Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/screenwriting-in-color).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 494 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Movies are written in black and white but filmed in color, except for Mank which is about the writing of a screenplay for a black and white movie, so the general point still stands that screenwriters must think about color. And today on the show that is exactly what we’ll do.

We will also have a new round of the Three Page Challenge with a special focus on how opening scenes are setting up the reader for the movie that follows. And, of course, we’ll answer some listener questions. Then in our bonus segment for premium members Craig and I will discuss our Olympic ambitions.

**Craig:** Oh, we have those?

**John:** Or maybe you had those at one point.

**Craig:** Oh yes.

**John:** Like our sort of fantasy. If you could be good at one Olympic sport in winter and summer games which sport would it be and why?

**Craig:** Oh, OK. That’s fun.

**John:** We might also talk about sort of whether we should have the Olympics and sort of the international implications thereof.

**Craig:** I think that’s also a pretty good – that will get us in trouble. And I want trouble.

**John:** No troubles at all there. But Craig I don’t know if you heard. The WGA is on strike.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** As we record this the WGA is on strike against the ABC quiz show called The Chase.

**Craig:** Oh god. No. No!

**John:** Not your episode of The Chase. So The Chase is this quiz show that opponents in it are big Jeopardy! winners. Like Ken Jennings and folks. And so it is a show that is going into its second season of filming in theory and the WGA has not been able to reach a contract with this show. And we talk about on our podcast how the WGA covers things made for big screens and for small screens, including game shows. The WGA covers shows like Jeopardy! and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link. This is a show that should be covered by that same kind of deal.

So, the writers on that show are currently on strike.

**Craig:** Hmm. See, I’m looking at the information here. It seems like ITV America, which is the company that produces The Chase, does have an agreement with the Writers Guild of America East, which is kind of the necessary substrate for a strike. You can’t have a strike if you don’t actually have a relationship I think with the company, or if you voted for a contract, or whatever. Anyway, the point being they have a deal with the WGA-E, and they’re apparently just not abiding by it.

**John:** Well, it sounds like there are things that are in that deal that are not up to the level of what a deal needs to be. And so those writers need pension and health benefits. They need residuals. They need the basic protections and they don’t have those yet. So that’s sort of what is at issue right now.

This is being handled by the East because East handles more sort of this kind of show, even though the show actually films out here. So, we hope this is resolved by the time you are listening to this podcast, but just to know that there was a WGA strike that very few people are participating in.

**Craig:** Yeah. And a lot of people may not understand that game shows require writers, particularly these kinds of trivia shows.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** The questions are writing. And people have to do the research and write them and put them in a script and stick them on a teleprompter.

**John:** I remember a campaign at some point called Somebody Wrote That.

**Craig:** The worst campaign the guild ever did.

**John:** Billboard, “Somebody Wrote That.”

**Craig:** I’m so glad you brought that up. It was my least favorite – the best thing about that, like we’re driving around LA and there’s this huge billboard and it has a quote from a movie and then a picture of a screenwriter and then it says, “Somebody Wrote That.” And I guess the point was like, see, actors don’t come up with these lines on their own, but my point was like who is that? Can you put their name on the billboard you idiots?

So, that was the worst campaign we ever did.

**John:** Yeah. But anyway so we will see what happens with this WGA strike action.

**Craig:** Well good luck to them.

**John:** In happier, more local news, so listeners likely know that my company makes Highland which is the screenwriting app for the Mac, which I use to write everything that I write. It is a free download on the Mac App Store and will remain a free download on the Mac App Store. It’s $49 to upgrade to the full version.

But for the past 18 months we’ve also done a student version which is the full pro version but just for people who are in university writing and film programs. And so we partnered up with individual schools to do that to make sure it all works right for them. And now we’re opening it up to everybody. So, if you are a student in a college level writing or film program and would like to get the full version of Highland free for a year there’s a whole new way to do that.

So you apply, you send in a photo of your student ID, and we send you the code to unlock it free for a year. So, if you’re a listener who would like this and you are in a university writing program or film program you go to Quote-Unquote Apps and click on For Students and we will get you set up.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s lovely of you. Well done.

**John:** Yeah, we do try.

Finally, we’ve been talking a lot about scheduling of movies. And this week a whole bunch of movies came sort of smashing around like little broken up iceberg pieces in the summer season. So Black Widow and Cruella are both in theaters and on streaming. It feels like everyone is just trying to figure out how big the summer box office is going to be and when things get back to normal.

**Craig:** Yeah, this one is another whack at the piñata of the theatrical movie business. Specifically because Cruella and Black Widow, they’re big movies, right? So they’re on par with what Warner Bros recently did. And they’re also doing this premier access thing. So you pay for Disney+ and then if you want to see Cruella or Black Widow when they come out that’s another $30.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And is that $30 for the year and then you kind of get everything in that premier access? Or is $30–?

**John:** No, it’s just for that title.

**Craig:** Holy cajole.

**John:** I say that with such confidence. I cannot promise you with that confidence. But I really do believe that it’s for that title.

**Craig:** That’s my move. OK, well, I’m interested to know. But either way that is pretty huge. Because on the one hand you think, well, geez, $30 to see one thing streaming when you’re already paying for Disney+ is a lot, but I think a lot of parents remember that not too long ago, like two years ago, if you wanted to take your two kids and one of their friends to a movie it was going to be way more than $30 because of all the food and everything. So, it’s still kind of a deal.

This is one more shot at the sustainability of the theatrical business. I have no idea where this is going to go. This is nuts.

**John:** It is nuts. So two things. First off, one of the things we need to remember about parents with young kids is you are just desperate to get out of the house. So, going out of the house to see a movie with your kids is a totally viable way to burn some hours on a weekend, as opposed to watching at home. Makes sense.

But I also say like I’m not vaccinated yet but I feel like when I am vaccinated this summer I am excited to see Black Widow and Cruella on the big screen. So I’m increasingly saying what about my own possible movie-going experience in the future here.

**Craig:** Yeah. One of the things that is in play here is the secret, not so secret, but the silent economic killer of the theatrical business which has always been marketing costs.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And you and I both know that the marketing costs as they went up were also starting to, I’m going to use the word corrupt, I don’t care, corrupt the creative process of making films, because where it used to be that creative people would say here are the movies that we as a studio want to make, and then marketing people said, “OK, well, let’s figure out how to sell that.” Once you were spending more on marketing than on the movie naturally that flipped.

So the marketing people were telling the creative people what kinds of movies they should pay for. Now, with streaming you don’t have anywhere near the costs involved, because you’re not asking people to leave their house and go anywhere. In fact, every single show on Disney+ will serve as an advertisement for Black Widow or for Cruella.

Furthermore, social media has kind of taking over the job of advertising for you. People just talk about it with each other. So, if a movie like Cruella, I don’t know what Cruella cost, but it looks pretty expensive. A movie like Cruella before in the old days they probably would have spent $150 million marketing that thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, if they only spend $30 million marketing that is a massive difference in how the profitability line is on that kind of movie. It’s enormous. I cannot overstate how big of a deal that would be if the big marketing buy of theatrical movies went away. That more than anything will change everything. And I have to argue probably for the better. Probably for the better.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, the big marketing spends really anchor a movie in people’s heads. And so you don’t get sort of the giant change everything franchises unless you sort of have that marketing push behind them I would argue. But, yes, when Netflix makes a movie that costs $100 million it really kind of just costs $100 million because they’re not spending a fortune on marketing that movie because it’s just they’re pushing it through their own channels. They’re putting up some billboards in the city where the actor lives but that’s it. And they’re not sort of doing the big nationwide campaign for it otherwise. So it’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

I’m making a movie for Netflix now and it feels like the right thing to be making for that platform and that service, but it’s going to be weird not to see commercials for it and sort of a push for it.

**Craig:** I get that. I just think that if television has taught movies anything about the way streaming works it’s there is value in being unique and good. And that that is more important than kind of putting an advertisement for your movie on every carton of milk in the world because people will find it and talk about it with each other and watch it. And you do save a ton of money. And hopefully this leads to movies returning to a more adventurous mindset and not just a kind of franchise-obsessed, navel-gazing, big, big event movie for PG-13 audiences only.

**John:** Yeah. We’ll see what happens.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** All right. Some follow up. Last week we talked about foreign levies and our own Stuart Friedel wrote in to say that foreign levies can be paid to your S-Corp but the WGA just needs a W-9 on file. So, if you are a loan-out corporation you can just register that with the WGA and they will pay it to your S-Corp rather than paying it to you as an individual person.

**Craig:** I did not know that.

**John:** Yeah, so things we learn ourselves. We have another foreign levies follow up here. Do you want to take that?

**Craig:** Sure. Bea asks, “Yesterday I got a WGA foreign levy for a project that was never made. It was a feature writer’s room, single day, major studio. Definitely hasn’t been made yet, if ever, but somehow the WGA is sending checks in its name. How’d that happen?”

**John:** So we won’t say what the name of this movie is, but Craig and I can both see it on the outline. I have absolutely no idea why you are getting this check for this movie that has not been made yet. Cash that check because the only reason the WGA got that check is because the studio wrote that check. And so it’s the studio’s fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not the WGA’s fault. Cash that check. I have no idea why you would be getting this check.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wonder if sometimes out of ease what happens is the countries will say like to Warner Bros, “Here’s a bunch of money that we have for your projects that are kind of…” Because remember they’re not collecting money off of the movies and shows that air. They’re collecting money off of the sale of blank tapes, disk drives, thumb drive, etc.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** So it may be that the studio kind of aggregates all of its expenses and says here’s how we will distribute that money, or here is how it should be distributed. They send a big list of information to the country. The country goes, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it, let’s send out that money to the WGA for these things. That’s my guess.

**John:** That’s probably the best guess we can make for this. Basically they had a list of what writers did you employ during this year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And Bea’s name was on that list and that’s what happened.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Well, cash that check. Whenever I got sort of like small checks for not a lot of money I always treated it as like Panda Express money. Ooh, I can get some eggrolls at Panda Express. That was a treat for me when I got those small checks.

**Craig:** Orange Chicken, man.

**John:** Oh, I love the Orange Chicken.

**Craig:** Everyone loves Orange Chicken. They figured something out. I remember when in the mall I noticed for the first time Panda Express had smartened up and did the double tray of the Orange Chicken. Because remember it used to be the same size tray as everything.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And then they were like, OK, fine, we give in, you people. You love sugar and fat. Here we go. Fine.

**John:** So good.

**Craig:** Yup. It’s delicious.

**John:** Some follow up on Episode 491, the deal with deals. Danielle asks, “Following up on your conversation about writer deals, can you cover if-come deals? Specifically how they may or may not be hurting newer writers.”

Craig, have you ever had an if-come deal?

**Craig:** I was offered one many, many, many, many years ago and I said no. But I understood the general wisdom of it. I understood that.

**John:** So if-come deals are really common in TV. And so what will happen in TV is you are a writer with an idea for a series. And so you go and pitch to a studio or to a production company and they say this is fantastic, we really love that idea. We are going to make a deal with you that’s pending us getting a successful setup at a network. And so basically I’ve pitched to Sony and Sony says, yes, we love it, we’ll make you a deal. If it’s if-come on getting a network, so an ABC, or CBS, or somebody else to do it.

Super, super common in TV. And you can sort of get why they do it because that studio is going to be paying you but they’re only going to be paying you if they actually have a home for that project. And so it’s just sort of a given way of doing business in TV.

In features it’s weird and I don’t hear about it in features I think mostly because if you wrote a spec script and somebody wanted to buy it but not really buy it, or sort of have the option to buy it that’s just called an option purchase agreement where they’re paying you some money now and a promise for a lot more money down the road. That’s standard in features. What I’m guessing may be happening here in features would be let’s say, what did we decide it was, it was not the Slinky Movie, not the Uno Movie, what are we–?

**Craig:** Oh, what are we up to now? Oh, Mister Clean?

**John:** Mister Clean. So let’s say the Mister Clean Movie. So the Procter & Gamble or whoever owns Mister Clean says, OK, we love your take on the Mister Clean Movie and we want to be the producer of record on this, so we are going to make a deal for you, but it’s going to be if-come based on whether we can actually get a studio partner to actually release the thing.

I would not be excited about that deal.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Because they are basically locking you up for a lot of time and they’re not paying you everything. There’s just no guaranteed money.

**Craig:** Well, even worse, what they’re doing is they’re purchasing insurance against an auction. And this is why I said no. And also I should say if-come was more common during the network dominance era, because now many streaming channels are their own studio, of course. But what they’re saying is like, OK, that’s a really cool idea. We can go and sell that to any one of 12 different places. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to lock you into what we’re going to pay you now and we’re only going to pay it to you once it lands at a place. That means is if there’s a huge competitive situation where everybody wants it the studio will benefit because the rights are going to go through the roof, the licensing fees will be massive. You won’t.

So, much better for you to be like, Nah. If I’m willing to bet on myself here I’d rather just see if a couple places want it and then they can fight over me and then I will also benefit from the competitive situation.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, you know, one of those.

**John:** It’s also important to understand that even if you have an if-come deal if they can’t find the buyer at the level that they were expecting, or the kind of situation they were expecting, they might come back to you and say like, OK, we couldn’t actually get that deal so we need to figure out a new deal that’s actually makeable for the thing we’re trying to do.

And so I’ve encountered that in my career where I got like a pretty sweet ass deal, on paper, but then we went out to the market. The one place that wanted it wasn’t going to pay the amount that would actually pay out the other places. So they were going to renegotiate your deal anyway. That also happens.

Having that quote, a good quote, could be helpful for future deals. So there’s some valid, some reason why you might want to do it. But I would say if you’re a newer writer being offered an if-come deal especially for a feature or for a TV project that feels like it already is kind of set up at one place, that just doesn’t make sense to me.

Like an if-come waiting for an actor to be attached, that makes me really nervous.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ll also get if-comes a lot when you’re dealing with a producer that has an exclusivity issue. So you go to a particular company and they’re like well we have a deal with Netflix and we are exclusive to them. So we’re going to make you an if-come deal because there’s nowhere else to go. That’s it. We’re going to go there or we’re going nowhere. At that point maybe makes a little bit more sense.

**John:** Yeah. But it also may make more sense to actually just pitch to the one place that you can go and try to make a deal.

**Craig:** Well, correct. And so then you’re gambling, right? And the interesting things about those arrangements is they can be a little incestuous. So these people have a relationship already with the streamer and they can make a kind of deal where you get screwed and so do you want to lock something in earlier? It’s complicated. Your agent or lawyer will have the best advice. But Danielle that’s basically the long and short of it.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, what is your favorite color?

**Craig:** Red.

**John:** My favorite color is blue. How long has red been your favorite color?

**Craig:** Since the first time someone asked me what’s your favorite color. I don’t know why. I don’t know why it’s always been red. There’s never been a question. And it’s not like, oh, I’ve got to wear red or I’ve got to paint my house red. I don’t do that. That’s stupid. I just like it.

**John:** Yeah. I’m that way with blue. It was always the first answer and I just like blue. And when I say blue I have a very specific blue. It’s like a Crayola Blue. The basic blue crayon.

**Craig:** Standard blue.

**John:** Is the kind of blue that defines my favorite color. But of course like all things as you grow up you develop maturity and you horizons expand and you come to appreciate many other colors that are wonderful out there. And so you get past the sort of like very rainbow colors of your youth.

But I want to talk about color because I’m reading this book, The Secret Lives of Color, by Kassia St Clair. It’s a couple years old but I’m just now reading it. Which goes through the history of how humans sort of came to be able to make the colors that we see and use. Like how dyes and pigments and sort of all these things actually came to be. Because dyes were incredibly expensive, and so it was so hard to find the things that actually got you to that color. And worth more than gold, ounce for ounce, over the annals of history. And it’s only through modern science that we sort of have the ability to reproduce all the colors that are out there.

And I’m reading this book but I’m also thinking about the script I’m writing and I feel like partly because I’m reading this book I’m just very aware of the colors of the scenes that I’m writing and sort of what is what color in what space. And even though I’m not writing those colors necessarily into scenes they’re definitely informing my choices. So I thought we might talk first about sort of how color works on screen and some of the iconic moments that we sort of think about where you couldn’t pull color out them.

**Craig:** That’s interesting. All right.

**John:** So I think of movies with amazing color palettes. Amelie. The greens of Amelie. The pink in Grand Budapest Hotel. 2001 is mostly white. And then there’s some sequences that are all red. So in the movie Knives Out Chris Evans is wearing a sweater. Craig, what color is that sweater?

**Craig:** It was an off-white.

**John:** Yeah. It was on off-white.

**Craig:** It was a bone.

**John:** American Beauty has the red flowers and she’s in the red flowers. Midsommar has a really limited color palette and it’s just the explosive colors of the flower headdresses. So color is such a part of our movies and yet we don’t think about it that much on the page. So, let’s spend some moments thinking about it on the page.

**Craig:** Well it’s hard to do because it is purely visual. Sound I think occupies maybe – well, it depends on your mind. I think everybody’s brain functions differently. For me I find the ability to hear sound from a page much easier than to visualize color so much of what’s on page is dialogue. We’ve been trained since childhood to read books where people are talking to each other and so we are trained to hear words. And therefore we can hear sound effects. And sound effects are also very onomatopoeia-able.

So, well, I made a word. I can describe with words what a smash is. Describing colors turns basically into a simile fist. So it’s tricky to do. And it’s something that I think one of the first things that happens when a director reads a script is that can start to fill in more. The director who is going to be doing the first few episodes of The Last of Us, made this movie, Kantemir Balagov made this movie called Beanpole and color is an intense part of it and so much of our conversation already has been about color and specific color choices and what it means and why they pop up.

You’re actually putting your finger on something that I think is lacking probably in my toolbox. And I don’t think of enough. And maybe I should think of more.

**John:** Yeah. Something I’m trying to be more aware of as I’m writing, but you’re also right that a lot of times our color conversation becomes part of the conversation, becomes our discussion with the director and ultimately a production designer and an art director about how things are going to look beyond what’s just happening on the page.

And so when a filmmaker is thinking about how to shoot something there’s a discussion of color palette. And color palette not just like here’s all the colors, it’s like, no, no, we are being deliberate about what colors we’re using and what colors we’re not using. And really it’s that omission of colors that becomes even the stronger statement. So, in my movie The Nines it has three different segments. The first segment is really leaning towards reds and yellows. And so that informs the color of the light, but also just the wardrobe. We really go into yellows and reds. You will not see any blue or green anywhere in that section.

When we get to section three it’s all blues and greens. And we’re outdoors in the forest and it’s wet. And the light is whiter and bluer and colder. And you will not see any reds and yellows. That is a very common set of choices that filmmakers are going to make about how they’re going to shoot a thing just to make something feel deliberate and not random.

**Craig:** Correct. And I think you’re right that a lot of times it’s the subtractive aspect of it that strikes us. It’s a subconscious thing. We don’t really know that we’re not seeing something. Just like we don’t know we’re not hearing something. But it does create a subconscious, psychological impact which is something of course everybody wants. As opposed to just, oh wow, that’s a red movie.

So, removing things is a really interesting choice. The other aspect of color that I do think about when I’m writing, it’s not specifically a color choice, but overall is a question of saturation

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So saturation is just how – I guess it’s how vivid the colors are. So when you think about, like for instance you did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Very vivid, right. Candy colors, which is no surprise.

**John:** Once we’re inside the factory. But outside the factory it’s very desaturated.

**Craig:** Exactly. So you make these choices and generally speaking we think of very saturated color as heightened reality and desaturated, particularly very desaturated as verité. So, the opening sequence in almost all of Saving Private Ryan is really desaturated to the point where you’re like, wait, is this black and white? It’s that desaturated. And it makes us feel like we are in something that’s super grounded. And there’s no right or wrong, obviously. It’s a question of tone.

So, with the stuff that I’m writing now I tend to want to write towards desaturation.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a scene I was working on this past week where I wanted that desaturated feel and I was thinking about well how am I going to get that. What is the natural way to do that? And I decided it’s two sides of a FaceTime call. And so I decided on the side I wanted desaturated. Oh, it’s going to be raining on that side and it’s going to be a guy outdoors standing under extra covering, but it’s raining. And that is sort of naturally god’s desaturation. It’s like you’re pulling the color out of things.

**Craig:** God’s desaturation.

**John:** And let’s talk about how color is created, because you can’t talk about color without talking about light. So, what color is the light? Basically what time of year is it? What time of day is it? Sort of where are you at geographically and sort of emotionally at that time?

I just watched Another Round, which I really loved, and it’s set in Denmark. And most of it takes place in sort of summery months, and so it never really fully gets dark. And so the colors are really strange. And it’s sort of always at most like a twilight. And that really affects sort of how you feel about the things you’re seeing and the choice to set those scenes at those times of day versus bright sunlight really does impact how those scenes play out.

**Craig:** Yeah. The impact of light on things, it’s a little scary for me to write it because when you start to get into how the light changes, the color of something as something moves through it, you do risk that kind of purple dialogue that we want to shy away from.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** A lot of new writers are talking about the golden hue as it turns–

**John:** The crimson sky.

**Craig:** And yada-yada-yada. And, of course, when cinematographers read that stuff they kind of roll their eyes and they’re like, OK kid, but this is not actually how light works. But there is a feeling, and I always feel that the goal is rather than to be technical – I like to just be honest, you know, the way the light hits you it makes you sad. Just say that. I think cinematographers vastly prefer that because they know how to achieve that. Just like actors are just like tell me I’m supposed to be sad. I know I can do that. So, I do think about light that way.

And then there are gags, which is our all-purpose moviemaking, television-making term for special things. So there’s a gag where a particular beam of light is coming down through a shaft and it’s combining with something else. Well that you can always call out and describe because that’s really specific.

**John:** Yeah. Well one thing you may choose to call out and describe is the colors that we’re seeing on screen, especially if they’re impacting characters. So characters are making choices about what clothes they put on, how they do their makeup, and that will have an impact. And so I’m definitely not arguing that you’re going to label the colors for every single thing a character is doing or wearing, but it’s important to highlight some things.

Like in the thing I’m working on right now it’s basically a two-hander and one of the characters has sort of a uniform that he wears every day. He just doesn’t want to think about the clothes he’s wearing. And so I’m able to describe what that is that he’s wearing. And the other character I describe as being unafraid of color and pattern. And that just tells you, like, it was a signal to the costume designer you can push this guy a little bit. This guy lives in a heightened space. And so I’m not really calling out color so much as sort of like the range of choices that should be open as we’re visualizing this character.

**Craig:** It’s such a good point. And it’s why I wish that movies would function more like television shows in the sense of how a writer interacts with key department heads, like costume. Because, you know, I’m writing a scene, or I wrote it, in an episode and there’s a crowd of people. Who they are is not important. I just want people to notice one particular woman because something is going to connect through to later. She’s not going to have a name. She doesn’t have dialogue or anything like that.

So, what I’ve done is given her a particular piece of clothing with a particular color. As I’m doing it I’m well aware that this feels very Schindler’s List. There’s the little girl in red where everyone else is in black and white. And so I don’t want to be that. But what I want to be able to say to the costume designer is this is what this means. This is what I’m just trying to achieve. Now tell me how you would go about doing it. Let’s take a look at some choices. I can always go back and revise that. But this was the intention. It is a relationship that should exist in movies and weirdly in features, for whatever reason, everyone feels the need to aggressively sequester the screenwriter from everyone else. And it just, I don’t know why other than directorial insecurity. I don’t know. It’s just bizarre.

**John:** I’m thinking back to go, my first movie, and Sarah Polley’s character, Ronna, where’s this iconic sort of red leather coat. And that’s not scripted in there, but the idea that she would have a sort of signature look, that makes total sense. What is scripted in as a color is that Adam and Zack are driving a yellow Miata. And a yellow Miata is actually just a very specific joke. And I knew it would also photograph well at night and so you could see it in these dark scenes. But them driving a yellow Miata actually does pay off. It’s a recognizable car. It also tells you something about them as characters.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that becomes important. Again, we’re always arguing for specificity, but as a writer you have to be very deliberate about what things you’re putting in and what things you’re putting out. So we’re not saying to make everything a color but to be thinking about color and thinking about whether color could be helping you tell the story, especially what’s happening in the scene.

