The original transcript for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/what-youre-looking-at).
**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig Mazin:** Oh. My name is Craig Mazin.
**John:** This is Episode 576 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, how do screenwriters place things in front of the reader’s virtual camera? That’s right, it’s a crafty episode, where we’re going to take a look at some really nitpicky word choices and how those make movies you can watch on the page. We’ll also tackle a bunch of listener questions on everything from outlining to maligning small villages, Craig.
**Craig:** Maligning small villages, finally. I have been waiting since Episode 1 for somebody to write in about that.
**John:** Absolutely. Those little, tiny villages that you drive past, what if you could just slander them, slander them to death?
**Craig:** Malign them.
**John:** Oh, but Craig, you’re going to really enjoy our Bonus Segment for Premium Members. Sixteen will enter. One will win. Which dessert will come out on top of our first ever dessert bracket?
**Craig:** I don’t know if people know this, but I do love making desserts. I like baking, cooking, mixing, whipping, folding. I love to make a dessert.
**John:** We’re recording this pre-Thanksgiving. Mike and I are planning on making three different pies. Pies are definitely in the entries here.
**Craig:** Of course. Of course.
**John:** Overall, in the general categories of desserts, we need to figure out which are the ultimate desserts and which are not the ultimate desserts.
**Craig:** Let’s rush through this shitty podcast so we can get to that.
**John:** I’m looking forward to it.
**Craig:** That’s what matters.
**John:** Let’s start with some news though, because Craig, Megana Slacked me this new on Sunday afternoon. I could not believe it. Bob Iger is back running Disney.
**Craig:** I could not believe it either. As somebody that owns a small amount of Disney stock, I was thrilled. Bob Chapek was an interesting choice to succeed Bob Iger. That was always going to be a tough gig to succeed Bob Iger. He was in a class of his own in terms of these uber-CEOs that ride over the whole corporation. Bob Chapek came in there and was like, “Watch what I do.” Then he did a bunch of stuff, and nobody seemed to like it. I think Bog Iger must have somewhere along the line thought, “I probably picked the wrong guy.”
**John:** Chapek was a handpicked successor. There was a whole plan for transition. There was a year of overlap. It was all going to be a very smooth transition in theory. Iger left, and then Chapek had a series of missteps and stumbles. The recent reporting we’re reading seems to be that it was really an investor call, that Chapek messed up on an investor call, was the inciting incident that got him out the door over the weekend. Friday afternoon, the call went to Iger. Then by Sunday-
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** … evening, Chapek was out and Iger was back in.
**Craig:** What did he do on that phone call?
**John:** The New York Times story, we’ll put a link in the show notes to that. The sourcing seems to indicate that he was too sanguine about the really dismal numbers and seemed out of touch.
**Craig:** Oh, I see.
**John:** His own lieutenants were basically going to the board and saying, “If you don’t get rid of Chapek, we’re going to leave.”
**Craig:** Bob Iger is back. One of the things that was really interesting was he came back on Friday and it’s currently Tuesday, he’s already changed 4,000 things. Look, from my point of view, obviously, you and I, we don’t swim in those waters. Different people do that stuff. We don’t really care about that stuff, only to the extent that it infects us. Bob Iger was always about the content and about making sure that you protected the creative output and made sure that the content was great and that the content would drive everything else. Don’t worry about it. Everything else will just flow from it. It appears that he is hard at work to reinstate that culture. I hope it accrues to the benefit of writers.
**John:** Another thing I’m thinking about this week is just how much CEO quality matters, because so often it seems like these corporations, they just are their own corporations. Many of the times, a well-run corporation is the one where you don’t have any idea who the CEO is. You look at Disney right now versus Twitter, and oh, wow, the person in charge of things can really have a huge impact on how stuff is happening, how stuff’s working. A good CEO can fix things. A bad CEO can break things very quickly, much more quickly than I would’ve ever guessed was possible.
**Craig:** The good news for CEOs is they’ll still make $400 million as they absolutely screw their company into the ground. Twitter, boy, wow. I quit. I’m out. I’m gone.
**John:** He’s out. He’s gone.
**Craig:** I’m gone. Pedro Pascal quit over the weekend. I saw that. Even internally, as we’ve been talking about gearing up for lots of marketing and stuff for The Last of Us, just incorporating the Twitter exodus into the planning. It’s now received wisdom that Twitter is a damaged product if you are not a MAGA troll.
**John:** It is fascinating, because if you’d told me a year ago someone’s going to build a rival to Twitter, it’s like, that’s a stupid idea, because there’s already Twitter. Now it seems like, you know what, you could probably find a bunch of engineers who are available to build you an alternative to Twitter. I don’t know that one thing will ever take off. I don’t know that we’ll ever replace it. I don’t know that Twitter necessarily will go away in a complete sense. It is just fascinating that something we assume, it’s Twitter, it’s always going to be there, can just disappear so quickly.
**Craig:** As a company, I think they always struggle to figure out exactly how to make money. When Elon Musk came along and offered them some stupid amount of money as a dumb, pot-inspired joke, I think, they were like, “Holy shit. Yeah, we’ll take that. Thank you. Thank you for overpaying for this thing that just doesn’t make money.” Now he has it, and he’s just flailing around and smashing it into bits. It’s very strange. I have to say, for something that I used every day for years and considered my main method of communicating things to the world, not only do I not miss it, I feel better. Not a little bit better, a lot better. I feel a lot better. Let’s put it this way. You and I, John, lived most of our lives without Twitter. Everything was fine.
**John:** Everything was fine.
**Craig:** It was fine.
**John:** I was on Twitter before I was doing this podcast, but the boundaries are blurry. I had my website before I had Twitter. I had some other place of truth of John August’s opinion. Twitter did become that, and I don’t know what’s necessarily going to replace that. I guess just the blog. Wrapping up the CEO talk, we have Bob Iger back there in charge. He’s not going to be there forever. He needs to find someone else to take over for him. That’s going to be even probably more difficult, because finding the person who can now do this job, it’s going to be challenging.
**Craig:** John, I have a real question for you.
**John:** Please.
**Craig:** What if they said, “Hey, John August, we want you to do it.”
**John:** I’ve been thinking about that, because Craig, I do consider a lot of alternative [inaudible 00:07:07].
**Craig:** That is the craziest answer ever. Ever. That was insane.
**John:** Craig, I have been thinking about it.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** I don’t think I would do a good job. Here’s the reasons why I don’t think I would do a good job. I know a fair amount about making movies. I know a fair amount about making TV shows, less but a fair amount. I do not know how to manage all the other parts of that company, including the theme parks and the streaming services and all this other stuff. That’s why when I look at who the people are who could potentially take over for Iger, it’s really challenging. Dana Walden is on that short list. Dana Walden is fantastic. I’ve met with her. I think she’s great. She’s really good at making TV shows and entertainment, and that’s not the whole job. Maybe it’s just too big a job for any one person to do.
