Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: Whoa, my name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 710 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, Craig, whatever happened to weird?

Craig: I’ll show you.

John: I would argue that our modern world is safer in most ways than it’s ever been. The arguably edges of that are not safer, but it’s also less interesting. I want to root out the causes and potential solutions for what feels like cultural stagnation and what it means for writers and the entertainment industry. I also want to discuss the tipping point between wanting to write and actually writing. Not just on a daily basis, but like, “Oh, this is the thing I want to write.” What is the actual turning point for going for I want to write this thing, and I’m actually writing this thing?

Craig: Moving it from the, I think maybe one day I should do this pile to the, I’m doing it pile.

John: From the someday list to the active project list.

Craig: It’s happening list.

John: In our bonus segment, premium members, let’s discuss self-narrative and the pros and cons of remembering stuff about your past and having a continuity of who you are over time. We talked months and months ago about aphantasia, people who can’t summon images in their head. Correlated with that is, a lot of times people don’t have a clear memory of who they were over time. There’s a lot of disadvantages to that, but there’s also some advantages to that. You’re not weighed down by your history.

Craig: I may be one of the weird ones on that front. We’ll get to that if you pay the $5, which honestly, come on, it’s $5.

John: $5. Big news. We have a live show coming up. Our LA live show. We typically do a holiday show. We’re doing it November 30th at Dynasty Typewriter, our home base for live shows. Every ticket gets a signed copy of the book.

Craig: Oh my God. Really?

John: That’s it.

Craig: That’s amazing.

John: Usually, we’re doing a fundraiser for somebody. Now it’s a fundraiser for ourselves and the book.

Craig: Oh, my.

John: Oh, my.

Craig: Take that, poor kids. Look, all I’m hearing is that I have to sign more books, but do I? No.

John: You will have to sign some books. About the hour before the live show, we will be signing every copy.

Craig: That’s what I heard. I know you said other words, but what I heard was signing more books. I will say we have a great time at that particular venue. It’s a fun time of year. We always have good guests.

John: We do.

Craig: It’s a great rollicking time for the audience. Plus, free book.

John: Free book.

Craig: Free book and free book at the perfect time to then wrap it and regift it off to somebody else.

John: If you already pre-ordered a book, and thank you for everybody who pre-ordered a book this last week. It was crazy the number of new people we did. Your inbox, Drew, has been overwhelmed by people sending in those receipts.

Drew: A little bit.

John: A little bit, yes. You pre-order your book. You send Drew a copy of the receipt. We are going to be sending out a bonus chapter that didn’t make it into the cut of the book on getting stuff written. That’s coming out this next week.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: All that is great, but if you want to see us in person and get an early copy of the hardcover of the book.

Craig: Like a real book.

John: The real book, book, book. Not a gallery, the actual book.

Craig: The actual book you could hit somebody with and hurt them.

John: Yes. That will be November 30th, 3:00 PM. It’s an afternoon show.

Craig: Oh, I love that. I mean, at my age, get me to bed.

John: I like it. You can get back. You can be playing a game on your Steam Deck.

Craig: Yes. I’ll be back on my Steam Deck before you know it. That’ll be lovely. Everybody’s at home for Thanksgiving. Bring your friends, bring your family, bring your stupid little brother. Let’s have some fun.

John: Tickets are up on sale right now. There’s a link in the show notes for those. Get them quickly because it’s a pretty small venue, and we will sell out, and it’s a good deal.

Let us get to something I wrote down last night. I was thinking about how, in 2020 and 2021, when we were in the midst of the pandemic, on this show, we did acknowledge that we were in the midst of a pandemic. We didn’t do a lot of episodes that were specifically about it.

Craig: Right.

John: If you go back and listen to the episodes from 2020 and 2021, oh, yes, there was a pandemic happening. It wasn’t erased from history. I was thinking about the time that we’re currently in, and I feel like on this podcast, we’re maybe not acknowledging that things are just upside down and weird and wild. I wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge, as we’re recording this in the end of October 2025, stuff’s nuts, and it’s just easy to forget that stuff is crazy because it’s just so crazy each and every day.

Craig: Let’s distinguish that from weird, which is–

John: Oh, different, yes.

Craig: Things are chaotic.

John: Chaotic, unprecedented.

Craig: Yes, a lot of that.

John: As I started to put together the list, I realized, oh my God, I forgot that also happened in the past six months.

Craig: Our capacity to forget things is simultaneously our greatest asset.

John: We’ve limited attention. Our attention gets dried onto the next thing, and we forget the thing that happened before that.

Craig: I also believe, I have come to believe, in an age where everybody has access to information whenever they want it, at all hours of the day, and that information is generated extremely quickly after an event occurs. Most people don’t pay attention anyway, have never paid attention, and we are, as a species, far less plugged in than we think we are. The issue is that the people who are plugged in presume everyone else is, and all the people they talk to are plugged in. You’re in a plugged-in bubble. The biggest bubble on planet Earth is not plugged in.

John: I want to put this in here as a historical record of over-acknowledging these things have happened during the time. I think about someone five years from now, it’s weird they didn’t talk about this thing that was happening.

Craig: It feels like John’s trying to get us acquitted from some military tribunal. It feels like later when they’re like, “Who spoke out against all this?” You guys didn’t.” No, we did. Note this.

John: We did. I’m focusing mostly on domestic stuff here. Currently, as we’re recording this, the government is shut down. This question is, do you book flights to places? Because TSA is getting slower and slower. Air traffic control will stop at a certain point, unless those people get paid.

Craig: People are not paying attention. Thanksgiving travel will be insane.

John: Yes, it will be.

Craig: As always.

John: We have the US military in American cities in a way that we’ve never seen before. We have masked agents grabbing people off the street. That’s not a thing that happened before. The president knocked down the east wing of the White House just to do it, to build a ballroom.

Craig: I will say that the White House is a really decrepit building.

[chuckling]

Craig: In particular, the east wing, I don’t like– This is not a defense. I don’t defend anything that man does. Just in case people didn’t know, the east wing was not part of the original building. Also, the original building isn’t the original building because it was burnt down by the British in the War of 1812. The original building was built by slaves, yuck. There is an argument to be made that, in fact, the White House is garbage and should be completely razed and reconstructed in a way that is secure and impressive, and maybe ecologically better. There’s got to be chunks of asbestos in there that they put. God only knows what’s going on there.

John: I think the demolition and the new construction will be done to the highest standard. There’s no question that this is all going to turn out just fantastic.

Craig: The White House needed gold lions and a lot of Lucite.

John: I feel like the foam gold stuff that’s on there right now, it’s easy to scrape off, but you’re not going to rebuild the east wing the way it was. It just won’t happen.

Craig: It’s possible that a new tradition has begun. The new tradition is when a president is elected, they just knock the east wing down.

[chuckling]

Craig: Oh, that’s what it’s going to be this time? Okay, cool. Oh, this time it’s a GameStop? All right.

John: As we’re recording this, we have extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean. So far, this has happened in international waters. The concern is, what happens when you start attacking and killing drug people inside the US borders?

Craig: We have been doing this for a long time, actually.

John: Did we use our military to do it?

Craig: We’ve been using our military to do it for a long time, just usually coordinated by the CIA. I’m not recommending it. I’m just saying what it is is now we have an administration that doesn’t mind boasting about it because they’re jerks. That’s really what it comes down to.

John: We have mass firings of officials or anyone with expertise.

Craig: Yes, we certainly do. All the smart people, get out. Dummies, welcome.

John: Welcome aboard.

Craig: We should put a certain guy in charge of the nation’s health. Let’s do that.

John: Yes, that’d be good.

Craig: Yes, he’s going to great. He believes a lot of great stuff.

John: He does. Idiot. When will we have a flat earther in charge of something?

Craig: We might already have a flat earther in charge.

John: Yes.

Craig: What I understand, the earth is very flat. It’s flat, folks. Look at it. It’s flat. You can’t see it. No one can see the curve.

John: I’m not surprised you have a decent president, but it’s evocative if not duplicative.

Drew: You get the hands.

Craig: That’s the idea. If you can see the hands-

John: Once you come into video, that is all the–

Craig: -if you could see the invisible accordion, then it’s spot on.

John: Extortion of universities and law firms. President demanding $230 million from taxpayers for some bogus claim that he was wrong. We have ICE grabbing people off the street. The trade wars, but now potentially a new Cold War era nuclear arms race or nuclear testing thing. That doesn’t feel great. The economy seems really brittle, and the stock market is still booming, which is just a weird state.

Craig: Since we are laying down some stakes here for the future so that we can look back, it sure feels like we are in for an enormous market collapse because AI is garbage. I’m not saying that AI won’t eventually be useful or power the economy in some positive way as opposed to the negative way it’s doing now, or that it won’t be effective or integrated into our systems one day.

The quote, Alan Greenspan, the irrational exuberance around AI, it feels like everybody in the marketplace and large corporations have just gotten excited about something they think is going to be awesome. They don’t know why or how, and it is not yet awesome. At some point, it feels like this is all tumbling down, at which point the tower will be reconstructed again, as it always is.

John: I think what I’m feeling is that everyone’s banking on it being a transformative technology that would be worth all of the leverage that we’re taking to get there. You could say that’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen. The bubble pops, the bubble doesn’t pop. My other concern is that most of the growth in the economy is in that sector. If you’ve stopped paying attention to that, the real economy beyond that is not doing so great. These are all concerns that economists can debate. I mostly just wanted to put this all in one package so that five years from now, as we were recording episode 1,000-something–

Craig: People didn’t think we were out of touch.

John: Didn’t acknowledge that these are things that are happening right now. A thing you said shortly after the election was focusing on what is in your locus of control versus your local locus of interest. Again, a lot of these things I’m seeing right here are not things I can directly control at all. It’s not worth despairing about them, but also, at some point, you need to acknowledge them and not just bury your head in the sand over them. It’s not going to be useful either.

Craig: It is good to be aware, if only because it helps inform the decisions about the things you can control and influence.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Who you donate money to and who you volunteer for, and who you buy things from, how you save your money.

John: The plans you make for the next short period of time. Is it Thanksgiving travel? It’s like we decided again, Thanksgiving travel just because it’s going to probably be an absolute disaster, or we’re going to drive places rather than fly places, just because that’s going to be potentially a challenge.

Craig: I think Thanksgiving travel will be safe, and it will be exhausting and miserable, which is pretty much an evergreen statement. We’ll see. I’ll be one of them.

John: We’ll be flying back here for the live show.

Craig: I’m flying back, but I’m flying from Canada and to Canada, which feels somehow–

John: At least on the Canadian side, they probably still have air traffic controllers.

Craig: I don’t even know. Who knows? I don’t know. It may just be that they let the planes just decide themselves.

John: Unless the government of Canada says something that infuriates our president, then it’s beyond the topic.

Craig: They do have air traffic control, of course, but what they don’t have currently in Canada at proper capacity is the mail. There’s been a postal strike in Canada for months now. At first, it was a federal strike, but no mail. Then, I think because the government can do some sort of there’s got to be some mail, they have these rolling strikes now that I think are province by province. That said, I don’t use Canadian mail.

John: Our daughter’s in Australia, and they can’t mail anything to us in the US because Australia won’t basically send mail to the US because they can’t guarantee that there won’t be a tariff hit on it. Essentially, she’s not able to send us anything.

Craig: What about a PDF?

John: Digital goods, at this point, to this point.

Craig: Tell her to stop printing the PDFs and mailing them. She can just email the PDF.

John: Totally. Let’s do some follow-up. In episode 708, Craig was talking, This is going to be the best orange book–“ I’m assuming this will be the best orange book on anyone’s shelf.

Drew Marquardt: Zach wrote in, “Please let Craig know that claim is going to be immediately tested as Cameron Crowe releases his memoir at the end of this month with a completely orange cover.”

Craig: Wait, hold on, Cameron Crowe. Hold on. That’s our thing.

John: It’s our thing.

Craig: Orange is our brand.

John: 14 years, we’ve been orange.

Craig: 14 years of orange. How long has he been orange?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: How orange is his orange? Do we know?

John: It’s orange enough.

Craig: It’s orange enough. Oh my God, it’s very similar.

John: Pretty similar orange.

Craig: It’s very similar.

John: It has a picture of his– It has his face on it.

Craig: Look, we can’t say no one can have an orange cover.

John: I’m looking at the date here. His book actually already came out.

Craig: Oh, okay. Actually, he’s annoyed at us, probably. Now I’m apologizing to Cameron Crowe. The script for Jerry Maguire is one of the scripts that taught me how to write. You know what, he can– Go ahead.

John: Go ahead.

Craig: Fine. Second coolest book on your shelf that’s orange.

John: Same episode, we talked about printer prices and there was a debate, I remember, between the two of you.

Drew: There was.

John: Shelley wrote in that Drew is right.

Craig: Sure, because she found one guy that was selling one thing for $10.

Drew: She bought a printer on sale from Walmart for $29.97.

Craig: Yes, I’m sure you can also buy a car somewhere on sale for $29.99. Generally speaking, I knew this would happen. One person would be like, I’m going to spend all day because it cost them $29. By the way, is that printer, do you have to hand crank it?

Drew: Apparently, it can scan and copy as well as print, but the ink is $60. She gives you that credit.

Craig: Yes, it’s normally $60.

John: It’s $60 to refill both the black and white and color thing. It’s the razor and the blades situation.

Craig: Come on. What was her name?

John: Shelley.

Craig: Boy, she just loves you, doesn’t she? I’m going to remember this.

Drew: She likes truth, I think is what it is.

John: I think what we learned from Austin is that lots of people love Drew.

Craig: Yes, but they’ve chosen sides in what will soon become a great war.

John: My friend Quinn was misidentified as Drew. Quinn and Dana were–

Craig: Oh, somebody thought Quinn was–

John: Was Drew.

Drew: I didn’t know this.

Craig: By the way, let’s agree Quinn is a handsome guy.

John: He really is.

Craig: Quinn is one of the best-looking guys.

Drew: They met me, and they were like, “Oh no.”

Craig: No, you look like a podcast producer.

Drew: That’s just mean, Craig.

Craig: Yes, thank you. You’re welcome. Hey, it’s war. You started this.

John: Quinn is podcast host. You’re a podcast producer.

Craig: Oh, it’s getting worse. It’s getting meaner.

John: 708, Adriana and Veronica was one of the properties that we talked about on the How Would This Be a Movie? Craig, you were of the pitch that it’s only the real people are the interesting thing. That’s the only thing you want to see is a docuseries about the two of those women.

Craig: Right, like a reality show.

John: I was more convinced that it was a fictionalized version, but it’s one of those rare cases where the rights’ sold. Tell us about this.

Drew: Chris wrote in, “I’m a writer and producer, and been a fan of your show for years. Imagine my surprise and delight when I heard you cover my project on How Would This Be a Movie?. I’m a former book scout for Fox and have an IP-driven company called Winterlight Pictures. One thing I love to do is reverse engineer articles to sell for film and TV. I have an idea, the journalist writes it, and we sell it together. Nobody is better at this than Mickey Rapkin, who wrote the article that Pitch Perfect is based on. We’ve done it a bunch, but never at the level of Adriana V. Veronica.

I moved to East LA recently. My neighborhood has Adriana and Veronica on every bus stop. I started to wonder, who are these ladies? I saw a rumor on TikTok that they’re sisters, but that they never publicly talked about it or even acknowledged each other. I called Mickey, and he did his thing. He’s a genius journalist. After months of trying, he finally got them to crack and got both to talk. When the article came out, we must have had 15 meetings with producers, and there was a four-studio bidding war.

We just closed a deal. We can’t announce it yet. It was fascinating to hear your expert takes, as we’ve had many similar conversations. We met with unscripted folks, and there could still be a reality TV version, but we’re on the same page as you guys. We’d love to see an ongoing scripted show. Succession and Mad Men are good coms. Anyways, wanted to share that, and thank you for a terrific podcast and for covering the story.”

John: Great. I also love, it answers a question I had. It’s like, why does this article exist, and why was it in The Hollywood Reporter? The article exists-

Craig: To be sold.

John: -to be sold as a thing.

Craig: It is interesting. I guess there isn’t really any currency to hiding the fact that it is an artificially inspired article. I don’t mean artificially in a bad way, but it’s contrived to sell. I guess the fact that it is doesn’t impact the fact that people want it anyway. He’s happily saying, “Yes, this is how this works.” I’m like, ‘Oh, this could be cool if it were an article.” Then a guy writes an article, and then they sell it. Congratulations to them. It’d be fun to see how this goes.

John: I want to go back to the article. I thought the article was great as I read it. While it sets up a world that feels cinematic, it feels like it could be a series, I like that it didn’t explicitly try to make it– It didn’t feel like it was a pilot. It didn’t feel like it–

Craig: It wasn’t a pitch.

John: It wasn’t a pitch.

Craig: That probably would be a step too far, where people would read this and go, “Oh, this isn’t really–“ It’s a funny thing. People want something that isn’t a story so that they can make a story, but they want it to have a story.

John: They want it to have characters and a setting and a world, but they don’t want it to be predigested.

Craig: Just tell them what to do. Don’t tell me what to do.

John: Yes. All right. I want to talk about Weird. Two bits of inspiration for this. First off, there’s an article by Adam Mastroianni that argues that people are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of our society is pointing strongly in the same direction, that we are in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of mundane. Deviance is on the decline. It goes through, statistically, you can see we don’t have the same number of weird cults and serial killers. That kind of deviance is just down a lot. There’s arguments for what happened, if it was lead in the gas or whatever, that kind of stuff.

But also, it feels like there’s bumpers on the bowling lanes right now, like everything is just safe. The edges are rounded off a lot of things. Weirdness is discouraged. Things are more predictable. As I was reading this, I was thinking back to a project I got sent for a rewrite recently that was based on some really wild source material. Then I read the adaptation of it, it’s like, wow, this is just the most sanitized, cleaned down, just like the most mainstreamified version of a thing. It took something weird and just un-weirded it.

I just wanted to spend a little time talking about the value of weirdness, oddness, not even performative weirdness, but just the sense of just things that are following their own weird rhythms. Adam makes the point that creativity is just deviance put to good use. It’s the ability to not do the thing that everyone else is doing and create something that is just unexpected and surprising.

Craig: I think that there’s certainly some value to this argument. One of the things that happens over time is that things that are weird that attract people eventually fall apart because they were too weird, and also they were just wrong. Cults are a good example. Cults fall apart. Scientology, which on, I guess, the surface hasn’t fallen apart, it’s fallen apart. Nobody’s a Scientologist anymore. It’s just not a thing. There’s like 12 of them now. They’re mostly just a real estate holding company. It’s because people get wise to it. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to start a cult.

If you were to start a cult right now, you got to get over the hump of everybody going, “But all the cults end with a building on fire, or we lose all our money, or I can’t talk to my mom anymore.” You get smarter, and so a lot of the weirdness gets eliminated in that fashion.

The other thing that happens to weirdness is if it is successful, then there’s money in it. Then a company comes, and it’s not weird anymore. Best example I can think of is Goop. Goop is a large corporation that is primarily owned and controlled by Gwyneth Paltrow, I believe. Goop contains a lot of weirdness that is institutionalized and packaged, and sold. Which, by the way, thumbs up, well done. She employs a lot of people, helps the economy. The idea of, oh, throwing some bee pollen on my food is going to make me better, which it does not, used to just be something weird people did.

Lastly, because everybody weird feels the need to self-promote, it’s hard to be weird when you’re popular. We end up in a popularity machine where people pluck all the weird stuff out immediately. There’s no time for it to live underground.

There’s no chance for you to be like, “Oh, I knew them before they were famous.” Everybody’s famous all the time immediately. Nobody got in there early. There is no weirdness because we all know about it. There’s either just popular or unnoticed, which doesn’t mean bad. Lastly, corporations just take everything now. They just take everything.

John: I hear all that stuff, and I think you’ve hit on some really key things for why weirdness seems to be declining. I think there was a time when we grew up, people could be locally weird because you were the weird person in this group. With the rise of the internet, those weird people can find each other, and suddenly they have a base. They’re not weird within the group. That’s a thing that happened with comic books and the comic book culture, which was weird. It was a little bit more fringy, but then it became just more and more. Once everyone could find each other and Comic-Con became a thing.

Craig: Comic-Con is now a place where corporations go to sell stuff. It was, in fact, a niche thing. Hey, we play Dungeons and Dragons all the time. More people play it now than ever, but it used to be something that weird kids did, like me. [chuckles]

John: I also say that you talk about the corporations, but honestly, sometimes there is an ambassador or some person who can take a fringe thing and pull it into the mainstream and just make it approachable. RuPaul and drag. Drag, it was a very fringe thing that only a very specific subculture knew about, and the rise of Drag Race. Much good was done, but it also made drag less weird. Less weird in ways that are always going to feel. Yes.

Craig: It’s not that it’s sanitized as much as it is popularized. It’s not–

John: You can’t be weird and popular.

Craig: You can’t be weird and popular. That’s the bottom line. If you get popular, you’re out of weird zone. Now you’re just interesting and trendy. Drag culture is trendy. When my daughter is saying boots the house down or whatever, I don’t even know what that would be. Boots the gag me with your boots, I don’t know what. It’s something from Drag Race. A lot of people that watch Drag Race are laughing at me now. I’m cool with that.

John: That’s fine. I’m fine.

Craig: I’m weird, but everyone knows it.

John: Even within the culture of Drag Race, you have a performer like Jimbo who’s throwing bologna slices on himself. That’s weird, but you have to really go to a different thing. It’s bringing in a clowning culture into drag, which was related but not the same thing.

Craig: Boots the house down. Boots the house down. Slang expression that means to perform exceptionally well with great style and energy, or to look amazing. Just side note, I boots the house down all the time. I do not. That’s exactly right. There’s also, let’s talk a little bit about the popularization of kink.

John: Yes, for sure.

Craig: Kink, the concept of kink is weird. That’s kinky. That’s weird.

John: It’s not just sex, which is taboo or porn that is taboo, but it’s a special, that’s not weird enough anymore, so you have to go–

Craig: It’s like among the people who are doing weird stuff, you’re into the weirder stuff.

Craig: Then it became like, “Don’t kink shame.” Then it was like, “Oh, that’s your kink.” Meaning like, “Oh, you like rock?” I like BDSM.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, great. That’s your kink. That’s cool.” No one’s kinky.

John: There’s a great episode of Dakota Ray, and we’ll put a link in the show notes too, which is about cucking and a cuck chair. The degree to which–

Craig: [chuckles] There’s just something about seeing you say the word cucking that is so funny.

John: The Democratic Party can send out a meme, which is just a chair in relation to another political figure that’s clearly a cuck reference. It’s like nothing is taboo, nothing is weird too much.

Craig: How is the chair a cuck reference?

John: The cuck chair. The man who’s watching his wife be–

Craig: Did someone sell a cuck chair? It’s not a bad idea. A branded, this is actually a great chair for you if you’re a cuck. It’s comfortable.

John: It’s because it’s not a La-Z-Boy. It has to be a chair that feels like it’s appropriate in the bedroom.

Craig: Right. You don’t want the arms of the chair to be too high because you can get in the way of your self-gratitude. [chuckles]

John: I want to talk about–

Craig: That’s not a bad idea, right?
[chuckling]

Craig: Cuck chair.

John: Let’s bring it back to the things that we are actually doing, the films and television that we’re writing, because I think that sometimes we underestimate the degree to which weird does work. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a very weird movie that was a giant hit.

Craig: So weird. Sinners is weird.

John: Sinners is weird.

Craig: It’s weird.

John: It’s weird. It has this big musical number in the middle of it. Great. Love it.

Craig: It’s just Irish guys showing up and playing that weird song. It’s weird. I love that.

John: Weapons is weird. It’s really weird. It uses its time really strangely. Gladys is just a fundamental weirdo.

Craig: We crave it.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, it is hard to– Look, it’s not probably possible to make an equally weird Sinners 2 because, at that point, then it’s being repeated. It is absolutely true that what we used to call weird, people now call a little dangerous and risky. My least favorite term is punk rock because anyone who says, “Oh, yes, that’s more punk rock,” is never a punk rock person.

Anyway, point is, yes, weird is risky and dangerous properly, but what we get a lot of now is what I would call weird acceptance, where this is like, this movie is about defending the weird and promoting the weird and accepting the weird. We’re good with that. We’ve done it.

John: What I like about the examples you were giving, I’ll throw Poor Things in there, Lighthouse in there, One Battle After Another, so weird.

Craig: So weird.

John: But they’re not performatively weird. They’re not to feel like, “Look how weird I’m being.” They’re not just trying–

Craig: No, they’re just honestly weird.

John: From a fundamental level.

Craig: Inside of themselves aren’t weird. If you watch those movies, when you get to the end of Poor Things, you go, “That was weird, and yet by the time I got to the end, it was actually quite a conventional narrative in its own way.” That’s wonderful. It was just that it was doing something creative. It wasn’t afraid to wander off and do some stuff that is different and challenging and odd and kinky in a proper way, not in fake kinky way.

John: Here’s what I think these movies are succeeding on is that they are– The challenge I’m always putting to everyone when they’re talking about what they should write, it’s like they’re writing the movie they most want to see. These filmmakers are making the movie they most want to see on a big screen, and they’re being honest with themselves about what it is, and they’re finding ways to make the movie that is exactly their movie and not someone else’s movie.

Craig: I completely agree. I still think that we have a side business, by the way, in this culture. I just–

John: Craig, you’re not generally the entrepreneur, so I’m curious to see–

Craig: That’s what I’m saying to you, really. I’m not going to do it, but see, you have a company. I mean, Highland, right?

John: Yes, furniture is a real venture.

Craig: Sure.

John: Like an inflatable chair that you can inflate when you need it, because it’s also humiliating to be in an inflatable chair.

[chuckling]

Craig: God, I mean, you can almost charge extra for that. That’s the other thing about this plan is these people like to be humiliated, which means you can take even more of their money.

John: Absolutely, but I feel like if you could, I think an inflatable cuck chair is weird.

Craig: Is weird.

John: I mean, it actually pushes it–

Craig: That goes back around to now, even in the cuck community, people are like, “Dude, you know, he bought the inflatable chair from “apps.” [chuckles]

John: Other things I think we should acknowledge as being weird and wonderful. We’ve talked about Too Many Cooks, which is just such a strange video. I showed it to my daughter, and she’s like, “I don’t know what that is. I don’t know why you showed that to me. I’m angry that you showed it to me,” but it’s just so–

Craig: Then she showed it to somebody else, I guarantee you. It’s like a virus.

John: Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Craig: So weird.

John: So weird.

Craig: Pee Wee himself. That character is weird. Tim Burton, of course, been weird the whole time. Tim Burton, I think some people may have felt like, “Oh, you are now–” At some point, he crossed into, “Oh, you’re doing an impression of Tim Burton being weird.” Except I think that was just Tim Burton being weird the whole time. That’s just what he does.

John: Yes, that’s Tim Burton being himself.

Craig: Because they were popular, people were like, “Oh, it’s just not weird anymore, but it is. It’s weird.

John: What advice can we give to our listeners who are thinking about, “I want to embrace what this is?” It goes back to, really, what do you actually want to watch, and how do you make that thing that you want to watch that is specific to your experience? If you have really mainstream taste and you want to make mainstream stuff, go for it. We’re not steering you away from that. I’m also just saying, also look for what is specific to your experience that helps.

Craig: Coming back from Austin, there’s a certain trend I’ve noticed, and I would caution people to maybe consider not going down a path of what I would call well-traveled weird. There are a lot of stories about people who are struggling with their sexuality or their gender, and then they get thrown on a road trip with somebody. There are so many of them that you get the feeling that people are like, this is in and of itself, the point. I think about the movies that I’ve seen where there was the most interesting commentary on gender or sexuality, they were not movies about gender or sexuality. They were movies with people who had honest questions about these things.

There’s a commoditization of it. It’s almost like, “I think this is selling. Let me write a conventional version of a film about weirdos.” It’s also, we’re all like, we’ve all changed. Society has changed. It’s not so weird. If we’re all talking about the same weird thing, it’s not that weird. Here’s a movie that was weird. 1998, a movie called Happiness that was written and directed by Todd Solondz. That’s a weird movie, and that confronts some pretty weird stuff, including pedophilia. That movie felt dangerous. It felt like it was going to a place that made you uncomfortable and scared because you knew it was real. That is legit weird and fascinating and upsetting.

The other thing is, what’s actually upsetting? Horror, a lot of horror to me is not weird. It’s just pushing on the same old things. Then every now and then something comes along that is legitimately upsetting because it is weird.

John: May December, a weird movie.

Drew: I love that movie.

John: I love it too.

Craig: Weird?

John: Weird.

Craig: Weird?

John: Half the Nicolas Cage movies are just weird. Nicolas Cage is a fundamentally weird person.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: There’s a whole episode of Community, which there’s a class being taught to figure out whether Nicolas Cage is a good actor or a bad actor. The answer is, he does not fit on any spectrum.

Craig: The answer is, he’s Nicolas Cage. His movies are weird because of him because he is fully weird. Some of them are weirder than others, Bad Lieutenant. What the hell? That’s another disturbing movie. So weird. By the way, weird doesn’t mean good.

John: No, it doesn’t mean good.

Craig: Sometimes, weird movies are bad. In fact, a lot of times they’re so weird, you’re like, “I don’t know what to do with this.” Ken Russell used to make some weird-ass movies. I’m a fan of his weird. Layer of the White Worm, one of the weirdest movies you’ll ever seen. Tommy, based on this massively successful rock opera, weird movie, super weird. One of my favorite Ken Russell films, Gothic, which is the story of the night Mary Shelley conceived and wrote Frankenstein. So weird. Love that movie.

John: Emerald Fennell with Saltburn.

Craig: Weird.

John: I love that she’s getting to keep making weird movies because they succeed. Sometimes they break out because they’re strange. M3GAN broke out because it was weird.

Craig: So weird. Also, we forget because he’s become so, I don’t know, integrated into our understanding of modern cinema. Quentin Tarantino was weird.

John: Wes Anderson, weird, so weird.

Craig: Wes Anderson, we think of him now as just mostly twee, but he was and continues to be weird and honestly weird.

John: You love honestly weird. That’s the pride we’re having because you don’t have to love all the movies. I don’t love all these filmmakers, but I love that we’re continuing to make these movies.

Craig: Yes, and to the extent that you can either make something that is truly and honestly weird that comes from you, that feels authentic to you, that is interesting to people, or make something that is not weird, that’s really good. Pixar makes not weird, really good movies. Just try and avoid fake weird. That’s where I think there’s a lot of fake weird, and people can smell it from a mile away.

John: The little weird dust to sprinkle on top of it.

Craig: The weird dust, exactly. You don’t need to do that.

John: No. Let’s transition to talking about going from you have an idea, like, “I’m going to write this thing, this is the thing I want to do,” to actually doing it. Because I suspect we have a lot of listeners out there right now who is like, “Oh, I want to write a movie about this thing. I want to do this pilot.” Maybe you’ve written something before, maybe it’s the first time you’re doing it. But I want to talk about that transition from this is the thing I want to write, to actually doing the thing, and what the steps are in between. Because in previous conversations we’ve talked about, when do you know that you’re ready to start writing? Not doing too much, not doing too little. Unlike a song or a poem, you’ve got to have some plan going into it, or else it’s going to probably be chaos. But that transition point from, today I’m going to sit down and start doing it because I feel like so often it’s that worry that if I actually start doing it, I’ll hate it and I’ll fail.

Craig: You get married and you wake up and go, “What did I do?” It is scary. I think the truth is, we don’t really know.

John: You don’t.

Craig: Ideally, you have an ending. If you see the beginning and the ending, then it’s worth doing, and you’ll make it because you know where you start, you know where you finish, but you will be afraid and you will regret. Everybody regrets it. I regret when I get my food in a restaurant. I regret I couldn’t order something else.

John: I always want what Mike ordered.

Craig: Yes, exactly. I always want what Mike ordered, and I’m not even there. You have decision sickness, and it happens, but also, you must learn the value of commitment because commitment is not, “Oh, I made a great decision at the beginning of the process.” Commitment is, “It doesn’t matter if I made a good decision. I committed.” Through time, energy, and effort, it will be rewarding, hopefully. At worst, you finish, you have a finished script, you wish you hadn’t spent time on that one. You got better. You learned something, put it aside, start something else. You just have to pick and hope.

John: Nora Garrett was on the podcast a few weeks ago. She was talking about her first script, which ended up getting produced as After the Hunt. She went through a writer’s boot camp, basically, to do it. I think the value of write your screenplay in 21 days or NaNoWriMo is that it provides some excuse for why you’re starting.

This is why I’m starting to do this thing. It’s signing up for a gym on January 1st. It’s some reason to get there and actually start doing the thing, because once you’re in the middle of doing the thing, you’re more likely to keep doing the thing. You have to have some rationale for why it is now. Aline also has a metaphor of the easing yourself into the water, where you stand on the beach and let the water roll over your toes, and before you know it, you’re actually writing.

Craig: You ease in, yes.

John: I’m also remembering Katie Silverman coming on the podcast, talking about how, before writing the actual script or even writing treatments for things, she’ll just have those characters have conversations. Just have a long conversation.

Craig: That’s what I do. In the shower, I start doing weird– I’m weird. I’m weird in the shower, you guys, [chuckles] because I’m talking to myself.

