Scriptnotes Transcript

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

**John August:** Bonjour et bienvenue. Je m’appelle John August. Et voici Scriptnotes, un podcast sur l’écriture pour le cinéma et des choses qui intéressent les scénaristes. We are speaking French because we are supposed to be in Fontainebleau as part of Serie Series, and annual conference billed as “the meeting place for European series and their creators designed by those who make them. So, the scoop is that Craig Mazin and I, we had our plane tickets. We were planning to go. But then there was a pandemic. So, like all things it moved online to Zoom. So I thought we would take advantage of being on Zoom to reach out to some showrunners, some creators, we couldn’t have otherwise gotten.

So, we are talking to the creators of two of my favorite series. And since Craig doesn’t watch any TV I drafted another creator of another series to be me co-host. That’s you, Aline.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Je m’appelle Aline Brosh McKenna.

**John:** Now, I feel so often Aline like you’re just always the extra person on the show. We don’t talk about your amazing credits. So, I’m going to take a moment here to acknowledge your credits. Aline Brosh McKenna is best known for adapting the novel The Devil Wears Prada and co-creating and showrunning the Emmy-award-winning comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Aline also directed the final episodes of all four seasons. Her feature film credits include 27 Dresses, Morning Glory, We Bought a Zoo. She has a production company. She’s busy doing a thousand things. Aline, it’s a pleasure having you here always.

**Aline:** Good morning. And this week I will be the Joan Rivers to Scriptnotes.

**John:** So it is 7am as we’re recording this here in Los Angeles. But our guests are scattered throughout the world. Let us welcome the first. Anna Winger is an American writer and producer who lives in Berlin, Germany. She’s creator of the television drama Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86, and the acclaimed Netflix series Unorthodox, which I recently watched and loved.

**Anna Winger:** Hello.

**John:** Hi.

**Anna:** So nice to be here.

**John:** Anna, now what time is it there?

**Anna:** It is 4pm.

**John:** Let us also welcome our next guest. Tony McNamara who is an Australian writer for film and TV. His credits include the medical drama Doctor Doctor and The Favourite which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His limited series The Great debuted in May on Hulu in the US and in other channels in other markets which I am so fascinated to talk about. Tony McNamara, welcome to the discussion.

**Tony McNamara:** Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

**John:** And what time is it in Perth, Western Australian?

**Tony:** It is about 10:15pm.

**John:** Wow. So thank you for staying up late for us.

**Tony:** That’s OK. It’s a pleasure.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** So, Anna and Tony, both of you had shows that debuted kind of in the pandemic window. And so let’s just start with that. So, you’ve made this project which has taken months and years to sort of put all together. You have this plan for how it’s going to launch and then suddenly the world stops. Tony, what was it like for you launching The Great in this space?

**Tony:** Well, I mean, it was strange because we were even post – like we didn’t finish shooting till – I think we were shooting in Italy on February 23rd or something. So, we were sort of doing post as it all started up until – I mean, we delivered like two weeks before we dropped. So it was strange not knowing. I mean, it was strange because I was supposed to do post-production in London and then, you know, my family, we all decided we’d go back to Australia. So then we were doing post at night remotely from London and in the morning.

So it was all weird because there were a lot of big Zoom calls with composers in LA and, you know, editors in London. So that was the strangest part. And then by the time it went out the world was so strange, nothing seemed strange, you know.

**John:** Yeah. Anna, what was your experience putting the show out? Because was the show all finished and ready to go by the time everything locked down?

**Anna:** We delivered it in the middle of January. So by the time it came out it sort of coincided exactly with the first couple of weeks of lockdown. The realization like all these events we had planned, all the travel, blah-blah-blah, all of it was canceled. And everybody was at home. And then the show came out, which it launched on March 26th on Netflix. And it was – I have to say it was an amazing experience because the other show that I make is on around the world, but it’s on at different times, like it’s not the same channel. But because this is on Netflix it just kind of dropped in 190-something countries at once. And since everybody was at home there was then not only this global drop but this kind of global conversation on social media about what people were watching. And that was kind of a miraculous experience I have to say.

And, you know, of course I’m sitting there on the WhatsApp chat with the actors and my collaborators and we’re all trading things we’ve seen on social media. And everyone has all this time to kind of talk about it. It was a different kind of collective experience than it is to sit around and drank champagne together at a festival. But it was also kind of strangely intimate, I guess.

**Aline:** It was one of the first things that I binged. I think I binged it in the first – like as soon as it came out I binged it. And I will forever associate it with that feeling of like being stuck and also confused. You know, we were still trying to figure out how everything works and how are we getting food. And they’re out of Corn Flakes at the market. And it was a scary time. And to be watching a show about someone’s liberation and freedom and search for those things was kind of a perfect – and then it was really like a period of a couple weeks there where every single person I knew was watching it and talking about it.

**Anna:** That’s very nice. I mean, you can imagine we made a show in Yiddish. So, we were also like no one is going to watch it. There was a moment of incredible panic when we thought – I felt like I had to travel around the world and kind of push it into people’s – you know, you just don’t know how these things are going to go, right?

And it was already challenging because it’s not dubbed in any language, so it’s always on Netflix in Yiddish and the English is dubbed but not the Yiddish. So it was, you know, we just thought what if no one watches it with subtitles? But if nobody can deal with the Yiddish or whatever. So it was an amazing and unexpected experience that so many people kind of got into it.

**John:** Now, one of the reasons why I want to have both of you on together is because weirdly you made similar shows. If we want to take it from the perspective of they’re both shows about young brides who are caught in situations beyond their control who are trying to figure out how to find authority and voice. Yes. To try to figure out how do I take control of the situation. They work very, very differently, but it’s still that same vibe of like, you know, a teen bride coming into her own power.

Tony, I was reading some of the backstory on this. It sounds like you had studied sort of Catherine the Great before. You had thought about her as a character but what was the genesis of this particular series? When did you know that, OK, I really want to focus on her story and fictionalize parts around it? What was the start of that?

**Tony:** I guess I [a random] play about her, which was sort of the start of her coming to Russia and then it was also about her when she’s much older. And then I think sort of dabbled with that thinking it could be a feature. And then eventually I just was working in TV a bit and I really was like – I think my wife went this should be ten hours, or 20, or 30, or whatever we hope it’s going to be. And then, of course, my wife is always right about such things.

So I sort of looked at it and I thought about her and coming to Russia and, you know, waking up and thinking who have I married and I’m in a foreign country. And somehow you’re the character who then goes what I’ll do is I’ll take that country over, even though I don’t speak the language. She seemed like an amazing character and it seemed like a fun – you know, and I felt like I had a good sort of fun way to tell it, I suppose.

**Aline:** When you have an idea do you know this is a movie, this is play, this is a TV show? Does it come to you in its form? Or does it come to you as a story and then you figure out the form?

**Tony:** More and more it seems instinctive, but because I’ve worked in theater and used to always everything started as a play. Now I sort of instinctively can tell how big the story is. But not always. Like this I thought of as a feature for a long time. And it was as soon as I then thought about TV I was like how dumb I’ve been to not see that.

But sometimes you just see the story and you’re sort of like – you know, someone optioned it as a feature when it was a play, so it became a feature. And I think once I put my head into it and thought what do I think it is it was much more like, oh, well it just makes sense. It’s a TV – it’s a story that takes place over a long period of time and she changes massively. And it didn’t seem to do her justice to do a feature.

**John:** Now, Anna, your story could have easily worked as a feature. I mean, it’s short as a series goes. So when did you decide that this needs to be a series rather than try to make it as a feature?

**Anna:** I would say I actually worked back the other direction which is that because Deutschland 83 was my first series, I previously was a photographer actually. I had a totally different career. So, the thing is I think that originally we thought maybe we’ll make it a longer series. And then I made the decision that I wanted it to be shorter. And that’s – I have never written a movie, so that’s not something, you know, I’ve only written a series. And once I wrote a novel.

Yeah, I would say now it’s kind of a hybrid because I come to it as a series writer. I think I think in chapters. You know, writing a novel is a lot like writing a series. Whereas I think writing a movie is a lot more like writing a short story. And, you know, when you have that kind of long view of the story and how it divides up in kind of propulsive for lack – I know that’s a really TV word – but you know chapter storytelling. I think that when I looked at this material I felt like – and we invented a lot of it. You know, we had the source material which was wonderful but it wasn’t really activated because it’s a memoir. It’s in someone’s head.

And then we made up I would say 70% of it kind of around these characters from the book. And, yeah, I don’t know. Somehow I hit on the idea of four hours. And I don’t know how to explain that except to say that it seemed like fun to sort of milk it for like maximum emotional tension in a sort of short-long period of time.

Because had we spread it out over ten hours this particular story, I just didn’t think we needed that much space. And even though – it’s funny, because it’s a very unpopular thing to suggest. Like, everyone is like, “Well why not make more?” Netflix is like, “Why not make more?” And I was like, no, no, I think it’s four hours. But a movie would have been too short, or it would have been a bloated movie.

I think it’s important that it’s episodic, but again it’s really like the length of The Irishman, do you know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Anna:** I guess it’s a hybrid. But now I think everything should be four hours, because it was really sort of delicious to write and make it and to have this deep dive into material in a way that was like one year. You know? It wasn’t like writing a series over many years. And it wasn’t – so I actually – I’m thinking about form. I’m not like Tony. Tony has written so many plays and so many amazing things. I’m new as a writer. I come to this, as I said, from visual work. So it’s fun to think about how you tell stories in different forms and which stories lend themselves to different forms. I like to think about that now.

**John:** Also just even this past week I’ve been out pitching on a series and that conversation about how long it is, which used to be like, oh, it could be 22 episodes, it could be 13 episodes, in this last week I’ve been able to say like it’s between like four and six hours long. It’s an exciting thing to be able to pitch because it does change your relationship to the amount of work. The amount of work that I myself personally could do versus having a writing staff and having the whole assembly.

Now, Aline, you come from doing longer series. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was four seasons of 20 episodes each?

**Aline:** It ended up being 62 episodes. Which is not a ton for television, sort of average in a way. I mean, if you can get to be a continuing series. I never intended to that. I mean, we had no intention of doing that. We were going to do four seasons of eight to ten, something like that. But then when we got on a regular broadcast network that’s what, you know, we needed – we did two seasons of 13 and two seasons of 18. But I’d always written movies and so I think what’s a lot of the exciting things that have happened in television have been pioneered by the writers, not the business people.

And so the idea that you would tell one story over a long series, one unified story, that doesn’t resolve every week is something that really comes from writers wanting to do that. And it’s Dickensian. It’s those long, long novels. Breaking Bad, or–

**John:** The Sopranos.

**Aline:** You know, Sopranos. That sort of got the audience used to that. What’s exciting to me now is I haven’t seen a lot of four-episode series and it comes from you, it comes from the creator, and it breaks ground for other people to say, “You know what? I really think it’s this.” John and I came up in a Hollywood that was very specific about formats. And because of streaming and cable and international productions you really get to say, “No, this is what I think this story is.” And look at Unorthodox. And then look at shows that have done 100. You know, you can design it. And it’s the creators that have brought the pieces to what they need to be because the creators are driving the business process so much more.

**John:** Tony, can I talk to you about the format of The Great? Because I’m watching it in the US on Hulu, so I’m streaming it, it’s all available, all the time. But as I watch the shows they seem to have act breaks.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And as I look it’s playing on different networks in different countries. Does the show have commercials in some markets?

**Tony:** Yeah, it does. Even on Hulu in the states. We had to turn in five act breaks. They weren’t prescriptive about – because I’ve worked on shows where it was very prescriptive. You know, the old network kind of model where it was like the minute, you know, you were down to the minute it had to be in. It was much more like we just need five breaks. And that was simple as us going, you know, literally like we’d write the script and then just throw in five breaks even nine or 11 pages. Oh, about then.

But I never thought of that too much, except occasionally I’d think [unintelligible] any good those breaks. But I felt like it was OK. I think it was just because it’s serving a big marketplace with a lot of different platforms and, you know, some places have ads and some places don’t. You sort of have to do it and hope that it doesn’t impact the show too much, I guess.

**John:** With that show, with that model, you have financiers and you’re selling to different markets and so all that stuff had to happen ahead of time. So you had outside money and then you have Hulu as one of your buyers, one of the places that it was going to end up.

**Tony:** Yeah. Hulu was our original plan, who I sold it to originally. I had the pilot and then I took it out with Alan. Hulu is where, you know, they really loved it and I really thought they were great. So that was the start. And from there we go to studio. I sort of did it the other way around. I didn’t have a studio until after I’d sold it. And then I sort of looked for a studio who could sort of take some of the costs with it and take it out internationally.

And that was where MRC came on. And then they sort of started selling it I think while we were making it really.

**John:** OK. And Anna at what point did Netflix come onboard with this project? And had you had other places you were thinking about taking it? Or was it always a Netflix or die kind of?

**Anna:** You know, I pitched it to Netflix and then they bought it and then I never really pitched it to anyone else. But that was also partially because I’m in Germany, right. So, I’m in a slightly different conversation. I’m writing in English. I’m here. And Netflix had sort of rolled out recently in Germany at the time. And we had met many times about doing something together. And we make Deutschland 83 actually for Hulu also. And we also have act breaks. It’s funny to hear that.

I actually find it kind of useful. In the writer’s room in particular I find it really easy to talk about things in terms of act.

**John:** Yeah. In terms of like how things are hanging together and how you’re getting through stuff. It’s great.

**Anna:** I mean, I know it’s uncool, but it makes it a lot easier. If you know there’s no act three how do you talk about in a group about a bunch of scripts without, anyway, I’m used to it. But we write it with act breaks but it’s on basically different broadcasters all over the world. And so it’s on, I don’t know, 150 countries and almost none the same – a couple of them are Amazon, but that’s it. Otherwise it’s really like local broadcasters.

I thought it would be kind of interesting to try the sort of one – a different experience. Because we also, even the first season we had different logos in different territories. It really predated the era of streaming. So, it was like sometimes people even weren’t sure it was the same show. So, in a way I liked the idea of trying to work with Netflix and seeing like, OK, what is it like to make a show and distribute it and that’s it. And there isn’t these sort of separate relationships or separate press relationships or rollouts.

So, you know, for me it was an interesting experiment because we made it with Netflix Germany, even though it has very little German language in it.

**John:** That’s great. Well, let’s talk about language. Because Tony one of the things I find so fascinating comparing your two shows is that Anna’s show is characters speaking all these different languages and what language people speak is a very important part of the plot. And you made the decision that everyone is speaking English and we’re not going to sort of acknowledge that people are speaking different languages. At what point in the process did you decide, OK, we’re just going to kind of ignore language in our world?

**Tony:** It was pretty early. I think during casting. It was down to like casting agents going what do you want them to do when they cast. Do you want them to speak with Russian accents? And I was sure I didn’t want that. I guess I just wanted – in the end I was just looking for a uniformity so that everyone felt like they were in the same world. So we went with the sort of [RP] English accent. Because it was also about rhythm. Because the comedy in the show is very – like the way I write is very rhythm driven. So I was very aware of everyone having the same accent and it being easy. And it just had to work for the ear. So once I heard a few things, [Nicholas] kept going, “I just think I should be the only one who does the Russian accent.” And, you know, so we thought of that.

And then, you know, someone pitched why don’t we do Hunt for Red October the way basically they’re talking Russian and you push in on Sean Connery and slowly it morphs into thick Scottish brogue.

But in the end it was more rhythm and just how do I create – I’m creating a world that’s not historically accurate. I just wanted to make it so that all the comedy would work.

**Aline:** That worked as a stylistic choice for me because it was almost like looking at a beautiful miniature in a museum glass box thing. It sort of had an aspect of being just a little bit stylized, like a beautiful cuckoo clock or something where you can sort of look at all the little pieces. So, having it be unified aesthetically in one respect sort of creates a baseline of unity that you can embroider all these other things that you’re doing, especially visually and production wise.

**Tony:** It was a unifying point to the thing. And the tone of the show. And so it was all for those reasons I guess.

**Anna:** It also elevates it in a way out of heritage drama or any kind of—

**Tony:** Yeah.

**Anna:** In a way that for me was really satisfying. I mean, it’s funny because I live in Germany, right, so everyone is like, “But Catherine the Great is German. Why isn’t she speaking German?” And I didn’t even think about that. I felt like it was part of the flavor of the piece and the creation of it and the kind of artistry of it was that you had made it your own language. That’s what I loved about The Favourite, too, which is of course that is England, but it wasn’t England heritage drama. You know, it was your version of England. It was its own place. So, the language, I hear you.

**Aline:** Also the royals live in, especially in that time when you’d be sort of plucked from one country and say, “Well you’re Catherine of Aragon. Welcome to England and Henry the VIII. Good luck.” And she’s dislocated and they sort of have a common language, the royalty. I mean, I wonder if they still do. But there is sort of a common language. Certain courtly languages that you would be assumed to speak.

**John:** Now, let’s talk about the actual productions behind these because, you know, Anna I know you had a complicated production where you went to Williamsburg to shoot the New York exteriors and then everything else came back to Berlin. And Tony I’m curious how much you were shooting episode by episode versus block shooting parts and sections. So, Tony, let’s start with you. The decision that you have these ten episodes. I assume you had ten episodes written before you started production, or was there still writing while you were in production?

