The transcript for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2024/adapting-for-television).
**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has a few F-bombs, just in the One Cool Thing section. So if you’re listening with your kids in the car, you can skip just that section.
Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you’re listening to Episode 631 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Now, there’s a long history of bringing TV shows to the big screen. For example, my own Charlie’s Angels movies. But today on the show, what happens when you go the other way and bring a big screen property to television.
We’ll talk with the co-creator and showrunner of the new Mr. and Mrs. Smith movies about that process and the differences between telling a story over eight hours rather than two. We’ll also answer some listener questions on samples, casting, and more. And in our Bonus Segment for Premium members, we’ll talk about film school and fellowships. But first, Drew, we have some follow-up.
**Drew Marquardt:** We do. In Episode 629 we had someone write in who is in a writing team, and they were wondering if they could pass their original samples on to their reps or if one person on the team could do that.
Paul wrote in to say, “I was in a similar situation in 2018. My writing partner and I had been writing separately for years until we teamed up for one project. That landed us a manager in LA, and we sold our pilot to NBC. But we knew going into the partnership that we both wanted careers in Hollywood, and that meant getting a manager. Our partnership just happened to be fruitful and lead to that goal, so it was never an issue with us when we each presented separate works to our new manager. We were happy and rooting for each other, because we respected each other’s goals. We are each other’s cheerleaders. We both now have separate writing careers with the same manager, while maintaining our friendship, which began before writing anything together.”
**John:** Great. It sounds like they went into this process of getting a manager with the expectation, we will ultimately separate and do some different things, which feels right. Having that conversation up front seems good. Looking at the Brian follow-up here too, it also feels like communication was key for them.
**Drew:** Brian wrote, “My writing partner and I had had the conversation very early on about how we would deal with situations like this, and it’s worked out well. First, we were okay with developing stories together, and only one of us actually wrote the script. If that’s the case, it’s only the person who wrote the script who claims it as a sample. Second, him and I have different skills. I have an MFA in playwriting. He’s a stand-up comedian. We know we will eventually want to work on different stuff. Our partner writing is never to get in the way of our individual expressions. Third, if we get represented together, we know all work with that agent until such a time that we both have established careers, we’ll be writing together. And fourth, we delineate our stuff, my stuff, and your stuff before we ever start writing. It’s a shocker, I know, but open and consistent communication was key in making it work.”
**John:** That last point seems really important, because we’ve talked with other writing teams who have come on the podcast, and they will talk about, “This is an idea I have. Is this an idea for us together? Is this an idea for me separately?” I think that’s important to early on establish what those are. We talk about first-time writing partners and the importance of having this conversation but also getting some stuff on paper about what’s going to happen here, because when you don’t do that, it becomes really uncomfortable for everybody involved.
**Drew:** Seth Rogen talked about that.
**John:** That’s right. More follow-up on phonetic alphabets.
**Drew:** Jonathan wrote, “I’m enjoying your adventures in phonetics this year, and I thought you might like to know that the Earth Species Project in Berkeley, which is using AI to decode animal communication, has now introduced the first inter-species phonetic alphabet to transcribe animal sounds.”
**John:** I’ve seen a little bit of that on TikTok or Reels, which is how old people get TikToks. It is actually really cool, because there are consistent sounds that birds are making, that different things are making. It feels like an important first step to identify these things. Honestly, machine learning and AI is going to probably have some real insights here, because they can just listen to tens of thousands of hours of things and see what are the consistent patterns that we can’t notice that they can notice in there. Watch this space, because I feel like this time next year we’re going to hear some real breakthroughs about not just whale sounds, but bird sounds and other stuff happening there.
**Drew:** That’s so cool.
**John:** It’s cool. It’s cool. All right. That’s enough follow-up. Let us get to the meat of this episode. Francesca Sloane is a writer and producer known for Fargo, Atlanta, and the new series Mr. and Mrs. Smith, on which she is the co-creator and showrunner. Welcome, Francesca.
**Francesca Sloane:** Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.
**John:** It’s great to have you here. I want to talk about the show, obviously. But before that, I want to get into your career path, because if I look at IMDb, I see you starting in 2017, and it feels like a rocket ship, really fast. I bet that allies a lot of other stuff that happened before then. Can you talk to us about how you got started in the industry as a writer? What was your genesis here?
**Francesca:** Absolutely. I never had the chutzpah, I guess you could say, to think I could be a professional writer. I always was a writer in terms of just being somebody that liked to tell stories and focused on that in school and things like that. But in terms of thinking I could make a career out of it, that was never actually part of the agenda, I guess you could say. I had gone to art school, because my parents were big on education. It was something that I enjoyed, making films and writing stories. They were not thrilled that a non-trust fund kid decided to pack their things, move to LA, and go to art school.
**John:** What school were you going to?
**Francesca:** I went to California Institute of the Arts, which was actually a very anti-narrative, experimental school.
**John:** I think of CalArts as animation and just really experimental films. It kind of feels New Yorky for being in Los Angeles.
**Francesca:** Definitely. I would agree with that. That was what drew me in, which also takes me even further away from a typical screenwriting career, writing narrative things. But even within that structure, there was a teacher there named Nicole Panter, who was really cool. She used to manage the punk band The Germs. She worked on Peewee Herman. She was very cool. She led a very loose-based screenwriting course. That was my favorite class of CalArts. But even with that said, I got into making these experimental video art type work.
I just took any job I could, because at that point, I just liked Los Angeles. I worked at Yum Yum Donuts. I cleaned toilets. I nannied for celebrity children – well, celebrities who had children.
**John:** I think celebrity children would be awesome.
**Francesca:** Celebrity children. I was Haley Joel Osment’s nanny, even though we’re the same age. No. It was just constantly just doing whatever I could to pay the bills and still make art. But I would still go home and write these screenplays for no reason. I wasn’t even sure why I was doing that. I eventually decided to go to UCLA for a masters program, mostly because I figured I could get a teaching job at some point. If I was able to be in a creative writing community and be around writers in that respect, I felt, what a beautiful way to be around imaginative people for the rest of my life, again, still not considering that I could actually do that by going down the direction of trying to write TV for myself. I ended up writing a script that won a competition there.
**John:** Tell me about that. What was the competition like? What was the script?
**Francesca:** UCLA has this screenwriting competition. I submitted this script called Headbangers, which is about this punk kid in the ’90s who moves to North Philly, which is very close to where I grew up, and is immersed in a world that makes him fall in love with rap music.
