The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/betrayed).
**John:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig:** My name is Craig Mazin.
**John:** This is Episode 542 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, Craig, I thought I trusted you, I believed in you, and now for you to do this.
**Craig:** You got what you deserved, my friend.
**John:** Today we’re discussing betrayals, back stabs, and double crosses as they occur in film and TV, and real life to some degree.
We also have lots of follow-up and listener questions. Plus, Craig, what should I do about my keyboard? We’re going to talk a little bit about keyboards, which is a fundamental piece of hardware technology we don’t discuss nearly enough on the show.
In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we didn’t come here to make friends, we came here to win. I want to discuss which reality competition shows you and me and Megana would enter and what our strategies would be, because I would say you’re probably not a big Survivor-y kind of fan, but I could see you on a cooking show, for example, and you would kill it.
**Craig:** The question is, what kind of cooking show? There are so many.
**John:** We’ll get into all of them, but only for our Premium Members. First, there’s some stuff that happened in the news. Obviously, Disney’s handling of the Florida Don’t Say Gay bill was a big topic in discussion this last week.
I was at a premiere for Better Nate Than Ever, which was a Disney Plus movie, directed by Tim Federle, a former guest, which was delightful. Tim was asked on the red carpet, “How are you feeling about Disney’s response to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill?” He said that “good representation does not cancel out bad legislation,” which I just loved. I liked that he found a way to rhyme that and actually make the point that you can do everything you can do, like in Tim’s movie, which has incredibly important gay representing, but it doesn’t actually change the facts on the ground of people living under bad laws.
**Craig:** This is one of those spaces where the corporation is so far away from the content they make. It’s now run by a new guy. It was Bob Iger, and now it’s Mr. Chapek. What’s his first name, Bob?
**John:** I think it’s Bob Chapek.
**Craig:** Another Bob. There you go, just by not knowing my first name, I’ve put myself on some sort of blacklist. You have people that make these things and they care about these things and put all of their love into these things. I know that one of the producers of that was Adam Siegel, who’s a wonderful guy and a lovely friend of mine and just a good human being. They are putting all their love in this, and it means something to them. They mean what they say when they say that good representation isn’t going to cancel out bad legislation. That’s absolutely a great point. The boardroom is 4 million miles away. The boardroom might as well be on another planet. The question is, what will the boardroom actually do about this.
It is a very tricky thing for Disney, because I think they all know that this law is terrible. If this law were somewhere else, I think they would have a strong corporate response, especially Disney, which has always been, I think, the gayest of studios, just in terms of who’s been running it and who’s been there and who works on their movies. It’s just been a very gay-friendly studio, at least for employment. Disneyland has always had Gay Day, and yet their biggest investment in park is in Florida. What do they do? How many people do you think they employ in Florida? God.
**John:** I saw it was a huge number.
**Craig:** It’s insane.
**John:** I want to say it’s 30,000. They’re one of the biggest employers in Florida.
**Craig:** It’s like a city of employees. On the one hand, they do have to make sure that they take care of those employees and keep them working and all the rest of it, but on the other hand, what do they do? This is actually quite fascinating, because they have an oversized influence on Florida, but it seems like Florida’s leadership right now, under Governor Dipshit, doesn’t care. They just like being mean. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. Do you have any prediction?
**John:** I don’t have a great prediction. I think it’s [unclear 00:03:55] the folks who spend so much on Disney, which great to put pressure there, but also we need to remind everybody that Disney didn’t do this, it was Florida that did this. It was those terrible people. There are other companies that are working there who could also be pressured to do things. I’m thinking back to at the NBA making choices about when to pull games out of places because of things. This is just a bad law that will hurt people. It’s just a performative law, so not a thing that’s designed to actually have any measurable impact on people’s lives. It’s just going to do terrible things for kids who are in danger.
**Craig:** That’s a great point.
**John:** That’s the frustration is that it’s not even a thing where–
**Craig:** It’s not even a real law. They’re just posing, for their stupid core.
**John:** Sometimes what’s even more dangerous than a draconian law is a vaguely written law anybody could choose to sue over. It’s a horrible mess.
**Craig:** It’s so stupid. It’s so stupid. You got to know at least a bunch of the people that were sponsoring that are very secretly and quietly gay, because that always happens.
**John:** Yeah, or they’re going to have gay and trans family members, because that’s life.
**Craig:** I hope they all hear from all of them. You make an interesting point, which is we sometimes focus all of our fire on the friends who aren’t doing enough, and not on the enemy. I think it’s important to hold our companies to task and to make them be responsible. I think it’s important to remind them of their responsibility. First things first, let’s get rid of that governor, change the way the government works in Florida, because it’s just horrendous.
**John:** We also need to find some way to change the incentives to just make the most performatively stupid things possible, so basically that everyone has to keep running further and further to the right in order to avoid the challenges.
**Craig:** That’s easy. Just get rid of Facebook. Just get rid of Meta, and that’ll take away Insta. Then get rid of Twitter, and you’re on your way to a society that is mildly functioning.
**John:** On our way. Also, this past week, MGM officially was acquired by Amazon Prime Studios. There was a question of whether that would go through or it would face regulatory hurdles. It did not. It was approved for sale. MGM of course is the legendary lion-led studio behind the 007 movies and a huge back-history. As we’ve said before on the podcast, their catalog is really complicated because it’s been sold off in bits and pieces to various places, but it is a big acquisition. I will say that even over the past couple weeks, I’ve been out with a pitch, and I pitched Amazon and I pitched MGM, and they were two completely separate companies. They were at pains to describe themselves as two different companies. MGM could not buy this project for streaming, because they did not have any relationship with a streamer.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** Now, of course, they do. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the theatrical side of MGM, the degree to which Amazon uses MGM as a theatrical distribution mechanism for the things that they make that should have a theatrical release. We’ll see what happens.
**Craig:** It made me sad, and not because I hate Amazon or anything. It just made me sad that… Then I thought, oh my god, this upstart internet company has purchased this 100-year-old studio. I’m like, actually, Amazon’s been around for a long time.
**John:** It has.
**Craig:** Actually now, they’re kind of an old company. My daughter has never existed in a world without Amazon.
**John:** If TikTok were to have bought MGM, I think we’d be a little more concerned.
**Craig:** I would’ve jumped. You’re absolutely right. The MGM catalog is bizarre and fragmented. You could argue that what they really bought was James Bond. That maybe is what they really bought, because that is all that MGM has been doing for a while. It’s pretty much a guaranteed hit, assuming that you pour the resources in that are generally required. Obviously, it’s a big turning point, because James Bond is about to get a new James Bond. What it means ultimately is one less buyer, not that MGM was really a buyer. They were. They were pretty minor. What’s going to happen to those two sets of people, some of those people are getting fired. I think that’s probably what’s going to happen. It’s the same thing when Disney bought Fox. It just happens.
**John:** It does, which is a bummer. I will already remind people that I don’t think that deal should’ve gone through. In a different administration, that deal would not have gone through, because I think it was just too big of a merger.
**Craig:** I don’t disagree.
**John:** Megana, we have some follow-up. Do you want to get us started?
**Megana:** Yes. Malgosia writes, with genuine love, “In Episode 540, Baggage asked for packing advice, and to my shock and horror, Craig said something to the tune of, ‘Don’t worry about bringing a hat and such. The lovely folks at the costume department will hook you up.’ No. Please don’t. We are not your mom. We all wear clothes every day, and therefore we at the costume department are often taken for granted as an extension of your closet. We’re absolutely not though, just the same as set deck is not there to help you decorate your hotel room, and hair and makeup are not there to brush your teeth. Baggage and Craig, please bring your own hat. If something happens and a nervous PA spills coffee on your shirt, we sure as hell will help. Just don’t treat us like your extra suitcase that you decided not to bring. Bring that extra suitcase. Production will cover it.”