John: You’re starting to hear those characters and what it sounds like when those characters are talking to each other. Those are all ways to get started. Then you’ve got to, at some point, bite the bullet. I’m writing a scene. Whether it’s on paper or you’re firing a pilot or however you’re doing it, you write a scene, tweak it a bit, and then write the next one, write the next one, and you got to keep moving. I feel like there’s so many unwritten things out there because people are just afraid to start because they will recognize all the problems with it once you start it, but that’s part of the process.

Craig: Also, starting implies you have to do work.

John: Yes.

Craig: We are afraid, and we’re also lazy. Sometimes we accentuate our fear because it is in service of our laziness when, in fact, really, it’s not that you’re scared, you just don’t want to do it.

John: Yes. Almost anything else is easier than writing.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: A video game, cleaning your kitchen is easier. Some of those are the excuses for why you’re not doing your daily writing or you’re not doing the stuff that you’re doing today, but it can back into the excuse for why you’re never starting on the actual project itself.

Craig: I would argue that if you are a writer, meaning you are a professional writer, or it’s not your job yet, but you would like it to be, and so you work when you’re not working, you should be writing. If you are trying to figure out which thing to be writing, pick one now and keep thinking about the other ones. What you don’t have an option of doing is hamleting around going, “Woah, this one or this one or this?” If you get into that mindset, then at least if you find yourself terrified at the thought of writing something, it’s because you’re actually terrified by it, not because you just don’t want to write.

John: Yes. To wrap this up, we talk about pick the project that has the best ending, which is my general advice for which of the projects you should do. If you don’t know what the ending is, that’s the right place to start. Think about you probably have a good sense of how it starts, how your project begins. Really spend the time to just work through the ending and try writing that out. If you can find it, great, and that’s going to make you really excited to do it. If you can’t find it, probably don’t start because you’re unlikely to finish it.

Craig: It’s going to be bad and you won’t know where to go and you may get to a place where you finally have to pay the debt. Then the debt is what the ending is that I don’t know. The other thing I would recommend is when you have the beginning and you have the ending, ask yourself, “Yes, but what is this about? Why would anyone care?” It’s never about what it’s about, as we know. Having that can be some nice rocket fuel for you because it gives you some mental guidance for what parts of the story would be important to tell and what parts you maybe don’t need to tell.

John: Yes. All right, let’s answer some listener questions. We have one here from Grace in London.

Grace: Hi, John and Craig. I’ve been screenwriting as a passion project for the last 10 years, averaging a screenplay a year, and I’m writing my first animated feature. I think the story and movie would work best as a musical akin to a Disney animation or even though these aren’t animated Barbie or The Greatest Showman. Do you have any advice for writing a screenplay that will integrate with an original soundtrack?

John: Sure. First off, great. She’s written 10 things. She writes a screenplay a year. That’s awesome. She’s a person who has an idea, and she’s like, “Okay, this is the thing I’m writing this year.” Love it. Good on you, Grace. I’ve written a lot of animated musicals. What I’ll tell you is that you plan for where those songs are and plan for what the function of those songs are. I always put the song in there, the original song in there. Will it get replaced? Yes, but if the song is in there serving a story purpose, my temporary song does that purpose, and you really have to think about that. If it’s not a story plus songs, the songs are crucial story elements.

Craig: Yes. Worked on somewhat popular musical film. One bit of advice I would give you is to write stuff to happen during the song.

John: Exactly.

Craig: I think a lot of people will write up to a point, and then someone starts to sing, and then they just put the lyrics in, and then the movie re-continues. No. What’s happening?

John: Yes.

Craig: Where are they? Do they move around? Who are they singing to? Do they go outside? Are there other people in the scene? How are they reacting to that? Write it in. Basically, songs are the action scenes of musicals.

John: Yes, 100%. Next question comes from Nyasha.

Drew: “I wrote and directed an audio podcast for Audible. I’m very proud of it, but I’m now in the process of trying to adapt the podcast into a movie. I’m really interested to get your thoughts on the process of adaptation. What are the pitfalls to look out for in adapting a podcast script to a screenplay and what do you think are the advantages?”

John: Nyasha, we don’t know whether yours is like a documentary podcast or a fictionalized version. I think they’re two very different things. If it’s a documentary podcast, it really calls back to Adriana versus Veronica, which is that you probably told the story in a way that really made sense in a podcast medium, but now you really need to think about what is it going to look like with visuals, taking place in time, and that kind of thing. If it is a fictional podcast, who are the characters that worked in the audio version, and how do they work just as voices, and how is it going to feel different when you actually are seeing places and time is more continuous the way that it is on video?

Craig: Yes. I’ll presume that this was a fictional podcast just for the sake of the question. You want to make sure as you adapt something like that, which is an audio-only medium, to not only think as visually as possible, but also think about how much freedom you have to go places and to see things. Show me where you are. Go outside, and don’t be afraid to spend a little time in silence as long as something interesting is happening. Some of the more interesting sequences on film are ones where people aren’t talking.

When you’re doing a podcast story, I assume people are constantly talking. Otherwise, it’s just hammering noises. You’re allowed to not talk as long as you’re showing me something fascinating. When you look at how Christopher Nolan opens the Dark Knight movie, that big robbery sequence, there’s almost no talking. Every 80 seconds somebody says, hey.

John: Yes, things that would not work in there. We often talk about how screenplays are limited because you only talk about what you can see and what you can hear. In your audio podcast, it’s just what people can hear. You’ve got one vector there. You’ll have a lot more, which is fantastic.

Craig: You have to break some things, too, because there are things that just simply won’t work well because they were designed for audio only.

John: A good example I’d point you to, I thought the adaptation of Homecoming, which is a podcast, Michael Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz did it, and Sam Esmail did the adaptation for series. I thought it was really well done. It took the best elements of what made that work as an audio fiction podcast and turned it into something that feels like a series. It had its still strange energies to it. Again, look for examples, but there’s not going to be a lot. You’re flying blind here.
Let’s answer one more from Owen.

Drew: Owen writes, “I wrote a short film based on a personal experience. A director loved it and will be shooting it next month. The collaborative process has been great, but I haven’t been involved in a lot of the creative production decisions, including casting. I’ve loved the director’s attitude and I’ve tried to stay out of the way in certain areas, telling myself it’s my story but the director’s execution. I’d love to hear about how you navigate your feelings of ownership over an idea, a story, or even a draft, and if that’s something you’ve had to practice, what that journey was like.”

Craig: Well, this is an argument for producing your own work. You’re making a short film, right, so nobody involved is some big shot in Hollywood. Everybody involved is trying to make a good calling card. They’re practicing. They’re sharpening their tools. If it’s your story, that is literally your story. Even if it’s not, even if it takes place on Mars with aliens and you control it and it’s original, you have to, I think, have to insist that you are producing this as well. I mean, unless some financier is coming in to back this big short film, you have to produce it, which means you have to have some kind of approval over the process of casting, and some general approval over the process of the schedule and the budget and all the rest.

First of all, you need to learn that stuff. Second of all, I don’t care who it is. This whole, “You got to get out of the way of the director,” unless the director’s wrong. Then you need to be in the way. They’re wrong. There’s this presumption that you’ll get notes because you’re wrong, but the director, their authority can be unchecked because they’re not wrong. Incorrect and also insane. My strong suggestion to all of you out there who are in this position that Owen is in is to be a producer on your own work so that you do maintain, at a minimum, participation this process.

John: Yes. Owen is saying that the experience has been really great, yet he’s writing to us because he’s also feeling like he should be more involved.

Craig: Stockholm Syndrome seems to have set in.

John: Absolutely. Yes, I think so. Listen, it sounds like the director is doing a good job, and you’re mostly happy with stuff. You just feel like you’re on the sidelines. Get yourself a little closer in there. It doesn’t mean that you have to weigh in on every decision at all. Just be there as a resource and learn from it because the process of making a short film is to end up with a great short film, but also so you learn about the process of making a short film, so you know what this is. By keeping yourself involved, and seeing how casting works, and what production is like, and whose job is it to do that thing on set, these are all things you should be taking in.

Craig: All of it. I think it’s important to come to the table with an open mind and a dedication to best idea wins. Even, I would argue, giving the other person a little bit of an extra edge over your opinion because you’re counteracting the fact that it’s your opinion. If you sit with someone and you really consider what they’re saying and they make a good argument, you’ve learned, and they’re right. It’s not a contest, and it’s not a game of who’s in charge of whom, but you have to be at the table of a short film that you wrote, the end.

You cannot– this nonsense– this is where it begins, where directors literally who haven’t directed things, but are like, “but I am a director. Therefore, you need to get out of my way. Everybody’s got to be worried about my feelings, my domain, etiquette, blah, blah blah, blah blah.” Everyone’s walking on eggshells around a director because the world of directors has created this culture. I’m a director and I’ll tell you, “I don’t need any of that. I don’t want any of it.” I don’t want people walking on eggshells around me. I don’t want them overly concerned with etiquette.

Yes, okay, can the guy with the boom mic give my actor’s direction? No, that’s bad for the process. Can he come and tell me that he thinks that maybe they’re saying something or doing something that might not make sense? Absolutely. Then I’ll make a determination, but there’s nothing– It’s actually the worst job to put in bubble wrap, so get the bubble wrap off that guy.

John: A practical bit of advice here, Owen. There are going to be conversations where the director’s talking to the production designer, talking to other department heads by himself, and that’s fine, that’s great, and that’s natural, but there are going to be some things which are production meetings. They’re going to be either in person or on Zooms. You should be in those meetings.

Craig: Absolutely, and helping to answer questions. If there is a disagreement, it is important that all the people working on something feel like there is a common marching order, that the instructions are consistent. If there’s a disagreement, then you can always– and this happens in meetings all the time, where– I’m in charge of my show. If somebody has a thought that is different from mine, and I’m not sure which one of us is right, I’ll say, “Okay, let’s table that. We’ll talk about that,” like my DP, “we’re going to talk about that, and we’re going to come back to you guys with an answer.” Not, “Don’t question me in front of people.” Question me in front of– What are we doing here?

Come on, the sensitivity around directors is astonishing. It’s perfectly inverse to the sensitivity around writers, which is to say everyone gets to kick them as hard as they want, and no one can even, like, “Oh my God, don’t breathe on the director. They’ll collapse. Please.

John: My first experience in production was on Go, and I was involved in every bit of casting, every production meeting, all that stuff. Did I know what I was doing in a lot of it? No, but I learned a lot of what I was doing, and I definitely had the right answers to questions as things came up. Because I was in all those pre-production meetings, when it came time when I needed to direct a second unit, I knew who everybody was, I knew what the brief was, I knew what our schedule was, I knew how to do all those things. In most of the movies I’ve written for other people, have I been that involved? No.

The Tim Burton movies, I’ve been there through pre-production, and I’ve gotten stuff up on its feet and running, could answer questions from department heads as things came up. Our director on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could send me, “This is what is in the newspaper articles that are on the background of this wall? Does this all look right?” “Yes, and thank you for that.” That’s because I’ve made myself available, and I tried to work with people who would include me in the process, and basically wouldn’t try to shut me out of the process.

Craig: Exactly. I worked with Todd Phillips. Todd is a very strong director, this firm hand clarity, but we collaborated constantly on all aspects, casting, everything, all of it. The idea is for you to know how to do it in a way that is graceful and that doesn’t confuse people, because there have been situations where people are like, “Who’s actually directing this movie?” That comes up sometimes because there’s a weak director and somebody seems to be steamrolling them. Typically, a producer or a star. There is a way to work with a director who is confident enough to let you in because it’s help. If you make it better, you make it better.

The directors that get really fussy about this stuff are the ones that are insecure because they’re not quite sure what their actual value is, and so they need to invent it.

John: All right, it’s time for One Cool Things. Mine harkens back to our celebration of weirdness. It’s a thing called Channelvue. It is just channelvue.biz. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Written by Joe Veix, directed by Brandon Tauszik. It looks like in late ’80s, early ’90s, cable listing, a cable TV scrolling guide with a little video on top that has ads and things, but things go very wrong. It’s really very smartly done. It was clearly so much work, and just the payoff is just great. It’s also just weird. It’s deeply baked down in weird. It’s weird in the same way that Too Many Cooks is weird, but it’s its own special flavor.

Craig: Its own weird. Well, that’s fantastic. I, too, have something on theme for weird.

John: I love it.

Craig: Our Dutch friends who work at Rusty Lake, one of my favorite game creators, have a demo out for their upcoming game, Servant of the Lake. Rusty Lake has made a lot of what I would call shorter, they call them cube escape games. They’re a few hours. Then they have a couple of big ones, which are my favorite. Rusty Lake Roots, big one. This is going to be a big one. They put the first, I don’t know, maybe 20 minutes of puzzle-solving little stage on there. It’s like, you show up at this place, you have a few interesting things you do.

Unfortunately, it’s only available currently on Steam. It’s not something you can play on an iPad, but eventually, of course, it will come to iOS. They always do. I played it. It was fantastic. Rusty Lake are so beautifully weird unto themselves. They have this thing. Do you play those games?

John: I have played a few of them. At your recommendation, yes.

Craig: Yes. There are a few things that always show up, no matter what. The storyline is impenetrably weird. Then there are also these things that happen. There’s always a shrimp. When you find stuff, you find matches, and you find, oh, the code sheet and the thing, but then you often will find a shrimp. That’s how you know you’re playing Rusty Lake. They put a shrimp in a drawer. Why? Don’t know.

John: Yes, but it’s specific to their taste.

Craig: Yes. Check out the demo for Servant of the Lake. I am very excited to play that.

John: Cool. Great. That was our show for this week. Scriptnotes was produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. We have a bonus holdover candy spooky outro by Jim Bond. It’s out of spooky season, but it’s–

Craig: We are recording this on Halloween.

John: We are recording it on Halloween.

Drew: It’s weird.

John: Yes, it’s weird.

Craig: That’s weird.

John: That’s weird. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. It’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips, another helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for ScriptNotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram at ScriptNotes Podcast. If you need T-shirts, hoodies, and drinkware, you’ll find us at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers.

Craig: Thank you so much.

John: They showed up huge to pre-order the book. Thank you for that.

Craig: Second-best orange screenwriting book.

John: You should pre-order your Scriptnotes book today. That way, it’s in your hands December 2nd. It also gets us closer to being on lists and gets us in more libraries and bookstores. Thank you again for everyone who’s pre-ordered the book.

Craig: I like that you care about libraries. That’s very nice.

John: Yes, libraries are great.

Craig: Libraries are amazing.

John: I’m not opposed to– Like, “Oh, I’m not going to sell a book because it’s in the library.” No. Libraries are good things.

Craig: They’re amazing things. My dad, if he were alive, would absolutely take this book out from the library. I’d be like, “Dad, you know I can just send you one?” “No, I’ll get it from the library.”

John: “No, no, I’ll put it on reserve.”

Craig: He puts a request. Every week, he would go there and fill out cards. He’s like, “I’m not buying a book. I’m borrowing it.”

John: I love it.

Craig: It’s my dad.

John: I salute that. That’s good stuff. Please, pre-order your book so more libraries will be there for great staff.

Craig: Leonard.

John: Leonard will–

Craig: Leonard, well, he’s not anymore.

John: Yes. The Leonards of the world-

Craig: The Leonards of the world.

John: -will have it there.

Craig: He’s left behind legions of Leonards out there, gray-haired men in polos tucked into khaki shorts at the library with their reading glasses ready to go.

John: We’re finishing up the bonus chapter, which we’re going to send to all the people who pre-ordered the book. Remember, if you pre-ordered the book, send the receipt to Drew because it’s on the list for this bonus chapter.

Craig: Yes. ask@johnaugust.com.

John: Circling back to thank all of our premium subscribers. You can sign up to become our premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net. You get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on this sense of self-narrative and remembering who you are. Craig, you never forget who you are.

Craig: I’m not sure who I am right now.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Craig, maybe a year or two ago, we talked about aphantasia, which was this actually relatively recently discovered thing that certain people don’t have the ability to visualize things in their head. When everybody hears things like picture in your head or think back to a time, they’re like, that’s metaphorical, right? You’re not actually seeing a thing. Most of us around this table, and most screenwriters, I would presume, we can actually see things in our heads. We can sum up an image.

As they’ve done more studies on it, they see that it’s actually of a whole spectrum. There’s aphantasia, which is the inability to do this thing, and there’s hyperphantasia, which is you can do it too vividly and it’s actually not–

Craig: Disabling.

John: Disabling, yes. There’s a happy sweet spot, which is a great place to be in. I’ll put a link in the show notes to an article that I was reading recently, which went in much greater depth about it. It turns out that a lot of people with aphantasia don’t have a strong sense of their own history. They don’t have the ability to form a self-narrative, and they can’t think back to things. Sometimes they can’t picture places they’ve been before. They can’t picture their children. They can’t see these things. It’s not just face blindness. They just really don’t have the–

Craig: Gone.

John: It’s gone. That would feel strange and sad to most of us, and yet, some people are actually kind of happy. Their philosopher is just like, “I just move forward. I’m the person I am now, and my life is entirely present tense,” which feels like some of it, I read this and think about how would this be a movie? It’s interesting to reflect upon how freeing would it be to not be burdened by who you were.

Craig: Well, there are two things that we have to think about who we were. One are these specific memories, places, faces, times, imagining events, remembering, oh, the time I did something embarrassing. When we tell stories about something that happened, we begin to narrativize these things. There’s also the stuff that we don’t realize we remember from the past, that work underneath the surface. Those are the reasons we go to therapy because those are running in our minds. We just don’t realize it. Probably, I have just as many of those as anyone else. I think I do have a little bit, I wouldn’t say less ability to remember the past actively. We’ll call it active memory. I just have less interest in it. I don’t think much about it.

John: I’ll put a link in the show notes to this article by Larissa MacFarquhar that talks through what we know scientifically about it. What’s clear is that just the same way that some people have a kind of blindness where they actually really are seeing some things, like they literally can avoid walls. If they ask, “What do you see?” they can’t tell you, but they clearly are seeing something. There’s people who actually do have historical memory of themselves. It’s just that they can’t–

Craig: Summon it.

John: They can’t pull it up. They can’t do it.

Craig: I think that for most people, what we think of as the past is, in fact, a highly narrativized, reconstructed thing. It is not what happened. Our memories are notoriously terrible. Human memory is junk. We do not record things like a videotape. We take information in and rearrange it into a story. Our personal narratives are, in fact, narratives that are somewhat accurate, but oftentimes completely inaccurate.

John: The challenge, though, is that obviously, narrativizing is efficient. It’s a way of getting rid of the extraneous details and creating a consistent story which is useful, which may not be accurate. Narrativizing gives you the possibility of learning from your mistakes, and making different choices, and recognizing patterns that you don’t want to repeat again, or patterns that you do want to repeat again. They talk about some of these people who have the aphantasia who have a hard time with friendships because they don’t think about people when they’re not in front of them. It’s a kind of solipsism. It’s not intentional. It’s just like they literally don’t think about people unless they’re in front of them, but they sometimes worry, like, “Is everyone going to forget about me as well?”

Craig: Yes. I definitely don’t have that. I do have a healthy skepticism of my self-concept. I do feel like if I remember something, it means it probably has been processed. It’s like processed food. I’m suspicious of my own memories. I’m suspicious of my own memories of things that were good. I’m suspicious of my own memories that things were bad. I do note that I tend to memorialize things that are embarrassing, which is unfortunate. Ask me, like, “Oh, do you ever think about happy times?” No.

John: Well, probably because you’re not rehearsing those memories. Those bad things, they come up again, and they stew on them for a bit, and it reinforces them.

Craig: Well, I am a forward-looking person because I’m curious. More than anything, I’m curious, which means I want to know what’s around the bend. I’m always thinking about what’s coming next. It’s so exciting to me. The unknown is exciting.

John: One of the things I’ve noticed that they do in these studies is that people who work in scientific fields are more likely to be aphantasic than folks who work in creative fields. It makes sense, not just in the pre-sorting of it all, but the things you are– As your brain is growing and developing, if daydreaming has not been a thing you’ve been doing a lot of, you’re not doing that. I was a huge daydreamer, a crazy big daydreamer.

Craig: That would probably be the best word to describe me as a kid, as an adult, as an old man.

John: Absolutely. The parts of your brain that you’re exercising to do the things are going to reinforce. Imagining things a lot is what I get paid to do. It’s my default mode.

Craig: Well, it’s like in D&D, which of course is the answer to everything, you have abilities. The higher that ability is, the more likely you are going to use things that are connected to that ability and it all self-reinforces. I think daydreamers, we’re predilected to daydream. They daydream more. They really get a daydream. People that aren’t– Scientists have recorded data. They don’t have to remember the data. They don’t have to remember where they were when they recorded the data. There’s no story to the data. It’s just facts that are written down that can be referred to and compared and thank God for those people.

John: Yes, there’s a base truth, which is just very different from what we do.

Craig: They make miraculous things for us.

John: Drew, a question for you. Going through acting schools and stuff like that, to what degree, when you are in scenes, and did this change at all over your acting trajectory, are you literally envisioning yourself in a different place when you’re in a scene doing a thing? It’s always interesting to talk to actors like, “Are you getting rid of the camera and everybody else, or are you just in space?” Talk to me about that experience.

Drew: Oh, it’s been a while. That’s a good question. My gut was no. My gut is more about the way I was trained. It’s more about what you’re doing to the other person. That’s all actions and verbs. Just being with that other person and everything around you doesn’t matter. That’s all trappings on top of that connection.

But in improv and stuff like that, you have to imagine a room around you. Then, if you’re baking, you have to pick up the right thing. We did clown work and that kind of thing. There was a lot of that. Once it’s said, it’s said. If you’re putting out a table, you have to remember where you’ve left the forks and those kind of things. That is a different type of imagination.

Craig: Can I tell you something that bothers me about improv? People pick things up all the time. I have a water glass in front of me that you’ve so nicely provided. I’ll do this. People that pick things up in improv, it’s like they’re robots picking things up. They have to make this weird hand gesture and do this, or they put things away with both hands. It’s so weird. What is that?

John: Again, once we do this on video, all that makes much more sense. What you’re describing is, it’s the overperformance of a thing. It’s probably to sell it to the back row.

Drew: I think it’s an establishment thing.

Craig: When they reach for a door, they reach out, grab it, and pull it. They don’t just go pull.

Drew: It’s so weird.

John: It’s also because you’re establishing it for the audience, but also for other people who are on stage, that this is where the door is and this is how it swings and that stuff.

Craig: It’s very odd to me and amusing, that it always works that way. It’s just been taught and taught and taught, and now it’s inculcated. You know what? You got to imagine stuff in that space. I get it.

John: I have a focus group of people who have to watch Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, which is the movie. It’s just lines on the floor and everything is pantomimed.

Craig: I don’t want to watch that.

John: Yes. I really enjoyed it when I watched it the first time, but you are having to just imagine everything else around you.

Craig: It’s their job. That’s like, you go to an avant-garde restaurant and they just dump the ingredients on your table. Go ahead. Cook it. Make a thing. Here’s two eggs, some cheese. Make yourself an omelet, buddy.

John: I want to circle back to the sense of self-narrative. Craig, at what age do you feel like you are actually yourself? At what age does Craig Mazin begin?

Craig: I feel like I was probably 12 or 13.

John: That’s the same age I would put for myself. Before that, I acknowledge there’s a little kid who I see in photos, but it’s not really me.

Craig: No, it’s not me.

John: I feel like I can draw a continuous line back to that kid who was about 12 or 13, and it is consistently me. After moving to Los Angeles and people would make references to things, I have surprising gaps in popular culture before that age or around that age, like H.R. Pufnstuf, I just never saw.

Craig: Yes, I did see that.

John: There’s things you feel like, wait, it’s just weird, things I must have experienced or seen that just have disappeared because they never got rehearsed.

Craig: There are definitely things that I remember. I remember in first grade, kids would talk about The Rockford Files, and I was like, “What?”

John: [sings]

Craig: They loved singing the song. I’m like, “What?” I have a very specific memory. Maybe I told the story in the podcast before. We’ve done 7,000 episodes. We did charades in first grade.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: I was young for first grade. I think I was six. This is a memory from when I was six years old. There were charades where somebody would go up and do something, and we would have to guess what it is. Three different boys went up there, and their charade was just playing a guitar and pretending to sing. Everyone was like, Rockford Files. I’m like, “What is happening? What is this? What is The Rockford Files? Why would you know that from somebody playing guitar? Other people play guitar? What the?” See, I said Rockford Files, and what did you do?

John: [sings]

Craig: You did the song. As far as I know, The Rockford Files is a song for 45 minutes, then James Garner shows up, punches the guy, and it’s over.

John: That’s about right. Not entirely inaccurate. It has its scruffy charm. Again, it was a thing that was on in afternoon reruns that I was aware of,-

Craig: So weird.

John: -but I wasn’t really watching it.

Craig: Everybody was really plugged into that in 1976.

John: Yes, it’s wild. I would say 12 or 13 is when I first feel a continuity back to that person. Yet it’s strange because we are constantly creating fictional worlds and other things. We’re also in other places. All the time that I was doing Arlo Finch, those three years of writing those books, I was also simultaneously inside Pine Mountain. I could see everything. I knew the layout of everyone’s houses. I could do all that stuff. Now I don’t. As I go back, all of a sudden, I was doing a little thing about Highland, and I pulled up a chapter of Arlo Finch just to show some stuff. It’s like, “I don’t recognize these names. I don’t recognize these people. Who is that kid?” It’s weird how–

Craig: “Who wrote this?” I think about that all the time.

John: Yes. I recognize it as my writing, but I don’t remember it.

Craig: Yes, I don’t. I know I wrote it. It just was somewhere else when I did it. It is a strange thing to become other people because when you become other people in your head and you go to other places, it isn’t you. That’s why I get a little grouchy when people– and it’s inevitable. Somebody asks the question every single time when we go to Austin, like, “What stories do you feel you have the right to write?” All of them, everything. I can write anybody. That’s sort of the job is to be other people. Now that requires empathy and insight and attention and care and studying and doing your homework, but that’s what it is.

It is not surprising to me that you forget these things because you stop being those people. You start becoming other people. Well, I don’t know if this is true, but I was just thinking why the two of us thought 12 and 13. One argument is it’s because when you roughly start to transition into adulthood, which is what we are now, and so therefore that’s when you kind of remember being you. Every now and then, I do think that there was that time, I think between 12 and I’m going to say 16, where life was sort of magical.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: Everything that happened was powerfully magical. Becoming attracted to people was magical. The social stuff was magical. Drugs were magical. Everything was magical because it was all new, and it was all weird. There isn’t much magical left. I will say one of the bummers about growing old is I never have an experience where I feel like, “Oh my God.” Occasionally, I do, but generally speaking, the thrill of becoming someone is gone.

John: Well, you look at people complaining about like, “Oh, the experience of renting a movie at Blockbuster was just so much better than the current version of seeing a movie because we would go there and we would do this and sometimes you wouldn’t find the movie and that was half the fun,” and stuff. It was like, “No, you miss being 16.” That’s what it is.

Craig: Exactly.

John: You miss your youth. They do studies like when was America’s best decade and they also track their age, it was always when they were 12 to 18.

Craig: Of course. Basically, we are living through some dying boomer’s fantasy about that time, which had higher crime, and social justice was way worse. Social injustice was profound and now we’re like, “Oh, being queer isn’t weird anymore.” It was weird. That’s why they were called queer. They didn’t come up with that word.

John: Yes. It was a stronger word for weird.

Craig: Other people did. They were like, “You’re not normal.” That’s what life was back then. Then, when you look at somebody like Walt Disney, who when he designs Walt Disney World and Disneyland, what does he make? Main Street USA. Early 1900s. How old was he in the early 1900s?

John: It’s harking back to this vision of Americana, which was all the good stuff.

Craig: When life was magic. Born in 1901. Boom.

John: Exactly.

Craig: 1917, he was 16. If you look at Main Street USA, it sort of looks like what 1917 looked like in Wichita, for white people.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Those are the good old days. I guess for us, the good old days are the early ’80s, which were crime-ridden. There was a plague. It was really bad.

John: That’s part of the reason why I wanted to acknowledge in the main part of the podcast, they are not good things happening here, and just reflect note. We don’t have the ability to perfectly remember everything. I always go back to my photo roll. When was I there? What happened? That’s become my extra set of memories for things. Other references, like the podcast, it’s like, what was the context around things? You can find those.

Craig: I don’t look back.

John: You don’t look back? Only forward?

Craig: [singing] “Don’t look back in anger. I heard him say.”

John: Oh, my last thing is twice last week, I’ve watched videos of people watching my movies for the first time. It’s a really interesting–

Craig: Wait. How do you find a video of somebody watching your movies?

John: There’s a whole genre on YouTube of reaction videos where people watch a movie for the first time. It’s really fun to see people experiencing Big Fish for the first time. It’s like a couple watching Big Fish. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re narrating as they’re doing it, and they’re talking about what they expect. It’s a really interesting genre or media because it’s just like you’re seeing the live things. It’s intercutting, sometimes, with the scenes of what they’re saying.

Craig: Oh, yes. They send me a lot of reaction videos. HBO compile reaction videos to when we put a trailer out. They’ve had the trailer, the little box and the people in it. That is fun to watch.

John: It’s fun to watch it for your movie. You end up fast-forwarding through some stuff. Looking at the big twist revelations in Big Fish and how people take it, or I watched somebody watch Go, and I’m realizing how much I had forgotten about what actually happens in Go, but then seeing the person watch it for the first time and the revelations that happen in Go, it’s a fun thing. It’s nice that we have this in existence.

Craig: Yes. Some people are stuck in the past. I’m stuck in the future, which is a weird thing to say because I’m not there yet, but that’s where I am.

John: After I finished this little rewatch of Go, the algorithm showed me behind-the-scenes making of Go, which I’d never seen. I don’t know where this footage came from. They have a little interview with me and so here’s me on set of Go. This would be 1999.

Craig: Yes. It looks like you.

John: It looks like me.

Craig: You look the same.

John: I don’t remember this ever happening, but it was me.

Craig: I absolutely don’t remember any of those things. They’re gone. They happened, and then they’re gone. When we watch The Last of Us with our friends, Derek and Christy, they like to come over, and we watch together because they like the show, and it forces me to watch it. Then they make me watch the thing after the credits. They make me sit there and watch the talking head bits, the after-the-show stuff.

John: Then seeing how they cut you.

Craig: I don’t remember a damn thing from that stuff.

John: Those are all shot on one day, right?

Craig: Yes, those are all shot on one day.

John: Now we’re talking about this thing.

Craig: Hence, the single shirt, so pick a good shirt, I guess.

John: That’s the lesson we’ve learned from this discussion of aphantasia.

Craig: Pick a good shirt for behind-the-scenes.

John: Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Drew.

Craig: Thanks, guys.

Links:

• Scriptnotes LIVE! Book release show tickets at Dynasty Typewriter in LA
• The Uncool by Cameron Crowe
• Meet the Sisters Battling to Become L.A.’s New Billboard Queen by Mickey Rapkin for The Hollywood Reporter
• The Decline of Deviance by Adam Mastroianni
• Too Many Cooks
• Happiness (1998)
• Ken Russell
• Community tries to figure out if Nicholas Cage is good or bad
• Homecoming on Prime Video
• ChannelVue
• Servant of the Lake
• Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
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• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

[music]

[applause]

Craig Mazin: Are you guys being paid for this?

John August: I’m going to say, bringing in the warm-up act to get them in the mood, that was really good. It was worth all the hundreds of dollars.

Craig: Yes. Wow.

John: That was great. Thank you for that.

Craig: Sure. Thank you, guys.

[applause]

John: I would say it’s especially impressive that you’re here. Not only were we scheduled against a Rian Johnson premiere, also did you hear this? The Major League Baseball scheduled a World Series game. I’m telling you this now. They scheduled a World Series game against us. Apparently, it’s happening-

Craig: What?

John: -at this moment.

Craig: Yes. I have been told in no uncertain terms that I cannot check the score during this. However, I can tell you right now, it is tied up to two-

John: Which is exciting. Now–

Craig: -in the top of the sixth in Toronto.

John: What I will tell you is that people think, “Oh, John doesn’t like baseball.” The truth is, I like movies about baseball. I liked the episode of Moneyball. We recorded a deep dive on Moneyball with Taffy Brodesser-Akner. If you’re hungering for Craig and I talking about baseball, go back and listen to that episode. Be a premium subscriber.

Craig: I thought you were going to say, “We’ll just do it now.” I see.

John: We can’t recreate the whole experience.

Craig: I think you have agreed that before we get to audience Q&A, I can give us all another update.

John: Hold until then. If you are checking your phone along the way and something happens, cheer on the inside.

[laughter]

John: You can keep that to yourself and save it for the Q&A. All right. Craig, how many times have we done a live show here at Austin?

Craig: Oh, I would say at least twice.

John: More than twice. Eleven times we’ve done a live show here in Austin.

[applause]

John: That’s not counting three-page challenges. We’re doing another live three-page challenge tomorrow. Please come to that if you’d like to. If you want to read the scripts for the three-page challenge, they’re already up on the front page of johnaugust.com. You can read along and see how well-formatted they are on the page. Often, we come here and it’s just fun. It’s just not work.

Craig: Always a great time.

John: This year, we actually have an agenda. Craig, that agenda matches up to the cards that are on your seat.

Craig: I like that you’re acknowledging that I don’t know what the agenda is.

John: No. Craig, we’ve got to sell some books. All right. After 14 years of the Scriptnotes podcast, we now have a book coming out December 2nd. You might think, “Oh, December 2nd. On December 2nd, I will buy that book.” No. We need you to buy that book right now. You need to preorder that book. Here’s what preorders do. Preorders let bookstores know that, “Oh, people really like this book. Maybe we should stock this book.” It lets libraries know, “Oh, hey, maybe we should buy a copy for our readership.”