**John:** Great.
**Francesca:** I wrote it very much about the kids that I grew up around. It felt very authentic to my experience at the time. That landed me with a few meetings with managers, because if you win the competition, that’s the prize is you get an opportunity to meet with people from the industry.
**John:** I’m going to have you pause right there. It sounds like the script you wrote was a script that you had unique experience in. Someone could read the script and meet you and say, “Oh, she’s the one who wrote the script,” and it feels like there’s a good fit there. You feel like, “Oh, I get that she is the person who wrote this script.”
**Francesca:** I think that that’s very true. I actually remember there was one manager who said this very bizarre, backhanded thing, where he said, “I’m so surprised when I saw that your name was Francesca. I really thought a man wrote this script, because it just felt like such a masculine energy.” I found that so strange, because to me, I just wrote something that felt very honest. But I guess maybe he was leaning toward the fact that the protagonist happened to be this teenage boy. But I remember that striking me as something really, I don’t know, interesting, but also kind of a problem. I thought, “I’m definitely not going to work with you, sir.” But it was an interesting way to dip your toe in.
That eventually led me to the path of meeting my manager, who is this man named David Katzman. Every single person said to me, “Just make sure that you weigh your options. Don’t hire anybody in the room.” I hired David in the room immediately.
**John:** I hired my lawyer in the room too. Sometimes it just clicks.
**Francesca:** Exactly. You get a feeling. In fact, every single thing that I’ve done so far, I have not listened to that advice and have always gone with my gut in that way. So far, knock on wood, it has not led me astray.
**John:** At this point, you’ve signed with a manager, and you have a script that has caught some interest. Do you have other stuff to show? What’s happening next?
**Francesca:** I had nothing else to show, actually. In fact, he had said to me, “How would you feel about trying to be in a writers’ room?” I said, “I’m quite shy. I always imagined I would write, if anything, if I was going to go down this path, features, because I spend so much time by myself.” He said, “Why don’t we just give it a try and see what happens.”
There was this Sony Crackle show that was looking for somebody, and I think specifically a Latina woman for one character on the show named Izzy, who happened to be that as well. In order to be a part of that room – they were worried that maybe Headbangers was a fluke – they said, “Does she have any other samples?” I had nothing. Over the weekend, I wrote a slew of short stories and a few short scripts. I just said, “Here. Just give them this. We’ll see how it goes.” That ended up doing the thing.
**John:** That’s great. For international listeners, Crackle, I guess it maybe still exists. I don’t know to what degree it exists.
**Francesca:** I don’t know either, honestly.
**John:** It was an online video platform, that point where everyone thought web video’s going to be the next thing. Was it WGA? Was it not WGA?
**Francesca:** Actually, it was not, and I was not WGA, obviously. I had started that room very briefly. But at the exact same time, before that room even started, I ended up meeting with Veena Sud for her show, Seven Seconds, that was to be on Netflix. But that wasn’t anywhere ready to go. We said that if somehow I land that gig, which was a big question mark, I would be able to leave the startup Crackle room early and leapfrog into Veena’s room. All of this, again, big question marks. Nothing was certain. That ended up ultimately happening. Veena did end up hiring me for Seven Seconds. So I jumped from the Sony Crackle room to Veena Sud’s room.
**John:** You were worried about being in a room, because you felt like you were a shy person who wanted to write alone. What was the process of adaptation of learning how to be in a room? Because rooms are very different. There’s different cultures. What worked for you?
**Francesca:** Oh my gosh. It was like just meeting my people. It was the first time where I felt like I truly fit in. That sounds very idealistic and romantic. But it was just sitting around with a bunch of nerds, talking about characters and story and world building. For me, that was just so exciting. In fact, when I write on my own now, I get a little lonely, because it is so incredible to be able to bounce ideas off of people in that way and laugh and give personal anecdotes. It just all clicked. I just didn’t realize that that was what it was going to be. It felt right. It felt like home.
**John:** Seven Seconds was a Netflix show. It was a bigger show. Veena Sud’s an experienced showrunner. Were you taking notes? Were you trying to figure out, “This is how I do that job,” or were you just heads down, like, “I got to deliver as,” you were a staff writer, I’m guessing?
**Francesca:** Yes, I was a staff writer. I was so naïve, which I actually think worked in my favor. I didn’t understand the hierarchy that you’re supposed to know when going into that. I wouldn’t necessarily give this advice. I think it’s good to do your research and become well learned before you enter any kind of environment. But I did not do that. I did just go with human interactions and feelings. I started to figure out very quickly that if I was speaking too much, certain people had certain energies about it. I learned my place just by picking up on cues. But I didn’t totally understand that. I just was this dog with a bone that would get so excited.
If we couldn’t crack something in the room, I’d go home and spend the night trying to figure it out, to come in with something the next day, just because I was excited, not because I was kissing ass or anything. I had never had a job that inspired me that much before. Looking back now, I feel like I would be so annoyed with me if I were the upper-level writers in that room.
**John:** We have a lot of listeners who are going to be in that same situation. What advice can you give them when they’re feeling like the energy is just a little strange here? How did you navigate? How would you recommend it now that you’ve had to be the person in charge? What advice do you give?
**Francesca:** I think being excited is a wonderful thing. I think being a hard worker is obviously something that can only be helpful in that dynamic, because ultimately, that’s what you’re there to do is to break story, figure out the problems, solve them. But I do think it’s really important that you’re not taking up too much space, just like anywhere. It’s like really making sure that other people have opportunities, because most of the time, when you do that, your ideas can only become better, or they might actually see something that you’re not seeing yet. The collaborative process of a writers’ room is the beauty of it in the first place.
I will say though, Veena is absolutely incredible. But that was a very straightforward, conventional way of running a room. It was very much about plotting and breaking things and character development. The way that I like to work, ever since working on Atlanta, and the way that I run my room is more parlor style, talking more about your own life and anecdotes and what you saw that might’ve been interesting online or things like that first, before you go into the rest of it.
**John:** When you say first, first bit of business in the day is all that talking stuff before you get to, “This is the episode that’s on the board. This is what we’re trying to focus on.”
**Francesca:** Maybe not even just the day. I think even just the first few weeks, it’s just becoming about the alchemy in the room.
**John:** You said be careful that you’re not taking up too much space. A thing we hear a lot of writers of color talking about when they’re going into these rooms, it’s that feeling like, “How do I show up with my full self? How do I feel present in this place and not always asking permission to speak?” Any guidance on that?