**Craig:** Jeez, Malgosia, you’re tough. Maybe because I’m the showrunner.
**John:** I was going to say, Craig. I think there’s a little privilege there that may be coming in.
**Craig:** Yeah, which I’ve earned. They’re always so nice. They’re like, “Do you need a hat?” I would say that’s probably fair. That’s true. They’re not your mom. I can’t imagine that the occasional polite request would be met with quite this much horror and shock, or shock and horror. Shock and horror seems strong, Malgosia. It just really does.
**John:** It sounds like an invasion technique.
**Craig:** I know you’ve got a room with 100 hats. “Can I borrow one?” doesn’t seem like it would… Of course, no one’s relying on the costume department. I’m just saying if you forgot something, if you were like, “Oh my god, I don’t have a raincoat and it’s pouring,” it’s okay. Unless you’re working on a show where Malgosia’s got her arms crossed in front of that wardrobe truck, generally speaking, people are actually quite nice. I recognize that I’m the boss, so it’s probably why they’re nicer.
**John:** This is reminding me of a conversation I had way back when shooting Go, my very first movie. On that film, video taps were relatively new on cameras, because it was a film camera, but it had a video tap so you could see what was happening on screen.
More importantly, we also had a wireless video tap, which weren’t even I think technically even allowed at that point. It was just broadcasting on a UHF channel. We all had little TVs that we had, little handheld TVs, basically Game Boy size, so we could watch the shot if we weren’t right at set. It was incredibly handy, but those things just ate batteries. Inevitably, we’d run through our batteries, and we’d go to the sound department and say, “Hey, can I get some AA batteries?” At some point the sound department said, “Yes, but also, you’ve blown through our entire battery budget for the show.” We were counting on the sound department to always have batteries. Really we should’ve made some other arrangement for where are we going to get this or just acknowledge to the sound department, “Yeah, I know we’re eating all your batteries. Let’s talk to the line producer or somebody else, so it’s clear that this is what’s happening here.”
**Craig:** You only need one hat. If I came every day and was like, “Where’s my new hat?”
**John:** “Where’s my new hat?”
**Craig:** “Where’s my new hat?”
**John:** I burned this hat.
**Craig:** “Where’s my new hat?” Point taken. Assess your position and your need and act accordingly.
**John:** Sounds good. More follow-up, Megana?
**Megana:** Meedo wrote in, “On Craig’s question about meet cutely, yes, though not grammatically correct, cute could function adverbially in the same way hard does in die hard. On the subject of bad grammar, what are some instances of titles or catchphrases where such a distortion of the language has worked to great effect, and when does it not work? Instances of the former that come to mind are Gone Girl, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Never Say Never Again.”
**John:** Basically the question is, meet cute feels like bad grammar, but you can argue that it’s functioning adverbially.
**Craig:** You could try.
**John:** In titles we often do strangle some grammar there for effect. Gone Girl is the girl who’s gone, you get it. The Me and You and Everyone We Know, that feels actually pretty natural. I guess in titles we do get away with some weird grammar because we just accept it.
**Craig:** I just Googled a little bit here just to find some good ones, and there’s actually quite a few of them that are fun. You Got Served. No, you were served. You were served. Two Weeks Notice is missing a possessive apostrophe.
**John:** It is, yeah.
**Craig:** The Ladies Man, that was spelled the ladies, ladies plural, and the man. That just makes no sense. They’re titles, so you can do whatever the hell you want. Doesn’t matter. I remember I did a paper in college on Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song by Melvin Van Peebles. There are so many A’s and E’s. I had to learn, because I had to type it so many times, how many, because the spelling was obviously whatever it wanted to be. Get away with Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Honey, I’ve shrunk the kids. I think you can get away with anything, Meeto.
**John:** Honey, I shrank the kids. Honey, I shrunk the kids. Oh yeah, it’s honey, I shrank the kids.
**Craig:** Yeah, or honey, I’ve shrunk.
**John:** Also that’s one of those words that’s… Shrink. You could almost get to shrinked. It’s one of those words that’s going to be a transition going back to the more normal -ed things rather than switching vowels. [Cross-talk 00:13:35].
**Craig:** I think you can do whatever you want in a title.
**John:** You really can.
**Craig:** Titles are fine.
**John:** Later on in the show we’re going to be discussing BlacKkKlansman or mentioning BlacKkKlansman. As I’d try to type it into the Workflowy, I just could never remember how they spelled that.
**Craig:** That’s another good example.
**John:** Multiple K’s. Finally, some follow-up in Intelligence versus Charisma. Let’s start us out with that.
**Craig:** Em wrote in, “I think what’s missing in this conversation, and really missing in the Twitter fracas, is the connection between writing a great sample and figuring out what a great sample is in the context of the industry, which is something that’s largely learned via social connections with peers, which in turn is largely a function of charisma or at least social intelligence. A great sample in 2014 might not be a great sample in 2022, at least in TV, since the spectrum of what’s on the air has changed so much.
The best way to learn about that is talking to other writers and executives, usually in nonprofessional social context. It’s much harder I think to break in with low charisma, even if you’re a great writer, because you’ll have fewer friends, not because those connections are what will give you that first break, but because those connections are what might attune you to the industry so you can figure out what you should be writing.”
**John:** I think Em makes a really good point, but Craig is going to disagree.
**Craig:** Look, if you want to find out what the industry is doing, you can just watch TV. Also, if you’re in that spot where because of your high charisma you are now plugged into what’s being made, you may be in danger of agenting yourself, where you think, “Ah, I know what they want now. I will chase that.” It’s possible that that might help you a little bit, but not as much as something that’s fresh and original. I think now more than ever, actually, there is space for stuff that is different, because of television and the way television has functioned. Yeah, of course you could always do things that other people are doing. I’m not sure you’re going to need a lot of charisma for that.
**John:** Here’s my defense of what Em is saying, is that we talked on the previous episode about how there’s intelligence and charisma and wisdom, and wisdom is that knowing what to write, recognizing patterns, recognizing trends. Some of that also just comes with experience. Your wisdom stats will go up with some time. I think what Em is describing in terms of just getting a sense of the chatter and what people are actually talking about, because you can watch TV and see, oh, this is what’s on TV, but that’s what was purchased two years ahead of time and where the trend was. Getting a sense of where the puck is headed is a function of talking with people and being I that chatter. Yes, there’s a danger of overdoing that and chasing too hard the next trend, but it’s appropriate to be thinking about that in terms of not writing something that no one is going to pick up because of other things.
Right now I will tell our listeners, it’s really, really hard to set up a musical, I can tell you this from firsthand experience, because everyone’s afraid of musicals because so many musicals have failed recently. That’s just a thing I can tell you because you’re my friend and you’re listening to this on a podcast. If you didn’t have a friend who was listening to this, you might say, “Oh, I’m going to go set up a musical.” It’s going to be really hard to do it this week or this month. That’s just the reality. I think some charisma would be the way of being out there in the space, chatting with people at bars, doing that sort of stuff that happens, where you get the sense of what people are working on and what people are excited about. Some charisma there is helpful.
**Craig:** Look, I suppose also if you were just a careful reader for the 4 billion articles get fire hosed at us about everything, so if you Google Dear Evan Hansen, I think a thousand talk pieces will appear, and you’ll probably get a sense of why there is a trend right now. It’s understandable. I never want to come across as somebody who’s suggesting that social skills don’t help. I think I have pretty decent social skills, and they help. I don’t want to say wisdom doesn’t help, because I think I have some of that too. Of all your stats, really the one that is so outlandishly more important than the other is your intelligence here or–
**John:** Your writing intelligence.
**Craig:** What we call talent.
**John:** Obviously, this conversation was all about starting out a career. I will say that as my career has progressed, I reached a mid-level tier, where my writing was important, but my ability to be in a room with heavy hitters and survive was probably more important in terms of being able to keep that job and keep the project going. The words I was writing were very important. It was my ability to be present in a room and keeping up with the conversation and recognizing the psychological aspects of these difficult people in a room was more key to my success than actually the words, for some projects and some points in their production.