**Craig:** It’s not. Somebody has to do it.
**John:** It’s not too big for Iger.
**Craig:** Nobody can know everything. You have your lieutenants and people that report to you, and hopefully you do a good job. I think the thing that would get you… I remember the very first time I directed, I was talking to my first AD. First ADs have seen a billion directors come and go in their lives. I said, “What’s the one rookie mistake you can advise me, that perhaps I could then avoid making?” He said, “Honestly, it’s never about any of the technicals.” He said, “The thing that no first-time director ever sees coming is the politics.” I suspect that would be the biggest problem, because you take over, and suddenly, there’s all these people trying to figure out how to assassinate you and take your job. If they could promise me that none of that would happen, I feel like I could probably make a few things up.
**John:** I could make a few things up.
**Craig:** I couldn’t have done worse than Bob Chapek. No offense, Bob Chapek.
**John:** Honestly, it seemed like the politics were a big part of why he didn’t succeed, because he didn’t have the trust of the people that were working for him.
**Craig:** When the Florida thing happened, I could feel myself sweating. I’m like, “What would I do? This is really tricky.” That’s tricky. You’re like, “On the one hand, I have my principles and I have my morals. On the other hand, part of my principles and morals is taking care of the 12,000 people that I employ in the state of Florida. What do I do?” That’s a tough one. I’m glad I don’t run a company.
**John:** I’m glad I’m not taking over for Nancy Pelosi, because I’ve also been thinking about that.
**Craig:** That’s a hard one.
**John:** That’s a hard job. That’s a lot of [crosstalk 00:09:37]
**Craig:** Thank god you’ve been thinking about that. Who do you not thinking about taking over from?
**John:** I’m involved in a project right now, which Megana knows has just an incredibly high degree of cat wrangling. I can do it. You got to think from each person’s perspective, what are they looking for, what do they need to hear. That’s a challenging job. That’s why whoever takes over for Bob Iger or the ruins of Twitter whenever Elon Musk gets bored is going to have a lot to do. Let’s get to some questions. We have two follow-up questions about your outlining process, Craig.
**Craig:** Fair enough.
**Megana:** Neil asked, “I just listened to the episode on writing difficult scenes, and Craig mentioned his go-to on preparation via an outline. I’ve heard his testament to outlines a bunch, but I’ve never been able to track down an actual sample of Craig’s. Are there any available in the archives? I’m an engineer, so less of a pantser and more of a plotter, or maybe a plantser.”
**Craig:** A plantster.
**John:** A plantster.
**Craig:** I don’t have any out there, but it’s possible that maybe after The Last of Us runs through, I might put that show bible out there, because it’s quite extensive. I generally avoid doing it, because as much as I enjoy informing and educating to whatever extent I can, I’m also… I don’t just teach cooking. I also am a chef. I don’t necessarily want to show people how my magic tricks are fully done. A little bit of the process I think should remain opaque.
**John:** Maybe if we can’t see the actual visual, can you describe for an episode of Last of Us or an episode of Chernobyl, how many pages was an outline? Was it paragraphs? How closely were you matching? Were there scene headers? What do your outlines look like?
**Craig:** I don’t do scene headers. It’s basically prose. For each episode, my guess is, I would say probably five to eight pages, single-spaced paragraphs describing what happens, and more importantly, why. That’s the thing, because I don’t write these for myself. I write them for myself and others, so that everybody can feel what we’re doing before we do it. That’s important to me.
**John:** Your paragraphs are largely matching up to what scenes look like. No paragraph is going to cover multiple scenes or it will [inaudible 00:12:05].
**Craig:** No, a paragraph could cover multiple scenes, because I know there are certain scenes that flow together. Two people have left one place. They’re on their way to another. Then the next day they’re there, and a thing happens. Then they move on. Those things could probably be a paragraph where we describe what happens and what’s discussed or why it’s important. I will combine.
**John:** For Neil’s edification, what Craig is describing is actually a pretty common length and size and scale and scope of an outline in television. A lot of one-hour dramas that you’re going to see are going to have a document like that at some point that goes to the producers, to the studio, to other people, to let them know this is what’s going to happen in the episode, and sometimes they’ll get notes off that outline, depending what the process is.
**Craig:** Just as important as those episode outlines, there’s also character breakdowns, and there’s general discussion of theme. I will also sometimes take a moment to talk about, for instance… There are no spoilers here for The Last of Us. I apologize to those of you who are looking for them. In the outline, in the show bible, one of the little sections was a section on violence and what our philosophy about violence was, how we wanted to portray it, and what we thought was important philosophically for everybody to know as we went ahead and writing and then producing the show. It’s your chance to basically get anything off your chest you want, that you want other people to know.
**John:** In some ways, that’s doing what a tone meeting might do, but way in advance. People are looking at documents. Everyone knows going into the project, this is what our goals are here. Then you’ll have very specific notes on individual scripts, individual scenes.
**Craig:** In fact, the outline, the show bible we did, it was very extensive. I think it was about 180 pages. It was also the document that our production team used initially to budget. It was thorough enough that they could essentially get within, it was really close, within actually 5% of what we ultimately ended up spending, because they had a sense of locations and set pieces and all that.
**John:** A follow-up question from Tommy here. He asked, “In the last episode, Craig talked about needing roughly 20 days to write a one-hour TV script. How much of that time is spent before that in the outlining phase?” Is it 20 days after this episode is outlined?
**Craig:** The 20 days is the length of time I need to write the script. The amount of time it takes to outline things ahead of that is considerable. None of that is really divisible by episode, per se. You have to figure everything out together. That process could be two, three months, where you’re really trying to figure out how you’re breaking this all apart and what the episodes are going to be. Then you can spend about a week just writing it all up in one massive document.
**John:** Cool.
**Craig:** Then after that, yeah, it’s about 20 days. For me at least, it’s about 20 days.
**John:** Great. Before we get on to our big marquee topic, we have a bit of follow-up here. Way back when, Craig and I each did episodes with Megana, just Megana, where we answered listener questions and tried to get some good advice to people. One of those people is Ben. He wrote in about some advice that Megana and I gave him. Craig, would you talk us through Ben’s follow-up here?
**Craig:** I will play the role of Ben. He says, “I wanted to give you all some follow-up on my question that John and Megana answered on Episode 543 about my boss’s boss’s boss inviting me to send my script in to the head of the studio that I work at as an office coordinator, and I wondered whether or not I could take a year to do so. I took John’s advice and sent my script to six friends to make sure what I was writing would be worth sending. All my friends loved it, and so I sent it to a couple of other people I made connections with at work, and they loved it too. I was a little skeptical, because I’ve never gotten this type of universal positive response before. I was wondering if telling them I had this opportunity made them forgive certain shortcomings in the script.” I like Ben. I like that he’s nervous about good news.
**John:** Thoughtful.
**Craig:** That’s the way to be. He goes on, “I then checked it over a couple more times and finally end it to my friends who are a little more harsh. They loved it too. Just a few easily correctable notes. I emailed my boss. As John predicted, my boss’s boss’s boss said she couldn’t send it in to the head, but she connected me with a few creative executives, and after signing a release form, I submitted my script for them to review. It took them a month to read, but they got back to me, and they loved it also. It was great timing, as I wrote a family spooky movie,” for spooky season, “and they read it three days before Halloween. The creative executive said my script was a really fun read and very well executed and invited me to the lot to, quote, talk generally. He made it clear that the script wasn’t quite right for their current slate, but he did invite me to have coffee with him. I just got back from the meeting. It couldn’t have gone better. We really hit it off. He invited me to send him another script when I have one ready. He’s a really nice dude.