**Francesca:** This is not anything unique, what I’m saying right now. But I really think that people react well to being your authentic self. I think don’t think about that as much. I think I’m saying that less about being a person of color myself, which I can totally relate to that sentiment. I think I’m saying that more in terms of making sure that you’re also listening and that you’re not so hungry to get your own idea out, just because I think it makes your idea better. But I would advise to not think about that as a person of color, and go in and just be completely unabashedly you.
**John:** They hired you for a reason. That’s always a thing to remember. You were picked out of a lot of choices, and so recognize that they want you in that space. They had many choices, and they chose you.
**Francesca:** Exactly. I totally agree with that. I think the less that you think about that, the more that your brain can process than other things. It’s a liberating thing to actually be like, “What would this character do?” as opposed to, “Oh god, what am I doing here? What should I say?” There’s a freedom in that.
**John:** You’re in a room. You’re seeing how television is written. But did you get a chance to see how television is made in that first process? How close was the writing room to the actual production?
**Francesca:** Veena was such a G in that respect. She created the room so that even, no matter what level you were as a writer, you would basically go in as her stand-in. You would advocate for whatever you would think Veena would want, and you would show-run. I got very lucky with that, because here I am, I don’t know, this term is not the greatest, but this baby writer. I’m on set and being able to do the job that a showrunner would do. We would touch base with her every single day. She was still very much part of the process.
**John:** That was a show that was shooting here in Los Angeles?
**Francesca:** They shot that in New York. That was also very exciting is to be able to be on location in that way and do all of those things and make a lot of mistakes, which I definitely did, and learn from them. She was good about that.
**John:** Some examples? What mistakes did you make being on set?
**Francesca:** There’s a part of you that wants to make sure that you’re doing right by Veena. Because Veena was such a good leader, it wasn’t even just because you want to do right by your boss. Specifically, we wanted to do right by Veena Sud, because she was just this incredible person, and she worked so hard, and she really had a vision for her show. I would sometimes get anxious, because I would think, “Oh, Veena wouldn’t want this that way.” Then it really is a matter of how do you communicate those things. You also have to respect your director. My director was Ernest Dickerson, who is a big-
**John:** A legend.
**Francesca:** Yeah, a legend. Here I am. In his eyes, I look like a 13-year-old little twerp coming up and trying to give him notes constantly. I would have to gauge how to give notes, because I didn’t want to feel like a gnat that he had to shoo away. I think a few times he probably did feel like that, but I understand why he did. Those kind of things, like navigating how to give those notes, making sure that certain things are actually happening, when he might have a vision that might be different than what I would assume Veena’s would be.
**John:** The challenge as the writer, you know how the whole thing has to fit back together, and sometimes on that set, the director might be fantastic but may not remember these pieces have to get together this way. You were in that room as a showrunner was approving this script and what the purpose of that scene was, what the purpose of this segment was.
**Francesca:** Exactly.
**John:** Sometimes you’re the only person on that set with that memory.
**Francesca:** Exactly, exactly.
**John:** Coming off of that show, how was it moving to the next show, to the next show? Was it a steady progression? Did you have ups and downs?
**Francesca:** I wish I could say I had ups and downs, because it just makes the story more interesting. But I was one of those very lucky people where it just kept on going, one room to the next to the next to the next.
**John:** What are some differences you’ve noticed in different rooms? You’re coming off of a really good experience there. Hopefully, they were all good experiences. But every room is going to have its different culture, its different vibe. What were some differences you noticed between the rooms?
**Francesca:** Every single room was an entirely different job in terms of how different they could be. I don’t think I could point at any room and say, oh, this one was similar to this one. They were all completely different beasts. After that room, I jumped right into, and I actually came in a little bit later, to Beau Willimon’s show The First. That had its own intimidating factor, just because there was already that alchemy that I had described earlier, and here I am as the new kid stepping in. One person can truly change an entire thing in terms of a room. Jeff Melvoin once said to me that a writers’ room is like choosing who you want to be trapped on a submarine with for hours and hours at a time.
I was a little bit intimidated by the fact that I was jumping into that room a little bit later. We were there to support Beau’s ideas. It was a lot of us kind of helping him constructivist thing, which felt different than how collaborative Veena’s room was, where she really wanted to pull from us. I used to describe it as – and I mean this with complete respect – but it was like if you play a pinball machine, you know the two little things that bat the ball around?
**John:** Yeah.
**Francesca:** I felt like that was our job.
**John:** You’re the flippers.
**Francesca:** Exactly. We were the flippers, which was totally fine and understandable. It was a great room with really talented people. But that was very different than what I had experienced right before that. It was also a smaller room, significantly smaller.
**John:** That was a first season show. It was a whole group of people together. Going into Fargo: Season Four, that’s an anthology show, so there’s not ongoing mythology, but I suspect there are people who are coming back year after year on that show. What is it like fitting into the fourth season of a show with established people?
**Francesca:** Interestingly enough, yes, it was an anthology show, but we were all brand new to Noah, which was new for him too.
**John:** Great.
**Francesca:** Noah was the consistency there, but we actually all were this new crowd trying to replicate this really strong voice that other seasons had already expressed. What was interesting about that season as well though is it was tackling race. Part of what is interesting about Fargo in terms of the comedy is that it’s actually not necessarily pointing at something as heavy as that. It Trojan horses in heavy material by not speaking on those things. I think it was a big challenge in terms of the tone of the Fargo universe to try to bring that into the fold. I think we did our best. I think Noah did a fantastic job. He’s a genius. But I think it was an interesting place to play because of that obstacle.
**John:** You were talking about how in your rooms you like to have a parlor feeling where there’s a lot of blue sky and a lot of potentially weeks of chatting about stuff to get the speed up and running. Was that more, “We have this many episodes. Let’s get started and cracking.”
**Francesca:** Definitely. Noah lives in Austin, and he was also directing Lucy at the time. There were times when it was just the room in that sense. When it was just the room without our leader, so to speak, there was a lot more of small talk and personal anecdotes. We actually all got very, very close. It was an incredible room. It’s Enzo Mileti, Scott Wilson, Stefani Robinson, who I ended up meeting, which was my link to Atlanta, this guy Lee. It was just incredible, so we really bonded as friends. But when Noah would come back to the fold, it was go time. It was work. I used to explain it like we would mine ideas, and Noah would come back to the room, and he would take our ideas that felt like fuel or coal, and then in real time turn them into diamonds. It was an exceptional thing to witness. But that was that process.