**Craig:** 100%. And if you find yourself in a specific moment wondering what you can do to get the awesomeness of your mind’s image across think about color. Because there may be a point in your script where you may want to hammer it and help people see. I think about that moment in The Last Jedi where the one spaceship goes light-speeding through another one and splitting it apart. And it’s so white. But it’s also starlight white. And I don’t know if Rian made that clear on the page, because he’s also directing and he doesn’t have to necessarily communicate it on the page the way we might have to with a different director.

But it was a moment where you go, ah, sound stops, this incredibly bright light shines, and I can see where a signature moment could really use a full attention to color on the page. So, it’s a good choice to make when you’re looking for something special as well.

**John:** And I haven’t gone back through Scott Frank’s scripts for Queen’s Gambit, but that is a series that uses color quite aggressively to establish time period. Because different time periods have different colors that are predominate. And so calling out mustard yellow appliances, that’s not just painting the walls, that’s actually anchoring you into, oh, this is what this kind of kitchen feels like because mustard yellow is a very specific time period.

And so just be aware of that. I think if you’re doing anything period it’s worth looking at sort of what the colors were that were dominant at that time because it may be worth calling those out.

**Craig:** Time and place.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Because there are places that have colors. The colors of 1980’s Soviet Union, well they’re colors. I mean, you know what they are. We certainly did our research and there’s certain ones that keep popping up and they’re glorious. I mean, they’re not colors we used. I guess on one level you’d go that’s objectively an ugly color, but on another level you go it’s weirdly kind of beautiful and hypnotizing. So think about that in terms of place as well because no question that color is reflected by culture in huge ways. There’s just certain cultures just have a different point of view on color than others.

**John:** So my advice for screenwriters going forward here, listening to this conversation, as you’re watching movies and TV shows be aware of color and be aware of when you think those choices of color were deliberate and sort of how early in the process those choices of color might have been made. Because I suspect you can retroactively write the scenes and decide, oh, they really called out that color quite early on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And then as you’re going through the outside world just try to be more aware of the colors that you’re seeing. Because imagine yourself in a scene in a space. What would be the predominant color? And so if you’re hiking in the Grand Canyon you’re just going to be overwhelmed by that red color. And so that is going to influence any scene that is being shot there. If you’re in certain forests it’s just going to be overwhelmingly green unless you’re doing something to desaturate it. It’s going to be just super, super green.

So just be thinking about what the impact of color will be if you were to watch this on a screen.

**Craig:** Great advice.

**John:** Cool. All right, let’s get to our Three Page Challenge. So, this time we’re doing things a little bit differently. So let’s establish first what’s normal about the Three Page Challenge is we invite our listeners to send in the first three pages of their movie or their script and we read through them and offer our honest feedback. We’ve been doing this since very early on in the show.

But based on our conversation last week we said like you know what’s interesting about the Three Page Challenge is we’re just reading these pages in a vacuum and we don’t have any sense of what’s happening in the rest of the story, so we don’t know whether these opening scenes are actually setting up the movie that we think they are.

So what we asked our listeners to do is to send in their three pages but also give us a log line or a description of what happens in the rest of the script so we can see whether we were right and whether we set these up right. So let’s welcome on our producer, Megana Rao, to get us set up for this.

**Megana Rao:** Hey guys.

**John:** Hey. So we sent out an email to our premium subscribers on Sunday afternoon saying like, hey, we’re going to try this thing. Send in your script and send in your log line, too. And how many responses did we get?

**Megana:** And we got 190 responses. I read all of those.

**Craig:** Oh wow. Oh man.

**Megana:** By Tuesday night my brain was absolute mush. So I had to ask Bo to help me narrow it down from like the top 10 to 15.

**Craig:** Thank you, Bo. Thanks for helping, Bo. But so you read nearly 600 pages.

**Megana:** Yes. But if I found two typos like pretty early on I was like I’m not going to keep reading this.

**Craig:** Ooh. I like it.

**John:** That was a new thing I asked Megana to put in as a check because I get frustrated when we do a Three Page Challenge and you and I spend time talking about stupid typos on the page. And so going forward if Megana sees typos they go away. We’re not going to consider them anymore. Because you just don’t send in your stuff with typos. Have someone else read this first.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you want us to care about, at the very least you have to care about it.

**John:** Yeah. And also so this episode will have an element of surprise and mystery because Megana has seen the writers’ log lines for these things, the synopses, but you and I haven’t. So we’re going to speculate what we think the script is about and then she will tell us what the writer thinks the script is about.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** All right. Let’s get us started. Megana, can you talk us through Rinky Dink by Stephen Brower. And we’ll have a PDF in the show notes, but if you could give us a quick synopsis.

**Megana:** So Elias, 28, films a promo video for his aunt, Janet Witherbaum, a bronze-level figure skater in her 40s, at a skating rink in Minnesota. Janet is raising money for her trip to the National Championships of Adult Amateur Figure Skating. Elias tries to teach Janet a TikTok dance which she doesn’t get. Through talking head interviews we learn that Elias’s parents have died and that Janet taught him to skate but doesn’t allow him to skate at her gala events.

**John:** Craig Mazin, what was your first read and instinct on Rinky Dink?

**Craig:** Well, I was enjoying. The Minnesota kookiness, like wacky Minnesotans is a well-mined area, you know, from Fargo, and the Fargo show. But I’m a sucker for a good ice skating comedy and it definitely feels like a comedy. And I liked the way it started. Janet was an interesting character. I liked the say she was described and I liked the way she performed. I could see it. I could see the whole thing.

I ran into trouble on page two. So, I was cruising along. But on page two what happens is we go from this POV of an iPhone that is recording her and then there’s a wide shot of her nephew, Elias, shooting her through the iPhone. OK, cool, I get it. We went from an iPhone POV to that. And then it just says, “Elias Talking Head.” And he starts talking and I’m like where is he? I didn’t understand until quite a bit later that what’s happening is Stephen is putting Elias in one of those like Office-style testimonials somewhere else, but that needs to be spelled out really clearly. Because I was baffled for a bit about where the hell he was.

My other issue was I couldn’t quite get a read on Elias’s age. I mean, we are told that he’s 28. And we’re told that he’s kind of sweet and very easily steamrolled, which I liked. But he was interacting with her the way teenagers interact with old people. You know? Like “Come on let me show you the latest TikTok dance or let me say randos.” He didn’t seem like somebody on the edge of 30. So I was a little confused by the character there.

But I like the setup of things. It seemed like there was an interesting concept. Elias was still fun. And I thought there was a really good line when he says, “This year I worked up the courage to ask Janet if she would mind,” you know, to perform. “And she said, ‘yes,’ she would mind.” Which I liked.

This is cold open for presumably a series. It does not end with much of a punchline. I think we talked about last week how important punchlines are, whether they’re dramatic or comic. And this one just sort of ends. So that was an issue.

**John:** Craig, I literally wrote “not quite enough punchline.”

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** So, this feels like Modern Family. This feels like Modern Family, sort of Best in Show kind of space in that – whether or not there’s a documentary conceit like the way there is in The Office, or it’s just like for whatever reason they can talk directly to camera in these confessionals, it has that feel. And I mean that in a really good way. Like if I were to read this whole script and the whole script was to this level I’d be like, oh, this is a person who can write a Modern Family kind of show and shows real finesse with it and the ability to tell a joke and sort of get things going.

I have the same concerns you do about Elias though because I had forgotten that he was 28 so I just kept aging him down and down as I flipped through the pages.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Weirdly I know a lot about his parents dying and stuff like that. I know a lot of backstory, but I don’t get the great sense of who he is individually and specifically. And I’m asking a lot for the first three pages, and so I don’t want to sort of push it too far, but I don’t have a great sense of who he was at the end of these three pages in the way that in a Modern Family or in The Office I felt like I would have in the first three minutes. And so that’s a thing which I think can be worked on.

But let’s talk about some of the things that work really well here.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Page one, “Right now and always she means business.” Great. That scene description on the page it’s working really nicely for me here. Elias says, “Sorry, are you sure though? That’s what it’s called.” “No, I know.” “National Championships for Adult Amateur Skaters.” The just repeating it again to get the extra underline on the joke works really well and has a good sense of it.

On page two, here’s an opportunity to just trim a line but also I think works better as a parenthetical. So, Elias has his talking head. And so the “’whole social media thing, so’… He crosses his fingers. “’Her idea.’” I wouldn’t have broken out to the action line for that. I would have just kept in parentheticals crossing his fingers. It saves you a line and also keeps that thought together because it really should be one thought.

**Craig:** Right. I totally agree with that. I thought that one thing Stephen did pull through these three pages in terms of Elias is that he has got one of those indomitably happy spirits. So even when someone is kind of being insulting to him, or mean, he just keeps on smiling. You know, he’s like okie-dokie. So, he has a little bit of that weeble-wobble, you can tip him over but you can’t knock him down. And so I liked that. I liked him.

And so that’s why I kind of have a suspicion about where this is going, but you know, look, I’m not in possession of a log line.

**John:** What you’re saying about indomitably happy, like if he’d called that out on page one or page two, sort of like shortly after meeting him, that’s a fair thing to note because that colors what we’re seeing of the rest of his lines.

**Craig:** Right. It could contextualize that stuff for people a little bit better. I agree. But I thought that what was working here was that Janet feels like an interesting potential villain and Elias feels like an interesting potential hero. I like that the hero doesn’t quite get that the villain is the villain. And I think mostly other than the kind of simple clerical business like letting me know that we’re dealing with kind of Office testimonial, including where are they when they do it, you just need to kind of give us a good ending there. Because it just sort of petered out.

**John:** So this is the part of this special episode where we speculate about what the rest of this pilot is. And so I’m guessing that while they are central characters to this that there’s actually a pretty – there’s a bigger ensemble at work here. Because it feels like that kind of show. And so we’re going to see more of that family. Meemaw may still be alive there. And I think since Elias is our point of view character it’s going to be sort of centered around him. And so he will be sort of the straight man in – the “straight man” – amid all these sort of crazy, kooky people around him.

And so this first episode will go up through her event to raise money for her going off to this championship. And that things will go awry in trying to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Certainly we’ll have lots more characters. I can’t shake the feeling that this is going to turn into Elias versus Janet. And Elias is going to get a chance to skate in the Adult Amateur Figure National Championships. And either Janet is going to become his coach, or Janet will – so Janet has to leave the dream behind and help her nephew achieve his dream. Or, that they actually aggressively compete against each other, which would be fascinating.

But it does seem like ultimately this is going to turn into Elias hopefully in some final showdown a la Strictly Ballroom or something.

**John:** Megana Rao, can you come back and tell us what does Stephen Brower say happens in the rest of this script.

**Megana:** All right, so this is the log line we got from Stephen for Rinky Dink. “A charmingly delusional 40-something figure skater must prove her work among apathetic has-beens, cutthroat mothers, and snotty little children.”

**Craig:** Oh, so Elias is just sort of along for the ride.

**John:** Yeah, so she’s the central character.

**Craig:** That’s interesting.

**John:** That can work, also.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** I mean, we’ve definitely built shows around sort of a delusional central figure before.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, that makes total sense, right? So it’s maybe more of an ongoing thing. But, you know, this is the fun part. You kind of guess from these three pages. It’s no surprise that you might think that, OK, the thing that the three pages sort of highlights is what you would imagine everything to be about. But that’s interesting. I hope that Elias does get a chance to perform in that show. Because he’s sweet and he deserves it.

**John:** Nice. All right. Let’s look at Twilight Run by Andrew McDonald and Nick Sanford. Megana, start us off.

**Megana:** Twyla, 30s, wakes up in a 1980s Camaro next to a character titled Dipshit. Dipshit tells her she needs to take the edge off and offers Twyla a pack of cigarettes that she throws out the window. We cut to Twyla, Dipshit, some henchmen, and a French scientist in the pasture outside of the car. The French scientist claims that he has a world-changing technology and will only deal directly with Twist Jackson.

Twyla tells him he’s out of luck. Suddenly, a cowboy figure rides in on horseback. This is Twist Jackson. He exchanges briefcases with the French scientist who tries to warn Twist of the Twilight Run. Twist shrugs off the warning and later opens the box to reveal a swirling green gas.

**Craig:** You know. The usual.

**John:** The things that happen. This is a heightened world. And so one of the reasons why this made the finalist list is because we could talk about tone. We can sort of talk about what universe you’re setting up. And this is a clearly heightened universe. And I think the things that worked in this were about setting up what kind of heightened universe it is.

I don’t sort of really know what the rules of this universe are, but things are a little bit goofy in sort of a Buckaroo Banzai or a Rick and Morty kind of sense. And it’s good to see that by the end of page three. I got a sense that there’s some logic behind this even though I don’t quite understand what’s happening here.

My biggest issue was Twyla who is identified as our hero. I know nothing about her by the end of this. I really have no great insight into sort of who she is and why she’s special, or what her deal is. And instead Twist Jackson is the person who is sort of occupying things. So, by the end of these three pages I wanted a better sense of what makes Twyla interesting other than sort of being kind of grouchy and spacing out. I didn’t get a great sense of that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What were you seeing Craig?

**Craig:** Definitely Buckaroo Banzai. I mean, this just seems like an ode or an homage to Buckaroo Banzai. We could be totally wrong but that’s surely what it feels like at least through these three pages.

Couple of things. Tonally, there is a little bit of a mismatch because the first page feels tonally rather grounded actually. It’s just a couple of people in a car. They’re talking to each other. I was a little bit confused about, again, where we were. When I see somebody in a car in my mind they are – she’s behind the wheel. And then she looks over at – is she looking over to the right, to the passenger seat? Or is she looking out the window to a car next to her?

**John:** And I would say that the first two-thirds, “a woman’s face through a rearview mirror,” like I just didn’t really quite know what was happening there. And so even the second reading through I didn’t quite know what I was seeing, or why I was seeing it.

**Craig:** Correct. And I think that this underscores a larger issue that I want to talk to Andrew and Nick about. But the one thing I do know for sure is that the French scientist’s dialogue, “This discovery will change the world. I could have sold it to nations the world over. I made a deal with Twist Jackson. I want to deal with Twist Jackson,” even if the tone is heightened that’s just annoying. You have to kind of establish that a character lives in a world of bad dialogue to have him successfully deliver the bad dialogue. But we just met him. It’s literally the second – the first thing he says is, “Where is he?” which is, I don’t know anything, and then the second thing he says is this incredibly arch, villainy plot exposition thing.

So, again, you can get away with it if you know that that’s the world that guy lives in, but until you do harder to get away with.

Here’s the bigger issue, the biggest issue, and it ties directly to into what John is saying about how we don’t know anything about Twyla. There is no sense of perspective in these three pages. None. The perspective is I think a camera.

**John:** I felt like I was in a wide shot for the whole time.

**Craig:** Yes. Exactly. Because nothing is centered on somebody observing. Everything just happens and we’re observing, which is kind of no good. Especially when we’ve established a hero. The reason that we’re so confused about what the hell is going on is because you guys have this visual reveal that you just sort of toss out there. Like they’re in a flat open pasture. Well that is not where we expect a 1981 Z28 Camaro to be, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. So make a reveal out of it. Acknowledge that we’re not quite sure where we are, whatever it is.

And then this conversation, give me a sense that Twyla is having reactions. When Twist Jackson does show up, essentially completely contradicting what Twyla said, what does she think? We know what the French scientist thinks, but what does she think? When he shows up and grabs this thing what is she doing? She’s gone. She literally is gone. But somebody’s perspective has to be the perspective.

And it’s one scene. And in one scene, or one connected scene basically once we reveal where we are, one character has the perspective. One. So who?

I don’t mean POV. I just mean who are we kind of anchoring to?

**John:** Yeah. Like who is our entry point character? We’re sort of standing in their shoes as the scene is happening. And we don’t have that here yet.

**Craig:** We don’t.

**John:** Let’s talk a little bit about the words on the page. “Asleep, her head resting on a plain white pillow.” Well, there’s a color, just white. White pillow. Dipshit has prelap. It’s not really a prelap because it’s not like he’s going into really future stuff.

**Craig:** I circled that also. I was like it’s not prelap.

**John:** Yeah, so that’s just off-screen, or voice over. You can do either one of them. Both of them are acceptable here. But that’s not really prelap.

But that whole first sequence I just didn’t get the point of it. I really had a hard time understanding what that was. So, if you need that, if this really becomes important for your story that you need that, great, but I feel like just that precious time and you need – we talk about sort of the first line of dialogue in a movie, the first image in a movie is so crucial, so precious. Just to be wasting it on something that we can’t understand or really see, it’s not good. So I think starting someplace else will help you.

**Craig:** Yeah. I also want lines to be motivated. We’re going to see this issue come up in our next three pages as well. So in the very beginning, “TWYLA, our hero. 30s, short hair, black bomber jacket. Don’t fuck with her, she won’t fuck with you. Lounging behind the wheel, she looks over at: SOME DIPSHIT…” This is what you’ve described. I’m looking at a woman. She is sitting there. And then she turns for no reason to a guy who then says something. Like he was waiting for her to look at him for him to say what he’s saying which makes no sense. Especially when he’s saying “you keep zoning out.” Why would he say that after she’s turning to look at him?

That’s not what zoning out means. If she’s zoned out and then she hears, “(OS) You keep zoning out,” and then she turns and looks. So you see what I’m saying? And again that helps drive perspective so we understand we’re with her. That’s kind of important.

**John:** Lastly, these three pages had more colons in it than I’ve sort of ever seen in a script. Basically Andrew and Nick have made a choice that colons are going to be there dashes. And it’s fine. I’m not complaining. It’s a way of doing things. And so in places where you or I might use dashes or some other piece of punctuation they’re using colons. It’s fine.

**Craig:** Works.

**John:** Go for it. There’s a whole range of styles of work and at least it’s consistent. There were no other real problems on these pages in terms of like formatting screenwriting stuff, so go for it. If that’s your style knock yourself out.

**Craig:** Exactly. So, you know, perspective guys. Big one.

**John:** All right. So Craig we’ve got to speculate. What happens in this script?

**Craig:** Oh boy. Well you’ve got this really weird thing going on in the very first shot that’s like some sort of dreamy thing. I think it’s Buckaroo Banzai and I think that Twist Jackson is maybe an idiot and I think maybe Twyla is going to have to save the world from Twist Jackson’s arrogance as he seeks to do something with the swirling green stuff that leads to the Twilight Run.

**John:** Yeah. I think the box with the swirling green gas is a MacGuffin and there are going to be a bunch of people after it. And what this deal was and sort of the bigger stakes of it all are going to be important. And that she will be forced to make a choice about which side she’s on. That’s my guess.

**Craig:** Now let’s find out how we did.

**John:** Megana, what’s the truth?

**Megana:** Wait, can I prolong the reveal and ask you guys a question?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Yes.

**Megana:** What do you think of the character description that’s “some dipshit who will get blown up by page nine?”

**Craig:** Great question. I personally have no problem with it. I think it’s a tone signifier.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So it’s the first indication that we might be dealing with a bit of a wacky heightened reality. I’m totally cool with that. That page unfortunately didn’t have anything that the movie viewer or TV viewer would detect that would indicate a heightened tone. It only had kind of a very mundane situation between two people. So it’s a little bit of a cheat. If the visuals matched that attitude I’d be totally cool.

**John:** Yeah. I agree. I mean, I should mention that I was never clear who the goons were working for. Sometimes it seemed like Twyla’s goons and sometimes it seemed like the French guy’s goons. So just be aware of that, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think there’s two sets of goons.

**John:** Too many goons.

**Megana:** So here is their log line. Five years after a deep undercover operation ended in failure a former ATF agent teams up with a smart but socially awkward tech specialist to infiltrate a deadly cult and stop an arms deal that if successful could alter the very fabric of reality itself.

**Craig:** That’s plot. We don’t quite get what the character stuff is there. It’s so funny, we only think about stuff with character. But again log lines are very plotty, aren’t they?

**John:** They are very plotty. Yeah, I guess I could buy her as a former ATF agent who then discovers this sort of heightened universe world. But I feel like Twist Jackson exists as a semi supernatural character, just sort of appears out of nowhere and rides a horse. So, yeah, it’s not quite what I would guess. But teaming up to stop a thing, sure, you’re setting that up right here on page three.

**Craig:** There’s no sense of tone in that log line which I think actually might be a mistake. I think it’s good to kind of indicate – the way that he’ll get blown up in nine pages. Indicate a little bit of a sense of that heightened-ness because otherwise people are going to read this and go like “What is this?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Embrace the Buckaroo.

**John:** That could be Mission: Impossible.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** That could be a whole bunch of different set ups.

**Craig:** It could be a billion things. And it seems like what these guys are going for is Buckaroo Banzai. I mean, the dude is named Twist Jackson for god’s sakes.

**John:** Cool. All right, it’s time for our third and final Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** By the way, we’re doing poorly. I just want to point out. O for 2.

**Megana:** Great. So South Carthay by Alex Rennie. In the middle of the desert 11-year-old Andy watches the 1988 film Hellraiser 2 with his brother Parker, 13, and their pit bull, Jules. Parker is blind and relies on Andy to narrate the movie to him. Their mother, Maggie, 35, speaks to her agent Karen on the phone in her home office. Karen tries to set up a meeting for Maggie’s new book in Santa Monica but between doctor’s appointments for her sons Maggie doesn’t have any availability. Karen urges Maggie to move from the desert to Los Angeles.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Craig, do you want to start us off.

**Craig:** This, I’m going to talk about a couple things. My first question and I still don’t have an answer for it is what year is this.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Because they’re watching a movie from 1988, but I’m not sure if they’re just watching it as an old movie or if this is 1988. And it will become relevant in a little bit.

But there are two instances of a problem in here that I alluded to in the prior pages and that is – I don’t know what else to call it – the movie waiting. It’s like reality waits for something to happen. So here’s what happens at the very, very beginning. We get a description of a two-story house in the center of a barren desert. It’s very, very hot.

“The scene is suddenly interrupted by a demonic voice. Hellraiser, prelap,” once again not prelap, “you solved the puzzle box. You summoned us, we came.” And my question is how does that suddenly happen? The movie is on, right? Like it’s not like somebody suddenly starts up a remote for the movie.

What you can do, Alex, if you want to just not have rando dialogue and then that line have music that we go like what is this weird music. That’s weird music for this. And then the line would go, oh, that was score from a movie. But the point is the movie can’t wait. It can’t just suddenly come in.

Because we then go to a television screen and we realize that these two kids, Parker and Andy, have been watching it. Have been watching. Not just started, right?

I liked the reveal that Parker is blind. I thought that was really well done. Because first I was a little bit like I don’t understand why he’s asking these questions that he’s asking. And then I was like, oh, that’s why. And I love that feeling, right. There’s a joy as a moviegoer or television watcher to think that you got the writer and then you realize they got you. So I like that.

The problem of the world waiting for something to happen occurs again. These guys are watching TV and at the same time I assume their mom is on the phone with her agent. And that scene begins with the agent on the phone saying, “Mags, I sent them your book yesterday.” What were they talking about before? So the phone rings, I answer it, and then I just wait, wait, wait, oh the camera is here. “Mags, I sent them your book yesterday.” That is not how that works.

So you need to pick them up in mid-conversation, or have the phone ring and have her answer. Either way you can’t just suddenly have this line start in. Especially because it’s good news and it just makes no sense to have her waiting.

There’s a story problem here that you’re describing, or a character problem rather, that Maggie is being – she’s a book author and she’s being told she needs to have a meeting in Santa Monica at noon tomorrow and her problem is that Andy has a doctor’s appointment, so maybe they can do Sunday. This sort of like, ah-ha, single mom raising kids trouble. But the issue is this feels old because we’ve just spent a year not having to go to Santa Monica. Like you can Zoom. So that’s why I want to know what year is this.

