyone is either guessing, or is terrified, or is way too excited.

John: That’s why I think we need to have smart people who are actually working in those fields right now having the conversations about what it is because otherwise, it’s going to be made by businessmen.

Craig: It’s ultimately businessmen that will– if we have a prayer, it’s going to be because the businessmen align themselves with us because AI is attempting to eat everyone’s lunch. I don’t know why Hollywood continues to miss this simple fact. The technology industry despises ownership of information. They hate it. They hate ownership of information. They hate ownership of content. It disgusts them. What they love is being the people you pay to go get everything. They don’t want you as a– you write a song, they don’t want you to own that song. They want somebody to pay them to play that song for them. That’s what technology wants, and they will forever undermine the basis of what makes Hollywood tick, which is ownership of artistic expression.

John: All right. Let’s do our one cool things. My one cool thing is a piece of technology that is in front of Craig right now. It is called TRMNL.

Craig: TRMNL?

John: It is this very minimalist e-ink display. You buy it off of usetrmnl.com, and you can set up for what things you want it to display. It’s just a simple website, and you can have it display the weather. I have right now displaying how many days until the Scriptnotes book comes out.

Craig: 136.

John: As we’re recording this. You can set up your little dashboards. It’s fun for nerdy gadgeteers like me. It’s just like a very good version of something that I just wanted and the fact that someone made it was great.

Craig: It can display anything?

John: Anything.

Craig: It looks like it’s a nice little side thing for D&D.

John: Totally. It switches between screens, but it updates itself once every 15 minutes. The reason why it does it so slowly is because it goes for six months on a charge.

Craig: I’m thinking, you know how for some players, their action economy, how they’re supposed to do and the things that they can do, they forget. Especially as you level up, it gets more and more– to have a flowchart-

John: Oh, totally.

Craig: -would be very cool to have. I just want everything to be about D&D, but it’s like this thing’s adorable. I love that it’s called TRMNL with no vowels. It’s TRMNL.

John: TRMNL.

Craig: TRMNL.

John: If you are curious about a little device, so it has a stand, but you can also hang it on a wall.

Craig: How much does it cost?

John: Let’s take a look. I think that was–

Craig: TRMNL.

John: TRMNL.

Craig: It looks like the kind of device that wants to make you happy like in the Toy Story world. It’s really sweet.

John: The version you’re seeing, it’s $139. They come in different colors. There’s a limited edition, which is $154. I got the developer one, which is a little bit more expensive, so I can program my own dashboards.

Craig: Developers. Developers.

John: Developers. Developers. I like it. It’s not going to change my world, but I do like it.

Craig: I love that. We should throw on a link to Steve Ballmer doing the developers, developers, developers speech just because–

John: It’s incredible.

Craig: It’s the greatest thing of all time.

John: It’s an early nerdy meme. I just love it.

Craig: It’s just insane. It’s wonderful. My one cool thing this week, you want to talk about nerdiness?

John: Please.

Craig: John, I’ve gone back in time approximately almost 20 years back in time with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.

John: I remember playing Elder Scrolls way back in the day. Talk me through which one this is so that I don’t get confused.

Craig: Elder Scrolls IV is the one before Skyrim.

John: Okay.

Craig: This is back when they made these games not once every 30 years. Skyrim came out in 2011.

John: I think that was maybe, actually, the first Elder Scrolls I played.

Craig: Okay, yes. That was the first a lot of people played. That’s 14 years ago. We still haven’t seen six. They’ve said maybe there will be one and no one knows what’s going on with it. I think maybe I want to say four years prior to that Elder Scrolls IV came out. If you didn’t play it, it was excellent.

It was the first Elder Scrolls I played. I didn’t play Morrowind. I hadn’t played the prior ones. I didn’t know anything about that world. I think it was the first Bethesda game I played. It’s outstanding.

They’ve done that remaster thing, which they’re remastering stuff from 2013 now. I’m like, go back to the 2000 and aughts. What I love about the way they did it is they didn’t remaster it so it doesn’t look like– it’s still those janky faces. It’s like that weird– but it just still looks really good. I’m playing it on the Steam Deck, and I’m having a blast. Because it’s been– what year did Oblivion come out? 2006. Just shy of 20 years. I don’t remember anything from 20 years ago. This is awesome, but–

John: The fact that you can play it on a handheld device now too is great.

Craig: It’s so cool.My daughter was just four, and she would sit on the couch and watch me play Oblivion. We have these great memories of her getting so excited when there would be trouble. I’d say, “Oh, the music’s changing. There’s going to be trouble.” Then she was like, “Find trouble, find trouble.” It was just a great game. John, do you play the Bethesda games?

John: I played Skyrim and Fallout a lot, yes. Most of them have a very similar mechanic.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: You’ve complained about that that they’re a little too similar.