Maybe it puts us on a New York Times bestseller list, which would not be bad, would not be bad. No, Craig, I don’t know if you got this email, but from our editor, Matthew, who’s fantastic, we’re a month out, and he said, “The numbers look good.”

Craig: Oh, that’s horrible.

John: Yes, because we’re screenwriters, we know that good is bad. Good is not fantastic.

Craig: No.

John: Good is they’re okay.

Craig: There’s only two things, amazing-

John: Amazing.

Craig: -and horrible. There are 1,000 words for horrible. One of them is good.

[laughter]

John: Good. It’s funny that way. The English language is both vast and limited. I’m looking out over here. We have 400 people in this room. A show of hands, who in this room has currently preordered The Scriptnotes Book? Oh, that’s a lot of hands, but I also see a lot of opportunities.

Craig: These were all of the people that preordered the book.

John: More than that.

Craig: Good.

John: Yes. If everyone in this room ordered the book tonight, we have a real shot at getting on those lists that we want to be on, because how cool would it be to have a screenwriting book be on The New York Times bestseller list? That would be cool. It’s scripnotesbook.com. That’s where you see all the places where you can buy it. You can, of course, support your local bookstore. You can buy it through one of the online services. If you want a signed copy, Craig and I signed 500 copies of the book.

Craig: It was pretty screwed up because we thought we were going to sell 500 copies of the book. You guys got to really step up.

John: Yes, you got to buy all of them. Please, tonight, if you would, preorder the book. It really does make a big difference ordering it now versus December 2nd.

Audience Member: Just did.

John: Thank you very much. This man is a hero. All right, another here. If we get one more. All right, we got three. All right, I’m going to ask again at the end of the show how many people in this room have ordered that book tonight.

Craig: I may be able to afford the flight back to LA.

John: That’s the hope.

Craig: This is really great.

John: He bought a one-way ticket. This may be the thing that gets Craig home.

Craig: I commit.

John: You did commit.

Craig: I commit.

John: We have an amazing show tonight. We have a conversation about relationships and really not just what our heroes want, but what our heroes want of the other characters and that two-sided relationship. We’re also going to talk about career transitions, which feels really right for this audience because I see a lot of people in this room who may be transitioning from one career into a writing career. We have a guest who’s done exactly that. We’re going to talk about what that process is like, what that jumping off the cliff feels like. I’m so excited to get into all this.

Craig: It’s going to be great. Then there’s also some other fun stuff that we’re going to do in this audience Q&A.

John: We have another game in here that I’ll be thinking about if this next one is really keyed into who our super fans are. If you’re a super fan of Scriptnotes, this next one’s going to be for you. “Hi, I’m a super fan,” our first guest. Do you want to introduce her?

Craig: Yes. Our first guest is a screenwriter whose credits include Moana, Nimona, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and the Academy-nominated short film with the best title of any Academy-nominated short film-

John: Yes, I agree. I love saying it.

Craig: -or any Academy-nominated film of all time, My Year of Dicks. Of course, she’s a native of Austin, Texas, and a five-time Scriptnotes guest. We really should be getting these folks a nice smoking jacket. Welcome, Pam Ribbon.

John: Pam Ribbon. Oh my gosh.

[applause]

Pamela Ribbon: Yes. Where is my smoking jacket?

John: We need to get you one. Aline has the gold diamond one. You’ve been on the show a lot, and you’ve also been just a great guest again and again.

Pamela: Thank you. I pre-ordered Scriptnotes from Skylight Books, October 11th.

John: Yay. Thank you very much, Pamela Ribbon. In addition to the podcast, we have a newsletter called Inneresting. It’s interesting, but the second N is an N because Aline makes fun that I can’t say interesting with a T. It’s called Inneresting. We have a newsletter. Chris, our editor, came up this week with a post of his own that I thought was terrific. It’s talking about relationships between two characters and a sort of matrix on how much they are aligned and the affection between the two of them. It was a great way to think about relationships.

I want to pose to the three of us, let’s talk about relationships in our scripts and relationships between characters because we so often focus on what a character wants, but we don’t focus on what characters want from other people and how that misalignment is really a source of conflict in our stories. Who wants to field it first?

Pamela: I’ll say something that’s true. I hear in my head, Craig, I don’t know when, I’m sure it was a podcast, but not at my face, this feels weird, you giving me this advice, but you said all movies are about the human experience and the relationships. That is in my head whenever I start any story.

Craig: I got that from Lindsay Doran. Really, it’s Lindsay Doran in your head. She got it from Sydney Pollack. Sydney Pollack is in all of our heads now. He used to say when they were working on a screenplay that somebody else was writing, one of the questions he would ask is, “What is the central relationship of this story?” Which in and of itself requires us to focus in on which one matters the most. Then I guess the question is, when you think about that relationship, I know this is the way I think about it, do you construct characters, and then put them in a relationship, or do you construct a relationship, and out of that, figure out character?

Pamela: It depends on if your protagonist is already well-defined, then you want to find who’s going to drive that character crazy. If you know that it’s a world, then Planes, Trains and Automobiles of like, “How can these people have to be forced together and push each other’s buttons? I always try to figure it out mostly from the point of view, which is when you know what your theme is. Then everybody is orbiting around this concept of whether these two are going to make it.

John: When you think about relationships, so often you think about, “Oh, romantic relationships.” That’s the default thing, but any two characters have a relationship. They could be work friends. Craig and I have a complicated relationship, a good relationship but complicated. There’s tension.

Pamela: It’s a rom-com.

Craig: It’s simple for me.

John: Simple for you. What I think is crucial is that they may not be aligned. One person may have one perception of a relationship that’s different than the other person’s. It’s not just about looking at a relationship from, “Oh, what is this relationship?” It’s like, “What does this character think the relationship is, and what does the other character think this relationship is, and what changes over the course of the story, and how do each of them affect change upon that relationship?”

I want to talk about Nimona for a second because in Nimona, you have the central guy and the girl who’s not really a girl. Their relationship is complicated and evolves, and I’m sure evolved a lot over the evolution of the script and the story.

Pamela: Nimona is a very strong character. Moana had Maui. I’ll just say that you’re trying to balance whose film is this for that central relationship. You have someone who’s questioning everything up against someone who never questioned anything before and thinks, “This is the only way it is. This is how I grew up. My life is because of this system. Now, I’m starting to see that none of it’s real. Now, I’ve got the worst person, Nimona, with me to go through this,” and then you make that relationship test whether or not it’s even real. This was a movie about, like Nimona says, everything is broken. The whole system is broken. What if you just look past what you have been told not to see?

Craig: In that, you start to see how– We all understand that when a hero is facing off against a villain, they’re struggling over power. James Bond versus Blofeld, they’re fighting over who is or is not going to destroy the world. In all relationships, it seems, it’s worthy to pay attention to the power because one person almost always has more power in the relationship than the other. The question is which one, why, and then how do I flip it? It’s usually the case that just as characters change over the course of the movie, the relationship needs to change over the course of the movie.

You mentioned Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Steve Martin has all the power, all of it, until suddenly he doesn’t. That’s what makes that movie beautiful. Talk a little bit, if you could, about how you think about who has the upper hand and how that might help you as you’re wondering, I know what has to happen plot-wise, but what is this scene actually going to be?

Pamela: Oh, that’s such a good question. I think it’s someone very stubborn about their point of view, and they’re going to have to change. You throw someone at them that is an undeniable force of change. They’re just coming right at your heart. Usually, that’s who we put the sweet one as, the kind one, so that you’re rooting for this change. Whether or not they work out. That’s why Bing Bong dies. You want the thing coming at you. Spoiler alert.

John: Sorry. I’m sorry.

Craig: Sorry.

John: The movie’s out there.

Pamela: Score is three-two. I’m not going to tell you who’s up.

[laughter]

Pamela: Just kidding. I’m just kidding. I don’t know. I’ve talked to you the whole time. He’s right at his heart. You want someone who’s going to mess up that status quo of that relationship.

Craig: This is a demonstration of what power is in a relationship, what you just did.

John: We’re talking about power in a relationship, who is doing the thing to the other person. I want to direct us back to what does the character want from the other person? You see people talking about love languages. “What is it that a person is seeking from the other character? Are they getting it? Are they getting it in the way that they need to get it? How do they communicate what it is that they actually want? Does the character need to be seen? Does the character need to feel invalidated? Does the character just need a big hug?” You look at Wreck-It Ralph or you look at any of these characters, they need different things.

They have a hard time learning the language to talk to the other character. That’s actually some of the journey of the script. If they knew it from on page 35, there wouldn’t be a movie. The problem would be solved. It’s not just that they’re trying to change the other character. They’re trying to understand the other character and get the other character to see them as they see themselves.

Pamela: They also need that other character to be a true mirror.

John: That’s the construction.

Craig: That’s the– well done.

Pamela: That felt better than it should have.

Craig: There’s that Wizard of Oz theory that all of the characters are just fragments of Dorothy’s personality. One method is that you have a strong central character and the relationship that that character has with another one, and really all the relationships that character has will be in service of them changing. All of those people through the relationship and you letting them down, making them happy, you change. The other model is that the relationship is the story. Romantic comedies, the relationship is the story. They will tend to lean it towards one person who just needed to learn, but really, it’s the relationship. I have to say, I think in animation, they do a really good job of that. Better than, I think, live action.

Pamela: Also, we come at it so open-hearted. It allows for that love story to– I just keep thinking of the word shipping, because you’re rooting for these characters to just survive everything. Just a side note, my kid is 12 was like, “Hey, I just learned that shipping is about a relationship.” I said, “What do you think?” She said, “I thought it meant that you love someone so much that you go on the Titanic.” I was like, “That is what it means.” I was like, “You mean that you’d let someone be on the door?” She was like, “Yes.”

John: Oh.

Craig: Oh my God. You got that door kind of love. That floating door kind of love.

Pamela: That shipping.

John: He could have gotten on the door.

Pamela: [unintelligible 00:15:14] was the ship.

Craig: Oh, I thought that it meant like, “I love you so much, I will do one of those horrible cruises with you.”

[laughter]

John: I want to circle back to this question about animation, because I do feel like Nimona, Moana, these relationships are really well done in animation. I wonder if it’s partly just the process. The process of you’re going through iteration after iteration, you’re really seeing what’s working there, and you can narrow down and drill into it, versus as we shoot live action, “We shot that scene, we’re done. We’re not going to go back and reshoot that scene again.” That is an advantage.

Pamela: There were many Mauis, because you could take over the film pretty easily. Then you also have all the myths, and which Maui do you want? Is it the Maui who in the end lifts up all the islands and discovers Polynesia, or is he a broken demigod? One of the early versions, she was this big Maui nerd, and she was so excited that she had met Maui. He was just this defeated monster in a cave who didn’t want to be talked to.

John: That’s a good idea, but it probably didn’t serve the rest of the movie. The animation has the luxury of exploring the bad ideas and hopefully getting back on the right path.

Pamela: It gave him the movie, because she was just urging him to come out and come out and come out. There is a line in Moana where I’m like, “That’s the old version,” because she says, “Maybe we were all here for you to realize you’re Maui.” She handed him the movie for a second. I don’t know. I think you always want Moana to win so that when she loses, it is because she learned something from Maui.

Craig: The relationship reinforces who she is. It is far less interesting to watch somebody learn something on their own. It’s really less interesting to watch somebody learn something easily. Having somebody else point out that either you think you learned the lesson and you didn’t, or you haven’t learned anything at all, is helpful. I do think about John Candy confronting Steve Martin. Where you understand that Steve Martin, yes, Thanksgiving is about family. Sure. That relationship made me care about the statement, “Thanksgiving is about family.”

It would not have worked had you not, A, been invested in that relationship, and B, also being even. Steve Martin gets angry at John Candy reasonably. He’s infuriating. He has to be. He has to be. All of that comes out of relationship, as opposed to just characters next to each other.

Pamela: We also see ourselves in both of them. That’s why you want them to come together and heal the both terrible sides inside of you that they are at their worst at in a movie like that.

Craig: I have definitely done this with food. I’ve flicked it right off myself, John Candy style. Absolutely.

John: Now, I would say our feature bias is probably coming through here because we’re talking about feature films that have a clear arc. They have a beginning and an end, and things go through. I want to stress that the importance of relationships is obviously crucial to series television as well. You think about all of the individual relationships in The Office and the differences between them in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, how specific that is. Obviously, our great one-hour dramatic television, how important those are.

Kate and Jack, but also all the other survivors on Lost, you’re tracking where are these characters with each other at all times, and what do they need from each other, what are they trying to get from each other? It’s so tempting to think about characters’ individual goals, but there’s goals within each relationship as well.

Pamela: Craig, when you know you have to kill off a character–

Craig: Like Bing Bong.

Pamela: Like Bing Bong. When you know you’re having to take some character that has been established, so loved, so perfect that it’s the moment they must die, this is for both of you, but do you feel bad?

Craig: Yes, of course, because it’s about the relationship. That particular scene, I think you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about. Are you talking about–

John: Chernobyl, yes.

Craig: You’re talking about Chernobyl.

Pamela: Chernobyl. Remember when you had to kill everyone?

Craig: You’re talking about-

John: The Hangover III.

Craig: -the fourth diver in Chernobyl?

Pamela: I just think it was one, it made the trades. That’s a big death.

Craig: It’s a big death. I remember when Mark Mylod, who directed that episode so beautifully, we were sitting there without anyone. It was just the two of us in that room. We were looking around, “Where? Where? Where?” Really, what it came down to is, I think he needs to be here because she’s going to come in here, and they need to look at each other the entire time. They need to be this far apart. They need to be not so far apart that they’re too far apart, but not so close together that they’re too close together. Just the right amount of far apart because it is entirely about what it means to be connected to somebody in a relationship and be pulled away from them, as we often are with everybody in our lives.

You have moments of ebb and flow. You feel yourself drifting away from somebody, but it’s a rubber band. It’s not something that broke, and you then come back in that moment. All of it was focused through relationship. All of it, eyes, the whole thing.

Pamela: Someone mentioned Past Lives today. That’s it, right? You have a relationship that’s been established, and then a relationship that is mostly in the imagination and potential. Then you’re sometimes rooting for it to stay there.

Craig: Yes, exactly.

John: Let’s wrap this up by talking about technique. What we’re doing on the page to communicate where people are at in the relationship. Let’s think about how do we get insight into what the characters are thinking. Obviously, they can say things, but more importantly, we as an audience need to get a sense of each individual character, what they really want, and how do we find moments with each character separately so we can read what that is, or that we can, as an audience, understand a thing that they’re saying the other character doesn’t understand it the same way. That’s subtle, but it’s so important.

When you do that right in a scene, it really transforms what’s happening there. You think, “Oh, that’s the actors, that’s the performances, their chemistry.” No, if it’s not on the page, it’s not going to make sense. You have to be able to read it and get like, “I get why this is heartbreaking.” In Big Fish, I understand the dynamic between Will and Edward because I see each of their points of view, and I’m rooting for both of them. I’m rooting for the relationship to get all together to be healed, and yet, I know how hard it’s going to be because I understand how stubborn each one of them is.

Craig: Yes, when you’re writing a scene, especially between two people, which is my favorite, and it’s where you can focus it all down to relationship, every single thing somebody says should have an impact on the other person. Even if that impact is to make them think, “Oh, we agree, which is encouraging to me. I didn’t realize we agreed as much as we do.” That means they changed, and then mess it up, and then mess it up, and surprise, and go back and forth.

Every single thing that is said needs to have an impact. In our lives, we have conversations all the time where one person is saying the following, and another person’s listening along going, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. Here’s something,” and the other person, “Oh, that’s interesting.” No one wants to watch that.

John: No.

Craig: No one.

Pamela: That’s for podcasts.

Craig: That’s for podcasts. That is what a podcast is. I feel hurt.

[laughter]

Craig: You did the thing. Everything, think about all of it. Never give yourself a break there, but all of it is an opportunity then, therefore, to make a conversation about the relationship, and then think about every scene. “Where were these two people in the beginning? How are they on the way out?” Animation, again, because it’s so expensive, every single moment has to be thought like that.

Pamela: $1 million a page. That’s what they said to me. They’re like, “Was this page good?” I’ll go work on that page. I can do some more. This is my improv background, but I always think find the game. Do they play your game? That’s when rom-coms take off. Sometimes, my favorite, bring it on, it’s toothpaste scene, not a line, not a line, but they’re brushing and spitting, and they’re looking at each other, and they’re teasing each other, they’re testing each other, and they’re playing a game. By the end of it, you’re like, “I want this. I want this to keep happening.”

Craig: That’s great. That’s a great example.

John: All right. It is time for our second guest. Would you like to introduce our second guest?

Craig: Yes, I would love to. Our next guest is a showrunner, educator, father, and PhD, so screw us, whose credits include Queen Sugar, The District, The Blacklist, and Bel-Air. Please welcome Anthony Sparks.

John: Anthony Sparks, welcome.

[applause]

Craig: Was anybody in the pitch contest last year, perhaps?

John: These three.

Craig: Yes, we were–

Anthony Sparks: The band is back together. Yes, we’re back and ready to ruin your lives again.

John: Anthony Sparks, in the little bio intro, we talked about your PhD and all these amazing things. Of course, I buried the lede. You were also in Stomp.

Craig: Exactly.

John: You’re a Broadway actor on Stomp. That is where you were starting to do your work, getting into writing. Are you literally backstage writing scenes? Tell me about that.

Anthony: I am. I actually sometimes call Stomp my first writing job-

John: All right.

Anthony: -because I was playing, basically, in classic nomenclature of theater, I was the wise fool in the show. When everybody else would ding, I would dong. The show is written but improved at the same time in pockets. I had a lot of improv. My job was to connect with the audience. The directors were crazy enough to rely on me to change my show every night. I must have done 1,000 Stomp shows. I never did the same show twice. I just had to hit the punchlines, which means I failed a lot on stage in front of hundreds of people, but I would also hit.

I started thinking, “What is my next act? I had always privately written in high school and things like that. I decided that I was going to be a writer next as a practical answer to some things and a creative answer to some things that I was thinking about. I literally started teaching myself how to write TV. I’m sad to say, I missed a few or was late to a few entrances because I was engrossed in my script backstage. That was my sign that, “Oh, maybe it’s time to leave.” [unintelligible 00:25:58] is always working on scripts backstage at Stomp.

Craig: When you said like, “I taught myself how to write TV,”-

Anthony: To a degree.

Craig: -to a degree, how–

Anthony: I’m sure a lot of people here are like, “This is the early aughts,” late 90s, and there are TV writing books and books about the TV business, but not as many as there are now. I was able to get my hands on a couple of books, and I read them. I started just dissecting TV. I started watching. At the time, I thought I was going to be a comedy writer because I had written this satiric play that was getting some attention in New York City that I would put up on my days off from Stomp. I was young and had a lot of energy and was glad to say that I used it.

Just the fact that you had to come at it from a structural standpoint, I knew dialogue, I thought, from theater and plays, and I knew the feeling of structure, but I didn’t know structure to the extent that you go into a writer’s room, you’re able to actually contribute to story advancing. I would say that’s a process that’s probably never-ending for all of us.

John: Sure.

Craig: I suspect that it wasn’t an accident that you were the person the director was relying on stage to change things. I’m sure there were quite a few people on that stage of the director would be like, “Never, ever.”

Anthony: No.

Craig: “You do the bang that lid there then,” and you had a sense of it already. It’s just that you needed then to figure out, “How do I get this instinct from instinct level to craft?” That perfect term.

Anthony: Absolutely. I can’t say that process was complete because is it ever, because otherwise, the same person who won an Oscar last year would win this year because they just repeat it. There is an X factor to writing. In terms of fundamentally understanding story, that process, so I was able to write to the point where I was able to get into fellowships. I was in New York. At that time, there was no TV writer business in New York. There is somewhat now. I was applying to the Warner Brothers writers program. I was applying to the Disney fellowship from New York, getting close but no cigar in some cases until finally, I got one.

Craig: Let’s pause there for a second because I suspect a lot of people here have gotten close but no cigar. I’m sure that’s a feeling you’ve all had. It’s a bad feeling because you don’t know if maybe there will ever be a cigar.

Anthony: Absolutely.

Craig: What keeps you going in the hopes of a cigar?

Anthony: Wow, that’s a deep question.

Craig: Yes, man.

Anthony: What keeps you going? I think there are some people who will go for those fellowships because they’re really hard to win. It’s $1,000, $2,000, $2,500 play. It feels like a crap shoot, and on some level, it is. I know plenty of writers who never got those fellowships who are king and queens of the world in TV and film. I also have met a lot of people who applied once, didn’t get it, and was like, “You can’t win anything.” It was one, you wrote one script. Maybe you think it was great. Maybe it actually was, but a person read it after they had a bad tuna sandwich and took it out on your script. It happens.

If you’re a writer, writers write, and you can’t stop after one script. You just cannot. You just can’t. Writers write. You keep putting the coins in the machine. For me, I applied once to Warner Brothers. I had just gotten married. I got married really young, and I had just gotten married, and I applied, and I didn’t get in. For whatever reason, they were having this one-day workshop on a Sunday in Burbank where they were going to talk about what we’re really looking for. I don’t know if that particular batch of scripts that year was really bad or whatever, but they were doing this outreach.

I said to my wife, “You want to go on a working vacation to LA, so I can go to this workshop on this talk in Burbank?” We did. We literally turned into a working vacation. We flew out here, and I went and sat in the audience and took a bunch of notes. There was hundreds of people there, asked some questions, and I went back and took that back, and I wrote a new script, and I got in the next year.

Craig: There are hundreds of people here who are going to be asking questions.

John: Absolutely, yes. Anthony, one thing that really impressed me about talking with you is that you worked really hard. You get knocked down, you pick yourself up. That’s fantastic. I think you also constructed a life that if your writing career never happened, you still had a lot of very meaningful things you were doing. Can you talk to us about the decision? I know you got staffed on a show, but then you also got into a PhD program. You’re balancing those two things.

Anthony: Exactly.

John: Now, you’re a doctor. Talk to us about that decision and what you’re thinking as you’re going through all this.

Anthony: My bio, to some degree, on a good day, looks like I had this master plan for my life. Indeed, I did think a lot about, my wife and I call it, composing your life. It was something that when we first came out here to LA, we went to go hear Maya Angelou speak, and she spoke that. I don’t know. For some reason, we were very impacted by that phrase, compose your life, which means just try to be intentional, try to put some things together. I am mostly a product of just being hard-headed. I should have quit my PhD program five times.

Craig: You’re not a good doctor?

[laughter]

Anthony: As a few professors was like, “You can leave.” I was like, “No, I’m Pearly Mae, boy. We don’t quit.” I am. I’m a hard-head South Side of Chicago by way of Mississippi kid. Those things don’t normally go together. There’s only 24 hours in a day. The day that I almost dropped my baby daughter because I was so tired was a moment where I was like, “I’m quitting. I’m doing too much. I’m exhausted.” This child is three months old. I almost just dropped her on a concrete ground.

Craig: They bounce. They’re fine.

Anthony: Yes. It only takes five seconds.

[laughter]

Anthony: Although there is a text chain today about these migraines that she’s having.

John: A little stressed. Almost, but did not drop his daughter.

Anthony: I did not drop her. What was the question?

John: Going back to finding balance.

Anthony: The balance.

John: There’s a moment where you’re like, “I’m trying to do too much. Also, I love that.” Choosing to do this PhD program and finishing this PhD program, you are giving yourself many opportunities. You’re giving yourself many opportunities just to see it on many different things. All your eggs are on in this one basket and your identity is this because your identity is as a professor you’re teaching, but you’re also a showrunner, and you’re a father and a writer who does his own things as well. You are composing your life like Maya Angelou suggested you do.

Anthony: The only thing I needed to do was to try it. I’m the son of a mom who had a sixth-grade education. It was very hard for me when USC offered me funding for five years to the total of about $300,000, like the little kid from the south side of Chicago. I’m like, “I got to try and make this work. Win one for the ancestors, seriously.” When my show unexpectedly got canceled, the thing that happened was I got staffed. I got the funding. I got the fellowship. I said no to the fellowship because I’m going to go write. My show got canceled. I was like, “Does health insurance come with that?”

There was a practical side to it. I said, “I’m going to start,” because I noticed my first year on the show that I was on as a staff writer, I noticed I was in my office a lot reading. I was like, “I could be reading a book and getting credit for this.” I didn’t know that that’s not how all shows operate. I have been the beneficiary or what results from saying yes to the door that happens to be open at that time.

Craig: I think that’s a wonderful thing. That’s certainly something that I think people who don’t come from privilege feel. The open door is not tempting. The open door is necessary because the doors are usually closed. What I love about your story is you took away some of the innate fear that, “I made it. I made it. I broke in.” People are always asking us, “How do you break in?” The answer is there is no breaking in. You get broken. You think you got broken in, and then show’s canceled, LOL. You had something else to do. You did not go, “Yes. I made it. I’ve arrived. The end,” because it is not a smooth path. I do think that it makes you a better writer when you’re not writing scared.

Anthony: Yes. It was a scary time. This happened because I said earlier today, I got staffed and I was like, “Hey, let’s have a baby.” We did. Then the show was canceled, but you can’t take her back.

[laughter]

John: Also, you weren’t stopping your decision to have a family based on, “If I get writing success, then I will start the rest of my life.” You started your life. That’s a crucial lesson to learn as well. I think sometimes we fall into– we write heroes, we write protagonists, and we assume they have to go through this arc and do all this stuff and have a plan for how it’s all going to be. If you’re not exactly on that plan, then it’s a disaster. That’s not real life. What I like is that you are just like, “No, I’m starting now. I’m starting on things that are important to me now.”

You got married young. You started having a family young, and that’s awesome. As we wrap up, though, I want to talk about teaching because Craig and I, people who have listened to the show, sometimes have opinions about university screenwriting programs, which can be challenging.

Anthony: As you should.

John: I’m really curious, what do you get out of it? What, as a professor, do you take from teaching? You don’t have to.

Anthony: Quite a bit.

John: You do it because you want to, I’m sure.

Anthony: I do it because I want to. It certainly isn’t the money. I am a product of a serious succession of teachers who just kept giving me shots, creating opportunities for me, believing that I was worthy of them. It did get into my bones, that that is what you do. You educate yourself, you learn, you earn, and then you return, as Denzel Washington once said. That is part of me, genuinely. That’s the Pollyanna part of me. The other part of me is that it’s a very practical way for me, not so much with money, but just in terms of I’m always engaged in story.

I don’t walk into rooms desperate because I’ve built out these other areas of my life without compromising my commitment to what it is that we all get to do. It also is practice for me as a showrunner when I’m not running a show. I have to break down story and teach it to people who are in a very different place than I am. I am a better, much better writer since I started teaching.

Craig: Amen. Listen, if everybody had your resume and your validity and your experience, then I would say everyone rush out to go to school. There are other ways to get me, we do this. There are other ways, of course, to do that. One thing I love about what you’re saying is I feel like doing this over the course of all these years made us better-

John: Of course.

Craig: -at what we do because we have to think about it.

Anthony: There’s no way. Many of us make our bones. Writers write a lot by instinct. You can be a great writer who writes by instinct, but I think at some point, when you’re writing and it’s your profession, no one’s waiting for you to feel the muse coming. That’s where craft kicks in to get you from those moments of inspiration to inspiration, which lifts something to a new level. In the meantime, it’s grinding it out. It’s craft. It’s thinking about– Absolutely. I’ve listened to your podcast. I’m ear-hustling. I’m trying to be cool and not be seen taking notes, but I’m definitely taking notes.

Craig: Ear-hustling. That’s the best phrase ever.

John: Ear-hustler.

Anthony: Everybody up here is worthy of being up here for lots of different things. Being a writer is a little bit of a lifetime student thing. Even when you do it well and you’ve had these accolades, hopefully, you’re always, at the end of the day, staring at that blank page going, fade in, “Oh, shit.”

John: Yes. Anthony, thank you very much for joining us here.

Craig: Thank you so much.

John: Great. Now it is time for one of our favorite, but also potentially terrifying segments where we invite the audience up to ask some questions of us and our panelists. Hello. What is your name and what is your question?

Jason: My name is Jason. You can all answer this. What is the first thing you do when you feel stuck in a script?

John: What is the first thing we do when we get stuck in a script? Pamela, what’s the first thing you do when you get stuck in a script?

Pamela: I complain. I complain about it. I walk around the house with this face. Everyone thinks I’m mad at them. I’m like, “I’m thinking.” I have my thinking face. Then you try to figure out why you’re so irritated because you think, I know how to do this. Why don’t I know how to do this right now?
What that is why you’re stuck. That’s the problem you’re solving. Then you go talk to someone else about your problem. Then they tell you their problem. Then you help them with their problem, and then they help you with your problem.

Anthony: Getting an outside perspective. When we’re writing, we’re making a thousand different decisions that we hope will somehow add up to something that is compelling and believable, so sometimes the outside perspective. If I can’t get that, I will sometimes step back and simply ask myself, what is the logical thing that would happen here?

I can get overly whatever in my head, and so break it. What is the simple thing? Not what is the interesting thing. That comes after. What’s the logical thing that this character would do or feel or say in this moment to at least make the dots connect, and then I can go back and try and find a way to make it–

I sometimes will say when I’m leaving a room, like, “Let’s do the boring expected version, get it up on the board. This will, in no way, be what’s in the script, but let’s at least make it make sense, and then we can go back and make it interesting.”

Craig: That’s great. Both of you, great advice. I sometimes feel myself trying to solve the problem, then I stop myself because you’re not going to solve it well if you’re trying to solve it because you’re thinking about it like a problem. Then I just go, okay, I’m going to forget about the problem. Let me just think about my characters. Let me just put them in different scenes. Let me play around in my head. Let me take a long shower. Let me think about this.

Let me also, and I’ve gotten much better about this, look at this as good news. It’s actually good news. We tend to think that if we’re stuck, we’re dying. We’re not. It just means we don’t see it yet. You will, and you will because you know you don’t have it. That’s how you know you will see it because you’ll know it when you know it. It’s coming. You just got to let it come.

Pamela: It’s the puzzle lover in you. I try to remind myself, this is just a puzzle I haven’t solved, and if this was a crossword puzzle, I wouldn’t be this mad.

Craig: Exactly.

John: For me, I make a deck of cards called Rider Emergency Pack, which is for this purpose. It’s the little things I do when I get jammed up in a thing. You can find it in stores or Amazon or wherever. The philosophy behind it is, sometimes you just really need to change your focus. A card will be magnified. What if you were to zoom in super tight on this thing or on this character or zoom all the way out? What if you were to change genres?

Imagine this is a spy thriller rather than this comedy that you’re writing. What would be the solution to that kind of movie? Getting yourself off this track that is jammed into this place and realizing, oh, there’s a whole range of possibilities I’m just not considering, that tends to help.

The other thing which is true for all of this is that when you hit a problem, rarely is the problem right where you’re at. The problem was a while back, and you probably just need to lay some different tracks to get around this thing that’s in front of you. You may be imagining a perfect solution to this problem that really does not exist. Really, to create a different situation doesn’t end up in the same place.

John: Cool. Great question. Thank you so much. Thank you all. That was honestly a paradigm example of an actual question.

Craig: It was a master class in asking a question. No pressure.

John: No pressure. Now, what’s your name and what’s your question?

Craig: Hi, I’m Im Tay. As an actor by training, I was taught that acting rests on a three-legged stool of imagination, relaxation, and concentration.

John: Wow, Craig.

Craig: I was wondering if there is a similar kind of philosophy when it comes to writing. If so, what’s the hardest leg for each of you and how have you worked to develop that?

John: Remind us of the three things that you were taught, so imagination.

Craig: Imagination, relaxation, and concentration.

John: Those are really great principles. I haven’t articulated something like that of what those things are, but those are all crucial things as we’re putting ourselves in a place and watching what happens, which to me is what writing largely is.

Pamela: To capture the true moment. I get that that relaxation part is so important because I was like, writers have an 18-leg stool. [laughter] Then we were like, “I think I have too many legs.” That key, I think, is the relaxation to let the moment come and to breathe with your script and to just be okay.

John: Honesty is somewhere in there. Are you being honest to the moment? Are you being honest to these characters? Are you trying to force a thing that’s not supposed to be there? Relaxation is probably part of that. Really, it’s like, is the scene true? Is the moment true or is it fake? Does it feel fake within the context of this script?

That’s a crucial thing for me, too, because sometimes when we’re talking about problem solutions, there’s a fake solution. There’s a thing which is, this is not honest to the thing. You’re always going to hate it because you know that you lied to get there.

Craig: I wish I had good stool legs for you. I think, ultimately, in acting, those are three great things to consider. None of them will help you if you’re not a good actor. All of them will help you if you’re a good actor. There is something that is instinctive to artists and craftspeople.

Sometimes the answer is to say, “Okay, I’m not good at everything as a writer. What am I good at? What is that telling me right now? Let me listen to that because that’s what I’m good at.” Follow that. The rest is absolute mystery to me. I got to be honest. I don’t know where I go. I don’t know how I do it. When I read things that I’ve written in the past, I’m terrified because I don’t know who wrote that and I don’t know how to do it again.

John: Same.

Craig: Don’t remember it. I was gone.

John: I’ll read something and I’m like, “Oh, that sounds like me,” but I have no recollections. I don’t know who these characters are.