**John:** Craig, I was also concerned about what year it was based on page two, “Maggie sits in front of a desktop word processor, a house phone pressed to her ear.” And I’m like, wait, what universe is this? First off, what is a desktop word processor?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** A desktop PC I guess? Her desktop word processor, are they talking about that post-typewriter but before it was a real computer thing?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s a landline because that’s just what it is? Because that’s conceivable but that’s a very specific time period. And I don’t think that was really what Alex was going for here. So, again, one word choice of saying word processor rather than computer threw me and made me question what year this was happening in.

**Craig:** Or maybe it is happening in 1988 or 1989 and Alex just wants us to suss it out. And I guess what I would say is you need to give us a clearer indication than that. There just needs to be a clear sense, especially because they’re watching a scene from the 1988 horror feature. So they’re watching it on television. It’s either on video tape. The point is they’re not going to see it in theaters, so it’s not 1988. So when is it?

OK, so you’ve got to figure that out. And then finally I would say that the last bit here where Maggie is arguing with Karen about where she lives feels a little soft.

**John:** I didn’t buy it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just don’t buy it. It just didn’t make any sense. Like it doesn’t matter that she got Road R as opposed to R Road. And she wouldn’t know that that’s where the airplane graveyard is. It doesn’t seem – and also this entire discussion feels very elementary. This is a real problem, but the way they’re discussing it and the way that Karen is responding just feels very elementary. Karen does not feel like a human. She feels like a plot machine.

**John:** So here’s where I liked about the characters, and the setup, and the world. And so I’m going to – and I guess this ties into where I think the story is actually going. I liked the brothers and one brother is blind. I liked the mom, the setup. I like them being out in the desert. I thought there was a promising space for a movie there. And I don’t think they’re actually going to stay out in the desert. I think they’re going to move to South Carthay, which is Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Just my guess about why it’s titled that. So I like that in the setup. And so I dug these pages even though I thought a fair number of things weren’t working.

One thing I want to point out is just right at the top, “EXT. DESERT – DAY 1 A two-story house sits in the center of a barren desert landscape, dotted with patches of scrub brush.” You’re not giving me enough there. First off, there’s not just a desert. What desert? A California desert? Where are we? Anchor us. Because if you say desert I guess I’m thinking of the Sahara until you give me more stuff. So anchor us a little bit more.

And tell us what it feels like. You don’t have to describe every little thing, but is it just barely above a trailer park? Is it a two-story trailer home? Did it have that kind of feel to it? But I just don’t get a sense from this of what kind of space we’re living in.

When we get into her office we do get some more details about what her office is like and I liked that. I got a sense of character making choices that influenced the environment that they were in.

Craig had already pointed out the Hellraiser problems or the voice over that’s happening that becomes the Hellraiser dialogue. My way of handling this in general would be scratch that line “The scene is suddenly interrupted by a demonic voice.” You just hear character name Demonic Voice, “You solved the puzzle box. You summoned us. We came.” New action line. “A man’s voice screams in terror. Cut to…” And then you’re in. And that’s great. So we’re wondering what are we hearing rather than spoiling it by saying Hellraiser right at the start.

**Craig:** Right. I think that’s a great idea.

And I want to point out that Alex does do a really good job of creating perspective because in this first scene it’s not there’s an indication in the action that we’re meant to identify with Parker and understand the scene from his perspective, but we do. It’s just written in that way. We understand we’re with him and his inquisitiveness and his confusion. And that’s good. I mean, there’s good stuff there. But I’m nervous about some of the elementary nature of the drama that’s being created.

**John:** A few other small things to look at. In American screenplays parentheticals get their own line underneath the character’s name. So on page one, that “unsure” right now is tucked into that dialogue line. We don’t do that in American screenplays. On page two, two action lines. “Andy thinks, picking at a set of stitches above his right eye.” That’s great. That can work. Later on, “Andy’s sandwich collapses as he struggles to keep it together.” Those are two completely separate actions that are just too close together. I feel like you’re just throwing too much business at this one character. And it’s distracting from the scene. So either he’s working on the stitches or he’s trying to eat this sandwich like he was falling apart.

Pick one. There’s just too much there.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And if you imagined him picking at the stitches with the hand that was holding the sandwich because they’re itching and then it collapses, that’s fine. But you’ve got to let us know. But absolutely. You don’t want to have him pick-pick, and then line, and then a line, and then he’s doing an entirely other thing that implies some sort of sandwich disaster occurred. So it’s just like time management issues here in terms of continuity of reality.

Guesses, I guess it’s time to guess, huh?

**John:** It’s time to guess. So I was speculating that this family is going to move to the Carthay Circle part of Los Angeles which is close to where I live and that it’s going to be about them adjusting to their new life there. But I don’t have any sense of what the actual plot is of this story. These three characters are centered to it all, and perhaps there’s maybe stretching, reaching that it could be kind of a Lost Boys situation where it’s like the boys have their own adventure and the mother is sort of a secondary character. That’s my best guess at this point.

**Craig:** Yeah. It does feel like, and I don’t like this necessarily, but it does feel like mom is being setup to just be mom from E.T., like problem to be avoided.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And who is having a generic single mom problem like divorce, or balancing job and children, without more flavor to it. It does feel like this is going to be about Parker and Andy and some kind of horror thing, I hope. Because that would be fun. And, yes, moving to LA. But, you know, I have no clue from this which is not, I mean, again, 0 for 2. So let’s see how we did.

**Megana:** OK, so Alex wrote in, “When the MacLaine family inherits their dream home they quickly discover that their new neighborhood hides a sinister secret and must work together to find the truth.”

**Craig:** There we go. Well I like working together.

**John:** I like working together. I think we were closer than I would have guessed.

**Craig:** Oh definitely.

**John:** Yeah. It also has like a Fright Night quality where you move to a new house in this neighborhood. I like that.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, Lost Boys, right? You literally, I mean, that’s exactly what happened. They moved to a house. It harbors a big secret. But I’m really happy to hear that it’s all of them together so that mom isn’t just mom, but mom. Good.

**John:** Yay. Well that was fun. So, as always, we want to thank everyone who submitted their pages, especially Alex, Andrew, Nick, and Stephen for sending in your stuff. Thank you to Megana and to Bo for reading through all of these. You’re remarkable.

**Craig:** Thank you so much guys.

**John:** And again this is not a competition. This is just an exhibition where we all get to take a look at some writing and figure out what’s working well and what could be working better.

If you want to send in your own pages you go to johnaugust.com/threepage. And there’s a form you fill out, including a new field for where you can put in your log line for your script. This is not a log line competition. We don’t really care about log lines. We are just curious what the thing is about. And so just for the reasons we used on the podcast today.

So, Megana, thank you very much for all your hard work and all your reading in making this happen.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana. Great job.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**John:** All right. It’s time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article by Emily VanDerWerff from this past week that was looking at the way professional critics and fans get drawn into what she calls The Loop of defending positions on a movie or TV show or piece of culture. So talking about the show Girls she writes, “I had tied my own personal opinion of the show to myself and from there it was far too easy to grow more and more defensive with every criticism the series endured because it was like the criticism was criticism of me.” And it just felt so true to a phenomenon I’ve experienced more and more and more over the last decade where I love a thing, someone hates that thing, that person is attacking me. And this weird way that we sort of claim ownership over things and form our identities based on what we like.

And just a really great article detailing her perspective as someone who gets paid doing this as a living and still gets stuck into that loop.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, I’ve gone off on critics a billion times on the show. I’m not going to bore everybody by doing it again. But I will say that I do personally like Emily. I did a nice interview with her for Chernobyl. It was one of the early interviews I did and I thought this was – I read this, too. And I thought it was very thoughtful. And I just wanted to say you think you grow defensive with criticism of a show you watch, imagine criticism of a show you’ve written.

And what it kind of comes down to is what I’ve always said. I do think that these feelings we have about movies or television shows are a function of the relationship we have with them. And that means it’s not just about the show or the movie. It’s about us, and the show and the movie. Some intersection of who we are and where we are and that. And therefore it makes no sense – it literally makes no sense to explain to people why it is good or bad for them.

You can talk about why it was good for you. And you could talk about why it was bad for you. I wish that critics would just be more subjective. Like literally just say here’s how this made me feel. I don’t know if you’re going to feel the same way. But this is my thing. Instead of just declaring that movies are good, bad, stupid, etc.

But I enjoyed – the introspection here I thought was very valuable.

**John:** And a thing I think has changed over the course of our lifetime in terms of criticism is that it’s one thing to be a critic looking at a movie because that movie is finished. And so while people will come to that movie with new perspectives over time that movie is done. But what Emily was doing with Girls and a lot of other TV series is you’re critiquing something that is still ongoing where it hasn’t been finished yet and your criticism will actually change the thing. And that just becomes an impossible feedback loop as well.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Just everyone to be mindful of the fact that the creative process is influenced by the criticism of it in not always healthy ways. And that if you are criticizing a piece of art to differentiate criticizing that piece of art from the person who made it. Because they really are not the same thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And just the way that things are completely redeemed or vilified over time. I mean, blech.

I have a much easier One Cool Thing than that.

**John:** All right. Pitch it.

**Craig:** Cake.

**John:** I like cake.

**Craig:** Everyone likes cake. So, we over at the Mazin house have been engaging in a kind of homemade food exchange with another family in our town as we’ve been navigating the pandemic. So occasionally they would make something and bring it over and leave it on our doorstep and then we would make something and bring it over and leave it on their doorstep.

And so we owed them one and I asked what they wanted and they have three girls. And all three girls said chocolate cake. That was what they wanted. Which seems like, oh, OK, well chocolate cake. Who can’t do that? There’s a billion chocolate cake recipes.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And I’m kind of a recipe nerd. I love the science of it. And so I went through and read all sorts of them and I landed on one, just faith, and it’s a recipe by a woman named Robin Stone. And it’s called The Best Chocolate Cake Recipe Ever. It might be. It’s really, really good. It’s really, really good.

And you might be saying well what’s the big secret in it? I don’t think there is a big secret other than she does have you adding a cup of boiling water into the batter at the very end before you put it into the oven. It makes it much–

**John:** I’ve seen that in other recipes recently.

**Craig:** It’s really interesting.

**John:** It’s a chocolate thing.

**Craig:** Exactly. But overall whatever the balance of ingredients were it just came out beautifully. Same with the frosting. She also has a recipe for chocolate butter cream frosting that goes with it and it came out also beautifully. So if you’re looking to make a chocolate cake.

**John:** I’m looking to make a chocolate cake. Craig, my question for you is this gives a choice between milk, buttermilk, almond milk, coconut milk. What did you use?

**Craig:** In that circumstance – and one of the things that made me a little nervous is that Robin is like whatever. And I’m like, all right, I’m a little more finicky than that. I went with straight up whole milk.

**John:** Whole milk. So super rich.

**Craig:** Well, it’s one cup of it. It’s not exactly half and half or anything. But, yeah, just one cup of regular old whole milk as opposed to any of the other stuff. But if you were lactose intolerant does that still work after you bake something?

**John:** Yeah, it does.

**Craig:** Then you might want to try the almond or the coconut milk. There’s not that much in it so I can’t imagine it would make a massive difference.

**John:** You’ve got a cup of boiling hot water in it to dilute it anyway.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Damn straight.

**John:** Edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Always.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Ella Grace. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. But for shorter questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com which is also where you’ll find the PDFs of for our Three Page Challenges. You’ll find transcripts there and be able to sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of links to things about writing.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and the bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the Olympics. Craig and Megana, thank you both very, very much.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you guys. Thank you. And I just want to say a quick hello to listener Miranda, because I know she’s a big fan.

**John:** Oh, nice.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Well great. And that outro felt very Winter Olympics to me. I could imagine that being under a Winter Olympics Montage. Which is a good segue to a question from a listener, Adam in Los Angeles, who writes, “If you were an Olympic level athlete what sport/event would you like to compete in?” And so we’ll look at winter and summer. Craig, of the Summer Olympic events if you could be a medal-worthy athlete is there one sport that you’d go for?

**Craig:** Well, I suppose that one way to think about this is a little bit like how fun it is to fly in a dream. Because you’re never going to fly. So one possibility is pick a thing that you would never be able to do. Like in theory I could wrestle some people. I wouldn’t be any good at it, but I could wrestle for a bit at my weight class or something. I could throw a pole.

But the thing that I cannot do, ever, in any circumstance and have never been able to do, even as a child, is run for a long distance. I was not built to run for a long distance. So I would want to be a marathon runner. I just think that would be like flying. That would be so cool.

**John:** So I can run for a long distance. I ran a half marathon. And I assumed I could never run, but now I can run. But I don’t think I would actually want to be a long distance runner for Olympic stuff. I think I would actually prefer to be like a sprinter because that to me feels like you’re The Flash where you’re just so incredibly powerful out of the gate.

But what you were saying about flying made me think like, oh, maybe I should pick pole vaulting because that’s a thing in real life I would never, ever do, but it just seems so cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like I don’t even understand how that happened. Why did – who figured that out? Why?

**John:** Yeah, we can pole vault. My guess is there’s a season of The Amazing Race where they were doing these – they were in these canal kind of places, flooded field canals, and you actually do use poles to get from one side to the other. So maybe that was sort of how pole vaulting became a thing. I don’t know. We could have looked it up by the time I–

**Craig:** Could have, but you know what? Nah. I’m tired of learning. I don’t want to learn anything else. I’m done. I’m done.

**John:** But I should clearly choose gymnast, because male gymnasts have the amazing skills, versatile skills. You feel like a real life Rogue. And great bodies.

**Craig:** Yeah, I was waiting. It’s about the body. The male gymnast body is stupid. It’s a stupid body. Yeah, like how? Oh my god. Could you imagine?

**John:** Now the Winter Olympics. Craig, what winter sports would you want to do?

**Craig:** Ooh, I do like the Winter Olympics. They’re fun. I mean, look, like the weirdo one like the biathlete where you ski and then shoot. That’s a silly one.

**John:** That was my top choice. Biathlete.

**Craig:** It’s a pretty silly one so I kind of like sneakily want that. But I think, so the guys who do the skeleton in the luge, and the women, are moving at insane speeds. And it’s terrifying. I think maybe if I could be one of those people. Just the idea of just firing down a shoot like a bullet for like a minute just seems like it would be pretty awesome.

**John:** I said that I was so excited to be a pole vaulter, but I don’t think I would be a ski jumper because that just–

**Craig:** Ooh, god.

**John:** No. That’s just too much terror for me. I’ve bungee jumped. Great. I’m not going to ski jump. That’s, no. That’s not good at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. The ski jump is kind of like you go down the ramp and you catch, just perfect, boom you launch off perfectly and you’re like I’m doing it. I’m going to go further than anybody. And then when you start to go down you’re like, oh, shit.

**John:** Well, Craig, you and I both grew up with ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Of course the agony of defeat. This big intro and then it goes “the agony of defeat” and they show this guy going off the edge of the ski jump and just falling. I still feel pain just thinking about that shot.

**Craig:** Why would anyone be an athlete after that? You’re just watching a human being tumbling down a mountain, breaking I assume everything. And, yeah.

**John:** In reference to our Three Page Challenges, I think figure skating is just remarkably great, and to be able to do that stuff. But I would just get such performance anxiety to actually have to masterfully do all these things, and be artistic, and hit all those jumps. That feels like too much.

**Craig:** Yeah. The artistic part – figure skating, I don’t love it. I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t love it. Not on the level of ventriloquism which is a ridiculous waste of everyone’s time. Actually, it’s the fact that figure skating is a remarkably demanding athletic pursuit, but they also have to wear these outfits.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, they don’t have to. I think they want to in a sense. But it just gets sillier and sillier. It’s like Vegas kind of. It just becomes so odd. You know what I mean?

**John:** As a young gay child I just loved my figure skating.

**Craig:** I get it. I get it. I do. And maybe it’s also like the performance aspect of it is so outrageously fake. Do you know what I mean? The smiles and the…

But I can also see where, you know – look, my wife loves figure skating. I mean, loves. So I watch it when it’s on. All right.

**John:** I never looked at the contents of my mom’s DVR after she died, but I guarantee you there were at least 16 hours’ worth recorded of figure skating on that. Just to watch at any point, which is great.

**Craig:** I love it. Who was your favorite?

**John:** Growing up it was Torvill and Dean. They were an ice dancing pair.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** They were remarkable. They were the Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh of their time, but on ice. And they were just remarkably talented. But then like through the Brian Boitanos, through the Kristi Yamaguchis. Katarina Witt, who I saw at a post office here in Los Angeles. Just remarkable talents.

**Craig:** Torvill and Dean, were they married?

**John:** They were married but I think they ultimately split up, yeah, which was controversial and terrible.

**Craig:** Oh, it was controversial?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** Yeah. If I remember correctly. Chris Schleicher who is a writer who I only know through Twitter, but was a competitive figure skater before he became a writer. And I always find that so fascinating as a second act, you know, get out of figure skating and then become a writer.

**Craig:** Yeah. Interesting.

**John:** So, Craig, should we go to the Olympics in China? So that’s the 2022 Winter Olympics are going to be in China. And China has not done some good things.

**Craig:** You’re asking should you and I personally go?

**John:** [laughs] Oh yes.

**Craig:** Or should America go?

**John:** Should America send a delegation to the Olympics in 2022?

**Craig:** I got to tell you, and this is one of those hot button things. It’s practically designed for people to argue. But I remember as a kid feeling like boycotting the Moscow Olympics wasn’t great. The point of the Olympics was let’s get closer together.

I don’t think the Olympics, going to the Olympics, is any kind of tacit approval of what a government is doing. The United States went to the Olympics in Germany when Hitler was in power and Jesse Owens got to beat everyone in front of him, which is awesome. There’s a little chance to stick it to people at the Olympics also. And the way we kind of did to the Soviets in 1980 in Lake Placid.

But it kind of bummed me out. And then of course the Russians boycotted after. I feel like once you start it’s hard to stop. Because everybody has a reason to boycott everybody. There’s no reason that – if there’s ever an Olympics in Mumbai for instance, well, should the Pakistanis just immediately boycott? Do you know what I mean? You know, over Kashmir.

Everybody has got a problem. So, let’s preserve this one place where we just come together and we do it outside of the bubble of the bad things that we are or are not doing. And hopefully it brings us together and maybe solves a problem. I don’t know.

**John:** Yeah. I wonder if we hadn’t had the situation where we boycotted one Olympics and they boycotted us, I wonder when we decided that Olympic athletes a chip that we would use in international trade. Because we’re not talking about like, OK, we’re going to boycott Chinese products or we’re not going to do business with China at all, because clearly we’re doing a ton of business with China.

So, it does feel weird on that level. And yet at the same time you’re dealing with a government that is doing some really bad things. So, I’m sympathetic to both sides and I’m happy to be the one who doesn’t have to make the decision.

**Craig:** Right. Turns out weirdly that they have asked me to make this decision.

**John:** Craig, as your profile grows then so does your responsibility.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know how this ended up in my lap, so I’ve got to really think about this. [laughs] I’ve got to be honest with you. I’m in a whole boatload of trouble over here.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

Links:

* [WGA Strike](https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/the-chase-strike-writers-wga-itv-1234936943/) against ABC’s The Chase.
* For current university students and professors: Learn more about the [Highland 2 Student License](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/students.php)
* [The Secret Lives of Color](https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Lives-Color-Kassia-Clair/dp/0143131141) by Kassia St Clair
* [Rinky Dink](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F03%2FRinky-Dink-Three-Page-Challenge.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=428197df8aa5744b9773ac3f65f597c5f8419e2fd6e60923f799f6b7e82795bf) by Stephen Brower
* [The Twilight Run](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F03%2FThe-Twilight-Run-Three-Page-Challenge.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=f3e0780b9271811e28acf59ac67b2286357b3148ddf029bb4e12671a3fa558d9) by Andrew McDonald and Nick Sanford
* [South Carthay](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F03%2FSouth-Carthay-Pilot-3_21_21.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=ba275113a62a9a36a5dbf43a1c70442a3d5dd4ac8d303ec137268bbe73da2528) by Alex Rennie
* [The Loop by Emily VanDerWerff](https://emilyvdw.substack.com/p/the-loop)
* [The Best Chocolate Cake Recipe Ever](https://addapinch.com/the-best-chocolate-cake-recipe-ever/) by Robin Stone
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/494standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/opening-scenes).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 493 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’ll take a look at opening scenes, how they work, and what writers should consider when planning them out. Then we’ll dive into the weird world of foreign levies and why our friend Stuart is getting mysterious checks.

**Craig:** I don’t want to know.

**John:** Finally we’ll discuss the rise of the megaplex and with it the past and future of movie-going.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** And in our bonus segment for premium members Craig and I will help a listener answer a question about clichés and conventions. This is a listener in Copenhagen, so it’s a Copenhagen question about clichés and conventions.

**Craig:** All right. We’ll get into it.

**John:** We will do it all. But, first, Craig you and I have not talked about this on mic or off mic, but if you are planning to have another kid my advice for you would be to wait until after May 2. If you can wait until after May 2 it will behoove you.

**Craig:** You would have chosen by now if you were to be having a kid after May 2. I’m definitely not having any more kids. You know what, I say definitely, you never know.

**John:** You never know.

**Craig:** You never know.

**John:** I would say that the shop is closed, but I see babies and man I like babies. If I could have a baby for like a year I would be just the happiest person in the world. It’s that toddler and sort of like – honestly it’s that awkward kid’s birthday party stage I don’t want to go through again.

**Craig:** I’m good with five to 10. That’s what I like. I like when kids are children and they’re running around and playing and they’re going to grade school and nothing really matters and they can laugh and have fun. But they also aren’t peeing and pooping in their pants. And they’re not teenagers.

**John:** Yes. I believe it’s important that writers make decisions about when they want to have kids.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And that could be a little bit easier for some writers in the WGA because starting May 2 the details have just been announced that on May 2 the paid parental leave will go into effect.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So this was something that was one at this most recent round of negotiations. And it’s pretty good. And so if you are a WGA member and you have a kid after May 2, or adopt a kid, or otherwise add to your family after May 2 you are eligible for the paid parental leave. And it could be a real boon for many writers in our guild.

**Craig:** Yeah. So basically the rule is you can’t work and also receive – you need to the leave part of the paid parental leave in order to get the benefit, but the benefit is pretty solid, especially if you are a staff writer on a show. They’re trying to kind of get in near whatever perhaps minimums might be. So, $2,000 a week for up to eight weeks and they don’t need to be taken consecutively. And it looks like it also covers both birth and adoption and fostering. And placement for adoption. That’s interesting.

**John:** So if you are also a married writing couple who both of you are WGA members and you are having a kid you are both eligible for it, which was something I wasn’t sure was going to happen. So, that’s also a boon. Anyway, just some good news. It’s the first ever of its kind in the nation. The first ever sort of union paid parental leave that goes with you wherever your job is. It applies to screenwriters, variety/comedy writers as well. So, check that out if you are thinking about having kids or if you are currently pregnant try to wait till May 2 to give birth.

I was actually talking with a writer who is in that situation. Who is like my due date is May 1 but we’re trying to make it May 2.

**Craig:** It’s OK because the benefit is available for a 12-month window from the date of birth, adoption, or placement. So, you might have a couple of weeks of unpaid parental leave but then it gets paid. So, there is that. And it doesn’t have to be taken consecutively. So, you can do four weeks on, four weeks off. So that’s a terrific thing and it’s wonderful that we did get that concession from the companies as part of our collective bargaining power.

**John:** Yeah. So for follow-up. Hannah asks a question about gray areas. This is from Episode 492. Do you want to take Hannah’s question?

**Craig:** Sure. Hannah says, her question is regarding screenplay credit before it has been arbitrated. She says, “I have seen several examples now of writers being listed as the, insert big movie name, writer when the movie has not in fact come out yet. But the writer is taking credit where credit may or may not be due. Where do you come down on screenwriters taking credit and using it for personal promotional gain pre-arbitration?”

And we have talked about this to some extent before. John, where do you come down on this?