“All of this to say thank you, John and Megana, for your advice and all the great tips. Also, I want to thank Craig as well,” thank you, “even though he didn’t answer my question directly,” and has done nothing for my life, “but has given me like 600 episodes of advice as well.” That worked out phenomenally for Ben.
**John:** It worked out so well for Ben. That’s great. Craig, you stopped where he said take a year to send in the script, which felt like too long for us as well. I think what Ben did, which is really smart, is really just double check, like, “Wait, is what I’m writing any good at all?” and actually get that feedback to say oh yeah, this is actually pretty good. He went through then proper channels, and people liked it. It sounded like he was doing the right things there. My question for you, and for us to discuss, is what should Ben be doing next, because he’s had this good meeting with a creative executive. That’s lovely, but that doesn’t do anything. What should Ben be doing next?
**Craig:** I think the very first thing Ben should be doing is dropping an email back to his new creative executive friend and saying, “Hey, would love to get myself an agent. Any chance you could slip this script and your general approval and good feelings to an agent that you think might be well suited for me?” That’s the very first thing I would do.
**John:** I think that’s the right choice, so agent and/or manager. “I’m looking for a rep,” is the general thing, and who does this creative executive think might be the right person. The way to think about this from Ben’s point of view is like, “Okay, I know what I get out of this, but what could this creative executive get out of this?” In some ways, there are reciprocal relationships between your agents, certain managers and execs. If this exec really does think you’re a pretty good writer, then sending you to this representative could be a good, sympathetic kind of thing. It could actually help both of them. Don’t feel weird about asking for that ask is what I’m saying.
**Craig:** No, not at all. This is how it all starts. I imagine that the creative executive is probably roughly in the same age bracket you are, Ben. As we all grow up together in the business, we meet each other’s friends and connect each other with people that we like to work with. By this point, I know a whole lot of people in this business that I’ve never actually worked with, but you never know. We like each other, and then they mention something to somebody else. Crazy things happen all the time.
**John:** That’s how I got my first agent was a friend sent my script to a producer, who read it and liked it and said, “Hey, could I take this in to the studio?” I said, “That would be great. Also, I need an agent.” He’s like, “Oh, I think I know the perfect person for you.” That became my first agent.
**Craig:** There you go. There you go.
**John:** Ben, keep us posted a year from now and let us know what’s happened next. Great. Marquee topic here. Julian wrote in with a link to this thread by David Wappel, a writer I don’t know. Wappel’s thread was showing how nouns and sentence structures, when used well, can feel like they’re directing on the page, in the good sense of directing on the page. They really give you a sense of what you’re seeing. In this thread, he’s pointing out the difference between, “Sally reaches into her back pocket,” and, “Her hand slips into her back pocket,” and the idea that the second one, we’re clearly focusing on her hand. We feel like we’re in a closeup there on that.
Another example from this thread is on apples. If I say the stem of an apple, you’re thinking very closely about that stem of the apple. If I say an apple, you’re probably picturing the whole thing. If I say five apples, we move wider. A bushel of apples, a row of apple bushels, you get the sense that we’re pulling out wider and wider with those shots.
Useful there, but in some ways I was like, “Obviously.” I think it’s a thing that I do subconsciously, that I’ve never actually put words to. You and I are doing this all the time. Every sentence, every scene, we’re really thinking about what is the visual idea and how I’m using that visual idea to direct the reader’s attention, but I don’t know if we talked about it so explicitly on the podcast. We probably talked about it in Three Page Challenges. I want to spend a little segment talking about how we emphasize and convey the visual information we need not just scene by scene, but sentence by sentence, word by word.
**Craig:** Which is why, when people say, “Don’t direct on the page,” I just want to slap the world, because what else can we do? If you are visualizing the scene appropriately, visualizing it in terms of, as you said, close, far, up, down, movement, still, then the language ought to flow naturally from that. If you were imagining a closeup of Sally’s hand reaching into her back pocket, slipping into her back pocket, so now it feels a bit furtive, you would never write, “Sally reaches into her back pocket.” Those words wouldn’t happen as a result of the thought you just had. [Crosstalk 00:21:57]
**John:** Craig, sometimes I think people do stop at the very most basic sentence that gets the idea across. I worry that sometimes as we look at Three Page Challenges, we are getting a little bit like, “Sally reaches into her back pocket.”
**Craig:** Then people, stop doing that.
**John:** I want to shine a bit of a spotlight on it, because I think it’s an automatic process for you and for me. I don’t think it’s necessarily an automatic process for other writers, especially because screenwriting is a little bit different. All writing is about word choices and sentence structure, but screenwriting is a little different. As an example, here is a paragraph from Pride and Prejudice, one of the great novels. Jane Austen, really, really talented writer. Let me read this to you, and you can see why it’s not screenwriting.
“Mr. Bennett was so odd, a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserved caprice, that the experience of 3 and 20 years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married. Its solace was visiting and news.”
A terrific paragraph. The word choice, every little thing, every comma was deliberate, so smart, and that is not at all how you write screenplays.
**Craig:** No, because this is somebody that is relaying information to you about things that are not happening in front of your eyes-
**John:** Exactly.
**Craig:** … whereas in screenwriting, everything is happening in front of your eyes, unless you’re dealing with a voiceover or something like that. In a voiceover, you could do something like this. However, while the voiceover was doing all this, I need to know what I’m seeing.
**John:** Exactly.
**Craig:** This would actually be wonderful if I heard this in voiceover and then I-
**John:** Oh my god, a dream.
**Craig:** … witnessed Mrs. Bennett showing “little information and uncertain temper.” Because we are a visual medium and because we do not relay descriptions of things that have already happened, we are always in the business of thinking about what we’re seeing and hearing.
**John:** I think the challenge I want to put to our listeners is, as you’re doing the screenwriting, really be thinking about what is the visual idea of the sentence. Oftentimes, there’ll be a single visual idea in the sentence or a series of visuals that imply motion that gets you from place to place. If you have a sentence that has no visual idea in it, it has to have another really good reason why you need to put it there, because otherwise it’s not doing the job of screenwriting. Not every sentence in your screenplay is going to have visual information, but most of them should. That visual information should probably be at the start of the sentence rather than touch back in at the end of the sentence.
**Craig:** Let’s say that the word screen also encompasses sound.
**John:** Of course.
**Craig:** We are screen sound writers. That means we are visual sound writers. That’s what we do. That’s the description of the job. When you are putting these little moments together, there is no moment too small to be considering how to guide the mind’s eye of the reader to align with your mind’s eye as the writer.
**John:** I pulled some examples from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is from the very start. “Chocolate pours into a mold, one of hundreds inching along a conveyor belt. Complicated gears tug on oiled canvas ropes, slipping through swinging pulleys.” “With giant scissors, Wonka slices a fat red ribbon. One of the ribbon ends flutters up, obscuring Wonka’s face yet again.” “Wonka’s hand smooths out the blueprint for a massive structure, complete with curvy onion domes and twisted columns.”
