Scriptnotes Transcript

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

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has one bit of swearing, so just a warning if you’re in the car with your kids.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 484 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we’re going to look at the many ways screenwriters compress, twist, and otherwise manipulate time in their scripts and strategies for doing it effectively. Then we’ll discuss dialogue, both in terms of subtext and continuity. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we will discuss which moment in history or prehistory we’d most like to visit and why.

**Craig:** Exciting stuff.

**John:** It’s potentially a flashback episode.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** We could even weave in a Stuart Special.

**Craig:** We’ve actually had a little bit of a pre-discussion about this time thing with our D&D group, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out in our bonus episode for everyone else.

**John:** Yes. Little bits of news. So this sort of snuck in under the wire. This was a December 31st announcement that the DGA sent a letter to WME telling it to get rid of its conflicts. Basically the head of the DGA sent this letter to the head of WME, Ari Greenberg, and said “we believe now is the right time to communicate our strong support for DGA’s efforts to remedy the affiliated production company issue.” So, Craig, I feel torn about this in ways that, I don’t know–

**Craig:** [laughs] I’m not.

**John:** We always reach for ways, you know, of German should have a word for it. But it’s not really German. I feel like the Swedish might have the right word for this feeling of like, yes, it’s the right thing, but it’s not kind of the way you want it to happen.

**Craig:** I’m going to quote this – I don’t know if you saw this amazing interview with this Capitol Hill police officer who had been attacked by the mob.

**John:** Oh, absolutely. And the last bit of it was amazing.

**Craig:** The last bit of it was amazing. And I will go ahead and I guess this will earn us a language warning. But he said some of the people in that mob, realizing that he was in danger of being killed, finally sort of surrounded him and tried to protect him from further harm. And to those people he said, “Thank you but also fuck you for being there.” [laughs] And that’s how I feel about this. I mean, what an enormous expenditure of political capital for the DGA to just show up in the final seconds of the war to announce that they’re in support of the losing side losing. I mean, this is pointless. I don’t quite even – the only thing I think they get out of this is maybe once again earning some sort of respect from the companies for restraint?

And when I say companies I mean the agencies at this point. I don’t know what the point of this is exactly.

**John:** Yeah. And I don’t know where this message actually came from, whether it was directors in the guild saying, hey, we also want this resolved, or where this came from. I want to be an optimist. And so in being an optimist I want to say that one of my great frustrations for two decades has been how little the three guilds have been willing to work together on issues of obvious multiple guild concern. And this was one of them. And the WGA did it all by itself. OK, fine.

But as we head forward into this next decade the role of the streamers and residuals and what that all looks like, we all care about that. It all has to be figured out as sort of one thing. So, maybe this is a small opening, a small glimmer of hope that we can actually coordinate some of our efforts in trying to address the challenges ahead here.

**Craig:** Over here in the pessimist’s corner I think that the DGA has always been more than happy to strategically allow the Writers Guild to be the crazy ones and the aggressive ones and the militant ones. And then pick up the spoils after the battle is over. That’s kind of how it works. They let us go into the coal mine. They don’t have to do stuff. They didn’t like some of this packaging stuff or affiliated production any more than we did, but they also didn’t have to spend anything. Not one of their members had to fire an agent. They just waited for us to take all the body blows, to go through two years or whatever long, a year and a half, or however long this was. Or continues to be. And now, you know, when it’s basically over now they can come in and try and earn some sort of, I don’t know, labor solidarity chit. That’s C-H-I-T.

I don’t see them abandoning that strategy any time soon. Honestly, you know, tip of the hat to them. It’s worked for them for decades. I don’t see them changing.

**John:** Yeah. So basically Craig Mazin maintains his WGA militancy as always. He’s always the one banging that gong, that WGA gong, over all sort of reason and order.

**Craig:** Well, I would say relative to the DGA I am militant. But, yeah, I’m doomed to be caught between the Writers Guild and the DGA. And then there’s SAG. By the way, I’m a member of all three of these unions, so I’m sure someone is going to be yelling at me soon.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But I don’t know, SAG doesn’t seem to – they just seem to be so inwardly focused. That’s no comment on actors in any way, shape, or form. [laughs] But it just seems so navel-gazey about things. And they have their own issues.

The Writers Guild and the Directors Guild should be allied. Just naturally they should be. The fact that they’re not is…[sighs]

**John:** Yeah. At some point we should probably schedule an episode where we really talk through that because it’s got to be so confusing to anybody who has not been immersed in this for two decades to understand why things are the way they are and how we got to this place.

**Craig:** Well, let’s schedule three episodes to explain why there’s a Writers Guild East and West.

**John:** That’s an easier one, but yes, that same episode or a different episode can talk about the East and the West and how luckily there’s not conflict there.

**Craig:** Anymore.

**John:** They’re doing different things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Some housekeeping, sort of follow up stuff. So many of you are members of the Premium program which is awesome. Thank you for being Premium subscribers. We just added a $49 price point, so you can either go monthly, but some people asked, hey, what if there was an annual price and it would be cheaper. So, sure. So you can get 12 months for the price of 10. If you go to Scripnotes.net you can sign up for that. But thank you for all the folks who do that.

Some people are also confused about the back episodes. So the back episodes are available through Scriptnotes.net. That’s through the new Premium service, so it’s not Libsyn where stuff used to be. It’s all this new thing. So we used to have Premium episodes through Libsyn. Now they’re all through this new service called Supporting Cast. We’ve been on it for a year. It’s gone really well. So thank you for everyone who has joined us over there.

But if you’re writing in with concerns about like, oh, I was looking for this thing on Libsyn, that’s why it’s not there anymore because it’s all moved over to this new service.

**Craig:** Thank god.

**John:** Yeah. And some follow up about bad IP, suggestions for – obviously we have the Rubik’s Cube Movie, the Slinky Movie. We’re always searching for a new thing. Dwayne from Edmonton, Canada wrote in to say, “Yes, I was listening in the shower, but the Showerhead Movie.” And then someone else had a suggestion for the Loofah Movie. I like Loofah Movie more than the Showerhead Movie because Showerhead actually has a function and a purpose. Loofah has some sense of like it’s tough but it’s soft. There’s a little texture to the Loofah.

**Craig:** I don’t love either one of them. Because they feel like–

**John:** I don’t love them either.

**Craig:** They have to live within the realm of possibility. That some thickheaded dingbat in the ancillary IP department of a large corporation might actually say, “You know what? We should make a movie out of this. It has to be something that is theoretically possible. Theoretically.

**John:** And really IP is intellectual property. And the thing about Lucky the Leprechaun is there is intellectual property there. There’s a copyright. There’s a protectable thing that no one else can make that movie. It’s a struggle we have, like you go in and talk to – I went in to talk to a studio a year ago and they’re like, “Oh, we really want to develop blank.” And it’s like, great, that is public IP. That’s not a protectable thing. So what is your plan for going in to do that?

Like Jack and the Beanstalk is public IP. And so anyone can make that, so would you make that? You don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think it has to be something that is possess-able and ownable and exploitable. That’s the crux of the whole awful affair is that something is being exploited in the most cynical manner. So there has to be an exploitable object.

**John:** Speaking of exploitable objects, Beau Willimon, who is head of the WGA East.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** This week signed on to do the Risk movie which is based on a Hasbro property.

**Craig:** There you go. Right.

**John:** And would classically be the kind of thing that we make fun of on the show, because Risk has no characters. It has kind of a general scenario of world domination and archaic names for countries and strategies which are obvious but also crucial to understand of, you know, as a child you might start with an Australia strategy, but any adult who has played the game knows that the South American strategy is better.

**Craig:** Of course, the Venezuelan gambit. Always. Just, yeah. It is strange how the Risk board does sort of undermine what we understand to be where military and strategic value actually is located. The thing about Risk, it’s similar I guess to what they were doing with Battleship, not that it will turn out the same way. They’re just taking a game that was already based on something real and kind of echoing back to the thing it was based on. So Risk was just a board game version of a large WWI style battle for global dominance.

So my guess is that’s what the movie will – I don’t know. Actually I have no idea what the movie will be.

**John:** We’ll talk to Beau about it at some point. There was a vague plan on Twitter for us to be playing an online game of Risk to talk through it. So, who knows? Maybe that will actually happen and we’ll find some good charitable cause to play Risk online so we can celebrate this exploitation of an IP and hopefully do some good in the world.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** Exactly. All right. Let’s get to our marquee topic. So explaining sort of how the sausage is made. We are looking at a shared outline document. I put stuff on as I’m sort of helping to organize this episode. Megana put stuff on and we sort of try to group it together and have it make some sense.

Generally the topic for the week comes out of something either I was working on during the week or something I saw this week. Or Craig will suggest a topic and we’ll sort of flesh it out. In this case it was something I was writing and something I was watching. One scene that I was working on this week it was just too long. And it was clear that it needed to be cut into two scenes. Basically I needed to cut the middle out of it. And cutting the middle out of it is really common craft work that screenwriters need to do. And we haven’t talked very much about that. But basically we need to do a time compression in the middle of it.

There was also a sequence I was working on that I had scenes that were back to back A-B-C, but there was going to be a really significant time jump. So, you know, I was sort of changing the rules of the movie part way through where it had been sort of like scenes were very naturally flowing, like were all within one day, and then suddenly we’re jumping forward weeks. And that’s a thing we haven’t talked about.

So that’s part of why I want to talk about this, but also the movies I watched this week all dealt with time in interesting ways. So Nomadland, which was great, people should see it, has a kind of weird cyclical time thing to it. It uses time really strangely. Tenet has this weird time version. The Lego Movie seemed to take place in this continuous present. It’s just like hyperactively present. The Crown has these giant jumps forward in time between episodes. And we also watched Edge of Tomorrow which is an even better movie than I remember it being.

**Craig:** I love that movie.

**John:** Which is all about sort of looping time. So, time is just a thing that screenwriters do and it’s probably the resource that screenwriters have to control kind of most carefully. So I thought we’d just spend our main topic here just talking about time as screenwriters use it.

**Craig:** We have this craft over here, just been thinking about this because I was talking with somebody who works in plays, so she’s a playwright, and all of her work is on stage. And on stage even though there may be cheats of how time functions, it is all unfolding kind of in real time in front of you because you are actually in the room with these people. You are present in their reality, so you’re all experiencing the tick-tick of time together.

But onscreen we don’t. And in fact the entire exercise of telling a story cinematically is one that involves the manipulation of time. The very notion going all the way back to simple concept of editorial montage. I look at this, and then the camera looks over here, and we understand that there may have been time that passed. It just happens in the blink of an eye like that.

So, it’s not even something that we can sometimes choose to do or dwell on. We are always doing it in every movie no matter what. And that’s separate and apart from the theme of time. Because obviously some movies are about time itself and how it functions. And you have Looper and Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow and things like that. But in any movie, in any movie, I mean, how many times have you sat there and gone, OK, they’re in a space and this scene has concluded, but they must still be in this space again to start a new movement of the scene, meaning time has gone by. But how and why? What do I do to show that there’s been this lapse of time?

**John:** Yeah. And you think like, oh, well here’s ten tricks for doing it. Like sure, maybe there are a list of like you zoom out and you start in a close up of this thing and as you pull back out some more time has passed. Or you’re focused on this thing. There’s tricks, but it’s all hard work.

And before we even get into the jumping forward in time, we should call there are movies that try to take away that grammar. And they stick out because they are so unusual. There’s things like 12 Angry Men which is based on a play which is basically a filmed play which has sort of continuous time because it’s a play. But things like – do you remember the movie Timecode, the Mike Figgis movie that it’s quadrants and they’re all in real time.

1917 has the illusion of real time buried. Clue. Phone Booth. Dog Day Afternoon. United 93. Russian Arc. Where you’re sort of generally moving continuously through a space, and the whole gimmick, the conceit is that you’re not cutting. But those are the exceptions. And most times in cinematic storytelling you are cutting, you are jumping forward in time. And just learn as an audience to accept that as a thing that’s going to happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. We know when we’re watching these things inherently that we’re going to get a compressed version of time because it’s dramatic. It’s exciting. If it weren’t we wouldn’t go. I mean, 12 Angry Men is a wonderful play and it’s a terrific film. And if it was actually presented in the way a jury deliberation would go it would be profoundly boring. Profoundly boring. With side discussions of irrelevance and people leaving to go to the bathroom and coming back. It just doesn’t work.

We are always twisting it and turning it. And so one of the things that you have to decide tonally is are you going to be naturalistic about it, meaning are you going to kind of hide the seams in between the time jumps, or are you going to have fun with it. Is it going to be something you wear on your sleeve? Like in Go, for instance, the way you move time around, you’re not hiding it, you’re making a virtue of it. But then that is a tone, right? So then the movie is sort of like an elevated heightened reality.

You have to make those decisions upfront about what you’re doing with this stuff. But what you can’t do is just ignore it. You need to be a craftswoman or man when it comes to presenting the disruptions of time to the audience.

**John:** Yeah. So what you’re saying is that you may not write down your plan for how time works in your movie. It’s very unlikely you are going to have a specific time plan. But you are establishing rules very early on in your script for how time works in your movie. Both how it works inside scenes and between scenes. And so let’s talk about some of those rules and assumptions that are going to be there and what you need to think through.

So, an obvious example is like is it continuous. Basically are we existing in real time or the illusion of real time? That you’re never jumping ahead. How big of jumps can you make? Can you jump to later that same day, or the next week? Or can you jump forward a few years. And that’s a very different kind of storytelling if you’re able to jump bigger jumps along the way.

How many clocks have you started ticking? And so I’m thinking back to your movie Identity Thief. And there is a timeline. You’re having characters say aloud that they need to get from here to there in a certain period of time. You’re setting expectations. Different kinds of movies are going to have different clocks ticking. But you’re generally going to set some kind of framework for what needs to happen by what point.

In Big Fish you don’t know when Edward Bloom is going to die, but you know he’s going to die. And so that is the ticking clock where you get the dramatic question of the movie answered before that alarm goes off.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I like outlining, to be honest with you. Because when you outline you are confronted by those disconnects of time. And you feel them and they literally help you outline. That’s how you suddenly go, OK, I think that this index card consists of these things that occur. And then it’s time for a new index card, or a new paragraph, or however you’re doing it. Because time is broken. There’s a snap. And I want to justify it. And I want to play around with it. And I also am aware that if I announce a certain kind of timeline that leads to a certain kind of pressure I need everything that follows to fall in line with it.

This is why Chernobyl is only five episodes and not six. Because as I was working on episode two it seemed that the timeline that the story had presented required a certain kind of speed. And even though the events that take place over the course of episode two went over the course of a week, into an hour, if they had gone into two hours of television it would have felt like two or three weeks, which would have felt wrong.

So you just have to have this weird internal fake chronometer that is aligned with what you think people’s experience of the time flow will be as they watch.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s drill into a little bit more on this, because we talked about Chernobyl in the sense of time to a limited degree. But each episode of Chernobyl changes its scale of time a little bit. So that first episode feels close to real time. You’re not slavishly real time. But it’s very, very present tense all the way through it.

The second episode, if everything took place in a matter of hours in the first episode, then you’re a matter of two days in the second episode, and then several weeks, and then months. It kaleidoscopes out. And that was a very deliberate choice really, I assume, from the conception?

**Craig:** Absolutely. And, you know, of note the first episode which does cover, I mean, the flow of events once you get out of the little prologue starts at 1:23 in the morning and it ends roughly at sunrise. That unfolds over about 50 minutes. It feels – so that’s the other thing – even though it feels like real time, it is absolutely not. And juggling some of that stuff and being really specific about it was important because I’m aware that there’s – it’s a funny thing. If you say to people, OK, this is happening at 1:30 in the morning, and then you show them something else happening at 4am, in their minds they’re like that’s really close together. It’s the middle of the night. Not a lot of stuff happening in the middle of the night, therefore it’s like those things are right after another.

If it’s in the middle of a day and it’s 10am and then it’s 2pm, that’s a different vibe. And suddenly you feel like a lot of time has passed. Things have happened. What went on in between those things? You just have to kind of have that weird sense of it.

**John:** Yeah. What you’re describing is time is relative. And not in any special relativity way, but in the sense of general relativity there’s an observer. And time flows according to what the observer sees, in this case what the audience sees. And it’s the audience that sees that two events that happened in the middle of the night are closer together than two events that happen in the middle of the day.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And often one of the things we encounter as screenwriters and as filmmakers is the big shift is like a day scene versus a night scene. A bunch happens between the two of those. And even if they’re back to back in the day scene and night scene that is a challenge.

A thing we often encounter with stories that are happening on multiple coasts is like it’s night in New York but it’s still maybe daytime in Los Angeles or in Australia. That’s confusing. That’s weird to see. And you try to avoid those situations because it just feels weird and wrong for the audience.

We know that they’re in different time zones, and yet if two characters are having a conversation they should both be in daylight or at nighttime they shouldn’t be split between the two of them.

**Craig:** Isn’t that funny? And there are times where people, it’s like spy movies and such where you have people in Washington, DC talking to an operative in Malaysia. Well, that’s about 12 hours apart. That’s like flip AM and PM. You will almost always see one of those people inside. Because you don’t want to see the light/dark thing. You don’t want to see somebody going night to – it is really confusing to us. Like the way our own circadian rhythms get biologically confused by jetlag. We just can’t handle it. It feels wrong and it takes us out of the moment, which is of course the thing we’re always trying to not do.

**John:** One of the other rules you’re establishing in whatever you’re creating is travel time. And so a show I loved deeply as I watched it is Alias. And as the series went along suddenly she could be kind of anywhere magically right away. They never showed her traveling someplace, so it’s like she’s in Los Angeles. She’s in Europe. She’s back. And somehow it’s still the same day. Travel time just sort of went away. And early seasons of Game of Thrones I felt like it just took forever to get from Winterfell down to King’s Landing. And then suddenly like, oh, you’re just there.

And, you know, in some ways that is just the collision of all the transitional scenes. Weeks could have been passing during that time. But it also just felt like they changed the rules in terms of how quickly you could move from place to place because they didn’t – it wasn’t serving them to show the travel time that would be involved.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think that there is a boredom factor to repeating the kind of expanded time. So, it is interesting to watch a slow journey if it’s new to you. If it’s not, I’m all in favor of just like skip ahead, skip ahead. Fast forward. So I don’t have to watch the same boring journey again. No question, in the early seasons of Game of Thrones getting to The Wall took forever, which felt right. And traveling, it seemed impossible to get from Essos to Westeros. It was like a massive amount of land and ocean to cover. And as you got deeper in and closer to the end then things started going faster because you had experienced the journeys already.

And, yeah, was there some time things where you’re like on paper you have broken your own time travel rules? Yes. And you just kind of have to sometimes take those hits because when you are as deep into that world as those guys were after whatever it was, 80 episodes, it’s really hard to stay consistent and keep the story moving. It’s just hard to keep that timeline consistent.

**John:** Now so a lot of what we’ve been talking about so far has been scene-by-scene, or sequence-by-sequence, and sort of the stuff that you can look at in an outline form and figure out, OK, this is how we’re handling time. But let’s zoom in and talk about time within a scene. Because even as we’re talking to a playwright, a playwright is optimizing dialogue and moments within a scene so that things that would normally take place over four hours are happening in ten minutes. There’s an optimization that’s natural to any kind of dramatic writing where you’re sort of getting the tightest, best version of these things.

What I find to be so different as a screenwriter than other forms of writing is that we have this expectation of just how long a scene can be and how much has to be accomplished, and so often we have to be doing really delicate surgery to cut out half a page, to jump over some natural moments that might happens so we can get to that next thing. We’re always just trying to take out the stitches and see if we can just sew a little bit tighter. And that is part of it.

One of the things I’ve learned to do much better over the course of 20 years of doing this is recognizing when I can’t actually just make this – when I can’t tighten it and when I need to just actually get rid of this scene or approach it from a completely different way because there’s no short version of this scene that’s going to handle what I needed to do.

**Craig:** This is why the classes that aspiring screenwriters should be taking are not, in my opinion, screenwriting classes. Are we going to talk by the way about the crazy QAnon screen guy? Maybe next week. Because that was something else.

**John:** Oh yeah. When we have a little bit more about that we’ll do some of that.

**Craig:** We’ll get around to him next week. But I think the classes that screenwriters or aspiring screenwriters should be taking are editing classes. Because editing is where the time compression and expansion rubber meets the road. And you begin to see exactly how flexible or inflexible something is. There is a point where the material will snap. And it will not feel correct in terms of the manipulation of time. And that tensile strength, that flexibility, is different depending on tone and pace. But you’ll see it in there.