**John:** So, before credit is determined obviously if there’s a Variety story if someone was hired on to work on a thing that’s part of what you’re currently working on, so it’s totally fair game to talk about you working on it. No one has any disputes about that. Where it gets more awkward, I was actually having a conversation with another screenwriter about that, is when you’re talking about a project where you have a really minimal credit but you still talk about it as if you’re the writer on the thing. Or it’s a thing where you kind of feel like you probably won’t get credit on it, but you’re being listed for it. It’s awkward. And it’s a known awkwardness in how stuff is discussed in this town.

**Craig:** Yeah. So Hannah there’s something that might help you a little bit with the gray area here is that part of our rules are that before the arbitration happens the company does have the right to make a good faith guess of what the credit should or would be and then publicize it. Meaning they’re allowed to put the name of the writer on a movie poster before the arbitration is done. And there have been cases where there are posters with credits that then don’t reflect the final credits, so the poster changes. The idea there was we didn’t want writers to be disappeared off of things just because the arbitration hasn’t happened.

And arbitration sometimes take a really long time to get to. And they take a long time to finish. So, my feeling is that it’s perfectly fine for a writer to say, yes, if Variety is saying they worked on this to say, yes, I did work on it. That’s the way I put it. I worked on it. What I don’t think we should say is, “I wrote it,” because other people might also have written it.

**John:** Yeah. So, I think we’re trying to distinguish between employment and writing credit. And writing credit is a WGA credit. And employment, like I am working on this thing, is a thing you would say in a meeting, that’s a different beast.

Another follow-up question. Anonymous wrote in about whisper networks, which we talked about last episode. “One thing I felt was missing from that segment is that the whisper network exists to be amplified by those in positions of relative power. Those disempowered cannot convince the empowered of injustice or mistreatment because they’ve already been disempowered. So if someone like Harvey Weinstein hears from a woman that women are not his personal sex vessels it means nothing because he’s already decided that women are not worthy of full agency. It takes a whole bunch of men, people he respects, condemning him to rectify that.

“It’s hard to use Harvey Weinstein as an example here because it doesn’t seem that he respects anyone, but I hope I’m getting my point across.”

So, Craig, let’s follow up on this whisper network thing because I feel like Anonymous has a different idea of whisper networks than what you and I were talking about. So, for my conception a whisper network is like a warning system to others in a group rather than something that’s trying to systematically take down the abuser.

**Craig:** That’s my understanding, too. That is in fact why it is whispered. The point is the whisper networks, I think, would benefit from being amplified by those in positions of relative power, but they come into existence because specifically there is not a free and respected space for those opinions or information to be expressed.

**John:** So the whispering part of this is important. It’s like you’re not publically saying it out loud. But I think the network part is really especially problematic here because you have to be in the network to get the warning. So you have to – you know, a whisper network is only useful if you are actually able to hear the whisper network, or you’re part of it. And that can be the problem is that people who can be taken advantage of or having bad things happen to them is because they’re not benefiting from this network that they’re being excluded from. And that is a real issue.

And when we talk about the gray areas and sort of like when someone like you or I should speak up it’s because there are people who are being excluded from this whisper network as well that can’t get the warnings that you and I have heard.

**Craig:** Well right. So, that’s the other thing that’s important to note is that because of the nature of those whisper networks and the fact that they are typically an in-group kind of network it’s quite often the case that people who are in positions of relative power don’t know about it, because it’s being whispered. So, I did not know about a whisper network about Harvey Weinstein. I was not part of the whisper network about Harvey Weinstein for good reason. Nobody is going to call me up and say, “By the way, you need to know that if you’re going to take a job over there that you don’t want to be alone with Harvey,” because I’m not the one that’s going to be suffering there.

And so they’re actually protective of each other I think in a good way because they’re concerned that exposure will have negative impacts. That’s at least my understanding of how it functions.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, Harvey Weinstein is sort of an extreme example. Let’s step back and say that for many, many years I heard people talk about how Ellen DeGeneres was mean. I think you probably had the same experience too. People would talk about Ellen and Ellen is mean and that she has a great public persona but she’s actually mean behind the scenes. And I don’t know that to be true, but I heard it a lot.

And could I have spoken up more about it? I don’t know that it would have benefited me or anyone, but also there’s a difference between what I was hearing was sort of like she’s kind of mean and I wasn’t hearing anything worse than that. And so I did nothing.

**Craig:** Well, that’s also part of the issue with the whisper networks is that they have a freedom that expressed and amplified points of view don’t have. Expressed and amplified points of view are often held accountable to fact and truth. And so that’s where you start to end up in situations where you’re saying, OK, I have heard and therefore I need everybody to know that yada-yada-yada, well we have defamation laws. And we have lawsuits and we have all the rest of it, and for good reason, because you don’t want people to just simply say – anybody can say anything about anyone, of course. So, what I find fascinating and encouraging about the whisper networks that have existed from what I can tell they have operated extraordinarily responsibly.

I know that there are some people who don’t think so. Usually they’re the people that are being knocked by some of the whisper networks. And then you have to sort of, OK, figure that part out. But, you know, one thing that has maybe not been observed enough about the era that we live in now, we’ll call it the #MeToo or post #MeToo era, I guess we’re still in the #MeToo era and we will be until that problem goes away, is that there is enormous amount of power available to somebody in a sense to take someone else down.

And it doesn’t seem to me like people are behaving poorly, or abusing that power, which is rather amazing. Because the whole thing is in response to abusive power. And so there’s a group of people that have been the victims of abusive power. They get a kind of power which is to name and shame and they don’t abuse it. They just use it responsibly and fairly and justly. That is pretty amazing. And gratifying. And encouraging.

**John:** And I will say that when you try to move from informal networks, like whisper networks, to official systematized processes for investigation and such there’s definite pros to that. There’s definitely accountability. You can actually take actions that you couldn’t take in an informal network.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** But it also is really challenging to decide sort of what the rules are you’re going to make and what are the standards. It is really difficult and it is a thing we’ve seen out of #MeToo. It’s a thing we’ve seen in other efforts to hold people accountable for their actions. So just to acknowledge that it’s difficult.

**Craig:** Incredibly so. And terrifying. Because just knowing something to be true isn’t enough. And I think most reasonable people understand this. It’s not good. We don’t like it. But we know that just knowing something is true is not enough to save your abuser from re-abusing you, casting you in a different light, turning themselves into the victim, turning you into the problem. This is the playbook. In fact, we know from the Harvey Weinstein, was it Lisa Bloom? Was that his lawyer? Was essentially saying this is the playbook. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to destroy these women by dragging their reputations through the mud.

If you know that that’s going to happen then it takes a remarkable amount of bravery to get out there and say what you say. And people are going to come at you. And they’re going to come at you for all sorts of reasons. I mean, when I look at the sort of things that have been said about Rose McGowan, there’s a mountain of stuff that just gets slung their way and it’s a hell of a thing to go out there and take all the shots, know that you’re going to take all the shots, and still stand up for what fact is, and what truth is.

**John:** Yeah. So, we will not be able to solve these problems in the industry.

**Craig:** Segue.

**John:** Segue. But, what we can do is talk about really specific crafty things which I feel like you and I are much better in our element to discuss. And so this actually comes from a question that Martin in Sandringham, Australia wrote in to ask. “I’m curious about the process to decide on the beginning point of your screenplays. Have you noticed a pattern of thinking that you tend to follow when choosing that first line of a script to be in the story? Or is it purely driven by the unique nature of the story that you’re telling?”

So, Craig, it occurs to me that often we do a Three Page Challenge and we’re looking at the first three pages of a script. We’re really looking at these opening scenes and yet because we’re only looking at that scene we don’t really have a sense of what that scene is doing for the telling of the rest of the movie. We’re really just focused on what is the experience reading these scenes, what are the words on the page, but not what is that scene doing to establish the bigger picture of the movie.

So, I thought today we’d spend some time really looking at opening scenes and our process as we go into thinking about an opening scene for a movie, or writing one.

**Craig:** It’s a great question, Martin. And I think it has changed over time stylistically, which is no surprise. When we were kids and we saw movies from 30 years earlier, meaning the ‘50s, the opening scenes seemed a lot different than the opening scenes we were used to. I mean, we’re sitting at home watching a VHS tape of Raiders of the Lost Ark. We see how that opening goes. And then maybe dad shows us a movie from 1955 and it’s much slower, and more expository in a flat sort of way. Perhaps there’s jaunty music happening or sweeping violins.

These days as time has gone on it seems like opening scenes more and more are about a strange kind of disorientation, a giving to you of a puzzle that the implied contract is this will all make sense. But I think of maybe the most influential opening sequence or scene in recent television history was the opening sequence of Breaking Bad which was designed specifically to be what the hell is going on. What is that? Why are there pants there? Why is there an RV? What is happening? Why are there bullet holes? And then the puzzle gets solved.

**John:** So, I like that you’re bringing up the change from earlier movies to sort of present day movies in how openings work because I think you could make the same observation about how teasers and trailers for movies from a previous time worked versus how they work now. And you look at those old trailers and you’re like oh my god this is so boring. This is not selling me on the movie at all. And in many ways we now look for these opening scenes, opening sequences, to really be like a trailer for the movie you’re about to see. They’re really setting stuff up and getting you excited to watch this movie you’re about to watch and to sort of reward you for like thank you for sitting down in your seat and giving me your attention because this is what’s going to happen.

So let’s maybe start by talking about what are the story elements that need to happen in these opening scenes or opening sequences. They don’t have to happen, but tend to happen in these opening sequences. What are we trying to do story wise, plot wise, or character wise in these scenes?

**Craig:** Well you have choices. You don’t actually have to do anything. Sometimes the opening is just about meeting a person. And you are accentuating the lack of story. They’re happy. They’re carefree. Everything is fine. But I agree with you. More and more there is a kind of trailerification of the opening of a movie or a television show. And there is the indication of a thing. And it’s often a thing that the characters don’t even see. Or if they do see it they’re looking at it from a different time. This is later, or this is earlier, whatever it is, but there is an indication of something, there is a crack in reality that needs to be healed somehow.

**John:** Yeah. So from a story perspective you’re generally meeting characters. If you’re not meeting your central character you’re meeting another character who is important or a character who represents an important part of the story. So in that opening scene you might be meeting a character who ends up dying at the end of that scene or sequence but it’s setting up an important thing about what’s going to happen in the course of your story, the course of your movie.

You’re hopefully learning about the tone of this piece. And what it feels like to be watching this movie. The setting of this world. How the movie kind of works. And some of the rules of this world. Like if you’re in a fantasy universe is there magic? How does gravity work? What are the edges of what this kind of movie can be? Because in that opening scene you want to have a sense of like this is the general kind of movie that we’re watching so that you can benefit from all the expectations that an audience brings into that because of the genre, because of the type of movie that you’re setting up.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think about openings that have always stuck with me as being confusing. And challenging, which I’ve always loved. And I often look at, very curious opening to Blade Runner, which was not the original opening that they had planned. But it’s the opening they ended up with. And neither of the characters in that scene are main characters. There is an unknown investigator and there is a replicant who we don’t know is a replicant. But he’s not the important one. He’s not the head villain. He’s a henchman essentially.

And you have no idea what the hell is going on. There’s one man in a very strange device that might be futuristic, or antique, asking strange questions of this guy and seemingly zeroing in on something important. And then the man feeling somewhat trapped by the series of very abstract questions kills the investigator.

What happens there is a challenge to you to try and keep up and a promise that it will make sense later. But in addition I know that this world looks a certain way. I know people are going to dress a certain way. And I also know that it is going to expect some things of me. It’s good if the first scene gives the audience a difficulty level. It doesn’t have to be high difficulty, right? I mean, sometimes your first scene says this is going to be an easy play. But let people know what the difficulty is with that first scene.

**John:** So, as you’re talking about that I’m now recalling that scene and it works really well and it’s setting up that this is a mystery story. That there are going to be questions of identity and sort of existential issues here. Even though you don’t know that it’s necessarily a science-fiction world it’s a pretty grounded science-fiction if it is a science-fiction world, so all these things are really important.

Now, Craig, an experience I’ve had sometimes reading a friend’s script, or someone I’m working with’s script is that I will really enjoy the movie that they’ve written, but I’ll come back and say this is not your first scene. You have written a first scene that does not actually match your movie and does not actually help your movie. And it’s a weird way to run into, but I often find that some scripts I really like they just don’t start right. They start on the wrong beat.

Or, and sort of dig deeper, you find that the writer wrote that scene first but then they kind of wrote a different movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And they need to write a new first scene that actually helps set up the movie they actually really wrote. Is that a common experience you’ve had?

**Craig:** I’ve noticed this. I think sometimes, well, it’s hard to hit that mark because nothing else has been written yet. So, it’s your first swing. Sometimes the first scene suffers from a sense of, oh, you’ve been thinking about this as a short film for about seven years and you finally got the nerve worked up to finish it. But the problem is this thing feels like it’s a seven-year-long thoughtful short film, and then the rest of it is just a movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes there’s a sense that the opening is fine, but it is not special. And the opening is our chance to be brave. I think that we have two moments in movies or in any particular episode of television where the audience will forgive us a lot. And it’s at the very beginning and it’s at the very end. In the middle you’ve got to stay in between the lines on the road. But in the beginning and the end you get to have fun.

**John:** Let’s talk about why you have that special relationship with the audience at the start, because they’ve deliberately sat down to watch the thing that you’ve created. And so if they were going into a movie theater to watch it there they’ve put forth a lot of effort. They bought a ticket. They’ve driven themselves to that theater. They’re going to probably watch your whole movie whether they love it or they don’t love it.

And so in those first minutes they really, really, really want to love what you’re giving them. Their guards are down. In TV they could flip away more easily, so there’s some issues there. But their expectations are very malleable at that start. So you really can kind of take them anywhere and you get a lot of things for free. You get some – they come in with a bit of trust. And if you can sort of honor that trust and honor that expectation and get them to keep trusting you they’re going to go on your story. If you don’t set that hook well they may just wander off and they may never really fully engage with the story that you’re trying to tell.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re hungry at the beginning. They’re hungry. So don’t just immediately shove all the food down their throat. You can have some fun here. You know that they want to feel that anticipation. When you go to a concert and there’s the opening act, and then they’re done and they leave, and then the PA system is playing just songs and you’re waiting. And then the lights go down. And it’s not like the lights go down and then the band comes out, “Here we are, let’s go,” and then they immediately start a song. There’s usually some sort of like…you know, they get you ready. And it can go on for a while. Because everybody knows oh my god it’s happening. Right?

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So let it be happening. Don’t have it just happen if that makes sense.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s talk about some of our own writing and our own opening scenes and sort of what our experience was with this. So, I’m thinking back to Chernobyl. Chernobyl if I recall correctly opens with an old woman and a cow.

**Craig:** That is how episode four or three opens.

**John:** That’s right. So it was later on. It’s not the very first image of it. What is the first image of the first episode?

**Craig:** The first image of the first episode is a couch with sort of an afghan type thing of a deer and we hear a man talking. We actually hear his voice before we ever see anything.

**John:** Yeah. And so we don’t realize at the time it’s going to be a Stuart Special. That we are setting up the past and that we’re going to be jumping back and forth.

I think the reason why I was remembering that cow scene is it’s an example of we don’t have context of who these characters are, sort of why what’s happening is happening. Are these characters going to be important? No, not really. You were just setting up sort of the question of that episode and that world and what kind of story this episode is going to be. And I thought it just worked really well.

**Craig:** Well thank you. So every episode needs its own beginning. And so I’m pretty sure it was the beginning of episode four. It’s sad that it’s all mushing together now.

But that was designed to be a bit confusing. Because we don’t know what exactly this guy is doing there. And we’re not sure what his orders are. And we definitely aren’t sure what her deal is. And we don’t know he’s just standing there. And so this goes on. And then at the end of it we know. We know a lot. And that is kind of a standalone intro, which we didn’t do much of. And generally I don’t. But sometimes it’s OK to make this opening its own thing that announces something about the world and then we catch up to the people that we know and care about.

And we think, oh, did they know that they’re in a world where that other thing is happening?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So certainly one way to go.

**John:** So, completely analogous situation is the opening of the Charlie’s Angels movie.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, of course, again, you’re establishing a place, and a time, and a world, except that it’s in a very candy-colored, we’re in a plane and we see all these characters. We see LL Cool J is the first recognizable star that we see. And there’s clearly some sort of heist thing happening. And it’s only as the sequence plays on that we realize like, oh, the Angels were actually part of this the entire time and this is an elaborate sequence to get this terrorist off this plane before he does something dastardly.

That sequence was important to establish the tone and feeling of this movie. And sort of what the rules are of this movie. And the heightened kind of gravity-optional nature of this movie. And sort of what it’s going to feel like to watch this movie.

So nothing that actually happens in that becomes important for the plot. It’s just introducing you to who the Angels are in a very general sense. The fact that they could kind of go into slow motion at any point if it’s glamorous. And just kind of how it feels. And it was one of the only sequences that made it all the way through from very early, before I came onboard to the movie, through to the end because it just felt like a good, goofy, fun start to this franchise.

**Craig:** With a punchline. I always feel like your openings need punchlines. And it’s weird to say like, OK, the punchline of the opening of the first episode of Chernobyl is a man hangs himself, but that’s kind of the punchline in the sense of there’s a surprise end. Similarly the old woman and the cow you’re pretty sure that soldier is going to shoot her and he doesn’t shoot her. He shoots the cow. Punchline.

You need to land something surprising. If you can, then the additional benefit you get from your opening is you’re putting the audience on alert that you are one step ahead of them so far. So, this is a good thing now. They’re leaning in. They’re trying to see what comes next. But they are also aware that you’re not just going to feed them straight up stuff, which is good.

**John:** The most difficult opening sequence I ever did was Big Fish. And I’m trying to establish so many things. I’m establishing two different worlds. A real world and a story world. That there are two protagonists and that both of them have storytelling power. So getting through those first eight pages of Big Fish and sort of setting up the storytelling dynamic of Big Fish was really, really tough, yet crucial. That was the case where like if I didn’t have that opening sequence the movie just couldn’t have worked because you wouldn’t know what to follow and what to pay attention to.

**Craig:** This is kind of high anxiety time. I like that you care – I think sometimes when I read these scripts, and we’ve said I think the word “precious real estate” or phrase a thousand times. You need to nail it. You’ve got to make that opening fascinating so that the audience says I will keep watching. If it’s just kind of meh then, I mean, you could have done anything there. The moment you have an opening you have limited what can come next. There’s a narrow possibility for what comes next.

**John:** You build a funnel. Yeah.

**Craig:** You make a funnel. A logical funnel. But not in the beginning. In the beginning there’s no funnel. You can do anything. And if you don’t do anything interesting I don’t see why people would think, well, this will get better. It won’t.

**John:** No. And weirdly it is probably the scene or sequence that as writers we spend the most time looking at just because by nature we’re going to kind of end up rereading it and sort of tweaking it a zillion times. And I do wonder if sometimes, let’s talk process here, at what point do you figure out that opening scene versus figuring out everything else in your story?

Sometimes I think the best approach would be to figure out where your story overall wants to go before you write that opening scene. Because so often you can be sort of trapped in that opening scene and love that opening scene but it’s not actually doing the best job possible establishing the rest of the things you want to do in your story.

**Craig:** 100%. If you do know what your end is. It would be lovely if you had that in mind when you wrote your beginning. Certainly I did when I did Chernobyl because it works like Pink Floyd’s The Wall album. It begins with I think it’s maybe David Gilmore saying, “Where we came in,” and then the song starts and then that album happens. And then at the very end you hear him say, “Isn’t this where?” And so you go, ah, ah-ha, in a very Pink Floyd cool way. I see what you did there, Pink Floyd.

And I like that. I like the sense that you catch up. And you complete the circle. It doesn’t have to be temporal like that. It can just be commentary. It can be somebody’s face ending in a similar position to how it began.

Here’s an example. Social Network. Opening scene, fantastic. And down to nothing but dialogue and performance. Two people sitting and talking. That’s it. Excellently written and excellently performed and excellently shot. And at the very, very end of the movie he goes back to looking at that girl’s profile on Facebook. She is not mentioned. Or referred to at any other time. It’s just the beginning and then the end. And then you go, oh man, this guy.

And so that’s how you can kind of think about these things. The beginning is the end, the end is the beginning. Know them both. It will help you define that opening scene much, much more sharply.

**John:** Cool. And now as we look at Three Page Challenges going forward let’s also try to remember to ask that question in terms of like what movie do we think this opening scene is setting up. Because that’s really kind of a fundamental question. We’ve talked so much about how those first three pages, that first opening scene is so crucial to getting people to read more of your script. But let’s also be thinking about what movie we think is actually establishing because we have strong expectations off the start of that.

So just a note for ourselves. We will try to think about how those opening scenes are setting our expectation for the rest of the movie that we’re not reading.

**Craig:** I think that tees us up nicely for a Three Page Challenge next week.

**John:** Yeah. We’ll try to do it. All right, next up we got a question from Stuart Friedel, former Scriptnotes producer. Do you want to read Stuart’s question?

**Craig:** Stuart, aw, writes–

**John:** We love Stuart.

**Craig:** “I just got a check in the mail from the WGA for foreign royalties for two episodes of Vampirina that I wrote. It’s the first time I’ve ever gotten anything like this. It was made out to me, not my S-Corp,” his loan-out corporation, “through which I got paid for these episodes originally. And the show is Animation Guild, not WGA. Is this normal? What’s going on here?”

John, is this normal?

**John:** It is both normal and weird. So writers get these checks all the time. But it’s not normal WGA residuals. It’s a whole special thing that I actually had to look up again because I remember it and then I forget and then I remember it and then I forget it.

**Craig:** I think we’ve done a run-through on the show at some point. It was probably years ago.

**John:** Stuart has listened to every episode, so Stuart should have known.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** But we’ll give a brief recap here. So foreign levies are the fees that some foreign countries, largely European countries, they collect and they’re mean to compensate the rights holders when films or TV are broadcast or copied in things.

I remember originally it was like blank VHS tapes and blank DVDs, there was like a tax put on those thing.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, still. In fact probably the largest chunk of the foreign levies we collect are feed levied on blank disc media, disc drives. So basically the theory, it’s a lot of South American countries, too. The theory is that people are going to use blank media to copy things and watch them again. The artist should be compensated for that, but we don’t know how many times they’re watching things. So we’ll just tax the things that let them do that.

It’s a fascinating sort of thing to do. And we are not the authors of stuff here. But we are there. And that’s where it gets fun.

**John:** Yeah. It’s where it gets complicated. So under US law we tend to write these things as work-for-hire. So, we sort of pretend that the studios are the authors of the properties. But many of the countries say like, no, no, that’s actually not true. It’s the writers and the directors who are the authors. And so it became this big fight. And so in the show notes we’ll link to the history of how foreign levies came to be and how the DGA and the WGA came to collect that money. It’s fascinating and complicated. And there was a lawsuit about how the money was being distributed out.

But, the answer for Stuart is that the foreign countries are sending in that money and it is the WGA’s responsibility and the DGA’s responsibility to figure out who those people are and get the checks out to them. And so that’s a thing they do.

**Craig:** It’s not based on union work. So, the rest of the world does not have work-for-hire and they have moral rights of authors. So, France collects this money and then they turn to us and say we would like to give this to the moral – the moral authors of this movie, which we consider to be the writer and the director. And over here the studios are like but there’s no moral author. We’re the author. And so France said, nah, we’re not going to give it to you then.

And so then we had to hammer out some deal. The split between us and the studios did adjust over time. It’s been a while. It should be 100% us. So, will continue to have to broker that somehow. But then this other issue happens where they say, well, OK the WGA steps up and says we will collect all this. The other countries say, “Uh, just one thing, we’re not breaking this out by who is in your union and who is not in your union because we don’t care. We’re just going to send it all to you and you distribute it.”