**John:** Great. You teed this up. Then you moved into Atlanta, which is an established show. You’re coming into the third season of it?
**Francesca:** Yes.
**John:** What is it like? I assume there were writers who’d been through that whole process. There’s the ongoing storylines, those things. How do you catch up to speed with it? How do you get running when something is already going like that?
**Francesca:** Atlanta was the biggest gift of my career. I think it will always be, actually. It was my favorite show. I remember meeting with my agents years before. They said, “If you could pie in the sky, what would it be?” I said, “Somehow write on Atlanta,” which seemed really unusual and unlikely, because part of what makes that show so incredible is that it’s specifically a Black point of view in a lot of ways. It was just a silly thing to even say. Then ultimately, it just happened.
Stefani Robinson hit me up and said, “Hey, Donald’s looking to expand the room. He especially would love strong female voices. Do you have anything?” Again, I wrote a sample that wasn’t a thing yet. I wrote this silly look script called Tuesdays that was about four different Tuesdays in a row between this family. That felt like my tone actually, but part of why I liked Atlanta so much is I felt like my tone could lend itself more naturally to a show like Atlanta. That got me a meeting with Donald Grover and Stephen Glover.
**John:** Stephen Glover is his brother and producing partner, right?
**Francesca:** Yeah, he’s the funniest person on the planet. Literally the funniest person on the planet. No one can make me laugh more. I feel like a baby when Steve’s in the room, because I’m just laughing at him constantly.
That was the most intimidating room. I keep using the word intimidating, but that was the most intimidating, because this is a collection of friends. These guys were all friends before they were writers together. Two of them are even related to each other. They have created this hit show for so many seasons, then took this hiatus and have a big thing to prove by coming back so late. I actually jumped into that room late as well, because I had been doing a development project that didn’t go through.
Not only was I coming in as a new writer to this group of friends, I was coming in late. I was also the only writer that was Salvadorian and Jewish. They have this whole other sort of shorthand. It was terrifying, but it ended up being the room that I was most comfortable in at the end of the day. I’ve never felt more aligned with a group of people in my entire life than I did with the Atlanta writers’ room.
**John:** I want to wind back, because you said, “Oh, I’d written a new thing which was right for this Atlanta sample.” Listeners might be confused, because it seemed like you’ve wrote things for these other shows. You could point to these produced scripts. Can you explain why those things you did for other shows are not useful samples for you trying to be staffed at your next thing?
**Francesca:** Absolutely. I think with every show, you’re writing to that specific voice and that specific showrunner typically or creator. None of the shows that I had previously written on felt like Atlanta even a little bit. Not only that, I even feel like my previous script that got me in the door in the first place, Headbangers, was so self-serious and actually so-
**John:** You’d grown.
**Francesca:** Yes, exactly. I was ready to be a little bit sillier, be a little bit less dramatic, and just write things that just felt a little bit more about the everyday, without trying to say something with every single line on the page. I wrote this thing in two days, because it felt so easy to me. It felt really natural. Thank god that resonated with the show Atlanta.
**John:** The other reason why you don’t tend to use things you wrote for another show as samples is because it’s really hard to show what was your work versus somebody else’s work. That was obviously broken as a room, so it was a bunch of different people’s inputs. You don’t know who touched every line. Even though it has your name on it, it’s not really fully yours the way that your sample is going to be yours.
**Francesca:** Absolutely, especially in a show like Fargo, because on a show like Fargo, Noah is such an exceptional writer, but really does go in there and play a lot with the scripts, as he should, because it’s also replicating the Cohen Brothers, and it’s such a specific tone of voice. On that note, I was already really surprised at how that would work, and then I was already really flattered and amazed at how much of my stuff would actually end up on television, that was actually my… I’m like, “Whoa. I actually really did write that. Holy crap.
**John:** Megana Rao, who’s our previous producer, and Megan McDonnell, also a Scriptnotes producer, they now have TV writing careers, and they still do marvel at, “Oh, that actually is my thing. That’s my scene.” It’s so nice to see when that actually happens. It gets all the way through to production.
**Francesca:** Yeah, it feels magical.
**John:** This explains your connection to Donald Glover. Does this get us to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and this new series?
**Francesca:** It does, yeah. Donald and I connected immediately. I will say that in the Atlanta room though, I did make sure, because at that point, all of those lessons that we talked about earlier had been learned. I did a lot of sitting back before I would jump in. I actually only spoke when I really felt like I had something pretty solid to contribute, because I just felt their bond. I didn’t want to be the thing that came in and interrupted something that was so beautiful and worked so well. It took a little bit longer for me to feel fully comfortable to show my real self. Then when I did, it was wonderful.
But I will say from the very, very start, I remember Donald had this Memorial Day pool party at his house before we even started the room. I went and I remember sitting down by the pool and got flanked by both Stephen and Donald. They both sat down next to me. Donald’s son was swimming in the pool. He was probably around five at the time. There was this moment he’s swimming and he’s swimming and he swallows some water, and he gets really panicked. At the exact same time, all three of us laughed as soon as we saw he was okay and said, “Do you remember that feeling of death at that age?” We all laughed at that, because it’s this fleeting thing. I thought, “Oh my gosh, the three of us see the world really similarly.”
It was this throwaway thing, but it was very comforting and very cool. From there, it was off to the races where references that Donald and I would pull were the same. I just started to realize we were very similar children. That made it really easy for us to connect creatively.
**John:** Great. What was the brief on Mr. and Mrs. Smith? I don’t know quite what the genesis was. Obviously, this is based on the Simon Kinberg movie – Simon’s a friend; he’s terrific – which was Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie. It was high stylish Doug Liman, who directed Go, directed that. A huge success.
**Francesca:** I love Go.
**John:** Thank you. It was the start of Brangelina. All sorts of things stemmed out of it. Where was the genesis of, “Okay, we’re going to do this as a series.” How did the Donald of it all come together? Talk to us about that.
**Francesca:** Donald and I knew we wanted to do something together. We didn’t know what it was. Donald called me one day. He is good friends and works with Michael Schaefer, who at the time worked at New Regency.
**John:** New Regency produced Mr. and Mrs. Smith for Fox, I think.
**Francesca:** Exactly, yes. He said, “Hey, what if we do Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the TV series?” I started laughing. I thought he was totally joking around with me. He’s like, “No, I’m actually completely serious.” I said, “Why would we do that?” Not as a diss on the movie. Just our specific voices do not lend itself to that at all.