Just four sentences picked at random from the script. It’s clear what the visuals are in the sentence. Also, if there’s multiple visuals, it’s clear how we’re moving between those multiple visuals. It’s not just the nouns. The nouns are very specific. The verbs used to convey action and convey meaning are also very specific. They’re tugging. They are pouring. They are fluttering. You could write more basic versions of each of those sentences, but they would not convey the visual information you’re trying to convey.
**Craig:** I particularly like that first one, because if I were handed that as a director, there’s an implication that I’m going to be shooting a closeup of chocolate pouring into a mold, and then I’m going to shoot a much wider shot to reveal that mold is one of a hundred. Perhaps I watch the chocolate pouring into the mold, and then I angle the camera slightly [inaudible 00:26:28] to reveal there’s this line of a hundred that are moving along, and that was just one of a hundred that are exactly the same. There’s all sorts of implications from the way that was written that you would not get if you weren’t considering what you wanted people to look at and see.
**John:** If I say, “A conveyor belt shows hundreds of chocolate bars being produced,” that doesn’t give you the same information, doesn’t tell you what you need to see.
**Craig:** It doesn’t. “One of hundreds inching along” is giving me a sense of speed. I can kind of hear it. There’s a vibe to it. There’s a lot of information there that is producible. As much as you can, if you think about… This is really what the job is. If you imagine a moment in your mind, what is the best way to describe that with the fewest words? That’s the game.
**John:** Its other general rules, I would say, general principles, is have characters doing things rather than things just existing. If you can have a character make a change within the scene, make a change within the sentence, the character is doing something rather than a thing just is, that is helpful. That’s not a condition on avoiding the verb to be. It’s just saying if a character can take an action that is part of the visual, that’s more helpful, and getting back to, again, showing us rather than telling us. Rather than just describing a thing, make it really feel like we are giving you a visual to really show what the thing is, rather than just being narrated to about what the activity is that’s going on.
**Craig:** Those are great rules. I would throw this one on the pile also. Watch out for certain words that mean lots of different things to you but may not mean lots of different things to the reader. For instance, let’s say it’s as simple as somebody smiles. We smile for a thousand different reasons. We smile because we are excited. We smile because we pity. We smile because we’re giving up. There’s so many reasons we smile. If you find yourself using one of those words that have a billion purposes, consider what you could do to relay the more specific aspect of it.
You could say, “John says, dialog, ‘Unfortunately, it turns out we’re not going to be able to offer you the job after all,'” and then in action, “Craig smiles, stands up, shrugs, shakes John’s hand,” or you could say in parentheses, in action, “Yes, as I figured.” You can try as best you can to not rely too much on people reading your mind, because they’re not always going to be able to, especially if there’s ambiguous action.
**John:** Here’s an example from Station Eleven I thought was really useful. “Jeevan faux-waves, straightens up, knows no one at this macabre gathering. He pats his jacket, looking for his phone, not left, not right, not back, not chest, remembers where his jacket is.” Very specific actions that Jeevan is doing, and it lets us know something about Jeevan. Clear visuals. We know what we’re actually seeing on screen. We also know why Jeevan is doing it. We know what he’s looking for. We can connect his thought process there. We’ve been that person, and we understand what he’s looking for. Another example from Station Eleven, “Kirsten’s attention has been drawn to the big windows, so huge they’re like the deck of a space station. She approaches the glass and puts her fingers on them, looking down at the lights of the pier.”
**Craig:** I could direct that. I know what to do. I even get a sense of alienation. All the things that they would want me to feel here, I understand. They’re just pouring off of these words. Note that you don’t have to say, “She approaches the glass and puts her fingers on them, a tiny person lost in the world,” blah da da, “separated by glass,” blah, whatever the hell it is. You get it. Any time somebody puts their hand on glass, I know what it means. I also know what to do. I know to shoot the hand. I also know to shoot back through the window at her, which would be great. “Looking down at the lights of the pier” implies I need to see what she’s seeing. I also need to see her seeing what she’s seeing.
**John:** The camera’s going to probably raise up a little bit so we can get the look down at the-
**Craig:** Yep.
**John:** Good stuff.
**Craig:** Then the reverse is a low angle back up. Distance would be great there, to get a sense of scope, because the windows are “so huge they’re like the deck of a space station,” so I need to be really wide behind her. There are all these things clearly implied by the writing there. Weirdly, for a craft where everyone is constantly admonished to not direct on the page, the one thing that will get your script bought, sold, produced, directing on the page.
**John:** This whole conversation I wanted to avoid, the “we see,” “we hears,” the wes of it all, because none of these examples involve the wes.
**Craig:** These don’t need them.
**John:** These are just good visuals, clearly communicated, giving us a sense of what it would feel like to be in the audience, seeing that produced on the screen.
**Craig:** As much as I love writing “we see” and “we hear,” I only do it when I need it.
**John:** In this case, we don’t need it.
**Craig:** We don’t need it.
**John:** Let’s get to some listener questions. Megana, can you help us out?
**Megana:** Yes. Adam asks, “How many montages can my 118-page screenplay have?”
**Craig:** 118.
**John:** Three.
**Craig:** I really do love the idea of a 118-page screenplay with 118 montages.
**John:** It’s all montages the whole time through.
**Craig:** Every page is a montage.
**John:** Everything Everywhere All At Once is honestly probably 118 montages.
**Craig:** It’s close. It is.
**John:** The answer is there’s no answer, but here’s what I’ll say. If you’re using the word montage more than three times in a script, something is probably weird about your script. It feels different. If you’re doing bullet-pointy montages a lot in your script, something is really strange about your script, and that’s worth noticing. Did you write a strange script?
**Craig:** Yeah, particularly if the montage is doing the most tropey of montage purposes, which is some sort of training/growth.
**John:** (singing)
**Craig:** (singing) I include makeovers as part of training and growth. There are certain kinds of montages that we almost don’t even notice are montages. For instance, very common when you’re watching a movie or television show and people are driving quite a distance from one place to another, there’s nothing happening along the way other than the driving, that’ll get montaged. We don’t feel like it’s a montage. It’s not the same thing as someone decides they’re going to start lifting weights and here we go, or the worst of them all, the novelist finally figures out what to write and 40 seconds later, there’s a book.
**Megana:** No, there’s papers flying first.
**Craig:** Of course. First, you have to throw… The wastepaper basket has to get filled up.
**John:** It has to overfill.
**Craig:** It overfills, and then suddenly you’re like, “I’ve got it.” Now, you’re just pulling the paper out, slapping it on that pile right to the right of you, and then threading in the next page, because everybody exists in 1963 when they’re writing a novel, and then clack clack clack clack clack. I hate that so much.
**John:** Getting back to the point of when you use the word montage and when you don’t use the word montage, I feel like I’ve probably used the word montage in my scripts maybe five times in a career. There are a lot of montages in there. Spring comes to the castle. A couple sentences describing what has changed and what we’re seeing. You don’t necessarily need to use the word montage to make that clear.