And so now the WGA has this interesting situation where they’re collecting money on behalf of people that aren’t members, like for instance in this case while Stuart Friedel is the member of the Writers Guild they’re collecting money for him that he earned through the Animation Guild. Here’s another fun fact. We collect a ton of foreign levies from porn.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** So we have to find the porn directors and writers. And that is kind of how we did it. We just agreed that we would do this. And for that there is some fee, of course, some sort of administrative fee that the Writers Guild takes. This has been litigated. Members of the Writers Guild have sued over it. Other people have sued over it. It was sort of like incredibly hot potato in the 2000s and has since ceased to be that hot potato. It’s now just kind of this passive stream of money that shows up in a brown envelope, or on a brown check instead of a green check.

**John:** Yeah. So to date the WGA West has distributed $246 million in foreign levies, and including $37 million to non-members and beneficiaries.

**Craig:** Ah, yes, that’s the other thing. If someone is dead–

**John:** They still get it.

**Craig:** They have to give it to whoever controls the estate.

**John:** Yeah. So right now there’s a little bit over $9 million that can’t be matched to writers and directors. And so we’ll put a link in the show notes. There’s a way you can search for like, oh, am I owed foreign levies. And so they try to match up those funds. But it’s possible that some money will just never go to the place it’s actually supposed to go, or to the person it’s supposed to go to. So, based on the settlement at a certain point that money, if there’s any money left over, goes to the Actor’s Fund which we’ve talked about before is the charity that supports the industry.

**Craig:** Correct. And that number, $9 million, sounds high. It’s not. It used to be much higher. There was a point where it was like at $25 million. It was becoming a real liability. You can’t just sit on $25 million of other people’s money and not do something about it. So the guild has actually made really good progress on that front. My guess is that’s probably as low as it’s going to be, because there’s always going to be some stuff that comes – it’s really hard sometimes to understand these – you have governments sending you lists of taxation based on their information. Sometimes it’s not complete.

**John:** Yeah. It’s going to happen. All right. This last week I was listening to an episode of 99 Percent Invisible, and this one was one megaplexes. It was about sort of how everything changed when AMC opened up the Grand 24 in Dallas. And I realize we’ve talked about exhibition before on the show, but I think we’ve never talked about our experiences of going to the movies and sort of when movie theaters changed.

And for people who are younger than us they probably don’t remember clearly a time before megaplexes and before stadium seating and sort of what that life was like, but we saw both sides of it. So I thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about our experience with that. And also the podcast episode, which was trying to make the point that the physical changes of theaters actually had a big impact on sort of what movies were getting made and then as theaters started to collapse a bit also change what movies were getting made. So I thought we’d talk about both our experience as movie goers but also what we saw happening in the industry as the exhibition itself changed.

**Craig:** I used to go see movies at the Amboy Multiplex. The Amboy Multiplex, not a megaplex like the AMC Grand 24, the Amboy Multiplex I think had eight screens which was considered insane at the time.

**John:** That was pretty big at the time. Was that the first theater you remember going to?

**Craig:** The Amboy Multiplex might have been the first multiplex. It’s in New Jersey. Well, it was. It’s no longer there. And I believe they opened in maybe ’78 or ’79. I remember for instance seeing Star Wars in just a single screen movie theater. And that was kind of what you had. The multiplex was pretty great because if you were a family my dad and I could go see Raiders of the Lost Ark and my mom and my sister could go see, you know, Max Dugan Returns or something, I don’t know. I can’t remember what was going on.

But the point is families could split up and see different things.

**John:** That was such a great point. And I had not considered it, but yes, I mean, on a single screen theater everyone is going to see the same movie and you can’t do that thing where you divide up and see different stuff starting about the same time. And that’s a huge difference. Like you’ve sold more tickets because more people can go.

**Craig:** Correct. And they also because they had that many more screens running the concessions became a massive part of it. Because now you’re not feeding the amount of people that fit into one room. You’re feeding the amount of people that fit into eight rooms. It all becomes a much bigger money maker. And you could just feel like, OK, if I’m a single movie theater and I’m showing one freaking thing, first of all if there’s a – so the blockbuster emerges out of the ‘70s out of Jaws and Star Wars.

Now, you can say we have these blockbuster films like Raiders, we can show them on more than one screen. So you’re losing money when you’re turning people away from a theater. The multiplexes didn’t have to. They said we’ll just stick it on another screen. No problem.

**John:** Now growing up in Boulder, Colorado my first experience in a theater was probably either the Base-Mar, which had two giant screens, or there was the Village 4 which were one really big screen and three smaller screens. That’s probably where I watched Star Wars. It’s where I saw 9 to 5. Or I saw a lot of early movies. I saw The Muppet Movie there.

But eventually we had – Mann built a six-pack theater with six identical size theaters and I think at about six is where you start to see some of those economies of scale. Where they can just sell more concessions. They can put the same movie on two different screens at the same time. There really are reasons they can just make more money off of things by sort of sticking a bunch of screens together.

But that was a real innovation. So, you know, the history of movie theaters were those giant sort of movie palaces that sometimes would get carved into smaller screens. But it’s still a pretty bad experience and not very efficient.

Now, something like the six-pack that I saw most of my movies in high school at that was still pre-stadium seating. When was the first time you experienced stadium seating Craig?

**Craig:** That’s a great question. I think it was when we – I’m going to say it was back in the early 2000s I remember going to a test – we were doing a test screening and it was out in like Chatsworth or something. And there was this stadium seating and I thought well this is absolutely terrible for comedies. And it is. It’s the worst. Because you laugh outwards and you basically hear yourself and some of the people behind you and that’s it.

Whereas in the old days when you were in that flat room everybody heard everybody and laughs were just so much bigger. It was like being in a comedy show. And now it’s not. Obviously it’s terrific for viewing. I get that. But I was disturbed.

And now that’s it. It’s that and nothing else.

**John:** Yeah. So younger listeners don’t have a memory of going to see movies and having to make sure you weren’t sitting behind someone taller than you. And having to look behind you to make sure you weren’t blocking somebody.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And that whole experience. And what’s also surprising to folks who live in Los Angeles now is you said you went to a screening out in Chatsworth and that’s where you saw stadium seating, like LA when I moved here had the worst movie theaters.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Bad.

**John:** We had Mann’s Chinese which was like a movie palace and just gorgeous, but it actually had terrible projection and sound.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And could only show one movie at a time. It was great to see a big movie there because it was huge, but was not a good theater. And all the rest of the theaters were just terrible. They were sticky floor monstrosities. And so now we have great ones, but we were kind of late to get our great theaters.

**Craig:** It’s true. We were. And there is now a generation of parents who don’t have the joy of saying, “I can’t see!” When you would go to a theater and you would say, “I can’t see,” would your parents say some version of, “Don’t worry, when it starts you won’t even notice.” Because my parents would always say, “Oh yeah, don’t worry about it. When the movie starts you won’t even notice that that guy is blocking half of the screen.”

And they were kind of right, in a sense.

**John:** They weren’t entirely wrong. I would say because I had an older brother, it was my older brother who was mostly responsible for taking me to movies. And so he and I might switch sometimes, but that was going to be about the extent of my accommodation for my shortness growing up and going to movie theaters.

Now, let’s talk about the impact of the change in movie theaters had on the movies that were getting made, because this is a point that this podcast was trying to make and I wanted to push back against it but then I thought, OK, you know what? They actually did have a point here.

So, I remember pre-multiplexes if you wanted to see a David Cronenberg film, if you wanted to see a David Lynch film, if you wanted to see an art film you had to go to an art house movie theater. But with the rise of these bigger and bigger multiplexes it became possible to have one screen that was showing a Being John Malkovich, showing something that was – a Miramax movie. Something that was outside the realm of just the big studio blockbusters. And I think more people saw some indie movies on a big screen in their home town than would have if we hadn’t built out these multiplexes.

**Craig:** Depending on your town, I think. Obviously it’s a little easier if you’re in a city. It’s a lot easier if you’re in a city. But that’s true. And there are still theaters now that kind of pride themselves on showing you a mix of both. So the ArcLight companies for instance, they take pride in their cinematic fidelity. And part of that is not only sound and picture, but that you can see a Spider-Man film and you can also see a Jim Jarmusch movie and that’s kind of their thing.

But over time I think the big megaplexes, the AMCs, and whatever the Regal Cinemas or whatever they’re called, they’ve really adapted to the way that studios have changed, because studios used to put out a movie every week or two. And now they put out a movie every month and a half. Maybe. And what that means is that movie is just steroided-out. It’s the equivalent of the Butterball Turkey. It can barely stand on its own legs because it has been steroided and fed for size.

And now everybody has been like, oh my god, we’ve got to go see The Avengers 7, and so Jesus put it on all 28 of your screens. And so then these movie theaters kind of become like The Avengers’ movie theater for four weeks.

**John:** Now even the ArcLight which can still hold some screens for the smaller movies, but Spider-Man is going to be on eight of the 14 screens. Which can be good for an audience because it means I can actually see something opening weekend. And I do definitely appreciate that. The frustration of not being able to see a thing that you want to see is a thing. And not be part of the cultural conversation about the thing. It is great to be able to see things opening weekend and I look forward to being able to see things opening weekend as theaters start to reopen.

But, I don’t know, the anticipation was part of the experience as well. And I remember before there was reserved seating having to line up and get there in time to sort of get your seat. Yes, it was a hassle, but it also was part of the experience of going to see the movies.

**Craig:** It was communal. But another shot has been fired. It was fired yesterday. Another shot across the bow of the way movies are released and seen. And that shot was Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s talk about that.

**Craig:** So, Zack Snyder shot Justice League. He was in the middle of editing and working on it and then there was a family tragedy and he had to stop. So, the studio brought in Joss Whedon. I assume just to sort of finish and Joss Whedon was like, ah-ha, how about instead of finishing I just redo most of this.

And so he did. And it was a different movie. And people did not like it. And for many, many years there’s been this clamoring for the Zack Snyder cut. Now, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never mentioned before on this podcast.

**John:** Tell us.

**Craig:** I saw the Zack Snyder cut back when he was working on it. Because they were talking about maybe doing a week or reshoots or something like that. And so he invited two or three – I think there were three or four of us, writers, to watch the movie in the state it was in and then just have a conversation about some things that they might be able to do to tweak some things up over the course of a week of writing.

And I, you know me, I’m not like a huge superhero movie guy, but I really liked it. I liked it. I thought it was really good. I thought there were a couple things, like OK here’s some suggestions and things. And then Zack left the project. And so that was it. Literally, I think he left like the next week. And I never saw the Joss Whedon version.

But all this time while there was this fan movement for the Zack, there was like a mythologizing that the Zack Snyder cut was going to be amazing and it was going to save that movie. And a lot of people are like why would you think that? And I quietly was sort of like but it’s really good actually, like I hope that that does happen. But I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to be in the news. Because people are obsessed with this stuff.

Well, I watched it last night and it’s fascinating. First of all, it is good. I really enjoyed it. It’s four hours.

**John:** Now, was the movie you watched previously four hours long?

**Craig:** It was probably three-ish. I think he went and shot some additional material. In fact, I know he shot additional material because there’s like an entire sequence at the end that wasn’t there when I saw the film. And there was a bunch of things that I think he went and reshot and did some work on.

But by and large, yeah, the movie was the movie I saw. Except like finished and good. And what I find fascinating – and people have received it very well. It has been reviewed very well and people are enjoying it. And I think this is a new kind of thing now. Everybody is going to stop and go wait a second, so now we can do these like really long experiences and people will watch them on streaming.

And that is a new challenge to what movies had become, which was we’re going to give you the 2.5 hour extravaganzas. And now people are like, “Or, give us four hours.”

**John:** Four hours at home.

**Craig:** At home. And this is interesting now.

**John:** So, I have a counterpoint for you. We can wrap up the sequence with the counterpoint example of another superhero epic, the last Avengers movie. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the fan reaction to the arrival of the other superheroes at the end of Avengers.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s great.

**John:** And to hear, I mean, you’re not seeing the audience, you’re just hearing the audience and the audience’s reaction to what happens at the end there is a great reminder of sort of why the communal movie theater experience is so different and so vital.

You talk about test screenings with a comedy and how a comedy plays with a crowd, well this isn’t a comedy but the cheering you hear and the feeling you get off of people’s reaction to it is just so different and so dynamic and it’s a thing you’re never going to get in streaming obviously.

**Craig:** Correct. And I don’t think that we’re going to lose that big movie experience, meaning I think movies will return. But, I also think that there may be room now for this other thing, which is the mega-movie, gig-a-movie. You see like say Avengers, the final one, and then two years later you see this four hours version of it, where all this other stuff is happening. Some of which was cut out. And some of it is just new. Like you can keep making those movies.

**John:** Yeah. I would say basically the whole Marvel canon in a way does feel like it is already kind of there. It’s this epic movie that just sort of keeps going. It’s like a series that just keeps going and there’s always a new installment, a new chapter. And WandaVision feels like it’s a six to eight hour Marvel movie that’s in the middle of it. So, it’s exciting.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’ll see where it goes.

**John:** But let’s wrap this up and talk about the megaplex experience because theaters kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and nicer, and nicer, and nicer, and I’ll be curious to see what happens next with the theater experience. And assuming we get back to just butts in seats and people are watching things, you know, I think this may give an opportunity for closing off those less performing locations and focusing on building good new theaters.

Sometimes when there is a crisis people can sort of cull things off their sheets in ways that is useful. Like Alamo Drafthouse filed for bankruptcy but I don’t think Alamo Drafthouse I will go away. I think it will just reorganize.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, bankruptcy doesn’t mean you go out of business, it just means you’re taking a pause to pay your creditors back because you need time. And, yeah, I don’t romanticize small movie theaters with terrible projection and awful sound. I think the trend towards making a movie theater more like your living room will continue. So you’ll have the lazy chair style seating and reserved seating. Ticket prices will go up.

If movie studios purchase large theater chains, and I think they’re sitting back and waiting. If theater experience comes roaring back I think we’ll see that. And then at that point you’re going to get to variable pricing on tickets. All sorts of things are going to happen.

But the theater business was remarkably stable, as much as everybody kept screaming about it, ticket sales were insanely stable for decades. And now all bets are off. I have no idea what happens now.

**John:** But, whatever does happen, MoviePass is going to be part of it. Because MoviePass is coming back. And when there’s an update we’ll see what that is. But they announced that they’re coming back, so in some version there’s going to be a MoviePass out there.

**Craig:** [laughs] Man, I’ll tell you. I want to give us a pat on the back for that, but I can’t. It was so obviously ridiculous.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh lord.

**John:** You know I’m not joking? MoviePass has announced – MoviePass really is coming back in some version.

**Craig:** What? I’m sorry, no. What? Oh no.

**John:** Who knows what it’ll be. But the MoviePass account is suddenly active again. So something is happening.

**Craig:** So MoviePass is going to come back and they’re like, OK, new deal. You pay us $80 and we let you see one movie.

**John:** Craig, it will involve the block chain in some way.

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** [Unintelligible].

**John:** Craig, it’s time for our One Cool Things. Before we get to your One Cool Thing, I’ve been asked by Megana for an update on your Upstep insoles. How are your insoles going?

**Craig:** Now, Megana, are you asking because you are also interested in some foot support?

**Megana Rao:** No. But as I was listening to the episode I was just like I wonder how that’s going.

**Craig:** I like that you’re just generally interested in my foot health.

**Megana:** The anticipation from all of that unboxing.

**Craig:** OK. It has worked great. They fit perfectly and they are very comfortable. They do this thing that all kind of orthotic inserts do which is they squeak. So when I walk it’s wah-wah-wah. I think over time that will probably stop.

**John:** Well WD40 should help.

**Craig:** Exactly. That’s what you want in your shoes. But, yeah, they work great. And they are experientially identical to the ones tht cost way more that you’d have to go to the doctor for. So, I give a big thumb’s up to the Upstep insoles.

**John:** And don’t forget to use the promo code “umbrage” at checkout to save 15%.

**Craig:** CraigsFootHealth49. Yeah, I just did an ad for Upstep and I’m not getting paid.

**John:** Weird. Weird that.

**Craig:** God, my streak of not getting paid on this show continues.

**John:** Yeah. What’s your real One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** You know what? Let’s make it that. It’s really good.

**John:** Craig wasn’t prepared.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** My One Cool Thing, I was a guest on another podcast this last week which I think many of our listeners would really enjoy, like the podcast overall. My episode sure, but this is the Screenwriting Life Podcast. It’s by Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna. They do it weekly. They are up to episode 35 right now, so it’s going to stick around for a while. What I really dig about their podcast is it’s very much just about talking through the writing that you’re doing each week and what the highs and the lows were. And it’s very much the emotional process of it all. So, we had a good interview and I’m sure all their interviews are great. But I really enjoyed how the two of them just talked about the work they were doing on a regular basis.

Now, Craig, you and I have referred previously on the show to you and I sort of write in our little bubbles and we just do our own writing. We don’t sort of share and don’t talk about stuff. But we have friends, especially women friends, who are involved in each other’s writing a lot. And I’ve always been really envious of that and I really appreciate the way they can just focus on what the experience is of writing on a daily basis. And so especially for aspiring writers who are listening to this I think just check out them and their advice because I really think you’ll enjoy that show.

**Craig:** It’s got to be mentally healthier than what I do, which is just curl up in a ball and shiver with fear and self-loathing. Right? It’s got to be healthier than that?

**John:** And play some videogames.

**Craig:** Oh yean. And D&D.

**John:** And D&D.

That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by Peter Hoopes. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions, but for short questions on Twitter I’m @johnaugust. I might be able to answer your question.

We have t-shirts. They’re lovely. You can find them at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of links to things about writing.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, we got a question from Julie in Copenhagen. Can you read Julie in Copenhagen’s question?

**Craig:** Indeed. She writes, “I’m currently writing my master thesis in film and media studies focusing on the meaning and use of clichés and genre conventions in Danish youth dramedy television series. I have interviewed Danish screenwriters, critics, and two focus groups of the target audience to hear how they define and feel about clichés.

“But there doesn’t seem to be a clear cut definition of what a cliché is and how it differs from genre conventions, or what the relationship is between conventions and clichés.”

Well, this is a question that is universal. It travels beyond the borders of Denmark.

**John:** Absolutely. Even places without Lego, they have clichés.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So, let’s talk about that, because as she raised the question I was trying to sort through what I felt is a cliché versus what is a genre convention.

And so I went to Wikipedia to look at their definition of cliché which is pretty good. They say, “A cliché is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.” And I think that last clause is really important there because a cliché didn’t start as a cliché. A cliché probably started as something relatively clever or sort of clever or at least new. But just through overuse it’s not that anymore and it just feels terrible. It’s an idea that doesn’t know that it’s busted.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah. I think that is a valuable way to discriminate between the two. I would say, Julie, that clichés are specific things that put your teeth on edge because you’re like, uh, it’s mean to make me smile, laugh, or be shocked or something and it’s not because it’s just unoriginal. Conventions are things that just keep showing up. They’re not demanding a lot of attention. They’re just sort of baked into the structure or concept.

So, for instance a convention of a space opera is a dogfight between spaceships shooting lasers at each other. That’s just a convention.

**John:** Yeah, not a cliché. So clichéd moments can happen during it, but the idea of a space battle, fine.

**Craig:** Exactly. So, like a cliché is someone gets shots a laser into my X-Wing and I go, “I’m hit, I’m hit.” That’s a cliché. It’s like, oh, what an original moment. But the existence of the convention of the space dogfight could actually be good.

So, there was like some really cool stuff that Rian did in The Last Jedi. It’s a convention, but inside of that convention original and interesting things happen. Please don’t @ me, because I like that movie. I don’t care.

So, I would say that like in zombie movies the convention is that a lot of people are zombies and a group of people who are not zombies need to get away from them. But inside of that there could be a ton of clichés. A ton of little moments that you’ve seen a billion, billion times.

**John:** Yeah. So trying to save someone’s life in an extreme situation can be a genre convention. There’s military versions of trying to save a person’s life, like doing CPR on a person. That is a convention. That’s great. We get it. Saying, “Don’t die on me,” that is a cliché. There’s no version of “don’t die on me” that will not be a cliché. And it will ring the bells.

And the first time a character said that it was great. But then the fourth time a character said that it’s like, ugh, that’s not fresh. We know it’s not fresh. And that not fresh feeling is really what makes something a cliché.

**Craig:** That not so fresh feeling.

**John:** An example of good genre conventions, we have vampires, we have vampires drinking blood. There’s lots of things about vampires that are genre conventions that are good, sort of come for free. But the vampire flourishing his cape in front of his face that’s just a cliché. You feel like you’re in Count Chocula territory when you do that.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So you’ve got to be mindful of that.

**Craig:** Yes. So, a vampire speaking with a vaguely Romanian accent is sort of cliché. It’s not a convention, because vampires can be anywhere. And that’s sort of the deal. Conventions in and of themselves aren’t bad. You can absolutely do something and be unconventional in the way you do it. But you will find just as often that there are vampire conventions that are turned around because they are executed in a way that is not cliché.

So, I think we talked about Near Talk at some point.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Kathryn Bigelow’s first film.

**John:** So good.

**Craig:** So good. A ton of vampire conventions in there. Sun burns you and you’ve got to drink blood. And there’s a lead vampire. But the execution, the setting, the tone, all that stuff, clearly she avoided cliché every step of the way and it’s one of the reasons that the film feels so exciting even though it’s full of vampire conventions.

**John:** So here’s a convention I want to throw your way. You’re in a western and there is a hooker a heart of gold. Is that a cliché or a convention?

**Craig:** I think it’s a cliché because the convention I always think of is connected to plot, setting, the inciting incident, the goal, that sort of thing. So a convention would be a bunch of unlikely allies in a western have to make it from one town to another while being pursued by bad buys. Well, if you are doing Stagecoach, well there’s the hooker with the heart of gold. That’s fine. It was 1930-whatever. But these days you wouldn’t do that. Because it is cliché.

You would want the individual characters to feel fresh even inside of the convention of it all. So in The Hateful Eight there’s a lot of western convention in there. But then these characters are just, whoa. Not clichéd characters.

**John:** So I would steer listeners to TV Tropes which is a great site which sort of goes through in any genre what are the clichés and conventions. And so you have to be careful to read through this to not assume that anything you see there is by default a thing you need to avoid. A lot of those things are just part of the genre. So you have to sort of understand what everyone sort of accepts as an audience and what things are hackneyed or stale.

And so you have to be a student of what’s happened in that genre before in order to avoid those clichés.

**Craig:** Yeah. So if you’re doing a romantic comedy you will want to fulfill certain conventions of the genre, most likely. But you’re going to want to avoid the cliché ways of getting them across. A girl meets a man. Girl meets a boy. Boy meets a girl. Boy meets a boy. Man meets a man. Whatever it is, then you don’t want them bumping into each other in the middle of the street and one person dropping all their stuff and the other person saying, “Oh let me help you pick that up,” and then they look in each other’s eyes and go, “Ah!” because that’s cliché.

But you’re going to want them to meet.

**John:** Yeah. They do have to meet at some point.

**Craig:** That’s the challenge. Do the convention. But be original.

**John:** And Tess Morris has been on the show to talk about rom-coms. And like, yes, again it’s always about understanding the conventions while avoiding the clichés.

We’ll put a link in the show notes to a video essay talking through the makeover sequence, the makeover montage. And that transformation of essentially the female character in one of these stories and how troubling it is and how we really need to look at that sequence and think about what it is we’re trying to say through those sequences.

**Craig:** We’re trying to say that if you’re pretty you’re valuable, and if you’re not you’re not.

**John:** There’s that.

**Craig:** That’s pretty much what those movies are telling everybody as far as I can tell. That until you are physically attractive by some normative definition you’re worthless and a loser. And I say that as somebody who has never been attractive in any normal sort of way. I’ve always been like but my face is weird. What about me?