Craig: That’s terrifying actually. There you go. It’s like an upside-down stool with one leg. Think of it that way. [laughter] That’s what it’s like.

John: Crazy. That’s crazy. Thank you so much for your question. Good question. Hello. What’s your name and what’s your question?

Joe: My name is Joe. Podcasting and screenwriting are clearly two different mediums. What is something you have learned about yourself either as a podcast host or a guest that is something you would not have learned during the creative process?

Craig: That ties into what we were saying earlier about educating is education. I know that I have had to think a little bit more clearly about some of the things that I do believe philosophically. It’s different than what is an inspiration in a moment when you sit back and you go, okay, there’s artsy-fartsy Craig, but then there’s also outline Craig who’s got a job to do and understands it needs to fit within a certain amount of time.

It needs to achieve certain things plot-wise. There has to be surprises and all these nuts and bolts things. I think doing this and being forced to talk about those things helps me codify and make some of those a little bit clearer in my own head. It’s like forced organization.

John: I would say I’m always riveted to being a segue man. I’m always moving on to the next thing. What that really is, is it’s recognition of being very present in the moment, but also always knowing where you’re headed and where you need to get to next. That’s also writing. That’s also what a scene needs to do. You need to set a sense like we are fully in this moment, and yet we’re going to the next thing.

Just the way a scene can just die and people are just sitting there and nothing’s happening, you don’t feel any momentum, you’ve got to keep the momentum there while still letting it be present for the characters who are in that scene.

Craig: That makes sense.

John: Great question. Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you.

[applause]

Silas: Hi, there. Big fan. Sorry, I’ll be a little bit farther. My name is Silas. You guys did a podcast episode relatively recently, I don’t know how well in advance you record these, about short films. I’m a sci-fi writer. I’m a sci-fi fantasy writer, genre writer.

I sometimes have a really hard time balancing the line between being super obnoxious and explaining everything way too heavily, the whole Star Wars scroll thing, whatever, and people asking me, why are they doing that, what is happening. That’s a huge problem to have in short films where everything is super compact, needs to be super tight. My question is, how do you balance that line between exposition and mystery?

Craig: Sure. I’ll turn that over to you guys because we all deal with this one. Everybody needs to know things. Also, you don’t want them to know things.

John: You don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining things.

Craig: What are some of the things– I think about in animation, again, $1 million a page, what are some of the tricks you use?

Pamela: The story in Frozen is there were all these backstories and all these minutes they had to get rid of, and it changed into the line, was she born with it or was it a curse? That’s an interesting question. It gets answered, and now we know everything about why we’re here.

Trying to find a way to take all of that that you think they need to know, you think they need to know it, they don’t. They don’t think that. They want to know, what do I care about? I don’t care about the backstory until I know why they’re not in love, why they hate each other. Then I can start to learn all the worlds and what your currency is and why it’s a patriarchy or whatever it is that the sci-fi world wants you to know. That stuff is interesting for you to know what your tone is, but we don’t need to know all of it to care about your characters.

John: Silas, thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, Silas.

[applause]

John: Hello.

Brenna Kwan: Hello. My name is Brenna Kwan. My question is, what is your opinion on, let’s say, sizzle wheels or proof of concepts from, let’s say, emerging filmmakers that’s created out of AI? Do you consider that as a red flag or–

John: Hey, it’s a good question.

Craig: I think everybody in here is going to give an answer, but let’s see what you say.

John: Let’s talk about sizzle reels in general. Sizzle reels, we’re cutting together stuff from other movies that give a sense of what this thing feels like. For directors who are putting together a project, sometimes it’s a really helpful way of showing what it is that you’re trying to do and sort of do this thing.

Where I get a little bit frustrated is when you have to do a sizzle reel for just a script that you’re not trying to direct, just to get someone to read the script, that’s really annoying. I really wish we could stop doing that because I think it’s a waste of time because you’re here to be a writer, not to be a sizzle reel maker.

Whether you’re cutting out of other films or using AI or whatever to do it, I just don’t think it’s a good practice for us to be in. So many strong opinions on use of AI and what things feel like, okay, well, it’s a person using that thing to do the job they would otherwise be doing to do.

I don’t have problems if a visual effects artist is using some new tool that uses some of the stuff in there. I just don’t want it to replace their job. I do feel like using a sizzle reel to do that kind of stuff, it’s just putting more of that stuff out there in the world, and I’m really frustrated with it.

Craig: I think it’s an indication maybe of lack of commitment, or even, dare I say, laziness. Remember, a sizzle reel is already taking what other people have done and putting it together to sort of go, it’s kind of like what these people all worked really hard to do, which is already sort of a cheat code, which is fine. Then to say, and also I just asked the slop machine to barf out somebody with seven fingers to help me, it’s indicative to me that maybe the heart isn’t in it.

John: I guess here’s my concern. If I see your thing, I feel like, “Oh, this was done with AI,” and then I’m going to read your script, it’s like, “Well, did she really write it?” I don’t think it reflects well on you.

Craig: Where does it stop? [chuckles]

John: That’s why I’m going to say no. I’m going to say it’s a no for me.

Craig: I’m going to say no. What do you guys think? Big pro, oh, Pam Ribon loves AI. Is that the headline here? [laughter]

Pamela: No. Just trying to get controversial. People listening, I am not nodding or excited. No, AI makes me feel scared. When I watch it, I get uncomfortable. What is it called? Sora? My husband will be like, “Look at this.” I’m like, “That’s a cyborg. We must run. We must run away from it.” I would worry that when you think this is going to explain how it feels, you have to worry about how it feels when it’s not real.

Craig: You might not feel the way you want it to feel. Is it budgetary? What is the reason behind why one would do this?

Pamela: I’m trying to recreate my pilot into a web comic or a Webtoon and to perhaps advertise for it. I was playing around with Sora, so that’s where the question stemmed from.

John: I can understand what the instinct is behind that, but I would say look for what Webtoons are doing, like the things you actually like that are Webtoons that you enjoy. Also, I would say, don’t turn your script into a Webtoon just because that’s a thing you can do, unless you really love that as a medium.

I feel like, so often, it’s like, “Oh, I couldn’t sell it as a movie, but we’re going to do it as a dramatic podcast.” It’s like, “Well, do you actually love dramatic podcasts, or are you just spinning your wheels because you want to do something?”

Craig: I hope that the robots don’t listen to this later and come after us. There’s that whole thing where you will be the one that they’re like, “Well, you live.” [laughter] Right.

John: Thank you so much for your question.

Brenna: Thank you.

John: Thank you for coming out tonight.

[applause]

All right. Let’s do two more questions. These next two, and then we’ll be done for tonight.

Craig: Two more.

Jordan: Hey, guys, I’m Jordan. My question is a little specific, but maybe we can make it a little more universal. Say you’ve got a great adult animated pilot that you’re taking out and you’ve gotten a little bit of feedback. You’re leaning towards serialized, but everybody’s telling you, “Well, we want episodic.” Do you go and do you rejig it?

You could go either way with it, really, but you’re leaning towards serialized. Do you go and adjust for the market, or do you write the thing that you want to write and just wait for it to be the right time for it?

John: I think you know your answer, but let me make sure that the rest of the crowd understands this. You have an opportunity. People like the thing you’ve written. You could make it serialized where you’re supposed to watch all the episodes in order, or episodic where you can watch them in any order whatsoever. You’re going to have a sense to me. You’re going to have a sense of what is more fun and interesting for you to write. Do that.

If the buyer says, “No, we really want it this other way,” and you get a chance to do it, do that. I think you have to both be steadfast and adaptable in this business. You have to be true to what’s important to you, but also flexible to actually get things done and get things made. We both know filmmakers who just, they made a great film, and then they were so steadfast about, like, “I’m not going to compromise a damn thing for my second film.” They’re not making films anymore.

Craig: There is no second film. I believe that there will be another thing. I never like to think that whatever I’m working on now is it. A little bit like the don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Anthony: That’s a really great thing to remember. I think the business will go on without any one individual. [laughter] That’s really horrible to say.

John: Even if Ryan Murphy were no longer making all his things, we would still have a television business.

Anthony: Economically, it would take a hit.

John: It would take a hit, but yes.

Anthony: Sometimes people have to remember that. What can you do that feels like it’s not absolute betrayal to the center of what it is you’re writing that you can collaborate on?

Pamela: Also, why not try? Then if it doesn’t work, you can say, “This is why I really wanted it this other way.” I can see why you asked me to do this because The Simpsons or whatever, they’re all episodic, but BoJack worked for a reason. Once you try the way that they think they want or they need, maybe they need it. That’s the mandate. Try for the job that you can get, always.

John: Good luck. We’ll see you at a future AFF.

Craig: All right. Bring us home.

John: Bring us home. Who are you and what is your question?

Emmett Farnsworth Guzman: My name is Emmett Farnsworth Guzman.

John: Emmett Farnsworth Guzman is a fantastic name.

Emmett: Thank you. My parents gave it to me.

Craig: I think you invented television. Did you invent television?

Emmett: Actually, that’s my great-great-uncle.

Craig: Is it, really?

Emmett: He’s Philo T. Farnsworth.

Craig: That’s actually your great-great-uncle?

Emmett: Yes.

Craig: That’s amazing.

Pamela: What is happening? [laughter]

John: This man’s great-great-uncle invented television.

Emmett: They cast him right here.

Pamela: Really?

Craig: Philo T. Farnsworth.

Pamela: Why is he here? [laughs]

Craig: Are you hired?

Emmett: I feel seen right now.

John: You feel seen. That’s when we get back to relationships. You’re leveling, which is validations, feeling seen, feeling heard. We’re giving it to you right now. All right.

Emmett: I wasn’t expecting that.

Craig: What’s your question? Really, you’re [unintelligible 00:56:51].

Emmett: They really did. The thing is I’ve listened to an inordinate amount of you guys over the past year, starting from the beginning. Incredible. You have very terse words for people selling books. Why did you decide to write this?

John: Thank God someone finally asked the question.

Pamela: Someone got the question.

Craig: I’ve been waiting all night. I can’t believe none of these terse words. It was an open goal. None of you took the shot. It’s a great question.

Emmett: I have to.

Craig: John, can you explain why we have the book?

John: I would say our listenership kept saying, like, “Hey, you should make a book,” or, “You should put a book of your transcripts out there.” We literally did the math. What if we just did a book of our transcripts? It was impossible. It was bigger than this entire room to do our transcripts. It was like, “Well, what if we could do a best-of?” It’s the synthesized version.

The thing that happens to me and Craig constantly is like, “Hey, I have a question about blah, blah, blah.” It’s like, “Okay, we talked about this on episode, I don’t know, 346.” You can send somebody and say, “Oh, go back and listen to episode 346.” If I could just give you a book, this is what we’ve talked about.

Our Natalie and Luke, who have the galleys here, you can track them down and look over their shoulder to see what’s in the book. The book is very specifically synthesized versions of what things we talked about over the course of the podcast. It’s not like how to write a screenplay. There’s one chapter–

Craig: Called How to Write a Screenplay.

John: How to write a screenplay, literally. [laughter] Which is mostly about Finding Nemo, really. People love it. The book consists of distilled versions of all the things we’ve talked about, stuff about relationships and stuff like that. It’s not like, here are the plot points, and here’s all the Syd Field stuff. It’s not that kind of book. It’s a book about screenwriting and not how to write a screenplay.

Craig: John and his team, of course, did all the work. You guys know I suck. What I think is great about it is, and I don’t mind sounding like a jerk, we know what we’re doing. This is our jobs. This is our careers, our lives. We have spent decades working in this business as professional writers. We are still doing it to this day.

Sometimes we have hits, sometimes we have losses, but we are still here. After breaking into the business in the mid-90s, we’re still here. We must know something. That is actually a perspective that generally doesn’t exist in the 4,000 other books. They’re written by people that don’t.

John: I’ll also say that the stuff we don’t know, every other chapter is an interview with one of our guests who’s come on the show. It is Christopher Nolan, or it’s Greta’s coming in. We’re talking to everybody, Aline and everybody else, about their experiences that are very specific and that are not our experiences.

Craig: They’re not just us.

John: We don’t have the hubris to say if we actually know everything. We know a lot, but we also have guests who know-

Craig: We know so much.

John: -a ton of stuff that we don’t know, which has been great, too. It’s honestly so people don’t– give people a book. Do a book. Thank you for the question. Also, this is a time, a show of hands, who has pre-ordered the Scriptnotes book? [laughter] [crosstalk] I had to be informed.

Craig: Thank you. Thank you for that.

John: Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, everyone.

John: Thank you for the softball there. Thank you very much, Mr. Farnsworth.

Craig: It’s like he was sent by the publishing company.

John: Oh my God. That is our show for this week. If you want to hear this as a podcast, you can subscribe to Scriptnotes, and you’ll get this in the feed on Tuesday. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, who’s over there. He’s a superstar hero.

[applause]

This show will be edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: As always.

John: God bless you, Matthew Chilelli, for making us sound better and smarter than we are. Our intro and outro, he also wrote all our music. He’s so fantastic. Thank you to Emily Locke and everyone at the Austin Film Festival. Who here is a Scriptnotes premium subscriber? Oh my God.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Thank you so much. You guys don’t realize it, but you keep the lights on at Scriptnotes. You pay for all the stuff.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Craig, where can they sign up to become a premium subscriber?

Craig: You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we did not do tonight.

John: The Q&A will be the bonus segment when you listen to it, so no one else has to hear those great questions there at the end. This was our 11th live show.

Craig: Not a bad one.

John: Not a bad one.

Craig: Not a bad one.

John: Really good. I’ve loved it. You’re a great crowd. Thank you so much. Have a great night.

Craig: Thank you, guys, so much. What a great crowd. Thank you guys for coming out.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Pamela Ribon, you have been volunteering and he said yes to help us out with this game we’d like to play. This is another chance to win a galley copy of the Scriptnotes book. Here’s how this is going to work. We need to find two Scriptnotes super fans who will compete to see who gets the copy of the book. It’s already signed. It’s a galley copy. There’s only 20 of these in the world. We need to find that person.

Here’s the strategy for how we’re going to find super fans in the room. It’s also a chance to stretch a little bit because that’s a thing that people do. In this room, please stand up if you have listened to 10 or more episodes of Scriptnotes. That’s a lot of listeners. That’s fantastic.

If you have listened to more than 100, stay standing. Otherwise, sit down. 100 episodes. These are people who say they have listened to 100 episodes.

Craig: That’s a lot.

John: Who is wearing a Scriptnotes T-shirt? If you’re not wearing a Scriptnotes T-shirt, sit down.

Pamela: Wow. They all fall down. [crosstalk]

John: I see three.

Craig: Three, two. Two, three?

John: I see three. One, two, three.

Craig: Three. One, two, three.

John: All right. You guys stay standing. We have some tiebreaker questions that we figured out.

Craig: You’re one of the three.

John: You’re one of the three. Some of these, they start easy, but they get really hard. Of just the three of you, please, no one contribute. Just the three of you. Raise your hand if you believe that Craig’s least favorite condiment is mustard. Craig’s least favorite condiment is mustard. Raise your hand if you believe that is true. That Craig’s– three, two, one. You all got it right. What is your least favorite condiment?

Pamela: Mayonnaise.

Craig: If you want to call mayonnaise a condiment, it’s really more of a disgusting substance.

John: All right. On Scriptnotes’ three-page challenge, we often refer to a Stuart special. Raise your hand if you believe a Stuart special refers to starting with a flash forward. I would actually say it is a flash forward. You’re definitely in. What’s your name? Natalie is in. Now it’s between the two of you to see who’s the other– who’s going to face her off in the final thing. Just the two of you.

All right. Raise your hand if you think there has been a deep dive episode on Unforgiven. A deep dive episode on Unforgiven. You say yes. She doesn’t know. There has been one. It’s one we rarely refer to. All right. Coming up, Natalie, coming up.

Craig: It’s like The Price is Right.

Pamela: Oh my gosh.

John: All right. What is your name?

Luke: My name’s Luke.

John: Luke, hi.

Craig: Luke. Hi, Luke. Natalie, come on up.

John: Natalie, come on over here.

Craig: Natalie’s got the cool S Scriptnotes shirt, by the way, which is my favorite.

John: It’s Scriptnotes University and Scriptnotes Cool S.

Craig: Scriptnotes University and Scriptnotes Cool S.

John: Very good. Now, Drew is going to give you some signs. The sign will either say John or Craig. Pamela’s going to read.

Pamela: These are fancy.

John: Yes, fancy. You can tell we’ve thought a lot about this.

Pamela: Oh my gosh. We’ll tell you what they say in the back.

[laughs]

John: All right. We have some things that Craig and I have said over the years on the podcast. Craig and I don’t know what these are. Drew compiled all these. We have no idea. Pamela Ribon is going to read these things, so you have to decide, did John say it or did Craig say it?

Craig: This will be exciting.

John: This will be exciting for us. We can’t help you. We don’t know.

Craig: We don’t know. We can’t help.

John: All right. Pamela, the floor is yours.

Pamela: Thank you. I’m going to do my best to not let you know who said it by always sounding with, I have slight umbrage. Number one, “I don’t like it when you hold me accountable for the things I say and do.”

[laughter]

Craig: Oh, so fast.

John: Natalie says Craig. Luke says Craig.

Pamela: It is Craig.

Craig: Because I don’t like that.

John: Drew is keeping a score. The winner gets the book. This is important. All right.

Pamela: “No more being stupid. That’s dumb.”

[laughter]

John: Both Natalie and Luke say it’s Craig.

Pamela: It is Craig.

Craig: It’s dumb.

Pamela: Number three, “No undamaged woman owns a bar in Tibet.”

[laughter]

Craig: Such a good observation.

John: We have Craig. Luke says Craig. Natalie says Craig. What is the answer?

Pamela: It is John.

John: It is me. I suspect that’s from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Craig: It must be from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yes. Marion.

Pamela: I bet you sounded sweeter when you said it. Number four, “You can’t sink the same boat twice.”

John: Luke and Natalie, what do you think? Who said that? Why don’t you say that and I’ll say it to see which sounds better.

Craig: “You can’t sink the same boat twice.”

John: “You can’t sink the same boat twice.”

Craig: I think it’s John.

Pamela: It is John. That was hard because you could tell that was helpful.

Craig: Yes, exactly. [crosstalk]

Pamela: Which really are the same. They’re the same.

Craig: Also, I think you can sink the same boat twice.

Pamela: You sure can.

Craig: Of course you can. Get it back up.

Pamela: Bring it back up.

John: Bring up of the Titanic. Sink the Titanic again.

Pamela: That’s right. Do it twice.

Craig: Sink it again.

Pamela: It pops back up. We saw that in the Titanic. Number five, “I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I think that I could kill you.”

[laughter]

John: Both Luke and Natalie say Craig. What’s the answer?

Pamela: It is Craig. If John said it, there would be a lot of call-ins. There’d be a lot of emails.

Craig: I think I could do it.

Pamela: How’s John doing? Number six, “Acknowledgement is hype.”

Craig: Ooh, that’s deep.

John: Both Natalie and Luke are saying John. What is the answer?

Pamela: It is John.

Craig: John, yes.

Pamela: I’m going to do this since they’re so– [crosstalk]. It is a little–

Craig: [unintelligible 01:07:26] [crosstalk]

Pamela: It depends on if he’s complaining. The apology, it’s just hype.

John: I wonder if that was probably in reference to sexy Craig, wasn’t it?

Pamela: God. All right. I guess I could try sexy Craig for number seven.

Sexy Craig: Did someone say my name?

Pamela: “It’s a cross between a play and a yuck.”

[laughter]

Craig: Ooh, a split.

John: Oh, a split.

Pamela: Oh, we have a split.

John: Luke says John. Natalie says Craig. What is the answer?

Pamela: It is Craig.

Craig: I am shocked. Well done, Natalie. You know me better than I know me.

Pamela: Oh boy, sexy Craig. Number eight, “Anything can be a sex toy if you’re imaginative enough.” [laughter] Do you two know which one of you said it?

John: I have no idea.

Craig: I have a suspicion.

[laughter]

John: All right. I’ll try it out. “Anything can be a sex toy if you’re imaginative enough.”

Pamela: That’s your Play-Doh pitch.

Craig: “Anything can be a sex toy if you’re imaginative enough.” Oh, another split.

Pamela: Another split.

John: Luke says John. Natalie says Craig.

Craig: I think it’s John.

Pamela: It’s John.

Craig: It’s John.

John: Oh, I said it.

[applause]

Craig: Only because I think there are some limitations on sex toys. Just a couple.

Pamela: Talk to John.

Craig: Not many, just a couple.

John: Narrow-minded Craig.

Pamela: That’s right.

John: Once again.

Craig: It’s too little.

Pamela: Number nine, “If you want to see a twink navigate a chocolate river, you’re probably not going to the multiplex.’ [laughter] I just had to do that one in my voice.

Craig: God, I hope that was me. I really do.

John: Oh, a split. Natalie says John. Luke says Craig. I don’t know. What is the answer?

Pamela: It’s John.

John: It’s me.

Craig: All right. I’m jealous. I wish I had said that.

John: Was that Jen? Was that it?

Pamela: Do you want a score check? We’re about to do 10.

John: Yes, a score check. Where are we at?

Drew: Natalie’s up by one.

John: Natalie’s up by one. All right. That’s the only score that matters.

Craig: I wonder if anyone else is up by one. Okay, go on.

Pamela: Number 10, [laughter] “I’ve never done a Latvian escape room.” It’s hard to say.

Craig: A Latvian escape room.

Pamela: A Latvian escape room.

John: Latvian escape room.

Craig: Latvian.

Pamela: Latvian like the Latvian.

John: We both try it. I’ve never done a Latvian escape room.

Craig: I’ve never done a Latvian escape room.

Pamela: That’s tough.

John: Two Craigs.

Craig: I think you’re both wrong because-

Pamela: Two Craigs.

Craig: -I have done a Latvian escape room.

Pamela: That’s right. Two Craigs make it John.

John: John is the answer, right?

Craig: Yes.

Pamela: All right.

Craig: Oh, yes, I have. If I’m in Latvia, what else am I going to do? Latvia as a whole is an escape room.

Pamela: Do you think you were just saying it as a segue? You’re like, “I’ve never done a Latvian escape room.” Speaking of escape rooms, for the room that we’re in now. Number 11. We have five more.

John: Five more. Right.

Craig: Oh, God.

Pamela: “We’re not hiring people because of the size of their bones.”

[laughter]

John: Both say Craig. What is the answer?

Pamela: It’s Craig.

John: It’s Craig, yes.

Craig: It’s true.

Pamela: Number 12, “I couldn’t have been wronger.”

Craig: We’ve got a split here.

John: A split. Natalie says John. Luke says Craig.

Pamela: It’s Craig.

John: Ooh. Are we tied up? Drew, are we tied up?

Drew: Tied up.

John: We’re tied up. All right.

Craig: Damn.

Pamela: This is the World Series. Number 13, “Maybe try laughing at something funny.”

[laughter]

Craig: What does that mean? What was the context of that?

John: All right. Natalie says Craig, but Luke says John. Who said it?

Pamela: It’s John.

John: I said it? Oh, that was mean.

Craig: I knew it. I don’t think you were saying it to me.

John: Luke, you’re ahead. All right. Up by one.

Pamela: He’s up by one?

Craig: Luke is up by one.

Pamela: All right.

Craig: Luke is up by one.

Pamela: We have two left.

Craig: We have two left. This is actually a big deal.

Pamela: Number 14, “It takes maybe five seconds to fully maul a child.”

[laughter]

John: Both say Craig. Is it Craig?

Pamela: Yes. He said it back there.

John: This is it. If Luke gets this wrong and Natalie gets it right, we’re tied. Otherwise, Luke’s won this game.

Craig: Let me just say, strategically, whatever he says, say the opposite. You can’t win otherwise. You’ve got to go for this.

Pamela: Shout out to Katie P. for these quotes. Number 15, “I’m excited for your socks.”

John: Ooh. We’ll try to give them a shot. “I’m excited for your socks.”

Craig: “I’m excited for your socks.”

John: Very similar, actually.

Craig: Luke, you’ve got to throw it out there. You’ve got to throw it down.

John: Three, two, one, show. Oh, so you say John. Luke says John. Natalie says Craig. What is the answer?

Pamela: It’s John.

Craig: It’s John.

John: Oh, the big winner is Luke.

[applause]

Craig: Way to go, Luke.

John: Congratulations. All right. Stay right here. All right.

Craig: You did great, though. I consider you my great supporter. Thank you.

John: Natalie, I’m going to give you a book, too.

[cheering]

Craig: I’m so glad.

John: That was really fun. Thank you, Pamela, for doing it.

Craig: Great job.

John: Well done.

Pamela: Do it anytime. I love impersonating you both.

John: Killed it.

Craig: Five seconds, John. Five seconds to maul a child. Accurate.

John: I’ve learned that I’m meaner sometimes than I thought I was, which is fine.

Craig: Yes, you are.

Links:

• Pamela Ribon and Anthony Sparks
• Austin Film Festival
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
• Our Moneyball episode
• Enter the Relationship Matrix by Chris Csont
• Bring It On toothbrush scene
• STOMP
• Writer Emergency Pack
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 708 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we look at three stories in the news. Two of them from the Hollywood trades, and ask, how would this be a movie? We also follow up on audio dramas, last looks, and absolute rage bait in an article about ChatGPT 5.

Craig: Oh, that’s fantastic because there’s already rage bait in two of the How Would This Be movies. You’re setting me up. This is a setup because what? I haven’t been cranky enough lately?

John: Yes, we have a blood pressure monitor on Craig, and we will just watch the line rise as we go through–

Craig: My blood pressure goes down the angrier I get.

John: Oh, that’s nice.

Craig: That’s my secret cap.

John: Absolutely. Lie detectors never work on Craig because–

Craig: Yes. It just–

John: Lie detectors would be useful for several of the stories we’re talking about today.

Craig: Yes, for sure.

John: Plus, we’ll have a new listener questions. In our bonus segment for premium members, we often need to watch TV while we’re traveling away from home, overseas, or domestically. We’ll share our experiences and hopes for the future about best ways to watch things when you’re not in your home audio and video setup.

Craig: Oh, that sounds like a good idea. How to hack the hotel television and so forth?

John: Yes. I’ve reached behind so many hotel TVs.

Craig: Sometimes it’s very complicated. They really don’t want you to–

John: Clearly, you are just breaking everything.

Craig: Please don’t. Which I take seriously.

[laughter]

Craig: I’m a rules follower.

John: Before we get started, we have some local news and follow-up and explanation. Recently, Scriptnotes sent out 81 emails over the course of 20 minutes.

Craig: Oh, yes. That was fun.

John: That was fun.

Craig: Oh, I loved it.

John: I was in Australia for two weeks, and so I knew nothing about this. Craig, you actually knew about it before I knew about it, which is–

Craig: Can you believe it? It’s so unusual for Scriptnotes.

John: I can’t, no.

Craig: I got quite a few texts that morning saying, “Hey, has the Scriptnotes email server lost its mind?” I was like, what? Then I looked up my– I’m one of those people that I go through my emails. I don’t have the 15,000 unread emails that sometimes you see. My badge is usually good for three or four.

John: That’s impressive.

Craig: There are a bunch of read messages that are still sitting in my inbox. I try and read. That morning, it was 89. I’m like, oh. I actually saw that before I read any texts, and I honestly thought, have I been fired or something? That’s the sort of thing that happens if you get fired or a video came out of me beating my wife, which happily, I don’t think there is video of it, at least.

John: In ping pong.

Craig: Right.

John: Drew, you as producer can answer the question, were we hacked?

Drew Marquardt: We were not hacked.

John: What happened?

Craig: We just stink.

Drew: We just stink. For our premium members, we put out seasons with back episodes. I had put together– we had just crossed 700, so I did the 601 to 700 season and put that out. Our wonderful hosting service said, “Hey, do you want us to send out an email to members letting them know that there’s a new season?” I said, that would be great.

Then I went to bed and then I woke up to [onomatopoeia] because the system had, instead of sending one email, recognized each episode as a new episode, so it was sending out 101. We very quickly were just pulling plugs digitally trying to get it to stop. It stopped at 81.

Craig: Oh, so it could’ve been worse.

Drew: It could have been worse.

John: It actually could have been worse, yes.

Craig: Well, thank you for that. I apologize.

John: I apologize to our listeners. Now–

Craig: Nobody wants that. There was no easy way– I had to delete, delete, delete. It’s email, right? Tap and delete.

John: Yes, you can select a bunch, but yes.

Craig: I didn’t even know how to do that. I was on my iPad.

John: On your iPad, yes. It’s on the bottom one, top one, but yes, on the iPad, it’s yes. Again, we do apologize. We thank all of our premium members for supporting Scriptnotes. Let’s talk about why we do seasons is because when there’s 800 episodes, you want to not have to scroll through the whole list. We break it up into 100-episode chunks.

Craig: We were trying to make it easy for everyone, and we thought– What I loved about it was like, hey, Scriptnotes premium member, listen, we have news for you. What’s that? You didn’t listen? We’ll say it again. We won’t stop saying this until you send us another $5.

[laughter]

Craig: Tragic.

John: Anyway, it shouldn’t happen again. What’s tough about this error is it’s a very hard thing to troubleshoot or test for because you don’t know it’s happening until suddenly, it’s happening a million times.

Craig: You’d think that whoever runs the servers would have some sort of internal control that says, don’t send out–

Drew: Well, now they do. Because of this, they’ve built a thing–

Craig: They’ve innovated.

Drew: They’ve innovated. Now there’s a block that after two emails within quick succession, it just cuts off, so it’ll never happen again.

Craig: Well, happily, if anybody was worried that their billing info had been leaked or anything.

Drew: That was the concern of a few people.

Craig: We’re not the ones leaking your billing info. Your billing info is being leaked by literally everyone else. I got a letter in the mail, the M-mail from WestJet. They’re a commercial airline that’s affiliated with Delta. I think Delta may just own them. They’re regional. They’re the jet I would fly to Calgary back in season one.

They sent me a lovely letter explaining that they’ve been hacked. Don’t worry. Your credit card numbers weren’t compromised. Just your name and possibly your address and maybe date of birth and possibly some security number and maybe. Here, we’ve bought you two free years in this– Who gives a damn service that monitors? Oh, please.

John: I also don’t trust those services. They’re the cruel services.

Craig: No, I don’t either. They’re going to get hacked.

John: Yes.

Craig: When I signed up for that service, they’re like, “What’s your birth date?” I’m like, I think you know. I think everybody knows now. Thanks, WestJet.

John: Other bits to follow up. The scripting on this book is coming out December 2nd around the world. The hardcover copy in Australia, we’ve just learned it’s going to be January 4th instead.

Craig: Because they’re on the bottom of the planet.

John: Yes. They have to ship it all the way down there.

Craig: They have to defeat gravity to get there.

John: The e-book and audiobook will release the 4th of December in Australia, but the hardcover book will be a month later.

Craig: Well, we apologize, Australia, but you know what? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There’s a little bit of time to work up an appetite for what I believe will be the best book in anyone’s bookshelf that has a completely orange cover.

John: Yes. It’s going to be really great.

Craig: We are the best option.

John: You recognize on the spine, on the center shelf.

Craig: You don’t have to go hunting for it.

John: It’s there.

Craig: If your car breaks down at night, you wave your Scriptnotes book around, it’s like a flare.

John: It absolutely is.

Craig: No one’s hitting you.

John: It works really well. A reminder that you can pre-order the book now wherever you are. It’s scriptnotesbook.com is where you can do the pre-order. We’ve had a ton of pre-orders, which has been great. Thank you for everyone who’s pre-ordered.

Craig: Is this book going to be a success, do you think?

John: I think it’s going to be a success. I think we’re going to do well. We had one little live event for the pre-order folks. If you do pre-order the book, send your receipt to Drew and Drew will add you to the list for other little events that we’re going to do before the book comes out. We also have signed copies of the book that are going to be available through a special site. There will be a link in the show notes for if you really desperately want a signed copy of the book. Craig and I did 500 of those.

Craig: It just seemed like we signed our names forever.

John: Forever. With a combination of the WestJet-leaked information and Craig’s signature in the book, you get to take over his life.

Craig: I basically should be able to at least pay my mortgage off for me. It’d be nice. It’d just be nice.

John: Let’s just follow up on audio dramas. Back in episode 706, listener Dan wrote in asking if he should turn his screenplay into an audio drama. We had a lot of listeners who wrote in to say they had personal experience with that.

Drew: Sounding Off writes, “I just finished a series for Audible, adapting an iteration of my work. In my experience, this was handled like most other productions. They put our scripts through several rounds of notes, hired name actors through their agencies, hired a director via the same, set up recording studio sessions, and they handle all the post-production sound along with multiple rounds of dialogue edits.

Perhaps Dan has a different way in, but having worked on this project for several years, I’d caution him against doing all the work on his own with the expectation of then selling to Audible. I suppose it could happen that way, but if you look at many of their dramatic or fictionalized podcasts, these are professionally-run projects on the Audible side from start to finish. There’s a learning curve for writing just to audio. It’s challenging and fun, but you do have to expand your skillset.”

John: That would be my expectation, too. You look at the professional productions, there’s an expectation that goes into what they’re looking for. It feels like it’d be hard. I’m thinking about the screening process. If they’re picking up stuff that’s already produced, they’re going to put on their headphones and listen to 20 minutes of it and decide, is this a thing I want to do? They’re also looking for what is the overall package? What is it going to feel like?