And the more you can get a rhythm of how that functions in an edit the more you will be able to anticipate that as you’re writing ahead of the edit. You will know that you can get away with certain things and you will also know you can’t get away with certain things.

I’ve spent so much time in editing rooms. So much time in editing rooms. If there’s one thing I can point to that has made me a better writer than I used to be over the years it’s the amount of time editing scenes of things I wrote.

**John:** Mm-hmm. And recognizing like, oh, I thought I needed that or basically you have to acknowledge that like it made sense why you did that on the page. And then when you actually see it with physical people in the blocking that they have, that moment just can’t last. We don’t have space for that in the movie we actually made. So therefore we need to come into that scene later or leave earlier.

So let’s talk about some of the classic techniques we do use for trimming time, which is also trimming pages. Because how we sort of measure our time is pages. Come in as late as you can. Leave as early as you can. So basically what is the latest moment you could start this scene. Can you start the scene with the person answering the question rather than the question being asked? Can you get out on a look rather than on that last line? What is the moment you can jump out of this thing? How can you not ask the question that a person would naturally ask? How can you get from A to B as cleanly as possible and still have an interesting scene?

Some of the challenges we face though is you can optimize a scene so much that it’s just not interesting. It’s quick. The story has made forward progress but there’s nothing interesting in that scene itself.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think that, while the “get in as late as you can, leave as early as you can” advice is probably very good advice for early screenwriters who tend to overwrite, once you are getting better at things it’s dangerous. Because there are human moments in the beginnings and ends of things. Sometimes just the way somebody walks up to somebody else in and of itself is dramatic and sad or exciting. And it allows you to set a context for what comes next so that you don’t feel like you’re just kind of getting the choruses of the hit songs on the album, but that you’re getting something a little bit more rich.

Shoe leather is the term we use in production for people that are walking.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Traveling pointlessly from one spot to another is considered the cardinal sin. There’s a moment in Chernobyl that we looked at a billion times where Jared Harris has, they’ve taken a break in the trial and he sees Shcherbina is sitting a bit a ways away on a bench and he walks over to him. And the question was how much walking do we need. I think initially in Johan’s first cut he just sort of materialized next to him and I was like, well, no. We can’t do that.

But, on the other hand, do we actually want to show him doing the full freaking walk? No. So can we show some of the walk that feels meaningful and weighty and just trust that the kind of, I don’t know, human aspect of his little travel there will be enough to kind of cover the manipulation of time? And it seemed like it was.

But there is definitely a screenwriting class version of that scene that begins with those two guys just sitting next to each other already. Like they went out there. They’re sitting next to each other. There’s a pause. And then one of them starts talking. But, you know, I like a little windup. What can I say? I’m a windup kind of guy.

**John:** Yeah. But you have to really make that decision. Does seeing one character sit down next to the next character change the dynamics of the scene?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If it does, then yes, you should write it and you should aim to shoot it that way. If it doesn’t really matter then maybe you do just have him sitting there because you don’t think about sort of the editorial work that the reader is doing. But just that sentence of like “walks over and sits down next to the person,” we’re filming that in our minds and it’s changing our perception of what is the urgency, what’s actually happening. Getting to that moment more quickly may be the right choice.

Definitely I think you and I are both urging writers to write like it’s the edit. And write the version of the movie that you’re actually seeing in your head. And you may make different decisions working with a director. You may decide to make some different decisions. But as close as you can come to this best version you can make inside your head and get that on paper the more likely you’re going to have a successful version of that scene and hopefully you’re whole movie.

**Craig:** Yup. It is one of those places where you get to show off a little bit of creative freedom. A little bit of chaos. Even shows that you might think of as very well organized temporally like say Breaking Bad is full of time tricks. Full of them. There’s that one season where multiple show openings were of a pool and a teddy bear floating in it. And you didn’t know why. And none of it made sense until the end when it was revealed to be a function of something that hadn’t even yet occurred at the first episode of that season. Because they had no problem messing with time and being creatively chaotic with it.

But it’s got to pay off. It’s got to be worth it in the end.

**John:** Yeah. You have to have confidence and you have to – that confidence has to be built out of trust in your audience and your audience trusting you. We always talk about the social contract between the writer and the reader. It’s like give me your attention and I will make it worth your while. And time and use of time well is one of those aspects of trust.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** All right. Let’s go to some listener questions because some of our questions actually do tie into this topic. Here is where we bring on our producer, Megana Rao, who asks the questions that our listeners write in with. Megana, what have you got for us this week?

**Megana Rao:** All right. So first up, Don writes, “I know you’ve talked about continuous dialogue before, but I wanted to take a crack at changing your minds.”

**Craig:** No. [laughs]

**Megana:** “Wouldn’t it just be easier for everyone to stop using continuous dialogue altogether? Does it really help that much? I can understand the argument that is useful at the start of a new page, but I can’t seem to find any usefulness outside of that. Even if the dialogue is broken up by action, I assume the average person doesn’t get totally lost without the use of CONT’D. Continued.”

**Craig:** I must admit, Don, I’m a little confused. Because you don’t have to change my mind at all. I don’t use CONT’D for dialogue, for continuous dialogue. I haven’t used it ten years.

**John:** Yeah. So CONT’D is a convention that I kind of feel is going away to a degree, but there’s two kinds of CONT’Ds to talk about. And it’s a thing that we encounter a lot with Highland because Highland does one kind and doesn’t do another kind. So let’s talk about what the difference is.

There’s CONT’D if a character is talking at the bottom of a page. Let’s say they have a long speech and it jumps to the next page. Software will automatically mark it CONT’D there to make it clear that it’s one block of dialogue that just got split between two different pages. That I have no problem with. I think Craig you don’t have a problem, too.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Because it’s referring to like it’s just the software doing a thing to make it clear that this really is all one block of dialogue.

**Craig:** If you didn’t put it there you would not know that the next bit of dialogue was meant to be part of a continuous speech.

**John:** Yeah. So that – no one really has big issues with that.

**Craig:** That’s all good.

**John:** What we’re talking about though is Craig starts talking and then there’s a scene description line and then Craig keeps talking after that. And Highland does not automatically put that CONT’D in there. Final Draft does want to put that CONT’D in there. That was just a philosophical point from my side, because software wise we could do that. It’s just so often I’ve had to manually delete those back when I was using Final Draft because it really wasn’t the same idea, it wasn’t the same thought. I didn’t mean for it to be one continuous thing.

So, if I meant it to be one continuous thing I could type the CONT’D there to show that it really was one thought. But sometimes three different things happen between those two, so it really is not the same line, the same thought. It shouldn’t be continuous.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t matter. Basically, Don, what I’m saying is you’re right. I don’t see the value in it. It feels very format-y to me. Something that just was sort of vaguely secretarial in the creation of the classic Warner Bros screenplay format or whatever, the [unintelligible] format was. To me it’s literally changing the character’s name. I hate it. Just let them talk. They’re saying something, then a thing happens, and then they say something. And it isn’t continuous. If it were continuous I would make the choice to not break the dialogue up. There is some sort of natural pause, break, or change that has occurred in between those two things.

So, I don’t use CONT’D myself. And so you don’t have to fight me on it.

**John:** Nope. I will say there have been times, because I don’t use it, there have times in table readings where I’ve noticed that an actor doesn’t get their next line because they’re expecting like, oh, if there’s another line of dialogue it wouldn’t be my line of dialogue. But they can get over that. Or they can highlight their own script. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.

**Craig:** They can figure it out.

**John:** Megana, what do we have next?

**Megana:** Danielle asks, “I would love any feedback on how much to include in therapy scenes. My protagonist seeks professional through a three-month rehab program in the third act which greatly moves them forward in their healing journey. I have plenty of dialogue that navigates what healed them, but not sure how much to include and when is too much.”

**John:** So this is, again, a question of time. How are you using your limited resources of pages to show this three months? And you’re going to make elisions and choices about sort of what we’re seeing. Are sessions individualized? Is dialogue being stretched out over the course of multiple sessions? Is the dialogue extending over other scenes that show passages of time? There’s a lot going on here. Craig, what tips would you offer for Danielle as she’s thinking about how to do this?

**Craig:** Well, I think first of all I would need to know what the nature is of the relationship between the patient and the therapist, or the rehab specialist. Because if it’s a very important relationship then I want to see more of it. There are movies where that relationship is central like Ordinary People or Good Will Hunting. Then there are situations where those relationships aren’t as important, but they are kind of backgrounded and they are used as these sort of subtle markers of progress. In Honey Boy, for instance, there are some therapy scenes. They’re very, very truncated and they’re really meant to just show where a character is in a given moment in his journey.

So, it depends on what you want us to focus on and listen to. The thing about therapy scenes is they’re always, of course, there are great examples, even better than a jury deliberating, which is usually very, very boring and then we just show the good parts, same with therapy. Therapy is circular. It can be boring. It can go backwards. It can be frustrating. And when a movie show – they show this kind of glamorized highlight reel of it all that often concludes with someone saying the one thing that makes everybody go, “Oh my god, I get it now. I’m healed.” Which is not what therapy actually is.

But there could be some key moments or some big reveals or things. So, I guess my only advice would be tailor the length to the significance of the relationship between the patient and the therapist. And try and avoid over-glamorize pitfalls if you can.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not technically therapy, but I go back to Marriage Story and the scene with Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern which is a long scene and plays in continuous time. But the choice to have that be one scene rather than a bunch of little small scenes that add up to that scene was so smart and so well done because it allowed for a continuous emotional progression within a scene. It made it its own moment and would not have worked so successfully had it been broken into smaller bits.

And so I’m going to throw two contrasting bits of suggestions here. One is to look at sort of like if you sort of shatter it apart and just take the pieces and thread them through a period that covers time, where we can see progress of the character, where you’re not sort of in one scene for a lot of it, that’s a possibility. Or to do this Marriage Story approach where you really anchor it around one central scene that is really doing the work of this thing and not try to break it into three scenes of equal length which I suspect is going to be the least effective way to handle it.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** What’s next, Megana?

**Megana:** Great. So Ash from London asks, “My writing and directing partner and I are 99% in synch. But recently we have both noticed that we might read the same dialogue in a totally different way, inferring different subtext, tone, or intended performance in ways that are quite drastic and effect the interpretation of the scene. It’s a bit like the relationship between reading the lyrics to a song which seem mundane and flat on the page and then listening to the final piece of music. I feel like I’ve suddenly become aware of a massive limitation of the medium and I find myself panicking about people reading the dialogue I write in the worst possible way. What’s happening here? Am I OK? Am I having some kind of existential crisis? Or am I struggling with something that everyone struggles with?”

**Craig:** No, Ash, you’re not OK. This is all you. Of course, what are you discovering, you’re discovering that this is what we are. This is part of our humanity is that we will interpret things in different ways. And it’s actually good news. It means that this stuff is more extensible than you think it is. It’s more rich than you might have thought it was. Yes, it is possible and it happens all the time that people read a line and go, “Why would you – this is so dumb.” And you’re befuddled by that reaction and you say what do you mean. And they say, “Because of this.” And you go, oh, no, no, no, you don’t understand. My apologies. It means this. This is the intention. And then then go, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, OK.”

That will happen to you a thousand times. So, in a weird way kind of almost enjoy it when it happens. Like my whole thing is I let people just keep talking. I swear to god. I do. It’s mean, but I just let them keep going until they finally exhaust themselves with their complaining. And then I say, well, it actually meant this. You were just stressing the wrong word. I would stress this word. And then they go, “Oh, oh, OK. Oh god.” And then I can see that they’re embarrassed. And I like that. Because I’m bad.

**John:** Ash, one thing that will help you is at some point you will be in casting for a project and you will see 30 actors read the same scene. And you’ll recognize, oh wow, there are so many different ways to read those exact same lines of dialogue. And you can tell which ones match your expectations and which ones don’t match your expectations and which ones are even better and cooler than your expectations. That’s great. That’s actually performance.

The writing is a plan. It’s a guideline for things that actors are actually going to say. And their performance does really matter. And their intention really does matter. So, there’s nothing wrong with what’s happening. It is super common.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s good. I like it. When somebody something and it’s better than what you imagined, that’s a wonderful surprise. And it also jogs the material out of the expected. Because if it can surprise you, imagine what it’s going to do to the audience.

**John:** So I will tell you, my first experience with this was with Go. And we were having a very hard time casting the role of Gaines, the drug dealer, Todd Gaines the drug dealer. To the point where I was sitting through all these auditions like did I just write a bad scene? Is this a bad character? Can this not work? And then Timothy Olyphant came in and read it. It was like, oh, that’s what it’s supposed to be. That is actually – it does actually make sense as a character because this person in front of me was able to do this role and it does actually track and make sense.

So, don’t worry too much about it. That said, you and your writing partner who are theoretically writing the same thing disagree on sort of what these lines are supposed to be, there may be something that’s not happening right in your communication with each other, in how you’re establishing the voices of these characters to begin with. Because as you’re reading through a script if a character has an established voice it should be pretty unambiguous how a given line is going to sound or what the intention of a given line should be. So, watch for that. Maybe you’re not establishing voices especially clearly.

And then I’d say one technique to look at, and this is a thing I see a lot in J.J. Abrams scripts, is in the parenthetical there will be quotes with a line for what the line is meant to say. So if the line was, “You’re stupid,” but in the parenthetical it says, “I love you so much.” Just basically giving kind of like a line reading in the parenthetical. It’s a thing you see more in TV than you do in features, but it’s available as an option if there’s a specific line that is really not what it seems like it is just texturally on the page.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Word. Let’s do one more question, Megana.

**Megana:** All right. Great. So, Lawant from the Netherlands writes, “What makes a story more suitable to live action versus animation? I know the way the screenplay gets written is often a little dissimilar to the way a live action screenplay does. I also know that there are often logistics and economics at play. So do you feel that there are certain stories that inherently lend themselves better to one medium or the other?”

**John:** Yeah. So the obvious thing is if most of the characters in your story are human beings, live action is a really natural good choice. If most of them are not human beings, they are animals, they are other kinds of creatures, animation is a better choice.

Obviously we can do things in sort of hybrid ways that are between the two that are new, and exciting, and different. We can redo The Lion King in “live action.” But we all know what we’re talking about. If it can be filmed with human actors, then it should probably be live action.

But that said, the nature of certain kinds of stories that we tend to do more often in animation than in live action. So, mythic stories, simple fairy tale kind of things. Things that feel like they should have Disney songs in them are generally better off to be thought of as animation. But just this past year there was a project that we took out which was going to be live action, it was going to be sort of Mandalorian-y kind of shot, and ultimately the decision was, you know what, this is probably going to be animation instead just for the logistics of it all. And it was the kind of story where you could kind of go either way and we decided to go into animation.

So, I don’t have hard and fast rules, but the characters and the world are what’s going to dictate whether it’s live action or animation to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only other consideration may, Lawant, is that if your story is what I would call pure story, meaning it is so connected to a really sharply engineered super high concept plot, then it might be better suited for animation. Because in animation you can do anything. You can show anywhere and do anything. So if you have this pure story that really requires very specific plotting and structure, you might want to think about it as an animated tale because you’ll just have more latitude.

**John:** There are Pixar movies that you could do live action, but they really kind of wouldn’t work the same way. There’s certain formulas and there’s certain heroic journey stuff that it just feels better in animation than it feels in live action. And so really just be honest with yourself about the character goals and sort of what the story wants to be and you probably will feel if it’s animation or if it’s live action.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Cool. Megana, thank you for these questions.

**Megana:** Great. Thank you guys so much.

**Craig:** Thanks Megana.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. Before I get to my One Cool Thing I have to do follow up on Craig’s One Cool Thing from last week which was There is No Game which is a terrific – it’s a game, spoiler, it’s a game. But really, really well done. I haven’t finished it yet, but do check that out because Craig was actually right this time.

**Craig:** Actually.

**John:** I don’t play all of the games that he recommends, but this time I thought it really was terrific.

**Craig:** It’s a good one.

**John:** Two small things for me to recommend this week. First is Some Kind of Heaven, which is a new documentary that came out this past week. It’s about The Villages in Florida which is this retirement community. And it is a great documentary following several people who live at The Villages. Again, I don’t want to do spoilers. But we’ll put a link to the trailer. But if you went in cold I think it would honestly be the best exposure to it because it’s great. I want to have the filmmaker on at some point to talk through his use of characters and how you create detailed character moments and arcs when you only have these real people for limited periods of time. It’s just really well done. So, I’d urge you to check that out.

But my general One Cool Thing if you want to waste some time is Microsimulation of Traffic which is this German website. And it basically – it’s this animation where you have all these cars in this highway system and you can drag in little obstacles. You can sort of see how the traffic flow goes. I’ve always been really curious sort of how you optimize cars getting from point A to point B. And it’s just a really smartly done version of that. So it’s not Sim City. It’s very much more sort of mathematically-driven in terms of how you optimize traffic flow. And I wasted a good hour on it. And I think you will enjoy it.

**Craig:** There was an article years ago that someone did about traffic in Southern California and what causes traffic and what would alleviate traffic on the freeways. And one of the things that kind of blew my mind was he said one of the biggest impacts on traffic flow is sun.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So you’re kind of going down a hill or something and there’s sunlight in your eyes. You will slow down. And everybody that slows down a little bit causes this ripple effect in the back. The other one is how many cars can you see ahead of you. If you can see a lot of cars ahead of you a lot of times it seems like there’s more traffic, so you slow down. And if you can’t, it doesn’t, and you speed up. It was just like we suck is basically – it was just another one of those your brains are bad stories.

**John:** Yeah. I will say a thing I’ve always read about and never sort of seen until I tried this on the traffic simulator is ghost crashes. Basically there will be an accident or something and then there’s a bump in the rug and there’s this traffic jam that persists for hours after an accident has been cleared. And this simulator makes it really clear why that’s there and why running traffic breaks, which is where the police cars turn their lights and very slowly do these S shapes to sort of slow down all the traffic clears the break.

And so it was fun to see that like, oh, it is actually just jams are sometimes just the echoes of things that happened a long time before.

**Craig:** Exactly. I like that. Ghost crashes. A couple of One Cool Things this week. This one is sort of a cool thing. They’re related. The first one is definitely cool. We announced, The Hollywood Reporter announced, that The Last of Us has its pilot director. Originally we were going to be doing this with Johan Renck who I did Chernobyl with. Johan, like so many people who is working on things, had a movie that got delayed by Covid and so suddenly the schedules couldn’t line up. So some big shoes to fill in terms of where to go and who to talk to.

And there is a film, this is, by the way, again not to be like – I don’t want to sound like a butt-kisser here, but HBO is pretty cool. Like we’re making this big show. It costs a lot of money. And we come to them and say, “You know who we want? We want a guy named Kantemir Balagov who had made a small film called Beanpole in Russian, in Russia.” And they were like, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

It’s awesome. Beanpole is beautiful. I’m 99% certain that we are also going to be using the cinematographer that Kantemir partnered with. She is also remarkable. Her name is Kseniya Sereda. And it is stunning and heartbreaking and gorgeous. It showed up on a ton of Top 20 of 2020 lists. I’m not a huge list person as everybody knows, but the Top 20 of 2020 lists have been fascinating because so few movies came out that almost all of them are these really obscure and very cool little movies.

So, we’re very happy about that. Kantemir is a fantastic guy. Super talented guy. And he speaks English. But, he speaks Russian better than he speaks English. So, as we’ve been communicating I’ve been trying to find a translation solution, sort of an inline translation solution. I mean, ideally I would be writing an email and something would be mirroring in another window in Russian. That would be incredible. Not quite that simple. I mean, I can sort of go on Google and type it into that window and see what happens.

What I’m using now is something called Mate. M-A-T-E. Which is kind of like an integrated translation system. Its interface is a little funky at times. Sometimes the formatting goes away. And sometimes it comes back. So I’m just – it’s a pretty cool thing. It’s a pretty cool thing. But if somebody out there has an awesome translation solution, sort of a frictionless translation solution for me for English to Russian and Russian to English I’d love to hear about it.