**John:** Aw. Craig.

**Craig:** Oh, Craig.

**John:** Thanks.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [WGA Parental Leave](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/new-paid-parental-leave-benefit-details) begins May 2!
* [Learn more about foreign levies](https://www.wga.org/the-guild/levies-payments/foreign-levies-program/history)
* [99 Percent Invisible Podcast Episode: The Megaplex](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-megaplex/)
* [We’ve Outgrown the Ugly Duckling Transformation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa4bR5ZO3dM) by Mina Le on Youtube
* [TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VampireTropes) – Vampires
* [Listener Guide Submissions](https://johnaugust.com/guide) send in your favorite episodes from 300-500!
* [Check out the Screenwriting Life Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-screenwriting-life-with-meg-lefauve-and-lorien-mckenna/id1501641442) and this episode with [John!](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/35-john-august-on-worldbuilding-in-your-writing/id1501641442?i=1000512898141)
* [Upstep](https://app.upstep.com) – the review is positive!
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You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/493standard1.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/gray-areas).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 492 of Scriptnotes. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Often on this program we talk about the difficult choices characters have to make. Today I want to explore the dilemmas that screenwriters encounter in the business with a mix of listener questions and things you and I are grappling with at this very moment.

We’ll also be looking at writer websites, international guilds, and hassles when joining the WGA.

**Craig:** Ooh, the only hassle I remember was that they suddenly made me pay money I didn’t have.

**John:** Yeah, there’s that. There’s also more stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, OK.

**John:** And in our bonus segment for premium members it’s time for an origin story. You and I will travel back to the moment we decided to become screenwriters.

**Craig:** Oh, OK. Fun.

**John:** And I had to think about what that moment or those moments were and you can share it with our premium members at the end of this episode.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool. At the head of the program I said this is Episode 492. That means eight episodes away is Episode 500.

**Craig:** Good lord.

**John:** You and I have barely discussed what we should do for Episode 500 except that the idea of doing a big, live show with an audience seems a little premature.

**Craig:** I don’t know, John. Let’s kill them all.

**John:** [laughs] Let’s kill them all.

**Craig:** What a way to go out.

**John:** Absolutely. So, you have to have a proof of vaccination and then you come to our live – it’s too soon for that.

**Craig:** It’s too soon. Also, I mean, look, it’s 500. Seems like a good round number. We can just chuck it, right? We just wrap it up?

**John:** You know what? Maybe we should just wrap it up. And it has got me thinking about Episode 1. So let’s take a listen back to Episode 1 and see what Episode 1 sounded like. Because I don’t think you’ve probably heard any of this since–

**Craig:** Since Episode 1.

**John:** No.

Hello. Welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig:** And I’m Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is the inaugural edition of something we’re calling Scriptnotes, which is meant to be a podcast talking about things that screenwriters might be interested in.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What would those be?

**Craig:** Ah, you know, we can cover craft, the business, the union, psychology.

**John:** Work habits, too. Sort of like how you actually get stuff written.

**Craig:** Yeah. And topics for people who are working steadily, people who aren’t working steadily, people who want to work steadily.

**John:** Dig deeping. Dig deeping things?

**Craig:** You said dig deeping.

**John:** Dig deeping.

**Craig:** Please don’t edit that out. [laughs]

**John:** I will leave my misspoken terms right in there, unedited. But I wanted to start with a question because I figure, you know…

Oh, Craig, nothing has changed.

**Craig:** In a sense nothing has changed. You still do say things like “dip deeping” and I still have that stupid laugh. And other than that, good lord, we were children. First of all, it’s clear that I had no idea what a podcast was. You could hear it in my voice. You could hear it.

**John:** No sense.

**Craig:** But I still don’t know.

**John:** And still the brief we laid out in terms of the things we would be talking about on this program we’ve remained remarkably true to what our initial instinct was for what this podcast should be.

**Craig:** Let’s clarify. What your instinct was.

**John:** That’s true. And so while we didn’t have all the lingo down right in terms of like “things that are interesting to screenwriters,” that wasn’t quite right. We didn’t have our intro bloops yet. We were still using the CBS theme music as our intro stuff.

**Craig:** So good though. Makes me so happy when I hear that.

**John:** I can picture it. I feel like something exciting is happening at CBS right now.

**Craig:** I’m sitting in front of a large – and when I say large I mean small cube of a television. Remember when you would turn it on it would take a while for it to come on? It had to warm up.

**John:** Got to warm up the television. So nearly 500 episodes ago, but it’s also almost ten years. So I would propose that what we would really do is like we’ll go through Episode 500, fine. Episode 500 we’ll celebrate it in its own small way. But we’ll think about doing something for our 10th anniversary which would be August 30th of this year. It would be ten years of Scriptnotes. And I feel like August – something will be possible to do in August.

**Craig:** Well, I will be in another country. So, there is that.

**John:** That’s a challenge.

**Craig:** But, you know what? Maybe we’ll have a big Calgary show.

**John:** Yeah. A big Calgary show.

**Craig:** It’s not a big town, but if I can convince enough Calgarians to show up right off the bat.

**John:** Some sort of rodeo fair ground.

**Craig:** At the Stampede. They’re probably angry that I’ve called them Calgarians because I doubt that’s what they are. I’ve already blown it. They may run me out of town on a rail.

**John:** So let us lower people’s expectations for 500 episodes and raise them for the 10th anniversary to unrealistic heights for what we’re going to do. But, a thing you as listeners can do in the meantime is at Episode 300 we put out this listener guide saying like hey tell us what your favorite episodes are of the first 300. We are updating that now for the first 500. So, if you want to point to suggestions of like these are the best episodes if someone is new to Scriptnotes go to johnaugust.com/guide and let us know what are the best episodes, especially episodes between 300 and 500, which ones stand out for you.

**Craig:** Did I say Calgarians?

**John:** Yeah, you did.

**Craig:** Guess what? That’s right.

**John:** That’s right?

**Craig:** That’s right. I got it right.

**John:** Sometimes you guess correctly.

**Craig:** The thing is I don’t know why I was nervous because they’re very polite. People in Canada are worldwide renowned for their politeness. And I’m sure they would have just said, oh, you know, that’s not what we’re called but we accept you.

But I did call them – it’s Calgarians. Why would I have – how did I get there? Anyway, sorry. Here’s what’s happening as we approach Episode 500 I begin to ramble more and more.

**John:** Yeah. And Matthew has to keep cutting you back shorter and shorter. Those early episodes I was cutting everything myself. And so I think part of the reason why I became less of a terrible speaker is because I had to edit myself so much and I did not want to edit myself and so therefore I learned to just speak more clearly the first time through.

**Craig:** Right. Well you do an excellent job. I think the two of us have defined what excellence is for this show. We have self-defined it. We didn’t copy anyone.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** Clearly.

**John:** We made it up as we were going along.

**Craig:** Correct. 500.

**John:** Another bit of housekeeping here. So people write in with questions or stories or things they want to share to the podcast and this last week Paige Feldman wrote into the ask account. And I read it and I said like, you know what, this would actually be a better blog post, so I asked her if we could post as a blog post and I did.

So she wrote about how screenwriting competitions are incredibly expensive. And so that instead of entering all these screenwriting competitions she normally would have entered she saved that money and then used it to fund an audio podcast version of her script. And that it was a much better use of her time and her money. So, I would point everyone to Paige’s example in terms of rather than spending the entry fee on a screenwriting competition there’s probably a better way to spend your money and your time.

**Craig:** I totally agree.

**John:** But what I liked about Paige is that she showed the initiative to just put her money and her time to better use. So whether you do what she does in terms of making an audio drama, just find something else to do with your time and your money other than a screenwriting competition.

**Craig:** I think there may be a chance that in Episode 1 of Scriptnotes, from which you just played an excerpt, I may have said something like screenwriting shouldn’t cost money. And here I am nearly 500 episodes later saying screenwriting should not cost money. I don’t think I spent a dime. And I don’t think anybody needs to.

You can. And there are certain ways to spend money I suppose smarter than others. But you don’t have to. And I love the way that she was entrepreneurial here. And I like the fact that she took a sober look at screenwriting contests. Because, John, I’ve got to say looking around how many of us, when I say us I mean screenwriters who are sort of safely ensconced in a career, how many of us got into this by winning a contest?

**John:** Almost none of us.

**Craig:** Ehren Kruger I think.

**John:** Yeah. You could probably point to some folks who won the Nicholl Fellowship, which I think we’ve said probably from Episode 1 is the only one that kind of–

**Craig:** Kind of super matters.

**John:** Clearly is worth winning. Yeah.

**Craig:** But even then it is not in and of itself – it’s a bit like the SAT. Congrats on your excellent SAT score. It’s not actually a predictor of success.

**John:** No. Not a bit. Well let’s keep talking about money. So last week on the podcast we talked about writer deals. Would you read what Lisa wrote in?

**Craig:** Sure. She’s wondering, “Can you speak to production bonuses and how those are calculated in deals? In 2019 I signed my first screenwriting contract with one of the major streamers. It’s a multi-step deal and I was ecstatic at the numbers because I’d never made such a large sum of money in my life before. However, after listening to the episode on deals and looking at the WGA’s screen deal guide I was shocked to discover I was earning $50,000 under the median for new screenwriters with multi-step deals.

“Then again my contract does include a production bonus which guarantees me another six figure check on the other side of production. If I take the production bonus into account does that mean I’m overall earning over the median? Or are production bonuses pretty standard in screenwriting contracts and I’m actually earning under the median?”

John, this is an excellent question.

**John:** It’s an excellent question. So Lisa first off congratulations on setting up that project at a streamer. Congratulations on having reps who fought for you to get a multi-step deal. That’s good. And you can compare on that chart like you made more money on a multi-step deal than you would have on a single one-step deal. So hooray for you.

That production bonus, that’s not included in these median figures. Because those median figures are about what you’re guaranteed to be paid. They cannot pay you any less than that. That production bonus is not a guarantee. It only happens if the project goes into production.

So, no, that money, production bonus, is important and so worthwhile, but you cannot count on getting it, so therefore you cannot really count it as income at this point.

**Craig:** That’s a great clarification. Lisa, it’s an interesting game, the production bonus game. We probably talked about this a number of times, but the way it basically works for those of you at home who don’t know is when you make a writing deal for a movie it’s blank against blank. I’m going to make $100,000 against $400,000. That means I’m guaranteed $100,000. If the movie is produced and I get sole screenwriting credit then they fill that money up to get to $400,000. So in other words they add another $300,000 on.

In the case of streamers I suspect they have a much higher rate of production than movie studios do. Movie studios used to have a terrible rate of production. They would develop ten scripts for every one they made. That number has come down quite a bit. But I still think streamers – because streamers are so voracious to produce and push out content I think there’s a fairly high rate of development to production. Doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee though. A guarantee is a guarantee. Made a guarantee, made a guarantee.

So, you can sort of think of it a little bit that way. If the number is super high than it’s a bit of a gamble. Again, this is also contingent on credit. So take a careful look at what your bonus is for shared screenplay credit. Because that typically is half of what the full credit bonus is. And you don’t know what the credit is going to be. You’re working on this now. But they may hire somebody to rewrite you. That person may rewrite you to the extent that you only get half screenplay credit. They may rewrite you so you get no screenplay credit.

And if that happens you don’t get any bonus. So, as much as you can get into guarantee the better. And I think it’s a great thing that you took a look at the screen deal guide. I think this is a conversation you should have with your agents, particularly now that you’ve made a big deal and you might want to convert that quickly into another one, which I think is generally a good idea. Talk about seeing about getting up to parity there. At a minimum. Remember, that’s the median.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Try and get more.

**John:** Also important to point out here so this report that we talked about was the WGA put this out but the WGA and the contract they formed with the studios is really about the minimums. And so all these things we’re talking about are things that are in your individual contract that are not in the overall contract. So when we say backend bonuses and that kind of stuff those are all things that your reps have negotiated for you individually. And so while we talked that there are sort of standard terms and things you kind of expect, they’re not codified in guild language.

And so that idea that you have a production bonus where it’s this amount if you get sole credit and that amount if you get shared credit, those are all negotiated points.

Also what’s negotiated in your contract is to what degree do the optional steps count against that bonus. And so every time they’re paying you for that optional rewrite, that optional polish, that may come out of your bonus. And so really what you should be looking at at that other figure is that is the most you can possibly earn in direct compensation off of writing this project.

And so, again, when you look at headlines where it’s like someone sold a project for a $4 million deal, really that’s probably the upper limit of how much they would be paid for something. It’s not what you are actually getting as the writer going into this project.

**Craig:** Yeah. The magic word there is applicable. So, in almost every circumstance all of the optional steps that are listed in your contract will be applicable against that bonus. That means, again, like John is saying whatever you earn they’re only obliged to just fill that up to get to the big number.

But, there is a term called fresh cash. It’s the best term. It’s the most magical term. That means that at some point they’re asking you to do something and you realize, look, you guys are making this movie. And I’m pretty much going to get sole screenplay credit. So if I do more work that’s applicable against the bonus it’s free. I would make the same amount if I did nothing. Therefore, you kind of need to make it “fresh cash.” That means cash that’s not applicable against the bonus.

**John:** Yeah. And so that’s if you have leverage in the project and that they want to keep you on and everybody else wants to keep you on, you may have the leverage to negotiate for that sort of point.

So I’ll point Lisa and everyone else to an episode we did where we really walked through writer deals and sort of how they work. And so you can look at the contract because it’s so important to understand that, yes, there are minimums set by the guild but everything else is in your own individual contract and knowing what that is makes a huge difference.

All right, some more follow up. Last week I talked about how I thought Disney was going to make its next trillion dollars on selling artwork and possibly through a mechanism like an NFT with the way digital art is being sold these days.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Philip wrote in to say, “If Disney earns trillions through NFTs wouldn’t it make sense for the WGA to already be aware of this and talk to writers being part of that NFT value chain with some percentage points of their work? So that if Disney makes trillions, writers make something at least, rather than be late to the party.”

And, yes. Yes, and, challenging. And so what I would say is that writers in America have classically been able to get some piece of the pie because of the intellectual property that we are creating and the sort of weird dance we do about copyright where we sort of pretend that these studios are the creators of the work. And that’s how we sort of claw back a little bit of that money.

It’s unclear to me whether an NFT fits in that copyright chain kind of at all. It’s its own weird sort of beast. And I think it’s absolutely a valid thing to be looking at. I don’t know that it’s going to be workable in the same way that merch and the guild have a weird relationship as well. So it’s challenging.

**Craig:** I think this probably would fall under merchandise. And we do have some access to merchandising money, but it is very restricted. So, first of all it’s relying on separate rights. Hopefully in our show notes we can give you a little link back to our episode where we went through all the separated rights. But let’s assume you have it. You’re writing something for Disney and you have a story credit or written by credit, which as we know is unlikely given the fact that all they seem to do is remake their animated movies. But regardless if you have that then you do actually get access to 5% of the money paid to the manufacturer for such merchandise.

So what does that mean? It means that your literary material – this is where they get you – must physically describe the object or thing being merchandised. And it has to do so in such a way that it includes specific physical attributes. And if the final product substantially follows that description than you may be entitled to money for the sales of the object.

So I know that for instance Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio kind of mixed it up with Disney over the fact that Disney was selling the Aztec coins from Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyworld. And they said, “Hey, we created the Aztec coin in our script and therefore…” And they were like, “Oh, mmm, actually we’re changing that now. It doesn’t look like the way you described it in the script. So now you get nothing.” And that’s kind of how it goes.

It’s very difficult. Getting merchandise money through the guild happens, but it’s a little bit of a Halley’s Comet. So, will the companies be more likely to want to share that with us now that that revenue stream might explode? Quite the opposite.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They will become even more miserly about it I suspect.

**John:** I think you’re right. And I would also say in the case of Disney I think what they can commoditize through something like an NFT would be very equivalent to sort of like the pins you buy at the park. And so it’s like a character. It is an image. It is a thing. And it’s hard to say that it’s the work of the screenwriter that they’re putting out there as artwork. That’s the real challenge there.

**Craig:** If you successfully describe something in such a way that if they were to merchandise it you would get some merchandising money they would specifically not make it look like that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They ain’t dub.

**John:** And, again, this is a thing where in theory this could be negotiated in your individual contract.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So Megana has provided us with a link. It was Episode 407 where we talked through understanding your contract. This is the kind of thing where you might want to do that. And I’ll say that there are properties that I’m considering doing that I actually own and control that I am thinking very seriously about like OK do I want to just pitch this as an original thing, or do I want to create some other piece of property first that can then sell? Partly it’s just so I can hold on to some of the merch a little bit more easily.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So that’s a thought. I had talked about a previous One Cool Thing was Beeple who was a digital artist who I said like, oh, you should follow him on Instagram because his art is really good. The day that we’re recording this that artist, Mike Winkelmann, who is known mostly for doing one big illustration a day, and so he’d been doing it for like 5,000 days. He’d been doing an illustration a day. The most any of his artwork had sold for was $100. Today an NFT was sold through Christie’s for $69 million. So, he’s made some money on this [digital gold rush].

**Craig:** That doesn’t seem good to me.

**John:** So let’s talk some pros and cons, because it’s actually a good segue into these moral gray areas here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Seems troubling.

**John:** It does seem troubling. The whole idea of how this artwork is sort of locked down is through these chains, these block chains, that involve a tremendous amount of energy. So this idea of sort of like it’s like you’re printing a baseball card on like ivory or something. You’re actually doing terrible things to the planet to build this thing.

**Craig:** That sounds awesome, by the way. [laughs] I would by that. A Mikey Mantle rookie card in ivory. Ooh.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** Wonderful.

**John:** But, also it speaks to the commoditization of everything. Just the sense that things only have value if they have some digital uniqueness to them. And at the same time I’m happy for this guy to be paid money. And I’m also happy for some artist to be able to actually see value off their work in ways that they could not otherwise see it.

But, man, pros and cons here.

**Craig:** I mean, when you have somebody go from something that the general marketplace value is at $100 to something the general marketplace value is at $70 million, and that happens within months, something has gone awry. And it’s certainly not – it’s not that Mike Winkelmann somehow managed to receive a message from god and put that into digital artwork.

What’s happening is a marketplace is getting distorted. And we know that the visual art marketplace, that economy is insane. It is tulips times a billion. And it’s entirely about perceived scarcity. And also prestige. And essentially it is fueled by a factor that does not – there’s no relevance for you or for me. It is the vanity of billionaires is what it is.

And what I see here is the vanity of billionaires at work. And it would be a shame if these things started to become distorted by that. It’s almost impossible to say to somebody like Mike Winkelmann, who by all accounts is a perfectly good guy who was doing something that was fun, to say, “Oh, by the way, if you take this $70 million for one thing you did it’s going to be ‘bad.’”

You know, he’s got a family. He has dreams and stuff. Maybe he has charitable desires and he wants to redistribute that. That’s awesome. But that seems bad. And if NFTs are already doing this? Eww.

**John:** Yeah. So, a good segue into talking about gray areas and decisions and choices and things that you and I face on a daily basis. And we’ll also then lead into some questions we get from listeners about this stuff. Because so often I think on this podcast people will write in and like we’ll have clear answers. Oh, you do this thing. You don’t do this thing. Or this sucks, but here’s how it goes.

But off mic you and I often have conversations about like, ugh, this situation. Like what do we do in this situation? And there’s sort of no good answer.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I went on a nice walk with Aline Brosh McKenna and we were talking through some of these issues yesterday as well. There’s just stuff that comes up. It’s like you sort of do the best you can. Yet you’re grappling with these things. And to the degree that we are characters in the stories of our own lives, I just want to talk about some of the things that you and I grapple with on a regular basis.

**Craig:** A great idea for a topic. It’s something that happens constantly I suspect in every job, in every industry, but there’s something about the loosey-goosey nature of this business, it comes up all the time.

**John:** Yeah. Because it’s a relationship business. It’s a question of we’re creating art that is so amorphous and so what is an idea. There’s a lot of stuff happening here. So, we’ll start with back in Episode 372 I talked about No Work Left Behind which was back when I was on the board. It was a thing I was pushing really hard. That idea of like when you go into a meeting and you don’t leave your pitch behind. You basically don’t leave written stuff after a pitch because that is problematic both for you as a writer individually but also for all writers. It sets an expectation that people should be able to get free work out of you and that your writing is essentially worthless.

And you obviously agree with this. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show. As a general principle you should not leave writing behind. Right Craig?

**Craig:** You should not leave writing behind as a general principle. Correct.

**John:** Yeah. And yet I find myself doing stuff that’s kind of like that in real life. And so here’s an example. There’s a property that I have set up. I’ve been pitching and have sort of set up. It’s not my own original IP. I control it but I didn’t create it. And getting this thing set up and trying to figure out how we’re going to do this I’ve sort of like paused the deal-making. I haven’t signed my deal because I’m not sure we can actually do it.

Technologically – it’s not the virtual sets of The Mandalorian, but it’s kind of like that. And it’s just like, god, I don’t know if we’re actually going to be able to make this thing happen. And so I wanted to see, basically just do a test and do sort of like a vertical slide to see is this actually going to be cool because I don’t want to waste my time if this is not going to be cool.

So, I ended up writing two sequences that we could actually put through a team and work on and see is this going to be cool. And it falls in this really murky area that’s somewhere between a pitch thing and actual work. And I felt weird doing it, and yet I don’t have a better solution for how do I decide if this is a thing worth my time to do.

**Craig:** Well, it’s entrepreneurial. You’ve generated it. So it’s a little different. If somebody comes to you and says, “Listen, we have an assignment and we want you to come up with some pitch,” and then leave that behind that’s different.

I do think in this case you probably have more leeway, but it’s leeway, right? I mean, the whole point of leeway is where does it stop and where does it end.

And you and I are always giving general advice. But when you talk about a specific situation general advice is only as good as general advice. General advice applied to a specific situation is typically not hugely useful. You have to take that general advice and adjust to taste. And in this situation I feel like that’s called for.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t feel guilty on a regular basis, and yet I could very easily see where my doing this could potentially lead to some other less powerful writer feeling like they are being required to send in some sort of proof of concept thing for something else that they may end up doing someplace else, or on IP that they don’t have any control over. So it’s frustrating to both be aware that I’m probably doing the right thing for me in this situation and it could also be not a good thing for the next writer down the road.

**Craig:** And this is why sometimes I struggle with the moral argument that we get a lot of times from the guild, because the moral arguments do start to fall apart in specifics. They are very good for general arguments. In specific cases they fall apart. And in fact doing the moral thing ends up just being a self-defeating pointless exercise.

And what it really comes down to is where is your heart. And it seems like your heart is in the right place here. And it is unlikely given the specificity of your situation that what you’re doing here is going to make life harder for other people. We kind of know what we’re talking about. It’s a little bit of the “I know it when I see it” rule.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But for all of these things we are going to be discussing the pain of uncertainty. It’s a very difficult thing for everybody. It’s really difficult for some people. And sitting in your uncertainty can be really uncomfortable. And yet it is required at times.

**John:** So here’s a conversation you and I texted back and forth about. A listener wrote in with her experience working with a very well-known showrunner and saying like, “Oh my god, this was terrible. Why isn’t anybody talking about this? Have you heard anything like this?” And you and I both said uh-huh. We have about that specific showrunner and other showrunners like that showrunner.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And my question for you was at what point do you think it will ever come to light and do we share any culpability by not speaking the name of this person?

**Craig:** I don’t know if that specific situation will come to light. I mean, over time you think probably the odds increase with every passing day. And do we share culpability? No. Because once you step into a river it’s not the same river.

The moment you say out loud this person is blankety-blank you have changed the state of everything. And it now becomes partly about you and why are you doing that. What are you trying to achieve, etc., etc. It literally changes the dynamic to the point where if your argument is if I don’t say something more people are going to get hurt, if I do say something more people are going to get hurt. And not the particular person that you’re saying this stuff about, but other people might get hurt, including the person who spoke to you.

And so there’s all this just sticky gray area stuff. It’s not as simple as like, you know, say the name. And also you and I don’t have personal work experience with that person. So, we’re kind of going – I mean, granted there sure is a lot of hearsay. But it’s hearsay to us.