**Craig:** I agree with that. I think we talked about the whole concept of the screenwriter plus. Especially in features, that makes absolute sense. If you’re going to break through to the next level in feature writing, and we’re talking about you’ve got a career, you’ve had a credit or two, things are going well, you’re getting work steadily, the next level up, if you’re trying to get to the famous A-list, is you now need to have quite a bit of charisma and quite a bit of wisdom, because you are now going to be more than a screenwriter. You’re also going to be an interlocutor, you’re going to be a producer of a kind, you’re going to be a therapist, you’re going to be a conflict manager, and you’re going to be a de-escalator and a hostage negotiator. You’re going to be a lot of different things, and you need to know how to do that well. If you can’t, you will not be that person. You will still be somebody they might hire for a week or two, because you’re wonderful.
I don’t think anybody that hires Charlie Kaufman for a week or two is looking for a therapist, screenwriter plus producer. They’re looking for somebody to come in and be Charlie Kaufman for two weeks and to get that stuff. Guys like him have removed themselves from any need of being on any list. He’s just his own list. Yes, I completely agree, as you go on in your career, once the talent has been established, that other stuff makes a huge difference.
**John:** We should also acknowledge our screenwriting bias here, our feature bias, and that if you’re a person who’s working in television, you’re going to be working with groups of people a lot, so other writers in a room often, but then on a set you’re going to be doing lot of other work where you’re going to be interfacing with people and not just doing your writing skill. You’re going to be doing other persuasion skills and ability to communicate, and that does come down to charisma at some levels. It is important, especially in television.
**Craig:** Agreed.
**John:** On this show, over the history of this show, we’ve talked some about keyboards. I’ve definitely blogged about my keyboard travails over the years. I noticed I think the last time I think we were doing DnD or something, I saw your keyboard. You are not using any traditional keyboard right now either, are you?
**Craig:** No. I have not used a traditional keyboard in forever.
**John:** Great. Let’s talk about that, because I started using a split keyboard. It’s basically the one where the keyboard is divided in half and a little bit at an angle, some sort of Microsoft keyboard, ergonomic keyboard, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, because it was helpful because I was having some issues. That keyboard alone was not enough to stop some really serious carpal tunnel problems I was having, and so I had to escalate to bigger, more serious, weirder, stranger keyboards. The one that I’ve been using for the past 15 years is a recommendation from Dana Fox. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Craig, you can see it also in the Workflowy. This is my SafeType keyboard. Craig, could you describe for our listeners at home what this keyboard looks like?
**Craig:** If you imagine a regular keyboard and then you keep the middle where it… The middle would be your number pad and stuff like that, which normally wouldn’t be in the middle. Then the other two sides, the left and the right side, you take and tilt up 90 degrees. If you’re a touch typer, you know you have your left-hand letters and you have your right-hand letters. All the left-hand letters and the right-hand letters are now on an upright thing. Instead of typing with your fingers pointing down, you are typing with your fingers pointing toward each other. I guess your hands are now perpendicular to the desk.
**John:** This is the keyboard I’ve been typing on for a very long time. It’s weird to learn how to do it. In the photo that we’ll include in the show notes, you can see that it has little rearview mirrors that fold out so you can see the function keys. No one ever uses the mirrors. I’ve tucked the mirrors away for all these years. It works for me. Because I’m a touch typist, I can type at a good normal clip on it. I’ve been happy with it enough that I got a backup keyboard just in case this one breaks, although this past week I was featured on this little blog post called Writes With, which is basically what different tools writers use. I linked to the SafeType keyboard. The guy who does the blog said, “Oh, that link doesn’t work anymore.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” It turned out that SafeType has not actually existed as a company for at least three years.
**Craig:** John, they’ve been dead for 100 years.
**John:** I’m typing on a dead keyboard. I’m typing on a keyboard that is–
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** Who knows, maybe it’s going to last me 20 years and I don’t need to think about anything else. This keyboard may not be around forever. In fact, the keyboard I’m using, it’s not even USB. It’s an ADB thing that has a little USB connector.
**Craig:** Oh my god, ADB. Oh, jeez. Wow.
**John:** It’s sketchy.
**Craig:** Megana has never seen that. Megana has never seen that in the wild, I don’t think.
**John:** Apple Desktop Bus, or it’s whatever the PC equivalent to that, but it’s not a USB connection, which is strange. Because it’s also hard for this keyboard to do keyboard command shortcuts, like command X, command C, command A, I have those mapped out to an external gaming keyboard.
**Craig:** Oh god.
**John:** Which I absolutely love. It’s just the Razer Tartarus Pro. Unfortunately, they stopped making drivers for it for Mac, so I need to have this Frankenstein combination of other things that don’t reliably work. I’ve been in frustration anyway. I’m now considering switching keyboards. I wanted to talk with you about this and see where you’re at but also have a discussion about why keyboards are so crucial but why they are so problematic, often for writers.
**Craig:** As long as I can double up. The new keyboard I have is my One Cool Thing. I’m going to double up. As long as I get credit for that.
**John:** You get credit for an early One Cool Thing.
**Craig:** I had, same as you, a lot of wrist issues. I’m a touch typist, as you are. The old keyboards were just horrendous. The new keyboard that, for instance the No-Frills Apple keyboard, I don’t know what they call it, Magic Keyboard, whatever they call it, it’s terrible.
**John:** Nice and straight.
**Craig:** Horrible. The reason it’s horrible is because ultimately your wrists have to pronate. Your hands are going in. It’s an unnatural position for your elbows and your wrists. Ergonomically, it messes you up. I found a little cushiony thing that I was using for a while. It helped a little bit, but not a lot.
Then eventually I did find my way to split keyboards. A standard split keyboard, unlike what John uses, which is essentially an affront to God, a normal split keyboard just takes the keyboard and separates the left and right slightly. Imagine putting a triangle between them. Instead of your hands pronating in, they can just relax in a natural place. It does take a little bit of getting used to, but not much. I can go back and forth between a split keyboard and a regular keyboard without any fuss at all. I can’t remember what the original one I was using was, but eventually it did break, and so then I switched over to Microsoft, of all people, for a long time.
**John:** They had some good ones.
**Craig:** That’s what I’ve been using for a long time. It was Microsoft. I think the first one was called the Sculpt Keyboard. It’s still called the Sculpt Keyboard. Essentially it just became their Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard, which if you look it up, you can see a picture of it, you can see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s curvy and it’s got a built-in hand rest and it’s lovely. Here’s the issue with this and a lot of them. Most keyboards now want to be wireless. These third-party ones use Bluetooth, but they require dongles. This is enraging to me, but I guess there’s no way around it. If you lose the dongle, at least for Microsoft, you have to buy a whole new keyboard. They don’t sell the dongle.
In looking for a better option, because there were certain things I just… The way the command keys and things mapped I didn’t really enjoy, even though I could remap them. I did just recently switch to a new keyboard, and that is the Logitech Ergo K860 wireless split keyboard, also with dongle, but connects much easier and quicker. It’s more comfortable. The key action is nicer, I think. It does everything I need it to do. It worked instantly with Mac, no drivers required.
**John:** The keyboard, for folks who are listening at home, like most split keyboards, it’s divided in the middle and then rotated slightly out. Also, it has a hump in the middle so that the middle part of the keyboard is higher than the outside part of the keyboard. That is so your wrists are turned slightly at an angle. They’re not completely flat, which is better for your wrists and is a very natural typing form too. People don’t react to that poorly. I think this will not be enough for me. I think I would probably still have the problems I would have on a keyboard like this, which is why I’m trying out as a backup keyboard, this thing which I will also put in the show notes, if you want to look at the Workflowy here. This thing looks insane. This is the Kinesis Advantage 2.