**Tony:** Yeah, there was still writing while we were in. I mean, we shot a pilot as a sort of proof of concept. Then I came in, we had nine to do. And I think I always wanted to do – I didn’t want to write all of it. So, I think we had maybe six or seven written. And I wanted to leave the last two till quite late. Because I just wanted to see – often you’re not sure what’s going to happen, what dynamics are really going to work. There’s 12 main cast, so I wasn’t 100% sure. I started roughly knowing how I wanted to end the season. And roughly knew what was going to happen. So I felt like I knew enough. And then it was just like I’ll wait and see what happens and then I’ll quickly write the last two, hoping I’m not too tired to do so.

**Aline:** Who financed the pilot?

**Tony:** Hulu.

**Aline:** Oh, Hulu. OK, so you came in meaning – I thought you – so when you say you came to Hulu with a pilot you had a script?

**Tony:** Yeah, a pilot script. And then sort of green lit the pilot and then we delivered that. And then they green lit the show.

**Aline:** Got it. You’ve never been through that pilot process?

**Anna:** I’ve only ever written like the whole thing and then shot the whole thing like a movie. With Deutschland we do that, too. We’re working with really small budgets, so it’s a very different production process than in the United States. We write the whole thing and then we divide it all up and then we shoot it by location. And that’s true with everything I’ve ever – I mean, that makes it sound like so much, but everything I’ve done so far we’ve always done it like that. So that wasn’t even something – we’ve never been writing while shooting and we’ve never shot in blocks. So that’s – I’ve never done anything like that. So, it’s a different way of looking at it.

I guess in that sense we always produce as if it were a movie. And in terms of, it’s true, we shot in New York at the very end of Unorthodox. Like we shot all the interiors in Berlin and then we went to New York for three days and shot exteriors. But that’s no different from how we shoot Deutschland. We just shoot by location.

**John:** In your case, Anna, you have the whole thing already done. And you have one director who is going to be shooting the entire project. Unorthodox was one director for the whole thing, correct?

**Anna:** Yeah. Because it was only four. With Deutschland we always have multiple. But yeah.

**John:** And Tony you had more classically a series of directors, different people doing different things. You needed to have tone meetings. You had to make sure that everyone was shooting the same kind of show. How early in the process did you know what your main sets were going to be, what you were going to build versus what was going to be practical? Tony, for you what was that decision?

**Tony:** Once we had the pilot green lit – we didn’t build anything for the pilot obviously because they were expensive builds. So, once we were green lit then I think I had two months with Francesca di Mottola, production designer, and then we had studios. So we shot like 70 – most of the interiors are our place in the East End of London. Next to Tesco. So it’s kind of like weird, terrible Dickensian falling down studio and then you walk in and it’s this beautiful Russian palace everywhere.

So we had a couple of months of pre-building, working out, you know, and writing scripts, thinking ahead about visually how I wanted the show to move. Because you’ve got no director at that point. So it sort of her and I deciding how, you know, I wanted the show to move in a certain way and the camera to be able to move. And so we ended up building in these massive spaces that would let us build rooms into rooms into other rooms so it felt a bit less like a set. Because we weren’t going to move much. We just shot there and in Naples. We shot a lot of exteriors at a palace.

**Aline:** It was beautiful.

**John:** It was because you were Netflix-Germany that you were probably doing all of your interiors in Germany. But what was the decision process for what was going to be shot practical versus things you were going to build? How early in the process were you figuring that out?

**Anna:** Pretty early because we knew we were going to shoot it in Germany, so the question was we went to New York a couple of times and picked all the exteriors. And then built the interiors in New York to match them. So that was relatively straightforward. We did a season of Deutschland where we shot in South Africa and in Germany, so we had done that before. So that was sort of – in a weird way that was kind of similar. And I think really visually I guess because as I said I come to writing as a photographer. So I often can really see it before I can write it. You know, a lot of storytelling is also through how it looks. And I usually work with kind of visual formalists who are cinematographers and directors, or I choose to work with people like that.

So, I would say the imagining how to execute it in this case, but in every case, was a big part of writing it actually. That’s maybe why I find it very strange to write without any perspective on when we’re going to shoot it, because I guess the difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay is the execution of it. And I like that part of it, too. It’s like when Tony was just describing, doing the scripts and imagining how the camera is going to move through the sets. That’s a huge part of writing it, too, you know.

**John:** Yeah. Some of my favorite writing has happened when I’ve been on a set, where I physically have the space. It’s like, OK, I can imagine. Here this doorway is going to be fascinating. It’s a great opportunity for this moment to happen because of the actual space that I’m in. As a person who mostly writes features rarely do I know what those locations are going to be. But the times that I have done TV or had standing sets to know that I can go back to this thing, or this is an opportunity, or could literally imagine – rewriting this scene while I’m sitting on this set is great.

Aline, I mean, you obviously – something like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend you know exactly what your sets are and you know what your pattern is going to be. You can plan for those moments.

**Aline:** Well, I was just thinking, Anna, how often do you write things that don’t get shot?

**Anna:** Haven’t done that yet. But that’s only because I’ve only been doing this [unintelligible – crosstalk – echo]. You can give me some therapy later. But it’s this feeling now where it’s like, oh, we just didn’t write all [unintelligible – echo].

**Aline:** Well that’s, I mean, the reason I’m saying that is welcome to Hollywood. I mean, it took me seven years to get my first movie made. And my husband used to say, “You’re so frustrated with the document production business.” Because a lot of Hollywood is producing documents, putting brads in them, and then stacking them on a shelf. You know? Or that used to be. Now you just put the PDF in a file. You know? And so just to hear somebody say like “Oh, I’m always writing thinking of how it’s being produced” is like what a wonderful thing, what a wonderful sphere to be in because so much of Hollywood is building prototypes that are – and I just recently – there’s a script that I wrote with someone else actually ten years ago. And we went back and reread it and we were like this is pretty good.

And every executive, every executive that had worked on it was gone except for one. And who had been more junior at the time. And she sort of reread it and we relaunched it. And it’s like Toy Story. You know, it’s this poor little thing that was sitting on a shelf and then it got – you know, it was waiting and waiting for somebody to try and pull it out.

And, you know what, it might get thrown back in the bin. And that will be so sad. But I think one of the things about international productions is they produce, that’s what I’ve noticed. My friends who are like – they don’t – we have so much R&D in the American system. There are so many unmade scripts. And especially in the television business where, you know, they’ll commission 100, shoot 20, and then if those don’t get picked up they’re garbage. They’re just garbage, never to be seen again. And it actually – it really kills me.

I think you could do an entire season of television development where you just went to the executives and said, “Give me the five favorite un-shot things.” And they would be glorious. You know?

So this cycle that we have in America where we just, you know, just the garbage-ification of scripts I find heartbreaking. And I don’t think they do it in other countries because it’s expensive.

**Anna:** Yeah. Something I think about a lot actually is just kind of the difference in the way we do things. Because of course it’s nice to be paid a lot of money for what you do. And, I mean, I’m not arguing against that and to have a lot of money to work with in production. But there’s also maybe a give and take around that. Because if you’re working with lower budgets and you’re kind of a little bit nimbler on your feet then it’s easier in a way to push something through.

So there is, I mean, like the Yiddish. Now everyone is like, “Oh my god, I have like six new ideas in Yiddish.” It’s like, believe me, nobody was going to make this show. You know?

**Aline:** Well that’s what makes me laugh is I have talked to so many executives who are like, “Oh my god, are you watching Unorthodox? I’m obsessed. It’s my favorite show. I want something just like Unorthodox.” I was like, “You do this week.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** I would love to have seen anyone a month ago going, “Four episodes. Yiddish. It’s kind of heartbreaking/sad in a very specific sub-culture. Shot in Berlin.” I mean, many years ago I went to have a meeting with a producer and a huge Adam Sandler movie, Water Boy, had just opened. And I sat down, which is nothing like anything I write, and I sat down and he said, “What I really want from you is another Water Boy.” [laughs] And I was like, “Go see it. It’s there. You don’t need another one.”

But it’s funny how people retroactively say, it’s the same with The Favourite. I hear a lot of people citing that as something and I think, OK, I’m sure there was a heated bidding – I mean, I don’t know the commercial circumstances. But that’s another great thing is you’ve set a template for other people in terms of the scale, the language, and that’s wonderful.

**Anna:** Well I’m looking forward to the sequel that you’re going to make now about the downfall of The Devil Wears Prada. I mean, just in the strange news cycle we’re in, I bet you a lot of people are rewatching that movie right now.

**Aline:** Well, publishing is completely different. I think we caught the last wave of – not the last wave – but those were the waning years of print. You know. And I love movies about newspapers, magazines, and all that stuff. But when was the last time that you bought a physical magazine? Or a physical paper?? I mean, I read the paper but even I only get it three days a week now. So that sense of that’s your object, which was so much of what that movie was about in a way, the transfer of the object—

**Anna:** But I watched it recently with my 16-year-old. I mean, it’s so good. And she absolutely loved it. I mean, the crazy part was she wanted to go work at Vogue tomorrow. It’s so bizarre, right? It’s like, wait, it makes you want to work there? But just given all the press now about Conde Nast is just going through a big tumultuous period. It’s interesting to think about what the addendum to that film would look like.

You know, it’s another era, right? It’s the end of something. I don’t know if you ever read a book called The Imperfectionists.

**Aline:** No.

**Anna:** It was about the end of a news – it’s by Tom Rachman. It’s about the end of a newspaper in Europe. And it’s so good. That’s something I would have loved to write as a series but it always seemed to have been optioned by somebody else. But it’s so good. And the end of basically the Herald Tribune but as told through all the many different people working there. And it’s really funny and very tragic. And really great.

**John:** Well that’s a good segue into – let’s talk about POV. Because you’re saying that The Imperfectionists has multiple people who have storytelling power. The choice of who has storytelling power in both of your series is so fascinating.

So, obviously with yours you have Etsy who is sort of the center of it, but you make the choice that other people can drive story. In The Great it’s Catherine’s story. It’s Peter’s story. But making the choice about which characters can actually drive story is so crucial. Who can have scenes that are just by themselves? Tony, how early on in the process did you know that, OK, well it’s centered around Catherine’s story and her journey that these other characters can drive things? Was that right from the very start?

**Tony:** A little bit. I knew in the first episode no one could drive – the choice was no one could drive story except her. And I had a rule for myself, it was like unless every scene – even if she’s not in the scene the scene is about her. And the scene exists because of her. And I held onto that. Sort of as we got into episode two and three I started to run Nick’s own story. And then as that happened and I sort of slowly branched out to some of the others. So it became sort of a cascading thing where as we got to the midpoint of the season you start to get, you know, Aunt Elizabeth. You get these other characters that are actually – they’re sort of running their own tiny stories.

But whenever I board it it’s – I’m always very, very conscious of her and that almost – but that was always the rule is generally there are stories that aren’t about here, even if they look like they aren’t, they will be, you know.

**John:** Now, are you boarding a second series for this now? Are you boarding another season for this? I don’t know where you’re at in the process for The Great?

**Tony:** We’re just waiting to hear if we get another one. I mean, I’ve got a sort of rough shape and I’ve got some – you know, it’s like whenever you do a first season of something you end up with a lot of, oh, that would be good for season two. So, you know, I’m just starting to reread those pages and going, boy, we’re really mental. Why did we think that was good?

**John:** Stop me if I’m asking questions that you don’t sort of know or shouldn’t say, but is the decision entirely a Hulu-based decision? Because since you have other markets and other people who are buying in other markets. I don’t even know if you’ve debuted in all of the different markets yet. So how would that decision come about?

**Tony:** I mean, at the moment [unintelligible – echo]. Yeah, we have debuted in almost probably, I don’t know, 100 countries maybe. So I know it’s out in most territories at the moment. So I’m just waiting on Hulu really to see if they want to do it again. It’s sort of that thing where you’re roughly boarding it and you don’t want to do too much in case it doesn’t happen.

**John:** Yeah. I was on book tour in Scandinavia two years ago and I was out with some of my publishers there and this young woman who worked at the publishing company was talking about The Haunting of Hill House, which was on Netflix, and how much she loved Haunting of Hill House. And it struck me as being so unusual that this is a series that had just come out at that moment, but it had come out worldwide in everyone’s native language. And so the whole world was having the same experience of watching one show, one piece of entertainment.

And you have some of that through Hulu, but you don’t have the same like on one day all around the world people are watching exactly the same show. Whereas Anna you do have that. Like that’s so exciting about debuting on Netflix where it’s just one place that everyone could see the thing at the same time.

What is it like getting that feedback sort of all together as one thing?

**Anna:** They bring their own experience into it. And actually the thing that has been most moving for all of us who made it has been the way it’s crossed borders of faith and culture. Like it’s been really popular in Latin America, among the Catholic world. In India in the Hindu world. In the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. We’re really proud of that, you know, because it’s a very sort of Jewish made show. It’s sort of Jewish from inside out in every way. And everyone involved was kind of on the spectrum of the Jewish diaspora, if I’m on one end and Esty is on the other, then there were sort of everybody in the middle. And we had a really lively conversation about sort of Jewishness, about our sort of extended international culture and all of that on set and also in the writer’s room.

And it’s just been so satisfying actually that it connected with people who have no contact with Jewish culture. You know, it’s one thing that’s popular in New York and with my mom’s friends, etc. But it’s something else to hear from people in, I don’t know, Saudi or Turkey or India who wrote us these amazing notes about how they identify with it, how they see themselves in it. Men. Women. It’s like not just women.

You know, at a time when we’re all alone at home on our sofas, right, a lot of people identified with it coming from really different places. Maybe that was also, I’m sure, it was also partially to do with the lockdown. But it was still a really pleasant surprise. Maybe part of the Netflix – maybe everybody who makes a show for Netflix experiences that. I just had never been in that situation before.

**John:** I know of some people who have made shows for Netflix and felt like the show came out and no one saw it and it didn’t make a ripple at all. And so that’s always one of the things I’ve been worried about with trying to make a show for Netflix is that I could come out and just no one sort of sees it or knows it. It doesn’t click the way your show did and it doesn’t create a conversation the way yours does. It just sort of disappears and it never shows up in people’s home screens. And it never sort of – it doesn’t land for people.

So, I’m so happy it did for Unorthodox.

**Anna:** I don’t know how to explain it.

**Aline:** In my case it was Shtisel. Because I loved Shtisel and every time I watched Shtisel Netflix was like, “You’re going to love Unorthodox. Just trust me. Trust me. No, trust me. The second you’re done here, just go right over there.”

**John:** The algorithm didn’t have to work very hard to get you from Shtisel to Unorthodox.

**Aline:** No.

**Anna:** Still in our sort of core audience. But is Shtisel popular in India? I have no idea. You know, they don’t share that much data. So it’s not – like we’re all sort of reading between the lines about that. Can I ask Aline a question about music?

**Aline:** Sure.

**Anna:** I wanted to know how involved you were in the musical numbers and what that’s like as a writer to sort of write songs.

**Aline:** Well that was part of the whole fabric of the show. So the writing of the series and the episodes kind of drove the music. So we had parallel writer’s room, one big one and one little one. And we had the one that was writing scripts, which informed and spoke to the songs, and then Rachel who starred in the show was also in the writer’s room when she could be. And one of our writers, Jack, was also one of the songwriters. So we had three songwriters, two of whom were in the writer’s room with me. And then I was sort of the – I mean, I contributed to maybe 20, 25 songs or something as a lyricist, but I’m not a musical person.

But I sort of supervised the integration of the music into the – well, we all did, really. So the story has to drive the songs. We almost never had a song and then jammed it into a story. It was like – so there are songs that are on the dust heap because with the old scripts, there’s a little Toy Story of dead songs. Because the story changed and so we couldn’t use the songs anymore.

So like there was a scene that had been written where the character comes in and says, “I’m taking antidepressants and I don’t feel great.” And she feels stigmatized a little bit. And then everybody in the café says, “I’m on antidepressants. So am I. So am I. So am I.” And the script went to Rachel and she looked at it and she goes, “Well thank you. This is a song.” And, you know, they went off and wrote the song.

So, sometimes it was very clear. The story gave you a song. And sometimes there were ideas for songs, like we did a song called Don’t Be a Lawyer, which I had been begging them to do some version of that for a long time. But since I can’t write songs, it was kind of a fun, interesting – I was the songwriting Doula I used to say. So we had three songwriters and I would sort of – we would need them to go into production you know. So I would walk around going, “Come on, you can do it, it’s right there. Do you need a back rub? A soda?”

And the worst thing I could do would be to try and write some lyrics for them and then it would really be like, no, no, no, no. Sometimes giving something to someone that they can say no, no, no to is a great way to, you know, “Oh, just let me do it.”

It was part of the fun of the process. And we happened to have these three incredible songwriters all of whom had other jobs on the show. Rachel was acting, working on the scripts with me. Jack was in the writer’s room. And Adam was also producing all the music.