**John:** Nice. Yeah. Send those suggestions in. And that’s our show for this week. So, as always, Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Timothy Vajda. We could use some more outros. And so a reminder of what an outro is, because I was looking through the folder and there’s a bunch of pieces of music that are good that really have nothing to do with Scriptnotes at all. So, the only requirement we give is that they be cool and they somehow go Bum-bum-bum-bum-bump, or the minor version of that. But there’s pieces in there that like that’s a cool piece of music but it has nothing to do with Scriptnotes. It does not have our theme. So the only requirement is it has to use the theme in some way. And I want you to keep pursuing excellence and giving us great outros because we really appreciate it.

You can send us links to those outros at ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send questions like the ones we answered today. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts. You can get them at Cotton Bureau.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you 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 like the one we’re about to record on time travel.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, Craig, this is very much a dorm room stoner question.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** But if you could travel back to any point in history, or pre-history, and go there as a tourist, so we’ll start with the tourist rules where you go and you know you can come back to the present time. What are some places you’d like to visit in history and why?

**Craig:** Yeah. So we put this to our D&D, or you put it to our D&D group as well, and immediately because it’s a D&D group, which is just obsessed with the details and potential loop holes and possible ways to gain the system, there were certain questions in there, but they were reasonable. So let’s also presume that I’m not going to be suffering. There’s not going to be a bad case of bubonic plague or something like that. I’m not going to be immediately burned as a witch because of my clothing and so on and so forth.

So then the question is where do you go back in time. What are you most interested in seeing? And, you know, I don’t know how much of this reflects on who I am or what my interests are, but I suppose – and again let’s also presume you can understand every language.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Maybe because my dad was an American history teacher and that was the bulk of the history that I was taught, I think I would want to go back to those very hot days in July, late June and early July, where Americans were debating whether or not they should be declaring independency from Great Britain in Philadelphia. Because in that discussion there was not only the momentous occasion of our independence, but there was also the first real consequential debate over slavery. It had begun already. And it wasn’t going to get any better or any less complicated or any less morally repugnant. And would ultimately fester and explode into the Civil War and then into Jim Crow and then of course we still are struggling with its legacy today.

So all of that’s there plus Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. It’s pretty – I think I would like it. That’s where I would go.

**John:** Absolutely. So both around the Declaration of Independence, but also figuring out the Constitution are just, are just such seminal moments and we have many accounts of it, but we have no one who can sort of tell us what it’s like to be there and sort of look at it with modern eyes in ways that, you know, just to actually physically be there would be great.

And I guess we’re sort of playing – we’re not playing Terminator rules, so you can’t go back and change a thing. You can just sort of go back and witness it and really see what it was like.

**Craig:** Fly on the wall.

**John:** Fly on the wall. And so fly on the wall, two points in history and prehistory that I’m really curious to see. Everything happening around Jesus’s time. And sort of like what Jesus was like in his time. What the sense of this small little group was like and did it feel like it was the start of something bigger because I guess I just always wondered to what degree civilization was primed and ready to have this explosion of a religion that would take over everything, or it just was lucky.

And to what degree, who he was individually and how charismatic. And sort of what it felt like in that time would be fascinating. So, that’s one thing, but I would also really be curious to come to North American continent in a time before European settlers arrive and just see what it was like because I think I was definitely raised on this myth that North America was just sort of this empty continent, that there really wasn’t anybody here. And that clearly was not the case. It was actually a pretty busy and full place. And the myth of it being empty was sort of foisted upon us.

So while there weren’t permanently built cities in the way that we saw in Europe, there were actually a lot of people here. And I was just really curious what that was like. And we sort of lost all of that because there wasn’t written language just in that sense of what it felt like here before the Europeans came.

**Craig:** Cleaner.

**John:** Yeah. Probably cleaner.

**Craig:** Much, much cleaner.

**John:** Yeah. We made a mess of things.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, changing the rules a little bit, if you could go back to one moment in your life, so we’ve always gone back pre-us, but is there a moment in your life where you’d like to look at yourself?

**Craig:** Oh, oh god. I mean, no. I don’t want to see any of that.

**John:** I don’t know that I want to see any of that either. Because I think I would just – it would just be very wincey to sort of see the dumb choices you make. One of the reasons why I like the show Pen15 so much is that you have these really talented actors going back to play themselves at 15 years old and just how unbearably awkward you are those early ages. And so if I couldn’t change stuff, if I couldn’t encourage the younger version of me to do the things that are so obvious to do in retrospect, I guess I wouldn’t go back and want to watch any of it.

**Craig:** No. I’m embarrassed by all of it. Everything. Everything up to this moment. It’s a tragedy.

**John:** I will say having lost my mom last month there are definitely moments in my mom’s life and in my dad’s life that they’ve given me some reporting on, but I just don’t really have a very good sense of who they were at different moments. So the sort of Back to the Future fantasy of like getting to see your parents when they were teenagers or early 20-somethings would be neat. It’s not Jesus in his time neat. But it would be illuminating.

**Craig:** Yeah. I always feel like if you could get a good look at your parents when they were young it would be a little bit like getting a peek into the cockpit of a plane and seeing how drunk the pilot was. It would give you a bad feeling. Like there but for the grace of god. Like this person should not have been in charge of me at all. At all. Who put this guy behind the seat of an airplane or the wheel of an airplane or whatever you call it, the helm? Who put this guy behind the helm of an airplane? And who put this guy in charge of a child?

And if my kids could look back and see how absolutely clueless I was at so many points they would probably feel exactly the same.

**John:** So a thing I noticed this last year is that as I look back at photos of my daughter there’s continuities and there’s also discontinuities. And I don’t perceive sort of one continuous evolution of a kid from point A to where she is right now. There’s stages. And of course there were small shifts – there were shifts between those stages and there were transition points, but it’s almost like she’s a whole different species than who she was as a younger child.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And sometimes I feel lost for – I look over these photos and I feel lost for who that kid was. And obviously she’s still right in front of you, but she’s not really right in front of me. That younger toddler who was so neat in her own specific way is gone.

**Craig:** Yeah. That is the tragedy of watching your kids grow up. There is a progression that you can see. And you can follow it with a line. And to tie back into our topic in the main show about time and how time can sometimes just break, there is an end of childhood and there’s the beginning of this other thing and there’s a break. And that break is traumatic for everybody. But what happens on the other side of it is a different person entirely emerges. Just a different human being. And it is a struggle sometimes for everyone to wrap their minds around the fact that your kid is gone.

I mean, memory and time claim all children. All of them. And what is left in their place you have to come to accept. And if you can, then there’s this whole other potentially wonderful relationship with them for the rest of your life. But sometimes you have this kid and everything is great and there’s the jump and then they come out on the other side a person and some children and parents don’t like each other anymore after that point and they go their separate ways. It happens.

**John:** And a huge source of tension between parents and kids is the parent not willing to acknowledge that it’s not their small child anymore.

**Craig:** That’s right. There’s been a change.

**John:** It’s reality. And tying this back to sense of time and screenwriters as being masters of time, if you haven’t seen Boyhood, the Richard Linklater movie, this is a great opportunity to see Boyhood because that is an experiment in which you follow a kid through this difficult time and you see both the continuities and discontinuities of a kid aging. And a great example of approaching a project with a plan, with an intention, and then having to adjust based on the actual realities of what happens.

So, I loved Boyhood. I thought it was just terrific.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Cool. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

Links:

* [DGA tells WME to get rid of its conflicts](https://deadline.com/2021/01/dga-sides-with-writers-guild-in-its-dispute-with-wme-over-endeavor-content-1234672501/)
* Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium at [Scriptnotes.net](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/), with a new annual pass for $49!
* [Some Kind of Heaven](https://www.somekindofheaven.com/)
* [Microsimulation of Traffic Flow](https://traffic-simulation.de/roundabout.html)
* [Beanpole](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10199640/) film
* [Mate](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/language-translator-by-mate/id1073473333) translation app integration
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* [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 Timothy Vajda ([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/484standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/the-wedding-episode).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 480 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we talk weddings. More specifically we talk about wedding scenes in film and television, the tropes, the challenges, and what we can learn. We’ll also answer listener questions about the weather and bombing a pitch. And in our bonus segment for premium members we’ll discuss our post-vaccination hopes and plans.

With so much on our plate we need to welcome back our very own Aline Brosh McKenna. Aline, welcome back.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Oh my god. I’m like so happy to be here.

**Craig:** Oh. My. God.

**John:** Oh! We started talking about weddings and there was no one I want to talk more about weddings than you.

**Aline:** Mm.

**John:** So you have written at least one wedding movie, so 27 Dresses is obviously a wedding movie, but you’ve written wedding scenes in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. You know your way around a wedding scene, correct?

**Aline:** Indeed. And I was thinking after you mentioned this topic that of the four season finales that I directed three of them had weddings in them. And the first thing I ever directed, that first episode that I directed, had a giant, giant wedding. And they’re pretty hellish to shoot.

**John:** So we’ll talk about the practicalities of shooting them, but also as I started digging into it I realized that there’s not one thing that is a wedding scene, so there’s just a lot to dig into. And there are so many universal things. So many specific things. So we’ll get into all of that.

But most crucially as we head into this holiday season I was thinking like what kind of gift could I get for my friends, for Aline and for Craig–

**Craig:** What did you get us?

**John:** And I thought maybe what I can get you guys that you would really, really want, that could really be good for you would be to get you guys agents.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** And so I got you guys some agents. So CAA right as we were about to hit the record button signed a deal with the WGA, bringing closure to their part in the agency campaign.

**Craig:** [sighs heavily]

**John:** That’s the relief you hear on the air.

**Craig:** It’s just like, ooh.

**Aline:** [sighs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Aline:** I mean, here’s the thing. You know, I think you guys have talked about this a lot and I’ve talked to a lot of writers obviously during this, and I think part of this might be generational, but agents have been really, really important in my career, really important relationships. People I really relied on. And in the last few years I’ve had agents that I really loved and really relied on. And I, having done the TV show, I sort of didn’t have a lot of access to them because I was busy sort of doing the one thing and had been looking forward to working with them. And then this thing started.

So, I’ve really missed them. And, you know, my agents really have always been – I’ve never had a manager. And I like to, you know, as I often say quoting Mike Newell, I think with my mouth open, and so I like to have people to talk to. And agents have really been key for me in strategy and in understanding what my potential was, or could be. And so I’m just really happy and I’m really proud to work with the folks that I’ve been working with. So I’m very happy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ditto.

**John:** So you guys have not read through any of this stuff yet, but you don’t have to actually read all that much because the deal with CAA is exactly the same as the deal with ICM. There’s a four-page side letter which goes into all the specifics and disclosures about the sale of Wiip, which is the independent production arm and the blind trust about–

**Craig:** I actually have a question about that. Did they build in – did they, I mean did the guild or them in combination – build in some sort of window? Was that the compromise there?

**John:** So it’s both a window in time but also disclosures and transparencies about what’s actually happening and that it’s not strictly about CAA but it’s also TPG which is the company that owns Wiip and CAA.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that was the complicated stuff which took a lot of time and negotiation to sort through, but has apparently now been sorted through to both sides’ satisfaction. So it ends the lawsuit on CAA’s thing. I was facing a deposition from CAA and sort of other disclosures.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So I’m just delighted that that part of this whole campaign is behind us, leaving only WME as the hold out among agencies in this campaign.

**Craig:** I suppose there is a template now for them to follow in theory.

**John:** It seems like it will be a very similar kind of discussion.

**Craig:** Yes. Good. Well, regardless of how we got there or any of that stuff the thing that – when we started talking about this, John, was way, way back with Chris Keyser–

**John:** Oh yeah. Chris Keyser.

**Craig:** Whenever it was, a year and a half ago. If people go back and listen to that episode they’ll hear plenty of umbrage on my part about packaging, which has always just been this awful stone in our collective shoe. And we’ve gotten rid of it. I mean, I’m perfectly cool with the fact that they’re divesting from Wiip since as I mentioned many times I’ve been a CAA client for whatever how many years, and they’ve never even mentioned it to me. So, it was not anything that was part of my life. But packaging was apparently thrust upon me. And so I’m glad that we have arrived at this place at long last. And now I can get my agent back. And believe me, the texts have been coming in. [laughs]

It’s a bit like Jerry Maguire where suddenly an agent gets fired and they have to start calling all their clients to bring them with them. It’s like, OK, we can all be I guess re-hiring them back. And so, yeah, a lot of texts, a lot of phone calls. And it’s good. I’m glad.

**John:** All right. In a bit of follow up, way back in Episode 348 we did a How Would This Be a Movie where we discussed this Japanese Rent-A-Family business. So it was an article that was in the New Yorker. It ended up winning the National Magazine Award in 2019. But basically you could hire these actors to come in and pretend to be your family. And so for like a lonely man on the holidays you could pretend to have a family that was with him.

But it turns out that the subjects that they interviewed in the story, they were lying. They were not disclosing who they actually were. Some of them actually worked for the company in ways that were not clear. So there’s an editor’s note at the start of that article now sort of talking through what’s not been able to be verified or what’s not been true. And it calls into question sort of how much of the story, or even this industry, actually exists.

Philip from LA, a listener, wrote in to say, “I wonder if this could be its own twist on the story where the story of a fake family for rent in order to drum up publicity becomes something like The Producers set in the modern viral online era with touches of the balloon boy story, or the dark edge of a crisis actor conspiracy theory if things go too far awry for the hapless hoaxers.”

And it is an interesting point. It was like a con within a con. It was like a fake-fake family. It’s just a weird place for this to be at.

**Aline:** I just wonder how much of this movie would have been dependent on like “no guys this really happened.” Because when you first read the article it seemed like, wow, this is unusual. And it feels like if you tell a story that could exist, or it could just be a Black Mirror thing where you have an app and you can get a family. And if you build a great story and an interesting, engaging story I don’t know that – it doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that you’re showing up looking for tons of historical accuracy in that one. You’re looking for relationships to follow. It just seems like it is a fun, interesting, engaging idea that makes people smile and you kind of see the narrative opportunities opening up.

But I agree there’s something also funny in the idea of guys who are launching a business and so they manage to get this article placed in some fancy publication to try and publicize their business. That’s the sort of Shattered Glass version. But I think that the idea of renting relatives, it feels like you could do a lot of variants of that that would point to kind of the funniness of families, especially around the holidays. And it doesn’t need to be – you don’t need to have to fact check it in that sense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m just excited that any fact checking still happens at all. The gap between I guess what I would call journalistic scruples and political scruples is about, I don’t know, one light year wide. Because here they are sort of – and in a great way – tripping over themselves to say we are holding ourselves accountable. And we’re saying literally we don’t even think this story is false per se, but there is a little bit of this issue of perhaps one or three bad apples are ruining the bunch, so we’re going to tell you about this. As opposed to the rest of the world which is like we’re just going to say nonsense and repeat it over and over and deny.

So it’s nice to see that anyone still gives a damn.

**John:** Well, I think Aline’s point is the difference between there is journalism, which this is part of. And that journalism can be the spring board for a movie. But in many ways the movie doesn’t rely on that underlying story being true. It creates a story area, a story space. And even as we were talking about this in Episode 353 we did follow up where we talked about the different producers who are fighting for the rights over this thing, we wondering how important was it to actually have this actual story, to have this actual Japanese company. Is it really just an area for which you might want to build this fake family?

You think of the movies like We’re the Millers which is about a fake family to hide drug smuggling. Or Dana Fox’s movie, The Wedding Date, where it’s like someone is hiring on a fake boyfriend to go to a wedding. It’s a premise and therefore maybe you don’t really need the underlying details of that story to be true.

**Aline:** Right. The New Yorker obviously has a different standard, because they’re doing journalism. It’s been interesting also there’s been a lot of kerfuffle around this season of The Crown. And people who wanted a disclaimer. But I think people who are watching fictionalized pieces, pieces of history, understand that there is – you’re writing scenes you didn’t witness with characters you don’t know. I wonder, you know, I think that with The Crown it’s because a lot of the people who lived through that are alive today, or still in the public eye today, and so that’s why there’s been sort of a greater call for people wanting the historical record to be completely verified.

I wonder what you guys thought about that.

**John:** Yeah. This season of The Crown I thought was spectacular. And I did find myself because this was part of my own life story, like the wedding of Charles and Diana was a thing I actually remember seeing, I did take this as being, I don’t know, it felt more uncomfortably close to reality. And I did feel bad for some of these people.

Like I don’t know any of the people who are portrayed in this season of The Crown personally, but some of them are friends of friends which is just an odd place to be at. I’m not sure I wanted a disclaimer there, but I did start to wonder about what was true and what was not true. Craig?

**Craig:** I had a very specific opinion about this when I was doing a fictionalized show about historical events. I don’t really say fictionalized, I say dramatized. And I’m trying to dramatize what happened. So, I did, but, you know, just as a basic premise if you’re trying to cover a year of events in one hour, or five hours, or a hundred hours, you are taking license with reality. You have to. There’s no way to do it otherwise. But I personally felt it was important to be as transparent as I could be about those changes and those adjustments via a podcast because I do think if you don’t say anything the presumption that people are going to have is that you did your research and that’s accurate to history.

And I think it would be better for shows to be honest about those changes. You’ll get way more credit, frankly, for the dramatization that you do if you’re just open about it.

**Aline:** But I think most shows, I can’t speak for The Crown because I don’t know what Peter has said publicly about that, but I think that he’s never pretended, as far as I can tell, that it’s word-for-word. It’s a dramatic rendering. And it’s heavily thematic. It deals with, you know, every episode has a different sort of angle. And so I think what people were suggesting was you put a warning on that says this is not exactly historically accurate.

**Craig:** No. That’s dumb.

**Aline:** And I think about all the movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s that are like biopics of people which are just–

**Craig:** You would have to put a warning in front of everything.

**John:** Titanic.

**Craig:** There is no such thing as a dramatization of history that is perfectly accurate to history. I guess all I’m suggesting is that is that if there are significant deviations that have occurred it’s good to just have a forum in which you can acknowledge those and explain why. Because if you don’t I think people will find out and then get grouchy about it. I mean that’s for instance one of the reasons why not only forget the podcast, we literally put in type onscreen that a character in Chernobyl was a composite character. Because I just didn’t feel comfortable having them watch this whole thing and then find out three weeks later that she wasn’t real. It just felt manipulative to not acknowledge what we had done and why.

And you know what? It doesn’t undermine anything as far as I can tell.

**John:** Yeah. So I think what I’m hearing from this is that we need to have companion podcasts for all these shows.

**Craig:** Basically.

**John:** And Craig, I mean, honestly that was a good innovation for Chernobyl and for Watchmen. And I think it only helps them. We should probably try to have Peter Morgan come on the show.

**Aline:** Because he’s done a lot. He did Frost/Nixon and The Queen. He’s delved in that realm a lot. But I think in a certain way it feels to me like he approaches it as a playwright. So, he finds these situations and he’s building the dialogue that he – but, you know, these things are – I feel this way about podcasts, too, where sometimes podcasts now are being put out as sort of a definitive, factual version because that format makes people feel like they’re in a fact zone. And the fact of the matter is like, yeah, newspapers, journalism, they have fact checkers, or they’re responsible to a very literal standard. And it doesn’t feel to me like The Crown, that’s what The Crown is trying to do. It’s not trying to document.

**John:** Yeah. All right. Let’s get onto our marquee topic because I’m very excited to talk about weddings. I’ve had weddings on the brain for a bit because last week I officiated my first every wedding.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** It was on Zoom, but it still counts.

**Craig:** Under what church are you ordained?

**John:** I was the Church of Universal Life.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** It’s the one that everyone just goes to.

**Craig:** That’s me. We are both priests or reverends in the Universal Church of Life. [laughs]

**John:** Yes. And so–

**Craig:** Sounds like a Star Wars church.

**John:** It does. It really does sound like life day celebrations are my specialty.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** So just so people can fit this into the chronology, the wedding I officiated was on the same day my mom died, which seem could either be a great tragedy or a great comedy. But it ended up being actually a really nice thing to be able to have a structured celebration on this day that would otherwise be just incredibly sad. So it was nice to have something ceremonial that I could do on that day and sort of commemorate the beginning of someone’s new life rather than just the end of somebody’s life.

Anyway, that’s a really depressing way to get into something I’ve always really been interested in, because I’ve written some weddings scenes, and the script I’m writing right now has a wedding scene in it. But the more I thought about it there’s really no such thing as a wedding scene. Because really what weddings are is a whole constellation of events which you can chose to have become scenes in your story, but don’t necessarily have to do that. And I think weddings are also a really unique opportunity to show what is special and unique about those characters, the relationships between those characters, and what is culturally specific to this group versus any other group. So there’s so many great examples I can think of of ways to explore dynamics because of a wedding, because there is a set form to them that we can dive into and explore.