**Craig:** I saw this one when I was researching.
**John:** This is a much more ambitious rethinking of what a keyboard should be. You still have the keyboard split in half, but those two halves are set far apart from each other and inside little wells, and so that you are still on your home keys, but those home keys are set down into little bowls, and all the other keys are facing into them. Your muscle memory can still do its thing and still hit the letters, but it’s a very different experience. Your space bar is–
**Craig:** Where is that?
**John:** Your space bar is your right thumb. Backspace is your left thumb. Return is next to the space. It’s one reach over from where the space bar is.
**Craig:** Oh, no, no no no.
**John:** It’s a strange thing.
**Craig:** The one thing that I can’t deal with is, return should be to the right of the apostrophe, which so the right of the L. That’s where it goes.
**John:** I get that.
**Craig:** Anybody that moves it is a criminal.
**John:** That is a natural feeling. I think the logic behind this is that your pinky is by far your weakest finger, and your thumb is by far your strongest finger, and so therefore, putting those things you hit all the time on your thumb saves your hand. It saves your pinky from doing that work, which is a large part of the problem with repetitive stress.
**Craig:** I could see that. I do enjoy slamming the space bar. People have commented to me that I am a very loud typer.
**John:** I can imagine that.
**Craig:** I type fast, but I type furious. It’s just ba ta ta ta ta ta ba ba ta ta ta ta ta ba ba ba! It’s just my thing. I’m just a furious typer.
**John:** I always say I always envy the people who like, “Oh, I’ve been making a custom keyboard. I’m replacing all my letters with these things and I have these mechanical switches.” That’s wonderful for you. I’m trying to find the keyboard that will make my arms not go dead at night, where I would literally have zombie arms at night, where I would wake up and I could not move my arms, until I replaced my keyboard with this one and also replaced my mouse with a vertical mouse, which was much better.
**Craig:** Sorry, the way you said that, for a moment it sounded like you had zombie arms and you kept having zombie arms that night, until you reached over and dialed something with your nose and then got a new keyboard to come in.
**John:** At night. When I say zombie arms, literally both my arms would be dead. I would have to physically flop my body over to get out of bed. I couldn’t even use my arms to push myself out of bed.
**Craig:** It’s so funny. I wish it still happened.
**John:** It’s hilarious.
**Craig:** You’re like a Muppet basically where the–
**John:** I’m a Muppet. I’m a Muppet who’s lost the little sticks to the puppeteer. I think our conclusion here is that if you’re experiencing pain after typing, you should do something about it, because it will not just magically get better by itself. You just need to look for solutions. Some of those solutions are a new keyboard, a new mouse, but honestly, just changing your work setup could also be helpful. So often I think people try to type on a surface that’s too high or too low. Just look for those proper angles. For me, I need arm rests on a chair that can support me as I’m typing. For other people, that’s a bad solution. Do what works for you and do what’s going to not make your arms hurt, because you will not be a productive writer if you cannot write productively.
**Craig:** You’re going to spend a lot of time typing.
**John:** Got it.
**Craig:** Side note, learn how to type.
**John:** Learn how to type. People who don’t learn how to type, learn how to type.
**Craig:** Learn how to type.
**John:** Just take one of those online little classes if you need to. I learned how to type, and it was just an absolute godsend.
**Craig:** In fact, all this talk about charisma, wisdom, intelligence, sometimes there’s this weird little stat that you forget about. Typing, let’s put that under dexterity.
**John:** It is what dexterity is.
**Craig:** There’s a minimum dex. Believe it or not, typing will make you a better writer. If it happens faster between your brain and the page–
**John:** Less friction, yeah.
**Craig:** Less friction will make you better. Actually, you do need to bump that dex up to a minimum number for typing.
**John:** You know who’s a very fast typist?
**Craig:** Who?
**John:** Andrew Lippa.
**Craig:** What’s his number?
**John:** It’s well in the hundreds.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** He’s a pianist. He has incredibly strong fingers and just can brrrrt.
**Craig:** I’m about 100.
**John:** That’s great. I’m nowhere near that.
**Craig:** When you talk about people that are 150 and 160, it’s terrifying to watch them go. Even for me, it’s weird. The 100 is when I’m transcribing something. I’m looking at something and I’m typing it, and my mind turns off and my fingers are just going. At some point it even weirds me out how it works. 150, or whatever, 175, that’s steno tool stuff from the ’60s. I’m impressed.
**John:** My fastest typing is I had to do not even really a pitch, but get ready for a meeting, and so I just had an open Highland document and with just brain dumping. Brain dumping is incredibly quick for me. It’s just a great way of just getting all that out. I don’t know how many words per minute it is, but I can just very quickly plow through stuff. I find that very liberating.
**Craig:** It’s fine. It’s fine. Megana, do you type?
**John:** Weirdly, Megana doesn’t know how to type at all. You would think that between Harvard and Google, she would learn how to type, but no, it never came up.
**Megana:** I made it this far. I had to Google what touch typing was though, because–
**Craig:** Wow.
**Megana:** They just called it typing. I don’t know, I just think of it as typing.
**John:** You probably had a keyboarding class in school at some point.
**Craig:** Keyboarding.
**Megana:** They called it technology. I used to fall asleep in that class a lot, and then my output was just where my head had fallen asleep on the keyboard. I learned to type because I grew up during AOL Instant Messenger and so I was just constantly chatting with people on the internet. I became a quick typer that way.
**Craig:** Did anything bad ever happen? “I was a 10-year-old girl constantly chatting on the internet.”
**John:** With strangers. AOL.
**Craig:** Yes, the perverts’ playground. Megana, I think you need to bump the dex up. It’s just something to think about, and it actually goes faster than you think. Learning how to type properly goes faster than you think.
**Megana:** I think I did learn how to type properly, but I didn’t practice well until I started internet chatting.
**Craig:** It’s gone?
**Megana:** No, it’s there.
**Craig:** Oh, you do type.
**Megana:** I do type.
**John:** She does type. I’m kidding. I was kidding.
**Craig:** Oh, I just took John at his word–
**John:** Sorry, I’m never joking again.
**Craig:** Because I trust John. You have nothing. Your dex is fine?
**Megana:** Yeah. It’s strong.
**Craig:** It’s strong. You have strong dex.
**Megana:** Across the board I’m really everything that we’re measuring here.
**Craig:** You mean you’re a well-rounded bard.
**John:** That’s what she is. She’s really a performer.
**Craig:** You know what? That’s important. You need a jack of all trades.
**John:** We love it. Let’s get to our marquee topic, which is betrayals and back stabs and double crossing. This was prompted by, two weeks ago in Interesting we were talking about these topics and some good examples from different films or TV shows or the nature of what betrayals look like in film and television. While we’ve talked about lying on the show before and how important lying is, we’ve never really gotten to betrayals, which I think are important, because we have cases where obviously the villain betrays the hero, or someone who’s supposed to be a friend betrays our hero and that becomes a big thing. We also have situations where our main character has to make moral and ethical choices which do result in a betrayal.
A very obvious example from Jurassic Park is the notion that one of the employees was actually working behind the scenes to steal the material and sell it off to another thing. That betrayal became an important plot point, and once it was revealed, put other characters in danger. Also leading up to this discussion of The Departed and the betrayals and deceptions within The Departed and how that comes out and comes across.
There’s so many movies you can think of, movies in different genres. It’s not just the con men genre. It’s not just heist movies. In a lot of our science fiction and a lot of our other films, you have characters who seem like they’re working together, and then one will turn on the other. Let’s just talk about how that functions and how we should think about that as a writer, both so that it’s as rewarding as possible within the film, but so that a character being betrayed doesn’t feel like the audience being betrayed.