As we kept talking about it, he said, “We could really focus on the marriage of it all.” I had just gotten married, so it was heavy on the mind. I never thought I would get married. Donald never thought he would get married. Now we’re both married. We started talking about that. We started talking about how we could focus more on in-between moments. As far as an action show was concerned, that felt really intriguing to me.
Then Donald said, “Yeah, okay. Do you want to pitch this at some point?” I said, “Maybe down the line.” At the time, I was developing something for Jordan Peele, and I was developing this erotica comedy series. He’s like, “Yeah, cool, cool. I’ll come back to you.” Then he called me and said, “Can we pitch this next week?” That’s very Donald, by the way. He waited all summer and then all of a sudden it’s like, “How about next week?” That’s very typical. I said, “Yeah, why the hell not? Let’s get together, crack this thing, and pitch it.” We were off to the races from there.
**John:** The original film is about a husband and wife who, they’ve been married for a time and they’ve discovered that they’re actually spies for rival organizations. It’s the secrets you keep inside of a marriage. From that initial pitch, had you decided to basically flip it that these are complete strangers who are put together as a marriage and then have to learn about each other? That was your initial pitch?
**Francesca:** No. Actually, our initial pitch was that this was a marriage that was on the rocks, and things had gotten stale. We actually did pitch something closer to the film.
**John:** Closer to the premise.
**Francesca:** It wasn’t until we were really workshopping it that we felt like two strangers was the correct angle for a variety of reasons, one being the why. We really wanted it to be about loneliness. That just felt like the better angle in terms of bringing that to light.
**John:** You say workshopping. What does workshopping it mean?
**Francesca:** Tossing around ideas, banging our heads against the wall, saying, “Let’s go down this path. Here’s why this is great.” Then we felt like within the eight episodes and the eight hours that we had, showing milestones of a relationship from start to finish felt like the freshest take, and especially in terms of having missions of the week.
**John:** Absolutely. The meet-cute is that they’re essentially assigned to each other, and it then has to evolve from that. Had you solid it with the vague, initial pitch of being more like the movie, and then in actually developing it internally, you decided, “We’re going to change the premise.”
**Francesca:** Yes. We pitched it exactly as you just said. Also, it definitely helped that at the time, Phoebe was on board.
**John:** Phoebe Waller-Bridge, another previous Scriptnotes guest and incredibly talented writer and actor. Was the goal for them to write it together? What was the initial vision for this?
**Francesca:** The origin, everyone’s very curious about this piece, which I totally understand. No one is more of a legend to the writing community than a Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She’s incredible. Donald and I knew that we wanted her to play Jane, because in my mind and in Donald’s mind, it just made sense that it had to be this meta couple and that they had to be truly well matched. For what Donald did for Atlanta and a community in one way, Phoebe felt like she did that. Fleabag. They’re also friends. They’re also funny in very different ways, but still very, very funny.
**John:** They’re in the same Star Wars universe.
**Francesca:** They’re in the same Star Wars universe, exactly. It just felt right. I actually wrote this little synopsis with all of these places that episodes could potentially go. He sent them to her, and she read them. I waited with bated breath to see how she would feel about it. She loved it, which floored me. I couldn’t believe it. She came on board initially to act and then ended up asking us, “How would you feel if I wrote it with you guys?” That turned us into a three-headed monster of creators together, which was a dream to me.
When we pitched it to Amazon, it was just Donald and myself, but we did say, “Our Jane could be Phoebe Waller-Bridge,” which Amazon’s mouths hit the floor. They were very happy about that idea, especially they both had deals there. There are so many reasons why it was amazing.
**John:** You’re developing this. You and Donald are figuring out your take. She would come on board also as a writer at some point. It sounds like ultimately the visions did not align perfectly. That also happens. It’s so frustrating when you see reports like, “Oh, there’s bad blood,” or anything. Sometimes things just don’t work right. Is that a fair summary of what happened there?
**Francesca:** It’s a really fair summary. Donald let me cast the room with this incredible group of people. The room ended up actually being all women, all women of color, completely based on merit and the strength on the page. It actually wasn’t based on anything outside of that.
**John:** What were you looking for? This is your first time assembling a room, right?
**Francesca:** Yes, it’s my first time assembling a room. I was looking for people that could get along. It was really important to me that we all felt like we would be friends, that we weren’t just there for work. It was important to me that people were generous about their own stories and vulnerabilities and being able to laugh at themselves, because so much of this had to be pulled from personal lives about relationships.
Most importantly, I wanted the writing to be strong. I wanted the writing to be able to speak to personal dynamics, but still also have a sense of humor. I was really excited to have all women, because I really felt like the strength of this show would be more Jane’s story, even though it is about two people. I wanted different perspectives of different kinds of really strong woman come into the room and get their voice to that.
**John:** I want to make sure I’m getting the order of events here right. You’re putting together this room. Had you already written the pilot?
**Francesca:** No, we had not.
**John:** That’s interesting. You had a vision for what the show was going to be, but there was not a pilot yet.
**Francesca:** No pilot.
**John:** You’re putting together this room. That room has to figure out whether the whole show is including the pilot.
**Francesca:** Exactly. At that point, I had done that first, before necessarily knowing if Phoebe really was going to come on or not, with this big hope. “Let’s hope that she does. If she doesn’t, we still have a great room.” Then she said yes, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, we cannot be beat. We’ve got everything. We’ve got the great women in the room. We’ve got Phoebe. We’ve got Donald. We have Stephen Glover. We’re unstoppable.”
To your point earlier, with different time zones and Zooms and a pandemic and all these different kinds of voices, ultimately Phoebe gave so much. Phoebe and I would a lot of times end up just on the phone for hours and hours, just the two of us, really trying to figure this whole thing out. But ultimately, Donald and I had such a distinct vision for the show. It evolved over time, and it changed, but the crux of it is still the same. Eventually, the visions just weren’t aligning. She was very gracious about stepping away and letting us do our thing.
**John:** You have this room. You have this vision. You’re talking. But what point is there actually a script? At what point is there something on paper to say, “This is the show we’re trying to make.”