So, I want to start with Aline. Let’s say you’re writing something that is going to have a wedding, what are the events around a wedding that could become scenes to you? What are some of the moments that you could chose to make into scenes?

**Aline:** Well, I’m actually really glad that you mentioned this because I think that a lot of beginning writers choose a wedding as their first movie because it feels like an identifiable process with component parts. But I have found them brutal to write. I mean, it sounds funny to say about a movie like 27 Dresses, which is, you know, it’s not [unintelligible], but like it was very challenging to write because the way I think of weddings is like you know when you have a baby and you get that set of nesting cups? If you turn them over and you go from big to small you can make a tower, right, because they’re ascending.

Writing a wedding is like the cups are facing up and when you stack them they stay flat. There is nothing in those wedding events that is necessary escalation. If you’re writing a sports movie it’s like the beginning of the season, will they get into the playoffs, they get into the playoffs, they’re in the last game. I mean, it has a progression built into it. A war movie. An action movie. They have a natural progression. You’re trying to get the nuclear briefcase.

Wedding events are just parties. And obviously one of the things that’s really fun about weddings is that every culture has a slightly different one, and I think we’ve seen, you know, people love Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Crazy Rich Asians. And there’s Best Friend’s Wedding. I mean, there’s tons. But they’re actually so – I found it so, so difficult to write in 27 Dresses because it was like what is the difference stakes wise between the shower and the rehearsal dinner? I mean, I don’t know.

**John:** Nothing.

**Aline:** And –and – they’re huge gloms of people, so when you’re writing those scenes if you’re trying to focus on a few people but you don’t want to be in a setting with every single one of your main characters and just have a scene with two people in it, what’s the point of that? And so how are you servicing everyone’s story moving forward? It’s kind of like those nightmare scenes where you have every character together but you’ve got a whole bunch of them and one doesn’t escalate off the other one. And so it’s kind of important in those movies to embed another – you’ll find that most of those movies have another deadline, another kind of process they need – an arc – that is outside of just the getting married.

And it’s also, you know, I think of Shakespeare a lot when I’m working on wedding stuff because I think there’s an expectation with weddings that like there’ll be some sort of minuet with the characters and then they’ll land in the right place. And so there are some sort of formal expectations, but they’re not narrative expectations. And so it’s actually kind of a tough one.

And I’ve read a lot of early screenwriter’s scripts where I see them get into that cul-de-sac where it’s a little bit – their car is a little big for it and they end up doing a K-turn that’s, you know, has 17 backs and forths to it, because it’s very hard to get that forward motion.

**John:** Aline, I want to go back to really underlining a point you made is that with weddings and wedding sequences they have an order. They have a flow to them chronologically how they’re supposed to go. But you’re so right. There’s no natural escalation. There’s no greater stakes because it’s the next part of this thing. And so it really relies on an outside force to create what is going to be the further complication from this stage to this stage to this stage. Because otherwise it’s just you have dress shopping, and scouting venues, and the seating chart, and the bridal party, and the bachelor party. It doesn’t matter.

Unless there’s something else actually happening those are just one-off events. And it can feel very episodic because of that.

**Aline:** That’s exactly right.

**Craig:** Yeah. They are a bit of a trap. The plus side is that you have a rite, and rites are parts of the universal human experience we all understand. Almost everybody has been to a wedding, whether it’s as a child or as a participant, as a parent. So we all have a way in and out. We all understand what it is. There’s a bunch of stuff that you don’t need to explain. So if I need to get all of my characters together in a room to have an argument, or to conclude an argument, a wedding is a great way to do it without having to deal with any plot bending or contortions because everybody gets it. Of course, they have to go, it’s a wedding. And your costume is solved. The space is solved. You don’t have to really think too hard about what it looks like. It’s just really some version of a wedding.

All of these questions that normally drive us crazy are answered by the wedding. But that of course is the other edge of the sword that says that this is very well-trodden ground. So you’re not going to get something particularly new. We know there’s likely going to be somebody going to be somebody walking down an aisle. There’s likely going to be a speech. Those speeches are either amazing or disastrous. There’s going to be a crying parent or there’s going to be a rift. Someone is going to run away.

We’ve seen almost every permutation of what a wedding can do. But the kernel of it, which I think is useful still, is as a ritual and probably I’m curious maybe there’s a version of this where it doesn’t happen where a wedding is either the beginning or the ending of something important in your story. It’s pretty rare that you have a wedding in the middle that matters. And if you do have a wedding just right in the middle then it’s about two other people who are having a relationship and the wedding is a background, a very expensive background for that relationship.

**John:** And that’s exactly, the movie I’m writing right now has a wedding in the middle which is an important turning point in a relationship but also it’s not their wedding. And that becomes sort of a crucial thing.

I want to revisit something you said and shade it a little bit differently because you said you don’t have to think too much about what the venue is like, you don’t have to think too much about what characters are wearing. As the writer you probably are thinking about that because there’s going to be some stuff that’s going to be specific and different to your – so you’re going to be aware that it is so tropey.

**Aline:** Yeah. I was going to jump in on that, too. Because there is a cultural obsession now with weddings, is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I mean, it only gets more and more. And I think social media has greatly contributed to that. But I think for a certain audience those differences between what the bridesmaids are wearing, what the venue is, there are so many specific social and cultural signifiers. And obviously the main steps that we have of what a wedding looks like is basically a Christian wedding. And I in addition to being Jewish, my parents are immigrants. We didn’t have a big extended family.

I hadn’t been to a lot of weddings kind of in my life, until I started going to weddings. And so I hear what you’re saying Craig which is like it’s a bride, there’s going to be some – even if she’s wearing a different cultural costume, some of the, yeah, the feel–

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s dressed up. And even then like the—

**Aline:** And the parents have an investment in the relationship. And what are the friends doing? Right. It is, but I really, to me, speaks to somehow we imbibe these tropes and we kind of understand what they are. And I think there’s a loop now where weddings are looking like movies that were about weddings.

**John:** Oh yeah. There’s a feedback to it.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And going back to what Craig originally said it’s like even though you as the writer have to do that work to sort of make this wedding specific and unique, you don’t have to explain to the audience what a wedding is. Everyone is ready to accept like, OK, there’s going to be some bride and they’re going to walk down an aisle. They have a sense of the kinds of things that happen.

And so some of the movies we’re going to talk through are Crazy Rich Asians or The Farewell and one of the things I love about, or Unorthodox is another TV show that Aline and I talked about, what I loved about the wedding in Unorthodox is I kind of had no idea what was going on for parts of it, but no one had to explain to me what was happening because I could sort of puzzle it out and it was great for that reason.

But, an argument for why weddings are such good material for our stories and why they’re a great place to set scenes is that you have families coming together and there’s a natural emotion, a heightened emotion, and conflict. So, characters are ready to be emotional. And that so often one of the struggles we’ve run into in film and TV writing is realistically people would sort of suppress their emotions and they would keep it level and calm. And weddings are an opportunity to sort of rise up and be heightened. Be a little bit more traumatic than they would be on a normal day.

People are trying to act a little idealized in ways that can be great for us as writers.

Let’s start by taking a look at a scene from Crazy Rich Asians. So this is a screenplay by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim based on the novel by Kevin Kwan. And I picked something very late in the story, this is the actual wedding that they’re going to go see, and it’s not our central characters’ wedding. They are just guests at this wedding. But this is an example of an incredibly expensive wedding, an expensive sequence.

**Aline:** That’s a good example of what we were talking about with Craig which is like it’s a wedding, yes, we understand all the signifiers of the basic things of what’s happening, a man and woman coming together. But the details of that were so rich and interesting. And it had a walk down the aisle I had never seen before, which I had a little bit of glee in my soul when I saw that.

**John:** Yeah. So we’re looking at page 113, so we’ll have links to this in the show notes, PDFs for this. So, page 113, “a HUSH falls over the crowd. Eyes turn to: KINA GRANNIS, who takes the stage.” As you read through these pages it’s really specific. I mean, people, again, it’s very directed from the page in ways that the screenwriting experts tell you you’re not supposed to be doing, but of course you should be doing.

It goes into a montage with the flower girls, the ring-bearer boy. You’re seeing all the little moments. And it’s so crucial that the screenwriters here are choosing to show you exactly what these moments are because otherwise you might just aim the camera at the bride and groom who we don’t care about at all. Our actual real interest is in Nick and Rachel and the mother, Eleanor, and really that is the central relationship. And we’re charting their reactions over the course of this while this bigger wedding is happening.

It’s a great example of how you might think a wedding is about the people being married, but it’s really about, in this case, the characters we’ve established our time with and what their reaction is to this thing that we’re all seeing together.

**Aline:** Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things that this wedding was really particularly beautiful I thought. There’s a sort of a fantasy here. She says it’s a wedding fantasy come to life. As I said, you know, there’s a Shakespearean element to weddings, but there are also – one of the things I’ve experienced in my career is that because I’ve written a lot of stuff that has to do with romance, or weddings, or relationships, or characters, or sort of those smaller moments I have felt a snobbery. I have felt in moments where I’ve been in groups of my peers, male peers, where it’s sort of like a little patty on the head. But we’re all here because a man and a woman decided to join their life in whatever way, shape, or form, whether they were married or not.

I’ve been watching a ton of Finding Your Roots, the Henry Gates show on PBS, which I enjoy so, so much. And you realize there are all these people that had to come together, find each other, and make a baby to make us, to make Craig, and make Baby Craig, and make Baby John.

**Craig:** [laughs] Gross. So gross.

**Aline:** And that is – but it’s true. It’s like all those sperms and eggs had to find a way towards each other.

**Craig:** Oh, come on. No.

**Aline:** And it’s a very primal, so I think weddings–

**Craig:** John wasn’t made like that. John was manufactured.

**Aline:** There were very important semiconductors and robotic arms that had to come together–

**Craig:** There we go. Thank you. Much cleaner.

**Aline:** But I think it is interesting, you know, I always think about the fact that the first movie to win Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay was It Happened One Night.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And that would be like an $8 million Netflix movie at this point. You know, and so–

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** We used to understand as a culture the importance and the value of what it takes when a man and a woman, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a man, or gender fluid, or whoever is uniting themselves that there are families that result from that. And that we all come from that. And there is a sanctity to that that I think we all feel and it’s in those unions. And it’s just interesting that as a culture we have a primacy now on other kinds of storytelling. And it feels like all those comedies and by that I don’t mean like funny stuff but things or stories where things work out in kind of an elegant fashion are considered sort of might I say jejune.

**Craig:** You might.

**Aline:** But there are important reasons and for centuries they’re the reasons that we are the humans that we are because of those genetic unions most of which were sanctified in some sort of ritual.

**Craig:** I mean, the ritual part of it is what you feel here and in all three of these. There are very rituals left. We have birth, we have welcome to adulthood, we have wedding, we have death. Those weirdly are the rituals that are left.

**John:** Graduation.

**Craig:** Graduation. You know what? Graduation-ish. But truly, nah. Like Graduation is sort of like you made it through a bureaucratic thing, so if you’re just standing here you got it. These are different ones. These are sort of like the life impact rituals that are left for us in the west. And I guess this is also the case as we start to see cultural representations of other cultures, it’s through these rituals, we start to see how weirdly uniform the rituals are as we move away from the west into the east and elsewhere. There are always differences.

But the differences sort of serve to accentuate how there are not differences. And in this, these pages from Crazy Rich Asians, this is something that you do see frequently – when I say frequently I don’t mean like, oh, it’s a trope. I just mean this is – because we don’t say like shooting guns is a trope, or I don’t know, punching someone in a bar. These are things that happen frequently at weddings, where the wedding serves as a substrate, a context for people who are on the edge of a thing. And being exposed to a ritual and being confronted by a ritual they understand that a certain path is now available to them. It becomes real.

I think this actually happens in life. I do. I don’t think this is fantasy. I think people go to weddings and then they walk away, I think the amount of breakups that happen immediately after a wedding is probably rather high compared to after like a bar mitzvah. Do you know what I mean? Because you’re confronted by the ritual. And I like the way that they’re confronted here.

**John:** Let’s turn our attention to Palm Springs, which is one of my favorite movies from this past year.

**Aline:** It was great.

**John:** It was a terrific movie. Premise-y wise there’s a Groundhog Day thing happening, but you come upon a character who is already deep, deep, deep into his Groundhog Day-ish-ness. But we start at this wedding. It’s a wedding toast. And we’ve seen bad wedding toasts before, like bridesmaids’ toasts before. This is a particularly a good one. I think Plus One also did a great job with this this past year, with the trope of the wedding toast and sort of how many bad versions of it there are.

What I really liked, this page three I’m starting to look at here. We’re starting in the middle of a terrible bridesmaid’s toast. But then we’re following our other two central characters who we’re going to realize are the central characters, Sarah, who is the sister, who is getting very drunk, and then Nyles who is going to be taking over the mic and giving the speech. We have an expectation it’s going to be an embarrassing speech and then he ends up just saving it in ways that are just remarkable and we’ll realize this because he’s been going through this hundreds of times before this.

A really smart, funny job. So much is being set up in these pages. And it’s so nicely focused on who is important versus who is not important. It’s doing a lot of really good story work while staying very, very funny. Really a great version of this kind of scene.

**Aline:** I also really like the way this is written. It’s very clear, and lively, and easy to follow. Doesn’t have lots of bulky description. I just like the writing style of this piece.

**John:** Yeah. It’s very dialogue forward and just enough stuff to give you a sense of what’s happening in this space and really what the important beats are. Really short scene description, action lines that don’t have to be full sentences. Just enough to get the flow of how the dialogue is driving the scene.

**Aline:** Yeah. Like “All eyes land on Sarah — caught mid wine sip.” And she says, “Uh.” You know what that is. And he doesn’t over-explain that.

**John:** Yeah. So this is written Andy Siara. Story by Andy Siara and Max Barbakow.

**Aline:** We’re all old enough, we’ve passed through the wedding phase, the baby phase.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** We’re deep in the cancer phase, who has cancer phase.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** When I went to weddings I would just love a drunken toast. I mean, man, that just livens up the evening. When somebody gets up and you know. And, you know, most people don’t do a lot of speaking. And most people are not prepared, so extemporaneous speech when they’re exhausted and they’re holding a glass of booze. It’s going to be fun stuff.

**John:** The other thing I’d recommend people look at these pages for is that this is a four-page dialogue driven scene which would feel too long normally. But what the writer is doing, which all writers need to learn how to do, is when you’re in a bigger space how you break that up into smaller moments. And how even though it is one continuous scene there are moments and smaller areas within that scene so that it doesn’t just feel like one monolith of a scene. If it had been sort of like in a wide shot that whole time it would have been torture. But because it’s being broken into smaller little moments it doesn’t feel like you’re trapped in this space for a long time.

All right, lastly I want to look at The Farewell which was one of my favorite movies in its year. We had Lulu Wang when she had this movie come out. What I love about this is so our central character, Billi, she’s come to China because her grandmother is dying. She’s very upset about this. But they’re not telling the grandmother that she’d dying, and so she has to maintain this secret. And this wedding is really all a pretense for one last gathering to see grandma before she dies.

And so the actual wedding itself Billi is not really a part of, and so she’s just a spectator at the wedding the way that we as an audience are just sort of a spectator watching all this stuff. And yet what Lulu does so well in this sequence is really letting us focus on Billi even while all this expensive wedding is happening around her. And, again, one of the things I really appreciate about this is Lulu Wang never explains how a wedding is going to work. There’s no outside character who is new to all of this who gets talked through it all. It just happens. And we sort of piece together what the sequence of events must be which is really nicely done.

So let’s take a look at these pages. One of the things I really appreciate about this is recognizing that for most individuals a wedding is a once in a lifetime experience, or they’re a guest at multiple weddings, but for some people a wedding is an everyday thing. And so I like that Lulu shows us the waiters and the other folks who are sort of on break. They do this every day. There’s nothing unusual or remarkable about this day. This is just their daily, ordinary life. And so there’s moments here where she has people on a cigarette break while the wedding is happening around them. I just love that it’s routine for some of the people in this scene.

**Aline:** What I thought was cool about this movie was that even though it’s dealing with this wedding and bringing the family together it didn’t at any point veer into the tropes. It maintained its point of view through the lead character’s eyes in an incredible way through the whole story. So even when you’re in stuff that could take you to tropey land in weddings, which that’s another thing about wedding stories is they kind of have this pull where they will try and drag you towards more kind of expected things, and what I loved about her writing here is that she always maintained her point of view and her tone even through these things which, you know, it’s sort of like in a courtroom piece where you can sort of turn your brain off because you feel like you understand the flow of something. And in here she really maintains the tone. And a lot of it was in the way she shot it, so that you understand that you’re always keeping track of the main character and sort of her issues around her identity and responsibility and what she owes to her family and how she feels. And I thought that was really cool.

So it doesn’t kind of verge into that like wedding comedy space.

**John:** Yeah. In prose fiction there’s a discussion of first person versus third person. And so first person being the I narrator, versus third person is the third party narrator, watching the person. And especially in middle grade fiction they call it a close third person where you are literally like kind of right over the shoulder of that character. And that’s kind of what I feel like here is that we’re basically only getting information that Billi gets, and so we’re never cutting away to things that Billi would not be aware of.

**Aline:** Right. Right.

**John:** And that’s what keeps it very much centered in her experience even as we’re seeing stuff around the edges. It’s very much her experience of this wedding versus the bride and groom’s experience of the wedding. And I remember when Lulu came on the show I said like, listen, I would love to see a companion movie which is just about this bride and groom who have been sort of forced to get married too early and too soon. And I understand why you didn’t want to do that in this movie, but I’m so curious to learn more about them because their story feels really interesting, too.

So it’s an opportunity to – by focusing your narrative lens on your central character you still can paint out the sense that there would be fascinating stories and real life people inhabiting these other roles even though we don’t get to see too much of it in the course of the two hours that we’re following.

**Aline:** Yeah, that was basically the idea of 27 Dresses, which is to tell a wedding movie from the perspective of a bridesmaid. You know, it’s an “always a bridesmaid” movie. I was kind of surprised when I pitched and wrote it that there hadn’t been tons of those. I mean, obviously then there’s Bridesmaids. But 27 Dresses, which was before that, which was really about the type of person who gets asked to be in everyone’s wedding and there’s sort of a personality type. So it actually was an outgrowth of an idea that I had had long, long before that, which is I wanted to do a Cinderella movie from the perspective of the step sisters, who are like, you know, they have a point of view on it and it’s like they’re being told their feet are fat and gross. It seems like there’s another version of that story.

And so that had always stuck with me. And then it’s based on this friend of mine who has been in so many, many weddings. There are characters that populate a wedding movie that you can kind of shift your focus or different type of wedding. So it is a rich area, but, you know, again, I would say from the crafty point of view find something you can hitch your wagon to that’s pulling you through, as is The Farewell obviously. That can pull you through so that you’re not completely just dependent on like, you know, and now they have the bachelorette party or whatever.

**John:** Exactly. So I think our takeaways are it’s nice that there is a structure. There’s a sequence to it. But I think the point that Aline made early on which is that just because there’s a sequence doesn’t mean there’s an escalation. So you are responsible for the escalation and the increasing stakes over the course of these events. It’s nice that people have expectations and you don’t have to teach them what a wedding is. That’s great. But within that you do have to be thinking about sort of what is unique and special about this wedding versus all other weddings.

So, those details are probably even more important for this because otherwise it’s just going to shade back towards generic wedding. And just always make sure you’re keeping your narrative camera aimed at what’s actually important. Because this is something I found just even in a scene I wrote yesterday, which was not a wedding scene, but there was this big moment that happened, this big sort of set piece happened and then I realized like, oh, that set piece is really cool but my protagonist, my actual central hero, isn’t really the focus of it. And so my work today was to rethink that set piece to keep my protagonist really more central focused within it. Because it just doesn’t matter if it’s not about my character.

So, a wedding is like one of those big action set pieces and it can be really impressive, but it doesn’t matter if it’s not about your characters.

**Aline:** Yeah. And that is where boring lives. One of the things that I always think is like one of my hidden weird reverse traits as a writer is like I get bored very easily, even by my own stuff, and I will get bored by a story. And so a lot of times when I find like, geez, I’m boing myself, it’s that I’ve lost kind of the character and I’ve lost the point of view of the character and what’s pulling me in and why I care. And it is – you can get sort of distracted by arranging the tchotchkes on a coffee table and then just forget – you just don’t have a coffee table. You’re just moving ashtrays and candles around on the floor.