**Craig:** It’s an incredibly useful technique, because you can create plot through a simple need. In Jurassic Park they could’ve had our bad guy just need money because his grandma was sick. He’s like, “I’m desperate. I know this is wrong, but I need to do this for money.” That’s perfectly fine, because that character isn’t somebody we’re probably going to be emotionally invested in. The wonderful part about double crossing and backstabbing is that it creates an emotional response in us from a character that probably isn’t essential or is secondary. This can happen all the time. It’s exciting. It means that we haven’t figured out exactly what’s going on yet.
The movies that I think about all the time for backstabbing and double crossing are the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It’s baked into everything. What was wonderful about those films and what Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio did was have main characters backstabbing and double crossing each other, so that whenever you got a little too sentimental about the characters, whenever you bought in a little too much to kumbaya, they reminded you that they were pirates, agents of chaos, who would absolutely betray each other. We have an ability to keep the audience on their toes. When they get fooled, they don’t get angry at you, the writer. They get angry at the character for doing it, which is great.
**John:** Other great examples, Aliens is of course one of my all-time favorite movies. Paul Reiser’s character and his betrayal in that is crucial. We’ve mentioned BlacKkKlansman before in terms of who is he really working for. Parasite. In the first Charlie’s Angels, the relationship between Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore is about that. It’s about a deception and really the question of he’s revealing his true identity at the moment it’s going to hurt her most, not even for the most useful moment in plot, that he actually is a bad person for what he’s doing there. The Social Network is basically a betrayal of when did you decide that this company was worth more than our friendship, when did you know you were going to screw me over. There’s lots of genres in which this can take place.
Maybe we should define our terms a little bit first, because let’s think about what a betrayal actually really means and why it has this moral valence to it. Betrayal is you’re breaking an oath. There’s a trust between two characters or an expectation of trust that has been broken in a way that causes harm to one of the people. It’s not just like you disappointed me. A disappointment is not a betrayal. There’s some lasting harm you’ve done because of this betrayal. Betrayal I think can really only be a conscious choice. You can’t accidentally betray somebody. You can betray your principles. You can betray your inner promise that you’ve made to yourself. A betrayal’s often also a revelation of something, a revelation of some secret or some nature that you didn’t want to get out there.
**Craig:** Good betrayals I think have an interesting perversion of power dynamics. A lot of times the people that are doing the betraying are not people in power. People that have the upper hand often don’t need to betray the people beneath them. When there is a slight power imbalance, it doesn’t always work like this, but when there is, the betrayals can be particularly delicious, because the powerful person didn’t see it coming. If they’re a villain, you get very excited. if they’re a good person, it just really affects us.
This goes back to the Gospel. Jesus is betrayed. The person who betrays him does not have the power that Jesus has, but he gets him in the back. In the movie 300 there’s something just brutal about the way the lowliest person is the one that betrays the Spartans and so they all die. I do remember as a kid watching the, I think it was CBS, (singing), the animated special of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Do you remember that one, John?
**John:** Oh yeah.
**Craig:** When Aslan, Jesus, is captured, and because he’s betrayed by Edward, and they shave his mane, aka putting the crown of thorns on him, I felt something terrible in me. It affected me deeply, because it seemed so brutally unjust, this violation not only of trust between people, it’s a violation of what we understand about justice and how people ought to be. That’s why being stabbed in the back is the ultimate expression of betrayal, because no one can defend against it. The highborn, the lowborn, no one.
**John:** The reason why a back stab works is because a false friend is doing it. You did not defend your flank because you didn’t think you had to. You were vulnerable to that person because you let them get close to you and they can stab you in the back. I would say every back stab is a betrayal, but not every betrayal is a back stab, because there’s many ways to betray something that’s not a back stab.
**Craig:** That’s right.
**John:** The other thing to talk to, which I didn’t know the whole history of, is a double cross.
**Craig:** Double cross.
**John:** The first apparent reference to it is 1834. It’s from the Thieves Slang. To cross is to refer to something dishonest, which is the opposite of be square or straight with something. If you have a crook that’s going back on his partners, that would be crossing the crossers, which would be a double cross. In this case you’ve agreed on a plan with somebody and then you were deliberately doing the opposite. You had a second plan that they did not know about.
**Craig:** When you watch Casino or Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese is so good at portraying these petty double crossings. As you’re watching you’re like, “Oh my god, just don’t do that.” Then you realize, that’s what criminals do. They’re criminals. If they’re the sort of person in the first place that’s willing to break all of society’s codes and morays for selfish purposes, they’ll probably also do that to you. No honor among thieves.
**John:** The crucial thing about all of these betrayals is to remember that you can’t betray somebody if you never trusted them in the first place. There has to be some relationship between the two of you in order for betrayal to actually make sense. There has to be some, doesn’t have to be friendship, but it has to be some relationship, some assumption of mutual benefit between the two of you for this betrayal to actually work in there.
As we’re looking at setting up our characters and where they’re headed and what they are expecting, it does come back to what characters want. Obviously, our approach is from what our hero wants and what their goals are and what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to do it, but looking at those characters around them, what do they want, and at what point are the things that they want that are in contrast to our hero is enough to motivate them to actually do this thing. We’re going to want to make choices about did they come into this relationship with the intention of betraying them? Was it all a setup from the start or did the circumstances on the ground change and therefore they are making the best choice for themselves at the moment?
**Craig:** I think a small peripheral character can just be defined as betrayer. In Jurassic Park, his name is Nedry. Nedry is a scumbag. He’s a scumbag. They always make him sweaty. He’s shifty and sweaty and he’s disgruntled and he’s a scumbag. When they figure out it’s his betrayal, I don’t even think anyone’s like, “What?”
**John:** “Never saw that coming.”
**Craig:** They’re like, “That’s about right, that shifty, beady-eyed sweaty guy who was grumpy all the time did us bad.” Side characters, you can do a classic, typical betraying side character. Die Hard has a wonderful moment like that with Hart Bochner. If you want your main character to be betraying, if you want the betrayal to be something that’s carrying you through, as opposed to just being a little kickoff incident, then I think it’s important that you do show the choice. If there’s this pointless or blithe betrayal, we will not care as much about it. It won’t make us as angry. We need to see the choice.
**John:** Always remember that just seeing your characters have relationships with each other, you as the writer have a relationship with your audience and making sure that the betrayal that you’re portraying doesn’t feel like a betrayal of the audience. There are notable examples of movies that did pull a sudden switcheroo at the very end, and you’re like, “Oh, that worked great, and I was surprised, but I’m delighted, because I could see it all make sense.” The Sixth Sense is a case where that turned out really well. No Way Out is an example of that, where information is being held from the audience, that when it was revealed is like, oh, I get what was happening there, and that feels great. Those are the notable exceptions.
In general, if we get to a place in the movie where you’ve pulled the rug out from underneath us and, okay, that was just not even cool. I thought we had a deal here. You’ve broken that social contract between us. That’s going to be a problem.
**Craig:** Twist endings are dangerous things. You have to get them right. As you’re writing these characters, and one of the issues with the twist ending is, at some point, like we say, we need to understand the double cross. It can’t just be ha ha! There has to be some sort of sadness to it. There has to be a humanity to it.
Again, thinking about 300, I think his name is Ephialtes. I think it was Ephialtes. He was deformed. He was physically deformed. He was supposed to die, because the fascists in Sparta would get rid of any slightly imperfect, quote unquote, children. He’s disabled. He cannot physically be a Spartan soldier, even though he desperately wants to be. King Leonidas in a kind way just says, “You aren’t able to do the things physically we require.” He’s very angry, and he sells them out, because he wants something for himself. He wants honor for him. He wants dignity. He is denied it. He lashes out. In the end, he regrets. I understand why he does what he does. In fact, it’s Xerxes as portrayed as a weird demigod who basically plays on all that stuff, so we understand. It’s similar in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. There’s temptation.