**Anna:** What an amazing achievement. I mean, that just sounds so hard.

**Aline:** Thank you. You know, we have a lot of institutional memory for something that no one will ever do again. That’s what’s interesting about it. I know how to do that. We all figured it out eventually how to smooth out the process. But it’s not relevant to anything else. To do that exact thing. But it was fun for me because I’m a music fan and then they were very kind to me about my notes being like, “This sounds a little crunchy and a little sour.” [laughs]

I was sort of describing it like it was my dinner. And I think in some ways that was less annoying than if I had been trying to pretend I knew musical terms. I think it’s sometimes the same on set. You know, I’ve noticed a lot of directors who want to have a lot of swagger about going to the department heads and pretending that they know the jargon as well or better. And in some ways I think it’s annoying when you’re the person who is the expert to have a director come over and sort of – you know, as opposed to saying what you want it to feel like or making suggestions that are more of a feel thing. And then allowing the person who has the expertise to say, “Yeah, you want this.”

I’ve noticed that I think sometimes when you do that it’s out of your own insecurities slightly that you feel like, oh, I’ve studied up and I want this exact… – You know, they probably have a better sense of the new, whatever the new thing that came out that’s going to be able to give you the effect that you want. So, sometimes when you’re creating something just having kind of a language which is a more general creative language can be – is part of your job and can be quite helpful.

**Tony:** I find that with composers a lot on shows.

**Anna:** Yes!

**Tony:** Because that’s just like so far from me that now I just come clean really fast and go, “I don’t know how to talk about music and I don’t know anything. All I’ll be able to tell you is what I want it to feel like.” And it is an easier conversation because then they don’t feel like you’re in their patch. You’re just trying to get across as ineptly as you can and then they feel sad for you that he’s so inept. And so, you know, it kind of works–

**Aline:** How annoying would it be if you didn’t really know, but you were saying, “I feel a descending A.” You know? And they would be like, “This jackass showed up and asked for the wrong thing.” And I feel like one of the things that holds people back, particularly women, from directing is feeling like they’re not going to be able to open the lens case and pick out, you know. But you don’t have to. There’s somebody there who wants you to get your mitt out of that anyway and wants you to come over and say, “This is what I’m feeling. Let’s look at this together. What do you think is best? What’s the newest thing?” And giving people confidence to speak in that more general feeling sometimes is the most helpful thing you can do for your collaborators.

It’s sort of like you don’t need to give people line readings, writ large.

**John:** Now, one of the most important collaborations you’re going to have as a creator/showrunner is with director. A director or a series of directors. Can we talk a bit about what that collaboration should look like and best practices? But also some tips for making sure that relationship works well. Tony, as you’re talking with a director for The Great what are those conversations like? Obviously a pilot director is going to be one conversation maybe. But then later directors. How do you find that balance between this is what I, Tony, want from this scene versus what the director might be approaching a scene with?

**Tony:** I think it’s like – I mean, it’s sort of a harder thing because they’re sort of there for the least amount of time out of every one who is working on the show. You know, they’re dropping in and everyone is up and running. So, it’s kind of – like on our show, particularly like just and [unintelligible] just do it as much as possible where I was coming from and what the world of the show was. And the pitch of it. As long as it was truthful was our thing. It’s like comic truth/dramatic truth. Just don’t reach.

So I think it’s a lot of – like in the end it became rolling conversations. It wasn’t like we’ll have a tone meeting then and in two weeks. It was much more like – I was just like let’s just talk all the time. I don’t mind if we talk every day. So there was a lot of – so I tried to spend time talking about the script.

And it depended how much the director needs. Like you start to read how fast people are getting it, or how experienced they are. Like Colin Bucksey did three eps for us and he’s done everything. He did Miami Vice. And he won an Emmy for Breaking Bad. So, you know, he picks it up really fast. And he’s a lovely guy. So, it just depends. You’re just trying to get – showrunners, it’s like you’re trying to dip another human’s brain in your brain and hope when you pull them out they’ve got some of it so that they get it.

So it was also they can be their creative best without feeling – like I never want to feel too on top of directors. I just want them to understand what we’re doing. And I let them go direct. I don’t want to direct it.

So, for us it’s like just lots of conversations and lots of checking in about where they’re at with things. And also heads of departments often feedback if they feel like the directors aren’t quite on the same page as us. Though I really trusted them, so they would occasionally go, “I don’t think we’re on the same page. This isn’t sort of the show but that’s what’s being asked for.” And so then it’s just a conversation of that’s not the show, this is the show. Particularly first seasons where people haven’t really got anything much to look at, you know.

**John:** Anna, what was your experience with directors? Obviously you have one director for all of Unorthodox, but on Deutschland you’ve had multiple directors. What is that collaboration like?

**Anna:** I love that collaboration. Because, again, I don’t want to be a director. It’s funny because people ask me that all the time because I was a photographer. They think it’s like a natural progression. But to me I feel like I already kind of did that for so long. And I think it makes it richer. I like the conversation. There’s certain things that really matter, like choosing someone who has the same taste. And taste is a big thing. It’s like a big blob. It’s not just what it looks like, although I think that is sort of a visual form or visual style, an attraction to a kind of – you have to agree on something and both see it on how it looks.

That’s also, of course, the cinematographer, gaffer, all that. But it’s also a question of subtlety. You know, with Unorthodox for example there would have been many different ways to execute the sex scenes. Let me just give you one example. It was very important that we had – I think there was a lot of things about the humor that we had to really talk through. We had cultural things we had to unpack in order for Maria to understand what it was that we wanted out of certain scenes and what are intentions were in the script. We talked those things through a lot.

But at the end of the day I think we had a common taste and an idea about restraint in the way you were going to show some of the things. It could have been different. We could have approached the whole thing in a different way. And Maria is the star of my other show. Did you know that?

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

**Anna:** We have a collaboration that’s really intense anyway. So then she directed Unorthodox but she’s not in it. I knew already from working with her as an actress how good she was with other actors. That part of it was very clear. Because she even elevates other actors in her performance in the scenes in Deutschland. Do you know what I mean? Like I’ve seen how–

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Anna:** Yeah. But she had made a movie in between the first two seasons of Deutschland. She made an art house film about the life of Stefan Zweig who committed suicide in Brazil in the ‘40s when he left Europe. It’s called Farewell to Europe. It’s really beautiful. And I loved the look and feel of it. So it wasn’t just Maria, it was also the cinematographer and production designer for that film. Like the three of them who have a really close working relationship all worked on Unorthodox.

**John:** You’re bringing a team back in who knows.

**Aline:** One thing I can suggest, and this may not be necessary on some show, but we would sometimes have people show up who hadn’t seen – I mean, the first season we had some directors who had really not seen much of the show. And, you know, people are busy and they may not have seen every single episode of your show. So we created a look book just, you know, stills from the show laminated and broken down into the types of coverage we favor and the types of things that have worked well for us. So there was a reference thing that you can put on the prepping director’s desk, you know, right when they get there so that they have a sense of like the kind of things you favor and have worked well for you and that you feel like are important ingredients.

I think that’s more important in regular series television where you have people who are kind of winding in and out of things that have long standing and maybe they’ve not seen every single episode. But it’s helpful to have – I found that helpful to have that as a jumping off point.

**John:** Well, Aline, it sounds sort of like you were coming from making almost like kind of factory television. There was so much that had to be done. You had to be able to slot people in to do stuff.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And some of the shows we’re talking about now are a little bit more artisanal where they are–

**Aline:** Right. That’s why I’m saying, but it still might be helpful to – you can even have your editor cut together a little reel that says like, OK, here’s our–

**John:** This is what it feels like.

**Aline:** It is the difference between artisanal cheese and–

**John:** And fantastic Kraft.

**Aline:** It is helpful to have. In comedies sometimes people came in with ideas for funny shots. And that was death for us because we had these musical numbers that were really pushed comedically. So we couldn’t really push anything comedically in our real world. It had to be very simple. So we developed a bunch of – just a visual language that would orient people. But I would think people who are showing up to direct The Great have by and large seen the series. But you never know.

**Anna:** It is kind of amazing that they hadn’t watched the show before they directed it. How can that be?

**Aline:** Sometimes – there were people who had seen – I mean, in the beginning especially when we had not aired. But also, you know, people are busy. They see one or two and they think “I got it.”

**John:** Well, also, the classic broadcast directors would just hop from show to show to show to show. So like last week they were doing a CSI. Now they’re doing Aline’s show. And that’s a thing that’s just so different how classic American television was made.

Now, usually on Scriptnotes we would do a One Cool Thing where we recommend something to the audience, but I’m not sure whether you guys all got the memo about One Cool Thing. Does everyone have a One Cool Thing, something to recommend to people?

**Anna:** I have a One Cool Thing, but it’s extremely random.

**John:** That is exactly what a One Cool Thing should be. Anna, what is your random One Cool Thing?

**Anna:** I mean, I actually thought it was something to watch.

**John:** Watch is great as well.

**Aline:** Yeah, it’s great.

**Anna:** Well it’s this documentary, at least it’s on Netflix here, I’m assuming it’s on all over. But you can check. It’s about the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And it’s about how it was written by this guy in South Africa and it was then sort of stolen from him and traveled around the world. I mean, the story is ultimately about how his children were paid for it. But it is an amazing, I mean, if you’re interested in music it’s an amazing story about how a melody that is very specific, right, was misunderstood. Like the lyrics were completely misunderstood. It was about something completely different. It was misunderstood when it was translated. But the song, the melody is the same melody. It’s about post-colonialism. It’s about apartheid. It’s about the music industry. It’s about many things.

**John:** That’s amazing.

**Anna:** It’s one of those deep dives into something where you’re just like, whoa, that was so interesting. And, I don’t know, I like watching stuff like that. So, I was thinking it’s something maybe people wouldn’t think to watch, but it’s very good.

**John:** Excellent. Tony, do you have a One Cool Thing to share?

**Tony:** At the moment all I care about is swimming in the ocean. That’s my One Cool Thing.

**Anna:** Isn’t it winter?

**Tony:** It is winter. That’s what it’s sort of cool, because I’m the only one in there not in a wet suit.

**Aline:** Oh my god.

**Tony:** My relatives who – I don’t live in Perth usually. I’m like some weird eastern state person. So whenever I come here I have to swim in the Indian Ocean. Because I grew up near the Pacific Ocean, but I like the Indian Ocean. So I guess my One Cool Thing is the Indian Ocean.

**John:** The Indian Ocean.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** It’s the biggest One Cool Thing we’ve ever had.

**Aline:** I have something, so I mean, I know we’re kind of past this phase of the pandemic, but you know everybody was baking these amazing loaves of bread with the yeast and the rising and the whole thing. And it’s just too hard. And especially now that we’ve moved out of that. But we’re still pretty much confined in the states.

There’s a recipe for beer bread. Do you know this John? OK. In the New York Times there’s a recipe for beer bread. And it’s really cool because it just has – all you need is flour, baking powder, salt, a little bit of sugar, and a beer, and some butter. It’s got five ingredients. And a little bit of cornmeal for the pan. It’s really fast. It’s really easy. And it’s really delicious. And allows you to make bread with beer, which is fun. It’s on the New York Times cooking site. And it will allow you to say to people that you baked a fabulous loaf of bread. Which right now I think given the state of what we’re processing in the world I think bread Instagram has receded. But if you want to take pictures of it, feel cool, feel like you baked a loaf of bread. There’s something very primal about having baked a loaf of bread.

**John:** Definitely. My One Cool Thing is – we’ve all seen the deep fake videos where they take one actor’s face and swap it with another actor’s face. And those are really remarkable. But the same computer techniques that do that kind of stuff can be trained not just on faces but on anything. And so my link is to Algonuts. It’s by Eric Drass who is an artist. And what he did is he took 18,000 Peanuts comic strips and trained the computer on those. And so it can now generate its own Peanuts comic strips, like algorithmically. And so I’ll put a link in the show notes to this, but it looks like Peanuts but it doesn’t make any sense. And Snoopy will have two faces and yet it looks exactly like a Charles Schultz Peanuts.

So I always find it fascinating when computers will try to create art and it feels like just a good, creepy, sort of mid place of a–

**Aline:** Does it come with weed?

**John:** It should come with weed or some sort of dissolving acid tab for your tongue.

**Aline:** Yeah. Just a gummy. They mail you a gummy. The right gummy.

**John:** The right gummy and it will all make sense. But it was so weird how you could sort of feel the DNA of Peanuts in it even though it’s not clearly Peanuts. And raises all the issues of like what is copyrightable and what is not copyrightable. And is the feeling of Peanuts copyrightable?

So, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that because it’s cool and strange.

This was delightful to have this conversation. I want to thank you both for joining us at such strange times of day for everybody. We need to thank our actual conference who we’re theoretically at. We need to thank Marie Barraco, Marie Cordier, Louise Deveaux for helping us put this together. We would love to do this in person next year, if next year happens, or whenever people can gather together as groups to do this kind of thing.

**Aline:** I think we do this and then we go in the ocean.

**John:** That’s what we do. We just dive. We dive right in.

**Aline:** From here to the ocean.

**John:** Scriptnotes is produced every week by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Eric Pearson. You can send in your outros and your questions to ask@johnaugust.com.

On Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Aline, you’re on Twitter now.

**Aline:** @alinebmckenna.

**John:** Anna or Tony, are you on Twitter? Do you want a social media handle for people to reach out to you?

**Anna:** I’m not very good at Twitter, but I am @annawinger.

**John:** Tony do you check the Twitter?

**Tony:** No. I’m not on the Twitter.

**John:** So smart. Such a good choice you’ve made there in Perth. You can find all the back episodes of Scriptnotes at johnaugust.com. We also have the Premium episodes with bonus segments at Scriptnotes.net.

And that is our show for this week. I want to thank you both very, very much for joining us. It’s an absolute pleasure and thank you for making the shows you’ve made. They really brightened up some dark weeks here during this lockdown period. So thank you for that. And we cannot wait to see what you guys do next. Thank you so much.

**Aline:** Thank you so much. Great to meet you both.

**John:** Thanks.

**Aline:** Bye.

Links:

* Check out [Serie Series](https://www.serieseries.fr/en/) and also find the video recording of the session here!
* [Unorthodox](https://www.netflix.com/title/81019069)
* [The Great](https://www.hulu.com/series/the-great-238db0d4-c476-47ed-9bee-d326fd302f7d)
* [Algonuts](http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress2019/2020/06/17/algonuts/) by Eric Drass
* [Beer Bread](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2766-beer-bread)
* [Remastered: The Lion’s Share](https://www.netflix.com/title/80191050)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Anna Winger](https://twitter.com/annawinger?lang=en) on Twitter
* [Tony McNamara](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1110111/)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](https://twitter.com/alinebmckenna?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) 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 Eric Pearson ([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/459.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/adapting-with-justin-simien).

**John August:** Hey, it’s John. Craig uses the F-word a couple of times in this episode, so just a warning in case you’re in the car with your kids.

**Craig Mazin:** Sorry about that. It just happened. It slipped out.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 460 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we look at adapting features into TV series and adapting to changing norms of portraying people of color and historical figures. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we’ll talk about Hamilton on Disney+ and what it means for musicals on screen. To help us with all of this we will be welcoming writer-director Justin Simien.

But first we have some industry news. Craig, what happened this last week?

**Craig:** So on July 1st the Writers Guild announced, that’s the Writers Guild West, in conjunction with the Writers Guild East, announced that conjointly they had reached a tentative agreement with the studios on a new three-year contract. You were on the negotiating committee. This was kind of a strange one because of the pandemic and all the rest. And I think this may have been the first in my memory, this may have been the first deal that we negotiated after both of the other two major creative unions.

**John:** That’s right. So in our backstory here, so as we’ve talked through the lead up to this, generally the three big guilds, the Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and the Writers Guild, each of them is negotiating a three-year contract. I forget exact expiration dates but generally the DGA goes first, SAG generally follows after the WGA. Sometimes it goes before the WGA. But our contract had actually run out and we’d extended two months because of the pandemic basically.

We started all the process of gearing up for this negotiation. So we did the survey to members. We did the pattern of demands. There was a vote on the pattern of demands. We had member meetings. And then suddenly we could not have member meetings anymore because there was a pandemic. We could not gather together.

**Craig:** Yeah. And a lot of people had asked me at the time when we were running up against the expiration what would happen if there wasn’t some sort of official extension. And the truth is there kind of is an implied official extension. If your collective bargaining agreement expires and there is no strike and there is no lockout, essentially the contract remains in place and is largely enforceable. There are a few things that go away like grievances and things, but mostly it extends itself.

So people were a little concerned, like wait, do residuals stop on that day? No. Everything just keeps on sort of motoring along. But what you don’t get are, for instance, increases, or any of the things that you’re hoping to get, or probably know you can get. So it’s a little bit of a game of chicken. You don’t want to extend forever. You want to get a new deal done. So, I was not particularly freaked out by that.

**John:** No, I wasn’t either. Things to keep in mind though is that so the pandemic, of course, meant that we could not meet in person, but also meant that all production had shutdown. So suddenly the entire town was not working, except for weirdly the writers. We were still employed. And we were still employable. And we had virtual rooms. So it was a weird situation that we were going through. And then in the middle of these negotiations, which were all happening on Zoom, we had the George Floyd protests, Black Lives Matter. We had a lot of other stuff sort of happening in society. And that was impossible to ignore that these other things were happening while we were trying to negotiate a three-year contract with the studio.

So there was a lot going on is basically what I meant to say.