**Francesca:** At one point, I had done a pass of the pilot. I then passed my pass to Donald. Donald did a pass on my pass. That pass went to Phoebe. Phoebe did a pass. There was one moment where we all blew up each other’s scripts. Then finally, we all band together one more time from the first pass that I had sent there. We went back to it. That ended up being the pilot that, once Phoebe ended up leaving, I rewrote one more time. But ultimately, that was what ended up being on television.
**John:** This script exists. The room still exists. Now, the room can read this thing. “This is the show we’re trying to make.” I always feel like the script helps anchor our expectations in a way that it’s all nebulous until there’s something on paper.
**Francesca:** Yes, 100 percent. That is exactly right. I will even say that the most important thing that we figured out in the room was the milestones of the relationship and making that the anchor of the series, and also then figuring out how we could take these missions that could otherwise be so silly and make us get away with the unbelievable and pausing disbelief because it was able to speak then so directly to the relationship milestones. That was the freshness of it. That’s how we got away with some of the silliness. That was the best and most useful part of what we did collectively as a team in the room. The scripts had to change so many times, especially once Phoebe left and once we found Maya. Maya of it all happened when the room mostly disbanded at that point.
**John:** Let’s talk about Maya, because she’s another creator, brilliant writer, performer. Were you specifically looking for that energy or someone who could do that, or she was just the right person and available at the time?
**Francesca:** It’s a great question. It’s a combination. I think going back to earlier, the gut reaction thing, I think it started off as a gut reaction.
**John:** The gut reaction is true, just the same way Phoebe’s interesting opposite him. She brings a very interesting energy opposite him.
**Francesca:** I agree. I remember being on a text thread with Carmen Cuba, our casting director, and then Michael Schaefer and Donald and Hiro. We’re like, “Who? Who? Who?”
**John:** Hiro Murai, who’s the director.
**Francesca:** Hiro Murai, who is, yes, the director, one of my really close friends and probably one of my favorite people on the planet. We were texting each other. Carmen said Maya. As soon as she said Maya, I was typing Maya. I was like, “That’s just too strangely aligned.” Then Hiro said Maya. We all felt her, but none of us unpacked why. I think in retrospect, it is the fact that she is also this visionary. She’s also a creator. There is that meta quality that I was looking for with Phoebe in a different way with Maya and Donald. Also, there’s something interesting about them playing these rejects. It feels like a good pairing.
**John:** She plays lonely really well.
**Francesca:** She does.
**John:** We know that from Pen15. She’s not afraid also to let you deep inside of her.
**Francesca:** She is the queen of allowing herself to embarrass herself so deeply that it turns beautiful. She does that better than anybody, in my opinion.
**John:** You have a pilot. Now, you have all the scripts. The room is largely disbanded. We have a new actor on, so you’re having to rewrite some stuff to tailor it better to her experience. Now, you’re also responsible for production. This is the first time that this is all on your shoulders. What was that process like getting up to speed with that?
**Francesca:** Just a little anecdote or background on that too is that we started talking about the show in 2020, we started writing the show in 2021.
**John:** There’s a pandemic happening, yeah.
**Francesca:** I got pregnant, and then I had just had my baby at the top of 2022. Then we were off to production. I was juggling being brand new first-time mom, brand new first-time showrunner. I joke around sometimes that I had twins, because it really did feel like that in a lot of ways. We had an amazing line producer, Anthony Katagas, who’s this old-school cinema head, really knows New York. When we decided it was going to take place in New York, he was the guy. Anthony’s the kind of producer that never tells you no. He just says, “How can we do this? How can we figure it out?” which is really fun for a bunch of scrappy kids with a big budget for the very first time. It was incredible that we were able to do it.
**John:** What lessons did you learn early on as a showrunner? What were the things that were complete surprises? Background is, I produced a show very early on and had a complete nervous breakdown. It was a disaster.
**Francesca:** It’s so hard.
**John:** It’s so hard. I think you had more TV experience than I did going into it. Just the amount of just staying on top of everything is so tough.
**Francesca:** Oh my gosh. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. I even feel like if I ever have the opportunity to show-run again, which I hope I do, it’s still going to be a shit show. It’s part of the experience. I didn’t realize how much of it was people managing. I didn’t realize how much of it is also being a psychiatrist and then needing a psychiatrist for yourself. Also, so much of making sure that you’re managing the budget and being wise. Here’s a little stupid example, but I feel like it says a lot. When I wrote initially, I would write these scenes with the cat, so many scenes with Max. Maya’s allergic to cats.
**John:** Oh, god.
**Francesca:** The cat one day ran and got lost under the stage and cost us hours, which cost of us money. All of a sudden, Max is in maybe no scenes anymore. Maybe we can have sometimes Max sit on the couch. That’s an example of learning and thinking on your feet in a small way, but there are way bigger versions of that. As you’re making this thing, it takes so much time and energy. People were losing their parents. I lost my dad. You’re having to push through these personal matters, close out the noise, and still give everything you can to this moving show. Also, the tone, I think I learned a lot that you have this idea when you write something on paper, and then in the reality of it, it’s this ever-moving, evolving thing. It tells you what it should be, versus the other way around, and you have to pivot. I hadn’t known that until this experience how much pivoting you end up actually doing to service the show.
**John:** How much rewriting were you doing while shooting a lot?
**Francesca:** Gosh. A lot. That I won’t do as much this next time around, because that was bananas. But yeah, quite a bit.
**John:** We have some listener questions I thought might be good for us to talk through.
**Drew:** The first one comes from Chat McG. Says, “I recently read Christopher Nolan’s screenplay for Tenet. While I enjoyed it very much, I don’t think an unknown writer would’ve gotten very far with it as a writing sample. This got me thinking, what makes a good calling card screenplay for an unknown? If you had to start from scratch, what kind of thing would you write? Would you steer clear of certain genres? Would you try to reinvent the wheel to get noticed or write something solid in a popular genre to assure the reader that you know what you’re doing? How would you write to impress the agent’s assistant’s assistant to pass it on and get noticed?”
**John:** You read a ton of samples for this. What was a good sample for you? What did you like to see on the page? Were you finishing all the scripts? How did you get scripts? Talk us through that process of picking writers for your room.
**Francesca:** There are a lot of not-great scripts. I hate to say that. I was so surprised by that. Again, in terms of answering a question or giving advice, I always feel silly about it, but I just want to come from a sincere place, and I hope this isn’t too sincere. But I think if you’re trying so hard to write a script to get in the door, you’re doing it wrong. I think you have to first write a script that you feel connected to. It has to start with you. If you’re not feeling anything by it, and you’re just thinking about the agenda as a whole, people can read that straight away.