**John:** Yeah. So I think about this also in context with #MeToo though. Is that you and I had heard discussion about certain people who we knew to be sort of personally abusive but didn’t know that they were actually sexual harassers and doing terrible things.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I always think about that in terms of like two years, five years, ten years from now will it seem obvious that I should have spoken up about these things I was hearing or have tried to reach out to more people to see whether there was a consensus. And I think in this particular case on this particular person who we talked about before the answer is probably no. And yet I do wonder if that’s a rationalization for doing nothing. And the degree to which doing nothing is also a choice. And so I don’t want to sort of absolve myself of responsibility in too many situations.

**Craig:** You’re right to grill yourself and interrogate this. In the case of somebody like Harvey Weinstein I think one thing I discovered was the existence of the whisper network. So you and I are men. I don’t think we were part of the whisper network that said that Harvey Weinstein is a raper. I mean, I worked for Bob for many years and I did not know that Harvey was raping people. I knew that Bob was awful. And he was an abusive person, psychologically abusive. I received a lot of it.

But I didn’t know that that was going on. I think a lot of women were talking quietly with each other. To the extent that I can quietly talk to other people about what I know, I do. Because that feels like it’s not going to backfire into that person’s face or anyone’s face.

**John:** Well let’s talk about the talking quietly, because this is another thing that happened just this last week. There was a director who I was curious about and so I reached out to a writer who had worked with that director. And in the email to that writer I said, hey, so I’m thinking about this person, this director, what can you tell me about him. And here’s my phone number if you want to call me because you don’t want to email me.

And I find that you have to give the person that out because there’s a lot of times people will not want to have anything in print, but they will tell you honestly on a phone call. But, again, I could do that because I knew the other writer and I don’t know whether a stranger would be able to do that.

And there’s a power imbalance that is just naturally there. And so I’m trying to mindful of that while also getting through my daily working life.

**Craig:** I mean, I play this out in my head. Let’s say that I believe I know something. And I publically state this person I believe is this, this, and this. Inevitably within minutes somebody else is going to say, “No. That person is not that. I have more experience with that person than you do. You’re a liar. And I’ve heard the following about you.”

Now, what they say may or may not be true. It doesn’t help. And by the way let’s say I’m a shoplifter. This is not the worst thing in the world to be. It’s not great. Let’s say I just routinely like to lift Chap Stick and such. And I say I believe that John August is a domestic abuser. Sounds great. Because I’ve heard. Oh, I’ve heard.

**John:** Oh, you’ve heard the stories.

**Craig:** And I know him. He’s not. And also you’re a shoplifter. And I have proof. Well, my being a shoplifter doesn’t mean you’re not a domestic abuser. But now the conversation is muck. This is the problem with the world.

I will say if I had credible evidence or a strong reason to believe that somebody was behaving in an illegal way, breaking the law in a serious way, then I would do my best to try and get it out somehow in a way that would be also credible and believable. That is not what we’re talking. I mean, in terms of what you and I are talking about it’s really more of just unpleasant nasty behavior and not breaking the law.

**John:** Indeed.

All right. So going from situations out there to situations internally, a thing I often grapple with is when to bail on a project. When to say like, you know what, I just don’t think this is going to happen. And perhaps I enjoy the people involved and I would love to see this movie get made. I just don’t think it’s going to happen. And I’ve never been able to find a good rubric for figuring out, OK, for these reasons I should leave. And I think therefore I encounter the sunk cost fallacy where I’ve spent this much time on it I’m going to keep working on it, even though I probably shouldn’t.

**Craig:** It’s hard. And it’s hard because you are breaking up with something that you once loved. And maybe you still do love it, but you just don’t think you can love it that way anymore because you have something else that you need to attend to. Including things that you want to do. This does happen a lot.

It seems like Hollywood knows what you want and they want you to do the other thing. They know you want a job, so they won’t give it to you. They know you want to stop working on something, they will not let you. They just know. And this one always feels terrible to me. I do not like this feeling. I don’t like the feeling of disappointing people. I don’t like the feeling of letting people down. It’s a weird feeling.

Sometimes I feel like, OK, you’re a doctor in a MASH unit in a war and you could absolutely go over there and stop that guy from bleeding and probably save his leg, but this guy over here needs something else to save his heart. And so you work on that guy knowing full well that other guy, he’s going to lose a leg because of you. That sucks. But you know we can’t do everything. We can’t.

**John:** Yeah. Some advice that someone gave me which I’m sure I’ve shared on the podcast several times is that, and I forget which writer this was, but I think her advice was to write a letter to that project basically saying like thank you for teaching me these things. This feels very much The Art of Tidying Up kind of thing which is basically like acknowledging that that project as a thing and saying goodbye to it in a way that’s meaningful rather than just sort of keeping it on a tiny bit of life support there in your brain.

**Craig:** I don’t think I’ll ever do that.

**John:** Will never do that. That’s too rational of a thing to do.

**Craig:** I just would feel silly writing a letter to a concept. But that’s me.

**John:** Here is a thing that comes up quite a bit, and I’ve had some personal experience, but I also remember talking with a writer friend about this. Someone tells you something that they’re writing, or something that they’re working on, and it’s just a hell of a lot like something that you yourself are working on. That you’re clearly in the same space. Do you tell them that you’re working on the same thing right away? Does it matter how front burner it is versus back burner?

I find it awkward and yet it’s naturally going to happen because we’re all working in the same business. We have the same cultural impacts. It’s going to happen. What do you do in those situations, Craig?

**Craig:** I haven’t been in that situation too much because usually I’ve been working on things that were sort of, like a studio said we want to do this. So it wouldn’t matter whether or not somebody else wanted to do it. It was already there in existence and I’m working on it. But for things that were individual, if for instance while I’d been working on Chernobyl someone had said, “Oh, you know, I’m thinking about doing Fukushima as a big story.” I would have been like, OK, I should tell you that I’m working on this.

I’m not going to go into details or anything, but I am just so you know. And never because I want them to stop doing it, but rather more because I don’t want them to think that I walked away from that conversation going well I should work on Fukushima.

**John:** Yeah. A thing I’ve found myself doing, especially early on, is that I’ll be with a group of writers and someone will tell a tale or share something and if it’s close to something I want to do, or that actual incident is actually the thing we all sort of experience, and I will say like, “Hey, is anyone calling dibs on that? Because I actually could really use that thing.” Recognizing that other writers are going to find the same kind of material around you.

The same thing happens with just like people in your real life, like Mike my husband, and my daughter, things that could happen, conversations that could be had I need to be mindful of am I just strip-mining these things to use in stuff I’m writing. And I try not to, but if I am going to end up using some of it I will try to signal to them first that this is a thing that I’m going to be using a piece of, but don’t feel like I’m just taking your life.

**Craig:** I like the idea of you having a little light that you could turn on in the middle of a conversation. Just press a button casually and a green light goes on. And they just know, oh god, he’s recording it now. This is happening.

**John:** But back to the idea of competing projects, you and I have had a conversation a while back of like there was a time where we were working on projects that weren’t directly competing but were in a similar space. And it was interesting. And it was sort of fun, but it never became contentious because I think again it was clear that those properties existed independent of our involvement with them.

**Craig:** Yeah. And if I think I know which ones you’re talking about, there’s already been four billion things that had come out of that anyway.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And so essentially if there is a situation where you know both things can coexist even in the marketplace at the same time then it’s not an issue. It’s really more like when someone is like, “Oh my god, I have discovered this story that nobody knows about about this lady who did this thing in 1733.” And someone is like, “Oh, no, I’m also writing about that lady from 1733.”

**John:** Yeah. That’s the problem.

**Craig:** At that point two people are looking at each other and then slowly backing out of the room. It’s a duel. And all I can say in those situations is to just be charitable with each other. Because neither merit nor speed is going to determine which one or if either or both get made. There’s going to be some crazy series of luck and financial decisions and god knows what that makes those determinations. So don’t feel like once you hear that you’re doomed. You’re not.

**John:** You’re not. How to talk about movies and properties where you share credit, where it’s not entirely yours? And the degree to which you should claim credit for things – I’m not saying claim credit in a grabby way, but do you list those as your credits when you share a credit?

So an example for me would be Aladdin. And so Aladdin is a movie that I share screenwriting credit on. And so when people list my credits, like Aladdin, it’s like yes and it’s a shared credit. But I’m not going to go out and every time correct them to say like oh that’s a shared credit. Like to what degree is it OK to say from the screenwriter of Aladdin on something.

**Craig:** You kind of got to feel like where was I in the totem pole of things, you know? And if I feel like maybe I was the junior member of the writing crew then I’m not going to kind of want to say like – if someone is like, oh, Craig Mazin, he wrote The Hangover Part 2. Well, no I didn’t. I wrote it with Todd Phillips and Scott Armstrong. So, it would be strange – and literally ampersands. So in that case it’s super easy. I just don’t want that.

If someone says, OK, Craig Mazin wrote Identity Thief. Well, technically I have sole credit for the screenplay and I share credit with the story because another writer wrote a spec script. And that’s a guaranteed credit he has not matter what. In that case I’m OK with it because I kind of mostly did. Mostly. You know?

**John:** So, there’s going to be decisions though about when you’re going to bother correcting something and when you’re not going to. An example, our friend Rachel Bloom, whenever she’s listed as creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend she will tag Aline and say, “And don’t forget Aline Brosh McKenna, co-creator.” That’s a great, nice thing to do. Because co-created, that’s like a huge deal.

**Craig:** That’s an ampersand situation. It’s a team.

**John:** It’s a team. They did that together. But you and I also have colleagues who they share a story credit on something and they’ll be like, I’m not saying “I wrote this movie,” but they broadcast a credit that’s like it wasn’t really very much their credit.

**Craig:** If you talk about your own credits out of insecurity to make yourself seem like you did more than you did, or you are who you aren’t, everyone is going to know anyway. I mean, it’s not going to matter. It’s not going to fool anyone. Just be honest to what it is. Just be honest to what it is.

I mean, I have a lot of credits on a lot of movies. And then I have movies that I wrote a lot on that I don’t have credit on. And in the end no one gives a damn. If you do it long enough and you do it frequently enough you finally get to a place where you realize no one cares. When you get those first credits, oh my god do you care.

**John:** Yeah. Not only does it affect your career, it affects your income in a way we talked about last week. A credit does matter. So we get that.

**Craig:** Right. But if you have that shared story credit on a thing because you were rewritten essentially out of existence then you’re not going to get a huge bump in your career. You’re not going to get a huge bump in your salary. And you probably shouldn’t go off and say things like I wrote blankety-blank and forget the people that have like, for instance, all the rest of the screenplay credit or the rest of the story credit. It just doesn’t make sense.

**John:** Yeah. More ethical choices. Do you take a project where the money involved may come from places that are really problematic?

**Craig:** Ah, yes.

**John:** And so we’ve talked about this before in terms of Saudi money and things. And that can be a huge problem. But China. Also a real issue. And so there have been projects recently where it’s like, oh, you know, this would actually be an amazing movie to make with Chinese money. You can totally see that happening. And then you have all the challenges of China.

**Craig:** Correct. I try to keep things working directly for what I consider to be United States or UK companies that are funding themselves. There is no way to remove yourself from the global economic mesh. Everybody who walks down the street is ultimately one way or another doing business with other countries. If you don’t want to do business with China you do need to get rid of all of your laptops, all of your cell phones, all of everything. Because they manufacture everything.

Is there a difference between that and directly taking 100% funding from a particular company in another country? Yes. Of course there is. And so you have to sit in your uncertainty and make those choices. For me, I don’t really live in that world, so it’s not been a thing for me.

It would be really hard, I’m sure, as an artist if you knew like oh my god the thing that I was desperate to make that I really wanted to make, ah, but these people who are giving me the money I do not like them. And then you’ve got to look in the mirror and make a tough choice.

**John:** Yeah. A similar tough choice is getting involved with people who may have done terrible things. And so we can think of a list of people who have done shitty stuff who continue to work in the industry and are you willing to work with them? And sometimes it’s a case of like, oh, I can take this animation project to seven different places. Am I going to go to that place that has that guy who we’re concerned about? That’s a choice you’re going to make.

And it’s tough. Sometimes you have the luxury of being able to pick where places go. But if one person controls the rights on a thing and you want to do that thing that can be your only place to go to. And those things happen all the time. And if you rule out working for anybody who is problematic you’re going to basically not be able to work anywhere.

**Craig:** Well humans are problematic. Let’s just start with that. Everyone has done some really weird, screwy crap. Everybody. Nuns. Everyone has thought or done something bad. Because we’re human. And then the question is how bad, and how frequently, and did you change. I do believe in redemption. If I didn’t I don’t know how I would do the job that I do, because that’s what half of stories are about. And I do think it’s important to give people room to improve and change.

There are some people that do things where I don’t feel I need to forgive them. I’m just perfectly happy never working with them again. But for others, if they appear to be making a real effort, and they appear to have changed for the good, and are doing the work, then I think it’s important to not endlessly shun them. Because if you do you’re just kind of saying just keep being a criminal then basically. And when I say criminal I mean moral criminal. So just keep doing it, because you’re getting blamed for it anyway. So do it forever.

So, this is the sit with the uncertainty. Where is the line between unforgiveable and forgivable? Between I’m never going to do that again or this person deserves another chance? They have changed. Have they changed? I don’t know. Feel it out I guess.

**John:** Yeah. So the way you’re phrasing that at the end speaks back to sort of like the situations we’re often trying to find for our characters which is basically those are thematic questions. What is forgivable? Can a person be redeemed? You’re trying to create situations in which your protagonists are wrestling with these concerns. So don’t be afraid when you are the protagonist in the story and are wrestling with these concerns.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And it’s natural to feel tension and for it to feel really uncomfortable. And to want to retreat into the safest possible choice, but that’s often not the correct choice. Sometimes the traumatic choice is actually the correct choice. It’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to be painful, and you’re going to push through it and figure out the best way forward.

**Craig:** That’s why I love the movie Doubt as much as I do. Or I suppose the play which became the movie. It is a spectacular investigation of people whose job is to make moral determinations wrestling with doubt. Fundamental doubt. And uncertainty about a moral choice. And aside from being beautifully written, and beautifully acted, and beautifully directed, Amy Adams, Streep, it’s also a philosophically smart evaluation of our inability, fundamental inability to make certain moral choices.

There’s a place we cannot see, but we have to figure out how to navigate anyway. We have to move forward. We have to make a decision. But there are places we cannot see. And we make these decisions blindly all the time. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’re making these decisions with a clear head after careful thought and evaluation. But we’re not. We’re guessing. All the time.

**John:** We’re retroactively creating principles that theoretically guided our decision, but of course we actually just made the decision and then decided the principles after the fact.

**Craig:** And to tie into the craft of writing that’s one of the reasons I love that movie so much is because you’re going along feeling like the movie is zeroing in on moral certainty. And then there’s a scene between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis that just knocks the wind out of you and makes you think maybe not. And that’s where it gets really weird and uncomfortable, which I love.

**John:** All right. Let’s invite our producer, Megana Rao, on to ask some of our listener questions. We’ve got some good ones. And we’ll start with things that feel like this moral or ethical gray area.

**Craig:** OK.

**Megana Rao:** OK, great. So Cedric wrote in and he said, “I wrote a movie, my first, that got sidelined by Covid. They had decent name talent signed up. Funding was approved. Preproduction was already beginning, and literally a day or two before I was going into the lawyer’s office to sign the papers Covid struck and the whole thing got frozen.

“It’s an independent project, so I don’t know that it will ever happen now. Everyone insists that it’s going forward this year, but I give the whole thing a 10% chance or less. Two questions that came out of it for me that no one can seem to give me a straight answer on. One, at what point in the process does a writer’s contract get signed? They sent out the script to talent after we finished the director’s pass, but we hadn’t signed anything other than the deal memo at that point. No one asked my permission or anything. And when I brought it up to my lawyer and agents they seemed to think it was OK because I still own the material.

“And, two, in the process of doing the director’s pass there were a number of changes I didn’t like and argued against. I was constantly told, well, if you don’t do it the director will just fire you later down the road and do it himself. But I wasn’t proud of it anymore and I was marginally embarrassed about putting my name on some parts of it. Should I have just given the director co-writer credit so I could use that as an excuse for the parts I didn’t like? Or is it still better to keep sole writer credit regardless?”

**John:** Oh, so much good stuff to unpack here.

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s chew on this.

**John:** And so some backstory on Cedric here is that he wrote in with a previous things like months ago about this situation before his movie got shut down. And so this is sort of the synopsis of where we’re at now.

But, Craig, we can start with the simple. At what point do writers’ contracts get signed?

**Craig:** Well, it’s different. It depends on the studio. It depends on the project. Sometimes – I will tell you this. I don’t have a signed contract for Chernobyl. HBO is just sort of like, you know, we had a deal in place and then sort of like, you know, this is what we’re doing. And it happened. But usually there will be a final singed contract.

In the case of Cedric weirdly the longer it takes for that contract to get signed the more leverage he has. Because if they’re going to make a movie and they haven’t purchased the copyright, they have not done the literary material sale, you can hijack them for almost anything.

So, I actually think your lawyer and agents are correct because you own this material and the longer that goes – I mean, the best scenario is they forget. They forget and it’s one day before everyone is going to start shooting and you’re like, oh, by the way you can’t. I can get an injunction. You can stop this crap tomorrow. You can’t make a derivative work of something I have copyright on without my permission and I don’t give permission. So they’re going to have to.

**John:** Yeah. We’re assuming this was a spec script where he wrote it himself and this company bought it and that this was happening. It wasn’t that they owned a book or something and hired him on to write it. But, yes, Craig is correct. At some point before production begins on an indie feature like this they are going to need you to sign that contract because in order to get their insurance and everything else they need for the bond and everything else they need to actually make this movie. They will to prove that they actually have control of the chain of title.

**Craig:** Now, the second thing is disturbing. And it’s why I suspect that if this did happen on the day before shooting your lawyer and agent should say, “Oh, by the way, you have to sign this bad deal because if you don’t then you’re dead in this business and you’ll be blacklisted.” Because you’re getting bad advice. In the process of doing the director’s pass there were a number of changes you didn’t like and argued against and you were constantly told if you don’t do it the director will just fire you later down the road and do it himself. I don’t know who is telling you that. Is it your producer? Is it your lawyer? Is it your agents?

Regardless. If you’re not proud of it and you’re marginally embarrassed and you don’t put your name on it, guess what, don’t do those. Then maybe you don’t want this movie made that way. While I understand the value of getting a movie made, there is also danger in getting a movie made if it’s bad and it is embarrassing. That word embarrass is a very upsetting word. Then maybe this isn’t the right director? And maybe you should say I don’t like this director and I don’t want to do this anymore. Because guess what? You own all the chips.

And if they want to make the movie they need you to do it. So, this is a conversation that I would have very frankly with your lawyer and agents and tell them I don’t like what’s happened here. I want this to be like this again. I don’t mind making changes but I think we should find a different director, because I don’t like this one.

**John:** All right. So here is where I disagree with Craig. I think it is in Cedric’s best interest for this movie to get made. And understand that the process of going from your vision of what this movie should be to the shared vision of what a director can actually do and accomplish and put on screen is an important part of the process. And I think he’s probably feeling some of this natural tension.

And the director may be terrible. The director may just be the wrong person. But the director could also in many situations be exactly the right person to direct this movie, just has a slightly different vision. And sometimes the writer has to accommodate the director’s vision because that director cannot direct a movie that he or she does not understand and doesn’t get and is not excited to shoot.

And so I think it’s natural to feel frustration at this script not being exactly what you set out to do. But you’ve got to kind of live with that. If this actually happens. But you think there’s only a 10% chance this movie even does happen, so the good news is Cedric you have the ability to sort of roll back to whatever version of the script, or a new version of the script that you think best reflects what you want this movie to be and that can be the movie that goes forward under a new situation, a new way of setting this up. Or as a writing sample to get you your next job.

So, I fully get Craig’s instinct to sort of say you have to be excited and proud about your work at every stage. But, it’s also important, I think you and I have both had this experience, sometimes you do have to bend to the situation because that’s what being a screenwriter is.

**Craig:** You’re right. So the question is where does the bending stop and the breaking begin? And in this case Cedric you’ve given us a perfect example of an area with uncertainty. Because I don’t think what I’m saying is wrong, and I don’t think what John is saying is wrong. I think it’s really a question of you have to ask where does this fall on that line. And there is uncertainty here. And you may not even ever know if you made the right decision. How about that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

**John:** I look at so many of my screenwriting colleagues whose first credits are not good movies. And I think they would all prefer that those movies were better movies. But are they glad those movies exist? Yeah, because it did help. And so a not fantastic first movie I think is still in general better than not having a movie produced. And especially in terms of what you, Cedric, as a screenwriter will have learned in the process of going from this is what I had on paper and this is what showed up on screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, you just got to kind of feel it out and see what you think. And talk about it with somebody you trust. And this is why it’s important that at least somebody among your lawyer/agent cadre, really it should be your agent, should be able to have that long term far view. And be able to then tell you, look, in the long run I think this is going to be better for you, or in the long run I do think we should make a change. That’s kind of what you’re hoping they’ll be able to do and not just think short term.

**John:** And you may need to make a change in your reps or your lawyer or somebody else if you feel like you’re getting bad advice.

**Craig:** Fire your agent. Fire your agent. I mean, we need to have those Morning Zoo buttons where I can just push a thing. Fire your agent!

**John:** Yup. All right, Megana, what else do you have for us?

**Megana:** So Max asks, “I just finished a feature that my agent and I are really excited to send out. The movie is a high concept farce with an ensemble cast and some action-y set pieces. Although its length is on par with similar scripts, it does have an objectively high page count. My agent and I are worried that the script won’t get looked at based on page count alone.

“A simple solution is to trim it down. But here’s the dilemma. Everyone who gave me feedback had a different favorite character, a different favorite scene, etc. And sometimes their least favorites were someone else’s favorites. I think this will be a strength of the movie, but it doesn’t give me a clear picture of what cuts to make. My question is should we send this out to producers and executives as is, and let them decide what they want to cut or emphasize? Or do I need to buckle down and make a decision so I don’t seem amateur and undisciplined?

“My biggest fear is sending it out and having doors close for me instead of open. Or, am I being an insane, insecure writer?”

**John:** Oh Max. You’re being every writer. Every writer has those insecurities.

**Craig:** How sad would it have been if we were like, no Max, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

**John:** There’s something seriously wrong.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** Put down your pen and leave.

**Craig:** Check into a facility immediately.

**John:** Craig, my first instinct is that Max feels that something should get cut. That cuts probably will help. And he’s scared of what to cut. I think he has to make some decisions and actually just make the cuts that he thinks delivers the strongest script and not worry about the differing advice he’s hearing from different people. What’s your instinct?

**Craig:** You can’t please everybody. So if you make a movie and in particular what you’re talking about is a high concept farce. OK, well, if you make a high concept farce and you get 75 people to like it in a movie theater you’re doing a really good job. That means a quarter of the people aren’t going to even like it. So, you don’t have to opinion shop here. That is a way, ah, so let us introduce this fantastic phrase “reassurance seeking.”

When you are reassurance seeking you are hoping for people to help you get rid of the anxiety of uncertainty. You tell me and then there will be certainty and I won’t have to worry anymore. The problem with reassurance seeking is the reassurance isn’t actually necessarily real. People will differ in their opinions of what is reassuring. And in the end you will still be stuck with uncertainty. So, I think John is absolutely right. You look at it. You’re the writer. And you decide what I think is important, what I think maybe could go.

Also, because it’s a high concept farce – farce is the important thing I’m thinking – with an ensemble cast, I’m feeling like there’s probably a lot of scenes where there’s a lot of snappy dialogue and people yap-yap-yap-yap back and forth and door-slamming. And that can inflate page count in a deceiving way.

So, one thing you might want to also – look, if it’s 190 pages I don’t think there’s anything anybody can say that’s going to help it. But if it’s 130, you can say on a little opening page, “This is a farce. People talk fast. Don’t freak out about the page count. It’s going to read faster than most scripts that are 90 pages. Trust me.”