**Craig:** There was. Look, you and I know that for, I don’t know, a while now there had been a lot of talk that the writers would be going on strike. I would hear it all the time. And I just didn’t ever think we would. It just didn’t seem – this was before COVID, before the world started to turn upside a little bit. It just didn’t seem likely to me. I didn’t quite understand why everyone was freaking out. Maybe I’m just naïve. But it didn’t seem like it was going to be a strike situation. It really didn’t seem like it was going to be a strike situation once the DGA and SAG had already cemented the pattern in place.

So, I was not surprised by this. I think some people were. Nor was I surprised particularly by how it all worked out. It kind of seemed to me like it worked out the way I expected it would.

**John:** I would say it didn’t work out quite the way I expected it would. So, and again, perspectives in terms of like who we’ve been talking with and sort of which rooms we’ve been in, but let’s go back and talk about sort of the strike idea, or the strike threat. Because in our last negotiation, the 2017 negotiations, there was a strike authorization vote that happened. And that’s one of the things that unions do when they are in a negotiation to show like, hey, we actually will – we would step out. We would stop working if this were to happen. Much harder I think to play that card when the entire town is shut down.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s true. Although I’m happy that we couldn’t play that card because I don’t really think we should be playing that card the way we do. First of all, I don’t think it comports with our constitution. But also I’m just – we had gone through this last time and I was like on record I am not doing this whole – even if I don’t want to strike I have to vote yes for a strike. I’m not doing it anymore. It’s just crazy. We shouldn’t be in that business of just constantly asking our members to vote for something they don’t want just so that it won’t happen, and then it happens. I’m glad.

We do have to figure out how to have a reasonable strike threat without taking that vote. I think we did in 2001. We did a really good job of pushing it right up to the brink. We didn’t have a strike authorization vote, but it sure seemed like it was inevitable. And then at the last minute a deal was worked out.

**John:** So let’s recap what the issues were going into this, pre-pandemic, sort of what was on the table. So, for a change it wasn’t about the health plan. The health plan is actually funded and fine. We knew that the DGA had taken a rollback on residuals for TV syndication, so that was a thing that was going to be pushed at us. We talked a lot about pension and keeping our pension funded, so that we actually can pay what’s being owed to writers.

We talked a lot about streaming and SVOD, specifically residuals for streaming and SVOD. The idea that if your show is a massive hit for Netflix or for Amazon your residuals should reflect that. And right now they don’t. We talked about getting rid of the reduced rates that studios can pay for writers, newer writers, so there’s a new writer discount. There are trainee rates, which mostly go to underrepresented class of writers, minority writers, Black writers.

We talked about teams and the way that – writers are the only group in this industry where two people are sharing one salary and in sharing one salary there’s some real inequities that happen there, in their rates and also how things are calculated for pension and for health.

Comedy and variety, so when we had Ashley Nicole Black on the show talking about how if you’re writing on one of these talk shows, like late night talk show that’s for a steamer, there aren’t even minimums. There’s not residuals. It’s all sort of a wild free for all.

In feature land, because Craig and I focus on this, there was a proposal for a theatrical residual for foreign distribution. So essentially the same way that when an American TV show is shown overseas we get residuals for that. Shouldn’t we get residuals for an American movie that is showing overseas?

We talked about a second step for screenwriters. This has been a thing that Craig and I have been hammering on for years and years. The idea that especially writers who are being paid less than a certain percentage of minimum, or certain double of minimums, that you need to guarantee them a second step. They are the most vulnerable feature writers and they are being exploited in one-step deals.

**Craig:** Yeah. Generally speaking I think all these things are important. The guild has to figure out what their priorities are and what is more getable than others. I just want to mention that pension was a real issue. I mean, you all saw that. Somebody should be apologizing to Nick Kazan who went out on a limb and made a very strong statement during the last election that our pension was in trouble. And I believe he got just a ton of anger about that and denial. There was just like official Writers Guild denial that the pension was in trouble. And he was right. The pension was in trouble. And somebody should apologize to him for that.

And I’m glad that we were able to address it because the guild essentially has two major moral obligations as far as I can tell. One is to the emerging writers and one is to writers who are in the sunset of their life, because that’s when we need the care the most – when we’re coming up and when we’re on our way out, not to be too grim about what it means to be a retiree. I’ll be there soon enough.

The feature thing is obviously – it just hurts. And we are either going to be in a situation where we keep kicking that football down the field and punting forever, or we make it a point of saying that that is now the priority and it’s more important than other things like the every three years improving the payments and rates and terms for television writers. We’re just going to have to do it or not. Right? But right now we are on a pretty much a 25-year streak of nothing for screenwriters specifically.

And so I don’t know what to say. Certainly I’m going to be voting yes on this contract. I think most reasonable people would. But I just don’t know what else we can do internally, other than to continue to encourage screenwriters to run for the board. I know Michele Mulroney is a big advocate for screenwriters. I’m glad she’s there in the room.

**John:** She was co-chair of the negotiating committee.

**Craig:** And I hope she keeps pushing this. I know she wants it. I know that.

**John:** So you were saying the guild has a specific focus on writers at the beginnings of their careers, emerging writers, writers at the end of their careers. Another area which was on our pattern of demands was paid parental leave which is a real crux point there because for many writers it’s the moment at which they have to decide am I going to continue a writing career or am I going to have a family.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so one of the sort of real breakthroughs I think of this negotiation was for the first time, for the first guild ever, we have a paid parental leave which is entirely funded by studio contributions. It’s 0.5% of writer’s earnings go into a fund that pays for paid parental leave. It’s worth $30 million over three years. No one else has it. I genuinely believe DGA and SAG have to get it for their next round. I think it could be groundbreaking for writers, especially women, who feel like they have to choose between a family and a writing career.

**Craig:** Yeah. No question. This is definitely of greatest value to us because it supports women continuing in the workplace. We know that just because of the nature of the way birth works that parental leave accrues to the benefit of women in the more immediate and important way. And because – I’m not sure if it ever will carry over quite the way it has for us to the DGA and SAG, because the nature particularly in television is that it is a Monday through Friday gig. You show up, if you’re in a room and you work and you go home. Directing, there is no ability to take leave in the middle of a movie as a director. It just doesn’t work financially. And the same goes for actors. It’s going to be much more difficult for them.

I’m not saying that they deserve it any less. It will just be much more difficult for them to get.

**John:** Craig, I think you’re misunderstanding it though. This is actually – it’s fully portable. So I think a feature writer is in much the same situation as a director. And a feature writer will be able to use this because the money that has been socked aside from this is going to go to them. So, you know, while you may not be leaving your exact job the way that someone who is working as an executive at Disney would leave to go on parental leave, when the time comes and you are not taking work because your job is now to raise a newborn you will be able to use it.

So the fact that it applies not just to TV writers but to all writers, to comedy/variety writers, is crucial.

**Craig:** Of course. Absolutely. I think, no question. I wasn’t questioning whether or not it applied to all writers. And I’m glad it does. I’m just suggesting that it’s going to be harder for the DGA and SAG to get it. But I hope they do.

But, no, I’m thrilled that we got this. I think it’s incredibly important. And it is going to make it easier for us to improve our parity, well, we don’t have parity statistics, but will improve our statistics and help push them toward parity, particularly in gender. So this was a big win for us and I’m thrilled that we have it.

**John:** Cool. Let’s wrap this up by saying the things we did not get, which I think are still really important. That sense of tiered residuals or some way of recognizing that if something is a giant hit for Disney+, like Hamilton, it should be paying out more in residuals than something that is not a hit. And there needs to be some way to recognize that and to pay that.

**Craig:** You’re talking about like elevations of the formula itself?

**John:** I’m saying elevations of formula or an actual true formula. How often something is streamed impacts how much a writer gets in residuals?

**Craig:** Well, there’s not connection whatsoever to the amount of showings? It’s just a flat number?

**John:** It’s essentially a flat number?

**Craig:** Isn’t there a formula with [imputions] and [unintelligible].

**John:** No. So right now the way in which you figure out how valuable something is is kind of an internal calculation based on the market value of the thing. But it doesn’t actually make sense when Netflix is making something for Netflix. They’re not selling it to anybody else.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** And so there’s no transparency.

**Craig:** They’re self-made stuff. And there is no transparency. We know that. And this is – this is a really tough nut to crack. Because even if you come up with a tiered plan you have to rely on their numbers. Because there is no Nielsen. There’s no ticket sales. There’s no box office. I mean, Netflix repeatedly says that people watch their shows. It’s some number that’s absurd. It’s just like, “Yeah, 400 billion watched our latest—“

No they didn’t. No they didn’t. They have their whole like, oh, they watched it for two seconds. But then in reality they’ll come back to you and say, “Oh yeah, no one is watching it.” I don’t know how they – how do you get that without transparency from them?

**John:** But the reason why this is so crucial just to wrap this up is that as more and more stuff goes streaming first, as what we consider theatrical features are made streaming first, this matters. Because the future of residuals is going to be on streaming. And so we need to make sure that residuals actually make sense on streaming.

**Craig:** Look, this battle is hugely important. And this is a battle that will cover both feature writers and television writers.

**John:** 100%.

**Craig:** Because right now I’m looking around, I’m not seeing theaters even open. And when this ends I don’t know what that looks like. And I also don’t know – I don’t think any of us really truly understand the economics that the studios are currently contemplating. The cost of putting Hamilton on Disney+ is vastly lower than the cost of putting it in theaters. Vastly lower.

Now, are they losing out on ticket sales? No question. Do they make it up in subscriptions and subscription retention?

**John:** Maybe?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** I don’t know. But what I do know is if things continue to go the way they are, I mean, even prior to COVID Netflix had no problem making movies for Netflix that just stream. So, yes, we need to figure out that formula. And that will be a strike issue. And that’s something that we’re going to have to – I would love if we could somehow talk to DGA and SAG about that, too.

Foreign theatrical is probably not as big of a deal. I don’t that that’s – for me, personally is much of a – that feels a little bit like arguing over a somewhat sun-setting thing.

**John:** Just to help the Deadline Hollywood headline writers who are going to say, “Craig Mazin: We must strike.” All right.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I’ve always said [Wannsee] and we have to strike over something. They really need to look carefully at that. But I also do think at some point we are going to have to as a union collectively, and I’m talking to television writers now, do for feature writers what feature writers have done over and over for television writers.

**John:** I would also want to include comedy and variety folks in there as well. We think we get the short end of the stick. They get no stick at all.

**Craig:** They get no stick at all. So I think we should concentrate on the no sticks and short sticks people in our next go around. But for this go around I think that you, your committee, the guild pretty much did the best they could. I don’t see, I mean, just because I’m disappointed that certain things aren’t there, well, duh. I mean, I guess if we’re not disappointed then we really under-asked, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But this seems like a pretty solid deal. And pretty much what I imagined it would be. And we should all vote yes and get back to – well, keep working I guess.

**John:** We’ll keep working. All right. Now for the marquee attraction of this podcast. Justin Simien is a writer-director whose credits include Dear White People, which won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for breakthrough talent at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In 2017 his television series based on the film debuted on Netflix. Now two seasons in it’s received a notable spike in attention given the protests and national conversation about race and racism in America.

His follow up feature, Bad Hair, debuted at Sundance in January, which feels like a century ago. Justin, welcome to the show.

**Justin Simien:** Hey, thanks. Good to be here.

**Craig:** Great to have you on, man.

**John:** It is a pleasure. So, where do we find you today? Describe your surroundings as we’re recording this.

**Justin:** I am Skyping from lovely Los Angeles where coronavirus is everywhere. And, yeah, where I’ve been just sort of working out of my house, you know, since February like everybody else.

**Craig:** You’re nesting. You’re nesting. We’re all nesting.

**Justin:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Which I like. Yeah.

**John:** It’s a good instinct. So, let’s talk a little bit about your background. So you are a film school person, is that correct? We get so many questions on the show about like, “Hey, should I go to film school?” People who are in high school or people who finished college and thinking like, oh, should I go to film school. You are a film school person. I am a film school person. Tell me about your film school experience.

**Justin:** Wow, I’m a film school person, guys. You know, it was interesting. I have to say I figured out what kind of storyteller I needed to be/wanted to be in high school because I had the fortune of going to a performing arts high school. I studied theater. What was I called? I was a theater major with a musical theater emphasis. And truly if it wasn’t for that experience I don’t know what I would be, where I would be, how I would be. And so for me college was actually a little bit more like a high school in that there was certainly a film school component to Chapman University, but there were also other schools there. And there were other kinds of folks there. And there were quite a few people who had grown up and spent their whole lives in Orange County and had never met Black people before.

So it was a little more I would cliqued than my actual high school experience. But, the thing that I really loved about the Chapman film school is that, you know, there’s really this emphasis on making things from day one. You’re not sort of learning theory. I was making short films right away. And they were probably really terrible and I haven’t watched them in a long time. But it felt so great to be able to, you know, apply what I was learning kind of immediately.

And I think there’s a lot of stuff that I learned. There’s a lot of stuff that I’m realizing I didn’t learn in film school that has become essential to me.

**Craig:** Oh, well, let me stop you there. Because I’m not a film school guy like you two fancy lads. So I’m kind of curious what are the things, and I would imagine people who run film schools should be curious about this – what are the things you didn’t learn that you maybe think you should have, or at least film schools could do better?

**Justin:** Well I think film schools, well, I don’t know if this is true for all film schools, but it feels like it’s all about preparing folks for a certain kind of job. You know, you’re taught single protagonist storytelling. The things that I learned were very focused on like how to fit within Hollywood’s existing framework, which I think is valuable and interesting and helpful, but is incredibly limiting, too.

Specifically when we talk about cinema history, specifically Black people and African-American sort of contributions to not just Hollywood but cinema history in general are almost completely ignored. You maybe get like a conversation about Blaxploitation but like, you know, when everyone learns about Birth of a Nation we all watch the movie or we all watch clips on that. We discussed in great detail how D.W. Griffith invented cinema language and editing and cross-cutting and all of these things. And everyone is very careful to parse out the egregious racism in that film from its cinema techniques.

But then no discussion is ever given to the fact that that actually begins the independent film movement in America because, you know, Black Americans were so outraged by that film that you have the rise of someone like Oscar Micheaux who actually creates an entire Black Hollywood system, with its own stars and its own theater chains and all this stuff.

And this is stuff you just kind of have to find out in life if ever. And it’s actually like essential knowledge. This is actually the framework, the groundwork, for independent cinema as we know it. And of course independent cinema is what I’ve been operating in since I got my break.

**Craig:** It’s fascinating I think the general perception in let’s just call it the hegemonic culture in the United States is that universities and higher education is a hotbed of Marxist hyper-progressive thinking. And in fact the more I talk to people the more it seems that at least in a lot of these institutions things are fairly regressive. I don’t really understand. I mean, I’ve got to be honest with you, just as a side note about film school. A lot of people bring up Birth of a Nation. It’s been brought up a lot lately. John, have you ever seen Birth of a Nation?

**John:** I’ve never seen Birth of a Nation. So it only adds a thing that people talk about rather than an actual thing to watch.

**Craig:** Let me go on record here for a second. Birth of a Nation sucks. And I understand that people, like why they study it, because it was the first one. But it sucks. It’s sort of like let’s all study the first sandwich that was ever made. It was one stale piece of break that was folded over a shitty piece of meat, but look, a sandwich was born. Well who gives a shit?

Yes, OK, so he created these things. But it doesn’t matter. We all know what those things are. It seems like such a pointless exercise. And it’s a boring, overlong film. And the heroes are the Klan. It’s just stupid. I don’t know why anyone is bothering with it. Here, you want to summarize the value of Birth of a Nation? Let me teach you what cross-cutting is. There, that’s what it looks like, in 4,000 other movies since Birth of a Nation. Who gives a damn?

So, anyway, that’s just my rant on Birth of a Nation. I don’t understand why film schools are so obsessed with this boring, crappy thing. It just sucks. Come at me Birth of a Nation stans.

**Justin:** I know.

**John:** Send your emails to ask@johnaugust.com

**Justin:** A very controversial statement.

**Craig:** Yup. I’m out there.

**John:** But before you got into that rant I think you were asking why film schools and the Hollywood studio system are so regressive or so traditional and they are institutions. It’s basically they have a gatekeeper function. They classically have had that. And for people who were excluded from that system you have alternative systems that rise up. Just like we have alternative press and alternative newspapers, you had alternative films and independent films. And that’s what I think Justin is signaling that we have not been paying nearly enough attention to the history of independent film. We’ve only been paying attention to the history, the line that goes from Birth of a Nation through Casablanca up through, you know, Jaws.

**Craig:** Or when we do look at independent film we’re looking at our single, typically white male hero directors. That’s kind of the ‘70s worship of the guys that came in from USC and all that.

**Justin:** And those guys are great, you know. But the truth is that that kind of – these pockets of filmmakers exist all over the place and exist all over the globe. They exist in every race and every gender. But it’s only a certain grouping of them that we talk about.

And this is something that I deal with in the show Dear White People because the Ivy League that the kids attend in Dear White People is meant to sort of be an analogy for America or for imperialism or whatever. But the thing is all colleges are kind of based around this Ivy League system, at least in America. And the Ivy League system really came out of specifically preparing white, I believe Protestant men to be a part of the American workforce.