Craig: Starfield is where you start to feel, A, it’s really getting old. No people when you talk to them should not look directly into the lens of the camera. That’s insane. B, compared to Oblivion, which is essentially 20 years old, Starfield is empty. It is devoid. Oblivion is packed with so many people, and so many stories, and so many places to go and things to see. When you go into a town, there’s, I don’t know, 18 houses in one district that you can knock on a door and talk to people. Starfield is like five people live in this city. I don’t know what’s going on, but I would urge Bethesda, look back, look back to your roots. I’m having an absolute blast.

John: That’s great. I’m glad to hear it. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. On top of your games. Birdigo, which is the game that I made with Corey Martin, which is a cross between Wordle and Balatro, is going to be out this week. If you are listening to this episode as it comes out, take a look for that on Steam as well. You can put that on your Steam deck.

Craig: You guys are pumping stuff out left and right.

John: Yes, more stuff coming.

Craig: Factory.

John: Nothing could top the Scriptnotes book, which is available for pre-order.

Craig: Nothing today? Today.

John: Today.

Craig: It’s happening right now. People, it’s happening.

John: Adam– I’m going through the– Boilerplate, people can just pull up on their phone right now scriptnotesbook.com and pre-order the book.

Craig: Just-

John: You can pre-order it from-

Craig: -pre-order?

John: -your local bookstore through bookshop.org or through one of the big services, whatever you want to do.

Craig: We’re not going to judge you.

John: Do what you want to do.

Craig: Do what you want to do.

John: Do you. If you live in the Los Angeles region, we are planning to do live shows for the book on the week it comes out. Just still pre-order it. If there’s an extra book you get there, you can give away one of your copies of your book.

Craig: Listen, if you get eight or nine of these, then just think of everywhere you go, just hand a book out to someone.

John: Do you have more than one bathroom?

Craig: Yes. It’s a great way to tip people.

John: Absolutely. Not to replace– give them money– Then, also–

Craig: -then also be [unintelligible 00:58:08] here.

John: Yes, absolutely. Listen, I know you are a waiter. I know you are a valet, but you’re also probably a screenwriter. Here’s a book for you.

Craig: Great job.

John: Great job.

Craig: It’s a great way to get punched in the face.

[laughter]

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also a place where we can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have t-shirts, and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find us at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with all the things we talked about today on the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all those premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes all the way back to Episode 6. What did I reference?

Craig: 30.

John: 30, yes. Bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on kindness, scriptnotesbook.com. Order your book and send Drew at ask@johnaugust.com the receipt from that, and we’re going to send you something. I don’t know what that’s going to be yet, but it’s going to be fun.

Craig: Amazing.

John: Craig, thanks for a good show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig, I want to talk about kindness.

Craig: Shut up, John.

John: It could have been from, Into the Woods. I think I may have heard that [unintelligible 00:59:34] recently like, “You’re so nice. You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re just nice.”

Craig: “You’re not bad. You’re just nice.” It’s one of my favorite lyrics.

John: It’s so good. He’s a very nice prince, and he’s nice.

Craig: It’s the last midnight.

John: Yes, so good. Kindness is not niceness, and it’s also not politeness. I just wanted to separate that out both in terms of the real world, but also how we’re thinking about our characters. I think so often we have characters who we think about as being good, but what is it that they’re doing good? Do they have a good nature? Are they friendly? Are they helpful? Is their niceness transactional? I think kindness has a non-transactional quality to it that I think is a crucial distinction.

Craig: Yes, nice almost implies not nice. It’s absence of trouble. “Oh, you’re nice.” Kind does imply deeds.

John: It implies action for sure. It’s not just a good spirit. It’s not pity, because pity can make you feel condescending. Kindness is not pity. It can be related to love, but you can be kind to somebody you don’t love. You can be kind to somebody you despise.

Craig: Nice is seeing somebody crying and saying, “Hey, are you all right?” and they’re like, “Yes, no, I’m fine. I’m fine.” You’re like, “Okay, just checking on you.” Kind is sitting down with them and going, “How can I help? Is there a way for me to help?”

John: Exactly. Compassion would also be recognizing someone else’s pain, but not doing anything about it.

Craig: Kindness implies an attempt to connection, going out of your way. Nice people can ignore trouble. That doesn’t make them not nice. It just means that they’re not bad.

John: There is a CS Lewis quote talking about how your goal is not just that someone is happy, but they’re better on a deeper level. There’s comforting, but that comforting isn’t necessarily kindness. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. There is an aspect of that that is actually a little bit true that you have to speak to the actual truth of things and not just paper stuff over.

Craig: Then think of the great Tennessee Williams line, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,” meaning the things they give me, the way they take care of me. It’s an interesting thing to think about is, characters who are kind oftentimes feel they don’t have main character energy-

John: Yes, I think you’re right.

Craig: -because they’re mentors, they’re the neighbor, they’re grandma, priest, buddy.