**Craig:** Agreed. How many montages? Not too many.
**John:** Not too many.
**Craig:** Adam is regretting asking us this question. He’s like, “These guys don’t know what they’re talking about?” What’s the next question, Megana? I feel like we’re going to crush the next one.
**Megana:** David asks, “My story takes place in a real town with a small population. After a recent draft, the townspeople have become way more complicit in the evil doings of the antagonist. Is this poor taste, since real people live in this town and are being represented negatively? Should I change it to a fictional town, or is this just part of the storytelling game and I shouldn’t worry about it?”
**John:** Interesting. It’s a real small town. David is writing some terrible deeds happening in this small town that people are complicit in. I don’t know. He’s not saying whether it’s a true story or not. If it’s a true story, then yes, you have to be much more mindful of the fact that people can be mashed together to be in your thing. I really wouldn’t worry about it. You cannot libel a town. You can libel people.
**Craig:** That’s right.
**John:** Unless you are making it clear that these are the specific people who are doing this terrible thing, I think you’re in the clear.
**Craig:** I would refer you to obscure author Stephen King, David, who has forced real small towns in Maine to go through all sorts of horrible things, and Massachusetts. As long as the actual people aren’t reading this and going, “Wait a second, that’s me,” then you’re fine. That thing at the end of episodes or movies that say, “Any resemblance to people alive or dead is,” what is it, coincidence? That’s the key. I would not worry about this too much.
**John:** Agree. Megana, it looks like we have a question about shooting scripts.
**Megana:** Yes. CH asks, “I keep being told by a fellow writer that I shouldn’t put things like establishing shots into a script. He tells me that this is something that is done when you write the shooting script.”
**Craig:** What?
**Megana:** “Can you tell me about the process that happens to a script when it goes into production and a director gets his hands on it? What is the difference between a script and a shooting script? Who writes the shooting script?”
**John:** Wow, some fundamental questions here. I also want to point out “gets his hands on it.” Their hands on it? It could be a woman. It could be a person who identifies as a he.
**Craig:** It could be a person without hands.
**John:** By the way, it could be a person without hands.
**Craig:** Just saying.
**John:** I want to start by saying we could probably put a link in the show notes to a previous episode where we talked about some of the things that do change when you move into production. You don’t see numbered scripts until you get pretty close to production, until someone tells you, “We need scene numbers.” Then you put scene numbers in. You don’t put them in scripts up until that point. There’s not a big difference between a shooting script and the script that you’re writing. It’s a mistake to think that they are completely different things or that some other person does them.
**Craig:** CH, here’s what I would like you to tell your fellow writer. You’re wrong, fellow writer. Apologies, but you’re wrong. The shooting script is not a thing. The shooting script is just like, “Okay, we’re shooting now, so I guess this draft is the one we’re working with for now,” but you can revise that one. There’s no special skill to writing a shooting script. There is absolutely nothing other than, as John says, scene numbers, that belong in that script but not in earlier script. If you want to say establishing shot so-and-so, of course you write that into your script. You don’t need to wait for some theoretical day where they tap a magic wand on your document and call it the shooting script. There’s no such thing really. For the legal purposes of figuring out credit, the Writers Guild essentially describes the shooting script as the last one. That’s the last one they got published. That’s it. I guess that’s the shooting script.
I have a feeling that your fellow writer either is not particularly experienced or is just deeply confused. In anything, just for all of you, any time anybody gives you advice that smells like, “Hey writers, know your place,” reject it.
**John:** Here’s where I think the friend maybe got confused is that online you will find screenplays and you will find screenplays that look just like the screenplays you and I would write normally, or you’ll find what are called shooting scripts, which all have half pages and A and B pages and stars in the margins, and they look crazy. They’ll be in different colors if they were originally in different colors. There’ll be weird headers on things. That kind of shooting script is the production drafts that go through multiple series of revisions and stuff. Things can look really strange in those. You don’t want your script to start that way. It’s just a way that we’ve decided to handle additions and deletions to shooting scripts while we’re in production. We don’t have to re-shoot the whole script. We can just re-shoot pages. That is the difference between a shooting script and the original script.
Sometimes it’s harder to read shooting scripts, because they are just messy, and there’s weird one-eighth pages, and things get broken, strangely. You’re not writing that. You’re writing a draft, and you’re writing the script that is meant to be read and goes into production. Don’t worry about the differences here.
**Craig:** Agreed.
**John:** Agreed. I think it’s come time for our One Cool Things.
**Craig:** Oh, exciting.
**John:** I have a big One Cool Thing and a very small, little, adorable One Cool Thing. My big One Cool Thing is, previously on the show we’ve talked about the Inevitable Foundation, which is a great group here in Los Angeles that helps match writers with disabilities and people who should be hiring those writers with disabilities. They’ve had a great track record of getting people staffed on shows and getting projects set up. This last week I went to an event that they were doing that was really focusing on their new class but also their concierge service. I want to hype up the concierge service. If you are person who is looking to hire on a writer with a disability for a specific project or if you have a show, and it’s like, “Man, it really would be fantastic to find a deaf writer from a Latin background for my show,” you call them, you [inaudible 00:40:10] them an email, and right away, they will give you a list of some really great writers and samples for you to be reading through.
Shoshannah Stern, who was a previous Scriptnotes guest, was one of the hosts of this event. She’s a great example of somebody who is working today in part because people recognized, “Wow, it would be really great to have a deaf writer to help us figure out how to do this show about deaf characters.”
Just hyping up the Inevitable Foundation. If you are a person who is looking to staff, you’re an executive who is curious about trying to find disabled writers for your project, they are the place you should go to first.
**Craig:** That’s great.
**John:** We’ll put a link in the show notes to them. My small, adorable One Cool Thing is, you can see it in the show notes here, I fell for an Instagram ad which was about these little crochet animals you can make. I bought the little kit. It was kind of difficult but actually really fun and rewarding. I made Pierre the Penguin that you see there, this adorable, little, plush thing that I crocheted just from a bunch of yarn.
**Craig:** This was not something I could have foreseen.
**John:** I’m a crafty person, Craig.
**Craig:** You are.
**John:** You’ve seen me-
**Craig:** You’re amazingly crafty. It’s just the crocheting was something-
**John:** Crocheting?
**Craig:** … that I did not foresee. I love it. It’s adorable. I will tell you… John already knows this. I watched John expertly duct tape the handles of picket signs for our last strike, not to be confused with the one we’re about to have. He watched me absolutely screw up. All I needed to do was just duct tape a wooden stick, and I really struggled.
**John:** It’s all about the angle.
**Craig:** His, it was diagonal, and it was layered perfectly. I have a feeling Megana would also be just amazing at that.
**John:** Megana has great craft.
**Craig:** She looks crafty as hell. I still do not know how to wrap a present. That’s me. This is wild. I love the way this thing looks. You’re a very good crocheter. Speaking of crocheting and crocheters and pronouncing French words, John, you mentioned that the Inevitable Foundation has a concierge service. Have you heard, and I have heard this so many times, people say concierge [said like concier]?
**John:** Yeah, they’re over-applying the language. They’re over-applying the rule. They think a French word, you have to not say the last bit of it.