And so even though we’re moved from those days, college is really just about preparing a person to become a product. You are–

**Craig:** This is so good.

**Justin:** You are preparing to establish your market value. This is what I deserve to earn as a filmmaker. And so things that college is particularly concerned with is what the market is already looking for, what it already demands. You’re looking really to figure out how to fit yourself in a can of soup so that it can appear on the proper shelf. And I think that that knowledge is important and is interesting, but it isn’t like sort of the same as like, you know, knowledge in general. It isn’t the same as art and conversation and dialogue. These are things that happen in a culture and a society actually all over the place and in ways that might surprise people and are unexpected and don’t sort of fit neatly into a curriculum.

So, I really enjoyed film school. It was kind of like an escape. It was a way for me to get out of Texas and just sort of make movies every day and have that be normalized. But, a lot of what I needed to learn to sort of become the filmmaker that I am I had to figure that out on my own. I had to go find that stuff.

**Craig:** I fell into your discussion of higher education like a cold man going into a nice warm bath. That is so – I cannot tell you what a breath of fresh air it is to hear somebody talk about the higher education industry the way you just did, because it’s so spot on. I mean, the Ivy League tradition was originally meant to educate the wealthy sons of wealthy captains of industry so that when they took over the business they had some, I don’t know, general understanding of just well-rounded liberal arts and weren’t just kind of narrow dumb-dumbs.

And what we’ve ended up with, you’re exactly right, is a system where we actually before you get to college you are already a product that is being analyzed and tested and tested and tested. And the purpose of the testing is to get into a school. The school does nothing more than prepare you ultimately, I mean, what do Ivy League schools really prepare you for? I went to one. So I can tell you. To go work on Wall Street. That’s what they prepare you for.

I had no interest in that. So, I don’t know why I went there. This is a great – we should have a whole other discussion, like a very radical discussion about higher education on another time, because I’d love to dig into that. But obviously we have many other things to talk to you about.

**Justin:** We do. But just really quickly I have to insert like a really—

**Craig:** Go for it. I love it.

**Justin:** Something that just came up, because we research a lot every single for Dear White People and I was researching the admission standards and how that works. And not only was the goal of the initial Ivies to prepare white Protestant men to lead what they felt was going to be a new empire, the American empire. But specifically it was designed to weed out in this country at that time Italians, Jews, Black people, women, you know, everyone else so that they couldn’t sort of take the reins of this new empire. It was a way to make sure that only a certain sect of people would get to lead it.

**Craig:** It’s a weird thing. It is a weird thing. When you start to look back at how recent this was not just like an implied bias or a secret bias but just an open policy. Open.

**Justin:** In fact, it was created to enforce the bias.

**Craig:** Correct. I mean, we have a world where Einstein is teaching at Princeton and is generally considered the smartest man in the world and the father of the nuclear bomb that helped us win WWII, blah-blah-blah. And there is still a strict quota on Jewish students at that time at Princeton. Anyway. And by the way, no women. And Black people…what?

**Justin:** Oh please. No, Black people – you know, this idea of systemically taking Black people out of the history of various things, that really begins in WWII because they felt like the general public couldn’t take the idea that there were Black people fighting in the war, but what we were fighting was white supremacy. Like wasn’t that what we were fighting? Weren’t we trying to end fascism?

**John:** Who is the white supremacist actually?

**Craig:** Their white supremacy has a crazy costume, so that’s bad. But ours…

**Justin:** And so instead of going into it let’s just remove them from it. So that’s why you don’t see any Black people in WWII. That’s why you don’t see any Black people in the history of cinema ever talked about before the ‘70s.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** All right. Let’s get back to your university setting. So can you talk us through the decision to do Dear White People as a feature, the original feature you made, and then the decision, let’s transition into making it into a TV series? So the initial idea for Dear White People as a feature. Where did that come from?

**Justin:** I was sitting in college after one of many very funny conversations between the few Black people that went to Chapman. I was in the Black Student Union. And I was just having a conversation with a friend about how funny is it that like for certain Black folks, you know, we will tolerate all kinds of personalities because we like need each other in a way that’s different. And we just had this conversation about friendship and race that was like why isn’t this kind of conversation in a movie. I of course adored Spike Lee and Robert Townsend and John Singleton and Charles Burnett and sort of the Black filmmakers that came out of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. And I loved that, it’s probably problematic to say it now, but I guess it was then so I can say it. I was super into Woody Allen. Dun-dun-dun.

And like–

**Craig:** That’s all right. That’s OK. They’re movies.

**Justin:** Sort of like dialogue-laden, talky, articulate comedic satires. And I felt like I wanted to do that, but I wanted it to be new and fresh and speak to something that wasn’t being talked about. And what I felt at the time was that there really wasn’t anything in popular culture that was reflecting specifically my Black experience of being a Black person among mostly, vastly white people. Yes, I had my sort of community of Black people and Black friends, but most of time was navigating a very white world and having to cross in between those two things. I felt like that was an experience that I was having that all of my Black friends are having but yet none of us had a movie or a TV show that reflected that.

And so that’s really where it came out of. And at that time I just really knew that I loved multi-protagonist movies. It was like the one thing that no one at film school seemed interested in teaching me how to write or make. But I knew that I loved them and I loved Altman and I loved Do the Right Thing. And I loved Election. And Fame. These movies that nobody is right. And it’s not about consolidating around one particular point of view. It was about challenging the status quo from a bunch of different points of views.

And even though I didn’t really have language for all of that at that time I knew that my first movie had to be in that kind of world. And so ever since I had the idea to do that I really, you know, I spent years and years just sort of really self-educating myself how to write something like that. And in doing that it just became obvious to me that like within an hour and 40 minutes I could tell this story. But if this were ongoing somehow, if this were a series, and again in 2005 when I first started the idea of something like Dear White People being on television was laughable.

**Craig:** Right.

**Justin:** I mean literally it was unheard of. Nobody thought that that would ever happen. But in my imagination I thought, boy, this would really make for a great show. And I was inspired specifically by the M*A*S*H becomes a show. You know, Altman who is sort of a master of multi-protagonist cinema. It was already in my head. So by the time it started to come up it really wasn’t a decision. It was like do I want to pay rent and follow this opportunity to make Dear White People a show, or do I want to spend another eight years trying to get another movie made. So I picked the one that paid my rent and allowed me to keep going.

**John:** Justin, I want to stop you there on your decision to write the script while you were in film school. The idea that like, OK, this is a movie that I want to see that doesn’t exist but I want to see. And I think a message we keep trying to get out is that, you know, people ask us what you should write and we always say like write the movie you wish you could see. And it sounds like it’s exactly, Dear White People was exactly the movie you wish you could see because it did not exist out there. And you would have bought tickets for the very first showing, the very first day if it did exist. And so you had to make that movie. Is that fair?

**Justin:** I think that’s fair. And I think that’s a really important thing to stress because I think what we’re all taught, not only in film school but in film books and just by popular culture in general that like the most important question to ask is who is your audience. Who are the strangers that you’re sort of pouring your guts out for? And let’s make all of our creative decisions based on that hypothetical.

Whereas I always bought that, because I was like well I actually want to make things for me because I fucking love cinema. Like I will drink cinema’s dirty bathwater. I love it so much. And so what I want to see is a valid thing to bring into the equation because I’m not getting, you know, me as a gay, Black lover of cinema I’m getting hardly anything that’s geared specifically to me. It’s always an adventure from the outside in, you know, when I watch movies. And specifically when I watched the movies that people say are the great ones and the ones to watch. Like I’m having to look from outside a window into usually a very white life that Black people hardly ever show up in.

**Craig:** Well it’s described as this empathy gap where people who are in marginalized communities, in your case Black, gay, you are forced by culture to witness straight and white over and over and over to the point where if you’re going to appreciate what are an enormous amount of brilliant cultural works, you have to find a way to empathize with that culture. That culture doesn’t necessarily have to find a way to empathize with you. Right? Because they don’t have it. And, in fact, when you ask them to empathize with the other they really seem to struggle.

And what I find so interesting about the way you’re describing your relationship to the audience is that you have combined what you have taken in and who you are and then you say I want to make something that I’m passionate about that has a purpose. There’s sort of a purposeful self-expression. And I will argue over and over again until I expire that if you have a personal expression that is unique to you, meaning you’re not copying other people, right, so you’re not cynical, and you are not concerned with hitting a target. You’re simply expressing a concept that you believe hasn’t been expressed in this way and could not be expressed by anybody else like you can do it. If you have that, plus talent, then the audience will show up. Right?

So that’s like the old joke of like how do you avoid paying taxes on a million dollars. Step one. Get a million dollars. Right? So you definitely need talent. But there are a lot of talented people who don’t really get – look, for whether or not, people can argue about what my talent level is, but coming out of this very middle class kind of workday ethic background that I did my attitude was you work the jobs they give you. And that was where I was. And that’s where I was for a long time.

You were clearly and are clearly a braver person than I was. And it’s for the better. If you have talent – I mean, that’s obviously the key, then you trust it. You will essentially create the audience for the work that you do.

**Justin:** Yeah. I mean, I think that that that’s true. But I also think that for somebody like me, specifically Black, gay, it isn’t a given that an audience will show up. You know, there are so many brilliant storytellers who are braver than I am frankly and who are really out there, you know, doing something that popular culture is not ready for. But because they are a woman or because they’re gay or because they’re something other than straight white men audiences don’t find it. And people don’t champion it.

And I think my bravery, if you could call it that, really comes from a sense of urgency. A sense that like if I don’t do this and if I don’t take this chance and if I don’t sort of make the loudest version of this thing I will be completely ignored. You know? It’s sort of like there’s a pressure there.

You know, Dear White People is not the only thing I came up with. Dear White People is not the only thing I was thinking of in 2005 when I started writing it. But I knew that it was the one that had to come first because it was loudest. It doesn’t feel courageous in the moment. It actually feels quite terrifying. But I appreciate that it reads as brave. [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, you know, you can’t be brave if you’re not scared. Right?

**Justin:** That’s very true.

**Craig:** Bravery is action in the face of fear, I think.

**Justin:** That’s absolutely true.

**John:** Well, Justin let’s talk about the actions you took in that face of fear. What were the steps from I have this idea, I’ve written this script, to actually we’re rolling cameras and we’re finishing a film? What was the process of getting from idea to there’s a movie that can debut at Sundance?

**Justin:** Well, for me the process was really about motivating myself to do the work. There was a tremendous amount of work to do for Dear White People. One, I had to learn how to write it. I had to learn how a multi-protagonist film works. Because they don’t work in the same way that a single protagonist film works. And the kind of obvious thing of like, oh, it’s just like a single protagonist film but with many protagonists. It actually doesn’t answer a lot of questions. And it’s a really easy thing to get lost in.

And so part of my process was to watch everything that was multi-protagonist first and foremost. And then watch everything that felt like issue-driven. And whether or not it felt like Dear White People tonally, whether or not it was a comedy, I needed to get into my DNA the way these movies operate because, you know, something like Do the Right Thing for instance, you know, Mookie is technically the protagonist but he actually isn’t the one that breaks us into act two. It’s actually Buggin Out that breaks us into act two by bringing up the brothers on the wall.

But then it’s Mookie who breaks us into act three, but [unintelligible]. So just like little things like that, having to sort of – you know, what are the rules here? And so that was actually a really wonderful process. And then the other part I’ll be honest is I watched the Star Wars documentary Empire Dreams countless times because what George Lucas was trying to do with that film was also to make something he wanted to see but that did not yet exist and in fact really nobody, even the studio up until the day before release, nobody believed in that project.

**Craig:** They let him have the rights to the merchandise. [laughs]

**Justin:** Oh yeah. And I think they put it in two theaters or something. It’s like no wonder it’s a blockbuster because it’s only playing on two blocks. I needed those stories and I read a lot of biographies just to know that I belonged in the room. Because the self-doubt is crippling, I think for anybody trying to break into this industry or be an artist.

But especially for me because I was trying to say and do things that frankly I had no indications that I would be allowed to do.

**Craig:** Love it.

**Justin:** So there was a lot of that. And there was a lot of table reads. There was a lot of self-prodding. Self-given deadlines. Forcing myself to, OK, I’m going to figure out this plot problem this week. I’m going to table read with this group of friends by this month. You know, that kind of thing just went on for years and years.

**John:** But at what point did you have – there’s a budget, there’s a schedule, we’re actually going to make the movie? What was the transition point from this is a script that I’ve written to this is a movie I’m making?

**Justin:** So around 2011 we had a table read and I felt like people got it. I felt like people were picking up what I was putting down. And there was a conversation after that table read that was exactly – that’s how I knew that the script was in a place where I felt it was ready to be produced because people were having the exact conversation that I wanted people to have in the lobby after seeing the movie.

And so I made a concept trailer, because I mean there was just absolutely no – there was no market for what I was doing at that time.

**John:** Let me push back against that. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a market, because we actually know there was a market because the movie did really well. But there wasn’t an obvious prior to say like, oh, an audience will show up for this movie. You had no evidence of that.

**Justin:** The movie did OK. But it was, you know, I remember sitting with my agents and these people who were very passionate about me and my career and the movie were like, “So just so you know, 90% of all independent financiers we actually won’t even be able to go out to because they won’t even look at the package because it’s a Black ensemble”

So, yeah, it was like really I didn’t have any clue how to get the movie made. So, I just took whatever next step was available. And I felt like, wow, we should make a concept trailer so that people can get what this is. Because on the page it’s multi-protagonist. It doesn’t read like a script that a reader would expect to receive. You know, some readers, particularly white male readers were incredibly offended by aspects of the script. And so I made this concept trailer so that people could see it and get a feel for it. And that went viral online. And instead of at the end of that trailer “coming soon” it would say, you know, “Don’t you wish there were movies like this? Me too. Give us some money and maybe we can make that happen.”

And we raised about $45,000 and we were able to hire a casting director. And essentially we made YouTube videos about the making of this movie until a bigger financier eventually maybe a year and a half later came onboard to properly finance the film at about a million dollars. And, you know, because of the virality of that original clip we were, you know, there was a studio that was interested for a while and then they dropped us. And then spread a story that I had dropped them. It was all of this BS like political stuff going on.

But the net result was the movie wasn’t getting made. And then a year and a half in, because we had built this fan base online, and then we were continuing to water it and foster it, you know, this financier, Julie Lebedev, who also financed my second film, Bad Hair, I mean, she was just like, “You guys have an audience before there’s even a movie. Like let’s do it. And can you do it for $1 million?” And I said I don’t know, but I know that I’d rather try than not. And that’s exactly what happened.

We went to Minneapolis because they had a rebate program called Snow Bate that had just come back. We landed and looked at the University of Minnesota and we were told, well, you know, if you want to shoot here, and at that point in time it was the only college in the nation that we conceivably had a timeframe that we could shoot at. They said, “Well then you need to start in two weeks.” And that’s what we did. We hunkered down. I started casting. And all of a sudden we were making a movie.

**Craig:** I just love this so much. I love stories like this because it just shows a certain kind of indomitability and an impossible persistence is required.

**Justin:** Yes.

**Craig:** It also – I think it also goes to the heart of this very strange paradox. I think people think that studio productions are all about minimizing risk and independent film financing is the riskiest proposal of all. It’s actually backwards. Most independent film financing is the most cowardly kind of financing. They only way they’ll give you that financing is if they can do foreign pre-sales which make them make money before you even start shooting.

**Justin:** Absolutely. Absolutely. And foreign pre-sales work on specifically white star talent.

**Craig:** Yes. White and generally male star talent. And that system is, I mean, we have a certain kind of wonderful racism here in America. There’s a very old classic racism overseas. It’s a different kind. It’s a different vintage.

**Justin:** Nostalgic racism.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. And it is very much their theory is that “Black movies do not travel.” I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. And we know for a fact that it’s not true. We know that.

**Justin:** We know it – it is proven untrue constantly.

**Craig:** Constantly.

**Justin:** And yet it’s still the paradigm. And so when people talk about how does racism persist, it’s like it’s not necessarily even an attitude. It’s not like – there maybe, but I don’t envision this hidden meeting of all the independent financiers and they’re like, “How do we keep the Blacks out?” Like it’s not like that. But when there’s these informal rules in place that’s essentially what we’re doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a received wisdom. And then every time a movie with a – let’s just say a significantly Black cast or a predominantly Black cast, or a movie about issues pertaining to Black people or race does well overseas they just say, “That’s the—“

**Justin:** “The exception.” Yeah.

**John:** The exception that proves the rule.

**Craig:** The exception. It’s an exception that proves the rule. Well, if every single exception is an exception then they’re not exceptions. It just happens so often.

**Justin:** It does.

**Craig:** First of all, hat’s off to the financier who was bold enough to say, “You have an audience. That’s all I need. I don’t need to be repaid by Spain, France, Germany, Italy before you can roll film.” I mean, to me that’s what independent film financing should be. So that’s good for her.

**Justin:** Well I think that’s great about Julie is that she would like that, but she recognizes that it’s wrong that that isn’t happening for certain kinds of stories and I think Julie is in the business of making – of proving markets that haven’t been proven by other people. And certainly with Dear White People and then again with Bad Hair, I think we’ve been able to do that.