Craig: Yes, I can see the wisdom of what Sounding Off is saying here. I love the punny name, by the way. I like that people do that for call-in– There’s something about radio/podcast where you need to come up with Sleepless in Seattle. It’s just their thing. Sounding Off, I think, makes a great point because if you are Audible and you listen to an already produced story, you might think, okay, I like this, except this part, I wish were longer, or this part, I just don’t love that line.

I want access to, well, we didn’t do that bit, or we didn’t do this bit, or sorry, that sound effect is married to that of dialogue. Suddenly, you have to go back in the studio anyway. Since they all have– They get very fussy about standards, post-production people are very fussy about standards. It makes sense that they would probably want to control that production process.

John: I could imagine basically shooting a pilot, recording a pilot for what I’m seeing as a proof of concept. That might be the thing. To go through and do all the work ahead of time with the expectation that you’re going to sell it to Audible versus releasing it yourself feels like a reach. More listeners wrote in.

Drew: Jonathan writes, “I very much agree with what was said about not doing something unless you really want to be making it. Audio dramas may not have the industry prestige that a film does, but they do have a dedicated loyal audience who may not otherwise discover your work. I know many people who don’t watch films, but they do listen to fiction podcasts.

As a producer, you can attract a higher level of talent than on an indie film as the time commitment is less and they have the opportunity to play a role outside their on-screen type. I find it a very satisfying medium to work in.”

Craig: That’s fantastic to hear. Yes.

John: We also have some follow-up on last looks. We were talking a few episodes back about the last things you do with a script before you turn it in. We had a suggestion from Liz.

Drew: “Regarding finding the objectivity you need for that last edit on your draft, I’ve got a very dumb and very effective hack for you. A few years ago, I started to convert my script to a PDF and send it to myself with a title page. Something about the look of a PDF and the fact that I can’t fiddle with it as I’m reading tricks me into objectivity. I find I can read it and note myself as though I’m looking at someone else’s work. So dumb, and yet I swear by it.”

Craig: Two things. One, I’m not sure why we’ve decided to replace the word tip with hack. Hack is some interesting shortcut, a workaround. This is just a tip, it’s not a hack. Sorry, Liz G. What she’s suggesting here is the slightly newer version of what you and I always did, which is print it out. Something about printing it out and going through the pages one by one made it seem like somebody else had written it and you can be more objective because you’re out of the composition environment.

John: I think getting away from the scroll is really important. That’s how you’re seeing it differently and really feeling, and the page flips matter. It’s useful to do it that way. Whether it’s printing it or doing it as a PDF that you’re reading on your iPad, it’s going to help.

Craig: Printing is something that we all did. We all had printers in our little crappy apartments. I have a feeling most people don’t have a printer in their crappy apartment now. Then if you do want to actually physically print it, which I think is superior to the PDF “hack/tip”, I guess you’d have to go to work, print it out there on their printer, I guess. I mean, printers aren’t that expensive, but it’s–

Drew: $30.

Craig: Wait, what?

John: Printers are incredibly cheap right now.

Craig: Did you say $30?

Drew: Yes. You can get a basic printer at Best Buy for $30?

John: The replacement toner cartridge is $100.

Craig: Sure. You just throw the printer out and get another printer. Wait, $30?

Drew: I could be wrong, but that’s what I remember paying for the last one, I think.

Craig: That can’t be possibly right. Hold on. We’re going to do a little live– We’re doing a live price check. This is a new segment called Drew, I Don’t Believe You. Best Buy printers. Okay, we’re all looking this up. Printers for home use. It’s not looking good for you right now, buddy. I got to tell you.

Drew: I Googled printer and the first one is $49.99 at Best Buy.

John: I see a basic [unintelligible 00:13:34] printer for 130.

Craig: Okay, the lowest selling printer that I– Oh, let me take off brand. Okay, so the lowest selling printer is an HP that’s $50. That is their rock bottom, absolute crappiest. That thing is like, yikes.

Drew: Office Depot has a Canon PIXMA for $37.99.

John: Oh, damn. They’re selling that for $65 over it.

Craig: Still haven’t hit $30, by the way. Listen, you said– If it’s an exaggeration, then–

Drew: It was a maybe $7 exaggeration, but I remember it being $30. I feel like there was a deal. I feel like it was a holiday sale.

Craig: $7 off of $30, that’s a lot. That’s like 20-something percent.

Drew: I’m going to hold steady on this one. I think–

John: I think Drew was making a category statement of in a $30 range. $37–

Craig: If you had said $50, I still would’ve been like, what? Then this would’ve been a slam dunk for you. You know what? There’s a lesson here. [laughs]

Drew: It’s my hyperbole.

Craig: It does turn out that printers are stupidly cheap to the point where I would say yes. If all you used it for was just this, it’s better to me, at least, than the- PDF method.

John: All right, let’s get to our marquee topic here, which is how would this be a movie? This is where we take articles that are in the news or that people send to us and talk about the ways in which they could be converted to fictionalized entertainment for our enjoyment. It could be a movie, it could be a TV series.

What’s interesting about these three stories is two of them come from the Hollywood trades, which is not where you actually think about these stories coming from. You think that the trades are going to be reporting on these things rather than the actual stories themselves. The third is just a fun story. They all involve ambition, chicanery, in cases, misrepresentation.

Craig: Yes, con artistry. It does seem like swindling, horn-swoggling. We could do this all day.

John: Let’s start with The Many Faces of Sir Marco Robinson. This is an article by Jake Cantor writing for Deadline.

Craig: By the way, good job, Jake Cantor. Again, you’re at Deadline, we’re used to reading–

John: It’s like barely-written press releases.

Craig: Yes. The eighth banana on a procedural has changed agents, and you’re like, I don’t– Nobody cares.

John: I was so surprised when I see this because it’s a long-form investigative piece.

Craig: Sort of like an Atlantic kind of style or Vanity Fair-ish kind of investigation. I thought it was quite well done.

John: Yes. Drew, could you give us the quick summary here?

Drew: Sir Marco Robinson is a self-styled Instagram business guru. He claims to be the number two Netflix producer, a bestselling author. To have been knighted in Malaysia, a global real estate empire, he promotes movie-making master classes based on his claim to have produced the Netflix spy movie Legacy of Lies. A budding screenwriter signed up for master classes after being contacted by Robinson on Instagram, spending up to £10,000 to access his so-called expertise in script development.

Craig: You and I are idiots by the way. Do you know how much money we could be making?

John: We make really good money not doing this. That’s the reality.

Craig: Think about it. If we did, I’m just saying. If we did, oh my God, this podcast could be worth trillions. Go on.

Drew: He also pledged to produce their projects through his company. It will surprise no listener to hear what happened next. He was sued by several writers for fraudulent misrepresentation, and he lost. The real producers of Legacy of Lies have sent him a cease and desist. We should note here that Robinson denies all the claims and continues to pursue all of his business ventures.

Craig: We should just continually cite that the way that at the end of Say Nothing, they kept saying, Jerry Adams denies all involvement in the IRA. Yes, Robinson denies all the claims. Let’s talk about these claims. I’ve never heard of this guy. I’ve also never heard of Legacy of Lies.

John: Legacy of Lies, it made it up to the number two slot on Netflix once.

Craig: For a day.

John: Yes. It’s being like an Amazon number one bestseller in each category.

Craig: It turns out he wasn’t a producer of that movie. He initially was. He was an investor. He failed to deliver the money he promised, and so they took away his credit. He’s not even a producer. He does have a cameo as Johnny who says a line. That’s in and of itself insane. The knighting thing is incredible. He’s British. As the alleged con artist that he is, seems like he thought, “Oh, I’ll get quite a bit of legitimacy if I put the word sir in front of my name.” Reverse engineered a vague sir from a British protectorate that turns out didn’t give it to him anyway.

John: In Malaysia.

Craig: Nor would it have mattered because the United Kingdom does not recognize titles that are given by other countries or protectorates. If you want to be sir in England, and this is going to be surprising you, they’re rather specific.

John: It’s like champagne in France.

Craig: Yes. They’re like, “Sorry, you can’t call that champagne. It’s not from– It’s sparkling wine.” He’s the sparkling wine of number two producers in Netflix. What is fascinating is the breadth of his alleged scams. It cuts across 20 different things.

John: Before we get into the meat of how this would be a movie, let’s also bring in the Scriptnotes connection because looking through the archives, Drew found that his team had actually reached out to us in 2023.

Craig: You’re kidding me.

John: Here’s the email.

Drew: I was wondering if we had anyone who was like, “Hey, I’ve been scammed by this guy.”

Craig: Turns out we have him.

Drew: We got a guest request from May 1st, 2023. “Dear Scriptnotes, we hope that got your attention.”

Craig: It’s gotten my attention. [laughs]

Drew: “We love your podcast and we also believe you should feature Sir Marco Robinson as your guest really soon. Here’s why. One, yes, he has slept with a Russian spy that was sent to kill him and survived. Two, the above is part of the true story of the making of his first feature film, Legacy of Lies, which debuted at number two on Netflix USA.

Three, he is making a musical called Legacy of Spies. Are you prepared to die to live your dream? His own life story. If that wasn’t enough, Sir Marco remains the only human to give three houses away to three homeless families on Channel 4 Primetime in the UK with his own show, Get a House for Free.”

Craig: That is so specific. On Channel 4. Other people have given away many more houses on other channels. Now, can you read the sentence again about the spy, the first thing?

Drew: Yes, “he has slept with a Russian spy that was sent to kill him and survived.”

John: The spy survived.

Craig: Thank you. What is that sentence construction? The spy was sent to kill him and survived. [laughs] She’s okay, is what I’m hearing?

John: She’s good. We could interview her. That sounds fascinating.

Craig: How are you writing those? You’re surely dead. That’s horrible. I think, this I can say factually, I find that to be idiotic. That’s a fact. I do.

John: Let’s talk about this. How would this be a movie? How would he be a character in whatever we want to do? We hear it where I need to divorce myself from like, okay, this is a person who at least three screenwriters have said has been scamming and done a lot of behaviors which we’ve condemned on this podcast for a long time, which is taking advantage of aspiring screenwriters with promises that are not being fulfilled.

Setting that aside for a moment, the idea of a charismatic, ambitious hustler producer who’s faking it until he makes it, there can be something charming about that. It’s a classic story. It’s also a reality we see all the time in this business, especially with international productions where it’s like, do you really have anything? You just have a poster with Ben Kingsley’s face on it. Is there actually a movie?

Craig: Does Ben Kingsley know about this poster, which in this article, it turns out, no. It’s tough to come at this directly because Catch Me If You Can exists. That’s sort of the top of the heap of what you could do. Also, that character of Joseph Bagnoli, I think was his name, Joseph Bagnoli, was fascinating.

This guy, at least in terms of how he’s been portrayed by this article, is just boring. He’s a boring scam artist. The only thing that’s surprising, and I suppose this isn’t really surprising, is how anybody fell for it. Even if you buy everything that he says at face value, the people that are more interesting to me are the people that– There’s a woman that sued him and won.

There’s this little thing in the article where I went, oh, that’s the thing that I hooked on. He has a master class in screenwriting. The bait on the hook is number two Netflix producer of Legacy of Lies. That’s not enough. No, but this woman, like many, bought it. Now, here’s the part that amazed me. She sued him. She won. She got her money back, and now she has started her own website called Victim to Victor, which is like an advocacy– It’s like a master class for how to get your money back. What’s happening is this is the world we live in now where everyone self-promotes.

John: It’s the idea of, it’s not even being influencers, but it’s basically getting people’s attention and being able to hold people’s attention as a way of monetizing that. I think we’ve always had this legacy of fabricators and people who would sell you stuff, like snake oil salesmen and stuff like that.

In the online world, in the Instagram world, the ability to portray yourself as something fancier, more powerful, more influential than you really are is just more directly commoditizable and because you don’t have to be there physically, in person, in front of somebody you can just get away with a lot more. Calling himself Sir Marco Robinson is more helpful than Mark Lawrence Robinson, which is his actual real name.

Craig: I’m not sure if this is a movie.

John: No, I think it’s a space.

Craig: I could see a comedy where friends are laughing at one of their friends who has spent money on this and they’re just making fun of him and reading the description of the guy and going, “This is who you gave your money to?” Because Sir Marco Robinson, look at that email he sent us. That’s not great. No, it’s not written well.

John: Listen, I think the fact that we’re discussing how this would be a movie at all, he’s won to some degree because the email he wanted, he wanted to be discussed on the show.

Craig: He did get on the show.

John: He got on the show.

Craig: He got on the show. I don’t like him.

John: Positive attention, negative attention, it’s still attention. That is actually, I think if you were to do a movie or a TV series adaptation of this space, you wouldn’t do it about him specifically. It is that sense of people who just need to be in the conversation. They don’t care why you’re talking about them.

Craig: They are the ultimate enemy. You cannot defeat them because if you agree with them, you’ve lost. If you disagree with them, you’ve lost because you’re talking about them at all. My only hope is that anybody– because he’s still out there. He’s still–

John: I suspect we’ll get an email from him.

Craig: Cool. I hope it’s written better than that last one. I hope that gets his attention. [laughs] All right. Probably not a movie, but we’ll sum up later. Maybe we’ll have better luck with this next one.

John: Absolutely. Next up, we have the sisters battling to become the Billboard Queen of Los Angeles. This was sent to me by my friend Shad. I think it’s a great story. Again, it’s in The Hollywood Reporter, which you don’t think of it– It feels like a good Vanity Fair article.

Craig: It does. Mickey Rapkin wrote this for The Hollywood Reporter. You know, by the way, that it’s one company that owns all of these things. It’s the same. They’re all in the same building. I don’t understand this. Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and I think The Wrap are all owned by one company.
It’s hysterical, but they actually do try and scoop each other. In a way, they’re like sisters battling to become the Billboard Queen. Mickey Rapkin did a terrific job here. I really enjoyed reading this.

John: I loved just how local it was because people outside of this market are like, what is this? We see these billboards all the time. Drew, give us the summary.

Drew: Adriana Gallardo is the founder of Adriana’s Insurance, which is recognized across Los Angeles for her iconic billboards featuring her and a red convertible. She’s a formerly undocumented Mexican immigrant and a self-made millionaire. Adriana also has a younger sister, Veronica, who owns Veronica’s Insurance and also has iconic billboards across LA featuring her next to a large German shepherd.

These two sisters are bitter rivals. The article chronicles the sisters’ rise to prominence, catering to the large but underserved Hispanic community. Veronica initially worked for Adriana, building her insurance empire, but after feeling undervalued by her older sister, she strikes out on her own. Since then, the two have been fierce competitors and undermine each other however they can.

John: They undermine each other, but they also have territories and they don’t encroach on each other’s territories to some degree.

Craig: Yes, it was interesting. There was something that Adriana says in the interview that I thought was really wise. She said Hollywood always wants, I think it was sisters, women to fight. Even though they do compete, and it’s clear that there is some resentment there, Adriana paints Veronica as the little princess, the younger sister who just didn’t want to work that hard and get everything handed to her and won’t complain anyway.

Obviously, Veronica is a hard worker because her business is doing well, but then they go out of their way to make the point that they go to each other’s children’s weddings, they still talk, we’re still sisters. It’s not like Falcon Crest.

Drew: No, it’s not the cat fight.

Craig: It’s not Joan Collins and Linda Evans.

Drew: Linda Evans, yes.

Craig: You don’t know what we’re talking about.

Drew: No.

Craig: Okay, so that was Falcon Crest. Falcon Crest was a prime-time soap opera.

John: It was Dynasty.

Craig: Was that Dynasty? Okay, Dynasty. A lot of people just started screaming out there. A lot of gay men just started screaming out there. I couldn’t hear them. I’m so sorry. Dynasty was a prime-time soap opera, and at the center of it, Joan Collins, this grand, dumb English actor, and Linda Evans, who was this very dignified American actor. I think she was American.

John: Yes, I think so.

Craig: They hated each other, and they got into some massive physical cat fights, wig pulling, throwing down stairs.

John: They’re always ending up in the pool.

Craig: Yes, it’s very mommy dearest, like two mommy dearests. It was insane, and people loved it. In any case, that’s like what it could be, like the telenovela version of that, but it’s not.

John: They’re rivals, but they are fundamentally still sisters, and they’re civil about things, but it’s clear that they’re choosing their words carefully. I loved so much of this and I think there’s a movie version to make, there’s a series version to make, but one of my fundamental questions is, where do you start? Because the origin story of it is actually really fascinating. They’re coming into the United States on a tourist visa, and they’re just staying, and so they’re undocumented.

Craig: She describes herself as illegal. That’s how she categorizes herself.

John: It’s their mother who sees how long the lines are for the insurance offices, because everyone has car insurance through that changeover.

Craig: Yes, and the law change that basically said, if you get pulled over for a traffic violation, if you don’t produce insurance, they’ll take your license away. A lot of Latinos in LA were like, “Well, we don’t have any.” Which I remember being a problem when we first moved here. I don’t know if you remember, people were like, “By the way, no one has insurance. If you get into a car accident, you’re screwed. No one has insurance.” It turns out a lot of people didn’t.

John: Now they had to. It’s the mother who pushes Adriana to get a job at this insurance office. Adriana learns the trade, and basically can do it better. She strikes out on her own. Veronica ends up following her sister’s footsteps. That rags to riches story, as you often see here, mythologized, seems really true.
They were going from nothing to relatively good success. Then also the decision to put themselves on billboards and bus shelters, and stuff like that leads to a kind of fame that is unique and special. To agree with Final Destination, the most recent one, had a tie-in with Adriana.

Craig: And apparently, was incredibly effective because in that horribly dry way, the over-index with the Latino population– over-index is a terrifying phrase. By the way, side note, when I first came to LA, I needed car insurance. I got insurance from Freeway Insurance. Do you remember this? I think they’re still out there.

Freeway Insurance, they would advertise on the radio. Their slogan was, Freeway Insurance, it’s that thing you’re speeding on. I was like, you know me. I love this, too. First of all, it’s a very LA story. Los Angeles has a strange tradition of women mostly, but a few men, a few accident lawyers as well. Sweet James, he’s out there.

Accidentes is out there, who buy billboards, and because we’re all driving all the time, the people who manufacture culture through television and movies get to know the people on the billboards even if those people are not movie stars. Angeline is the most famous. She was a woman who just got dressed up like a human Barbie and put herself on billboards and no one even knew why. It just said Angeline and just showed her with her pink corvette or whatever it was. She became famous for being on a billboard.

John: Then you would see her on a talk show. She wouldn’t actually even be interviewed. Just physically–

Craig: Sometimes you would see her around town also and you’re like, oh, yes, you do not look like that billboard. You’re dressed like the billboard, but you’re like that billboard, but a thousand years older. When you saw Angeline, and I don’t even know if she’s still alive, but when you saw her in real life, it was a bit sad actually because you’re like, this is an older woman who’s– something’s going on here. This doesn’t seem well. Who’s paying for these billboards? I remember reading an article about that, too. In this case, I think if I had to make money off of this in the grand tradition of Adriana and Veronica, I’d want to do it as a reality show.

John: Apparently, there has been a reality show before. There was a– I don’t know if it was Bravo or whoever it was, but there was a behind-the-scenes.

Craig: It feels–

John: Yes. I get that, but I also just feel like we have amazing actresses who could play these parts. I think we haven’t quite seen that.

Craig: Yes, but what I don’t see in the story is an arc, per se. I see actually a fairly straight arrow. Adriana is one of those– the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. She’s the busy ant who just works. Her whole thing is, I worked really hard. I did any job. I knocked on any door. I did what needed to be done. I made all this money, and I believe anybody can do this. Very much land of opportunity, only in America kind of story. That’s sort of it. There isn’t a murder. No one stole anyone’s husband. No one’s died. It’s missing that.

John: I get that. If you were to take characters who are like these and put them in a Knives Out movie, you could see them in the backdrop of that. Characters in that rather than just their individual story. I do just think that a smart writer could find a way to succession this, essentially. Use this as the same way that the Murdock family is succession, but it’s all fictionalized and turned around. There’s ways to do that we just haven’t seen on screen before.

Craig: It could work. Succession, the stakes are built in because they’re running the media empire. They’re literally figuring out who the next President should be.

John: This isn’t quite that. Mad Men is another example. It’s a period– you could move this back into periods. It could be ’90s, 2000s, and rising up with this and these two sisters who are partners and then rivals. There’s a way to do that too. I don’t want to give out lines.

Craig: It could be. I think series, for sure. A movie, I just don’t see the movie here. Series, yes. In a world where there are– because Adriana and Veronica are both glamorous people. That’s what they’re selling. They’re selling glamour through their looks, their hair, their car, even the dog is somewhat glamorous.

They’re glamorous. They’re doing a job that’s not glamorous. They’re actually glamorous and in heels, but walking around and answering phones and dealing with invoices. It’s giving Selling Sunset, as the kids would say where real estate is the most, but I’m not going to watch a reality show about real estate. Yes, you will if it’s this. I’ll watch a few episodes of that.

The fact that they’re sisters, each one of them seems to be developing a show. One show. It’s about the two of them where you go back and forth, and then they can build up the rivalry. That would be successful. To me, that’s a slam dunk.

John: All right. Our final story is from Josh Levin writing for Slate. This is about a congratulations, you’ve got accepted to Oxford. Oh, wait, there’s something you should know.

Craig: Yes, it’s hysterical.

Drew: In 1995, a group of high-performing American students believed they’d been accepted into Oxford University through a college called Warnborough. The brochures and acceptance letters all tied the school’s identity to Oxford University’s reputation, convincing the students to pay thousands of dollars and cross the Atlantic.

When they arrived, they discovered that Warnborough was not an Oxford college at all, but an independent and unaccredited institution set up in a countryside estate way outside of the city. After hunting down answers, half of the Americans left and demanded refunds. The other half stayed and tried to make the best of the situation.

Still, Warnborough was unaccredited, so they could not grant valid degrees, and the credits were untransferable. Media coverage soon turned the episode into an international scandal. Warnborough was sued for its materials being misleading, and the fallout took a significant financial toll on the students. Its President, Brendan Tempest Mogg, still denies any wrongdoing. Warnborough collapsed soon after the suits, but later reemerged as an online university.

Craig: Brendan Tempest Mogg.

John: That’s a great name. Incredible.

Craig: That’s insane.

John: This is 1995, and that’s important context because I feel it was easier to pull this scam, at least get people to show up at a place in 1995 before the internet made it. It’s easier to search things. It’s also a uniquely weird thing that Oxford and these universities have so many different colleges that are all part of the same thing, but are not from the same thing.

Craig: They’re in the system.

John: I can understand why these students were duped to some degree, but as you read through the article, some of the students had some heebie-jeebies, even as they were headed there. I love them showing up and like, “Oh, no.”

Craig: It’s a great moment where they’re driven through Oxford campus and they’re like, “We’re here. It’s amazing.” Then the car just keeps going, and then suddenly it’s out in farmland, and they’re like, “Wait, what?” That’s an amazing moment.

John: I feel like this is a comedy. It needs to be an American Fish Out of Water comedy, and you’re struggling to figure out what it is that we’re going to do next. Is there shame involved? Do you want to report home to your parents what’s happened?

Craig: It feels like it’s potentially a basis for a high concept college comedy. We haven’t had a good college comedy in forever.

John: It’s a missing genre.

Craig: Yes, mostly because no one’s funny anymore. College campus is very serious business. The problem with this as a comedy concept is it’s unique, which sounds weird. Wouldn’t that be what you want? The problem with its unique nature is I don’t see this ever happening anywhere else ever. It can happen once.

Therefore, it’s almost like you’ve rigged your plot to create comedy instead of not rigging it. Do you know what I mean? There’s something so– It’s not science fiction or anything. You can do that. You can do a liar-liar where somebody blows out a candle, science fiction occurs, and now you can’t stop telling the truth. That’s not what this is?

John: No. To me, this feels like a British indie comedy that happens to have a much American center in it, but it’s the fish out of water of these Americans who are trying to figure out what to do. The characters have to be funny and distinct and have clear leadership roles as to what all brings them together.

It’s a Breakfast Club situation and see what happens. How do you make college out of this weird situation? The TV show Community is actually almost the same premise in a weird way. It’s this terrible, “learning institution” that we’re all just surviving inside of.

Craig: Community had that, hey, we know we’re not a four-year college material. There is this unearned, unfair stink that’s on community colleges that should not be there. It’s a little bit like, okay, we know we’re in the loser club. We’re losers and we’re here at loser club. Now let’s deal with that. In this, you get there, you’re– These kids got into Harvard and Princeton and stuff and now they’re here.

Of course, half of them, immediately, are like, “Bye.” Get on a plane and go home. A few of them try and stick it out and eventually go, bye. One poor kid, his grandmother dies, he flies back, doesn’t have the money to fly back again. They all lose their money to Brenden Tempest‑Mogg, or at least that is what he’s been accused of. He’s still out there, by the way.

John: It’s not clear from the article whether he was the person who was administering all this during the time or if he’s the new person brought in for the online university.

Craig: No, he was there. He blamed it on the guy that they had hired for US student recruitment. That guy was like, “No, that guy runs this place.” What happened to them was, as from the article, it seems like they got sanctioned by the government in the UK for being unaccredited, for representing themselves as an institution of higher learning to British people, and they got slapped. As a result of that, maybe it was just that it was an article, perhaps it was just really bad publicity, the upshot of it was their enrollment plummeted in a desperate attempt to save this place.

This is like Fawlty Towers now, where John Cleese has an idea. Well, if someone goes, “You don’t understand. We can’t run this college anymore because there’s no one in Britain who doesn’t know about how bad this is.” He goes, “No one in Britain, you say? What about America?” Then they just go on this campaign to get dumb Americans to believe it’s Oxford. I could see that. I want to now be actually–

John: On the other side.

Craig: It’s funnier. It’s funnier to be this sweaty con artist who’s constantly trying to keep the Americans from leaving and convincing them that this really is Oxford, even though there’s goats moving through the classroom. That’s funny. I would watch that.

John: There are two very different comedies out there, but I think there’s something fun to do there. Both of these are small. I think both of these are Gold Circle movies at the highest end.

Craig: Yes, which is a perfectly good movie to be, if it’s a movie. I would probably rather watch the sitcom version, the good old six-episode British sitcom version. My gut is, I want to be with Basil Fawlty on this. I want to be with Brenden Tempest‑Mogg as he desperately– or Father Ted, it’s such a great standard of sitcom work. The guy in the middle of it is a con artist who’s constantly getting hoisted to buy his own petard. That’s such a evergreen comic engine.

John: Yes, I do love that. All right, let’s recap our movies and our predictions here. Sir Marco Robinson, I don’t think we think there’s a movie to be made specifically about him as a general class of this kind of person as a character, evergreen, the fabulous. Adriana and Veronica, we think there’s multiple ways into telling this as a series. Probably not a movie.

It’s also really a question of where do you start and what is the nature of their relationship as they’re battling and finding what’s fascinating about that. We think there’s a couple movies to be made about fake Oxford. It doesn’t have to be about this one specific place, or just inspired by that general idea. Great. There’s comedy to be found there.

Craig: A comedy.

John: Cool. Let’s answer some listener questions, starting with a rage-baity one. Josh wrote in.

Drew: “Do you guys see this article in The Ankler called Run It Through a GPT-5? The phrase changing Hollywood overnight. Feels vastly overstated regarding the adoption of AI in writers’ rooms and studios, but worth discussing and guaranteed to incur some final draft-level umbrage from Craig.”

John: A little from me as well. I had a reaction to this. A couple of friends sent me this article right as it was published because it mentions AI and WGA, and so they’re always sending me stuff. I had one really visceral reaction, and then I had to modulate it a bit based on, well, what is The Ankler? We’ve been talking about it the trades. There’s Deadline and there’s Hollywood Reporter and these things.

Craig: What is The Ankler?

John: The Ankler, it’s on Substack but it’s not a one-person thing. It’s a bunch of different writers writing under it. It feels like a publication. It feels like journalism, but I’m not sure it really is journalism in the classic sense. I looked up the guy who wrote this, Eric Barmak, and he’s really a producer, not a journalist. Other things he’s written for this, it’s been about, “How I’m using GPT-5 to do these things.” When I look at it from this perspective, it’s not like fan fiction, but it’s more just talking off the top of his head.

Craig: This is an advertisement. That’s what this is because when you look at it, it’s got a headline that’s rage-baity. Then it suggests that something is true without citing anyone. Then it transitions very quickly to, “Here’s what I’ll tell paid subscribers.” Then a nine-point or eight-point bullet point list of all the pro-tip hack benefits that you’d get from reading this. The implication being, this is how you’re going to beat the robots.

John: What’s frustrating is there’s a lead to it. It’s basically, you get a paragraph for free and a bunch of bullet points, and then you click through the full thing to see it. Fortunately, a friend had a subscription and sent through the whole thing, so we have a PDF to look at. One of the bullet points is, “Why did the WGA’s ‘AI protections’ from the 2023 strike are already outflanked, and what the guild can’t actually stop this time.” Nothing in the article gets to that point at all.

Craig: Oh, you mean you’ve read the paid subscriber?

John: I’ve read the paid subscriber.

Craig: Oh, did you pay him?

John: No, people sent me the PDF of the whole thing.

Craig: Oh, we stole it.

John: No, we didn’t steal it.

[laughter]

John: An actual subscriber who was concerned about stuff sent it through to me for my PDF.

Craig: We should ask ChatGPT to summarize it for us.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Of course, because this is just like all the things that you see at the bottom of a local newspaper. There’s all these suggested articles that are clearly from an ad mill, and they’re all full of things like this. How many times have you seen this stupid doctor that’s warning you not to eat blueberries for breakfast? Do you see this?

John: All the time.

Drew: I don’t get that one.

Craig: Okay, because you’re not old. We must have let them know that we’re in our 50s because there’s something about this doctor.

John: They know.

Craig: They know. This doctor is like, “I have a warning for Americans over 50. Do not eat this for breakfast.” It always shows a bowl of blueberries. I’m like, “A, okay. B, what?” It’s this. That’s all this is. It’s crap.

John: What I don’t understand about the whole process is, did Barmack write the meat of the article, and then someone else writes the leads for things? They don’t seem to match very well together.

Craig: It’s almost like maybe a person didn’t write all of it at all.

John: I don’t want to go into that level of speculation, rather than focus on the article itself, which I don’t think– it’s all filler. What I do want to say is that there’s a class of article that is just designed to be like a grenade you throw into a room and rage bait. We just have to recognize this and not overreact to it.

Craig: This is so poorly done as rage bait. I feel nothing. This didn’t even get the tiniest bit of red mist in me.

John: Here’s where I think it’s dangerous is that a person reads this and says, “Well, God, if all the writers’ rooms are just using ChatGPT to do everything,” and if, “Oh, do a GPT-5 pass on things,” because it’s a standard thing, no, it’s not.

Craig: No, it’s not.

John: No one is saying that at all.

Craig: Never. Nobody says that.

John: As we have conversations with the actual people who are creating film and television every day, this is just not a thing that is actually happening.

Craig: It’s not.

John: I think it’s distracting from the real concerns we should have about AI and how it’s going to impact writing and every other part of the industry to just hand away and assume this stuff is already happening, and it’s not actually happening. That’s my great frustration.

Craig: I love this bullet point. The quiet gold rush in studio marketing and post teams. By the way, I’m going to get back to– this is rage baiting to me, is how bad it is actually. The quiet gold rush in studio marketing and post teams, where a GPT-5 can cut 20 trailers before lunch and nobody’s sure whose job that is anymore. Okay, the second part of that sentence undermines the first part. If GPT-5 can do that, how is there a gold rush?

Second of all, everyone’s sure whose job that is. It’s the guys who edit the trailers. It’s still their job. This is so poorly done. In any case, I’m not falling for it. More importantly to me to answer, I guess, Josh, who wrote this in. He was saying, did you guys see this? He said, “Feels vastly overstated, but well worth discussing.” Josh, I think you’re exactly correct. This is vastly overstated. Nobody talks like this. Are there writers’ assistants who use ChatGPT to summarize? Perhaps, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a writer’s assistant.

John: Yes. As an industry, there are a lot of conversations happening about how as an industry are we going to address what these technologies do and how it’s going to change things because it’s going to change things. It’s important for the industry to be smart and proactive about making the choices now about what we use these things for and what do we not use them for. This just stirs up anger.

Craig: Also, there are not that many people reading this. That’s the other thing.

John: My concern is that it’s because people who are tangentially in the industry, they see this kind of thing and they assume that this must be true because it’s in print.

Craig: 98% of what is written about our business is nonsense. This fits right in with everything going all the way back to the 20s. It’s just baloney. I love saying baloney. It’s baloney.

John: Let’s get to a happier letter from one of our listeners. This is Paneque, who writes in about some producers.

Drew: All right. “I’ve been out here about 10 years. I’ve worked my way from assistant to writer during that time, but I’ve never really had something hit or get hot. That changed this past week. My new script went out and got an immediate response. I was bombarded with meetings, all of which my reps handled beautifully while trying to build a competitive situation for me. I feel incredibly blessed. However, one of my most enthusiastic meetings has now really turned up the pressure.

It was a company I’d met previously and to whom I’d sent the script directly, and it’s a place I think really loves and understands my intentions. I’ve met with other folks who have similar enthusiasm. Now, this company’s executives have started to contact me directly, reaching out to tell me how much they want to work with me and how they’d be heartbroken if they don’t. While I’d be lucky to work with them, I also feel awkward since I do want to continue with my reps’ plan to keep everything competitive and keep momentum going, and give this thing its best shot at being made.