**Craig:** They don’t understand that if the word were C-O-N-C-I-E-R-T, yes, concierge [said like concier], but concierge, G-E, the word’s concierge. I never know what to say when they say concierge [said like concier]. I don’t want to be that guy, but I am that guy. I am that guy.
**John:** While we’re in a digression about pronouncing things, where is the World Cup being held right now?
**Craig:** Qatar [said like cutter].
**John:** We decided it was Qatar [said like cutter] and not Qatar [said like ka-tar]. I’m fine with it. I’m fine with it, by the way. It’s just interesting that we’ve now all come to agree that we’re going to say Qatar [said like cutter] rather than Qatar [said like ka-tar].
**Craig:** I think we agree because the people from Qatar [said like cutter] were like, “It’s called Qatar [said like cutter].”
**John:** It’s interesting in what cases we decide to use the local pronunciation and not, because we call it Paris, we don’t call it Paris [said like Pari], but some people insist on calling it Barcelona [said like Barselona], which drives me crazy.
**Craig:** It’s too much. Part of it is when we learn these terms. Qatar as a nation is not… As a people, it’s been around forever, but as a nation, it’s relatively new compared to say China. The word for China in Chinese is not China any more than the word for Japan is Nippon. Why don’t we call it Nippon? I don’t know. It’s because just somewhere along the line they said Japan. Then we do change things. We don’t say Bombay. We say Mumbai. What are some of the other ones? Beijing is the best example. It used to be Peking.
**John:** Peking.
**Craig:** Now it’s Beijing.
**John:** Those were cases where it was like our colonialism had forced a word on there and we were like, “Oh, that’s not the real name for things, so let’s not call it that.”
**Craig:** Then other places, we have no problem forcing our colonialism on. It’s like, “Fine. You’ll just be called this or you’ll be called that.” Korea’s not Korea. That’s not the name for Korea in Korea. I don’t think it is.
**John:** No, it’s Hanguk.
**Craig:** Yeah. Anyway.
**John:** Anyway.
**Craig:** Any who.
**John:** That’s a digression. Anyway, the Woobles are adorable little things. I think they’re largely sold out. I can’t believe I’m hyping something I found on an Instagram ad, but I enjoyed it.
**Craig:** You’re hyping it. My One Cool Thing, this one’s expensive, folks. This will be more expensive than the Woobles. I use a Yeti mic for this podcast. I can’t remember what my headphones are, but they’re nice. I enjoy them. They’re nice. I had them brought to my house, because I was at home sick with COVID, and I’d left them there, of course, because that’s me. Here I am in the office, and I need to plug headphones into my mic so I can do this podcast.
As luck would have it, our amazing editor, Tim Goode, had gotten our amazing producer, Jack Lesko, a pair of new headphones, because she didn’t have really good reference headphones. I’ve immediately stolen them for this podcast. I will give them back. I promise I will give her her headphones back, but they’re awesome. These are AKG headphones. The model is K702. They are reference studio headphones, open back, around ear. What I love about these is they are incredibly comfortable and I can hear my own voice not solely through the microphone, if that makes sense. I’m hearing my own voice much more naturally, which is really nice. My ears don’t feel quite so stifled. In terms of actual sound reproduction, these I think are state of the art. I don’t even know what they cost. Should we dare to look it up and see?
**John:** Let’s dare. We’ll take a moment here.
**Craig:** Oh, boy.
**Megana:** They’re not crazy.
**Craig:** What are they?
**Megana:** It looks like they’re on sale for 289.
**Craig:** That’s not horrible. We are heading into the holiday season. They are a joy. I’m getting myself a pair of these for sure.
**John:** Craig, I’m guessing that the headphones you’ve been using have been the Sony MDR ones.
**Craig:** I think they are.
**John:** They’re the classic-
**Craig:** I think that’s right.
**John:** That’s what Megana and I both use. They’re great. They’re the standard. Obviously, if you have something that you like better, go for it.
**Craig:** These feel better. I’d say they feel better and they sound better, to me. If you are looking for some reference studio headphones that feel comfortable and reproduce sound nicely, and you’ve got a little dough to spend, or perhaps you want to shower somebody with luxury this holiday season, AKG by Harman, K702.
**John:** K702. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.
**Craig:** Yay yay, woo woo!
**John:** Our outro this week is by Matthew Jordan. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions, Craig’s not on Twitter anymore, I’m @johnaugust for the moment. We’ll see. We have T-shirts. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. I think you can still probably get them in time for Christmas if you order today. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. 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 the dessert bracket. Which is the ultimate dessert-
**Craig:** Ultimate.
**John:** … that will beat all others? Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun show.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**Megana:** Thank you.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** This is inspired by several things. First off, it’s the Great British Baking Show just resolved, or Great British Bake-Off if you’re British, which was always a delightful show to watch. They were always making great, delicious, tasty desserts and some other tacos [said like tack-os] that they should not be trying to make.
**Craig:** Tacos. Taco [said like tack-o].
**John:** Tacos [said like tack-os].
**Craig:** Their pasta [said like pass-ta] and their tacos [said like tack-os].
**John:** Oh my gosh, don’t get me started on the pico de gallo [said like gall-o] and pico [said like pike-o] de gallo [said like gal-o].
**Craig:** I know. Come on, British people.
**John:** It’s also the holidays, which means there’s lots of good desserts out there. I thought we would actually just take a moment and really figure out which is the best dessert possible.
**Craig:** Great.
**John:** In this bracket, we’re going to have 16 different desserts competing. I want you to imagine the best possible version of a thing. It can be a thing you make yourself or a thing you got from that one fantastic place. It’s the ultimate version of it. Don’t worry about the mediocre ones.
**Craig:** Perfect.
**John:** We will start with the fruit pies. Which is the winner, apple pie or cherry pie?
**Craig:** Apple.
**John:** Megana?
**Megana:** Apple.
**Craig:** It’s apple. It’s apple, for sure.
**John:** I don’t think there’s really a [inaudible 00:49:15] question. Cherry pie is delicious. Again, vanilla ice cream elevates both of them. Apple pie is the one you want to go for.
**Craig:** The only way to really make cherry pie is to over-sugar and glop the cherries. The cherries themselves become kind of gross and not really cherry-like, so yeah, it’s apple pie.
**Megana:** It’s just not as versatile.
**Craig:** I agree.
**John:** Apple pie also you could have for breakfast the next morning. It’s delicious.
**Craig:** It’s wonderful.
**John:** So good. So good. Next the battle of the breads. We’ve got banana bread versus bread pudding.
**Craig:** That’s actually tricky, because you’re asking me to imagine the best possible version. If you were going for just average probability of happiness, you’d go with banana bread, I think, but the best possible version of bread pudding destroys banana bread.
**John:** That’s where I’m coming too as well. Megana, what’s your feeling on the breads?\
**Megana:** I am bread pudding all day every day.
**Craig:** There you go.
**John:** I’ll pick a bread pudding at a restaurant almost any day, so let’s go for it.
**Megana:** I’m just going to say it. I think banana bread is over-hyped.
**Craig:** It’s fine. You know what it is? It’s a dessert that anyone can make, and so it gets over-made. That said, somebody did recently give me, as a gift, a wonderful banana bread.