So it is always important to – I think, you know, there is a lot of busywork that can come up when you’re writing where you feel like you’re writing stuff down or doing things, to do lists, especially if you’re writing something with an action component or a lot of “business” where your audience showed up to see a story about a person or people that they can connect to. And they came to see characters and to live through characters. And so it’s important to make sure that you’re clearing out all the other bric-a-brac so that’s what you’re doing.

**John:** Yup. So full disclosure, Craig actually had to step away in the middle of that conversation so that’s why he didn’t resolve his feelings about weddings. Craig is back now, though, so Craig–

**Craig:** I’m back.

**John:** Tell us one last takeaway you have for wedding scenes.

**Craig:** OK. I think that wedding scenes are an opportunity to have wish fulfillment in a beautiful way because they are a moment where everybody in life stops and does something special. We literally dress up together and it’s happy. Usually when we’re dressing up together it’s a funeral. So this is nice. It’s a beautiful moment, but don’t think that that’s going to carry you through. It’s not. Even if you’re doing a kind of wedding that people generally don’t see, and there are different colors, and there’s different music, and there’s different food, doesn’t matter. That’s not going to carry you through. What’s going to carry you through is the same thing that carries you through every other scene ever. Relationships.

So use the wedding to leverage relationships as you want unless it is at the end of a movie and it is the conclusion of something in which case it’s the locker room celebration and then just have fun. Just have fun. But relationships.

**Aline:** When I got married, I like a fair bit of attention, but maybe not to be like the center-center of attention. And when you’re a bride it’s the closest that you get to being a celebrity because you’re the person that invited all the people and they all want to talk to you. And I felt the eyeballs on me when I was walking down the aisle. And so the expression I was so nervous that my knees were knocking against each other, I had never actually – I thought that was like hyperbole. But I was walking down the aisle and it was a billion degrees, shvitzing, but with my knees – actually when I stood next to Will my knees where actually banging together to the point where I thought people are going to be able to hear this. It was weirdly the most nervous I’d ever been. And I wasn’t doing anything.

But it was like the fact that – I think one of the reasons this is so bewitching for women is like it is the only moment in my life where I was ever like that person that everybody wanted to talk to, dance with, look at, talk about my outfit. So, I think that’s one of the reasons that it has this enduring appeal. And I got so nervous that I was like knock-kneed.

**John:** Literally.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Nice. All right. It has come to the time where we bring on our producer, Megana Rao, to open up the mailbag and ask the questions that our listeners have asked us. Megana, what do you have for us today?

**Craig:** Hey Megana, before you ask the first question, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Megana.

**Megana Rao:** Oh, Merry Christmas.

**Craig:** You know, right? Because we’re allowed to say Merry Christmas again. [laughs] I am a Jew that has been saying Merry Christmas literally my whole life. I have no idea what’s going on out there.

**Megana:** Oh, Merry Christmas. This was such a great discussion as someone who is like 28 and had 10 weddings to go to this year.

**Craig:** Yes, you’re in that zone.

**Aline:** And so expensive.

**Megana:** Yes. And normally it’s something I dread, but the Zoom weddings and hearing you guys talk about it I’m like very nostalgic for that.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** Now, Megana, when we were prepping this topic you also mentioned a show that you’re watching that you really liked. So tell us what that was.

**Megana:** Yes. So there’s this show called Made in Heaven and it is about these two wedding planners in India. And in Hinduism there’s this idea that all of the matches are made in heaven, so that’s where the title comes from. And it’s really interesting because it’s sort of a procedural where they take on a wedding of the week and they use it to talk about class issues and all the other factors that come into play in an Indian wedding. And some of the I guess antiquated traditions that still exist.

**Craig:** Where would I see this if I wanted to stream this? Yeah, where it at?

**Megana:** So it’s on Amazon. It’s great. I highly recommend it.

**Craig:** Maid of the Week?

**Megana:** Made in Heaven.

**Craig:** Oh, I wasn’t even close. I literally was a million miles away. And you’ve said in Hinduism we think, OK, and I said, no, you know what, I’m changing it to Maid of the Week which is terrible, is the worst title in history. All right, so what do have going in our mailbag?

**Megana:** OK, so Flores from Australia asks, “How important do you think it is to describe the weather conditions of a scene? I like to think that the intervention of nature can help propel the conflict of a scene. For example, a torrential rainfall could increase the danger of a car chase, or a blanket of gray clouds may reflect the grim state of mind of a character. The trouble is that on shoot day the weather rarely plays along. The description in a short film I once directed had started with, ‘It’s high noon as the sun’s warmth fills a cloudless blue sky.’ But on the day of the shoot we were hiding under umbrellas.

“Do you think describing weather is necessary?”

**John:** All right. I think weather is necessary when it’s necessary. And so if you look through my scripts I’m not talking about the weather very often, but when I do bring it up there’s a reason why I’m bringing it up because it’s actually important to the scene.

So I look at there’s a sequence in Go where Sarah Polley’s character gets hit by a car and is in a ditch. And it really does need to be raining for that. It just doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t track for it to not be raining like that.

But I do also read scripts sometimes that are just like way too filled with the weather and blue skies and clouds and such in ways that are not reflective of the reality of production or what’s actually important in the scene. What do you guys think?

**Aline:** I think when you’re writing it you can do that if you want to if it’s important to the story. And then when you get to actually making it you can decide how important it is. But I will say I always try – when I’m doing this podcast I always try and think of beginning writers because I always recommend this show to beginning writers. There’s almost always too much stuff in people’s scripts, not too little. I would say the distribution is probably 70% of people write too much stuff, and 30% write too little.

Your weather thing might be the thing you want to cut. You probably don’t need as much of it as you think you do. Because I think when you’re first writing you feel a need – you know, as Craig always says, you’ve already seen the movie. And I think when you’re first writing you have a tendency to want to write down every single little bitty bob of that because you’re so excited that you see it.

Weather might be something that can go.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes it matters. And rain, always think of this, Flores. Rain you can make. No problem. You can’t unmake it. It’s really hard to do that. But you can make it. Now, when you make it it’s super annoying. So, you know, you’ve got your truck that’s pumping the water. The actors are angry. Everyone is angry. The water is often cold. And it takes time. It just takes time. It messes things up.

That said, sometimes you want rain. Rain is one of the best ways to show onscreen that a roof doesn’t work very well. There are all these little interesting things that rain can do.

But what I would definitely avoid is what I would call unremarkable weather commenting because we have a state of default fine, you know. If I need to see your breath that’s remarkable. If it’s raining that is remarkable, meaning I’m remarking. Otherwise, neutral weather, that’s what we presume. And if you could please try and avoid overly purple discussion and descriptions of normal weather, like the sun. We do – in our Three Page Challenges we have occasionally seen people waxing poetic about the sun. And my whole thing is like, yeah, you know, we’re not going to be staring at the sun. It’s just not going to happen, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

**John:** We’re never going to aim that high.

**Aline:** Can I ask you guys also a question, because in movies routinely, and this just might be me, people in movies routinely have lengthy, lengthy conversations in the rain.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** I’m always running through the rain. I’m getting out of the rain. I don’t want the rain. I don’t stand there and talk. I’ve never had a conversation in the rain voluntarily.

**Craig:** Well, actually that’s one of the values of rain.

**Aline:** Have you?

**Craig:** Is that if you put people standing in the rain talking you know that they are in a state. What they’re discussing is so important they actually have to take the hit of the rain. And so I’m breaking up with you. I love you. We’re being shot at. Whatever that is, sure. But you’re absolutely right. If they’re just chit-chatting in the rain? Hell no. Nobody does that.

**Aline:** But those, like if you’re breaking up I would be like I get it, you’re dumping me, can we step to the side?

**Craig:** You would.

**Aline:** I just don’t want to be wet. I don’t want to ruin my hair on top of this.

**Craig:** That is a choice. By the way, a total valid choice for a character, but not all characters. [laughs]

**John:** One other thing I would recommend people think about is the difference between weather and climate. If you’re setting your story in a place that has a specific climate that we might not immediately grasp, it’s worth noting that. So I’m thinking back to Wide Sargasso Sea, which is an indie film from a zillion years ago, and it was just a very sweaty, lush, tropical place. And I needed to feel that. And obviously I’m going to see that on the screen. I’m going to get that and people are sweaty. But I need to feel that on the page as well.

So, in that kind of situation, if the normal is something kind of remarkable make sure we know that early on in the story to get a sense of what it feels like. Tennessee Williams stories are basically always in hot, sweaty Southern places. So that’s worth noting so we can have a sense of what it feels like, because that’s going to inform not just character’s actions but costume and everything else around it.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**Aline:** Well be aware that whatever you stipulate the opposite will be happening on the day.

**Craig:** Always. Always.

**Megana:** Great. Do we have time for one more from Brendan?

**John:** Sure.

**Megana:** Cool. So, Brendan asks, “Have you ever completely bombed a pitch? I’m a student at a university and I recently crashed and burned while giving a pitch to my classmates. From my point of view it was ugly. I got completely turned around in my notes, was rushed, and all my preparation seemed to disappear. The professor was nice enough to stop and give me an extra week to prepare. And many of classmates were kind enough to send me some words of encouragement. Has this ever happened to either of you?”

**John:** Yes. I have bombed pitches. And I’m trying to think, you know, one that I’ve talked about before was pitching Catwoman at Warner Bros. And I pitched it actually probably pretty well, but the executive was just not at all interested in my version of Catwoman at all. And just basically decimated it in front of me. And that sucked.

But there’s also been times where I couldn’t really connect the pieces very well. Or I could sort of feel it unraveling as I was talking. And that’s disheartening, but it does happen. And it happens more often early in your career just because you don’t have the practice in terms of kind of knowing what a pitch needs to be.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I mean, the one that I think of is I had to pitch a movie across a rather slender table to a gentleman who was eating a rather large sandwich.

**Craig:** Ew, I’ve had that. I’ve been there.

**Aline:** And I get it, he’s very busy. It happens. But it wasn’t like we were in production and we were working on something. It was just like I was maybe 27 and I was pitching something from scratch to a very important man and just as we sit down this giant Dagwood appears in front of him. And it’s sliced in half and he kind of rotates the pieces to face himself and sort of inspects them and picks one up. And he’s a very, very high prominent – he’s now since rocketed through the corporate structure. And when his name comes up all I can do is picture him eating this giant ham sandwich with pieces of lettuce.

And I don’t know if I did bad or well. Something about that I kind of exited my body and flapped my lips until the thing was over.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’ve definitely experienced that, too. I don’t think I’ve ever bombed a pitch because I’m a pretty good yada-dada-dada guy. I’m a good improviser. And I try and prepare so that I’m not kind of figuring the pitch out as I’m there. But I have definitely been in pitches that didn’t go well. And that’s not necessarily a bomb as much as when you’re early in your career – first of all, pitching without context is brutal. It’s the difference between somebody coming in to a show room and saying we would like to buy a washing machine and you go well let me show you our models. As opposed to knock-knock, I’ve got washing machines. How is your washing machine? It’s just so sweaty and miserable. And a lot of times because of that the people you’re sitting in front of aren’t that high up the food chain yet and so they often are bored and you can feel bad about it. It’s rough.

But I will say, Brendan, you’re a student. Therefore you did not crash and burn. You did not bomb. You’re merely experiencing and learning. That’s the point. You should be thrilled that this happened there. That’s why you’re there.

And I love the fact that your classmates gave you words of encouragement, because they’re all in the same spot. And guess what?

**Aline:** That’s very nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like a perfectly prepared delivered pitch of a boring movie is less of a success story than a crashing, burning, bumbling, confused pitch of something that has something fascinating at its core. We think we’re in control of this. We’re not. So, don’t freak out. Don’t worry. You’re learning. Crash and burn a few more times. Get a little bit better at it. Feel a little bit more confident. And then we’ll hit the eject button and land in LA and start it over again.

**Aline:** I’ve got another hideous meeting beginning, which doesn’t have to do with pitching, but was a general meeting. I was going to meet, again, really early in my career, I was going to meet a producer and the development lady is walking me with great, great brio. We’re sailing into the room. And she says to her boss, “Do you have time for this – are you ready for this meeting? Are you too busy for this meeting? Are you ready for this meeting?” Something like that. And he says, “Of course I have time for my favorite new writer, Jenny Bicks.”

**Craig:** Oh no!

**John:** Oh no!

**Craig:** Jenny Bicks is really good though. [laughs]

**Aline:** She’s a good writer. And then we all stood there for a minute. And then the wonderful lady said, “This is actually not Jenny.” And then we all died a little.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s rough. That’s a rough one. That’s the them version of us sitting down in a room and having some general chit chat before we start pitching and we mention a movie that we hate and then you–

**John:** Oh…

**Aline:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Then you notice the poster.

**John:** Done that.

**Aline:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, that’s why I don’t talk about any movies or television shows with anyone.

**John:** Yes. Megana, thank you for these questions.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana.

**Megana:** Thank you all. It was so encouraging.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** All right. It is time for our One Cool Things. I have two very related One Cool Things. My first one is The Simpsons Christmas episode from this last week. It was called A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas, which is a parody of Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. But just really well done. And just a thorough sort of dissection of that form, but also a version of that form. So essentially Hallmark comes to shoot a Christmas movie in the summer in Springfield and everything that should happen in a Christmas movie does happen. Really good version of it.

And then back-to-back I watched that with Lifetime’s The Christmas Set Up which is the gay Christmas movie that Lifetime did this year, which was also delightful, which stars Fran Drescher as a mom trying to set up her gay son with this other guy at Christmas. It is both completely the formula for the Christmas movie and a pretty good version of that with some lovely little performances. So it was just nice to see both the parody of it and the actual version of it back-to-back. So I recommend people check out both of those.

**Aline:** I’m going to cheat also. I have more than one. I’m just going to say watch the Bee Gees documentary. Just watch it. And then my One Cool Thing or Two Cool Things that are sort of related. Merill Markoe who has long been one of my writing heroes who was the head writer of early Letterman Show and has written a lot of amazing books and articles and essays, and she’s incredibly funny, and was a real role model for me, she has written a graphic novel that she also did the illustrations for. And it’s based on her childhood diaries. And it’s called We Saw Scenery, which is when she was a kid and they would go and visit someplace and she would write in her diary “we saw scenery.”

The art is incredible. The story is great. It’s really funny, as are all things Merill Markoe. I highly, highly recommend it. Graphic novels are great for Christmas gifts. They’re easy to read quickly. And I just – I really love the book and it really captured all the things I love about Merill.

And then similarly Rachel Bloom, our friend, friend of mine, friend of the podcast, has a memoir out now called I Want to be Where the Normal People Are. And although I am not in any way an unbiased reader of Rachel’s stuff, it’s so funny. It’s so fresh. It is like hanging out with Rachel. It is a very fast read. And it’s something that you can sort of pick up over the holidays and have a ball reading. And it really, really captures her voice, her humor.

And, We Saw Scenery and I Want to be Where the Normal People Are have a very interesting connection point which is that they both had relationships with boys in elementary school, flirtations, that we’re related to the boys being anti-Semitic and invoking Nazi stuff to flirt. Very disturbing.

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** But they’re both great. So those are my recommendations.

**John:** Excellent. Craig, what do you got?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a little late to buy a Christmas present for your loved one, but why don’t you buy one for yourself. It doesn’t have to show up on Christmas. And I’m not going to rich guy you. This costs – are you ready – $14.

I derive so much pleasure from things I use all the time that work right. And here’s something I had. A little pan that I was using to make scrambled eggs. And it just didn’t work right. There was always an egg that would adhere. Just terrible.

Anyway, so found this little pan called the Carote. Carote Nonstick Skillet for – and mostly it’s for eggs. And the weird thing about it is the coating is rough. It’s not smooth. And somehow it works. And the eggs just sort of slide around on it. It’s amazing. I love it.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** So, super cheap. You can use it on any stove. $14. Do not write in complaining about toxins. I will punish you. It’s just not a concern.

And, yeah.

**Aline:** You can get the toxins out with crystals, right?

**Craig:** Yes. If you ingest enough crystals and colloidal silver you will detoxify by ceasing your life. You will no longer have to worry about toxins.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Frying pan.

**John:** And that is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced, as always, by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did our outro this week.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Aline, you are?

**Aline:** It’s @alinebmckenna.

**John:** @alinebmckenna. We have t-shirts and they’re lovely. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts. There you can sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has links to lots of 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. If you’re looking for that last minute Christmas gift you can actually give a gift membership to Scriptnotes, which is lovely, a little stocking stuffer for somebody who listens to the show but is not a Premium member. You can give them a gift of being a Premium member if you’d like to.

Aline, thank you for coming by to talk about weddings.

**Aline:** Aw, thanks for having me guys. I miss you.

**Craig:** Thanks Aline. Merry Christmas.

**Aline:** I’m going to hug you guys so hard I’m going to break some ribs.

**John:** Aw. That’ll be nice.

**Craig:** Once we are all vaccinated.

**Aline:** Oh man, I’m going to hug you real hard, Craig. Just get ready.

**Craig:** I’m going to bring my ribs to you.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah!

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, and we’re back. So, Aline has threatened to hug us all a lot when we are all vaccinated, but that is our main topic is sort of what are our hopes and our plans for a post-vaccination life? Because I’ve been thinking now that vaccinations are actually rolling out it does look like this pandemic will end. So I’ve started thinking about what are some of my first priorities of things I want to do once I can actually safely do them again.

So, I’m curious. Aline, we’ll start with you since you’re the guest.

**Aline:** We all are going to have to live in a world where I didn’t realize how much I was spitting on people and being spat on before. I didn’t realize that when I was sitting in Paris in a little restaurant that’s a little blot that the guy sitting next to me had fully spat all over my coq au vin.

**Craig:** Oui oui.

**Aline:** We are now going to be processing that. I mean, I got to be honest I’m like still very immersed in the trauma of the whole thing.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Aline:** And I feel like it is so immense. The amount of death is so immense. And every day where you turn on and you see the count and you see just the devastation that’s happening in our country and around the world. There’s many, many, many things I’m excited to do – go to the movies, go to dinner, hug my friends, break some ribs – but I’m also feeling like the after effects of this on all of us are going to reverberate for years. You know?

And so obviously none of us will ever blow out a candle on a birthday cake. Just if you do, that’s fine, I’m just not having any. But also I just think people have lost so much and sacrificed so much in terms of the mortality and the job loss and the economic implications. So I sort of feel like I ricochet between actually processing or trying to process what’s happening and then just being excited to go, you know, to a vintage clothing store and just, you know.

**Craig:** That’s what I’m waiting for.

**Aline:** Squeeze in among other people.

**Craig:** I’m waiting to go to the vintage clothing stores. [laughs]

**John:** Craig loves thrifting.

**Aline:** They have J. Crew. You can get J. Crew there.

**Craig:** Oh, my new thing is Vans. I like a nice Vans shirt now. That’s my new jam.

I believe that following vaccination, widespread vaccination, there is going to be a natural human release of pent up need. We are going to be around each other a lot. And it’s going to be very exciting. And there’s going to be parties. And there’s going to be dinner. And there’s going to be lunches. And we’re going to spend time with each other because we can. It’s going to happen.

And in that sort of burst of exuberance it will be tempting to wet blanket it all and say but look what’s happened. The problem is the exuberance is not really within our control. I think we should allow it. We should experience the exuberance that is coming, because it’s coming. And then following the natural cessation of the exuberance we need to go about doing the work of memorializing the people we’ve lost. Because we just lost more people than we did in World War II and Vietnam and Korea combined. That’s what’s happened.

So we have to memorialize this. And similarly I think we have to now hopefully pursue collectively an improved bolstered healthcare system for all Americans. Because we don’t have it. And the system didn’t just break, but it never even was a system. We didn’t have one. Clearly. At least in this administration. There was nothing there. We just had a house that had no door. Forget the weather stripping. There was no door. So, we have to go about doing that.

But I fully intend to welcome the exuberance with open arms and feel it as best I can and, yeah, some ribs are going to get crushed. And you know what? I’m not a kissy guy, but yeah. I’ll give people a little kiss. Yeah.

**John:** So I want to acknowledge that the collective trauma that we’ve all experienced and sort of the need to deal with the grief of it all and memorialize it is super important. And the collective part of that is really important.