At the same time, I also want to remain cognizant and grateful that I have smart people passionate about a project so dear to me. How do I navigate this? If the project does land elsewhere, how do I salvage that relationship with people I really do respect?”

Craig: This one’s easy because this happened to me. I’m sure it happened to you. I remember talking about this with my agents way back when. I said, “I don’t know what to do because they’re not calling me, and I feel bad.” They were like, “Oh, we’re going to call them and yell at them. We’re going to call them and say, ‘Hey, our client is incredibly nice. He loves you. He’s so worried about upsetting you. Because you’re contacting him directly, he feels you. Our job is to tell you you can’t do that. We’re his agents. That’s our job. Our job is to do this. You have to go through us. If you don’t go through us, we have a problem.'”

It’s just as simple as that. The agents become the heavies. By the way, everybody knows. What they’re doing is they’re just trying to get what they want. They’re just end-running the system. The agents who are the system are like, “Stop end-running the system,” because they can all speak to each other in the fully cynical language of people who know what we’re doing, as opposed to us who are like, “Oh my God, they care so much.” No, they don’t. Hard for us to be cynical. Probably shouldn’t be. Let the agents do it.

John: What can happen here is that the people who sent this thing to you directly, it may make sense to give it to them to take to one place or to places where they have relationships, but other producers will take it other places too. I agree with Craig. Your reps need to call them and say, “Hey, our client loves you, but also you need to back off because there’s lots of people he needs to be talking with.”

Craig: Also, you can’t. It’s as simple as that. You can’t do it anymore. It’s not because he’s asking you or she’s asking you to stop. We’re telling you, we don’t want you doing it. You have to go through us. It will hurt you to go around us because guess what? We’re this kid’s agents, not you. We have our thumb on the scale.

John: Here’s the balance is that as a writer working, you’re going to have personal relationships and direct relationships with some producers and some stuff that is only moderated through your reps. The ones who you do have specific personal relationships with, they need to also be in contact with your reps so that it’s not all on you.

It doesn’t mean you have to blow off these producers. It’s great that they love you because it seems like they’re good legitimate producers, but you need to communicate with your reps and then communicate after the reps have communicated through them. Make sure that you have a positive relationship going forward, but it’s not all just directed straight to you.

Craig: Perfectly fine to reply back and say, “This means so much to me. I think the world of you guys.”

John: “We’re so excited to see what happens with this, and we cannot wait to work with you on things.”

Craig: “I’ve let my agents know how passionate you guys are. I’m sure they’ll be reaching out.” Then your agents, when they read that, they’re like, “Oh, we’re about to get the call.” Then they’re going to get the call. They’re like, “I know.” That’s how they’re going to answer the phone. “I know.” The agents will be like, “Can you stop?” “Yes.” “Look, I love this script. I just don’t want to lose this script with so-and-so.”

John: Which is great.

Craig: Exactly. No one’s going to be like, “Wow, your client really hurt my feelings.”

John: They don’t have feelings. All right, let’s get to our one cool thing. I am just back from two weeks in Australia. My one cool thing is, the whole continent is fantastic, but my one cool thing for this week is Sydney. The city of Sydney is terrific. It’s always reductionist to compare one city to another city and do this. Sydney was great in a lot of ways. I find Vancouver to be great in that it’s just the right size city.

Craig: Not too big, not too small.

John: Sydney has fantastic public transportation. If you need to take an Uber someplace, they show up really quick. So many restaurants. I have no idea how–

Craig: So many.

John: So many.

Craig: So many restaurants.

John: I have no idea how the city can support as many restaurants as it does, but fantastic. Great.

Craig: Australians love eating.

John: I was lucky to be there for great weather. You can hike anywhere. There’s a zillion beach walks.

Craig: What about the spiders?

John: I saw no spiders.

Craig: You saw no spiders?

John: Well, there were no poisonous snakes.

Craig: They were there-

John: No animals came after me.

Craig: -stalking you.

John: A lot of cockatoos.

Craig: Oh, well, those are nice.

John: They’re nice. They’re gorgeous.

Craig: They’re not poisonous.

John: No.

Craig: It’s the only non-poisonous animal in Australia.

John: There are bats. The Sydney Opera House. We saw Rent at the Sydney Opera House.

Craig: Rent?

John: Rent.

Craig: You saw a Rent?

John: Rent. Sydney Opera House is great. We did the bridge climb again. We did all the touristy things.

Craig: Lovely.

John: I loved it.

Craig: I was so bummed out, too. I was supposed to go on the promotional tour for our second season, but I had to finish the show because our post-production people were like, “You can’t leave.”

John: Can’t leave.

Craig: “You can’t leave,” and so I couldn’t go. I was bummed out.

John: You’ve never been to Sydney?

Craig: No, that was my chance.

John: When you get there, it’ll be great. Everyone will try to marry visiting Australia and New Zealand at the same time. I get it.

Craig: It’s not a short little trip there. Quite a bit of ocean between them.

John: No, I will just say enjoy Australia for itself.

Craig: I honestly want to go see New Zealand because I want to be in Middle-earth. Straight up. I’m not going to lie to the people of Christchurch I’m not that interested in the town center. I want to go to Hobbiton. Straight up. I will. One day, I will. Maybe go visit my friends at Wētā. Well, I’m glad you had a great trip. Fantastic. The moment you left, there were 5,000 emails sent to people. Just be mindful.

John: I picked my time.

Craig: Just be mindful. Well, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on an island in the Pacific as well, playing Ghost of Yōtei-

John: I know nothing about it.

Craig: -which is the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, which I’m sure was my one cool thing back when Ghost of Tsushima came out. Now, I will say Ghost of Yōtei, which is a PlayStation Exclusive, has all the things that I really enjoyed about the first game and all the things that I were annoyed by in the first game. The combat is wonderful. It’s fluid combat, lots of fun options. In the first game, you had different stances you would use depending on the foes and the weapons.

John: Is this set in medieval Japan?

Craig: In medieval Japan. Exactly. In feudal Japan. This, you have different weapons, lots of stealth and parkour, minor parkour. It’s the characters and the dialogue. It’s just–

John: It’s wooden. No, I’m sorry.

Craig: It was wooden the first time. It’s made of the same wood this time. When you wander around a world and you meet people, like we play D&D, we meet NPCs all the time. One thing that’s really important is that NPCs, some of them can be boring, some of them can be earnest, serious, speak in platitudes and homilies and deep thoughts, but you want a bunch of them to be a little nuts or really funny or lusty or just really angry.

There’s only a couple. You meet so many people. There’s one character I’ve met so far who’s funny slightly, and nobody knows what to do with him. Everyone’s like, “Ugh, this guy. I can’t believe they let somebody with a sense of humor into feudal Japan.” They’re going to make another one. There’s going to be a Ghost of– pick another area of Japan. When they do, I would just urge them, give these characters a little more zip. A little more edge. Boy, is it fun running around killing. I got to tell you. I got my katana. I got my kusarigama. Oh, so much fun.

John: Love it. We talked before about how great Baldur’s Gate was on Baldur’s Gate 3 on so many levels.

Craig: So many.

John: The writing was terrific. Every character you ran into was so specific.

Craig: So many. They were funny. They were pathetic. They were funny to laugh at. They weren’t funny themselves, but you could laugh at them and how ridiculous they were. A lot of them, like the character of Auntie Ethel, spoiler alert for a while, she’s a hag. When you meet her, she just is this kindly old Irish lady trying to sell you potions. Then you find out she’s a hag who’s trying to basically devour a child to turn into a new hag. She’s hysterical. She’s so funny.

John: Even when you run into a bunch of goblins who are guarding a bridge, each of the goblins is specific.

Craig: They got their own thing. They fell into the thing of, all right, goblins are Cockney. I was like, “Bad monsters always have Cockney accents.” “Oh, can we have a little meet?”

John: Ghost of Yotai.

Craig: Ghost of Yōtei.

John: Yotei.

Craig: Ghost of Yōtei. Lots of fun if you like feudal Japan. I will say, having played Assassin’s Creed Shadows– honestly, see, I can’t even remember the subtitles. Is that the last Assassin’s Creed, which was also set in feudal Japan? I think this is better. Also, visually, there are times where you’re like, “Whoa, it’s so beautiful.” Thumbs up for me. Room for improvement, Ghost Squad, but the gameplay aspects are fantastic.

John: A friend of mine, a writer friend, is working on a big AAA game that’s not announced yet, and so he’s under so many NDAs. Just hearing the description of how hard the work is on that, it’s just incredible.

Craig: It’s so many people work so long and so hard, and sometimes the games don’t work. This one, I assume it’s selling well.

John: I hope so. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week comes from Jeff Ross. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. I don’t think it’s that Jeff Ross. It’s a different Jeff Ross. Is that on a roast?

Craig: It’s not roastmaster Jeff Ross?

John: Could be. If you have an outro, you can send a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with the sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting. There’s lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You will find us on Instagram @scriptnotespodcast.

We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find all this at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. You’ll just get the one email.

Craig: Just one.

John: Not 80, just one.

Craig: Just the one.

John: Thank you again to our premium subscribers for your kind attention. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on watching things when you’re away from home. Craig, Drew, thanks for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Craig, we were traveling for two weeks in Australia. There are things we wanted to watch that were on streaming services. There are things that we wanted to watch which were on broadcast. It’s always the question of how best to do this. Our classic technique for traveling is we just pack an Apple TV with us. We put in a little box with HDMI cable, its power cord. 55% of the time, we can make it work.

It’s a hassle in that getting that box connected to the hotel’s WiFi is challenging. It’s improved over time, but it’s still challenging. There’s ways it pairs with your phone to do it. Getting an HDMI port that actually works can be a challenge. Getting a plug that’s close enough to the Apple TV, so you’re not reaching across the whole room, can be a challenge. It’s just a frustrating experience.

This last time, we did take the Apple TV, but did not end up plugging it in. Instead, we used Google Cast, which was on all the hotel TVs, to do it. It was rolling dice to see, oh, is it going to work this time? Is it not going to work this time? Why did it stop working suddenly midway through watching Survivor?

Craig: Hotels have this legacy problem of wanting to charge you to watch stuff on their television. I guess you could buy movies. They have their in-hotel rental system. You can buy a movie and show it to your kids to shut them up while you go have dinner in the bad hotel restaurant. They seem to think that’s still a thing, and maybe it is still a thing.

John: At certain price points, it probably is.

Craig: Possibly, but I do feel like we’re past it. A reasonable hotel chain at this point should just go, “Hey, here’s how you can watch whatever you want.” There are some security issues. What they don’t want is for somebody to log into their account on a TV, check out, have it still be there, and the next person starts buying stuff on your account. There’s concerns that I’m sure they have. They also don’t want people uploading crap into their system through the television somehow, I suppose. That could be a thing.

First thing I do when I walk into a hotel room, if it’s one of those hotels that has the TV on when you walk in, which drives me crazy because they’ve set it to the hotel welcome channel, first thing you do is turn it off.

John: It’s so bright, also.

Craig: It’s so bright and it’s so annoying, and it’s always playing bad music. Then I just watch stuff on my iPad. I don’t even bother with the TV.

John: When it’s just you, it’s great, but sharing, me and Mike together–

Craig: I don’t share.

John: A couple of times, we just end up watching off my computer. It was close enough, and it was easy enough. A couple of hotels I’ve been at in Norway, there’s an HDMI port you could just plug in. I was like, “Oh, that’s-”

Craig: Lovely

John: “-lovely and nice.” I feel like Google Cast is attempting to be that same basic technology, where basically, on the menu, you go to Google Cast and just like, here’s the QR code, scan this thing and do it. If it all worked consistently, fantastic, but it’s buried in other stuff.

Craig: Hotel internet is horrible. It’s firewalled up the wazoo, and it’s slow. It’s also incredibly fragmented. Your speeds are-

John: They’re shifty, yes

Craig: -relative to whatever anybody else is doing. If five people on the floor are all Google Casting, you’re screwed.

John: There are times where we end up tethering to our phones because-

Craig: Oh, geez.

John: -our data plan was so big for Australia that we were never going to be able to burn through all of it.

Craig: Can we talk about data plans for a second? Do you know what drives me crazy?

John: Please.

Craig: I had to do this for my older kid. She needed a new phone. I had to go on where Verizon meets Verizon. I had to go on to put the new device on the old phone line. I never go there. They’re like, “Oh, by the way, here’s the tab, review your plans.” The crazy thing is, every other business is constantly upselling you. These people, I don’t know if this is true for AT&T or other service providers., they quietly are like, “Oh, your plan is you pay $40 a month for X. Well, we have a new plan where you pay 10 cents a month for 1,000X.” You’re like, “Why didn’t you tell me? This whole time I could have had this?”

John: Our broadband at our house was the same situation where we were actually like, “Wait, no, the new plans are so much more for so much less.”

Craig: Quietly, they’re like, “Okay, we roll these new plans out to get the new people, but let’s not tell the old people. Let’s just have them keep spending money.” Somebody out there is still spending money on a pager. Anyway, that’s a side gripe.

John: We were getting back to the story of the internet at these hotels can be really challenging too. Also, if I’m trying to watch stuff off my American YouTube TV, I use my VPN, ExpressVPN. Mostly works.

Craig: Mostly works. There are so many VPNs.

Drew: Do you guys not watch linear TV in the hotel rooms?

Craig: No?

John: Occasionally. We were in Egypt earlier this year, and it was fun to actually just watch linear TV in Egypt because you’re just like, “Oh, this is actually a very charming, Ted Lasso-y kind of show that it’s all in Cairo.” That’s great. No, mostly I’m not doing that.

Craig: I have never. I don’t watch linear TV here. Why am I going to watch it there?

Drew: For me, that’s the joy of it. It’s being part of the culture in that way by just watching whatever–

Craig: I have to say, I have watched television overseas. Let me just annoy an entire continent.

John: Please.

Craig: I find European television to be obnoxious. Our television is ridiculous. I find their ads are obnoxious. I want Europe to be more dignified. They’re the old country. I want them to have a little bit more restraint. Instead, less when it comes to advertising, it’s all quite garish and loud. Anyway, right in Europe. Let’s go on, or I’m going to get a summons from The Hague.

John: Finally, this week, Apple TV+ is now just Apple TV.

Craig: Oh, thank God. Now I know what to do.

John: Now you can watch Apple TV-

Craig: On your Apple TV.

John: -on Apple TV through Apple TV.

Craig: Which is where your iMovies is and iTunes.

John: Which is the best thing. I do hope that we’ll get an Apple TV stick because, honestly, the box does not need to be this big. This is my new phone. All of the phone is this tiny little bump at the very top of the phone.

Craig: I am confused by the size of the Apple TVs myself.

John: They have storage. Storage for what exactly?

Craig: That’s the thing. They were designed to store a lot. You don’t really need to store that much anymore.

John: It just needs to connect.

Craig: Yes. Also, I was about to say, they’re annoying because sometimes you just have to restart them because they just crash. Then again, they’re running all the time. If they crash once every six months–

John: They’re really solid. They’re really good. Once they finally figured out how to make a non-terrible remote– I like the remote now.

Craig: I have the universal remote. I can’t deal with that. Then people are like, “Use your phone.” No, I will not. Yes, Apple TV’s pretty solid. Yes, Apple TV+, Hulu, gone. Plus, gone. HBO Max. Max, gone. HBO Max, back. Netflix sits there like, “We’re still Netflix, by the way.” FYI, they’re so cool. They’re just smoking a cigarette, like, “That’s nice.” Oh, you don’t have a Plus anymore?

John: No. Listening back to this bonus segment in 5 years or 10 years, what things will be like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe they were still talking about this as a thing.”

Craig: Oh, Apple TV’s been around for a long time now. Wasn’t it Chromecast? Now it’s Google Cast. Wasn’t it Chromecast?

John: Yes, it’s now called Google Cast.

Craig: Then what was Slingbox?

John: Slingbox was a separate service, Slingbox.tv, which was basically, I think, a unit that you had on your own personal TV, and then you could basically log into it from any computer anywhere in the world. YouTube TV has taken the place of that for us.

Craig: YouTube TV-

John: That’s how you’re getting your local channels in the US.

Craig: -is how I get my local channels, yes. I think the cable companies have given up on that one, mostly. They’re like, “We know. Just take the internet. How about that? If you check on the new plan, we pay you $80.”

[laughter]

John: It’s how it works.

Craig: “You have 14 trillion gigabytes instead of your current plan, $100 for one megabyte.” Why do they do that? Well, I know why they do that. I know the answer to my question. It’s as obnoxious as a European ad. I’m going to get so many ad complaints. Well, I’ve spent time in America, and I think your ads are obnoxious. Fine.

John: Fine. Craig, Drew, thanks.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Thanks.

Links:

• Preorder a signed copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• The Many Faces Of “Sir” Marco Robinson, The Man Who Grifted Aspiring Filmmakers With Claims About Being A “#2 Netflix” Producer by Jake Kanter for Deadline
• Trailer for Marco Robinson’s TV show Get a House for Free
• Meet the Sisters Battling to Become L.A.’s New Billboard Queen by Mickey Rapkin for The Hollywood Reporter
• Dynasty (1981)
• Rica Famosa Latina on YouTube
• Fake Oxford by Josh Levin for Slate
• Fawlty Towers and Father Ted
• ‘Run It Through GPT-5’: The Phrase Changing Hollywood Overnight by Erik Barmack for The Ankler
• Sydney, Australia
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
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• Outro by Jeff Ross (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The oringinal post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

[music]

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 702 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

We often discuss how to start a script. Today on the show, how do you finish one? We’ll discuss last looks, those final steps when you think you’re done, but you need to get your script ready to hand in. We’ll then apply some of those lessons to samples we’re reading for our new round of the Three Page Challenge, where we look at the first three pages of scripts our listeners have sent in and offer our honest feedback. Today, we’ll have bonus feedback because our beloved Scripnotes producer, Megana Rao, is sitting here to the left of me to help us out.

Megana Rao: Hi. Thank you so much for letting me come back. I have so many questions on this topic.

John: You have a very specific question about last looks because that’s prompted the whole episode.

Megana: Yes.

Craig: I mean, we don’t let you come back. It’s not like you’re begging us all the time. We’re like, no, and then finally we let you. I personally want you here.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: I can’t speak for John.

[laughter]

John: It’s fantastic to have you here. Trying out some new stuff in the studio here. We don’t have headphones on, which is strange, but good.

Megana: I feel naked.

Craig: It is a little nudifying. Also, I have always loved the vibe of bald men wearing headphones because we all look like Lobot from Empire Strikes Back, which I think is amazing. It’s just regular.

John: It’s just regular. Yes.

Megana: Yes, it’s fun.

John: In our bonus segment for premium members, let’s discuss musical scores and the function of the soundtrack in feature films. We had a question about that, and we haven’t dug very much into that. I want to talk about what we’re looking for in music, in the things we make. We have no items in the overall news category, but I want to talk about something new I learned this week. Not new to me. Craig, you understand the musical scale. As for you– I forget. Megana, what instruments did you play growing up?

Megana: I played piano, violin, and the recorder.

Craig: The recorder.

John: The recorder, absolutely. The recorder is a fundamental music education which actually ties into this.

Craig: It is. We all played the recorder or even its stupider nephew, the song flute.

John: I don’t know the song flute.

Megana: Oh, I did not play the song flute.

Craig: The song flute is for kids who struggle with the recorder. [chuckles]

Megana: Then I should have been on the song flute.

John: Craig and I, we went hardcore down the woodwind track, and we were both clarinet players.

Craig: Deep clarinet.

John: In our early music education, we learned do, re, mi. We learned that. What I learned from Mike this week was that in French solfege, which is the do, re, mi, they only use do, re, mi. They don’t have letter notes for C, D, E, F, G, A, B. They don’t.

Craig: When kids are learning piano, they don’t learn middle C? They learn middle do?

John: Do.

Megana: What?

John: Yes. Is that wild? Our international listeners are like, well, of course.

Craig: Wait, they say it’s in the key of fa?

John: Yes.

Craig: That can’t be right.

John: That seems impossible.

Craig: That’s impossible.

John: No, you actually look it up. There’s–

Craig: Because there’s things like Minuet in G. Do they translate that?

John: Different countries will do different things for how they handle stuff. In France, it literally is.

Craig: Did you fact-check them on this?

John: I did. I looked up, the answers here. It’s the system of a fixed do system. Fixed do is solfege. Do is always the root C. Whereas we have the movable do system, which is, I think, just so handy because that way we can talk about do is just like the root of whatever–

Craig: Of whatever it is.

John: It’s just wild. It’s assumptions I would have made about like, well, everyone, they must work the same way.

Craig: I got to tell you, when you look at the history of classical music in Europe, you see, obviously, great composers from Germany and Austria. You see great composers from Italy. You see a couple from England. France?

John: Oh, so that’s what it is.

Megana: [chuckles]

John: Yes. Send your letters into ask@johnaugust.com and we’ll forward them directly to Craig.

Craig: Listen, I’m just wondering where are all the great French composers, the great classical French composers.

John: Did you see?

Craig: Okay, keep going.

John: God, the guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet. They’re all French authors.

Craig: That was Tchaikovsky. Russians, great.

John: Oh, no, no. There’s a different French–

Craig: The Russians had a ton.

John: They had a ton.

Craig: Tons.

John: What are you going to do other than compose music because it’s cold outside?

Megana: Do only French people have this system?

John: No, so it’s common throughout a lot of Europe.

Megana: Okay.

Craig: The other countries that don’t give us great classical composers. [chuckles]

John: You can also find a lot of Americans. It’s just strange to me that I would have assumed that everyone’s using the same A through G notation.

Craig: Do you think they’ll let me into France after this?

John: No, but this was not the deal killer.

Megana: You’ve been on their list for a while.

Craig: They’re the easygoing about people that criticize the French. It’s going to be fine.

John: Let’s do some follow-up. We had more advice for general meetings, which is our topic in Episode 699.

Drew: Alyssa writes, “I wanted to share a tip that’s helped my Zoom generals immensely, just in case it helps someone else. Before every meeting, I put my dog on the bed behind me. Without fail, he will be the first thing commented on. While his first couple appearances were a happy accident, seeing such a positive reaction to a cozy mini poodle with an underbite meant that I was happy to manufacture the situation if need be. In the Zoomverse, having something, anything bold in the background lays the ground for both an easy icebreaker and leads so naturally into a conversation about who you are and what you’re all about. It does mean I always have to make my bed before meetings and occasionally bribe my dog with a treat, but I think it’s worth it.”

John: I love this advice. I think it’s practical. It’s usable. Just having a first thing to talk about and having them compliment your dog. Love it.

Craig: You have to force that dog on the couch, though. He doesn’t want to go. “Hey, sit good on the couch. Mommy needs a job.”

John: Every dog wants to be on the bed, though, too. You let the dog up on the bed.

Craig: My dogs love being on the bed. You know it’s a sad day when your dog is too old to get up on the bed. I know. I have two dogs. Bonnie, the younger one, will spring onto the bed effortlessly. Cookie just stands there like, oh, and can’t get up there. She’s big. We can’t really get her up there. Then we got to get her down.

Megana: Do you have steps for her?

Craig: We don’t have bed steps for her. Maybe we should get her bed steps.

Megana: Yes, or a little ramp.

Craig: I’m not sure that she’ll still be here by the time it shows up. It depends on how fast the shipping is. She’s really old. Poor Cookie. She’s almost 15.

Megana: What?

Craig: I know.

John: She’s a big dog.

Megana: She’s like such puppy energy. I had no idea.

Craig: Not anymore.

John: Cookie?

Craig: Oh, geez.

John: This podcast took a depressing turn.

Craig: Yes. Thanks for reminding me about your vital dog.

[laughter]

John: No, Craig. You need to put Cookie up in the background and then you can talk about how sick she is.

[laughter]

Craig: I just want to say that you guys are really lucky. This may be the last Zoom where Cookie’s in the background. All right, here’s my comedy.

John: All right, let’s get to our marquee topic, which is brought to us by Megana Rao. Megana, can you remind us of what your question was that you wanted to bring to the show?

Megana: Yes. I have been working on this feature script and I was about to send it into producers and was really just taking my sweet time in the “polish phase.” I wanted to talk to you guys about what you do when you are doing your polish phase or your final pass on a draft. What sorts of things are you looking at? What questions are you asking yourself? I think there also might be a little bit of anxiety or comfort with me taking my sweet time during this phase because it’s like everything’s where it needs to be. Nobody has given me notes yet. How do you deal with that? How do you know when done is done?

John: How do you know you’re not just procrastinating?

Megana: Exactly.

John: Or that you’re just being OCD about stuff that actually doesn’t matter at all?

Craig: Well, I am OCD about stuff that doesn’t matter at all. It’s so funny. I was talking about this with Mehr, my new assistant, because she also works as the script coordinator for our show. It’s her job to go through the script right before it gets sent out through Synchronize as the official draft. If she finds typos, she fixes them. I’ve just let her know if, for instance, I’ve left out a letter and you stick a letter in and it makes the line go longer, which means the page breaks differently, tell me, because I will not turn a draft in with dialogue that is slopping over across two pages. I have a problem. I know that.

Megana: Wow. I thought that my question was going to be really nitpicky, but no, I had no idea the depths to which–

Craig: Scott Frank also has this. We’ve talked about this at length, and we know it’s dumb. We know that. I indulge it.

John: I’ve, over the years, started indulging it much, much less. I just turned in a script yesterday and–

Craig: All the dialogue broke across pages.

John: Every single line won. It was just little dangling lines. I did the spell check, drew right through it as well. I went through and I was looking for examples of I was using the same word too much. I was using the word processing too much. Because I was writing the scene separately and it’s like, oh, it made sense in each of the times I was using it, but collectively, like, oh my God, I’m using that word too much. I can take all those out.

I would look for, you sort of blur your eyes and look at the page. It’s like, is there anything that’s weird about it? Is there anything that just feels strange? It’s too dark. It’s too light. You’re looking for widows and orphans. Honestly, our software all takes care of those situations. What Craig is describing is, let’s say I have three lines of dialogue and it’s at the bottom of the page and the application may split it at sentence level, so the next sentence drops to the next page. You try to avoid that if at all possible.

Craig: I do. There are two things that I think about with dialogue as I’m going through. Obviously, part of the tweaking process is checking for typos and repeated words. I like to read the whole script through because sometimes I might think like, oh, I don’t need this paragraph, or I thought I did, but I don’t because something happens later and it’s fine. For dialogue, I try, again, avoid terribly, frighteningly avoid the continued dialogue on the next page. The other thing I look at is there are times where someone says something that follows another person’s line that should be together on a page.

John: If you were to page flip, you’d lose the context.

Craig: It almost feels like a drum roll, please, page turn, and it undermines it. There are times where I look for those things to make sure that it feels okay. Honestly, just reading it through and the usual stuff, I don’t get too crazy. What are you doing in your process there, Megana, that seems to be occupying so much of your time?

Megana: Well, I feel, okay, this is after I’ve had friends read it, and I’m going through and doing all of the stuff where if I have one word hanging off, can I rewrite the sentence?

Craig: Oh, big fan of that.

Megana: I’ll do a couple of command F passes for words that I feel like I’m using too much or I’m worried I’m using too much.

John: What are examples?

Megana: Here’s one that’s not specific, but I’ll do a just pass where I’ll command F for the word just.

Craig: Oh, you’re a big just person.

Megana: Yes. You almost never need it.

Craig: Well, I can come up with all sorts of reasons why I don’t need it.

John: I can also imagine cases where you’re using it. It’s the right question to ask. Do I actually need it in this case?

Craig: If you know that you use a word as a bit of a crutch or a tick, then yes, it’s worth searching for. I’m not sure I have. Well, if I have them, I’m not aware of them, so I don’t do any specific word searching. Maybe I should.

Megana: Well, mine thankfully come from having John having read my scripts. I’ll do a pass for tries to, which I think is sort of like young woman hedging.

Craig: Oh, yes. I could see you hedging. I could see a hedge.

Megana: Thanks to John, I now go through and just make it a little bit more assertive, but that is another example of a pass I’ll do with a command F where I almost never need a tries to. The character just does the action.

Craig: Does the thing. Yes, if they try to and fail, that’s interesting. Tries to pour a cup of coffee and succeeds, [laughter] it’s not that interesting.

John: It isn’t that interesting. We had a guest on recently, and I’m forgetting who it was, that talked about doing a transition pass, which is basically, the day before you’re sending it in, you’re sitting down and actually just looking at, what are the transitions between all the scenes, and are they the best transitions we could do? Does it naturally flow from one thing to the next? Is there a visual? Is there a way that you can get the energy leaning forward at the end of a scene so it tumbles into the next scene with a lot of spark there?

I won’t do a specific thing for that, but I am always mindful of, is there a pre-lap that makes sense? Is there a way that I can carry the energy across that transition? The project I just handed in now is animated, and the transitions will be incredibly important. I wanted to make sure that you could always get a sense of, okay, this is how we’re going to move from this thing into this thing because it’s not going to be an accident. It’s going to be a lot of animators building stop motion stuff to make it all happen.

Megana: I was just rereading the first episode of Chernobyl and Go last night. You both use transitions a lot in the beginning of a script and you highlight it because I think you’re establishing visual language. Then later on, the story just carries itself. Is that something you’re aware of that you’re thinking about when you’re doing these sorts of last passes?

Craig: Well, the beginning of scripts tends to be a little more lyrical because it’s the beginning. We’ve talked about how in the first 10 minutes of sitting in a movie theater, the audience is accepting. They are welcoming everything in because they are learning. They’re new to this country and they want to learn. You can be a bit more lyrical. Once you’ve established everything, then like you say, I think people can put that visual language on top of the read as they’re reading it, and there’s probably less call for it. At the end, you’ll see a lot of lyrical writing come back, I think.

John: We’re going to get into the first three pages of the temples that people have sent through. I will spend a little bit more OCD time on those first couple of pages because you’re inviting somebody in and you just want everything to present itself well so no one has any excuse for stopping reading or setting it down. Making sure those first three, five, 10 pages just really read flawless and there’s nothing there that’s going to jump out is incredibly helpful.

Over the years, I’ve been less prone to the word Jenga or the word Tetris where you’re trying to make things fit exactly the right way so that the page breaks fall down. With careful work, you can almost always squeeze a page or two pages out of a script by just making pages break a little bit earlier and it ripples through the script. I just do a lot less of that now.

Craig: If I see a big chunk of white space at the bottom of a page, sometimes I’ll be like– but usually I’m okay with that, honestly. It’s funny, I don’t worry about length. I think it was much bigger deal in features. I never worry about length.

John: Well, you’re also the boss now.

Craig: I’m the boss. I also know that there are pages that look slow and they’re fast, and there are pages that look fast and they’re slow. The other thing I like to do as a final, what are we calling this, last looks?

John: Yes, last looks.

Craig: Is I read it as if I know nothing. I try and flush my brain of everything. I don’t know anything. Who’s this? Who is that? What are they talking about? I don’t know. Sometimes I will note, oh, you know. That’s not clear to somebody who knows nothing. I don’t love clarity notes because I try my best to make it as clear as I want it to be. There are times where I realize it’s not as clear as I want it to be. The reading as a tabula rasa is a good idea.

John: Agreed. Also, the tabula rasa reading may also help you. If you’ve moved scenes around, I think I’ve noticed that sometimes, oh, I moved this character’s introduction to here, but I didn’t end up uppercase in their name on the first time they showed up. It’s weird that the uppercase is showing up in the wrong scene. Stuff has moved around and there may be other dependencies that I’m not thinking about at the time, which is helpful.

Megana: How do you get into that mindset? I think when most readers are in this phase, they are probably very close to deadline. They have been reading this thing over and over again. In my case, I’ve memorized what it is, so I just start hearing it. How do you get to this point where you’re looking at it with totally fresh eyes?

John: Printing it out is a big help for me because I’m so used to reading it on the screen. If I read it, like what I handed in yesterday, I print it out and sort of did all my corrections in pen on the paper because I’m just reading it differently if I’m reading it on paper is a good way to do it. There’s people who will proofread by reading it all backwards. It’s like, I don’t get that.

Craig: [unintelligible 00:16:51]

John: I don’t know. That’s the thing people do for recognizing those mistakes. The obvious things, spell checking, making sure you’re spelling characters’ names consistently because if you have a weird character’s name, you may have made different choices for how you’re going to say that. The title page, so often I’ll focus on everything else and I’ll forget to update the date on title page.

Craig: Date on title page. One of the last things I do for an episodic script is figure out what the title of the script is. I don’t like to do that until I’m done with the script because I sort of want to think, okay, what’s a weird little moment or a thing or an idea from this script that then would make an interest-inspiring title? People wouldn’t quite know what it means until they’ve watched the episode. I have to remind myself to do that or else the title will be Untitled Script.

John: Yes, that’s not good.

Craig: Nor, nor.

John: It’s also going to sound stupid, but you need to– You’re sending in a PDF almost always. Drew was asking yesterday, how did you turn in scripts before? It’s like, oh. We should explain. It’s like we would call the studio executive and say, I’m ready. You can send a messenger to pick up a script. We would print up the script. We would put it in an envelope. We had to have lots of paper, brass brads, and envelopes. We could stick it in and a messenger would just show up at our door and pick it up. It was always whenever you call about the messenger, then you would find another typo and you’d have to reprint a page or to–

Craig: Scramble.

John: Scramble.

Craig: Scramble. Yes, absolutely. You would also have to make sure that your printer, you’d have to go through, flip, flip, flip every page because sometimes your printer would just like, I don’t like page 38. It’s blank. It would just do that sometimes.