**John:** Did it have walnuts in it? Should banana bread have walnuts?
**Craig:** It should not, and it didn’t.
**Megana:** I just think it’s a place that we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s good so we don’t feel guilty about our brown bananas and doing something with them. Let’s just end this charade.
**Craig:** It’s one of the most annoying things. Melissa’s like, “I’m making banana bread.” I’m like, “You’re rotting food on my counter. That’s what I’m seeing.” Next, we have cake.
**John:** We have cakes.
**Craig:** That’s a big one.
**John:** Which do we prefer? Do you want a chocolate birthday cake or a poundcake?
**Craig:** I’m going to be the unpopular one here. I don’t love chocolate cake. I find it to be cloying. It’s too much for my palette. I’m not a huge chocolate person. Actually, I think a good poundcake, a really well done poundcake can be fantastic. I’m actually going to go with poundcake.
**John:** Is the poundcake frosted in any way? Is there a glaze to it?
**Craig:** No, I would not do frosting or glaze. I’m a purist.
**John:** Megana, what are you thinking in this cake battle here?
**Megana:** I knew that Craig and I felt the same way about chocolate birthday cake, so I am also going to go with pound cake.
**Craig:** Nice.
**John:** I would generally go for chocolate birthday cake, but I will go with the majority here, so poundcake is the winner.
**Craig:** Poundcake.
**John:** Now we’re going to worldwide here, international. Crepes Suzette versus baklava.
**Craig:** Can I throw one other one on there?
**John:** Sure.
**Craig:** Tiramisu.
**John:** Tiramisu’s also really good.
**Craig:** With that, my answer is tiramisu.
**John:** Again, we’re trying to only picture the ultimate versions of tiramisu. I’ve had some really shit tiramisus. I think I’m still leaning towards baklava.
**Craig:** Interesting.
**John:** Megana, help us out.
**Megana:** I know I’m taking this way too seriously, but this is incredibly difficult for me.
**Craig:** I know. You’re stressing out. I love it.
**Megana:** I’m going to go with crepes, just to mix things up.
**John:** Wow.
**Craig:** Now what do we do?
**John:** [Crosstalk 00:52:27].
**Craig:** I think what we have to do is maybe rank choice this, even though Sarah Palin does not like that system.
**John:** Absolutely, rank choice voting. Craig, rank them. Crepes, tiramisu, baklava.
**Craig:** I’m going to go tiramisu one, crepes Suzette two, baklava three.
**John:** I would go baklava one, tiramisu two, crepes Suzette three.
**Megana:** I’m going crepes one, baklava two, tiramisu three.
**Craig:** Oh god, did we just [crosstalk 00:52:54]?
**John:** Good Lord, I think we completely broke it.
**Craig:** Oh, no. Did we break our whole system?
**John:** We’re going to circle back to that. We’re going to cleanse our palette with other ones and circle back to the worldwide.
**Craig:** I’m happy to defer to crepes Suzette. It’s not that I don’t like baklava.
**John:** It is one note. It is one very sugary and honey sweet-
**Craig:** Very sugary. I don’t tend to like Middle Eastern dessert profiles, whether it’s Israeli or-
**Megana:** It’s so syrupy.
**Craig:** It’s so syrupy. Exactly.
**John:** It is syrupy. We’ll go for crepes Suzette. It has fire. Fire is exciting.
**Craig:** Fire is exciting, and it’s French.
**John:** Alternative pies. We have pumpkin pie versus key lime pie.
**Craig:** Wow. Oof. Man. You’re kind of catching us at a weird time in the calendar here.
**John:** That’s true.
**Craig:** Going for the best possible version, the ceiling on pumpkin pie is higher than the ceiling on key lime pie.
**John:** I agree.
**Craig:** I would go pumpkin pie.
**John:** I’m going to go pumpkin pie too. Megana?
**Megana:** Yeah. That was a great analysis.
**Craig:** We think we’re on CNN.
**Megana:** Or ESPN.
**John:** The only ting I’ll say is, two bites of key lime pie, and wow, this is really great, but my 10th bite of key lime pie, I’m like, “I don’t want anymore,” whereas pumpkin pie, I can keep eating it.
**Craig:** I’ve made them both from scratch. They’re both excellent. By the way, tip on key lime pie, never use key limes to make key lime pie. They’re disgusting.
**John:** Just use normal limes.
**Craig:** They’re tiny and bitter. Mediterranean limes, which are the ones you would imagine in your mind, those make a much better key lime pie. This has been confirmed by the excellent people in the test kitchens at Cooks Illustrated.
**John:** Love it. The cold round, cheesecake versus ice cream, any flavor, including hot fudge sundaes.
**Craig:** This is an easy one.
**John:** Are we going for ice cream or cheesecake?
**Craig:** Best version for me, cheesecake all day long.
**John:** I’m also going to go with cheesecake. Megana, what are you thinking?
**Megana:** I imagine this is what it would be like if you asked me to pick between me children.
**Craig:** It’s Sophie’s Choice. This is your Sophie’s Choice. One of them has to die.
**John:** One of them will come with you. The other one will just melt out on the sidewalk.
**Craig:** You’re actually crying.
**Megana:** God, my first love is ice cream, but I’m going to go cheesecake.
**John:** Something about it. I love a hot fudge sundae, but cheesecake, the best.
**Craig:** A great cheesecake is a great thing.
**John:** Pure Americana here, chocolate chip cookies versus s’mores.
**Craig:** I would go chocolate chip cookies myself. Megana?
**Megana:** To Craig’s earlier point, the ceiling on chocolate chip cookies is just higher.
**Craig:** S’mores are required to be one thing basically.
**Megana:** Unless you’re Paul Hollywood.
**John:** S’mores are exciting in a camping situation, like oh, this is pretty good for around a campfire, but I’m never reaching for a s’more.
**Craig:** No. It’s actually very annoying to eat. God help you if you have a beard like I do. You can’t.
**John:** Crumbly?
**Craig:** The marshmallow just begins to embed itself in your face.
**John:** Lastly, some summer fun. Peach cobbler versus rice crispy bars.
**Craig:** Megana, I want to hear from you first on this one.
**Megana:** Rice crispy bars.
**Craig:** That’s where I was going, and here’s why. Peach cobbler can be excellent, but rice crispy bars are not only one thing. You can kick them up. You can mess around with them. You can do some interesting things. They have a unique texture. No other dessert can have what rice crispy bars have. I’m going to go with rice crispy bars.
**John:** Rice crispy bars are rice cakes with syrup on them.
**Craig:** Correct.
**John:** I do not enjoy rice crispy treats. I will eat them. I will eat them, but I won’t enjoy them the way that I will enjoy a great peach crisp. God, summer fruits, stone fruits are incredible.