Just thinking sort of individually and selfishly like what am I looking forward to being able to do soon – or not soon – in six months from now hopefully that I can’t do right now. Even watching this Lifetime Christmas movie, they kept showing – because we were watching it through the Lifetime app they kept showing the same ad again, and again, and again for Disneyworld. And like I really want to Disneyland again. I want to do that stupid stuff where it’s I’m in a space and the experience of being in that space is actually unique and different.

So, I want to go to Disneyland. I definitely need to go back to Paris. I haven’t been to Paris in far too long. I’m looking forward to dinners with friends and hanging out. But I also recognize that I can’t even fathom leaving the house after dark anymore. I’ve just become such a homebody and sort of so – like the idea of going someplace at 8pm feels just unfathomable to me. So, that’s going to take some time to sort of get used to.

**Craig:** We’ll get you out there.

**John:** A place I want to get back to is this climbing gym I started going to before the pandemic. And I really miss it. And so there’s so many things I can do working out at home, but a climbing gym is a unique place and I’m looking forward to being able to go back there safely and just do that kind of stuff.

**Craig:** Fun.

**Aline:** Yeah. One of my big New Year’s resolution for 2020 was like, you know what, I like massages and I think I’m going to get a massage once a week. Why not? I will treat myself.

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** And I will do that for just a few weeks and then I won’t have any massages for the rest of the year.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Aline:** And I will just sit between my husband’s legs while we’re watching Homeland and go, “More!”

**John:** Yeah, so all those sort of services like the chiropractor, like the places where you go someplace and they actually have to touch you to do stuff. All that has gone away. So I will look forward to that coming back.

**Craig:** Yeah. I must admit my life has not changed dramatically. Because I’ve always been—

**Aline:** It’s so funny.

**Craig:** Because I’ve always been a bit of a hermit-y shut-in. But even I – I’ll tell you the thing – OK here’s my indulgence. The thing that I really, really, really cannot wait to get back to…Escape Rooms.

**John:** Yes. Had to be a location to go there.

**Craig:** I’ve done a bunch of the virtual ones. They are decent. They’re trying. God bless them for trying to keep their businesses going and keep their employees working. It just doesn’t quite connect the way you would want it to. So, I’m really excited for that.

**John:** It was one year ago that we took both of our, my company, your company, we had a joint Christmas party and Escape Room.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I would like to–

**John:** Who knew?

**Craig:** Yeah, god, that was right before the darkness. The darkness fell. I wonder who is going to be president. [laughs]

**John:** And I want to go skiing. Yeah.

**Craig:** No, I’m not interested in skiing. Absolutely not.

**John:** That’s a me thing. All right, thanks guys.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**Aline:** Appreciate it.

**Craig:** Thanks. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [CAA and WGA Agreement](https://deadline.com/2020/12/caa-wga-reach-deal-that-will-bring-writers-back-into-agency-fold-1234657859/)
* [Japanese Rent A Family on Twitter](https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status/1338703517465382912)
* [Japan’s Rent A Family Industry](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry) by Elif Bautman for the New Yorker
* [Crazy Rich Asians Script](https://www.scriptslug.com/assets/uploads/scripts/crazy-rich-asians-2018.pdf) script by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim
* [Palm Springs](https://www.scriptslug.com/assets/uploads/scripts/palm-springs-2020.pdf) script written by Andy Siara (Story by Andy Siara and Max Barbakow)
* [The Farewell](https://www.scriptslug.com/assets/uploads/scripts/the-farewell-2019.pdf) script by Lulu Wang
* [Made in Heaven](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P75SHR6) on Amazon Prime
* [Simpsons Christmas Movie episode](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-simpsons-season-32-episode-10-review-a-springfield-summer-christmas-for-christmas/)
* [Lifetime’s Christmas Set Up](https://www.mylifetime.com/movies/the-christmas-setup)
* [Carote 8 Inch Nonstick Skillet Frying Pan Egg Skillet Omelet Pan](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0732NXYNS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
* [We Saw Scenery by Merill Markoe](https://www.amazon.com/We-Saw-Scenery-Diaries-Merrill/dp/1616209038/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XPZEDZMH4S35&dchild=1&keywords=merill+markoe&qid=1608160454&sprefix=merill+mark%2Cgarden%2C198&sr=8-1)
* [I Want to be Where the Normal People Are](https://www.amazon.com/Want-Where-Normal-People-Are/dp/1538745356/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rachel+bloom&qid=1608160497&sr=8-1) by Rachel Bloom
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](https://twitter.com/alinebmckenna?lang=en) on Twitter
* [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 Heidi Lauren Duke ([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/480standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/on-losing-a-parent).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 479 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we talk about losing a parent onscreen and in real life, with a look at the emotional journey and some practical advice for navigating it. We’ll also talk about managing all the little scraps of paper with ideas written on them and answer some listener questions. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we will talk energy including the controversial opinions on nuclear energy from that guy who wrote Chernobyl.

**Craig:** What a dick.

**John:** Oh, that’s you. Craig, that’s you.

**Craig:** [laughs] More controversial opinions for that guy. Great.

**John:** Yeah. We’ll hear from Howard Dean and I’m excited to get into this.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I got into an argument on the Internet with Howard Dean. What are the odds?

**John:** That’s a good choice. He’s a screamer.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But first in our outro to last week’s repeat we raised the question of how filmmakers and money folks were going to feel about Warner’s decision to put their 2021 slate day and date in theaters and on streaming for HBO Max. And Craig what was the feedback?

**Craig:** Well, the feedback from the filmmaking community was fairly negative I think.

**John:** I would say not great, yes. Blindsided was a thing.

**Craig:** Right. The feedback from the people out there in the audience seemed to just be a bit of a shrug.

**John:** Yeah, feedback from my friend Nima was like, “Oh, thank god,” because he wanted to see these things and not get Covid.

**Craig:** Shrug to positive I think was the – and, yeah, the corporation appears to be going with the people who pay for it. So there’s the [unintelligible].

**John:** So Christopher Nolan, the writer-director of the Batman franchise and a lot of other big Warner tent poles, his quote was, “Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find they were working for the worst streaming service.” And it’s interesting. It’s that sense of not only were they blindsided, it’s just like I thought I was working for a movie studio and, no, I’m actually working for a streamer.

**Craig:** I have to say that that’s just a bit silly. I mean, the part where he said, “Look, we thought we were making a movie for movie theaters and it turns out we were working for the worst streaming service,” it’s the second part of that sentence that just feels a bit petty. They’re not the worst streaming service at all. And I’m not saying that just because I have a show on it. That’s just sort of ad hominem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The fact is that Christopher Nolan is kind of part of why this happened. It was a little strange that he was the guy who was out front saying this because it was his insistence that Tenet be released theatrically in the middle of a pandemic where a lot of theaters were shut down. That was the thing that kind of made everybody else look around and go we can’t afford to release these movies theatrically when theaters aren’t either open or a viable appealing destination for the consumer. So that’s why we’re in this spot.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That just was very confusing to me. One thing I noticed was that what we heard were a lot of directors talking about the sanctity of film. We didn’t hear from a lot of screenwriters, which I thought was fascinating. I know that some of these guys are writers as well. But there is very much a – this is, again, you and I coming out of the feature world we know this kind of director protectionism that exists. And I think a director exceptionalism. And they are very, very much about this. And I understand it. And if you make a movie for theatrical exhibition and it turns up on TV earlier you do feel like somebody broke your painting. I completely understand it.

**John:** It’s a natural way we think about it, because they really perceive they are making a movie for a big screen and people will watch it down the road other places, but they’re making this for the big screen.

Now, let’s talk about the money side of it because I think more than even the decision to put these things not just theatrically it’s the concern about like, wait, what happens with like the money we were supposed to be being paid.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So as I raised last week, you know, you and I in our deals will often have box office bonuses. So when a movie hits $100 million, $150 $200, we get a check cut to us, and it’s just a very clear thing that happens. Actors, the same thing kind of happens. And so what happens when the box office is essentially zero or close to zero because they’re also being released on streaming? That is a huge concern and it doesn’t seem like Warners really reached out to anybody to warn them this was happening.

So with Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot sort of got bought out of this. They clearly made a deal and they sent money her way. But what is going to happen to the other 20 movies that are going to be slid to streaming? That’s going to be just a real mess.

**Craig:** Yeah. The decision that they made was just about as hard of a decision as you can make in this kind of situation. Because if they do warn everybody and give everybody a head’s up and talk about it then they have a revolt on their hands before they can even to it. And we’ve seen that before where people announce a thing and then unannounce a thing. The Academy did something sort of similar. I can’t remember what the rule change was but there was an announcement and then an unannouncement. And you can pretend it’s because you thought about it some more, but really what it makes it look like is that you got held hostage by some people and lost.

I think that’s why they did it the way they did it, because they knew that people would freak out and they needed to just do it. And probably just from a very mile high corporatist sort of view of things I guess as a corporation they probably did what was best for the corporation there, because people will move on and they’ll forget about this. They will watch these things.

I’m bummed out because I do want to see these things in a theater. So what do I do? I mean, I want to see Dune in a theater.

**John:** You go see them in a theater. So that’s the thing.

**Craig:** I’ve got to wait.

**John:** They’re not being pulled out of theaters. It’s basically saying–

**Craig:** Well, yeah–

**John:** –worldwide they are being released theatrically.

**Craig:** I’m pulling myself out of theaters is the problem. So what I need to do essentially is wait. I know that Dune is sitting there watchable. And I have to say, no. I want you to see this in a theater, so wait until your vaccinations have come through and everything feels safer. And then go see it in a theater. Hopefully it’s still there. It’s going to be hard.

And, you know, it’s not permanent. I think that some people think this is permanent. I don’t think it’s permanent. I do think there’s going to be a permanent kind of change to the way movies are put in theaters. What kinds of movies are put in there? Who owns the theater? How many theaters there are? Hard to predict that. But the theater isn’t going away completely.

**John:** Yeah. I have a movie in production at Warners that I hope comes out in 2022. And I hope comes out in theaters. And I still believe that it probably will, because I still believe that’s probably the way that this movie and the company who made it makes the most money and sort of generates the biggest bubble of excitement for it. So, we’ll see. This show will still be on the air then.

**Craig:** I’m with you. I’m with you. These things were designed to be this way. So, yeah, but it’s kind of a bit of a lost year. So the movies that are in this year, you know, when I was a kid I used to collect pennies because, I don’t know, because I didn’t have a videogame.

**John:** There was no Internet, yeah.

**Craig:** Or the Internet. So I collected pennies. This is how pathetic it was. And so we’re talking in the ‘70s and I would routinely find pennies from the ‘30s and ‘40s. And there was one year I believe it was 1942 – the penny people will be angry at me if I blew that – where the penny was not copper. I mean, pennies aren’t that very copper anyway, but it wasn’t brown. It was silver. It was steel-colored because they didn’t have the copper to use. That year they needed it for the war. So, the mint just said we’re not doing copper pennies this year. We’re doing nickel-looking pennies. It was a year. We’re in the nickel-colored penny year. That’s where we’re at with movies.

**John:** All right. Well let’s continue our discussion of this nickel penny year with sort of my news of the last week. So last Friday, right as we were about to record last week’s show, my mom’s health took a sudden turn and just after midnight she died. And so my mom was 84. I wrote about this on Twitter and on the blog and on Instagram, so I won’t recap sort of everything there. But my mom, so everyone knows, she loved Jeopardy! She loved keeping tabs on what everybody was doing in their days. She had this remarkable memory for names and relationships. And so this was just another sort of terrible thing about 2020. She didn’t die of Covid but I wrote that she died within Covid. It was all the appointments that sort of got pushed back, her heart and her kidneys were failing and we just didn’t know. And so when a small infection took her to the hospital everything collapsed really, really suddenly.

Craig, you went through losing your dad earlier this year. I don’t know the circumstances behind that, but again, not of Covid but sort of in a situation where you could not be there with him the way you normally would be with a passing parent.

**Craig:** Yeah. That was the hard part. So it wasn’t anything sudden like it was with your mom. And I think obviously when it is sudden I can only presume it is worse. It’s not easy when it’s not sudden, obviously, but my dad had been sick with stage four lung cancer for about a year. So we had all prepared ourselves. And it’s a strange thing to have a kind of pre-mourning. And then you kind of come out of the pre-mourning into sort of acceptance which you think maybe is just like the acceptance that follows the loss itself. It’s not.

So, it was definitely a Covid, yeah, I guess what did you say, it was within Covid because I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t be there. We did talk a lot on Zoom, which was nice. And it was also odd to see day by day him getting worse. And the only thing about it that I think is positive and I think I mentioned this on the show before is that when we do have this memorial service for him it will be many months after he died and we will all be able to laugh a bit easier and not be so wounded, which I think is a nicer way to go through a group memory of somebody, or at least I hope it is.

**John:** Absolutely. So my dad passed away when I was in college and the conversation that I was never able to have with my dad really informed Big Fish. So the deathbed scene in Big Fish is really that conversation that I wish I’d had with my father. We had the memorial right afterwards, and so all the emotions were still really hot, and it was challenging.

Obviously there’s a good reason to do funerals right away, but there’s also a good reason not to do funerals right away. I don’t know if this is going to be the best case scenario, but tomorrow is the Zoom online thing for all of her friends. That remoteness can actually be a little bit nice for that. And then later this summer when it’s safe to travel we’ll go there for the actual funeral and body stuff.

But I wanted to talk about this because losing a parent is such a staple of movies. And so often the movies we write, the movies we watch, our protagonists lose their parents. They lose a parent or both parents. Sometimes that happens kind of in act zero before the real story has begun. Often it happens in act one. Sometimes it happens in act three, sort of in a Big Fish kind of way.

And so I want to talk through losing a parent on film but also in the way that I always keep pitching that people are the protagonists of their own life to talk about the experience both in reality and onscreen, where the parallels are and sort of best ways to navigate that both as real life people and as the characters that we’re writing.

**Craig:** Great idea for a topic. Obviously a difficult one, especially when you’re right in the middle of it like you are. But one thing that I’ve come to discover about being a writer is that when somebody in the family dies everybody turns to you and says, “So you’re writing the thing, right?” I’ve written a lot of eulogies. When Melissa’s dad died I wrote the eulogy. Her mom is not doing well. I will write the eulogy. My dad, my grandfather, my mother, whoever it is in the end I’m always the one doing that. So you start to get a kind of practice at it.

But what you’re doing inside of the movie is very much about being as honest as you can about pain. It’s a very difficult pain to get your finger on. You start to understand why people used to say broken heart. I mean, obviously it’s not a broken heart, but something in that general space does feel broken. It’s the weirdest thing. And I suppose we can move through our lives questioning the general wisdom of what psychosomatic pain or illness is like, but grief is the ultimate undeniable psychosomatic pain. And figuring out how to experience that inside someone else’s skull is hard as a writer. I don’t mean difficult. I mean it’s hard. It hurts to do it.

**John:** Absolutely. When I wrote the deathbed scenes in Big Fish, I’ve talked before, it was kind of method acting. I would bring myself – I would sit in front of a mirror. I would bring myself to tears. And then I would write the scenes. And so it feels that way because I was feeling that way as I was writing them. And it does sort of carry in there.

The episode that we had on the boards that we didn’t end up recording last Friday and sort of punted because my mom was dying was about weddings. And we will get to that episode down the road. And when I was prepping up that episode it really occurred to me that there’s no such thing as a wedding scene. There’s a constellation of scenes that become a wedding. There’s all the different little things that are parts of a wedding. And the same thing happens with death or losing a parent. It’s not just the deathbed scene. It’s not just the funeral. It’s a whole bunch of scenes. And let’s start with talking about the lead up to it, because you’re talking about losing your father and you had a year’s runway. You didn’t know how long the runway was going to be but you knew there was time. And the same when I lost my father. It was cancer and we knew that there was a set period of time. And you could track sort of where you were at in it and you were going through these stages. And you could have all these conversations.

Versus this last one with my mom was much more sudden. But even in that suddenness of it there was still a progression. I remember on that Friday when I texted you saying like, hey, I think we’re going to need to cancel this, my conversations the day before were about sort of like, OK, so she’s in the hospital, her leg is better, we need to transition her to a rehab place so she can sort of get her strength back. And so it was all the stuff of trying – anticipating a new normal. And so there was really a misdirection I guess I would say. The same way you would write a misdirection in a story, life was misdirecting me in thinking like, OK, it’s going to be challenging to get back to normal, but here’s how we’re going to get back to normal. There’s a plan for it. So this is figuring out, OK, the real problem is going to be how do I keep her safe in Covid. How do I find a rehab place that’s going to get her better but is also not going to get her sick?

And so it was all about that. And then over the course of the day of that Friday it was talking with one doctor. Oh, we need to see her make these improvements. And then every phone call I would have later that day something would be going worse, and worse, until you realize like, oh wait, we’ve actually crossed into a really bad place. And the language that they’re using has changed. That sense of there was a cascade happening. A collapse. And you start to recognize that where you thought you were was wrong. You had sort of the wrong assumptions about things.

So with your father or with my dad when they passed away that was stretched over months. In this case it was over hours. But that same process was happening. And as a character experiencing that I had to – I kept trying to catch up to where we were at. And so often the emotions I was feeling were happening really live. It’s that moment where like I was trying to ask a question to the doctor and I can’t because I’m literally holding back tears. And I didn’t start the conversation anticipating I would get there.

And that’s so often I think the kind of emotion we’re looking for in writing these scenes is what does it really feel like to be there in that moment.

**Craig:** It is the reason we have drama in the first place. If we don’t die we don’t have drama. And the way that we struggle with this is why we have stories about triumphing over the impossible. It’s why we have stories about things surprising us, looking better, and then looking worse. Looking worse, then looking better. It’s why we have stories about people meeting and falling in love so that they can say goodbye. All these things. Everything. All of it is because we’re mortal. If we’re not mortal we don’t need any of this. Our movies become incredibly boring. We don’t even have movies at that point. I don’t know what we do.

This is the root of all of it. Everything we do to make people feel things, even to make them laugh, because there’s nothing funny either if you don’t die, because there’s nothing absurd. All of it is because of this. So, the ways that people can die are almost analogous to the different kinds of genres that we use to get at this essential human condition.

You were in an action movie and I was in an independent film. But it was the same ending. Just like action movies and independent films, you know what I mean? At some point–

**John:** Eventually the credits roll, yes.

**Craig:** Eventually the credits rolls. That’s exactly right. How you get there, how frantic you are, how confused you are, all of that – the kind of heroic efforts, all these things. As a writer when you are in the specific moment of the ending it’s obviously about the person who is not going to die. Because you’re talking to people who are not dying. Or at least aren’t on the verge of death, most of them. You’re talking to people who are going to have to deal with people who are dying. And that’s what we’re there for is to unravel that mystery.

And movies like Big Fish put their fingers right on the nerve. And those are hard. They’re hard for me to watch. You know, Terms of Endearment is hard for me to watch. Bang the Drum Slowly is hard for me to watch because it hurts, you know. And there wasn’t much in Chernobyl, you know, even though a lot of people died, really it all just got focused in on one woman and her grief. And it was so awful that in the end, I mean, she loses a husband and then she loses a baby. And I just didn’t have her say anything. I just looked at her. And that was basically all I could do. Because it’s too hard.

**John:** But let’s contrast Chernobyl to sort of us and our parents and conventional ways is that Chernobyl the world is upside down. It was an extraordinary situation.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So people were trying to do their jobs but like they really weren’t even clear sort of what they were dealing with. As I was having these conversations last Friday I was always mindful that I’m talking on the phone to a stranger, a specialist, who does this every day.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so there’s just such a mismatch in terms of like where I’m at – this is an extraordinary event in my life – and this is absolutely ordinary life for them. And I was so grateful that they were so kind and considerate. They were clearly feeling emotion based on what I was feeling. But this was every day for them. And so imagining writing these scenes, you know, you have to play the reality of what it feels like to be the person who is freaking out but also the reality of the person who is just doing this on a daily basis and who has to confront these things all the time.

I found myself always asking what do I do in this situation, like what are the next questions I need answer. What are my choices here because they saw this all the time and this was a once or twice in a lifetime situation for me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And because there have been four million examples in movies and television of people coping with the death of a loved one there are four million well-trodden roads. So, part of the kind of – I don’t know – creepy part of this is that you also have to continue to be as creative an artist as you can. Your job is to figure out a way to express this incredibly common thing in a way that is not untrue and yet also not shopworn.