John: I will say printers used to be more reliable than they are now. I have many more problems printing now than I did 10 years ago.

Craig: I’m not surprised because they’re no longer a vital piece of equipment. The divisions within, I don’t know, whoever owns Brother–

John: Brother or Epson.

Craig: Epson, this is like seven guys.

John: My Apple LaserWriter, it worked well.

Craig: I remember I had a Brother Daisy Wheel printer in 1985.

John: If you were to print a script on one of those things, that would be a three or four-hour process because you’d have to feed him. It was awesome.

Craig: A Daisy Wheel printer. Do you know what this is? Is this the one that got the little punch holes on the side? No. That’s a dot matrix printer. That’s different. That was a little thing that would go side to side, left to right, and put dots. Then the dots would create letters. It was like– That’s what that sounded like. The Daisy Wheel printer basically had what a typewriter has. It had physical things. It would spin.

John: It was a plastic disk with all the letters on it.

Craig: It would spin to the letter, and then a thing would go, bam, and hit it. It would go very fast. It was like the fastest typer, but it was still typing it.

John: It was incredibly loud.

Craig: It was so loud and slow. Those disks would, if you wanted a different font, you had to get a different disk.

John: Click in a new disk.

Craig: Yes.

Megana: Wow.

Craig: I know. There was ink ribbons. It was madness.

Megana: It’s like a printing press.

John: Yes, it was a printing press.

Craig: Now, we talk about this as a horrible thing, but people in the 1500s would have thought literally God Himself had handed this to us.

John: Yes, but this was at a time when there were still script processing departments at studios.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Now, we send it in a PDF. My point is that you may have your own system for how you’re labeling your files, but whatever file you’re emailing through to your executive, your producer, whoever, just make a smart name for that, that makes sense to them. Like, title of movie, date, is a good choice. Don’t say first draft, second draft. Just say date.

Craig: Yes. If you’re rewriting and you’re not the first writer in, stick your name on the file as well, just so later when they’re looking through all the files, they’re like, “Oh, that’s the John August draft.”

John: That’s amazing drafting. That’s a smart choice. What else can we help you with figuring out in terms of last looks?

Craig: Or just your life.

John: We’re here for all of us.

Megana: We’ll do that offline or like bonus, bonus segment.

Craig: Oh, bonus, bonus segment. I like that.

John: Absolutely. For super premium members.

Craig: Yes. Oh, we should have a super premium.

John: Absolutely. A new tier.

Megana: Okay, here’s a question. You’ve written this thing. You’re sending it out to your producers. Stuff has changed between the last time you’ve spoken to them. Are you getting ahead of it? Are you annotating like, you gave me this note and this is the change that I made, or are you letting them figure that out as they read the draft?

John: That is a great question. If it’s the second draft that they’re reading, if you’re coming in with specific answers to things, this is like you responded to their notes, I think it is good in that email. If it’s just a few things, it can go in the email. If there’s a whole, here’s an explainer, I will put that in as a separate document just to walk them through what the changes are.

Megana: Oh, interesting.

John: Because you may have revisions turned on so they can see the stars, but they may not really get the context of what that is. That is a useful thing. For our first draft, before I turned it in yesterday, here’s what I actually said in it.

Craig: Here’s your stupid script, jerks.

John: Hello team, untitled maybe, excited to share with you the first full draft of this script. I say that because then if I’m looking for, why did I send that in? I can actually Google and search for that. No real warnings or disclaimers. I think and hope it feels like the treatment and subsequent discussions. Then I refer to one specific thing which we never actually discussed, but is a context kind of thing. We’re going to have to need to talk about this. Looking forward to discussing and digging in after the long weekend. Hope everyone has a great one. Files attached, goes through, happiness all around. If you’re sending through a multi-paragraph email with your script, I think it’s not helping you.

Craig: The person who’s making the decisions isn’t going to even see that email. I agree. I think if you’re doing a second draft and there are a lot of notes and a lot of changes, it could be helpful to turn revisions on. Give them two files. Give them a clean one and give them one with the asterisks. This way, it’s like, what do you prefer? Do you like to just read it through without knowing what changed or do you just want to go to the changes, up to you?

John: That’s a really good point. I will tend to do that. One file will be parentheses clean, one file will be parentheses starred, and then they can see both things.

Craig: Then they have a choice. Because from the point of view of somebody that, as I start to take on projects as a producer, and I occupy the space of the evil ones, what I’ve noticed, it’s fun, is that there are times where I will read something and I’m not sure if it’s always been that way or if it’s changed. As writers, we are 100% masters of the script. The people reading these scripts read a lot of scripts. They have a lot of notes conversations. In their minds, it gets confusing sometimes as to whether this was always there, it’s an answer to a note. Yes, a little bit of extra helps.

John: In generating the clean versions of scripts, what I used to have to do was I would save the file again and then just go through and clear all revisions and save a clean version of that. In Highland Pro now, you can just tick the box, don’t print revision marks, and just export the PDF again.

Craig: Oh, you know what? You can also do that in the software. I really should do that. Although, I don’t really do it now. Now, for television, I just send a draft in and then we just start. In feature land, it would make total sense.

John: Absolutely. Because you don’t want to send a draft that has star revisions all over it to an after. There’s something like that.

Craig: Exactly right. Of course, there are levels of revisions too. I don’t think I’ve ever used the setting where it’s like show all revision levels because that’s just, oh, congrats on your asterisked draft. I wonder why that’s there. Have you ever come up with a use case for that?

John: There were times, I remember on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there were a couple sets of revisions that went back and forth and they asked for, hey, can you give us a draft that just has this stars on it? I’m like, no. It wasn’t useful for my process, so I didn’t hold on to all those levels of revisions.

Craig: Oh, that’s interesting. I do. I just go through and I just advance it. If I’m not in production, I can just call it level one, level two, level three, whatever it is, so that I can actually go back and say, here is what was changed, this date, this date. What I do is I name the revision instead of just blue. I edit the name so it’s blue and then I include a date. It’s obviously the date that it was turned over so that it’s not just also like, oh, what was level three? I don’t remember.

John: At a certain point, certainly on television, a script coordinator will be doing that work rather than the feature writer themselves. You still do it yourself?

Craig: I change the name of the revision. I try and do as much as, so I change that. I do that and I keep track of the revisions because as I’m writing, I want to make sure I know what changed. The script coordinator is going through to make sure that I didn’t screw that up actually because sometimes you get into things where you realize, oh my God, I was working out the wrong draft and it was the one that I blah, and then it’s a whole nightmare and then you got to go. There was one nightmare that I created that Allie Cheng had to un-nightmare for me. I got to tell you, it felt great not having to do it. I’m not going to lie.

Megana: Also, Craig, who is reading your drafts before you send them in to people?

Craig: My producing partner, Jacq Lesko, and this is the method that she and I have been using all the way back before Chernobyl even. Doesn’t matter what I write, whatever the day’s work is, I send it to her. She reads it, comes back, catches some typos, if there are any questions, positive comments, areas where she bumped, anything, I take that in. Every day’s work is read. She knows enough about me now to know that when she gets the next day’s work, she goes back for a good five, six pages because she knows I would have also tweaked earlier stuff. I don’t asterisk that, obviously. Everything is read every day.

John: Oh, wow. That’s not how we’ve ever worked in our office. Drew and Megana, when you’re working for me, I will tend to give you full drafts of things. Megana, did I ever send through scenes as I was writing them? At times, I’ve worked more scene by scene rather than the full thing. Have you proofed individual things?

Megana: The only thing that’s coming to mind is Arlo Finch. That, I was definitely reading chapter by chapter, unless you were doing a rewrite and there was a specific thing. Even then, you would send me the rewrite within the context of the full draft.

Craig: Well, you move around when you’re writing.

John: Yes, I do. You’re always page one, two page, whatever you’re at.

Craig: Exactly. Whereas I’m linear. I think if you write linearly, it’s easier to have somebody reading every day because it’s like a story being told very slowly to them. They’re getting like, if every episode were five minutes long, that’s what they’re getting. Yes, if I were to write, oh, here’s a scene that happens later, I don’t know if she would know what to do with it.

Megana: I was going to ask you this because in the first few pages of Chernobyl, it’s so specific. Each sentence is a very specific shot and it’s so detailed. Is that something that in your first draft you were doing that or is that like–

Craig: Yes.

Megana: Okay. Wow.

Craig: Absolutely. That’s why I talk a lot about directing on the page and how important it is supposed to win these people, so you shouldn’t. So much of what I’m trying to do, whatever that day is, is get as much out of my brain onto the page as possible that is of interest. That is of interest is the part that I think a lot of people struggle with because they don’t know which part would be interesting, which isn’t. Yes, I do that.

I think, in part, it’s because I’ve gone through that process, where I do hand over six pages and then she walks back in my office and says, “I was confused. You said this, but where are they or how is that different from this?” I’m like, okay. Over time, I’ve just gotten more and more detailed. Lindsay Doran also, a brutal where are they, why are they standing, what does the room look like person, which has been amazing.

John: The pros and cons of what you’re doing with Jacq Lesko is because she’s seeing it every day, she has a consistent vision for what it is, but she won’t have fresh eyes to look at a brand new draft. She’ll have to just sort of do a mind wipe on herself.

Craig: She will never get an episode the way that other people get it. That’s a great point. If it hadn’t been a successful process from the start, I’m sure I would have abandoned it. As it turns out, it has been.

John: It also feels like there’s just some accountability because you know you’re handing this in to her every day.

Craig: Well, that’s the other thing, is that she’s down the hallway like the Grim Reaper and I know she’s there and she’s waiting.

Megana: She’s so sweet.

Craig: No. No, no. Yes, she is. Just a reminder, you said that this draft would be done by April 15th. Are we still on track for that? I’m like, you know we’re not on track for that. What are you thinking now? I just know it’s like, there is a librarian asking for the book back. It kind of helps.

John: I do wonder if some of our listeners could create this situation for themselves where they just basically have an accountability partner where every night they’re sending through the pages they wrote to that person and vice versa.

Craig: Yes, absolutely. You don’t need to hear back from them. Just, here, I’ve proven to you that I wrote another– I think it would make a huge difference. If you have a choice as a developing writer between attending one of these script groups, which I think oftentimes can be corrosive, or having an accountability partner where you guys give each other zero notes, zero feedback. You just go, you owe me five pages. Where are my five effing pages? That will be helpful, I think.

John: If any listeners out there have tried something like this or are going to try this experiment, write back to us and tell us what happens. All right, let’s do our accountability, which is a Three Page Challenge. Three Page Challenge for people who are new listening to the podcast, so often we put out a call to our listeners saying, “Hey, send in the first three pages of your script.” It could be a screenplay. It could be a pilot. We will give you our honest feedback. Just make sure it’s clear to everybody. People are asking us for this feedback. For harsh moments, it’s because people asked for our honest opinions.

Craig: They asked for it.

John: We have three very brave writers who’ve sent stuff through. Let’s start with Katie Seward. It’s a pilot for The Thin Place. Drew, can you give us a quick synopsis for folks who don’t have these pages in front of them?

Drew: San Francisco, 1924. A herd of bison break out of their paddock and move down the city streets in the middle of the night. A lone bison lags behind and stops under a streetlight. We then cut to present day where, in a hotel bar, Connor Sullivan, 36, is trying to tell his friend his theory about how time is controlled by capitalistic forces. His friend, Francis Dunn, also 36, keeps showing him pictures of the Olsen twins, marveling at his ability to correctly tell them apart. They negotiate who’s going to buy the next round of drinks.

John: Great. If you want to read these pages yourself, look at the show notes, and we’ll have a link to the PDF so you can read through them with us. Megana, you’re our guest here. We start with you. What are some things you enjoyed or stuck out for you as you started reading through these pages?

Craig: In a non-enjoyable fashion as well.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: I loved the setting. I was really excited about Golden Gate Park, the bison paddock. I love that park and I love the bison that are in there. I was very interested to read more about 1920 San Francisco. We quickly shift away from that. I was also really excited by what this guy was saying, this character, Connor, was saying about satellites and time and what seems like it’s going to lead to a conspiracy theory around that. I found that really fascinating. I thought that the Olsen twins game was clever and cute and I enjoyed reading that.

John: I liked the Olsen twins as well. I liked the idea of starting with the bison in the paddock. That is an opening image. I have many criticisms of how it was done, but that as an opening image is really good. I was a little frustrated that I didn’t feel like how this was going to tie in by the end of these two pages. I wanted a little bit of a better sense of what is the juxtaposition of these two things mean for us. Let me just dig in with some of the things I noticed from the top here. A monster’s got a little growl, heavy wet breath, giant bodies pound against wood. Again, this is all done over black. Something cracks. In the darkness, we see– Wait, what? How do we see something in the darkness, Craig?

Craig: I got there and it was, listen, Katie, this is what you wrote. In the darkness, we see a massive bison in the dark.

John: I see at least two problems with that. First off, we can’t see in the dark.

Craig: Correct.

John: From the darkness, ventures a massive bison.

Craig: Then we mentioned dark redundantly. This is all over black, so we can’t see anything. Now, if you want to say over black, also, I would say a monster’s got a little growl, heavy wet breath. Those are sounds. We don’t have to indicate the sounds. Then it says giant bodies pound against wood. I would write the sound of giant bodies pounding against wood. Again and again, something cracks. Then how do you want this to be? Tell me this movie, do you mean when it cracks through, that’s what makes light flood in from the moon or a street lamp or something? Or do you want to just go exterior Golden Gate, boom, bison explode out of their pen? Yes, the way this opened is confusing.

John: Here’s why I think it’s relevant to today’s episode. This feels like a last looks thing. You need to notice that what I’m saying, over black, darkness and dark, back to back to back in these first couple lines. You got to pick where you’re going to do this and sort of where to move on. This is a thing I think you could notice in that last step here. In the next block here, where exterior Golden Gate Park, night, the entire herd streaming out of their paddock, trampling over the battered gate. The entire herd streams out of their paddock. Again, there’s no reason to go for the gerund here when I feel like it just gives us a simple verb. Next block here, but our bison lags behind. Capitalizing the hour felt like a weird choice too.

Craig: Very Trumpian tweet style. Yes, sorry, truth. Is it a truth? Is that what he does?

Megana: Truth social?

Craig: Yes. He tweets a truth, he truths.

John: He truths. Whatever that is.

Craig: That’s a great word for lying. I love it.

John: Then we get Connor’s pre-lap. A pre-lap, valid choice.

Craig: Yes, but I suspect that this may be what’s on your mind. You tell me if I’m right. If you pre-lap somebody who is in a bar or a crowded restaurant, that sound will be with them also.

John: Yes. It’s not a clean sound.

Craig: It’s not.

John: As I started reading this pre-lap, I assumed that this was somebody on a microphone or was sort of a voiceover.

Craig: Exactly.

John: A clear space.

Craig: You may wonder how I got here. Yes. The issue is, you can’t do this. You literally can’t do what she’s trying to do here. What you can do is show this bison dazed, frozen, staring at us, and then, boom, smash cut to a guy, a crowded happy hour hotel, and we’re hearing him before we see him. Then we see him because the sound will be accepted.

John: Yes, but you could have or you could have pre-lapped the sound of the hotel bar. That could also have been interesting too. Why are we hearing this background noise that doesn’t match with what I’m seeing on screen?

Craig: Then you’d barely get a few words. The point is, and this is why this is important, Katie, the point is when you do this as a screenwriter, you are ceding way too much control to a director because the director’s going to go through this and go, well, this person didn’t write things that are physically produceable. Let me start fixing it. You want to fix it. You don’t want them fixing it. Fix it.

Megana: If Katie wants to keep this dialogue over the image of the bison that we’re seeing, what should she write instead?

John: You can’t. Connor could do it as a pure voiceover, but then it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t track quite right here.

Craig: You literally can’t do it unless you wanted to have the noise of the hotel and the bar with him, which would ruin this moment because you’d be staring at this bison and hearing a bar for some reason. It just doesn’t make sense.

John: I think there’s a way you could sell that, but it would be a different feel for what this is. It just doesn’t–

Craig: Especially because there’s continuous action. We’re looking at a herd and then suddenly we would hear. Like John says, you can get away with a slight prelap of the noise of the bar and maybe even one thing. This bison and then the sound of a bar starts to fade in and we hear a woman say, Mary Kate or Ashley. You could do that and then, boom, we’re into the bar and he looks in and goes, Mary Kate. You could do that, but you can’t have this run.

John: I like the idea of the Mary Kate or Ashley runner. I like the frustration that he’s feeling that this is just a parlor trick he can do. He doesn’t actually care. He actually is trying to engage on conversation. The challenge I ran into is that the scene descriptions, the actions in between, like momentary pain flashes across Connor’s eyes, but it gives in. No more physics talk. It felt out of scale with what was actually happening here. In a scene that really should just be dialogue, boom, boom, we were stopping a lot to address people’s reactions to things.

Megana: It was just hard for me to believe that these two characters, if I am to believe that they’re old friends and went to grad school together, are having the conversation that they’re having.

Craig: Right. It feels like they just met.

Megana: Yes. It’s like a first date or like a blind date, a setup, I believe it. If my friend could do this, I would never bring it up again.

Craig: Right. You mentioned it’s somebody else, but you wouldn’t suddenly discover they have this parlor trick after all these years. To me, it felt more like he was in the middle of picking this girl up and he was trying to impress her with what he’s impressed by, but she only cares about this other thing that he can do that isn’t that impressive, except that when you’re trying to pick girls up at a bar, anything that impresses them is great. Anything, right? That’s the point of learning this parlor trick.

You mentioned pace, I think, John, is what you’re referring to. Everybody knows the wonderful scene that opens the social network, and this has a slightly social network opening scene vibe to it. There’s a questionably spectrum-ish sort of guy, and there’s a girl, and they’re not quite connecting verbally. That scene is notoriously fast. It is paced faster probably than any dialogue scene ever, and I’m throwing in all the screwball comedies of the 30s.

When you are pacing, and this feels like it should be paced that quickly. Honestly, what I would do is have him say less stuff like, Mary Kate’s on the left. It should always be like, Mary Kate. So, dadadadada, Ashley. Dadadadada, Ashley. Nope, Ashley, and then Mary Kate in the same dress. Dadadadada, but make him– I don’t think he would use extra words because he’s so interested in talking about what he wants to talk about. All the stuff in between, the description, shorten because you want to keep the pace.

John: If you absolutely need it, you can pull it into a parenthetical for when the dialogue blocks rather than having it be its own separate thing because every time we stop reading the dialogue to read the scene description, we’re losing the sense of the pace of whatever we really feel like on screen.

Craig: Right. We have, that’s Mary Kate. Action. Dejected, Francis returns to scrolling through pages of images of the Olsen twins. Then the dialogue continues. Francis holds her phone up again, a picture of the twins in their Full House days. Connor examines it carefully, then we complete. I think he’d like, it wouldn’t take that long. It says Francis. In the dialogue, it says Francis, in parentheses, not listening. She’s not listening. I’m not sure I need a lot of description also showing that she’s not listening. It could say in parentheses, looking on phone, Jeff Bezos. I also did not understand this.

This is important because Connor’s making this interesting point that theoretically will either be relevant to the plot or just an interesting window into his personality. He’s talking about time and he says, the satellites we use for Google Maps have to get the time beamed out to them from Colorado. I think beamed to them or sent to them from Colorado. The next brick of text is, or dialogue, the clocks they have on board gain so much time, our GPS would go off by six miles a day otherwise, exclamation point. I don’t understand what that means. What does that mean have so much time and what is, and go off by six– Our GPS would go off by six miles a day, otherwise is incredibly unwieldy. It’s very clunky. It doesn’t sound easy to say.

John: It would drift by six. There’s ways to get to it.

Craig: Yes, exactly.

John: To Katie’s credit here, I feel like if you do the blur of the eyes test and look at the pages, they have a good balance of light and dark.

Craig: Yes. Absolutely.

John: There’s not chunks that are impenetrable. There’s no road blocks in your reading, which is nice.

Craig: Can I pull one more thing out?

John: Please.

Craig: This tends to stop me, and I see it quite a bit. Francis, in this kind of not horrible expositional way, says, which was harder, your PhD in science, which again is crazy because they literally lived together in grad school. How does she not know? That just seems ridiculous. We’re developing this expertise. To your point, this should have already been covered by their friendship. He says, my PhD is in quantum mechanics and we lived together when I was in grad school, you bitch. She rolls her eyes.

John: Yes, I wrote, ouch, on that.

Craig: That’s just aggressive.

John: It’s aggressive, but it’s also, it feels expositional. It just feels like, oh, this is not for us. This is for the–

Craig: A, expositional. Very expositional. We lived together. This is an, as you know, I have a degree in– B, if it’s two women calling each other a bitch, sure. If it’s a straight guy and a girl in a bar and he just casually calls her a bitch, it feels aggressive.

Megana: I guess I didn’t mind it so much. It was more offensive to me that she said science instead of–

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: Science?

John: Science?

Craig: Do you stuff with numbers?

Megana: If she said quantum mechanics or some sort of physics and it actually was theoretical physics or whatever niche thing, that would make more sense to me. Yes, it was just more offended by the science part.

Craig: Yes, they’re both stopped me in my tracks. Then why is she saying, I’ll buy the next round if you know what I do? They lived together. They lived together. Anyway, this is trouble. The last line also, Francis goes to buy him another drink. As soon as Francis turns her back, Connor’s face falls. Is cheerfulness a performance? He’s barely holding it together.

John: I wasn’t reading as being cheerful.

Craig: Also, I don’t believe he’s– How do I know he’s– If he’s barely holding it together, this was a lot of talking. He seems quite activated and passionate about this topic. If you are barely holding it together, you’re probably listening more than talking because you’re barely holding it together. These are things to think about, Katie, but interesting stuff. There’s obviously a lot going on here, which I want to know more about.

John: Yes, we can know more. Tell us about the long line for this pilot.

Drew: A millennial fundraiser can’t accept her best friend’s alleged suicide, so she digs through his San Francisco apartment full of mysterious scientific instruments, dives headfirst into nostalgia for their wild 20s, and unravels a conspiracy that goes further into the past than she ever imagined.

John: All right, so she is the main character and he is going to be dead.

Craig: Well, guess what? In these three pages, they are screaming to me that he is the main character. The perspective is entirely his. Entirely his. She walks away, we stay with him. If she’s the main character, I think this needs to be reconsidered.

Megana: I also want his dialogue, like what you pointed out with the six miles off the GPS or whatever, I want his dialogue to be a bit wonkier and more esoteric in that case, like he’s more misunderstood.

Craig: If he’s barely hanging on and there’s like a maniac to what he’s saying, a little mad scientist-ness, I need to see her being like, are you on coke? What’s going on? She needs to notice. I think that something’s going on because while one can make the argument that people who have depression often present as normal, the problem when you’re dramatizing it is that it just seems like you cheated, that you didn’t give us anything of interest and then they kill themselves. They’re not around to say, oh, let me explain. That was all an act. You know what I mean?

John: One possibility here for Katie to consider is if it’s not just the two of them at the scene, but there’s a third person that like, so her showing off her friend’s ability to tell the– She just wants to show off his freakish ability to tell the Olsen twins apart, whereas he’s trying to communicate important stuff to this third person, could be really interesting and just gives someone a point of focus.

Craig: That’s a great idea. If I were writing this, I would have, yes, I would make it from her point of view. She’s trying to understand what he’s saying because what he’s saying is provocative. She’s like, I don’t, but how? How is time part of capitalism? Explain that. There’s this other friend who’s like, Mary Kate and he’s like, Ashley, and she’s like, just trust that he’s going to get them all right. It’s what he does. Go back to the thing about the– so she’s interested and she has a want and her want is to understand him. The other friend is doing Mary Kate and Ashley, which is interrupting and creating frustration with her. Then I would know it’s from her perspective.

Megana: Because this isn’t setting me up to like Francis very much.

John: No, it isn’t.

Craig: No, it’s setting me up to like Connor, and then he dies. Oh, no, he died.

John: Oh, no, he died. Our next script has an arguably protagonist on the spectrum as well.

Craig: Oh, fun.

John: Let’s talk through Sunset Paycheck by Holden Potter. Can you give us the synopsis, Drew?

Drew: Eric Bond, 27, is at a job interview. We see a balance superimposed, $2,743. The interviewer, Casey, asks him where he sees himself in 10 years and his greatest strengths and weaknesses. Eric gives a very confident answer. Later, Eric walks through a park with Jane, who asks him how the interview went. Jane is excited to hear that he got the job and the interviewer asked all the questions Jane had prepped him for. Eric Venmo’s Jane $10 and the balance goes down to $2,733. We learn that Jane works at Casey’s company and tells Eric all about his future coworkers. Eric asks Jane if she’s told the company they’re a couple.

John: Great. We officially have a trend, which is two scripts that open over black.

Craig: Over black, which is fine.

John: I think we need to find it and go ahead. Just like a Stewart special, it’s a Three Page Challenge that opens with a flash forward and it comes back in time. Let’s workshop a term for opening over black.

Craig: Well, it’s going to have to do with Drew. He’s the one thinking that.

John: It’s like a Drew noir.

Craig: The Drew darkness.

John: The Drew darkness.

Craig: This is a Drew darkness.

John: Just some Drew darkness. His voiceover is, where do I see myself in 10 years? We open in a pretty classic job interview. I’m not mad at it. It’s a familiar scene. I found myself in the last script where there were a lot of scene descriptions interrupting the dialogue flow that weren’t actually helping me out or telling me more about what was special about what I was seeing.

Megana: I think a lot of the action lines that were describing Eric’s character confused me more.

John: Yes. It happens to Casey as well. On page one, Casey is stunned and surprised. Really, you’re stunned in a job interview?

Craig: And surprised.

John: Both. As people who play Dungeons and Dragons, we know they’re incapacitated and paralyzed. There’s a very specific condition for a specific thing.

Craig: She has the stunned and surprised condition, which now they took away the surprised condition in 2024 rules, as you know, Drew, and I’ve talked about that at length on a different podcast. A great choice to do that. If they’re playing 2014 rules, stunned and surprised, Casey will not make it through this combat.

John: No. 100%. Here’s the thing that is unique to the script I do want to talk through.

Craig: Megana is so bored with us. [chuckles]

John: The fourth line down on the first page, text of $2,743 fades in below the chair, then fades slowly after. An interesting idea that they’re basically constantly showing his Venmo balance, but you’ve got to make that more clear of what we’re seeing because I had no idea what it was.

Craig: I thought the chair was worth $2,743. That’s what this is telling me. Text of $2,743 fades in below the chair, fades away slowly after. That’s after a sentence that says, “He adjusts his chair in an awkward motion slowly.”

John: My focus is on the chair, the actual object, and so I’m thinking, well, that dollar figure must have pertained to that chair. Also, his age was 27, and the text is 2743, so I kept thinking like, wait, are those numbers connected somehow? Is there a purpose here? I think it’s an interesting idea to show that we just got to set that up really cool and clearly from the beginning.

Megana: Just why not clarify that that’s his bank account?

Craig: Net worth.

John: Net worth.

Craig: You can even say his name, Eric Bond Net worth. I don’t know. What does fiddles with his lips mean? How do you do that?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: What is that?

John: It was one of the things that was making me think from the start, like, oh, this could be like a spectrum-y thing here that we’re trying to– Because his dialogue choices felt a little spectrum-y, and so I wondered whether that was a physicality that we’re–

Craig: Well, it says, “Eric fiddles with his lips and takes a sip of the water cup in front of him.” Now, you don’t take a sip of a cup. Takes a sip of water from a cup. Also, this is like one of those ventriloquist gags where they drink milk and make the dummy talk. [laughter] How are you doing both of these at the same time?

John: We’re also missing a from. Eric sits across Casey Morgan. Again, this is your last look, so you’ve got to make sure that you don’t have stuff missing out of here.

Craig: He says, “Well, okay, where do I see myself in 10 years?” Well, that’s a great question. Then she says, “Take your time, dear.” Which is a very nice thing to say. Casey looks down at her notepad. Eric flutters and rolls his eyes. What an idiot. Why after take your time, dear? Super nice thing to say. Why is he rolling his eyes?

Megana: Rolling your eyes in an interview is so rude.

Craig: It’s crazy. It’s a crazy thing to do, and it’s not even called for.

Megana: I also don’t really know what flutters means.

Craig: It’s like this. It’s a thing.

John: The fact that it stopped us to think, what does it actually mean? What is it doing? It’s the wrong line there. Cut it or find a better way to get that in there. I think you cut it and get more into the meat of it.

Craig: “Well, if hired in 10 years.” You want well, comma, if hired. Well, if hired is a strange phrase. Well, if hired in 10 years, I won’t have this job. I think it’s an interesting concept. It’s an interesting interview gambit. You probably want to- because I don’t have this job. What job? We don’t even know what the job is. It hasn’t been mentioned yet. Well, if hired in 10 years, I won’t be working here. Then Casey is not surprised.

Now, my biggest issue, Holden, is that we are forced to watch two people sitting across from each other talking, which is my favorite thing to write. I love two people sitting across from each other talking, but when two people are sitting across from each other talking, it must feel like an action sequence with dialogue and emotion, or in this case, one-upsmanship, lying, concealing, different wants, different–

John: Surprise, seduction.

Craig: It’s just rambles. He just talks. The point he makes, it takes forever to make it, and it’s not a particularly fascinating one.

Megana: Also, in that part that starts with, “If you look at my resume,” I don’t understand why, if this was a question he was expecting, he’s umming so much, and that’s written out in the dialogue. Then I think this is the last looks thing. If Holden would have read this out loud, he starts two sentences with now, and then he says grow and no. I think that’s just a little too rhymey and awkward for an actor to say.

John: That’s good advice.

Craig: Also, why would somebody in an office care why you left a job in a mini golf course? You worked in a mini golf course, because no one wanted to hire you for an office job. That’s fine. Or you love mini golf, but I don’t care why you left the mini. You left mini golf because it was mini golf. You’re getting minimum wage. Of course you left.

Megana: A bigger note that I had with these pages is that these questions are so basic, and they’re so generic that Eric being surprised about it or them betting on it was upsetting to me. I feel like if the questions were more specific, I’d learn more about Casey and just have more respect for how odd the situation is. Someone being surprised that you’re being asked your greatest strength at an interview was baffling to me, whereas–

Craig: Right, or where do I see myself in 10 years? This is the most–

Megana: I think you could just say something so much more interesting about corporate America or interviews by the questions you’re asked. At Google, I was asked so many times what my death row meal would be or what my walkout music would be. I think there’s something so bleak in those questions and how standard they are.

Craig: Something so horrible and pointless. I’m here to code stuff. Who cares? Who cares what I eat when I die? My walkout music? I don’t have any. I like coding. [laughter] Am I getting this job or not? We all know you’re not going to decide it based on my walkout music.

Megana: There’s something cutesy that you could do.

Craig: Now here’s one other thing that’s important. Jane makes a point of saying, I’m assuming she said, “Is that right?” Which is not a particularly–

John: Not memorable.

Craig: The biggest problem is on page 2, they chuckle. Not sure why. Casey looks down back at her notepad. Eric cringes and his posture sinks. I don’t know why, because she just chuckled and he said what he wanted. Then she says, “Okay, is that right?” Why is she saying that?

John: I don’t know. I don’t know the context.

Craig: It doesn’t follow from-

John: Big question mark with that.

Craig: -what she said, what her attitude is.

Megana: Then we come back to it, right?

Craig: Then Jane’s like, did she say it? Did she say the thing? Yes. I would have had him like, okay, is that right? I think that’s an interesting thing. If an interviewer suddenly asks a question that shouldn’t be asked because it doesn’t follow for you to be like, “Yes.” Then later like, yes. For no reason. It didn’t belong. That would be interesting to note.

John: To Megan’s point, if she asks a really weird question, then the recall on asking the really weird question makes sense.

Craig: It makes sense.

John: More last looks things here. On page 2, exterior Loose Park afternoon.

Craig: What’s a Loose Park?

John: I assume that’s a place.

Craig: The name of a park?

John: It reads here.

Craig: I think there is a park named Loose Park, and you don’t live in the US. It’s like a famous park in London, which I don’t think it is. You need to say the full name of it or just name it something else. Loose Park sounds odd.

John: The Loose Park here, Holden is using double dashes before the time of day, which is not common, but it doesn’t bug me. On the first one, there’s a space between the place and the hyphens, and now there’s not. Just be consistent.

Craig: Consistency. Check my list and see.

John: Here’s the description of Loose Park. Ducks in a pond. An older gentleman feeding the ducks. A woman walking her dog. A couple walking by the water. Have you ever been dealing with stress where you’re supposed to just look around the space and just identify the name things in the room? That’s what it felt like to me.

Craig: You have to repeat them to make sure you remember them. Yes, this does feel like a memory game. How about just an older gentleman, not an older gentlemen. There’s only one of him. That’s a mistake. An older gentleman feeds ducks in a pond as a couple strolls by. A woman walks her dog.

John: If you want to go with a couple walks by the water, Jane, you got it. Then it’s Eric and Jane.

Craig: If we know him, we don’t say a couple walks by and then cut to the couple, and it’s Eric. Reveal the couple as them. I can see them, because you just said a couple–

John: We have eyes.

Megana: Also, the office chatter and machines began to drown out the interview on the line before I felt like was unnecessary for cutting to a park.