If you think about all the things that can feed into betrayal, you start to realize how juicy it could be for you and how exciting it could be, particularly if as you’re writing you start to feel like everyone can see what’s coming next. Then it may be time to think about betrayal.
**John:** Let’s get to our listener questions. Megana, do you want to start us off?
**Megana:** Imposter from New Jersey wrote in asked, “I’ve been listening to the back-episodes, and from the very beginning of the podcast, you’ve been warning listeners about supposed screenwriting gurus. A bit of context, I graduated film school about seven years ago and have worked in various jobs in the industry, UPM work, AD-ing, a bit of acting. Though professional screenwriting is my aspiration, I’ve never made much money at it. I’ve written a few small shorts, and I’ve been hired to do rewrites of independent features, but my credits are meager. To pay my mortgage, I’ve started teaching. Through a local nonprofit, I teach beginner screenwriting to teens and adults. When I say beginner, I mean ground zero, what a slug line is, why you shouldn’t use Google Docs to write a script, how to format dialog. Though the classes are through a nonprofit, students still pay to enroll.
“I’ve always felt a bit ethically icky about teaching these classes. Who am I to give instructions on the right way to write a script when I have so few credits to my name? Why should anyone take my advice? Have I become the most repugnant of all specialists, a screenwriting guru, or is this just another imposter syndrome flareup? Should I step aside and wait until I have more produced credits before I try to teach others how to write scripts?”
**Craig:** Imposter from New Jersey, that’s my name.
**John:** Let’s think about this. Imposter from New Jersey is concerned ethically whether it’s reasonable for him to be teaching screenwriting since he’s not had much success as a screenwriter himself.
**Craig:** I get that. I think the best news here is that he’s thinking that way, because the people that I despise never think that way. They think the opposite way. They think they have something special to offer the world and they’re going to charge them quite a bit. Here are all the positives here, Imposter. You are working for a nonprofit. Let’s just start right there. It’s a nonprofit. The gurus that I love teeing off on are very much for-profit people. They are charging people hundreds of dollars to get notes on their screenplay or master class sessions when they are themselves nowhere near master or even apprentice.
You’re working at a nonprofit. As you point out, you’re teaching beginner screenwriting, ground zero, fundamentals. They pay to enroll. They are not paying you directly. They are paying a nonprofit. I presume the nonprofit pays you. I suspect because it’s a nonprofit they’re not paying a whole lot. The fact that you have always felt a bit ethically icky means you’re okay. You’re right up against the guardrail of what you think you ought to be doing. If you went further, I think your own decent self would say, I cannot justify presenting myself as somebody that should do the following.
Where you are right now, I suspect you’re doing a fine job, teaching them what a slug line is, why you shouldn’t use Google Docs, and how to format dialog. I think that’s okay. Under no circumstances would it seem to me that anybody showing up in your class at a local nonprofit would describe you as a screenwriting guru. I don’t think you’re presenting yourself as one. I think you have a very healthy conscience. As far as I can tell, you’re doing just fine.
**John:** A couple scenarios here to talk through. I remember in junior high or high school, I went to this creative writing program that was done through our school district that was once a week. The guy who taught it was nice, well-meaning, had maybe had some short stories published, but had never actually done a full book. Would they learn as much as they possibly could? Was he an expert in the subject of creative writing? No, but it got me a structured situation in which I could be writing for this class, turning in stuff, getting feedback, working with other writers. It was incredibly valuable to me. If that is what Imposter is doing is providing a situation where he is teaching some very fundamental basics to these students who can also be in a group and learn from each other and learn some stuff about screenwriting and have conversations about screenwriting, I see that as only a win. If Imposter were teaching a Spanish class but did not actually speak Spanish, that would be a problem.
**Craig:** That would be a problem.
**John:** Where he actually has no business doing that thing, that would be not just ethically icky, that would be actually bad. That would be not acceptable to do. In this case, he is teaching what he knows, which is these fundamental things. He’s not teaching, “This is how Hollywood works,” because Imposter doesn’t know that. He is doing some fundamental Lord’s work in terms of getting those basics about how screenwriting works out there to these students. Go for it.
**Craig:** I agree. I think you’re fine. I think you’re a good guy. That’s what I think.
**John:** Cool. Next question, Megana.
**Megana:** Bruce asks, “I’m not a professional screenwriter, but I am a professional scientist, certified with a PhD, a bunch of papers, patents, etc. Over a number of podcasts, you fielded questions on people’s skill level and feelings. Sometimes your advice requires the person to take an honest look at themselves and ask, do I actually have it? This self-assessment is a critical aspect of life. It’s a reality, that unfortunately gets pushed aside for a general ‘you can do anything you put your mind to’ approach. In corporate America, the HR policies tend to coddle people. For example, in a managerial training on giving constructive criticism, I asked, ‘This is great and all, but what do you do when someone just doesn’t get it? Can I say we have a problem and the problem is you?’ ‘No,’ HR responded, ‘Please stick to the talking points and hope they get it.'”
**Craig:** That’s so great.
**Megana:** “Do you have the same issue in film and television production? What is the role of constructive criticism? Can you be honest when someone just isn’t cut out for what they’re trying to do?”
**John:** Wow.
**Craig:** Wow. Great question, Bruce. I love this. These are two great questions. Couldn’t agree with you more, by the way, Bruce, that “you can do anything you put your mind to” is utter horseshit.
**John:** It’s a trap.
**Craig:** You cannot. In fact, you can do almost nothing you put your mind to. That’s the God’s honest truth. There’s only so many things we can do. It just doesn’t work that way. Follow your dreams? I don’t even know what dreams. You’re putting your finger on something important, that is to say that some people, their talent stat is just not high enough to do the job they’re doing. They’re are underpowered in an over-leveled area of Elden Ring. What do we do with folks like this? Do we say, “We have a problem, and the problem is you.” You could. It’s unnecessary, I think.
If I were your HR advisor, I’d say, look, I understand exactly what that is like. It doesn’t help much to say it like that, because it makes you potentially seem like somebody who also doesn’t get it, because what if they have a problem and their problem is you? What happens in Hollywood and film and television production is expectations are placed. If at some point it just seems like that person just doesn’t get it, then the production parts ways with them. They just say, “You know what? It’s just not a good fit. Hopefully you can do a two-week transition while we bring somebody else on, and then that’ll be your time with us.”
**John:** What I like about this question is it’s not specifically talking about screenwriting, because we’ve talked so much about screenwriting and how it’s hard to get a clear metric on whether a person has talent or doesn’t have talent. It’s challenging. If you think about it, film and TV production, or if you think about a set or post in an editorial situation, yes, you could say, this assistant editor, we’re going to let them try to cut a scene, try to cut another scene. At a certain point editors can say, “Oh, this person just doesn’t get it. Editorial choices are not their strong suit.” It becomes tough to say, “Oh, I think you should not be doing this. I think you should try to find some other career in the business.” That’s just really hard to do.
I think one of the weird luxuries we have in film and television is because it’s all gig work and you’re just going from job to job to job, the next time the person is up for a job and they call the previous boss and say, “Hey, is this person good?” you can say, “Honestly, no, they’re not very good.” I do worry that we’re never on the hook to give the honest feedback about someone’s not up to snuff in this thing, that they’re spinning their wheels and should try something else. Again, one of the luxuries of film and TV production is because it’s gig to gig to gig, you can just not deal with some of those problems, but it’s certainly not helping those people who are never getting the honest feedback they should be getting.
**Craig:** I completely agree. Great question. We should talk about this stuff more. We should. I think it’s important. By the way, we never talk about HR.
**John:** HR exists in certain capacities within our business, but it’s invisible in other parts.
**Craig:** Now that I’m–
**John:** You’re a boss.
**Craig:** Yeah, A, and B, there’s just more HR than has ever been before. Just the presence of HR and what HR does and how much they have to deal with has gone up dramatically. Maybe we’ll have an HR person on to talk about this.