And it’s hard. Because there are a few moves that we tend to do. We tend to go through the standard Kübler-Ross stuff. You know, we’ve seen a lot of examples of denial in film. We’ve seen a lot of examples of anger. That stuff is always true. It’s the actual dramatization of those moments and it’s interesting how few stick in your head over time in life as just these things. I mean, I still think about Esther Rolle throwing that glass dish on the floor and going “damn, damn, damn.” Because that just – it felt so true to who she was. Look, it wasn’t anything special in the sense of like it was just she was in denial, she accepted it, but she was holding back all of her emotions. Then it all came back over a tiny thing and it just worked. And so we have to kind of figure out how to find those real moments even after we’ve experienced them, which is that awful part of our job. Get as close as you can to human emotion and human authenticity but also stand apart and run it through quality assurance.

It’s at times unpleasant.

**John:** It is. And I think there’s also – we have to acknowledge that because these are events that are only going to happen a few times in people’s lives you have no time to practice them. And so instead what you’re doing is you’re looking at other representations in film and TV for how you’re supposed to feel and how you’re supposed to react and sometimes those are not particularly good or helpful guides for how to do this.

So, let’s maybe wrap up this conversation with some practical tips for sort of like how to actually negotiate this in the real world and real life. Because I definitely have learned a lot about sort of how to deal with the practicalities of losing a parent while you’re in the middle of it and then we can also offer some tips for sort of like how to deal with the grief and the feelings and everything else that sort of happens after that.

The first thing I would stress to you is that if you think about yourself as the protagonist in your own life story the characters that you would write would not necessarily act rationally. So you can’t be too hard on yourself if you’re not acting rationally. Because sometimes you could recognize like that’s not the smartest thing I could have done. It’s like well of course not because you’re dealing with an extraordinary situation.

What I found to be really helpful as I was talking to people during the lead up is I would write down people’s names so I could actually go back to my notes, but also talk to them using their names of who was and so I could refer to them as well and communication was so crucial talking with my brother about what I learned, what’s happening next, what the decisions are, how I’m feeling, asking how they’re feeling. A thing that ended up being really important was I had medical power of attorney. We also had wills and sort of living will stuff. Having those in Dropbox was incredibly helpful because I could just send them through immediately and talk to the doctors when my mom wasn’t available to do so.

And in that whole process I certainly recognized it’s not privilege but facility – I had the ability to talk to doctors sort of on a peer kind of level just because of being sort of a white guy of a certain age. It became very easy to level with them about certain things. And I feel like a younger person might not have that experience, or even like talking on the phone to strangers to sort of get stuff. But I recognize that some of these things that were like well that’s straightforward for me would be very difficult for other people.

So, to always acknowledge that it may not be simple for you to do some of these things which I was saying like, oh, it’s just easy to do those things.

**Craig:** I mean, all of that is good advice. It doesn’t make it easier, but it certainly prevents it from getting harder. And I think probably the most important thing you said there was the first thing which is you’re going to be in a state. Not like we’re excusing bad behavior but you’re not going to be at your best. And if you are somebody who is used to doing things on your own, being a perfectionist, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work through the pain kind of person maybe don’t. Because it’s not going to work. And you are allowed to – well, it’s like my wife’s classic bit of advice for expecting moms. If you’re standing sit, and if you’re sitting lie down. That’s basically – that was her thing. Just relax. Because this is hard.

**John:** Yeah. Melissa also is a big advocate I know of self-care. And just recognizing that you need to take care of yourself in addition to taking care of everything else in the world. And so part of my self-care for this was e-mail – and so before I sort of tweeted anything or Instagrammed anything I emailed you and a bunch of friends, I Bcc’d a bunch of friends to say, “Hey, listen, this is what happened. This is where I’m at. I’m OK. But I’m just taking this whole week off to just be sad. And so if I don’t return your emails right away or phone calls right away don’t be worried. This is just what I’m doing. This is what’s going on.” And that helped.

**Craig:** Yes. And here’s some advice for people who get those emails. If you haven’t been through this before and someone emails you something like this, read the email, feel for them. If you want to say something back make it incredibly short. And then leave them the F alone. Because there are times where people suddenly want to just insert themselves in your life I think because they think that it’s helping and it’s not. They just want to be all over you. And you don’t want anybody near you and the thought of having to care-take somebody else’s feelings while I’m falling apart is overwhelming.

So just know nobody – when somebody tells you something like this what they’re not saying is “come over, cook my food, let me cry on your shoulder, listen to me, tell me about how you lost your dad.” They don’t want any of that. They just want you to know and then make some small tiny gesture so that they understand you saw it. And then that’s it. That’s it. That’s all they need.

They’ll ask. If they want something specific they will ask.

**John:** Yeah. And if you want that stuff, ask for it. It’s absolutely fine to say that. So I was trying to make it really clear. I think I said in the email, “I don’t need flowers or gifts. There’s so many better places to donate your money. So if you feel like donating money donate to anyone, that’s great. I don’t need it.” And so I was so happy with how little stuff came into our house during the week.

**Craig:** I’m so with you on that.

**John:** Which was really good.

**Craig:** Same thing. And seriously when I say don’t send stuff, it’s not like wink-wink. I mean, don’t. Do not. It’s going to be a huge bummer. I personally find flowers incredibly depressing. Who are these for? I don’t understand flowers honestly on a good day.

**John:** I really don’t either.

**Craig:** So on like a bad day?

**John:** I think flowers are pretty but–

**Craig:** I don’t get it. Why are you sending me plant material? It’s just so weird. Is this like a comment? I don’t understand it.

**John:** Last thing I want to end on, so I spent the week letting myself be sad and sometimes it’s hard to just allow yourself to be sad because you feel like, wait, I’m not feeling sad right now so I’m doing this wrong. And I tried to just be really mindful of like, OK, I’m sad because of this thing. I’m going to actually let myself be sad in this moment and sort of like experience it and sort of think about what it is and what it means and I was quiet through it.

But I tried to never perform sadness. Because I think sometimes when you’re not feeling an emotion you feel like oh well I need to be feeling this emotion. I need to get myself to that state. You don’t. And there were also times this week where I just felt like tremendous relief. Because while this was relatively sudden at the end I would say all of 2020, since the pandemic started, has been – one of my biggest sources of anxiety has been my mom has been in this senior living community and it’s like she’s in a boat and the ocean is poison. And I’ve just been so worried that some of this poison would get into her boat and she would get it and she would die.

And it’s been such a source of stress and anxiety. So, this last week as I felt some relief, like oh, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Was good. And it’s OK for me to feel that as well. And so I think too often I think we get from the movies we watch and the TV shows we watch that the sadness and grief you feel is all one thing after a death. And it’s not. It’s a whole swirl of things happening at once. And that’s OK. So just not sort of limit yourself to feeling – don’t just color your week with one crayon in the emotional crayon box. It’s not going to be that way.

**Craig:** It is not. And in fact the first thing I felt and the first thing I suspect most people feel is relief. Because the process of watching someone die or being near someone dying or even remote Zooming with somebody dying is brutal. It’s absolutely brutal. It’s the long goodbye. And I don’t like goodbyes. And it hurts. And you’re saying goodbye to somebody and then you’re like but I think maybe I’m seeing you tomorrow. I don’t know. And the last conversation you have with them is hard.

And then when they die you’re relieved because it’s over. First of all, they’re not in pain anymore. You know, my dad was in pain. And so that part is good. And also for yourself you’re like, OK, so this process that we were managing, that does require management, is over. The things that I pressed pause on don’t need to be paused. I’m going to keep them on pause for a while longer, but the point is that there is regular life returning. Essentially the beginning of the end of your grief happens once they die because that’s when your grief, the post-death grieving really begins. So that’s how you know it can end. It’s the weirdest feeling.

And for me I grabbed onto those moments of relief as best I could because don’t you worry the sadness is going to jump at you from behind like a dingo and get you and get you when you’re not looking. And then you cry it out. And then you get back to life. But the thought that you are not supposed to feel any kind of relief or even a sort of strange joy at the fact that this miserable process has ended is crazy. Of course you should. Of course you should.

You get to start getting back to stuff. When I die my greatest wish is that everybody feels awesome about it and gets right back to life. It’s going to be hard for some people I assume. Hopefully for a little bit. But the point is I don’t want anybody moping around. I wouldn’t want that. My dad wouldn’t want that. Your mom wouldn’t want that, either. Nobody does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nobody does except like people who have real personality problems. But, you know, allowing yourself to actually be relieved that someone died seems – it just seems counterintuitive and in fact it’s intuitive. So I’m glad you had that experience and that recognition. It’s a good thing because I think a lot of people put themselves on a shame hook when they feel it.

**John:** Yeah. The last thing I should acknowledge is that you and I are both talking from the perspective of folks who are established in our lives and so a parent dying doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of our lives. If you’re losing a parent or someone in your life when you’re in a more vulnerable position it’s all going to feel different because then you have all the anxiety about your own future. And so you and I we’re lucky that we didn’t have those things. And so we weren’t worried about ourselves and how the world was going to function without them because we knew it could.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a whole different deal. No question.

**John:** All right. Let’s do a palate cleanser and talk about a completely anodyne topic.

**Craig:** Anodyne. Nice.

**John:** Hey, Craig, when you wake up in the middle of the night or it’s 11 o’clock at night, maybe you don’t go to bed until quite late, but you have an idea for something, you need to jot it down, where do you jot it down?

**Craig:** I send an email to myself. I’ve got my iPad on the nightstand and I send an email to myself.

**John:** Great. And how detailed is that note? Is it a full sentence? Is it multiple things? How much do you have to capture in order to have captured that idea?

**Craig:** I just have a general sense of how much I need so that in the morning when I read it I go “I understand, I recall the salient details of this thought.” So it’s not full text, but I fill it in where I need it filling in.

**John:** So it’s a cue to help you remember that thing.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so back in the olden days I had a little notebook that I would keep beside the bed and I would jot that down. And it wasn’t particularly helpful to me because that notebook was always in one place and that’s not where I actually needed the note. So what I’ve taken to doing this last year which has been really great is I just have a big stack of blank index cards and I’ll make the note on the index card and I’ll set it by the door, by our bedroom door, so that it goes downstairs in the morning. Because we don’t have any electronics in our bedroom so I can’t send myself an email. But I’ll just write it there.

And I found it to be really helpful because it gets it out of my head. So I feel like I don’t have to keep rehearsing it to remember it. I don’t have to actively try to remember it because I know I’m going to remember it because it’s on the card. It’s going to be behind the door. And it’s been a real game-changer for me this year in terms of both making sure that those ideas stay captured but also letting me get to sleep and not worry that I’m going to forget about the idea.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have been doing this less and less. What I have found over time is that very few things that I think of and think, ooh, I should remember that are ultimately worth remembering. They are kind of actually on an even playing field with all the other ideas I have. It’s just that because I’m not near something in the moment or I’m actually writing or at my desk or near an index card by my bulletin board I think, oh my god, if I forget this then…

Sometimes you can inflate the value of those things simply because you’re not near the spot. There are very few things that kind of survive that filter. So sometimes I’m constantly running scenes and dialogue while I’m driving. I do this all the time where I’ll just start improving scenes between characters based around a situation I know I need to write. And sometimes they’ll say things and I’ll just be like, oh, that’s really interesting. And then I’m like, eh, I don’t know. It’s fine. I’m not going to write it down. Whatever. If it comes again it comes again. But it’s not like mind-blowing.

So I’ve become a little less grabby about those things. It’s only when I think I’ve solved something that I need immediately that I will do this. Like tomorrow I need to write this thing. Ooh, I’ve figured it out. I’ve got it. This is going to be helpful for me. Then I’ll write it down.

**John:** For me it’s both the capturing and sort of the to-do list of it all. So it tends to be much more the thing I want to write tomorrow. And I do think about you, Craig, because you’re definitely in the showrunner sense of that gathering phase. I do remember in times where I’ve been running TV shows where you’re sort of in filter mode where everything is sort of out there and you have to sort of process it. OK, this goes in, this doesn’t go in. And so there’s probably so much happening in your head at any given moment. But I guess it’s all in service of one very specific show, so it’s not quite like…

Tell me, do you feel that you’re in this filtering mode where like you’re having to make a bunch of choices about sort of what you see in daily life makes it into your show, or are you well beyond that point now?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, we’re pretty well outlined. And, you know, into the writing. But every scene to me represents what you just said. In every scene where are they. What does it look like? How much light is there? Are they sitting on the floor? Are they standing? Is there a chair? Is there dilapidation? Does it look good? And then that’s before I even get into what is the scene even about really. I know what the plot is. But what’s it about-about? And whose perspective is it from?

**John:** What’s the hook? What does it hang off of?

**Craig:** Yeah. How is this conflict going to play? All the stuff that we talk about on this show. All that stuff. There’s four billion decisions that have to be made. The longer you do the job the faster you can start winnowing out stuff you know you don’t want to do.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** And the quicker you can get to an instinctive thought of that feels interesting, I’m intrigued by this, I want to do that. But I’m always in that mode. It never stops. Ever.

**John:** And one of the things I will say that’s helpful about doing these cards is I would say a third of the time I’ll see the card in the morning and like, no, that’s a dumb idea and just rip it up. And that also feels really good, too. That’s a natural part of this process.

**Craig:** Totally.

**John:** In the light of day that’s not a good idea.

**Craig:** That’s a classic I had a dream, it was amazing, and no it’s not. It sucks.

**John:** No it’s not. Hey, let’s answer some listener questions. Let’s introduce our producer, Megana Rao, who has a collection of questions for us to tackle.

**Craig:** Hi Megana.

**John:** Hey Megana.

**Megana Rao:** Hi guys, how are you?

**Craig:** You know what?

**John:** We’re doing OK.

**Craig:** That’s right. [laughs]

**John:** Doesn’t have to be great. Doesn’t have to be terrible. It’s just like doing OK.

**Craig:** Yeah. How are you, Megana?

**Megana:** I’m good. Our queue has kind of filled up so I have a lot of questions I’m excited to ask you guys.

**John:** Great. Let’s go for it.

**Craig:** We’re ready for you.

**Megana:** So Laurie asks about paying gigs. And she says, “I’m not a member of the WGA but I’ve been getting paid work on non-WGA products for more than 10 years. In the past I’ve had long conversations with prospective clients only to find out that they wanted me to work on spec. So now when prospective clients ask for a meeting I ask upfront something like, ‘What’s your budget for the project?’ Is that rude or inappropriate? When is an appropriate time to ask whether a gig pays and how should a writer do this?”

**John:** It is absolutely appropriate to ask whether a thing is paid. And implicit in that is to what degree is it worthwhile to take a meeting just to take a meeting so you have a relationship so you sort of can feel a person out and see whether you like them. I think it’s reasonable to take a meeting, to take a general, even if it’s just to take a discussion about a specific project. But within that first meeting or in the follow up to that first meeting you got to know whether this is a thing where they’re going to be paying you or if they see this as a spec thing. Because you’re trying to make a living at this. This isn’t just art for you. This is also hopefully your livelihood.

**Craig:** My guess is, could be wrong, but my guess Laurie is that there are certain projects that you would be willing to do on spec. Because otherwise you would just sort of say upfront when people reach out to you, “FYI, before we go any further I don’t work on spec, so if that’s OK with you then let’s keep talking and discuss.” But there may be some things that you might consider working on spec. So, I guess one way to approach it, Laurie, is to just say upfront, “Before we get into it is this a project that is work on spec or is it a paid writing assignment?” Just in the beginning, I think, to know.

I’m not sure why or how you can even have fruitful discussions with people if you don’t know the most basic fundamental term of the arrangement which is are you paying me or not. It’s just a very different kind of conversation.

**Megana:** I guess for sort of newer writers who are having more casual conversations do you have any advice for approaching that with someone that you’re friends with and maybe this is like their dream project and they expect you to help them because you’re kind of young, because you’re all sort of helping each other create their dreams? There’s sometimes that pressure. And I guess do you have any tips for navigating a conversation with someone who is sort of your friend?

**John:** And Megana I’m sure you’re starting to encounter this because Megan McDonnell, your predecessor, I definitely remember having conversations with her about this where there’s people that she’s talking with and it’s just not really clear sort of where the boundaries of these things are. Like to what degree are you just peers kicking around an idea versus like, OK, are we developing this together?

Maybe give it like a one-hour kind of rule where you’re happy to discuss something with somebody for like an hour or so, and then after that point you need to have a conversation like is this is a thing we’re trying to do together as an actual project that we’re going to work on together. Even if it’s a spec-y kind of situation where we’re really doing this together, or are we just sort of shooting the shit? And it’s good to have those discussions early on. And so maybe give yourself an hour of conversation before you really raise that idea.

Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. And I think Megana it’s really important for everyone in their 20s to recognize that once they’re out of college they’re not that young. I know it sounds young, but it’s not that young. You are an adult in every possible way. You can walk into a Bevmo, buy yourself a fifth of vodka, and walk out. You are now an adult.

**John:** I love that as Craig’s litmus test of are you an adult. Can you buy vodka?

**Craig:** Can you buy vodka at a Bevmo? I don’t know whatever definition there is. You are now an adult. So you actually have to start treating yourself like an adult. That means in part that you have to have a healthy respect for your own time, your own energy. There can be value in youthful people getting together and using all of their exuberance and fresh energy and their availability, because the establishment world hasn’t yet gotten their hooks into them, to build things together. But that is a business.

When you have these discussions with people you’re talking about a business. And when you look around at the people who have gone ahead and succeeded in things they’ve done so as businesses. What we’re doing as artists is the business of art. And when two artists or two people that want to make movies together, one is a producer, one is a writer, whatever it is, when they start talking John is absolutely right. At some point relatively early on, like an hour in stop and go, “Before we go any future, because we’re adults,” this is the point where you’re starting to hook up with somebody. You have to bring up protection. Who is handling the contraception here?

That’s literally what’s happening. It’s a contraceptive discussion. What are we talking about actually? Let’s now discuss consent, protection, contraception, all of these things. Because that’s how serious this stuff is.

And this is why we get so many questions for so many years that are literally the equivalent of people going, “I had sex with someone and now I have both a baby and gonorrhea.” And you’re like, OK, we can try and help you a little bit with that, but the time really to have thought about this was before the sex. So, that’s kind of what I feel like people need to realize they’re adults now. And so am I getting paid is fundamental. Who are we to each other, are we partners, or am I just somebody you’re talking to?

There are people who just want either because they are users or they’re just ignorant they think they can just take what you give and then walk away, which is exactly by the way what happens with some people and sex. And so you got to figure out who am I dealing with here. Who am I sleeping with exactly? A guy that’s going to be here tomorrow or a guy that’s going to leave literally five minute later? That is our lives.

So, adults.

**Megana:** Yes, so in the same vein, speaking up for yourself and having difficult conversations, Laura from Wellington, New Zealand asks, “I’m a relatively new unestablished writer and recently wrote a feature spec that caught the interest of a producer team. It’s a story that means so much to me and I worked my ass off getting them a quick rewrite they requested. But as soon as I signed an agreement with them they became slow to respond. It’s now five months later and they haven’t sent me notes or done anything with the project. When I ask if we can work faster they tell me to be patient and that things in Hollywood are always slow.

“My manager told me there’s not usually language protecting writers regarding timeliness of producers and agreements. Should there be? Or I guess why isn’t there?”

**John:** All right. There’s a bunch of stuff happening here. So, first off, it’s great that you wrote a spec that people like, so count that as a win. You did a rewrite. Great. Now you’re in this holding pattern and it sucks. And it’s common and it’s terrible. Your manager is not advocating for you as well as they should be. I can’t tell you how to make those producers do something more quickly. I think my biggest push for you is to acknowledge that it’s a thing that’s happening and be writing something else because you’re not going to be able to speed up those producers.

Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Well, I’m curious what this agreement is. You say you signed an agreement with them. My suspicion is that what you signed is some sort of option agreement where they have the right to exclusively bring this property around to potential buyers. So, whether or not you’ve been paid some small fee for that exclusivity or not, option agreements almost always have a timeline involved. There is a terminus. Your manager told you there’s usually not language protecting writers regarding timeliness of producers and agreements. That is wrong.

It’s not a little long. It’s completely wrong. That’s part of what options are.

**John:** Yeah. An option is for the exclusive right to represent something for a certain period of time.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Likely it was a one-year-option they had that was renewable in some way.