I think we live in a really hard and cynical world, but I think the thing that transcends is being authentic. I think it’s contagious. I think people can sense it. As long as you’re writing something that feels really true to you and makes sense to you and makes you feel something, then that’s going to hopefully make someone else do that. But I don’t think you should think about where it can take you.
**John:** This question about should you write in a popular genre or that kind of stuff, it’s like, no, because really, it’s meant to represent you. It’s not meant to be made necessarily. It’s just what is the script that someone can point to, it’s like, “Oh, you should read this, because it’s really good, and I want to meet this person who wrote this script.”
**Francesca:** Exactly. Tuesdays was about Tuesdays, and it got me to eventually make Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
**John:** Another question.
**Drew:** Joshua writes, “I recently received notes from someone at a major studio. He told me that in pilots, you should follow major character introductions with a, ‘Think Mindy Kaling,’ or a, ‘Think Joel McHale,’ to give them a sense of what kind of person could be cast in this role. I hadn’t received this note before, but he implied this is standard practice now. Did I miss an industry-wide memo or could this just be for their particular studio?”
**Francesca:** I think that’s a particular studio thing. I think as long as the rest of it works, if that feels like that little wink goes with the tone of how you’re writing everything else and that feels natural for the rest of it, sure. But if you’re writing this hard-hitting, cinematic experience where you’re getting lost in the vision of it, and that’s how you write, and you’re like, “Think Mindy Kaling,” that will not work.
**John:** I bristle at this, because I also think if you say, “Think Joel McHale,” immediately that’s a white guy. Also, it limits your choices down. Listen. If that studio really wants it that way, you got to listen to that. But I don’t think that’s good advice in general.
**Francesca:** I agree.
**John:** I wouldn’t do that.
**Francesca:** Don’t box you in.
**John:** It feels lazy too. Then we’re only going to read their dialog with that cadence in our heads.
**Francesca:** Yeah, it’s really limiting. Definitely. I agree with you.
**Drew:** Rashani in Sydney writes, “I read lots of scripts and usually find them with ease. I’m working on a story about art and decided to read the Mona Lisa Smile script, but I couldn’t find it for free, so I paid $20 for it on a website I wasn’t even sure was legitimate. The story has a happy ending, since I did receive my pdf copy the next morning. But I’m curious, why are some scripts in the public domain and others not? It might be a silly question, but I never questioned this before, since every script I ever read, I found on the internet for free.”
**John:** First off, scripts aren’t in the public domain. There’s still copyright to the person who wrote them or the studio who released them. But most of them are available. You just download them on the internet. That’s good. It’s a good thing that’s happened over the last 20 years is that they’re available and people can read them. It’s so helpful for all people who want to learn more about scripts. Way back when I started here, there were stores where you could pay your 20 bucks to get a printed script of a thing. That’s not good. Scripts want to be free.
**Francesca:** I agree. I remember one of the most educational experiences for me way more than screenwriting school was just reading Buck Henry and seeing how much came from his mind. It blew me away. I thought, oh my goodness, what a beautiful medium to tell a story, and never thought about this until this exact moment. But I don’t know if I would be doing what I was doing in terms of writing scripts, so I hadn’t read that script.
**John:** Exactly. Listen, Rashani. I think it’s great you got the script that you wanted to read, but also maybe you could share the wealth and just put that up someplace so people can read that script and no one else has to pay $20 to get it.
**Francesca:** Yeah, I’m with that too.
**John:** Whoever wrote Mona Lisa Smile, they’re not getting any of that $20.
**Francesca:** Exactly.
**John:** It’s not a legitimate thing that you’re paying somebody.
**Francesca:** Exactly. I couldn’t agree more.
**John:** Cool. It’s time for our One Cool Things. Do you have something, Francesca, you want to recommend to our listeners?
**Francesca:** Yeah. If I deeply care about somebody, I always get them this book. It’s called Bluets by Maggie Nelson. It’s technically a poetry book. I feel like it’s more of a philosophy book. It meditates on the color blue. It’s really, really specifically from a woman’s point of view and unrelenting in sorrow and sadness and love and loss. I really feel like if anybody wants to get into the depths of how deep my sadness can go and how that’s actually then sort of liberating, I always get them Bluets to get some kind of a glimmer of what that feels like.
**John:** That sounds great. That’s great. Mine is a blog post I read this past week called A Unified Theory of Fucks by Mandy Brown. I’ll read the premise of it. She says, “You are born with so many fucks to give. However many you’ve got is all there is. They’re like eggs in that way. Some of us are born with quite a lot, some with less, but none of us knows how many we have. When we’re young, we go around giving a fuck about all kinds of things, blissfully unaware of our ever-dwindling supply, until one day we give the last fuck we’ve got. The invisible bag of fucks we’ve been carrying around all these years is irredeemably empty. We have no more fucks left to give.”
**Francesca:** That’s so great.
**John:** It’s a really good metaphor. She continues on to say that you can’t buy more fucks, but you can get fucks. People can give a fuck about you, and so you can collect fucks. It’s the importance of giving a fuck but also being willing to receive them when people are trying to give a fuck about you.
**Francesca:** I’m very into that.
**John:** It’s just a really smart philosophy and a smart way of framing that thing. Just give a fuck about things.
**Francesca:** I do. I give a fuck about things.
**John:** You clearly do. Absolute pleasure talking with you.
**Francesca:** You too. Thank you so much. I was so nervous, but this was actually really nice.
**John:** Yay. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. Reminder that our outros have some version of (sings). We’ve been getting some outros recently which are charming, but they’re not a Scriptnotes outro.
**Drew:** They’re full songs.
**John:** They’re full songs. We don’t need those. We want 30 seconds that feels like a clever variation on Scriptnotes.
**Drew:** Perfect.
**John:** Ask@johnaugust.com is also a place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today, or send some follow-up. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record on film schools and fellowships. Francesca, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is on Amazon Prime Video everywhere worldwide?
**Francesca:** Mm-hmm.
**John:** All episodes are out now, right?
**Francesca:** Yes, all episodes are out.
**John:** Should watch them and rejoice in the thing that you made.
**Francesca:** I would love that if they did.
**John:** Congratulations.
**Francesca:** Thank you so much.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** For a bonus segment, I would love to talk about film schools and fellowships and all the stuff you do before you get started in this career, because you went through CalArts. I think you’re the first person on our show who’s gone through CalArts. What did you take from that? What recommendations do you have for someone who’s considering film school, or should they do something else? You must be asked this question. What advice do you give people?