**John:** We should have an HR person on the show. Your experience doing a longer project like an HBO series is going to be different than a person on an independent film who won’t have an HR department at all, and yet some of the same things will still come up, these same issues, harassment at work hours and other problems will come up, and so much of what we’ve been dealing with from Pay Up Hollywood to Me Too are HR functions, just incredibly strained because of the weird way we work.
**Craig:** HR, boy, it’s a hard job to do, because they get a lot of stuff that comes in. I think my guess is that quite a bit of it feels eyerolly a little bit. The case gets opened, the case gets closed rather quickly. Then there are these real things that come through where HR makes an enormous difference in someone’s life, probably in a number of people’s lives in terms of the people who are perpetrating bad deeds, but also, more importantly, the people upon whom bad deeds are visited. HR matters. It’s a huge part of what goes on now in the world, more than it… When we started out, HR, they were just the people that were like, “Here’s what you get paid. Here’s the sick days. Here’s your parking spot. This is what the medical is.” No one ever said, “I’m going to HR.” You’d be like, “Why? You mean the people that tell us what the raises are?”
**John:** All that being said, one needs to remember that HR is fundamentally there to defend the company and to defend the company from horrible things such as employee lawsuits. That’s reasons why with certain kind of complaints, you need to be going into HR with somebody else and not be going in there by yourself. That’s why we have gills and other people there who can intercede, because there are occasions where HR is just there to protect the company.
**Craig:** HR, they work for the company. There is an interesting synergy where part of protecting the company is making sure that somebody doesn’t sue them because they’ve done that person bad. That’s where it aligns. I think that good HR people really do have humans in mind, even though human resources is the most Orwellian term possible. They do have resources that are I think independent. I believe that HR departments, the big ones do have independent therapists and people that are not responsible to the company and keep patient-client privilege and all that, I think, but I could be wrong about that.
**John:** When it comes to legal challenges, there’s reasons why, and there’s all sorts of issues about what things can actually go to court and what things cannot and have to go to private arbitration. It’s a challenging thing, which I agree, we should get back into, but if we have an HR person on, I think we should also have someone who’s critical of our HR system to also be a counterpoint there.
**Craig:** Who’s that?
**John:** We’ll find somebody. There are some good examples of people out there who have some–
**Craig:** Dear Twitter, who does not like HR?
**John:** Who doesn’t like HR? Come on our show. That’ll be a fun one. Let’s do some One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a show I’ve enjoyed on Netflix, it’s just six episodes, called Murderville. It stars Will Arnett, developed by Krister Johnson. It’s based on this British showed called Murder in Successville. The central premise of Murderville is Will Arnett plays this homicide detective in some unnamed city, and he has a dead partner and all these tropey things about this. It’s a scripted show. Things are happening. They’re going to solve a case. There’s going to be a murder every week, and a murder’s going to be solved. Every week he gets a new celebrity partner, who is just some random actor who’s being brought in. That person is not given the script and has no idea what’s actually happening. Therefore, they have to improv, again, what’s going on. It works, I think, surprisingly well. My two favorite episodes of the six are Kumail Nanjiani’s episode and Annie Murphy’s episode. They’re all good. There is some serialization that happens between episodes, so you probably shouldn’t watch them out of order.
I just really dug it. It’s a good, fun, light watch if you’re in the mood for something goofy. It reminded me a bit of Children’s Hospital, the David Wain show, and David Wain actually shows up in an episode.
**Craig:** I think Krister worked on that. I’m pretty sure. He’s a great guy. This has been on my list of stuff. When we stop shooting in 15 years, I’m going to sit down and just start watching stuff. It’s going to be a joy.
**John:** So many good things to watch.
**Craig:** I’m going to go find a hotel somewhere, hole up, and just watch.
**John:** You’re going to be away from your wife and your family in Los Angeles even longer, just so you can watch the TV, catch up on the really important things.
**Craig:** Oh no, I’m bringing the wife. Not the kids. My One Cool Thing is, as ibid, Logitech Ergo K860 wireless split keyboard. It is not super cheap. Here’s the thing about these keyboards. It’s $150 is what their retail list is. Keyboards, especially the ones these days, should last forever. Keyboards seem to be made out of the same material that PlayStation controllers are made out of. They should build anything important out of that material. PlayStation controllers I think have been tested within god knows what tolerances, because they presume that gamers are going to be smashing them on the ground in frustration, particularly while playing Elden Ring, and they never break. This very sturdy material should last for a long time.
Excellent key feel, connects instantly with a Mac, and unfortunately does require the dongle, which comes with it. Boy, if they sold the dongle itself… I don’t know, that’s a great question. If they sold the dongle itself, it’s a no-brainer.
**John:** Love it. We’ll put links in the show notes to also the keyboards we talked about, the other ones, for choices. I really do recommend a vertical mouse if you’re having any problems, because the one I am using is great and helpful for that.
That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nico Mansy. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. We have T-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. We also have hoodies that are delightful. We have a non-zip-up hoodie available in all our different patterns. Is it the 10th anniversary one, green one, which I quite liked a lot. I wore it for St. Patrick’s Day. Check that out and get your hoodies.
Show notes for this episode and all episodes are at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Interesting, 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 reality television and competition shows. Stick around for that. Craig, Megana, thank you for a fun episode.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**Megana:** Thank you.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** Megana, this was your suggestion, so set us up.
**Megana:** I had a question. If you guys could be on any reality competition television show, which one would you pick and what would be your strategy?
**John:** Let’s define reality competition shows, because Megana and I were discussing it in the office, it would be tremendously fun if Craig’s wife were cast on Real Housewives of Hancock Park, and that Craig would be that husband who’s interviewed every once in a while, like the Kelsey Grammer who shows up. That’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about some show in which there’s a winner and a loser and each week someone gets sent home. That’s what we’re thinking about. Anything from a Survivor to Big Brother, but also Project Runway, Great British Baking Show. Craig, what are you thinking in terms of your reality competition show?
**Craig:** It would almost certainly be the Great British Baking Show, because it doesn’t seem like winning is important to anyone. Everyone is trying to just do something that is not going to embarrass them, which is basically how I approach everything, what can I do to not shame myself and my name. Then if it works out, they’re just stunned and delighted. If you’re picked, you’re like, “Oh. Oh, my. I was just hoping to not be eliminated.” On all the American racing and surviving shows, it’s like, “I’m going to win this thing and I’m going to destroy you.” I don’t want to destroy anybody. I love baking. It’s fun. If I mess up, you know what? I think everyone’s going to be like, “Oh. Oh, didn’t quite come together, did it?” I’ll say, “No. No, it didn’t.” They’ll be like, “Quite a shame really.” I’ll be like, “I know. I’m so sorry.”
**John:** Craig, how did your crème brûlées come together? As we were playing DnD this last week, you were working on your crème brûlées in your oven that was not heated properly.
**Craig:** I really struggled. I dumped that batch and made a second batch in Jaq Lesko’s oven, because she’s in the building next to me and her oven’s just better than mine. I’m suspicious of this batch as well, to be honest with you. I’m a bit terrified, because there’s a dinner party this evening. I’m going to be giving people the crème brûlée. If it’s not quite right, I’m just going to be embarrassed and ashamed. You know what? I think what I’m going to say is, “Look, this is a bit British Baking Show. If it doesn’t work, I think you should all just say, honestly, ‘Didn’t quite come together, did it?’ and then I’ll say, ‘No, afraid no. Oh, pity really. Did try. Not sure what went wrong.’” Then I’ll go home. I think that’s the way I would do best.