**John:** Now, so you made this feature. It gets a great reception. The decision to go and make this as a TV series, in some ways it seems kind of obvious because when you have a multi-protagonist story, well, TV is multi-protagonist. You’re always going to be following multiple characters. So it seems like a pretty straightforward transition. And yet it’s so much more time and space and storytelling and a crew that is not just to make one feature but to make a whole series. You have potentially other writers. What was your process like figuring out how to move from I’ve made a feature to now I’m making a TV series?

**Justin:** Well, at that time I was certainly inspired by what was happening in streaming. I was inspired by things like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black because I felt like there was this new paradigm. There was this new space for cinema on TV. We were sort of moving beyond the idea that a show had to be very tightly formatted so that a kind of rotating set of creatives would come in and essentially make the same thing each time.

We were moving past that. And we were now moving into this world where you could stream an entire season of something as if it were just a really long movie. And that was really exciting to me. And I remember one of the early screenings of Dear White People there was an executive, her name was Tara Duncan, she’s president of Freeform now, but at the time was a creative exec at Netflix. And she said, “Have you thought about making this as a show?” And I said I absolutely have. And she said, “OK, well when you guys sell this,” at the time Netflix wasn’t really buying movies at that time, “so when you guys finally sell this I want you to think about it.”

And as I toured with the movie doing Q&As across the country a lot of which were at colleges, mostly white colleges where the BSU was throwing an event to show the film, or even in other countries like in Paris in particular, in London, Scandinavia, I was having these moments where I was realizing like, wow, the Black experience is actually a global one. And there’s so many things that we didn’t even begin to get into with this movie. So I started preparing just in my mind what would a TV show be like for this. And I started thinking about what could we do that would be new and fresh and exciting. And I came up with this idea of why don’t we give each character at least at the beginning their own episodes. So it’s a multi-protagonist show but it’s not a multi-protagonist show about this one light-skinned girl Sam and her friends. It literally is like when we’re in a Lionel episode we’re meeting everyone else from his point of view.

Wouldn’t that be interesting if we did something like I’ve seen Robert Altman do and I’ve seen other directors do with feature films, but we did that on TV? And that’s really where it grew out of. And there was a lot of material that didn’t get to be filmed that eventually became episodes. One thing that I recognized is that there were a lot of different kind of people showing up for the movie, but reliably Black women, young Black women were showing up. And were identifying with Sam and Coco. And I felt it was a priority to get Black women both in the writer’s room but also behind the lens to direct these episodes.

I never felt like this should just be coming from my point of view. I felt like my point of view should maybe set the parameters, but then I want a bunch of artists that are like me and I want to give them what I never get, which is room to do them and to say something that is specific to them. And that’s really the technique that I went into that with and I was able to do that. I was able to build a writer’s room where people felt empowered. Where people felt like they could bring their real stuff to the table.

We did the same thing with our creative departments, and particularly with the directors. And it’s been like going to graduate film school. I get to sit there and learn and mold and shape these world class directors.

**John:** Now, you have two seasons that are done and they’re out on Netflix.

**Justin:** Three.

**John:** I’m sorry, three seasons. But are there plans for – like what would you do next essentially? If there’s another season how does this current cultural moment we’re living in, how do you see that shaping the future of this show? What does it feel like to you?

**Justin:** We were actually writing season four when the lockdown happened earlier this year. And so we finished writing season four over Zoom. And then about the time that we were done writing it, and it was very emotional and of course it was like nobody knows that this is even happening, but we’re like oh my god this is the end of the show. Because it’s also our fourth and final season, I forgot to add.

And so the lockdown happens. And then the scripts are just sort of in a vault somewhere for a while. And then, you know, all of the protests around George Floyd begin to happen. And when the video of George Floyd went out, you know, as a Black person you don’t know if this is going to start a movement because frankly videos like this have become just part of the everyday fabric of life. And especially as a Black person it’s like every other week there’s something like this that happens. And when it starts to become a movement, you know, that was really mind-boggling and inspiring.

But then you realize that all of the same complications and all of the ways in which racism persists even among really well-intentioned people, well-intentioned white liberal people especially, all that stuff is still there. It actually felt like we had written a season especially crafted for this moment, but we of course had no idea that that’s what we were doing. The sort of method of attacking each season always involves deep, deep research. And a constant trying to tune in to what is in the Zeitgeist. Like what is just below the pop culture that’s happening.

And we end up making these wild predictions. And I can’t say much without spoiling it, but we end making these predictions that tend to come true. And you’re going to see the season and think that we wrote it in response to what’s happening, but we didn’t.

**Craig:** I have had my own weird dance with that very thing. And it turns out if you just look at the world and talk about it honestly that things that happen after are going to see like you predict them. You’re not predicting anything. You’re just accurately reporting what other people may not have been looking at.

**Justin:** I think that’s absolutely right. I think that’s absolutely right.

**John:** Cool. We have one listener question that I felt was especially relevant for this. Craig, would you mind reading us what Ryan in Brooklyn wrote?

**Craig:** Yeah. Ryan in Brooklyn, where I was born, writes, “My writing partner and I spent the first half of 2020 researching and writing a script based on a very well-known character from 18th Century American history. He is by no means the most heinous of culprits as far as racism, sexism, colonialism and the like go. But, he owned slaves and benefited from systems of white supremacy none the less.

“As our current culture reevaluates how we see these figures who in our case have for the most part been known as heroes and pioneers, we have taken a pause to ask ourselves for reasons both moral and creative if the project is worth even continuing with. How does one strike a balance between giving history its due but also taking into consideration modern sentiments?

“For instance the only people of color in the script are either servants or slaves who would have been paid very little mind within the limited scope of our narrative. But I feel like leaving them out altogether is white-washing. Artificially propping them is white-savior-ing. And leaving them as they are is lazy.”

Well, that is I suspect a dilemma that a lot of people are wrestling with right now.

**John:** Absolutely. And Justin it feels like the kind of dilemma that your characters on your show might be arguing. So talk us through what you’re thinking as you hear Ryan’s question.

**Justin:** Well, one, I applaud Ryan for having the dilemma, because there are examples of many people in this particular situation who don’t see a dilemma at all and just sort of well we’re just going to not talk about the slave people. Or that’s a very easy decision. Or we’re going to hang a hat on it. So kudos to you for recognizing the difficulty of the moment. I think for me and this is not really going to sound like advice, but for me it’s not just about how I’m telling a story or why I’m telling a story, but timing is a very important factor in storytelling in my opinion.

There are certain – there’s a time for certain stories. Because we’re trying to speak to a certain moment. There’s a reason why out of all the things people could be thinking about or talking about or experiencing we want them to experience this little slice of life right now. And for me – for instance I got a script the other day, it’s a wonderful script. Wonderful story. But it’s about a white boy sort of among a bunch of Black and Brown people where he is the outcast. And we’re sort of getting something of the experience of prejudice from his point of view. And I was like this is a good story, but I can’t tell this right now because this isn’t – this is a point of view that everyone is already pretty saturated in. And actually the story about the Black and Brown people who sort of just kind of accompany his world, those are the stories that have been left out. So actually I would like to tell those stories right now.

So, it doesn’t mean like abandon your story, but I would say, you know, I think you’re right to maybe give it a think and give it a pause. And if the Black people, the sort of subjugated people in that story are not the focus of it, you know, maybe they could be. Maybe we don’t really need a historical heroic example of a white person from a backwards time right now. Or maybe there’s something else to say about that person that is pertinent to the moment.

I think stories do exist in the times that they’re born out of and they should speak to those times. At least that’s how I feel as an artist. And everyone can do and make what they want. I may not go see it. [laughs]

**Craig:** I love that answer. I think that’s great.

**John:** Our friend Aline tipped me off to a podcast that charts all the presidents in order going up through modern day. And just because I know so little about the presidents, and my daughter is starting AP US History. And so I’m listening to the first episode and they talk about young George Washington who I only have the one image of George Washington which is sort of what’s on the dollar bill. But if you actually go back and look at he was pretty hot when he was a teenager. He had a reputation. He would have been a social media star essentially. He was known around the community and he was sort of heroic and dashing and sort of a wild adventurer. And there’s a story to be told about young George Washington, and yet I have exactly Ryan’s qualms about it because I don’t know that I need to see a young George Washington story and try to fit it into a context that is at all meaningful in 2020. It doesn’t feel like, what you said, it doesn’t feel like the time to tell a young George Washington story.

**Justin:** Especially because don’t we all have – I mean, you can’t live your life as an American without being confronted with George Washington’s story.

**Craig:** Thank you. We know it.

**Justin:** The one story that I just learned about is that it wasn’t wooden teeth, it was slave teeth. Did you guys know that? That he had slave teeth towards the end of his life.

**Craig:** Ew.

**Justin:** And it became wooden teeth over the course of the centuries of that story spreading, but it was actually the teeth of his slaves. It’s things like that that to me would be much more interesting to see a perspective or a movie about.

A movie I fucking love and I talk about this all the time that did not – I feel like this is another topic – but I feel like film criticism failed this movie. And it is Lemon by Janicza Bravo. And what I think is so brilliant about that movie is that essentially she’s telling a tried and true story that we accept all over the place about an actual sociopathic white man but nobody can see it because he’s a white man. And so the movie is very uncomfortable. And if you don’t quite know what she’s doing maybe you feel a little left out.

But what she’s doing is she’s telling the story that we always go to the movies to see, especially in independent cinema. It’s the thing that we always fall for, but she’s doing it without the white male gaze. She’s doing it from a Black female gaze. And that makes people very uncomfortable. But I was like that is so brilliant. That’s the movie about George Washington I could see right now.

**Craig:** It does seem, Ryan, like one of the things you’re hearing here is not only, OK, well done you’re considering this and timing matters, but also there have been a lot of books and movies and television shows that have examined very well-known characters from 18th Century American history. Do you know why they’re very well-known? Because they’re very well-known.

So if they’re very well-known, I don’t know, do we need another one?

**John:** Well, but Craig it is an opportunity to look at one of these people and fill out the context. So I guess the question is is it worth spending the time to take a look at one of these characters and paint out the context when you know that painting out that context is going to be really not just challenging but may not be the right time to be doing that.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. It just feels like – also, I feel we’re about to get – you know, I am always on the lookout for the trend. Because the trend is what, so people are behind things always. That’s what they want, the people that are paying for things. And the trend is going to be, well, let’s keep telling stories about famous white people but now let’s also focus on the Black people around them. Or, or, crazy idea, tell stories about not those white people. Because we’ve already had those stories. I actually don’t need another story about Thomas Jefferson as it relates to Sally Hemings or his slave-owning or the south. Because I’ve gotten my fill of Thomas Jefferson in Paris. I had 1776. I have John Adams. There’s a lot of Thomas – there’s Hamilton which we’ll be talking about. There’s a lot of Jefferson. Jefferson, Jefferson, Jefferson. I’m good. Let’s move on. Let’s find other people to talk about.

That’s my general feeling.

**Justin:** But I will bring this up, too. The dilemma that’s being described to me feels like – I always feel that way as a writer. And it’s not about racism. Like I always get to a point in the story where I’m like, oh, I don’t know if this works anymore. I don’t know if this fits. And so it might be a necessary machination of the process. Maybe this movie, you know, this is going to say woo-woo, but I do feel like stories kind of have their own souls sometimes. And they tell you when they’re not ready. They tell you when they need something else. They tell you when they’re not working.

And this might be your journey to making a more interesting project. You know, this pause that you’re being given by this moment might actually be an opportunity to explore a different area of this very same person or this very same moment in time or, you know, or something deeper, more challenging, more interesting perhaps.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** All right. It is time for our One Cool Things. Craig, kick us off.

**Craig:** Well, I didn’t have one myself so I turned to my intrepid assistant Bo. And I said, Bo, do you have a One Cool Thing? And that is why I’m going to talk about long hair, which I don’t have.

**John:** Nor do I.

**Craig:** I don’t really hair. I mean, I have a little bit. So, Bo does have very long, straight hair. And apparently when you have long straight hair, so I’ve been told, it does get very dry at the ends. And, you know, you hear about split ends.

**John:** Yeah. I kind of know that as a theory, but I don’t really know what it is.

**Craig:** Yeah. So I guess the ends of your hair just start to split because they’re dry. So she is recommending something called Olaplex. And we’ll put a link in the show notes. If you have long hair that is getting dry at the end do what Bo does. Check out Olaplex. I cannot vouch for it myself because I don’t really have much hair.

**John:** The amount of money I save on hair care products is staggering.

**Craig:** I use like this much shampoo. Boink.

**John:** No shampoo for me. My One Cool Thing is a website I’ve gone to for years, and years, and years. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about it on the show. It’s called Electoral Vote. If you go to this website, it’s electoral-vote.com, it looks like it’s from 1995. It’s like a really basic website. But every day they just update it and it’s these two smart guys who sort of summarize the political news and sort of what’s happening in the world for you.

And if you just read this every morning you feel like, oh, I kind of get what’s happening.

**Craig:** This is an encouraging map I’m looking at.

**John:** Yeah. So it was originally set up about sort of literally the Electoral College and that. But it’s morphed over the years into just a general political discussion of what’s going on in the world. Good summaries. Really good Q&As over the weekends. So, I’d recommend you take a look at this.

What I had to do during the 2016 election was really deliberately limit myself to how much news I would take in, because my anxiety just went off the charts. And so this would be the kind of thing which I would allow myself to look at in the mornings and then look at nothing else for the rest of the day.

So, if you were to go on that kind of diet this might be the thing you would leave in so you can get some information.

**Justin:** What is it again?

**John:** Electoral-vote.com.

**Justin:** Oh, OK, Cool. I missed the dash. Cool.

**Craig:** John, your description is perfect. This website does look like it was made back in the Angel Cities area.

**Justin:** Absolutely. Yeah.

**Craig:** But it’s a nice map to look at. I mean, I’m kind of grooving on the map. Because I don’t – I’m one of those people when everyone is like, well, we’ve put out a new poll. Biden leads Trump by this many points in the general election, I’m like, oh, you mean the national poll that I don’t care about at all?

**Justin:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Give me the states. Give me the states.

**Justin:** This is giving me so much agita.

**Craig:** It’s coming.

**Justin:** Louisiana, why? OK, go. Sorry.

**Craig:** I think you know why.

**John:** Know yourself. Know yourself. And if this is not the right thing you’ll know it and you’ll clip it away and you won’t put it in your bookmarks.

**Craig:** I like this.

**John:** Hey, Justin, do you have a One Cool Thing for us?

**Justin:** You know, this one made me feel so old. Have you guys heard of Animal Crossing? But I’m just going to say the thing that I think is fucking cool. I am so enjoying I May Destroy You. I know this is not a hot take. But Michaela Coel’s show on HBO or the BBC depending on where you are is just a cool – if you’re a writing nerd, you’re seeing the things that they’re doing on that show and the things that they’re getting away with in a TV show is so inspiring and liberating.

So, I don’t know if that’s cool enough or edgy enough.

**John:** Oh, it’s absolutely cool enough. We’ve been trying to get Michaela Coel on the show and Megana has been working really hard on it. So, people in Michaela Coel’s universe, if you are hearing this now we really are trying to get you on the show. So, we would love to have her.

**Justin:** I also just want to meet you and worship at your feet. So, if you can just reach out to Justin Simien. That would be great. If you just need some worship.

**Craig:** I feel like, yeah, she’s the new Phoebe, right? I mean, I’m not taking anything away from Phoebe. Phoebe remains Phoebe. But there’s this meteor that has arrived and everyone is like, oh my god, how do I get to talk to Michaela.

**John:** But you know what? We got to speak to Phoebe.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** So hopefully we’ll be able to get to speak to Michaela as well.

**Craig:** And just to reiterate, Phoebe, still a meteor. Still a Phoebe-like meteor.

**Justin:** Well I want the Zoom code or the Skype code. I just want to listen in. Because, you know, I think she’s incredible.

**Craig:** Honestly, after your discussion of higher education, Justin, I’m considering having you be a permanent third host on this show.

**Justin:** [laughs] I’m down. I’m down.

**Craig:** When you meet a kindred spirit you’re like don’t leave me. Stay.

**Justin:** I love nerding out about this stuff.

**Craig:** So great.

**Justin:** It’s my pleasure.

**Craig:** Well, you know what, we’ll nerd out about Hamilton in our bonus segment.

**Justin:** All right.

**John:** Absolutely. So until then Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did our outro. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. Justin, what are you on Twitter?

**Justin:** Oh god, I’m barely on Twitter. But @jsim07. I may not @ you back just because it’s not on my phone right now.

**John:** Which is so smart. We have t-shirts. They’re great. You can get them at Cotton Bureau. There’s a link in the show notes.

You can find those show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com or on the podcast that you are playing this from. 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 just about to record on Hamilton.

Justin, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

**Craig:** Thanks Justin.

**Justin:** My pleasure. Thanks guys.

**Craig:** That was great.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Craig, you are a big Hamilton fan. Did you see Hamilton on Disney+?

**Craig:** Yeah, of course I saw it on Disney+. Are you crazy?

**John:** Justin Simien, did you see it on Disney+?

**Justin:** I did.

**John:** And had you also seen it in the theater?

**Justin:** I had.

**Craig:** And I have twice.

**John:** I have twice. And I’ve seen it with this original cast in the theater.

**Justin:** Oh wow.

**Craig:** Yup. I saw it with the original cast and then I saw it out here at The Pantages with another spectacular cast with I think – Renee Elise Goldsberry was the one kind of carryover, but everybody else was knew I think.