**Megana:** I knew it. I knew it.
**Craig:** Unfortunately, the rice crispy bar people have spoken.
**John:** Fine. Now, we get to the next bracket here. Lead a battle between apple pie and bread pudding.
**Craig:** Bread pudding for me.
**John:** That’s bread pudding for me too. Megana, how are you feeling?
**Megana:** I’m going to go apple pie, but I guess I lose.
**Craig:** You have lost.
**John:** Bread pudding made it through the round, although now we have no fruits left in the competition.
**Craig:** Great. Good. Fruits are garbage. Let’s get to the real stuff.
**John:** Poundcake versus crepes Suzette.
**Megana:** Can I switch over to tiramisu?
**John:** You can switch to tiramisu.
**Craig:** If you switch to tiramisu, then I’m going with tiramisu for sure.
**John:** Great.
**Craig:** In that case, this is hands down tiramisu for me.
**John:** I think tiramisu deserves it. It’s a weird stacked dessert. It’s a trifle. It’s got come coffee in it potentially.
**Craig:** Definitely.
**John:** Perfectly made [crosstalk 00:57:36].
**Craig:** Required. Mascarpone cheese, delicious.
**John:** Pumpkin pie versus cheesecake.
**Craig:** I would probably go cheesecake. It’s just more versatile.
**Megana:** You could have a pumpkin pie cheesecake.
**Craig:** That’s exactly right. You can have a pumpkin cheesecake. Bingo.
**John:** You can have a cheesecake pumpkin pie, but you would still call it cheesecake.
**Craig:** You would call it cheesecake.
**John:** I think cheesecake’s going to win this one. Chocolate chip cookies versus rice crispy bars. No competition.
**Craig:** It’s chocolate chip cookies there.
**Megana:** Yeah.
**Craig:** That’s an easy one.
**John:** Final four. Bread pudding versus tiramisu.
**Craig:** Tiramisu.
**Megana:** Yeah.
**John:** I’m pretty much a bread pudding. Let me see if I can sway you to bread pudding. Bread pudding, it’s coming out hot. It’s coming out with little bits of chocolate melted into it, maybe some caramel melted into it as well. It’s like French toast. It’s a little bit eggy. You got to eat it with a spoon. Maybe it’s in the middle of the table and you’re sharing it.
**Megana:** Yeah, and some caramel.
**John:** Or maybe it’s in a little cast iron pan.
**Craig:** It’s amazing. Now let me try and sway you to tiramisu, because I recently made it.
**John:** Great.
**Craig:** Delicious espresso coffee. Ladyfingers have soaked it all up, this delicious, spongy yumminess. Then you’ve got a mixture of cream and Mascarpone cheese adding a little bit of tang, lots of sweetness from sugar. Then the whole thing is dusted on top with a little bit of cocoa powder. It all just blends together. Each bite has five things going on.
**John:** Megana, it’s coming down to you. You have to decide between tiramisu and bread pudding. Your vote decides everything.
**Megana:** I’m going bread pudding.
**Craig:** Wow.
**Megana:** He got me at it’s hot.
**Craig:** I hope the nation of Italy visits its vengeance upon both of you.
**Megana:** Don’t put them on me.
**Craig:** You’re a racist.
**Megana:** Where does bread pudding originate from?
**Craig:** It feels Englishy to me.
**John:** It does.
**Craig:** Any time the word pudding is in there and it isn’t a glop, I think it’s English.
**John:** Cheesecake versus chocolate chip cookies.
**Craig:** Cheesecake.
**John:** I’m debating. I’m thinking of the ultimate versions of things. Maybe it’s because chocolate chip cookies, while they can be dessert, they’re not really an end-of-meal dessert. They’re a treat to be eaten other times.
**Craig:** You can eat them after lunch.
**John:** The same reason we haven’t [inaudible 00:59:55] blueberry muffins, which are delicious.
**Craig:** Yeah, because they’re not really dessert.
**John:** Megana, you agree with us?
**Megana:** I don’t, but you guys win.
**Craig:** We win.
**John:** Make your case. Are chocolate chip cookies as dessert as the dessert winner here?
**Megana:** I don’t know. They’re just my best friend.
**Craig:** That’s not what we’re talking about though. We’re not talking about what listens to you talk.
**Megana:** They’re all the time. They are just a universal, delightful treat for any time of day, year, season, whereas a cheesecake is an undertaking.
**John:** What I was saying is it comes down to the definition of dessert. If it’s something that’s uniquely a dessert versus also a snack, is that a difference?
**Megana:** Yeah, because a chocolate chip cookie is like a treat.
**John:** It is a treat.
**Craig:** It’s a treat. I made a cheesecake recently for the first time. It came out beautifully. It’s fun to make. A cheesecake, when you bring it out at the end of dinner, people are like, “Oho.” You bring out a plate of chocolate chip cookies, they’re like, “Oh, you don’t care about us.”
**Megana:** Yeah, “He phoned it in.”
**Craig:** “He phoned it in.”
**John:** That’s fair.
**Megana:** I guess we’re going cheesecake.
**John:** Cheesecake. Final round. This is actually a surprise. Not what I would’ve predicted.
**Craig:** Startling.
**John:** Bread pudding versus cheesecake. I’m astonished apple pie didn’t make it through to here.
**Craig:** We’re not that American, I guess.
**John:** We’re not. Bread pudding versus cheesecake. What’s going to win?
**Megana:** Cheesecake.
**Craig:** Yeah, it’s cheesecake. I know. I know. I know. I know.
**John:** I think it’s the effectiveness of presentation. Would I have a stronger impression of cheesecake, would I enjoy cheesecake more if it weren’t for the Cheesecake Factory? That is what definitely has soured me.
**Craig:** The fact that they put the word factory next to it is pretty brutal. The whole concept and experience of Cheesecake Factory is upsetting from the very moment you walk in. The faux Italianate design.
**John:** Yeah, oh my gosh.
**Craig:** The menu that appears to be a phone book. They are terrible at night but good at nothing. Then the cheesecakes themselves, they’re stupid. They’ve gotten so far afield from just the simplicity and elegance of a New York style cheesecake.
**John:** We’ve not even discussed the Basque cheesecake and the rise of the Basque cheesecake.
**Craig:** The Basque cheesecake is-
**John:** Burnt.
**Craig:** … fantastic.
**John:** It is.
**Craig:** It’s glorious. That’s another great vote in favor of cheesecake is that there are different families.
**John:** I think a thing that’s also been pushing it over is because there’s been recent innovation, at least within America, the popularity of Basque cheesecakes.
**Craig:** Discovery.
**Megana:** Watch the cheesecake space.
**Craig:** Watch this cheesecake space. I’ve always loved the combination of sugar and cheese in a dessert. Even a cheese Danish is delicious to me. Cheesecakes are not easy to make. Bread pudding is easy. It just is.
**John:** Yeah, true. Anyone could do a bread pudding. Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun dessert bracket.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**Megana:** Thank you.
**John:** Bye.
**Megana:** Bye.
**Craig:** Bye, guys.
Links:
* [Bob Iger Back As Disney CEO, Bob Chapek Out](https://deadline.com/2022/11/disney-bob-iger-returns-ceo-bob-chapek-out-1235178223/) on Deadline
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 543: 20 Questions with John](https://johnaugust.com/2022/20-questions-with-john)
* [David Wappel’s Twitter Thread on Anchoring Nouns](https://twitter.com/davidwappel/status/1202287786998390785?s=20&t=xSSMDkDRYaft-MmoMKhE5w)
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