Craig: Then suddenly it’s quiet. Yes. If it said, “As his anxiety rises,” but he’s done talking, so there’s nothing left for him to say. It says, “I don’t quit, no matter the obstacle–” Then he stops talking. The sound rises. What is the actor doing while that’s happening? Just uncomfortably run out of dialogue? This is one of those things where you have to just say, how do I do this? Holden, you are going to make this movie. I want you to make this movie. You’re going to go out with your iPhone and shoot it. Can you shoot some of these things the way you’re describing and go through that exercise? It’s important.

John: Last looks, page 3, both laugh. That laugh was capitalized for some reason. Not the whole word, just that the L was capitalized. Eric asks, ?Seriously though, am I going to like it there?” is a question. Yes.

Craig: Jane.

John: Who is Jane? Jane is 26.

Craig: This is what I know about her. 26. I know what shirt she’s wearing, which is not important. I know that when Eric says, “She did ask every single question you’d say she’d asked,” instead of every question you said she would ask, which is more, I guess, grammatically correct, Jane jumps up and down. I know that she is slightly insane, because she’s jumping up and down at the most mundane thing possible.

John: Let’s back up a sec here, because they came from someplace. They didn’t just start walking. Just now, we’re going to say that what–

Craig: What were they talking about before this? How is this possible? You’ve got to make this movie in your head. You’ve got to imagine it. Jane needs to be a character. There’s something off about these. They don’t feel like full people. Maybe they’re not. What if they’re AI robots?

John: Could be.

Megana: I wrote, seems like they don’t know each other.

John: They’re dating.

Craig: Or they’re AI robots.

John: Or they are.

Craig: Well, let’s find out.

John: Let’s find out. Well, actually, one last thing.

Craig: Sure.

John: Title page, all looks good, and the email address is there, but just also like the full mailing address. No one’s going to send you a postcard. I don’t think you need your mailing address there. Phone numbers, I wouldn’t put my phone number there. Just so you know, randos are going to call you.

Craig: It’s a fair point.

John: Tell us what’s actually happening in this full script here.

Craig: After losing almost everything, Eric Bond struggles to live off his last paycheck as he learns to save time, money, and even people with the help of firefighter, Anne Sheeran, who craves the one thing Eric has, authenticity.

John: A character is Anne Sheeran, who’s not been introduced yet, which is fine. It’s three pages in. I’d like that his declining balance is going to be a recurring thing throughout this. That makes sense. You set that up on page one. Great. I don’t know.

Megana: I think that number should be lower.

Craig: That’s not a horrible number.

John: For a 26-year-old, no.

Craig: No.

Megana: If he just got a job, I’m not that worried about him.

John: [unintelligible 01:00:55].

Craig: Maybe he didn’t get the job.

John: Maybe soon.

Craig: Can you read that again?

John: Yes.

Craig: I just want to hear it again.

John: After losing almost everything, Eric Bond struggles to live off his last paycheck as he learns to save time, money, and even people with the help of firefighter, Anne Sheeran, who craves the one thing Eric has, authenticity.

Craig: I’m not sure a movie about somebody learning to save time and money is going to be particularly interesting. I don’t feel like this character is just bursting with authenticity. More importantly, I’m not sure how to portray Anne Sheeran, the firefighter, in a way that posits that she is inauthentic and wants to be authentic. If you want to be authentic, just stop pretending and lying, I guess. I’m not sure how Kirk is going to help her with that. This may be trouble.

John: It may be trouble.

Craig: It may be trouble.

John: Holden, thank you for sending it through. Let’s get to our third and final three-page challenge. This is Levelling Up by Sylvia-Anne Parker. I will say from the start here, it’s leveling with two Ls.

Craig: She’s British.

John: She’s British. I looked it up.

Craig: She’s British, and there’s so many Britishisms throughout. It was almost like I got a feeling she was like, no, seriously, I’m British. I am so British.

John: Story with me.

Craig: I trace back to the Saxons, like the early Saxons.

John: Those angles. I hate the angles.

Craig: I love the Saxons.

Megana: Putting a U everywhere.

John: Talk us through, if we were not reading the pages, what we would see.

Drew: After a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., the sound of choking takes us to a bathroom where a woman is being drowned by an unseen assailant. We then cut to that same woman. It’s Grace Tierney. She’s in her 50s, and she’s Black, waking up on a London tube from her nightmare. She grabs the arm of another passenger who pushes her away. Grace gets off at the next stop. We then cut to a tower block in Hackney where Jeannie, a 20-something white woman, discovers her heat isn’t working and brings her 60-something father a blanket.

In a podcast studio, Grace interviews Cameron Stonely, the minister of a new program called Levelling Up, aimed at reducing economic imbalances across the UK. When Grace presents him with numbers that prove a widening disparity, he tries to spin his way out of answering her questions. Grace’s boss and producer, Dennis, watches from the other side of the glass with a look of pain.

Craig: This is the opposite of true darkness. This is white

John: Okay, I’m white. A white screen.

Craig: This is true whiteness.

John: We’re opening with a nightmare image again, a thing we’ve seen before. This woman is being pushed underwater. Let’s talk about a woman, (Black), versus a Black woman.

Craig: It doesn’t bother me.

John: Doesn’t bother you?

Craig: No. What bothers me is that it’s a woman. I don’t know how old she is.

John: Ultimately, we’re supposed to be matching that up to Grace herself.

Craig: It would be good if you just put a 50-year-old woman just so I just know what I’m dealing with there, because it’s all about the imagery.

John: When we actually get to revealing her, it says, the woman Grace Tierney 50, which is just an awkward construction. I might try the woman– Grace Tierney 50– just to separate it off because- to make it clear this is the woman we just saw before.

Craig: A positively.

John: A positively.

Craig: A positively.

John: Good choice. Megan, what was your reaction to these pages?

Megana: I really enjoyed these pages. I liked this character. I am curious about what this nightmare she’s having in the middle of a pack tube is. I love a podcaster going after a minister. I’m excited about that. I just felt like things could be a little bit punchier, but I’m excited about the potential of this.

John: I am too. The idea of we see Grace. We don’t know her context, and then we see her in a podcast situation, feels right. My assumption is that we’re going to find that the tower block apartment and the heat not working is related to levelling up as a program.

Craig: I hope so.

John: I hope so. I had to reach to get myself there because I felt like, why am I seeing this here now, and why am I not continuing to see Grace throughout this?

Megana: It felt unnatural for that. If I’m watching her on the tube going to work to then cut to this woman, Jeannie, and I also just felt like that scene with Jeannie could be more dramatic.

John: There’s no dialogue in the scene. We can’t tell if this may be a postcard image, because there’s no actual real action happening in them. You’re looking at this stuff, and you’re not sure why we’re here. We’re seeing a tower block, literally just an image, and then we’re inside that apartment and just seeing an old woman. There’s no dialogue. No scene actually happens.

Craig: That just doesn’t work. You can’t do it, really. What’s going to happen is you’ll cut it out. If you want to be there, there needs to be at least one line of dialogue or something to say, “I understand why I’m here.” If there’s not a line of dialogue for us to push past the dad through the window and see Grace walking to work or something just to connect it somehow, otherwise, just this floating scene that could go anywhere just doesn’t fit.

I want to talk about the very beginning. In the very beginning, there’s this stylistic choice to start with a white screen and then the sound of typing and then see text typed onto the screen. It’s this visualized act of typing a sentence. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized- now it’s a quote from an American, so I don’t know, maybe I would put a Z there, but whatever, realized that we were the victims. The typing stops, resumes, of a broken promise, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That’s a really cool quote, and it’s a really cool moment where it pauses.

My issue is we go from that, which is this stylized thing, to another very stylized thing. It’s like I started with two desserts, and I feel like you can do one dessert. I’m not sure you can do both of these things. It’s such a great image to start with somebody drowning. That’s, whoa, I’m in it. That’s exciting. I would argue that maybe that’s the way to go here. The quote is really cool, but I would sacrifice it.

John: Let’s imagine the opposite of the case where we keep the quote and then just come to Grace on the tube.

Craig: You could do that.

John: What resonates for me about that is it’s just like, oh, how does that tie into this? I’m curious how that ties into this next thing.

Craig: You wouldn’t be able to have her waking up out of a nightmare, I don’t think.

John: No.

Craig: Let’s talk about waking up out of a nightmare, which is something that happens all the time to us in life, and it happens all the time to characters on screen. It’s just that it happens very differently to those of us in life than on screen. When you wake up from a nightmare, your eyes open, that’s pretty much it. That’s how I do it. Here, it’s really tricky, because we show her with her mouth wide open, which is meant to match her drowning, I guess. Then she sits up in her seat with a start, breathing heavily from the nightmare. Without looking, she grabs hold of the arm of the male passenger, Black, 30s, in the seat next to her and yells, “Marcus.”

The passenger roughly pushes her away because he’s not Marcus. Then she realizes, I don’t believe that at all.

John: I don’t believe it.

Craig: She wakes up and immediately knows she’s in the tube, by the way. She’s on a train. She reaches without a no-look reach to her right, yells somebody’s name as if she needs that person without looking at them. No.

Megana: As a nightmare queen, I have startled awake and grabbed the person next to me on a flight, but my eyes aren’t open yet.

John: That’s a crucial difference.

Craig: Have you woken up? You see what I’m saying? You’re not there yet.

John: You grab the person and then you wake up. I believe that.

Craig: If your eyes are closed and you grab the person next to you, in my mind, you could be grabbing them in front of you or turning to them and staring in their face. It could be anything, but the no-look grab and the no-look name while the eyes are open, is not a realistic thing, nor is it necessary. I know she wants us to know that Grace had somebody named Marcus who was important to her, a husband, a son, a boyfriend. We don’t know. There are other ways to get that.

Megana: Just before that also, we cut from this image of the water going into her mouth, and then she says, fast cut to a packed carriage. I would prefer a fast cut to mouth wide open, and then we get the packed carriage later.

Craig: Absolutely. If you’re going to cut to her, you’re going to cut to her. You’re not going to cut to a wide shot of a train and then cut to her. You have to think about how would I actually edit this? I want to talk a little bit about the interview, because there was something about it. First of all, when somebody has a disturbing experience, if they are then the next thing we really see is them doing their job, it feels like there needs to be a moment where we’re with that person and understanding that they’re taking a breath, having a drink of water. Flushing that out of their system, and then focusing in.

It says, “Grace dons headphones, ready for work. Grace is dedicated to her job. She’s damn good at it, and she knows it.” Which, by the way, I hate. I’m just going to say it. I hate she’s damn good, and she knows it. I don’t know that she’s damn good, and I don’t know that she knows it. If she’s damn good, why does she need to know it? That just feels overconfident. Kind of an annoying characteristic. I’d rather other people tell her she’s good at it. The most important thing is I would prefer a moment here where Grace dons headphones. She’s not ready for work. She just had a nightmare about drowning.

Take a breath here. Have somebody say, okay. She’s like, “Absolutely.” Then it’s gone. Then the red light comes on, or she’s not okay, and then the red light comes on, and she changes, because she’s– Last thing, we are in East London, which is one of the poorer areas of London. It’s where a lot of these council housing, and they call it quick-build, multi-occupational housing, ugly blot on the landscape. There is this prior scene that we’re discussing where there was somebody trying to warm up her father, a flat tower block, Hackney, London, so East London.

Then she interviews this guy, and the point that she makes is hospital waiting lists currently stand at 7.46 million cases in the north of the country, as opposed to 4.27 million in the south, highlighting the north-south divide. London is in the southern part of England. Why is her point here that the northern– By the way, the northern part of England does get the shaft relative to this big city in certain cases, but that doesn’t seem to be what we’re talking about here. Why are we spending so much time in East London, but then worrying about the folks up in, I don’t know, Yorkshire or Newcastle?

John: I want to talk about the actual flow on the page of this, because reading through it a second time, you realize like, oh, it’s meant to be that she’s just talking over him, but it’s not clear on the page that she’s talking over, because right now we’re seeing Cameron suddenly, it’s all dot, dot, dot to connect through the things. Visually on the page, it looks like they’re each taking their turn, and that’s not the intention here. I think this is a case where you do need some smart dual dialogue to show that this is simultaneously happening.

Craig: I think you could do this in this dual dialogue, and whenever I can avoid it, I do, but there is a way to do– Well, first of all, Cameron Stonely is just talking. He’s doing this thing regardless of what she says. I think ending each line of dialogue with dash, dash would be better than dot, dot. Dot, dot is a trail off. Dash, dahs is on cutoff, and then just a simple Grace parentheses cutting him off. How do the figures differ? Cameron Stonely rolling ahead. This government is doing, and then you understand that she’s going to keep cutting him off, and he’s going to keep rolling ahead. This looks a little bit like a page of Morse code because of the amount of dot, dot, dots.

John: I think the intention here is that she’s not backing down. She keeps going, but she’s also not letting him ever attempt to answer the question. I want to make sure that as an audience, we see that she is both listening and pushing through.

Craig: That’s where I think this could be broken up a touch with single lines of Grace lets him go on for another second, then enough already or whatever, so that we’re with her. We end with her saying, “Are you simply lying your way out of answering the question?” That is not necessarily a more aggressive line than, “Are you able to back up your claim with concrete evidence? Please answer the question.” Stonely’s stream of spin is brought to an abrupt halt. This guy is pretty good at just ignoring what you’re saying, and I’m not sure why that would bring him to a halt.

Through the glass, into the control room, comma, we would want there, Grace’s boss, producer Dennis Reardon, 35 white, old head on youngest shoulders. What are youngest shoulders? What is an old head? You mean older than he looks or looks older than he is?

John: I think it’s his experience. It’s like why he’s beyond his years.

Craig: Maybe that’s a British expression.

John: Oh, it could be.

Craig: It might be a British expression. Old head on your shoulders. Looks on with a pained expression. Why is he pained?
John: Good question, because we don’t know. Is Grace being too aggressive? What’s going wrong here?

Megana: To Craig’s point about the line of she’s good at her job and she knows it, I want to see how she’s good at her job in this versus that line.

Craig: I think that she doesn’t take any crap, and she really wants these people to answer, but if this is who she is, and this is how her podcast works, why is Cameron Stonely going on it? If this is what she does, why does Dennis Reardon suddenly seem pained as if to say, “Oh, no, she’s doing it again.” This is what she does. If she were doing the normal, okay, interesting, and then just something snaps and she just does something really aggressive and then he’s pained.

John: We’d have to see what normal is before- because we have no–

Craig: She just jumps right in. I’m not sure why he’s pained here. It would be good if we saw him earlier, not pained, and then she says something, and then he reacts so I know what it was.

John: Well, to your point, if he’s the producer asking, “You’re good?” She’s like, “Yes, you’re good.” Just establishing him earlier could help a lot. Title page looks great. A date on there would be helpful just so we can see when this is from. It’s not essential.

Craig: This is an interesting choice. Capitalized her name. You normally don’t, but-

Megana: I like it.

Craig: -I think it’s like, “Hey, I’m Sylvia-Anne Parker.”

John: You’re going to pay attention.

Craig: You’re going to pay goddamn attention to me. I want to find out what this is.

John: Oh, please, yes.

Craig: When a campaigning journalist confronts a government department over its socioeconomic policy, she discovers that the ministers in the department are the target of a serial killer.

John: Wow, a serial killer was not something I was expecting.

Craig: I wasn’t expecting that based on I thought maybe a supernatural thing possibly was going on.

John: I would say that the drowning thing does not feel connected to that premise that I was just given.

Craig: Yes.

Megana: I thought it was going to be more of like a get out experience of drowning. I didn’t think there was going to be actual physical violence.

Craig: This is an interesting choice. This is a movie that is criticizing the government for failing to achieve their promises of leveling people up and helping them economically, but the serial killer is going after those people. I have to stop the serial killer from killing these ineffective government people.

John: We’ll have to read the description to know what’s happening.

Craig: I’m sort of rooting for the serial killer. Not really, but I’m not like, “Oh, no.” That’s an interesting choice.

John: We want to thank these three writers for sending in their pages and everyone else who sent in their pages. Drew gets hundreds of these. If you want to send in your pages, it’s johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out. There’s a little form you read through. You click the button. You attach your PDF, and we look through them all. If you want to read through these pages with us, remember that they’re in the show notes. Just click the links there, and you’ll get the chance to look at those PDFs.

Let’s do our one cool things. My one cool thing is a blog post by Hollis Robbins. The title of it is How to Tell If Something is AI-Written. I try never to use the word writing with AI, so AI-Generated. Hollis makes really good points that for us, for humans, language represents a signifier, so a word like a tree, along with a signifier, the actual real or imagined tree. Because we exist in the world and have concrete examples of things around us, we’re talking about those concrete things, versus LLMs don’t have any of that. They just can generate a string of patterns that match to other language that they see, but they don’t actually know what things really are.

If you’re reading it through text and you’re wondering, did an AI do this? Is this real or something? Some tests you might try to do. If you can’t see anything, nothing springs to mind, it’s more likely going to be AI. All these tests are also, it could also just be bad writing, but good writing will tend to have concrete things that evoke an image in your head. If you look for a naturally perfect balance where every point has a counterpoint, where every advantage has a corresponding challenge mentioned there, so they’re always balancing the pro, the con.

Craig: They’re both sidesy.

John: They’re both sidesy. In the absence of concrete details, they’re not giving an example of an actual, real person or actual thing in the world, but it’s a hypothetical, because they don’t actually have a reference to a thing. AI can be good at persuasion, because it has learned a bunch of rhetorical patterns without having to believe the actual argument underneath it. I think the converse of this is looking at, well, how do you write things well? It’s something we talk about so often in screenwriting. It’s like you’re creating a visual for the reader, so the reader sees something in their head as they’re doing that. That’s what we talk about in these three-phase challenges. It’s what we talk about every week.

It’s how are you evoking the experience of sitting in a place, hearing the sound, feeling things? That’s why we say we, because we are putting ourselves into these things.

Craig: Never say we, John. I saw that on Reddit.

John: Absolutely. Two examples that Hollis makes is of things that create a visual. Instead of apologizing, she brought donuts. I get that. I feel the donuts. I see that. I understand what you’re saying. His idea of teamwork was to circle my title and draw a sad face. Again, you’ve created a visual. You’ve created a moment. I believe that in a way. I just think the lesson here is just make sure you’re not detecting AI stuff, but also just don’t write like an AI.

Craig: Don’t sound like AI. It’s funny. As you were talking, I never considered this before. Do they still do standardized tests for college?

John: They still do. [crosstalk]

Craig: The SAT section where you would read some sort of three-paragraph narrative about some historical event, and then you have to answer questions about it.

John: It was boring writing.

Craig: That was basically early human AI. Just a blunt, featureless, both sidesy, just unflavored oatmeal writing.

John: It really is.

Craig: AI certainly does that well.

John: I just had some really good observations in there, so I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Megan, what do you have to share with us?

Megana: My one cool thing, does it still count? I haven’t done this thing yet, but I’m going to do it.

John: You absolutely could aspire to a thing.

Megana: I am going to the Pageant of the Masters tomorrow. Have you guys heard of this?

Craig: Of course.

John: I’ve been to the Pageant of Masters.

Megana: You have?

John: I went last year, and I’m so excited for you.

Craig: I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been to it.

John: Do describe it.

Megana: You are also welcome to describe it, because you actually know. I’m going tomorrow. It is this festival in Laguna Beach. They’ve been doing it for the last 90-something years. It is a living art show. Have you seen the rest of development?

Craig: Of course.

John: There’s an episode where the Bluth family does the equivalent thing where they all dress up and recreate a work of art, a painting, but they’re there in person and filling the roles.

Megana: It’s a fantastic scene. It’s one of my favorite episodes. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that this was a real festival that they were referencing. Tomorrow, I will go down to Laguna Beach, take the trolley from downtown, which I’m so excited about. I think there’s something like 50 artworks that they recreate.

John: What is the theme this year?

Megana: It’s Road Trip in California or California Masters. It’s all paintings that are in different California museums. It ends with Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

John: Oh, yes. I think it always ends with it. I think it was a comment.

Megana: Oh, does it? Because I was like, I don’t know that that is in any California museum.

John: That’s not in California.

Craig: Oh, no, that happened in California, Jesus. According to the Mormons, I think it happened in Missouri.

Megana: There’s apparently music and narration, but please tell me, John.

John: It really is remarkable. It’s a thing that everyone in Southern California should at least go to once. The year we went, fashion was the theme. It was fashion throughout the ages. The curtains close. The curtains open. A work of art is there, giant-scale work of art, but with actual actors in there who are painted to look like the thing. It’s a wardrobe, but it’s also makeup. You don’t believe that it’s actually human beings doing it. The changes between them are so quick. How did they possibly do that?

Craig: Do they have two stages in the alternate?

John: No.

Craig: They have people waiting to run in.

Megana: They have thousands of volunteers.

John: It’s a huge thing that happens. There’s some stuff off of this.

Craig: Is the audience just a mass of people with their iPhones out taking pictures constantly?

John: Oh, you’re not supposed to take pictures.

Craig: Oh, thank you, Pageant of the Masters. I can’t stand it. Just watch the thing. I told you I went to go see Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl. I think it was awesome. It was fantastic. So many phones out. I’m like, just live the moment. Be in the moment. Then grab a video from one of the 14 million people that took a video.

John: I’m so looking forward to your report on what you think, because it was really great. The narration was really well written. All the music stuck together, which was great. Tickets are expensive, but–

Craig: Sounds like they would have to be for all those volunteers. Wait, volunteers?

John: Volunteers, but also other people. Everyone I think you see on stage is a volunteer, but the staffing behind everything else is incredible. There’s a whole orchestra.

Craig: Oh my goodness. I assume it’s a nonprofit venture.

John: It must run it all. Craig, what do you have for us?

Craig: Well, this is a repeat, but I try and do it every year at this time, because as we record this, we are two days away from what David Kwong and I refer to as Helpenmas. This is our friend Mark Helpen’s puzzle Labor Day extravaganza. David Kwong has flown in. We will be solving together over the course of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. That’s usually when we finish. Our goal is to finish on Sunday. We never do. We’re usually top 20. By the time you hear this, we will have solved it, because it’s a Tuesday. However, not too late for you to jump on this. It is free. If you just Google Mark Helpen puzzles, it’ll take you to his puzzle page where all of the Labor Day extravaganzas are listed.

Fair warning, it is hard. It is not what I would call extremely hard, because I’m not good enough to do extremely hard. There are some MIT puzzle hunt stuff that are just extremely hard. This is hard, but so beautifully crafted from a puzzle construction point of view, so elegant, so much attention to detail. There’s always a theme and he writes beautifully. There’s always beautiful flavor text leading into the puzzles. There’s a tip jar where you should leave a tip. That is always my one cool thing as we approach the Labor Day weekend.

John: I’m going to repeat one of my other one cool things, which is to get your flu shot. Flu shots are now available. The flu sucks. Don’t get the flu. Get the flu shot.

Craig: I was talking to my doctor, one of my doctors, because I’m a middle-aged Jew. I’ve got like 100 of them now. She said her thing was to wait until the end of September to get the flu and COVID booster because you get about three to four months before the vaccine doesn’t quite have the same potency. The flu and COVID will probably peak around December, January. That was her.

John: I love that she still believes that we’ll have flu shots.

Craig: She told me that the flu shots were locked in in terms of the strain and the production of them before the brilliant Trump administration decided that we don’t need to be healthy as part of their Make America Healthy Again thing.

John: I just believe that tomorrow they could come down and say, “Oh, no, we’re banning flu shots.”

Craig: I don’t think they’re going to ban flu shots. The bigger issue is next season, they will not provide the flu shot makers with their evidence for which strain will be predominant.

John: We’re getting way off topic. Even this last time, they did not convene the meeting that they were supposed to do. The manufacturers just had to figure it out themselves.

Craig: They did for this time, but next time is in question. I am the most pro-vaccine person on the planet. Maybe you’re right there tied with me. Megana, as we know, anti-vaxxer.

John: Stipulating that is not correct.

Megana: I love vaccines. Give me as many as you can.

Craig: Give me as many as you- I love a vaccine. I’ve always loved a vaccine. They now have, I think, their first measles death in Mississippi. Pointless measles death. Pointless. Heavy sigh. Anyway, Labor Day puzzle extravaganza, everybody.

John: That is our show for this week. Script notes is produced by Drew Marquardt. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answer many weeks. You will find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. If you’re following us there, you may see more stuff from our show in the weeks and months ahead.

You’ll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with links for all the things we talked about today, including the PDFs for the three-day challenges. In the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all these premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. We have new chairs in this office because of our premium subscribers. Thank you.

Craig: That’s why I’m sitting on this nice chair?

John: Yes.

Craig: Thank you, premium subscribers.

John: You can sign up to become our premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back-up episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Film Scores. Megana Rao, thank you for coming back on the show.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: Craig [unintelligible 01:28:23] question. Thank you, Megana.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Coming off of that outro music, let’s talk about more music. Jenny wrote in with a question.

Drew: From your perspective, what should a score aim to accomplish in a film or show? What sets a good scores apart from great ones? To what extent are you working with composers to capture texture or tone that you’re imagining versus leaving it in their expert hands? What are your thoughts on temp tracks? Are they a helpful tool or a creative hindrance?

John: Last week, we went to see John Williams’ show at the Hollywood Bowl, which is always great. One of the pieces was introduced as Adagio with motorcycles. Basically, John Williams had written this brilliant, clever piece of music, and then you basically can’t hear the music at all because there’s just motorcycle sounds over the whole thing, which raises the question like, oh, did he need to write that clever piece of Adagio music? The music’s great. Music is essential.

I love music in the movies I watch and the TV shows I watch, but there’s two very different patterns I notice. One is the music is there to support and it’s there so that there’s not silence. There’s a thing. It’s just filling some space. Then there’s the music that’s like, pay attention to this music. I’m thinking Blade Runner 2049. It just starts big and loud. The music is always a big part of what’s going to happen here.

Craig: There are so many different ways to explore how this works. To me, scoring is like writing again. It’s another chance to write. To answer, I guess, the last question, how important is temp music? Incredibly important, because when you’re editing, you know you’re going to need score in certain areas. You want it, and you want to make sure it’s working, and you want to be able to create something that feels like it’s being supported by the structure that music creates.

I think of scoring in two ways. There’s scoring that is connected to and consistent with what is happening on screen, and then there’s scoring that I just refer to as underscoring, which is scoring that punctuates or emphasizes what’s on screen. Somebody says something dramatic and the music goes, [mimics] that’s underscoring, which I tend to avoid, but some things it works great for. There’s also what I call, “Funny music,” which is never funny. It’s music for comedies, and it always sounds something like this. [mimics] I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. It destroys everything in its path.

Scoring is essential. It’s an essential part of the process for me, whether it was Hildur Gundadottir on Chernobyl or Gustavo Santaolalla on The Last of Us and David Fleming on The Last of Us, we do a session where we just talk through scenes, and then we let them do what they do, and then it comes back. I listen, and they send it connected to the scene, and I watch it. I listen, and then I give my thoughts. They’re always how it made me feel. I didn’t want to feel like that, or, oh, you’re making me feel like this, but I actually want to feel like this, and it’s all about the language of feeling. It’s exhaustive and exhausting and leads to some of the most beautiful stuff imaginable. I love score. I love it.

John: It reminds me of costume design. There’s some projects in which you want to notice what people are wearing. It has to stand out. It’s a big part of it, and there’s other ones where it’s just like everyone should plausibly be wearing what they would be wearing in real life. I don’t want to pay attention to those things. Music can work the same way where there’s times where it’s just supporting. You’re not really paying a lot of attention to it. Then there’s The White Lotus where it’s just like this whole scene is just this wild, crazy music, and that’s part of the delirious joy of that show.

Craig: Completely. There’s music that is more sound design than music. In Chernobyl, I think the first music we hear is when Legasov walks outside. He makes his little recording, and then he walks outside to go hide the audio tape and the scores. [mimics] That’s it.

John: The Hans Zimmer race. Something has happened there, yes.

Craig: It’s Hildur Gundadottir on a cello that has been distorted and lowered and all sorts of cool stuff, but it’s not melodic. I’m not even sure how you would notate it. It is sound design. Sound design and score often blend. With particular composers now, when you look at stuff like, for instance, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, that line between sound design and score, again, can get a little blurry, which is fun. Which I love.

John: Now, if we had the comedy music underneath, like Tron: Ares, that would be amazing. [mimics]

Craig: Brutal.

Megana: I was going to ask, since both of you have directed, and Drew is directing your first short.

Drew: Not first but a short.

Megana: A short this week. What questions are you asking yourselves when you’re meeting with your sound designer, your composer? What vision do you have going into it?

John: You have to speak to references. You can talk about your script, obviously, like what you’re feeling here, but you’re going to have to use metaphors. Working with Alex Wurman on the music for The Nines, we had to come up with the main theme before the frame was shot, because Ryan Reynolds plays it on the piano. We had to figure out what is that longing theme? What does it sound like? We know it’s going to be on a piano, so it has to make sense on a piano. How are we going to do that? [mimics] Figuring out what that was, was a very early part of the process.

That’s unusual. In most cases, you’re giving a sense of the overall space for something, and you’re probably casting that composer based on their previous work. You’re using their previous work to temp score it.

Craig: Absolutely. You don’t want to be talking to composers that have no evidence that they can do something like what you’re doing, but you, of course, don’t want them duplicating anything they’ve done. You just want to know you’re generally what I’m looking for. Then I think one of the things that helps is to say, “Look, here’s what I don’t want. Here’s what I don’t like. Then here’s what I am looking for and what I do like.” Then you just vibe it out. They should ideally read the script and have thoughts, but I will say some composers work very differently and achieve brilliant results.

The aforementioned Gustavo Santaolalla, Gustavo likes to score without looking at what’s on screen. He just knows, okay, this is what the scene is about. This is what the feeling is and the emotions are. I’m not going to watch the scene. I’m just going to write a piece of music. Let’s see if it fits. A lot of times it does. You make adjustments here and there, but that is specific to him. Look at process. I think when you talk to him, look at their prior work. Talk about process. Talk about your goals and your aims, and talk about the things you don’t want, and then pray, because God’s honest truth is you don’t know until you start getting stuff back from them. You just don’t.

John: You’ll hear stuff. Are you ever hearing music independent of picture? Are you sending your tracks and then you have to–

Craig: I never listen to music independent of picture. What I ask for is music when they send it to me– Scott Hanau, one of our music supervisors, is amazing this way, because he coordinates all of this. What I used to get back was the standard thing, which is here’s the scene. Here’s the cue. We’ve cranked the cue up to 11, and the scene is down to a 2, so that you can hear the music. My problem is that’s not how anyone’s going to hear this music. What I ask them is to also send me a version. Much like Scott, just do a basic shot in the dark mix here, so I generally know how this will sit. If I can’t hear a moment properly, I’ll go to the other one. I want to see how it sits.

John: Sometimes you have the luxury, just like you’re writing for an actor, you know in advance who the composers are going to be. The movies I’ve done with Danny Elfman doing the music, I have a sense of the world of his music and it’s just so helpful. I know, okay, I’m actually planning out for some space where we can get the– If I bring that in there, that’s going to be great. The opening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I knew I could really hear what the opening title sequence was going to be like, which is we’re in the factory assembling the chocolate bars and all that stuff. I could hear it even before he’d written a note of it.

Craig: That’s the joy of working with an established composer, because you know– I remember when I was reading the script for Dune, I don’t know if John Spitzer at the center or Eric Roth, but I think it was probably Denis. I think it’s when we maybe first see the worms, he wrote, in all caps, full Zimmer power. You know, okay, I know it’s full Zimmer power. It’s full Zimmer power is like [mimics].

John: You’re going to feel this in you.

Craig: It’s just like a thousand horns at the same time. When you’re starting out, and you’re talking to people that are also starting out, it’s a little tricky. You just got to vibe it out. If you have some temp pieces that are in the world, you can make a little mix tape of like, here’s the world that I’m thinking about.

John: The other thing that’s helpful, if you’re starting out and you’re making a lower budgeted film, you’ll have a conversation with your composer about like, what can we actually afford in terms of real instruments? My initial conversations with Alex Wurman were about like, well, piano, and he’s like, accordion. Hear me out because accordion can actually sound like a lot. It’s a much bigger sound than the one player would ultimately give you. It’s like, yes, you can digitally do a bunch of stuff, but we wanted some real things in there. Piano, accordion, harp actually gives you a lot of things, and then we can figure out, okay, what are the wins that are actually important and what are not important?

Craig: This is an ongoing battle. It’s been an issue also on Broadway as well where they have very strong unions that are protecting real players. The golden days of going to see John Williams and the LA Philharmonic doing the score for you and watching it live are slowly diminishing or rapidly diminishing, because you can create very accurate sounds with synthesizers and samplers. For what we do, maybe some of the bigger action cues rely on that for budget. I stay out of that discussion. I’m really just listening.

Happily, for Chernobyl and for a lot of stuff on The Last of Us, it really comes down to a person doing weird stuff in a room with Cellos. Gustavo loves a plastic tube. He loves a PVC pipe and his Ron Rocco, which is this very specific South American stringed instrument. I’m always just making sure it doesn’t sound synthy, because bad synthy sounds synthy unless that’s what you want, and then it’s great.

John: Going back to my wonderful thing in terms of when things feel artificial, you feel like there’s nothing really there. We do have a sense that there was an instrument. There’s something underneath that thing. It’s not just a waveform. It really was something that created that sound. Thanks for the question. Thank you, guys.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

Links:

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• Fixed-do vs. movable do solfège
• How to Tell if Something is AI-Written by Hollis Robbins
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• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.