**Justin:** You guys are hardcore fans.

**John:** We’re pretty hardcore fans. I loved the staged production. I will say I loved the film production as well. But I need to provide some context. I was staying at an Airbnb when this debuted and so we hooked up our AppleTV, watched it, and it was only after I watched it that I realized that motion smoothing had been turned on.

**Craig:** Oh no.

**John:** And you know what? It was good.

**Craig:** No. No.

**John:** My theory is, and I can’t of course reengineer it to know, but I think the weirdness of live theater and motion smoothing which makes things look too present, kind of worked for it.

**Justin:** I could see that.

**Craig:** Outraged.

**John:** It was weird. So I think it made the one case, other than professional sports, in which motion smoothing is not an absolute horrible–

**Craig:** I hate it on sports. I hate it.

**John:** But let us not talk about the motion smoothing. Let us talk about Hamilton on Disney+ and our reactions to it. Justin as the guest you get to start. What was your reaction to it on Disney+?

**Justin:** Oh god. This is very putting me on the spot.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**Justin:** I’m not, OK, I am probably not the biggest Hamilton fan in the world. I wasn’t before I saw it on Disney+ and I’m still not. But, I thought, you know, one, seeing theater on TV in this form is something that like deserved this quality of production for a really long time. Like when I went to performing arts high school like – every theater geek knows about that one tape of Into the Woods with Bernadette Peters in it, or Pippin with Ben Vereen.

**Craig:** Yup.

**Justin:** And I love that stuff. So to see it normalized on TV is great without the gimmick of like doing it live in front of an audience that I think some Broadway shows are being adapted for TV in that way. So to see it just like in its native Broadway environment, well-filmed, with beautiful lighting, clear audio, I think was kind of a revelation for me that like, god, I wish I could see more shows like this.

**John:** Craig, what was your take?

**Craig:** The same. Look, I do love the show. And I appreciate the – it’s five years old now. And because we’re older five years seems like the blink of an eye to us. My daughter who is a huge Hamilton fan, she’s grown up, like she’s changed dramatically from a 10-year-old to a 15-year-old as Hamilton has aged one-third of her life with her.

So, it is interesting to see how the world changes and we do start to look back and reexamine. I still think that Hamilton is an incredibly important show. I think it has opened a ton of doors. I think it has changed Broadway permanently. I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius.

I think that if you now want to look at the show and start asking questions about – he does sort of wave his hand kind of these aren’t the droids you’re looking for in that kind of manner over slavery. He’s very smart about how he – there’s a line right up front, “While slaves were being carted away across the waves.” He is smart to mention it. And it comes in various points. Does the show address slavery the way I think he would if he were doing it right now? No. Is that kind of the curse and blessing of art? Yes.

The art stays the same. The world changes. We do go back and look at it, but it is so good that it is – you can still dig into it and chew on it. From a musical point of view and from a storytelling point of view it is mind-blowingly good to me. And I really appreciated the fact that I could just see the show.

There are a ton of shows where they just don’t do it. I think they don’t do it because they’re scared that you won’t show up to see the show maybe. Hamilton obviously does not have that concern. They have sold out every performance they’ve ever had. But I would love to see other shows done this way because it is wonderful to watch. And it is a very different experience than a film adaption, like say Chicago, or the live versions which are live versions and not the show.

I thought Tommy Kail did a really great job of somehow being there and inside of things, but not in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t watching the show. More than anything what I really appreciated was the one thing that I couldn’t get in a theater and that was the faces. To see faces like that. Leslie Odom, Jr. in particular, who is just like, yeah. So that’s the MVP of the show, right? All respect to Lin who is, again, a genius, and who created the whole thing, wrote every one of those insane words, and managed to wrestle the whole thing. For a performance point of view, Daveed Diggs is a scene-stealer. But Leslie Odom is a show-maker.

And being able to see his face and the way he moves his mouth is very specific was fascinating to me. I got more of his inner turmoil and the terror of a man that’s constantly pretending all came out in the close, which I loved.

So I thought it was wonderful and I will absolutely watch it again. I remain a huge Hamilton fan. A huge Lin-Manuel Miranda fan. And just as much – more of a Leslie Odom fan. More of a Daveed Diggs fan. All of them. Christopher Jackson. All of them. Just remarkable.

**John:** So, I had a Broadway show, Big Fish, that you do a filming of it. So, pretty much every show that’s on Broadway there is at least one performance that is sort of properly filmed. There are multiple cameras in the audience filming it. But it wasn’t anywhere near this level of sophistication where – and it’s not edited in a meaningful way. So there’s not that kind of sophisticated approach to when we’re going to be in a close-up, when we’re going to be over here, when we’re going to be actually on stage and following a character as they’re making their exit. We have none of that.

And so there’s not a filmed version of the show I can look at and say, oh, here is the show. This is the thing that I made. And some of that is what theater is supposed to be. You have to actually be there to see it live and in person. And Craig you were asking sort of why more of them aren’t done it’s because – large part of it – is because the union contracts that govern how the performances are made basically bar the filming or make it impossible to have that be out there any other place.

And you’re always worried about cannibalizing future sales of the show by people just watching the video of it, which makes sense.

**Craig:** I get that.

**John:** But watching Hamilton, I think the thing that was most surprising to me is when it was done I did not have any desire for a typical adaptation of Hamilton. I didn’t want to see the movie version of Hamilton.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**Justin:** I agree with that so much because I think that Hamilton works in a very theatrical way. And I actually – this is going to sound like shade but it’s not – it is sort of, you see it with the adaptation of Cats into a film, is that some things they aren’t – it’s not a direct translation. I think a fantastic movie could be made of Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong. But you can’t just film it in real life and have it just be what it is. It just wouldn’t work. Like it works because it’s a concert experience almost. You are overwhelmed by these amazing performances and you feel like you’re there and there’s an audience participating. And you need all of that, I think, for Hamilton as it is conceived right now to work.

I felt the same way about The Lion King actually. And that I really enjoyed because I think too few people really appreciate the power of theater and musical theater in particular to be both musical and whimsical but also profound. And Hamilton is both dramatic, profound, and a musical. And that’s something that like only a few people understand because only a few people will have access. For that I think it’s very meaningful to have it out.

And I could not agree more. This to me is the version of Hamilton to see.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, there are certain shows that are easier to adapt than others. I mean, I’m in the middle of adapting one right now and I consider it to be one of the easier ones in the sense that the show is trying to be cinematic and so you can now be totally cinematic as you do the film adaptation.

Whereas Hamilton is not trying to be cinematic. Hamilton is interpretive and it is stylized. For instance, it does remind me of Pippin in a little way.

**Justin:** Absolutely.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** So when Pippin sings about war they’re dancing. It’s Fosse. It’s not war. And here when they’re fighting the Battle of Yorktown it’s dancing. And take the bullets out your gun, take the bullets out your gun. How the hell would you shoot that with real soldiers and bullets? It just would be ridiculous.

**Justin:** They would try. [laughs]

**John:** They would.

**Justin:** Which to me is so depressing.

**Craig:** They would, yeah.

**Justin:** In Broadway stuff in particular that gets translated to movies I’m just always – not always – but I’m mostly very disappointed because no one has taken the time to figure out how to adapt the theatricality of the show to cinema. They just sort of film it. And that’s not the same as adapting it. And some of these shows, and Hamilton is one of them, like I don’t think anyone should have a first blush idea as to how to do that. It should be recognized as an incredibly difficult problem to figure out how to adapt something like Hamilton to the screen.

**Craig:** Lin, I think, could. I suppose if there’s anyone who could do it Lin could. I still remain very impressed by the adaptation of Chicago. I think that was—

**Justin:** Oh, I think it’s great.

**Craig:** Incredibly successful. In part because Rob Marshall understood that he was making both a movie and also shooting the show. So he kind of runs in two lines. There’s reality, which feels cinematic, and feels real, and in the world with cars and outside. Because theater is inside. Movies are outside. But then also there are these moments where, you know, He Had it Coming is – it’s not the official name of the song, but–

**John:** Staged.

**Craig:** It’s staged. It’s a dream. Even when Latifah is doing When You’re Good to Mama there’s two versions. There’s the real one where she’s just in her regular – and it’s a regular prison – and then there’s the one where she’s in a burlesque on stage. So, he manages to do the theater and the real at the same time, which is brilliant.

I think Chicago is an excellent sort of map.

**Justin:** I love Chicago. And I love that Chicago consolidates really for popular culture some things that Fosse was doing in his films that I don’t think quite made it to the mainstream yet. Like if you look at Cabaret you’re starting to understand – Cabaret to me really is one of the first American musicals that begins to sort of have a dialogue between the real world and sort of like stage reality. And then with All that Jazz when the character starts hallucinating on his deathbed and he starts seeing in his mind what it would be like if this were made as a musical number you’re starting to see the language for that form. But it really isn’t until Chicago that it’s sort of like put into a kind of thesis that I felt like my mom could understand, or a general movie-going public could understand. And I don’t know, I do not include Chicago in the list of Broadway adaptations that I’m disappointed at. I quite like Chicago.

**Craig:** And interesting that you point out Cabaret because now we’re talking – there’s something about Kander and Ebb, I’m just going to say. Those guys are – when I think of the shows that they’ve done and written they do seem somehow slightly more adaptable. I don’t know how. There’s just something about them where I can see it working. I think part of it also is just the nature of the songs. They feel like I want to watch them being sung on screen. Or do I need them to be in a theater or else they’re boring? You know?

Like Sondheim to me, you got to be there. I don’t know. I just believe that. You got to be there. It just doesn’t work the same way if you’re not there. That’s my feeling.

**Justin:** Well I’m going to say it. I would have made a great Into the Woods. [laughs]

**Craig:** I love it.

**Justin:** And by the way I think it is possible to make a great Hamilton film. It’s just a lot harder than I feel like–

**Craig:** People might think.

**Justin:** People might realize, yeah.

**John:** So let’s also acknowledge that the Hamilton that we saw on Disney+ was not the version – well, it was a version – but we weren’t supposed to see it on Disney+. We were supposed to see it on the big screen. This was going to be a theatrical release. And I think it would have been a giant theatrical release. I think it would have been a big event.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And that would have been a very different experience to see it on a big screen with a big audience to be able to cheer together. I can imagine people singing along in a theater.

**Craig:** That’s the part I hate. [laughs] I’m so angry at that part, in my head.

**John:** Maybe some screenings they would allow singing, some screenings they wouldn’t.

**Justin:** Eliza!

**Craig:** Shut up!

**John:** I remember seeing Evita at a singalong Evita and it was great that everyone could sing along to the songs. But, it’s important to remember that Broadway Theater is incredibly expensive so very few people get to see it. And so people have much better experience, or their experience of Hamilton is probably largely through the cast album rather than seeing the show because so few people could afford to see the show.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** Movie tickets are much, much cheaper, so it’s how most people would have seen it. But now that it’s debuting on Disney+, which is an inexpensive subscription service, just the amount of people who saw Hamilton in one night when it debuted on Disney+ has got to exceed probably everyone who saw it, at least the original cast, in the theater.

**Craig:** Of course. Of course.

**John:** And so it’s important to remember sort of how transformative a cultural thing can be when everyone can see it is the thing, when it’s taken away.

**Craig:** This would have been – I mean, years ago if they had had to do this it would have been on ABC and they would have had commercial breaks. A lot of them. That’s how we watched stuff when we were kids, right? Commercial breaks. Oh my god, can you imagine? Oh my god.

**John:** Yeah. I may be working on one of those things with commercial breaks.

**Craig:** “Forgiveness.” And then, “We’ll be back after these messages.” Ah, yeah, commercial breaks.

**John:** All right. Thank you gentlemen very much for talking about Hamilton with me.

**Craig:** A joy.

**Justin:** My pleasure.

**Craig:** A joy. One more reason that I want to spend all my time with Justin.

**John:** Thanks.

 

Links:

* [WGA AMPTP](https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/wga-amptp-negotiations-deal-contract-1234695529/)
* [Dear White People](https://www.netflix.com/title/80095698)
* [Lemon Movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5973364/)
* [Olaplex](https://olaplex.com/)
* [Electoral Vote](https://www.electoral-vote.com/)
* [I May Destroy You](https://www.hbo.com/i-may-destroy-you)
* [Hamilton on Disney+](https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/movie/hamilton)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Justin Simien](https://twitter.com/jsim07?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 Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/460standard.mp3).

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 458 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on this podcast we’re going to talk about why and how screenwriters find themselves collapsing and combining scenes. We also have a bunch of listener follow up about returning to production, portrayals of police on screen, and issues faced by Black writers. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we will talk about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Your favorite. I know you’ve just been on the edge of your seat.

**John:** I am weirdly excited about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**John:** A lot to get into.

**Craig:** If there was ever a reason for somebody to quickly subscribe to the Premium member feed it’s this. Because even I’m–

**John:** What is John excited about with the NBA?

**Craig:** I couldn’t possibly–

**John:** Only the Premium members will know.

**Craig:** I mean, I cannot wait to hear this.

**John:** But professional sports are not the only thing going back into production. So, on previous episodes we’ve talked about how actors are likely to be the deciding factors about when shows and movies go back into production with COVID-19 precautions. And we also noted the power imbalance between stars on the top of the call sheet and those listed lower.

But Joe wrote in. Craig, do you want to talk about what Joe–?

**Craig:** Sure. Joe says, “I’m an actor and a member of SAG/AFTRA and the truth is that virtually no actors make a consistent living from performing. The overwhelming majority of actors book one or two day-player gigs a year. That’s if they’re lucky. And then they have a regular job that pays the bills. So the question that actors in this situation, which is most of them, have to ask themselves now is do I risk my life for a non-life-changing role? Because getting COVID for an occasional day-player gig that pays a thousand bucks can cost them the job that actually pays their bills.

“Actors are so desperate to land that life-changing role. So my hunch is that they’ll continue to risk their lives for the day-player gigs just to stay somewhat relevant. It’s a sad F’ed up situation because the odds of deriving a livelihood just from acting are slim to none.”

**John:** Well that’s more depressing with each paragraph.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But let’s do talk about that, because I think it’s important to acknowledge that WGA writers who are working in Hollywood, some are working a lot, some are not working as often. But if you’re a working writer you’re a working writer and that can be your main source of income.

With actors there’s a lot more variability and there are a lot of actors who are a member of the union who really are in the situation that Joe describes where you’re booking one or two jobs a year. And so for them, god, do they take the risk of going to a set that they don’t feel safe on? It’s a hard calculation.

**Craig:** Well, go a little further. Because Joe stops his calculus at day player. So for those of you who don’t know what that phrase is, actors are hired usually week to week. That’s how your general cast is employed, either on an episode basis or a week to week on a feature basis. Day players are people that are hired for one day. So that’s the role of the waiter who comes by and says, “Sorry sir, we don’t have what you asked for.” That’s a one-day job. They’re paid one day.

But what about background? So extras. Extras are already working kind of in tough conditions. They’re not particularly well cared for by productions. They are often smooshed together under tents. And they eat separately from everybody. I wonder about them as well, particularly because extras are the ones that are in crowd scenes. So when you see a big crowded room and you think to yourself in our post-COVID mentality, oh good lord, everyone is going to get COVID in that room, almost all of those people are background.

**John:** Yeah. So all the precautions we’re talking about in terms of like, oh, maybe we can shoot two parts of a scene separately so the actors aren’t actually as close as they seem. Or we’ll do things, when we talk about not having crowd scenes, well in some cases you’re still going to have to have some background players moving through there. Even in a show like Brooklyn 99 there are people who move through the backgrounds of those scenes and those people wouldn’t be masked.

And so it’s tough. And it’s tough for those people to decide, OK, I feel comfortable being in this situation without a mask while this is happening. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** I’m afraid that Joe is right though that a lot of people want to be in show business. And not only will day players show up at risk to themselves to make as he says a thousand bucks, but background artists and extras will show up to make a couple of hundred bucks. Therefore it is kind of incumbent upon our business to figure out how to keep these sets safe because people will show up.

**John:** Yeah. And we should also stipulate that everyone working on a set, like everyone working overall, is taking some risk by showing up. It’s just that the precautions that a grip or a gaffer can have about masking up and other safety equipment, a background player may not be able to have those because they’re literally on camera. So that’s what we’re talking about here.

The same way that we see news people having to make the decision of are they taking off their mask when they’re on a camera shot or are they leaving their mask on, those are tough calls. And people are having to make those decisions in real time.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Yeah. Another thing we’ve been talking about a lot on the show is portrayals of the justice system. And we’ve speculated that networks and showrunners will be looking at shows that portray policing and the justice system more realistically or in different ways than they classically have. Bob Shane wrote in to say, “I’d like to call your attention to a really good series that was on ABC for two years and it got canceled this year called For the People. In it a group of young lawyers who recently passed the bar exam are hired. Some by the federal prosecutors’ office and others by the federal public defenders’ office in New York. The show cuts back and forth between the cases. It never pandered to the police or authoritarian law and order agenda. And it did a great job exposing the flaws in the system. It was created by Paul William Davis and produced by Shonda Rhimes’ company.

“I suspect that this would be the moment for fans of that show to ask ABC to bring it back, or for Shonda Land to get Netflix to pick it up.”