John: To some degree is that because I think of kind people as having completed an arc or being a little self-actualized. I think there’s something about that feels a little complete about a kind character and they have to learn to do that. There’s situations where I’m thinking of Cinderella who is kind, but she’s also— she starts the story just really weak and disempowered.

Craig: Cinderella is not a good character. Cinderella’s character is victim. That’s it. She’s a perfect person who is kind to the animals. She is a victim of mean people. Then a fairy godmother just goes, “Boop, boop. Have a great night.” She’s like, “Okay.” Then the prince is like, “Love you.” Then she wins.

John: There’s no great arc. There’s no–

Craig: No, it’s a fairy tale. It’s a fairy tale designed to punish the wicked as many of them are. There are morality plays as and apparently stepmothers were a huge problem in like 1500s Germany.

John: I’m not trying to steel-man stepmothers [unintelligible 01:03:24] some other issue, but I think they were actually much more common back in the day of when women died in childbirth all the time.

Craig: Sure, but why were they so mean?

John: On some genetic level, isn’t it the right choice to push aside your husband’s previous children so that he will spend his time and energy on your children? That’s a Hansel and Gretel.

Craig: It must’ve happened quite frequently, or it just happened to the Brothers Grimm.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: They just had a horrible stepmom and they were like, “Well, what should the villain be this time? Can we do stepmom again?”

John: Yes. I think we can do a little twist on it.

Craig: I don’t think we’re done with that.

John: Take her to a witch at a candy house.

Craig: Yes, let’s do that. That’ll be great. What about in this situation? Also stepmom. The problem with the archetype characters like Cinderella is they’re pointlessly kind to the extent that we don’t really care. We’re looking for main characters who are kind, who are almost punished for it in a way. Not that they started victims. They help someone. I’ve seen this in comedies. You help somebody and then you can’t get rid of them. Now what do you do? It’s that kind of thing.

John: Yes, it is. It is that kind of thing. I wonder how kind end up being both-

Craig: Sort.

John: Sort-

Craig: Type and-

John: -and characteristic. The etymology of that, that’s probably fascinating, but–

Craig: Yes, let’s look it up.

John: All right.

Craig: Here we go.

John: All right.

Craig: Here we go. There’s only one way to find out. Before the 12th century, it just all comes from middle English kinda from old English kind, akin to old English kin. Oh, okay.

John: Oh, so it’s coming from kin. Okay, great.

Craig: It’s like how you would treat kin in this kind way. You would treat them like family and also it’s family. It’s of a sort. That actually makes a ton of sense.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: I like the idea of kindness as treating someone not family-

John: As family.

Craig: -as family, as kin.

John: Absolutely. It’s recognizing the shared experience of this and being able to put yourself— It’s beyond empathy, because empathy, again, is just compassion, seeing a thing but actually not doing a thing.

Craig: This is more like I’m forging a connection with you that I don’t need to, but I will.

John: Altruism, I think, is just more of a platonic idea. It’s a general approach to things, but it’s not specific to it.

Craig: This is why etymology is great.

John: I think it is actually a good example. It’s like, “Oh yes, that’s right.”

Craig: This is why you look things up.

John: Yes, look things up. That’s a lesson we’ve learned after–

Craig: Way to go, [unintelligible 01:05:57]?

John: After 679 episodes. We could just wonder about it, or we could just look them up.

Craig: We’re at 697. What happens at 700?

John: We haven’t–

Craig: Does the ball drop? What happens?

John: We haven’t discussed what should happen. I don’t know. It’s three weeks away.

Craig: Oh my God, this is a lot of pressure.

John: It’s a lot of pressure.

Craig: Although it’s a weird. 750 is a number, right?

John: 750 is a bigger number than 700.

Craig: 750 is insane.

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s a real number.

John: We’ve got a year to worry about that.

Craig: That’s DCCL. That’s exciting.

John: I’m impressed that you were able to pull that off in your head, Roman numerals.

Craig: Standard puzzling thing. Oh, that’s right. You’ve got to know Roman numerals. Got to know them.

John: All right.

Craig: John, I’d like to thank you for being kind.

John: Craig, I’d like to thank you for being kind as well.

Link:

  • Preorder the Scriptnotes book!
  • Send your pre-order receipt to Drew at ask@johnaugust.com
  • A Mother’s Revenge as told to Christina Cauterucci for SLATE
  • Charlotte Laws’ fight with Hunter Moore, the internet’s revenge porn king by Carole Cadwalladr for The Guardian
  • Help! My Husband’s Manic Pixie Past Has Become a Full-Blown Threat to My Sanity, Dear Prudence column for SLATE
  • SNL’s What’s That Name
  • An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life by Lisa Friedman for NYTimes
  • The Unseen Fury of Solar Storms by Henry Wismayer for Noema
  • TRMNL
  • Steve Ballmer: Developers
  • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
  • Birdigo
  • Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
  • Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
  • Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
  • Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
  • Craig Mazin on Instagram
  • John August on Bluesky and Instagram
  • Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
  • Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

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