**Craig:** There’s the timeliness. So, if you are – so you’ve now dealt with slow-to-respond five months later. Now, if you’ve signed a one-year-option that means you’ve got seven months to go. At this point I don’t think you need to do anything with them. I think John is right. You always want to just sort of be preparing the next thing. But remember, you own this. You didn’t sell it to them. I hope. I don’t think you did. You just signed an agreement. I’m not sure what that means, again. But if it was an option, they don’t own it, you do. They are renting it. And they get booted from their apartment seven months from the date you ask this question, at which point you pick more carefully the next time around. Or, just, hell, take another flyer for a year. Either way, this doesn’t last forever.

But you’ve asked them and they haven’t responded or done anything. And that’s it. Maybe not the best manager in the world. And I always feel like – I feel bad, because a lot of people are writing in. They’re not established writers. They have managers. I always say your manager is being stupid.

I just want to be clear. My first manager was also stupid. Everyone’s first manager is stupid, because that’s why they’re your manager. Do you know what I mean? Like if they were great they wouldn’t be representing you, because you’re not established yet. You know?

**John:** Yeah. But here’s one thing that manager can be doing, and let’s make sure your manager is doing this. That thing that you optioned to those producers, it is still out there to be read as a writing sample. So that person should be getting you meetings with other people who can hire you and actually pay you money to do things. So, the fact that somebody optioned something doesn’t make it invisible to the rest of the world. It’s still – people can still read. And people can be meeting with you about other jobs. So, do all that other stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Look at your calendar. Circle the day when that option expires.

Now, if you’ve sold it to them meaning like you took a bunch of money and they bought it, then they own the copyright. At that point just forget it man. It’s gone.

**John:** It’s gone.

**Craig:** It’s gone.

**John:** Megana, thank you for these questions.

**Megana:** Thank you both.

**Craig:** Thanks Megana.

**Megana:** Great advice. Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an artist. His website is Beeple Everyday. Mike Winkelmann is a visual artist in South Carolina and Craig click through this. I think you’d really dig it.

**Craig:** Taking a look.

**John:** This idea of doing new art every day. Literally every day of the week he’s creating a new really cool piece of art. And a lot of them are sort of heavily stylized science fiction-y things, or they have Trump in them. But I just love his Beeple style. I also just love people who make something and post something new every day.

**Craig:** Trump and them. That’s pretty great. I do like that. Science. Oh yeah, look at that. This is fascinating. So it looks like a kind of typical Thanksgiving dinner but in the middle of the table instead of the traditional turkey there is a very large representation of Buzz Lightyear’s head. It has been sliced in half lengthwise and brains and goop are pouring out of it. And everyone is sort of just, I don’t know, they seem happy. It’s very strange.

Oh, and here’s a guy, yup, OK. Well, I’m not going to describe that one because I don’t want to do the Not Safe for Work thing. It’s good.

**John:** Anyway, I love the artwork style. Sometimes it’s nice to see cool pictures. So click through this. Beeple is the site.

**Craig:** Nice looking stuff, Beeple. I have two – two – One Cool Things. Because sometimes I have no One Cool Things. So today I went with two.

**John:** Yeah, so making up for it.

**Craig:** OK. So first thing nerdy. Second thing arty. First nerdy thing, solid state batteries.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So this is a big deal actually. If this works, this is a big deal. We all know that we’re trying to transition away from fossil fuels. Part of that is vehicles that run on batteries as opposed to petrochemicals. Obviously batteries also need electricity generated by some means. But if we can find really good batteries it will ultimately be better for us than the petrochemicals. The issue with the batteries we have now, which are kind of liquid battery cells, is that they can only take so much charge and they take a long to charge. And eventually they wear down and stop taking charge.

The Holy Grail has been the solid state battery which is chargeable incredibly quickly. So for instance the Tesla, if you want a full charge of a mostly emptied-out Tesla, it’s going to take you a couple of hours on a regular high speed garage charger. The solid state battery in theory can charge to 80% full in 15 minutes. That is a game changer.

It’s also not combustible. Batteries, large assemblies of liquid battery packs when impacted tend to light on fire. And a lot of people think that’s a problem with electric cars. It’s actually a problem with gas cars. I don’t know why they’ve missed that fact that driving around with all liquid fuel is way, way worse. But whatever.

So there’s a company called QuantumScape and it is founded by a guy named Jagdeep Singh who has said basically we’ve figured out the solid state battery problem. It’s been a problem. They’ve been trying for 40 years to make one of these solid state batteries work. These guys say they have figured it out and they have published data which indicates they’ve figured it out. It’s not to say they really have. Sometimes people just say stuff.

But this sounds like it might actually work. And if it’s correct, well, it’s a game-changer. And in fact some people like Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla and Tesla cofounder JB Straubel sit on the board of directors. It’s backed by Volkswagen. And, yeah, seems like it might be the real deal. So this could actually make a massive difference in electric cars, electric trucks. Because getting to electric trucks would be a massive improvement for our climate.

So, anyway, hurrah, so hurrah for QuantumScape if they figured this out. OK, second One Cool Thing. I have seen a movie that is so good.

**John:** Craig doesn’t see very many movies.

**Craig:** I really don’t.

**John:** So you saw a movie.

**Craig:** I really don’t. We’ve been watching movies. So we don’t have the kind of limited amount of episodes that would allow us to have just one director on our first season of The Last of Us. We need multiple directors. So I’ve been watching a lot of things. And, you know, I like the weird directors. What can I say? I like weirdos. Like Johan Renck. He’s the ultimate weirdo. My beautiful weirdo. And so we get sent this movie called Saint Maud. I think it’s been seen in some festivals. It’s waiting for a theatrical release when, again, theatrical release is possible.

It was written and directed by a woman named Rose Glass, which is the best name by the way.

**John:** Yeah. Rose Glass. You can’t do better.

**Craig:** Because it’s sort of like Rosé Glass, but also it’s like George Glass from The Brady Bunch. Rose Glass.

**John:** But also like rose-colored glasses.

**Craig:** And rose-colored glasses.

**John:** Classically looking at something optimistically.

**Craig:** Every way you look at it Rose Glass is a great, great name. So, I watched this movie and I am blown away. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen period, the end. And you know I don’t do this. I don’t do this. It’s astonishing. And this is not a spoiler. The last few frames of this film may be the best final frames of any film I have ever seen. And I’m saying frames. It’s astonishingly good.

And so I’m telling you about this movie, Saint Maud, now so that when you do finally have access to it you run, run, run as fast as you can to it. It just got nominated for every freaking British Independent Film Award possible. That was just a few days ago.

So, I reached out to Rose Glass’s – I can’t stop saying it, it’s so good – I reached out to Rose’s agent. And I said, hey, you know what, I don’t know if this is something that Rose Glass is interested in doing, episodic television, but I have to tell her about how great her movie is regardless. And that agent said, “Ooh, this is so cool. I listen to your podcast all the time.” So I said you do? Because, you know, I forget. So I was like well that’s nice. That’s awesome. I feel good about that. And then she said, “I will absolutely forward your email to Rose Glass.”

Rose Glass writes me. And Rose Glass not only is just a lovely person, I can just tell. And very, very kind of – how should I say this – she’s uncomfortable with praise, which I love, so I just kept doing it. She also is big Scriptnotes listener and said in fact–

**John:** Oh, that’s great.

**Craig:** –that she listened to quite a bit of it when she was struggling with some rough patches while writing the script for Saint Maud. And so the circle is complete. Not that we really did that much. We just talk once an hour a week and she’s – I mean, legitimately I think Rose Glass is a genius. I think she is a genius. And I don’t do that thing where everyone is a freaking genius. Like oh my god, you parallel park so well. You’re a genius. No you’re not. Mozart was a genius. Whatever.

Rose Glass has made a genius film. I cannot wait to see what she does next. Cannot wait. Even if she does nothing next, I’m pleased. That’s how much I loved Saint Maud. That’s how astonished I was by the film Saint Maud.

So, Rose Glass, I hope that this has made you squirm in your shoes and throw your Air Pods to the ground in horror. Because I think you’re the bee’s knees.

**John:** That’s excellent. And that is our show for this week.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Scriptnotes is produced, as always, by Megana Rao. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Heidi Lauren Duke. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I 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. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts.

There you can sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting where we talk about things that are interesting to writers.

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 just about to record on energy. Craig, thank you for the show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John, and thank you, Megana.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, so Craig, it’s been established by the song that you are smart. You’re also a person who has done a lot of research on nuclear energy and other things doing Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** This last week I saw that you got into an argument with Howard Dean.

**Craig:** As one does.

**John:** The former presidential candidate and big democratic person. Over nuclear energy. So, tell us your belief in terms of how nuclear energy should be in the mix for America’s energy future.

**Craig:** Sure. So energy production is always going to be a bit of a double edged sword. Because it involves the transference of basic fundamental and powerful physical forces, the harnessing and storage thereof, and then the controlled release thereof. There’s always a cost.

Right now the vast majority of energy that we produce on this planet comes from fossil fuels or at the very least there is – it’s possible that maybe only half now, I’m not quite sure what the actual amount is, but I guess I can say safely our reliance on fossil fuels has been incredibly damaging to the planet. And so much of our infrastructure is embedded deeply in the usage of fossil fuels through gasoline and through coal, oil, etc.

We are looking for what we call clean renewable energy all the time and we’re trying to figure out how to do it. Solar and geothermal and hydroelectric.

**John:** Wind.

**Craig:** Wind. These are all great things. They’re particularly great for places that have those resources to harness the things. They’re particularly great for places that have the ability for the government to sponsor that research and put it in place. Maybe not so good for developing nations where there’s just a deep cost buried into it and people need power now. And then there’s nuclear.

Why would the Chernobyl guy be in favor of nuclear because of Chernobyl? So here’s what we learned from Chernobyl. That to make a nuclear power plant explode you have to do so many things wrong. And I mean so many. And that includes starting with a terrible design for a nuclear power plant, which they did. A design so bad, and I made a point of this in the show. I really did. A design so bad no one else in the world even considered it. That’s how bad it was.

The reason they built that reactor in the Soviet Union was because it was both cheap and of enormous capacity. In addition it also bred plutonium which they could use for their weapons program. In short it did all of the things they demanded it do without any of the safety advantages that every other design had. So they made a terrible decision to start with. And even then dozens of those reactors ran without exploding for decades.

They also didn’t encase them in a containment building. So it was really designed to go poorly. But in the West we don’t build those. There’s like a vague cousin to the Chernobyl reactor that exists in Canada, vastly, vastly safer than the one in Chernobyl. It’s not even close. I mean, it’s just much, much, much, much better.

So, what is the benefit of nuclear? The benefit of nuclear is that it has zero emissions. Zero. There is no carbon dioxide put into the air. In fact, nothing is put into the air except steam. Nothing. And I don’t mean radioactive steam. I mean just steam.

What is the downside to nuclear power? Obviously you have to carefully regulate it. It’s expensive to construct initially, although then just runs for decades generating massive quantities of power, again, with zero emissions. And then there’s waste. What do you do with the nuclear waste?

Now they’re actually getting better with nuclear waste. But really the balance of it comes down to this. Either we deal with the risk of handling waste safely and responsibly or we’re not going to make it. I really believe this. I don’t think we are going to be able to figure out solar, and geothermal, and wind, and hydroelectric in time, in the capacity we need, to stave off/permit climate disaster. I do not think it is possible.

If the world invested in a carefully and thoroughly globally regulated nuclear power industry we can. I believe that. And Howard Dean doesn’t. [laughs]

**John:** Disagreed.

**Craig:** Yes. Which is a very common thing – I mean, I’ll just be a little generational about it. I think boomers are really scared about nuclear power. And I think–

**John:** Because they lived through Three Mile Island.

**Craig:** Three Mile Island is an example of why we should have nuclear power. And here’s where I’m going to get a lot of angry tweets and I don’t care. Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown. That is terrible. That is terrible. And it happened because of a series of mistakes which were terrible. And the amount of radiation that was released into the air was approximately similar to a dental X-ray because the containment structure worked.

And this is my point. That that – the worst nuclear power plant accident we’ve had, that was what happened? The amount of people that have died just in coal mine fires dwarfs that. Just coal mine fires. I’m not even talking about what’s happened to their lungs, or what’s happened to all of us from pollution and smog and all the rest of it. It’s not even close. It’s not even close.

**John:** All right, so I’m going to offer not really a counter argument, but sort of a corollary argument. So I’m going to link to this post by Max Roser from Our World and Data. This has been circulated around a lot, so other people may have seen it. But definitely worth a click through. And it starts with a chart that shows what are the safest and cleanest sources of energy and coal, oil, natural gas, biomass are dirty and dangerous. And coal by far the most.

Hydropower, nuclear energy, wind, and solar are a lot safer. And I think the reason why we perceive nuclear energy as being unsafe is because we have examples, vivid examples, of it failing spectacularly. And that’s what we see in our heads.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Whereas the deaths from coal and oil and other stuff are much more invisible. So, that is partly generating why Howard Dean is so scared of it.

The next chart down though as you scroll through it, you look at the price of electricity, and they figure out the price of electricity based on how much does it cost to both build the plant and provide the power for it. And it’s interesting to see over the course of decades how these prices have changed and no surprise prices for like natural gas have gone down as new technologies have come online. But the price of solar has plummeted in a way that is just – it looks like the chart has broken.

It went from really – in the main episode you were talking about solid state batteries. And it’s that kind of thing where to produce that first one that was on a satellite that went out into space was incredibly expensive. And now they’re just so cheap. And photoelectric solar cells have become so effective and so cheap. It falls into a thing called Right’s Law which is the more – as you double capacity, as you double experience in making a thing the price plummets. And so a lot of our things scale for it. It’s kind of like Moore’s Law but for general productivity.

My house has solar panels. We have been generating all our power for a long time. But if we were to sort of replace them with the new generation of panels, these are like ten years old, we would be selling even more electricity back to the city of Los Angeles. That’s how good photoelectric solar cells have gotten.

So, I think it makes a strong argument for, you know what, we should be looking at how we’re replacing fossil fuels overall. I do think that some combination of solar and wind and some really cool breakthroughs in geothermal will all be part of it. I’m also willing to have nuclear energy be part of this as well.

The price of building nuclear power plants has gone up, but partly because we just don’t build them very often. It’s one of those things where if you make a plan for how you’re going to build them and you just start building them it will become cheaper to build. And so there may be a way to do that. The same way that France where I used to live has nuclear energy and our electricity costs are so much lower in France.

**Craig:** France is the poster child for responsible nuclear energy. You’re right. I mean, we have solar panels as well and solar is getting better. There’s no question. Solar has yet to be challenged by I guess what I would call, OK, you’ve opened up a restaurant and you’ve gotten really good at being able to serve your customers and then someone comes to you and says, “Oh, so now you need to serve a thousand people a day.” Scaling it is, you know, we’ll see. We’ll see if it can scale.

But we know, right now, we have a zero emissions solution. And I understand that people are concerned. And it’s a little bit like air travel and that classic you’re more likely to die driving to the airport than getting on a plane. Absolutely true. But you’re also far more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash. And so our minds overemphasize the disastrous nature of a single failure and terribly underestimate the value of how absurdly rare that failure is.

There have been what I would call two massive nuclear power plant disasters. And one of them, Fukushima, was terrible and I think a good case could be made for the relocation of places like nuclear power plants from areas that are specifically in line for natural disasters like tsunamis. But of course the Catch-22 is the further we go the more likely those natural disasters are, because of climate change.

There are also so many lessons that we learn, just as we do from plane crashes. Remember when we were kids and planes would crash all the time. Literally all the time. Jets would crash constantly. And now they just don’t. They just don’t. It’s kind of amazing. And there’s so much more air travel than there used to be, by the way. Just crazy amounts more.

So every time something like this happens we learn. We don’t learn anything from Chernobyl other than why it’s important for a political system to not be pumped up with nothing but lies, which perhaps people will apply to our situation now. I mean, because nobody builds that stupid reactor. It’s just dumb.

So, I agree. I think a combination of those things is required and I think people are going to have to just get over certain things because there is a monster at the door. And we really can’t be arguing over whether or not deadbolts are harder to turn than other kinds of ways to bar the door. We need to shut the door to climate change. This is one of the best ways.

**John:** With multiple locks.

**Craig:** Multiple locks.

**John:** So, what I do want people to take away from this though is I think there’s an assumption that solar is not quite ready yet or there still needs to be researched done. It’s like there really doesn’t – the current solar technology can be deployed at scale pretty well in a lot of places. And so I think the third world is actually a place for solar in a lot of places because it’s going to be hard to build a nuclear power plant. It’s not going to be so hard to build regional solar. So that is a good case to be made for that.

And to recognize that it doesn’t have to be either/or and we don’t have to wait for a breakthrough. We don’t have to spend a tremendous amount of time researching how we’re going to do this thing. We can just do it. And there may be good ways to re-deploy some of the expertise we’ve had for extracting oil from the earth to figure out how to do geothermal better. To do geothermal you have to dig incredibly deep and run pipes. And you know what? That’s kind of how you do oil. And so there may be ways to sort of use our existing companies and corporations and expertise to find new ways to do things, especially for something like geothermal where it’s useful because the earth is always hot.

**Craig:** The earth is always hot. And that is what’s so annoying is that we have this enormous ball of – this gigantic fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, and then we have this massive roiling ball of lava in the middle of our marble, that’s the core, and we can’t seem to figure out how to use any of it. So, solar is great.

And when we talk about just the statistics of safety, I like this chart that they put together which is deaths per terawatt hour of energy production. So for every amount of time you get to create this much energy from this substance how many people die? Solar is the lowest. 0.02 deaths per terawatt hour of energy production. Wind, 0.04 deaths. Nuclear, 0.07 deaths. So solar, wind, and nuclear, and hydropower, water, are all relatively the same absurdly safe methods.

Hydropower does put out some CO2, whereas nuclear, wind, and solar do not. Nuclear puts out the least, by the way, the least. Nothing puts out less CO2 than nuclear.

Now you look at coal. 24.6 deaths per one terawatt hour. That’s not 24 times what nuclear energy is. It’s not 240 times. It’s 2,500 times more, ish. It’s ridiculous. Orders of magnitude. What are we doing? What are we doing?

**John:** We’re trying to protect coal worker jobs. And so, you know what, let’s build some giant–

**Craig:** No.

**John:** –let’s build some giant nuclear plants in coal country and let them sort of work building that than doing dumb stuff.

**Craig:** Or just give coal workers $80,000 a year. I don’t care. Just give them $80,000 a year. This is your income. You’ve earned it from working in freaking coal mines. So for the rest of your life we’re going to give you $80,000 a year which is a rounding error for one department in the Pentagon. None of this makes sense.

We’re screwing the world up so fundamentally. You know what? I’m going to make a show about a world that’s been screwed up. I’m doing it.

**John:** Do it.

**Craig:** Doing it.

**John:** 100%.

**Craig:** Doing it.

**John:** I think it’s a winning idea. I think it’s going to be inspiring.

**Craig:** I’m folding it in. I’m folding it in to The Last of Us. I have to figure out how to make that.

**John:** Call it The Best of Us. Call it The Best of Us.

**Craig:** No. Because there are no the best of us. We’re terrible. God, we’re so dumb. We’re so dumb. We’re the smart ones on this planet? Oh man.

**John:** Dogs.

**Craig:** Nothing, I couldn’t say anything worse about dolphins than this. We’re smarter than them.

**John:** [laughs] Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Christopher Nolan Rips HBO Max as Worst Streaming Service Denounces Warner Bros Plan](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-nolan-rips-hbo-max-as-worst-streaming-service-denounces-warner-bros-plan) Kim Masters for THR
* [Did QuantumScape Just Solve a 40-Year-Old Battery Problem?](https://www.wired.com/story/quantumscape-solid-state-battery/#intcid=_wired-homepage-right-rail_35658516-6d30-45d5-a730-6073773577d4_popular4-1) by Daniel Oberhaus for Wired
* [Rose Glass](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/dec/09/saint-maud-leads-british-film-independent-film-award-nominations)
* [Beeple Everyday](https://www.beeple-crap.com/everydays) by Mike Winkelmann, a visual artist in South Carolina
* [The Cost of Solar has Dropped Spectacularly](https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth) by Max Roser
* [Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakthrough](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical) by David Roberts
* [Craig vs Howard Dean](https://twitter.com/clmazin/status/1335086888919519232)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [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 Heidi Lauren Duke ([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/479standard.mp3).