**Francesca:** CalArts I think was an incredible experience for me, but in ways that have nothing to do with what I do now for a living. I think CalArts was an amazing experience for me, because I think I met people who changed the way that I think.
For instance, James Benning is a professor there. James Benning makes these gorgeous long-form films. For instance, he made, for one example, this film called 20 Cigarettes, where he does these portrait pieces. I happen to be in one, but I fast forward during my part. It’s just a person starting a cigarette, from start to finish. It’s gorgeous. It says so much without giving anything away.
That affected my writing. But it was very costly. I don’t actually think it did anything in terms of moving me ahead in this career. Same with UCLA. I think what I got out of UCLA masters program was time to write scripts. This is no shade on either school. I think that they’re incredible. I think that they help other people. But I don’t actually think it impacted where I ended up if I had not had either one of those educations.
**John:** CalArts I think about as being just really an art school. Did you have other normal university classes? Did you have English and all of the other stuff, or it was just art the whole time?
**Francesca:** For instance, there was a math class that was called Math as Art. I remember we would have to come in. A friend of mine Patrick’s math problem was him saying in front of the room, “And on, and on, and on, and on.” He got a high pass. That sums up the answer to that question.
**John:** That’s incredible. I’m guessing you came from a pretty good educational background, so you didn’t necessarily need that full college experience. But for somebody who might benefit from that or benefit from the challenging medieval lit class, you weren’t going to get that at CalArts.
**Francesca:** No, you weren’t going to get that at CalArts. Actually, I went to Philadelphia Public Schools. I’m not sure how great my education was. I just was somebody who was a lover of books and knowledge and history on my own right. I think a lot of that just came from me. But I do think my biggest career education was watching films and watching television and watching my heroes, like you even, for instance. I think if you want to tell stories in this way, that’s the greatest way to learn and learn film history and things like that.
**John:** Going to UCLA for a specific graduate program, two years, three years? How long was that?
**Francesca:** Oh my gosh. My brain from the past years is scrambled.
**John:** You were a young child, so that explains it.
**Francesca:** Exactly, exactly. Technically, I believe it’s a two-year program.
**John:** Going into that, did you have samples to get into that? How do you get admitted to that program? What was your expectation going into it?
**Francesca:** You do have samples, and you have to apply, and you have to get letters of recommendation and go through all of that process. My expectation of that was, people think about it in terms of networking, I’m sure, which makes a lot of sense. You do meet people that way. I personally wanted to go to get a masters and hopefully get to write at least one script that was good enough to allow me to then teach. That was my angle was higher education.
**John:** As a fallback, you could always teach it while you were still writing.
**Francesca:** Exactly.
**John:** I have misgivings about sometimes graduate film school programs, but I think the least you were going to do is you were going to come out of there with some work finished. You had to come out of there with some samples. You’ll have to write a half hour. You’ll have to write a feature. You’ll have to get an experience writing different kinds of things.
**Francesca:** More than anything, you’re paying for the time and the discipline to get that done. I was fortunate enough that within my first year, I ended up getting cast into my first writers’ room. Then it was really about juggling writers’ rooms and finishing my masters at the same time.
**John:** And all the jealousy of your classmates.
**Francesca:** Yeah, and sometimes professors too, honestly. It happens. But it was important to my parents that I finish that, that I finished the education and got the paper, got the masters.
**John:** Any fellowships, any other programs along the way that you participated in? Were any of them useful?
**Francesca:** I did a Sundance Lab, which was really incredible, just because the community was really smart. I got to meet a lot of other really talented individuals. It changed my perspective on how to make things, just a little bit. Not entirely. I think any experience that makes you reflect on your own process and how to create something is worth your time.
**John:** I’ve worked with Sundance Labs a lot. This was a TV lab? A feature lab? What was it?
**Francesca:** This was a feature lab.
**John:** Were you up on the mountain doing all that?
**Francesca:** No, this was the one that was local. This was for actually that script Headbangers that I had workshopped there and I had written so many years before. It was interesting, because I almost felt like I had evolved from that, and I was still going back to it, which is really interesting. I did have one mentor. I won’t say who it is. But she had said something really funny to me. She said, “If you don’t change your script,” because I was saying I wanted to make it even more experimental and this and that. She said, “If you don’t change your script, I’m afraid that white people are really not going to like your movies.” I said to her, “That might be one of the coolest things anyone’s ever said to me.”
**John:** The Sundance model is really interesting. Basically, they’ll take filmmakers or TV writers and their scripts, and you’ll meet with a succession of established writers who are just talking through what it is you’re trying to do and how to help you do it. I always describe it as being, when I’m in that role as an advisor, I am just your friend with a pickup truck. I’m helping you move from where you were to where you want to go.
**Francesca:** That’s cool.
**John:** I’m not going to tell you how to set up your apartment.
**Francesca:** I like that.
**John:** I’m just going to help you get the couch through the door. That can be really, really useful.
**Francesca:** Definitely.
**John:** If a person has the opportunity to do Sundance Labs, I always say recommend them. But it doesn’t mean you take every note and just do every note. That’s just not how it’s going to work.
**Francesca:** I think that’s right. I do think out of all of the communities that this industry has, that one that is really supportive. I really do like Sundance.
**John:** They’re generally rooting for you. They have no other agenda…
**Francesca:** Absolutely.
**John:** … other than make the best thing you possibly can make.
**Francesca:** Completely.
**John:** Cool. Francesca, thanks again for this conversation.
**Francesca:** Thank you so much. Thank you.
Links:
* [Francesca Sloane](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4300986/) on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/f__sloane/)
* [Mr. & Mrs. Smith](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLRQGR5G?ref=DVM_US_DL_SL_GO_AOS_MAMS_mkw_sfphkCC9t-dc&mrntrk=pcrid_689516632965_slid__pgrid_156782128925_pgeo_9030930_x__adext__ptid_kwd-2265602445555) on Amazon Prime Video
* [ISPA: Inter-Species Phonetic Alphabet for Transcribing Animal Sounds](https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03269) by Masato Hagiwara, Marius Miron and Jen-Yu Liu
* [Bluets by Maggie Nelson](https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/bluets)
* [A Unified Theory of F-cks by Mandy Brown](https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/unified-theory-of——)
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* Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).
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You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/631standard.mp3).