You can own it. Right up front. It’s called anchoring. Anchor people’s context and then they won’t be like what the…

There you go.

**John:** Yeah. Another trick you might want to try is because it’s a farce I’ll say it’s permissible is to do the Greta Gerwig thing where you dual dialogue some stuff that’s sort of at the very edge of dual dialogue. But it’s a way of capturing that people talking quickly feeling without it just stretching on for forever. So that may be another technique. But, yeah, again I think farce is the thing here, so it’s both high speed but also we don’t expect a farce to go on for two hours. And so that’s why you may want to be underneath that kind of 120-page thing. Because that feels right for a farce.

**Craig:** Do what you can. But don’t freak out about it. And I will say this. You will not – if people get this, they’re not going to go, “Wait a second. This is more than 120 pages. Not only am I not reading this, but put Max on our list. He’s dead to us.” That will not happen. If they read five or six pages and they’re laughing they’ll read another eight. And if they’re laughing they’ll read another 20. And if they’re laughing they’ll get to the end. They will. They just will.

**John:** They will. 100%. Megana, what else you got for us?

**Megana:** All right. So Andrew wrote in and he said your conversation about the agencies and union agreement over packaging got me curious about union agreements internationally. For instance, I’m from Canada and the local actors union, ACTRA, has an agreement with SAG/AFTRA about honoring each other’s agreements and advocating for their members when actors work in Canada and vice versa. Does the WGA have similar agreements with international unions like the Writers Guild of Canada? Does the agreement you reach with the agencies apply to international organizations whose members work in the US?”

**John:** So the answer is it is complicated. And the thing you always have to remember is that unlike writers’ unions around the world, or writers’ guilds around the world, we truly are a union in the US. And most other countries have nothing like us as a union.

So there’s the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds which meets annually. It comes together. And so it includes people from France, New Zealand, India, Israel, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, South Africa. So they’re all talking about issues of common concern to film and TV writers. But a lot of the concerns look so differently because we are actually a labor organization and places in Europe and Asia and Australia they can’t do the kinds of things that we can do because we are a union.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is a slightly messy area because of jurisdictional issues. For instance, the Writers Guild POV – and this isn’t opinion, this is in our collective bargaining agreement – is that if you live in the United States, or if you are here in the United States geographically when you sell your material or if you are a resident of the US but happen to be temporarily abroad you are under the WGA.

Now, the Writers Guild of Canada basically says if you’re Canadian then we represent you. That’s how it works. Well, OK, now what? So you’re a Canadian. You come and hang out in LA and in about three or four months you come up with an idea and you sell it here. Now what? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I think it’s kind of a big old mess.

**John:** Yeah. And there’s things that come up and there’s waivers that happen. There’s lots of stuff that does sort itself out. I think the crucial thing to understand is it does sort itself out kind of over time. Whenever there’s talk of a big strike or something there’s always that threat that like oh the studios will just go hire British writers and it never happens.

**Craig:** The Canadians are coming!

**John:** There are so many British writers, but it just doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** No, because I think generally speaking writers are pretty cool and they understand. Nobody wants to be a scab, right? So just because you technically can, it’s like they always say, OK, there’s going to be a strike and then what’s going to happen is John August is going to move to London or France, as he often does, and then he can do whatever he wants because he’s in France.

But we don’t. We just don’t. If we wanted to cheat there’s an easier way to cheat than that. Do you know what I mean? So it’s like it doesn’t really happen. That doesn’t come up. Happily.

**John:** But, Megana, I see we have another question that’s very WGA related. So do you want to talk us through what Cleo wrote in about?

**Megana:** Yes. So Cleo wrote in and she said, “In Episode 485 you said the amazing thing about joining the WGA is that you don’t have to do anything. They will find you. I wanted to write in and share my experience joining, or trying to join, the WGA. Spoiler, it’s not as straightforward as you think.

“I was hired in December to write a feature for a WGA signatory company. I called the WGA’s membership department and emailed over a copy of my contract before the holidays. But I didn’t hear back. Oh well, I thought, they’ll flag my deal anyway and reach out soon enough. When I didn’t hear anything in the first couple of weeks of January I followed up by phone and by email and same deal. No response. Eventually in February someone got back to me to say they’d seen my email and in early March I finally received an application form.

“Now, you could blame this on the chaos of Covid, but the thing is a couple years ago I earned enough credits to become an associate member of the WGA. And no one from the guild reached out then to let me know. I didn’t even find out associate membership was a thing until much later. Whatever the reason, if I hadn’t been proactive and practically pestered the membership department for an application form I would not be on my way to becoming a member. The WGA should have some sort of checking system that flags contracts with non-members and triggers and application process.

“I’m sure I’m not the only new writer who has felt overlooked. And I sure could use the guild’s help getting my first payment, though I doubt that will happen because I’m still not a member yet. You see, I need that payment to make the $2,500 initiation fee.”

**Craig:** Oh boy.

**John:** Oh boy, lots of stuff here. So, first let’s talk about associate membership. Associate membership is a relatively new thing. It’s new within my time being in the guild. Where people who are doing screenwriting but they haven’t been hired by signatory companies to the degree they would be members can get some benefits for that. And it’s helpful and useful, but it’s a thing where you yourself have to sort of apply for it. So there’s a reason why the guild isn’t reaching out for that, because you call them versus them calling you.

My memory and my instinct about the guild is that they reached out pretty quickly when I was hired to write my first feature that was a guild feature, How to Eat Fried Worms. But it took a couple of months. And I don’t know that that’s unusual.

For folks who are writing television, it’s really clear when someone is hired in television because all that stuff happens really quickly. You’re getting paid really quickly. And the guild can see like, oh, this is a writer who is not in our system. This person now needs to join the guild and it’s easy to see. Features just take longer. And so that sense of like oh when the contract happened, well the guild wouldn’t have seen the contract until well done the road. And even in this age of agencies sharing contracts and deals they just sort of wouldn’t know for a while.

So it feels like Cleo did the right things in terms of being proactive. Are there things that the guild should probably do to improve tracking once a person has reached in? Yeah. Is it probably Covid? Yeah. But I’m not super surprised that she’s encountering this situation.

**Craig:** I’m not going to apologize for this. This was bad. I used to joke that the one thing the guild was really, really good at was finding out people who had earned enough employment credits to become a member of the guild and then chase them down and shake them down for that $2,500 initiation fee. Because that’s what happened to me in 1995 I think. I sold my first, it was a pitch that sold to write a screenplay with my writing partner. And I don’t know, within days or whatever I got a call from not just someone at the guild, but like the head of the membership department saying, “Hi, I found you.”

And I was like how did you even track – it was like getting served by–

**John:** How did they find you?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** Maybe was there something in Variety?

**Craig:** Maybe? I don’t know. All I know is that they were on it. And what I don’t like about this is that the – you want to talk – like the guild has this focus on organizing. The easiest organizing we can do is to organize the people that we already have the right to represent. So, yes, no question that when you’re hired in December Cleo the WGA signatory is supposed to alert the WGA. They may not have.

OK, so then you called the WGA membership department and emailed over a copy of your contract before the holidays. At that point that should have been done that day. I don’t understand.

**John:** They should have piggybacked like OK now you’ve got to fill out these forms.

**Craig:** 100%.

**John:** So here’s something we can do. We know the WGA folks. And so we’ll try to get an answer for Cleo about what is the normal process and sort of what didn’t happen properly here. I think our general guideline though is that Cleo couldn’t have gotten by for years without joining the WGA. They would have found her and she would have had to join.

**Craig:** But that’s not the point. The point is that – and this is the big point is her very last thing. I could use the guild’s help getting my first payment. Because she needs help. She’s already getting kicked around. And she needs her first payment to make the initiation fee. All of this would have been a lot easier if they had called her right then and there, right when they got back from the holidays on January 8 and said, got it, and she said, “Listen I can’t make that payment until you help me.” They would have helped her, hopefully.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But instead they sat on that email for over a month. And then, yeah, and then waited even longer. Yes, is Covid a thing? 100%. But also the WGA has managed to do a whole lot of stuff during Covid. So this seem fundamental like they should–

**John:** As we talked last week they were able to go through a thousand screenwriter contracts.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** So her contract should have been in that.

**Craig:** 100%. And by the way this is a good thing that we can always hand off to a board member that we know to say dig into this.

**John:** Oh yeah. We will.

**Craig:** In fact, we’re doing it. We’re doing it.

**John:** Done. Send. All right. One last question, I’ll just actually read this one. This is from Graham who says he’s a screenwriter about to graduate from college and “I’m building a website for myself for the first time.” And he basically wanted some general advice.

So I just did a panel for the guild on press and publicity and advice for that. And one of the things I mentioned in there which I want to share with everybody else is I think it is very important for a screenwriter to control a Twitter account, an Instagram account, and a website, just so that you can be clear that I am this person. And so when something comes up you can point to like I am this person on the Internet. This is a source of truth for who I am.

And so register your own name if it’s possible. Your own name dot com or dot co, dot UK or whatever you want to register. Register something so that when I Google your name that will be the first thing that comes up is a simple clean website that says here’s who I am. This is the things I’ve worked on. And in the question Graham asks, “Should I include samples of my stuff?” Maybe. If you have stuff that’s actually really good of course you should. And if you have a portfolio of work or YouTube videos of things you shot that actually really good you totally should.

You don’t need to put on pitches and log lines and that kind of thing. But just let us know who you are so that when I Google you we can find you and I can say like, oh, that is this person and not the other person who has a similar name.

**Craig:** That’s a great idea. I think that all makes sense to me. I think people should feel free to put stuff – you know, artists put stuff up all the time. Directors put stuff up. Actors put stuff up. Writers are like, oh god, but what if they steal it? You know what the best evidence for them stealing it is? The fact that it was on your website three years earlier. That’s kind of like the best proof ever.

**John:** Yeah. So my only hesitation in putting stuff up is just like make sure it’s really showing your best work. But if you have a thing you own that you control that you’re proud of, absolutely put that up. Or put up the first ten pages and let people email you for the rest of it. That’s great.

And so I’m really talking about kind of a calling card website which is the minimum thing you can do. I’ll put a link in the show notes there’s a site I use called card.co.

**Craig:** Card.

**John:** Which is good for little one page things. And I use it for like if I refer to a URL in a project and I don’t really want to build a website I’ll get the URL and build a simple page for that. It’s absolutely fine for this kind of thing. So, to spend two hours making a website once is time worthwhile. You don’t have to have a blog and have everything else. Don’t feel like you have to do everything. Doing the minimum is perfect in this case.

**Craig:** I love doing the minimum.

**John:** You used to have a website yourself.

**Craig:** I did. I did. God, so long ago.

**John:** So long ago. I remember one of our first interactions was you asking how I got the little brad icon to float properly in CSS.

**Craig:** I thought it was like, oh, that’s probably not that hard to do. And you were like, no, it was a month of my life. It was like roto scoping a brad onto a thing.

**John:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** That’s a whole world of stuff that’s just so mystifying to me. CSS. All the like Photoshop-y, layer-y. Oh my god. I can’t.

**John:** It’s a lot.

**Craig:** I can’t.

**John:** It’s a lot. I can still read CSS, but I don’t have to do it all that often.

**Craig:** I love the idea of you reading CSS at night like a novel. [laughs]

**John:** I can still often figure out what CSS element is broken when something is not looking right, but I shouldn’t. It’s one of those things where like I shouldn’t try to fix it because that’ll just make it worse.

**Craig:** Yeah, and you know what? It’s not your job.

**John:** It’s not my job.

**Craig:** Not my job.

**John:** But Megana your job is to go through all these questions so thank you for helping sort through all the people who write in.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana.

**Megana:** Thank you for these answers.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article by Taylor Lorenz for the New York Times. She’s writing that For Creators, Everything is For Sale. So it goes on sort of the Beeple stuff, but really talking about – I love this phrase she uses – how people “monetize the drama.” And so think about like what do writers do? Well writers monetize the drama. That’s sort of what we’re doing.

But these are people whose real life. So celebrities or online celebrities and finding ways to take a picture of their feet and make money off of just like selling the rights to their feet. Or selling the right to decide what they’re going to wear for a day. It’s that weird Black Mirror episode that we’re living in.

**Craig:** I don’t want to live anymore. Get me off the planet. Get me off.

**John:** All right. Craig, you promised something great for your One Cool Thing so I’m really excited.

**Craig:** I don’t know if it’s going to be great. But this is a first for us after nearly 500 episodes. I’m going to do a live One Cool Thing. And the purpose of this is to find out if this is or is not a One Cool Thing. Have I talked about Upstep before? Was that a prior One Cool Thing?

**John:** It sounds familiar, but describe it.

**Craig:** So many years ago I used to wear orthotics because my feet are – when I say flat I mean flat. Like where–

**John:** Elephant.

**Craig:** You would say to foot doctors I have a flat foot. And they’re like, uh-huh, well show. And then they would go, “Oh my god!” So I have the flattest feet.

**John:** How are you alive?

**Craig:** Yeah. Like what the hell? What planet are you from? So I used to wear orthotics and then I got these sort of like wore out. And it was a huge pain in the ass. You’ve got to go to the foot doctor. You step on this thing and they charge you like hundreds of dollars and it takes like 19 years and then you get the thing back and you try it out and you go back to the doctor again.

So, it wore out. And then I got these new sneakers that kind of had slightly built-in arch support and they were fine. But not great. And then I read about this thing called Upstep. So they send you a cardboard box that sort of unfolds into two halves. And in each half is foam. Like the kind of real soft foam. And you step in it. And then you step in the other one. And then you send it back to them and they take the imprint of your foot and the foam. You say, oh, I’ve got flat feet and I want this. And they make you insert and send them back.

I have received them. And I’m going to try – I’ll just do the right foot. So I’m opening the box right now. Upstep tips. Give your orthotics time. Start with one to two hours a day. No problem.

Here they are. They look like orthotics. So that’s good. Here we go. I’m going to put the right one in. My model is on my feet all day which is [unintelligible]. I guess they’re like your feet are so flat we’re going to call you that. So stand by.

My shoe is off. They’re going on. Oh, I’ve got to take out the – so when you do these things you’ve got to take out the one that comes in your sneaker. That one comes out. This one goes in. Oh, no, it fits. OK, it fits. I was like oh boy it’s already not cool, but it fits and it fits nice and snug and good. OK, so here I go. I’m putting my foot in.

OK. I can feel it in there. That’s good. And it does take some getting used to. I’m going to tie my shoes, stand up. Stand by. Here we go.

Oh! OK. Huh?

Well, here’s my verdict. It feels like a support. It feels like the other ones felt. Is it going to be good or not over time? I don’t know. I’ll have to check it out. But I’m going to give these a shot.

**John:** Very exciting.

**Craig:** Yeah. So I think this is provisionally my One Cool Thing. Upstep. Oh, and by the way much cheaper than going to the doctor about it.

**John:** I see these all the time in my Instagram feed. So, I’m sure I’ll keep seeing them more.

If you enjoy people trying on things they see online I’m going to also link you to my friends do All Consuming which is a podcast where they buy the things off of Instagram and then actually try them out on their podcast.

**Craig:** Oh that’s fun.

**John:** So you should try that as well.

**Craig:** That’s fun.

**John:** Great. Well I’m happy for your feet, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh, John, I have a question for you. Final question.

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** That what you just said reminded me off. Have you ever drunk bought something?

**John:** Oh, yeah. I will Kindle buy some things when I’m a little bit drunk. How about you? What do you drunk buy?

**Craig:** Back in the days when I used to be on Facebook one night I had just one too many, which for me means three. I had one too many. And I was on Facebook and there was some ad that made so much sense. It was like this is the most comfortable, these shoes, these dress shoes that you could run in. They’re that comfortable. And I’m like really?

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** OK! And then the next day I had forgotten it had happened. And then like three weeks later these shoes show up and I’m like what the hell are these. And I never wore them. Drunk purchase.

**John:** And did you feel guilty about getting rid of them?

**Craig:** No. Not even slightly. No. I just felt like in the world of mistakes that people have made when they drank too much that was the mildest possible mistake.

**John:** Yeah. But talking about shoes, I do find you see advice about like you should replace your shoes after certain miles, especially for runners and such. But I realize like I’ll have shoes that are like ten years old and are basically just completely flat and I still wear them because they still work and I feel bad throwing them out. I have a hard time replacing my shoes.

**Craig:** You should. Well, it depends on what kind of shoe. But it’s just not good for your feet. It’s not good for anybody’s feet. So look at it this way. It will do no one any good.

Now, is there some place that maybe recycles that shoe? You could always look into that I suppose. But it’s not something you could donate because it’s going to be bad for somebody else’s feet. It’s just no good.

**John:** Yeah. It’s barely even a gray area.

**Craig:** Yeah. Barely.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** That’s right. Sure is.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Michael Karmon. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send the longer questions that we answer on the show. But for short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. You can ask me some questions there.

We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. If you go to johnaugust.com/guide that is the place where you can tell us which of the 500 episodes you think is most relevant for people to listen to and they should not miss if they are going to take a listen through the catalog.

You can find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter, Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll see those links in the show notes.

And you can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all those first 491 episodes and the bonus segments like the one we’re about to record detailing our origin stories. Craig and Megana thank you so much.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** So our bonus segment this week comes from a question by Isaiah Facta. Let’s listen to what Isaiah asks.

**Isaiah:** Hi John and Craig. I’m going to be graduating from high school in a few months and I know that I want to be a screenwriter. I realized this just after a girl that I liked told me that she didn’t want to be with anyone and then proceeded to get into a relationship two days after. Halfway through an episode of Parks and Rec I realized, hey, I’m not thinking about the girl right now. And I had my ah-ha moment of I want to be a screenwriter. I’m curious what moment made each of you decide that this was what you wanted to do with your life. Thank you both for helping me figure out where to even begin with writing as I don’t think I would be as far as I am if I hadn’t found Scriptnotes. Bye.

**John:** What I love about Isaiah’s story there is that experience of heartbreak plus comedy entertainment is what leads to screenwriting.

**Craig:** Basically. It sounds like he’s got the most important thing in place which is just pain.

I don’t know if there was a moment I realized I wanted to be a screenwriter per se, but there was a growing realization during my senior year of college that I wanted to entertain, somehow. And I didn’t know which way it was going to be, but it seemed like maybe trying to write some stuff, that there was opportunity there.

And so what I started trying to do was write sitcoms. I thought maybe I’d be a sitcom writer. And I was not. That never happened. And I became a sitcom actor before I became a sitcom writer, in fact.

But there was this desire to entertain. And I don’t know if there was a specific moment, it just started becoming clearer and clearer to me somewhere in my senior year of college.

**John:** Up to that point were you writing plays or sketches or any of that kind of stuff?

**Craig:** Nothing.

**John:** Nothing. Because I could totally picture you in an improv troupe. You didn’t do any of that?

**Craig:** No, because I was told over and over by my parents that that was frivolous nonsense. And it was drilled into me in a way that was – it’s hard to explain how – it’s just this thing. I think – I wonder, hey Megana, are you still there?

**Megana:** I am, yes.

**Craig:** Megana, I think John’s mom was probably way nicer than my mom. You don’t have to answer any of this if it’s too personal, but what did your parents think when you were like, you know what, I kind of want to go into entertainment?

**Megana:** They were like that’s such a fun hobby for you to do once you become a doctor.

**Craig:** Et voila. I didn’t even get that much. I got how dare you, you’re going to become a doctor. And so there wasn’t really space to do things like do improv or anything. It all felt guilty. It was all guilty pleasures. And so maybe that’s why the very first thing I did was work on this public affairs news show in college which seemed like the most serious version and therefore maybe potentially the most acceptable version of “entertainment” that I could find.

But I didn’t really allow myself to do anything until I came to LA.

**John:** Well, a common experience I think all three of us on this call would share is that while we were good at writing we were also good at other things, and so like Craig I know you were on your path to becoming a doctor and sort of did all that stuff of looking at cadavers and such. And you could have become a doctor and the same with Megana had her career at Google. There were other things you could have done that were just sort of normal and traditional and typical, and so therefore why would you not do those? And I guess of the three of us I was luckiest in the fact that my parents really did not push me in any particular direction at all.

So I always wrote and I was writing for my high school newspaper and ended up getting a journalism degree in college. But I tried to think back to what was the first moment that I realized that stuff was even written. And I’ve talked before on the show that I remember watching War of the Roses on videotape and rewinding it and starting to just transcribe everything I saw. And I realized like, oh, the dialogue is all written – someone must have written the dialogue down ahead of time.

Which sounds so naïve, because you read plays in high school, but I just didn’t have a sense that there were writers behind stuff.

I remember in fourth, so Spanish 4, so this is in high school, our professor Hugo Hartenstein asked like, “Oh, so what do you want to be when you grow up?” And I said, I was trying to find the words for oh I want to be a screenwriter. And Hugo Hartenstein is a native Spanish speaker, Cuban, and had no idea what the word was for screenwriter. So we eventually figured out it was guionista. So, a guion is a script and a guionista.

But that idea of like, oh, I want to write those scripts. And so then in college I realized like, oh, there really is a whole business and industry of people whose job it is to write these things. And Premiere Magazine. And that was sort of how I first got the notion that like, oh, screenwriting is job and a career I could shoot for and a way to write the stuff that I actually really want to write. The kinds of stories that I want to write.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. You had more of a moment there. I think, well it sounds like Isaiah is a bit freer than at least I was.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** He seems really free. There’s nobody kicking his butt about being a lawyer or a doctor or something. I feel like there’s a really cool – there’s a cool possibility, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but there’s a possibility that Megana and I do just go to medical school. And we open up a practice. And we’re like screw it, it’s happening, we’re doing it. You know what? Find. We’re doing it. And then we become really good doctors. I could see that.

**John:** You know, I can’t think of any examples of someone who got their medical degree late in life. I’m sure there are examples.

**Megana:** Oh, you should talk to my dad. He has a ton.

**Craig:** Yeah. A friend of mine, his dad became a doctor fairly late in life. And, yeah, it does happen. Usually when it happens they don’t end up necessarily doing what you think of as like, oh, a general practitioner that builds a practice over time, because they don’t have that time. A lot of times they actually end up in administration, hospital administration, and things like that.

And a lot of them just are specialists. Yeah. They do it. I might still do it.

**John:** Get their masters of public health. Some advice for Isaiah as we leave here. He’s a high school student who has realized that he wants to become a screenwriter and TV writer may also be part of that as well. Opportunities he has is just to read a ton of scripts. And we live in a time where you can get access to all those things. And so he should be writing a lot, but he should also be reading a lot.

And I don’t want to steer him to a program that is exclusively film-based. I think he should – if he’s going to college go to a place where he can get a broad education about a bunch of other things that interest him. Because it’s those things that interest you that will be the material that you get to use as a writer.

If you just went someplace to study writing, especially screenwriting, I worry you’d become far too cloistered and wouldn’t have the kind of breadth of experience and breadth of curiosity that’s going to be so important for you.

**Craig:** Always. Try and live life as you’re going along. And try and find something that will put some money in your pocket. Because screenwriting will not for a long time.

**John:** It shall not. Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** See you next week.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Listener Guide Submissions](https://johnaugust.com/guide) send in your favorite episodes from 300-500!
* [Screenwriting Competitions Aren’t Worth the Money](https://johnaugust.com/2021/screenwriting-competitions-arent-worth-the-money) blogpost
* [$69 Million Beeple Auction for NFT](https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/beeple-auction-christies-nft-69-million-explained-why-why-why.html )
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 407: Understanding Your Feature Contract](https://johnaugust.com/2019/understanding-your-feature-contract)
* [Build a website on card.co](https://carrd.co/build)
* [For Creators, Everything Is for Sale](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/style/creators-selling-selves.html) by Taylor Lorenz for the NYT
* [Upstep](https://app.upstep.com) for insoles, and for more unboxing content, check out this podcast [All Consuming](https://allconsuming.show)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael Karmon ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/492standard.mp3).