**John:** I like the Great British Baking Show a lot. I agree with the criticism of it, that the middle segment where they’re given this blind instructions for things can sometimes be a little absurd. You’re trying to make this thing. I have never heard of this thing. The instructions are so absurd. Yet that also feels like a puzzle situation that Craig might enjoy.
**Craig:** Yeah, it’s scary. If you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re baking, it’s terrifying. To be honest with you, I’m a recipe baker. My daughter, she can actually just take things from the pantry and make something, and it’s good. Just wizardry. I’m a directions follower. I like the science of cooking. What about you, John? I assume you’d be on some sort of brutal… You’re going to want to be on Survivor, right? You’re going to want to [unclear 01:05:32]?
**John:** A younger me would want to be on Survivor. Mike White, another screenwriter–
**Craig:** He was on The Amazing Race.
**John:** He was on The Amazing Race and on Survivor. He’s been on both of those shows.
**Craig:** Jesus.
**John:** There’s been a precedent for pale gay screenwriter on these shows already. I can certainly survive it.
**Craig:** Do you think they would notice the difference? “Oh, Mike White’s back.”
**John:** “Mike White’s back.” I don’t have the blond eyelashes.
**Craig:** That is true. He’s very, very pale.
**John:** Very, very blond. That much sun freaks me out. That’s the thing that would scare me most about being on a Survivor kind of show. I think we’ve established on the show, I’m actually remarkably good at making fire. I can make fire [cross-talk 01:06:15].
**Craig:** You were an Eagle Scout.
**John:** I was an Eagle Scout, yeah, so I’m good at that. I can make it with a magnifying glass. I know how to do that stuff.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** That doesn’t scare me. I just don’t want to be out there in the sand for 30 days. I think instead I would probably, if I had to choose one, it would either be Big Brother, because you’re indoors a lot. I like being indoors. I can get along with people well. I would definitely the hide the fact that I was a screenwriter and that I had some success. I’d just make up some other career, I was a teacher in something. You just make a consistent story about that. Or Amazing Race, which is a fun show that takes you around the world. My husband and I, we do travel a lot. We could theoretically be good on that show. I just refuse to fight with him on national television. I’ve made a rule that we’re not going to fight on national television, because that’s what we would do, and it would not be fun.
**Craig:** I’m so not interested in winning. All these people want to win. I think that’s fun for them. Mike White, he also wanted to win. I don’t. That’s why I need to go on a show that’s not about winning.
**John:** Lowest stakes possible.
**Craig:** Yeah, just the most gentle, calm… Even the person who wins doesn’t really win. Then there’s a winner at the end, but it’s fine.
**John:** You get a glass plate.
**Craig:** It’s all really about just spending a nice time under a lovely tent in an area that’s reminiscent of the shire in Lord of the Rings.
**John:** That’s lovely. I would say, if I could invent a reality show for me to compete upon, it would be a gift wrapping show, because I’m really good at wrapping gifts. I would greatly enjoy the craft of wrapping gifts.
**Craig:** Literally just talking about this yesterday, because Bo’s birthday is coming up.
**John:** I know. It’s a national holiday.
**Craig:** Of course.
**John:** It’s here on the calendar.
**Craig:** It’s huge. It’s Bo day. I bought her a present. If she listens to this, she’ll know that I bought her a present. I was talking about this with Jaq last night in fact, because I was like, “Normally, I would have Bo wrap this, but I can’t have her wrap her own gift.” I’m just going to give it to–
**John:** Craig, can’t you take it to wardrobe and have them wrap it for you, because they help you out of all other binds.
**Craig:** That’s actually not a bad idea. They probably would know how to wrap it. “Can you guys just put this in a shirt?”
**John:** Megana, what would be your competition show? What would you compete on?
**Megana:** I don’t know if this counts. I think I would do the Bachelor.
**John:** The Bachelor totally counts. There’s a winner.
**Megana:** There is a winner.
**Craig:** Is there?
**John:** We’re all losers on the Bachelor. Tell us about your strategy on the Bachelor. What do you want to do? How much are you interacting with the other women who are competing, or are you the Bachelorette? It’s your show, so tell us how it’s going to work.
**Megana:** In order to become the Bachelorette, I would have to compete on the Bachelor. I think you brought up an interesting question, which is you can take one of two strategies, and one is to become a personality within the franchise, and the second one is to win. The prize of winning is being with a super milk toast man who’s never interacted with a woman.
**Craig:** Wait. Really? That’s who they put on the Bachelor?
**Megana:** Yeah, they always cast these guys who have the same talking points where they’re like, “Thank you so much for sharing that,” or like, “I appreciate you opening up to me,” but they don’t have an interesting point of view, or I don’t know, they’re just bad at dealing with conflict.
**Craig:** Interesting.
**John:** Your strategy is I’m the iconic personality that they’re going to want to bring back, right?
**Megana:** Exactly. I think it’s an interesting social situation, because nobody has phones. I am always here to make friends, but I would really try to adopt the “I’m not here to make friends” strategy and pull some shenanigans, and I would be totally unchecked, because nobody has the internet.
**Craig:** Interesting, so you want to be the villain.
**Megana:** Absolutely.
**John:** Wow. This is surprising, but exciting. I think your mom is disappointed.
**Megana:** Do you think she would be disappointed? I think my mom would thrive on this.
**John:** I have played board games with your mom, and your mom, you said, cheats. Your mom is a known cheater at board games.
**Megana:** Absolutely.
**Craig:** Also, does your mom have any investment in you getting married?
**John:** A little bit.
**Craig:** I think that she would be totally into this. She’s like, “I don’t really care what you do. Get married.”
**Megana:** Absolutely.
**Craig:** “I want a wedding.” Oh my god.
**John:** They’ve tried, there’s been various efforts to do a gay version of the Bachelor, and it doesn’t work, because everyone could just like, “Oh we don’t need this guy. We can just hook up with whatever.” It doesn’t actually pay off to the same degree. I would not be opposed to have been in my single life to be on one of those dating shows, because I feel like, why not? It could be fun.
**Craig:** Wait. I don’t understand. Why? I would actually prefer to watch gay Bachelor, because I would learn something new.
**John:** You would learn something new, but why are all those guys competing for the one guy, when all those guys who are also hot could just be hooking up with each other?
**Craig:** I see.
**John:** That’s the problem.
**Craig:** I see. I see.
**Megana:** That’s still great television though.
**John:** Still great television.
**Craig:** Yeah, but I get it. It’s like if you’re the Bachelor, you’re like, “Wait, where is everyone?”
**John:** Now, Megana, you’ve watched enough Bachelor. There’s been situations where women have hooked up on The Bachelor too, right?
**Megana:** Not that I can recall. I don’t think so. Not in the American Bachelor franchise.
**John:** I may be thinking of Too Hot To Handle or one of the other–
**Craig:** Love Island?
**John:** Love Island. I think it’s Love Island is maybe what I’m thinking of.
**Craig:** Love Island, just the name alone implies that everyone is hooking up with everybody. Everyone is pansexual, like Youngbloods.
**John:** Like Youngbloods. It all comes back to Youngblood, in the pre-show conversation. At some point we’ll start recording the pre-show stuff and we’ll get the real dirt on all this stuff.
**Craig:** So much better than the show.
**John:** Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Megana.
**Craig:** Thanks, guys.
**Megana:** Thanks, guys.
**John:** Bye.
Links:
* [‘Better Nate Than Ever’ Filmmaker on Disney’s Handling of “Don’t Say Gay” Bill: “Good Representation Does Not Cancel Out Bad Legislation”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/disney-dont-say-gay-bill-tim-federle-better-nate-than-ever-1235112555/)
* [MGM joins Amazon Prime Studios](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/mgm-joins-prime-video-and-amazon-studios)
* [Kinesis Ergo Keyboard](https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/)
* [John’s Old Keyboard set up with SafeType](https://johnaugust.com/2004/my-new-keyboard-setup)
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* [Murderville on Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/81193104)
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
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