And so this was a show that I had in my head and I could not remember the name of it as we were talking about it. Because Paul Davies is actually a friend. His daughter and my daughter went to school together and I knew when he was actually just starting his career as a TV writer. He’s a lawyer who transitioned to that. And so he’s always been on my list of like, oh, I have to have Paul on the show to talk about transitioning from another career in your 30s. Because he made that transition and got to run a show really early in his writing life.

So, yes, I think that’s the kind of show I can imagining happening more often. But even in the description that Bob puts here I can see why it’s a harder show to program than the other 19 police procedurals.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the thing about police procedurals and we’ll also call them justice procedurals, like Law & Order, which was built around trials, which don’t exist, is that they’re easy to do. It’s built-in drama. I mean, trials are dramatic. They have an incredibly narrative-friendly structure. You make an argument. You make an argument. You cross-examine. There’s banging of gavels and objections and moments of drama. And then people go and decide. Who wins?

Well, that’s just perfect.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like sports. There’s a clear outcome. There’s a winner and a loser.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In ways that reality doesn’t have winners and losers.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. Most of the time people are losers when they end up in the justice system and their loss is some kind of brokered loss that’s done a bit bloodlessly.

So, I agree with you. That does sound like a hard one. But I’m sure that, you know, look, if it got on the air, it was on for two seasons. So it was obviously doable. I think that will ABC bring it back? It’s unlikely. And I don’t think this is the time where we should be looking backwards and sort of dusting things off. Everything has changed quite a bit. It’s time we write new things. So it would be interesting to see what somebody like Paul Davies would do now if he continued working with Shonda Land or purely for himself or anything.

**John:** Yeah. Well on that topic of what we do now and do forward, do you want to read what Ryan in Florida wrote?

**Craig:** Ryan writes that “Episode 456 forced me to take a closer look at one of my characters, a sheriff, and to rethink his role in my story, which I believe was your intent. It occurred to me that the sheriff is a ‘the end justifies the means’ sort of guy. Where did this thinking, the end justifies the means, come from? And why is it so pervasive in a country founded on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice for all? Your podcast reminded me that the means is the end. Separation of the two concepts exists only in our mind. Here’s to hoping that America will rediscover the passion of its principles and pursue the ideals that changed the world.”

Here, here, Ryan.

**John:** Yeah. So I want to unpack a little of that because America was founded on the idea of justice for all and freedom, but it was also founded on this idea of like the frontier and the going your own way and sort of the lone wolf thing. So, it’s interesting that our sheriff mentality tends to be towards the hero/lone wolf person. And other parts of our justice system are more about the teamwork and justice for all. America has always been built on that duality of like we’re all in this together, oh it’s every man for himself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this was a debate that was going on when they were coming over in the Mayflower. Literally they were having this debate. Because we are a nation of what we’ll call sort of progressive liberal thinkers, a guy like Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island among other things and who believed in the equality of all peoples, including Native Americans, with whom – he learned their language and he had good relationships.

And then you had the true hardcore puritan Calvinists who believed that people were born either good or bad, as babies. It had been predetermined by god. And so, of course, if that’s your point of view and you believe someone is evil, why in god’s name would you allow the means to disrupt what must be divine justice?

Similarly, if you believe that you are good then you should be able to take whatever you want. Hence, manifest destiny. This is the American duality. And it’s interesting to see writers starting to at the very least recognize the duality is there. And once you know it’s there you have choices to make.

**John:** Also this week I saw a discussion that Brooklyn 99 was talking about it needed to throw out the first four scripts they have written for this next season to shoot, because they just don’t make sense given the environment. And that is a thing that you’re going to see in every writer’s room. Those initial weeks’ discussions will be really challenging to figure out what is our show in 2021. What makes sense?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s tough to see. But I think it does come back to some of these fundamental American principles that are in conflict with each other. That we are a nation born of people who sought freedom who also enslaved people.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** We’re always going to be grappling with that. I think it’s just much more obvious that we’re grappling with it as we come up with this next batch of series.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, look, a lot of people are going to accuse Hollywood of virtue signaling. And I think it’s important to recognize the difference between virtue signaling and evidence of virtue. Because virtue signaling is a cynical act. You’re not virtuous. You’re not trying to be virtuous. You don’t even understand the virtue of the virtue you’re signaling. You’re just putting on a show in the hopes that people will praise you, or not attack you.

Evidence of virtue is just that. If you are making an effort because of the right reasons to be a more equitable employer, to be a writer who is more aware of other perspectives, to be listening, to be changing, evolving, including, then people will see evidence of what I would consider to be virtue. And the cynical tarring of all evidence of virtue as virtue signaling is also something dangerous that we need to keep aware of.

Not saying that we shouldn’t also be – because, look, there’s a lot of virtue signaling. So let’s not pretend. Even if 90% of it is virtue signaling, at least 10% of it is evidence of actual virtue. And so be brave enough to do that and hopefully you don’t get hit with that accusation.

**John:** Yup. Widening our clock back further, we started this year talking about assistant pay and assistant pay cuts. Nick wrote in this week a suggestion which I found really interesting. So it’s kind of long but I want to read through it because it’s systematic and it speaks to systemic ways of thinking about it that might be helpful.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So Nick writes, “I’m an officer in the air force and I’ve lived in a few different countries over the last few years. Pay in the military is rank-based, meaning no matter what your position is if you’re X rank with Y years of service you get Z pay. It’s a very simple formula and you can even look it up in military pay charts to figure out what that pay is because it’s public knowledge.

“But because the military is spread across the world it would be unfair to give everyone the exact same wage because being stationed in Los Angeles would obviously be extremely more expensive than living in Oklahoma. That’s where BAH, or basic allowance for housing, comes into play. Every zip code in the US has a certain BAH based on different factors that the Department of Defense updates regularly. If you Google BAH calculator you can input a zip code and find out how much the government would pay you on top of your base pay if you were stationed there.

“This is something our government already does and is supposed to represent the amount of money you need just for housing in order to live decently in that area. The studios could easily start using this data to determine what is fair to pay their assistants on top of whatever the minimum wage type salary they’re trying to pay their assistants.

“For example, using LA zip code 90038 and a pay grade of E2, air man, normally a high school graduate with no college education, and brand new to the service, the monthly BAH would be $2,079. Using the rank of O1, a second lieutenant, the minimum requirement for which is a Bachelor’s degree and probably more closely aligned with the education level of an assistant, the BAH gets raised to $2,430.

“Do you think this is something the studios could use as a starting off point when determining what is a fair wage for their assistants? I feel like it’s as impartial as you can get and ensures that assistants are getting paid enough money to live comfortably.”

**Craig:** Interesting. Well, double-edged sword there. So always have to look at the law of unintended consequences. If you rigorously format payment then what you end up with is a situation similar to what we do when we’re negotiating union minimums. The minimum becomes the maximum. So, the deal is we only have to pay you – this is what the chart says, so that’s what you’re getting paid. And, yeah, we’ll pay you a little bit extra for living there. But there isn’t going to be as much upward variability.

Now, people could argue that it’s the downward variability that’s been crushing everybody. And I think that’s reasonable. The thought experiment is what happens if we firm up the floor, what happens to the ceiling? And that’s an interesting economic question. I don’t quite know the answer. But I think that since everyone who is an assistant in LA is living somewhere in incredibly expensive LA, this is probably not as impactful as it is for the military where as Nick writes people could be living in vastly different kinds of environments in terms of cost of living.

**John:** Yeah. So what I think your analogy with scale is absolutely appropriate. It is setting a floor. And so when unions negotiate scale it’s to set a floor so nothing goes below that. And for assistants we’ve talked a lot about sort of like what is the minimum sort of livable wage in Los Angeles. And so we talk about for a 40-hour week is it $25/hour? For a 60-week is it $20/hour? Is there some basis for which a person can make enough to live? And something like this calculator is helpful for figuring out what is the actual expense of living in Los Angeles, or the expense of living in New York.

What I do wonder is if this variability based on location could be helpful in thinking about how much we’re paying crews who are living and working outside of Los Angeles. Because some markets are a lot more expensive than Los Angeles and some are a lot less expensive. And so we’d be thinking about how much does a gaffer who is working in Atlanta need to be paid versus a gaffer who is living in Los Angeles? What are actual livable wages in those places? That might be interesting.

But because each of those productions is sort of working as a one-off I don’t know that you’re going to have a bigger impact or the range of impact that you would hope to have by using this kind of calculation.

**Craig:** You start to feel bad for people who move to stretch their salary further and then the company says, oh you’ve moved, we’re cutting your salary.

**John:** And that does happen. I have friends who moved from Los Angeles to cheaper places and the companies they’re working for are like, “That’s fantastic. You had an allowance for living in London and now you’re not living in London.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Not easy answers there.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** I also want to point our attention to – this wasn’t written directly towards us, but a lot of people mentioned us in it. Nicole French had a Twitter thread from this past week.

**Craig:** Yeah, I saw this.

**John:** She writes, “Today a Black film editor posted in a Facebook group for Hollywood editors looking to connect with other Black editors as they’re severe under-representation in post-production and they can be hard to find. What ensued is a slew of white editors who immediately objected to the post, asked for it to be taken down by moderators, and accused the poster of breaking the law, discriminating against whites, fanning ‘anti-white racism’ against them. And insulted Black editors and white editors speaking up for diversity.”

And this just felt like a giant Yikes to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] I mean, I saw it. I went through it. I looked at it. I’m not on Facebook, but because the link was there I could kind of go through or somebody had maybe just sort of copy and screen shot it. Is that the past tense of screen shot? It’s not screen shut?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Screen-shotted those things. And so first of all there’s just a question is that illegal and the answer is no.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I mean, if somebody said, “Hi, I’m looking to hire people and I will only hire” and then lists a group, there are employment issues. There’s employment law and things like that. But saying, yeah, I’m looking to just have a discussion group or meet up with or talk to, I mean, what? Of course it’s not illegal. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

**John:** Yeah. An affinity group for underrepresented population, yes, that’s not illegal.

**Craig:** No. It’s not illegal. And then there was just stupidity. Look, there’s all sorts of levels of racism. This was not quality racism. I don’t know how else to put it. It was like dumb-dumb racism. It wasn’t like, oh, I don’t know, when some sort of super thinky person writes this very long essay that disguises their racism in rather thought-provoking terms. No. This was just dumb-dumb racism. Like, “What? That’s not…bah.”

And I just thought, well, this makes white editors look awful. It was every single one of those. I just want – I’m going to say this, because I can. Because this isn’t illegal. I would never, never – I will never – hire any of those editors. Not because they’re white. I’ve hired white editors before and I’ll hire white editors again, no question. And not because they’re men. I’ve hired male editors and I’ve hired female editors. I won’t hire them because they’re dumb. How about that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, anyway, you’re not working for me anymore. And I hope other people look at those names and go, yeah, I don’t want to work with you either. Because you’re a dick. There you go. And I want a new group that’s for not dicks. Is that OK? Is that illegal?

**John:** Now, Craig, it struck me that I was seeing these Facebook messages, these screen shots, and it’s like I can’t imagine writers who do that. And maybe it’s just because we’ve been in this a little bit longer, but I don’t see the same things happening among screenwriters. And I’ve definitely seen concern about, you know, you and I have both talked to young white men who are trying to get staff writer jobs and feel like it’s really hard for them to get a staff writer job. And I’ve heard that. I’ve listened to that. And I’ve also been able to sort of talk them through that. None of them would be so stupid as these people who are replying in this thread, how they were replying.

**Craig:** I mean, these people seemed like editors who had jobs. So it was like they were eating in a restaurant and someone came in and said, “Hey, for those of you who have not yet been served do you want to come have a discussion?” And they said, what, you’re excluding us because we’re already eating? No! We get to talk to anybody.

And you’re like, goddammit. No, writers tend to not be this absurd. Or at least, no, let me take it back. There have been writers who have been this absurd, but not in a cluster like that. It was this weird cluster. It was like a herd of dopes.

**John:** I also felt like that a lot of those things happened like 10 years ago, or five years ago. I think we went through that wave and those people got culled a little bit. So, there just wasn’t a culling yet in this ring.

**Craig:** It’s not really praise for writers as much as just more damning evidence of these guys. I just – it was just like, ugh, they were just dumb-dumbs.

**John:** Dumb-dumbs. All right, Craig, now this is a thing I don’t think you’ve read ahead in the outline, but I feel like it’s important that you probably read this message from Tyler because I want to see how you respond.

**Craig:** Sure. This is going to go great. Tyler from Bellingham writes, “I just became a Premium subscriber and I’m listening through the back catalog. I just listened to Episode 7 and made a horrifying discovery. Not only is John withholding from Craig the riches he’s acquired through the podcast, he owes him potentially millions of dollars for coming up with the very idea of Highland.” This is great so far. I like you, Tyler.

“Toward the end of the episode John and Craig discuss screenwriting software. This is prior to John creating Highland. As they’re wrapping up the conversation Craig says he believes there is an opportunity in the market for a mid-priced screenwriting software to compete against Final Draft and other smaller players. Shortly thereafter John released Highland.”

All right, Tyler, your argument is falling apart quickly. “If I’ve learned anything from Scriptnotes it’s that an offhanded comment in an informal setting is 100% copyrightable and stands as a legally binding contract. Thus, John owes Craig bigly. I look forward to hearing how John plans to right this wrong.”

Tyler, this is one of the best things anyone has ever written in. You’re great. [laughs] You’re great. And you’re right. An offhanded comment, and certainly an idea as we all know, is property. John owes me what I think is probably millions of dollars.

**John:** Yeah. Probably [unintelligible]. Tyler, it shows a good understanding of the entire dynamic of Scriptnotes to be able to retroactively apply to that conversation we had way back then. And probably Highland was in the works back then. I just may not have said anything about it. But we can figure out in the timeline when we actually – when I started talking about Highland. Because there was a public beta for like a year before we released it. So, who knows?

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I guess I probably am owed money for that as well. I’m a saint. That’s what I think. Eventually people are going to understand that–

**John:** Saint Craig.

**Craig:** I’m a Saint.

**John:** He’s a Jewish Saint.

**Craig:** Yup. I’m a Jewish Saint. We have those now.

**John:** All right. I want to propose a craft topic. So this was something that I was encountering this week. And Craig I feel like you probably encounter this too.

**Craig:** Oh, of course.

**John:** If you have not encountered this I will be so angry.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no. All the time.

**John:** All right. So the project I’m working on I have a detailed outline and have really good understanding of what all the scenes and sequences were and I felt really good about it. But then I still encountered a thing that I’ve encountered in most of the scripts I’ve written is that – and it often happens in the third act, but it can happen sort of anywhere is that there are two or three story beats that I intended to be separate scenes or sequences and in looking at it and looking at the overall length of things and how stuff was working I was like, crap, I need to compress these down to become one thing. These can’t be separate scenes. They need to be shrunk down into one scene. And I feel like I’ve done that in nearly every screenplay I’ve written. And yet I don’t remember us ever talking about that as a topic on this podcast. Have you done this?

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. Of course. Usually I think when I’ve been doing this it’s not as a result of the creative process within but as you point out it’s when we’re going through budget and the practicalities of shooting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So there was quite a budget battle on Chernobyl. It was a prolonged slog. It was a WWI trench warfare battle. And thank god I had Jane Featherstone and Carolyn Strauss and Sanne Wohlenberg to fight that fight and I never had to get on the phone to do that, thank god. Sooner or later they had to come to me and say, OK, well we have a list of things. We’ve gotten a bunch more but we have to make some concessions. We have a list of things that we could compress. So, let’s talk through them. And then my job – and this is almost I think every writer faces this at some point or another in production is you are the one who knows the difference between hitting an artery and hitting a capillary.

And so your job is to guide people away from the arteries and figure out how to kind of squish the capillaries back into other things.

**John:** Yup. So, let me talk through an example of this and offer some of the choices that a screenwriter might make. So here’s the example. Let’s say you have – this is the middle of a script. You have two characters. You have Denise and Alfonso and they notice a strange smell in their house. That’s one beat. Second beat. They search the house and eventually discover that a family of raccoons is living in the attic. That’s the second beat. Third beat is the animal removal guy hits on Denise in front of Alfonso. So that’s a third beat, which should hopefully be a surprise.

So those three beats, they might be fine. They might work really well. They could be funny. They could build on each other. They could be effective just as it is. But if for reasons of length or budget or just a sense like I can’t have these three beats you need to compress or collapse these. You have a couple of choices. And so let’s talk through what those choices might be.

You could move the first and second beat together. So scene, we’ll call it A and B, could be combined. So we might come into the scene with Denise and Alfonso already searching for the source of the smell. So we don’t see the discovery of it. We don’t see the realization that there is a smell. We come into the scene and they’re already looking and we just set up within the already looking that they smell something. So that’s a choice to compress and combine those two.

Second choice. You could move B into C. So it’s basically cutting out the discovery of the raccoons and going from I smell something to there’s the animal control guy who is getting the raccoons out of the attic. So within C you’d have to explain that there is a family of raccoons up there, but you can get rid of B.

Third choice. You cut A and B and you just do – if the important thing is C, like the animal control guy hitting on Denise, you just do C and you sort of build the setup into the start of C.

Or, if the raccoons were more important than the animal control guy you might cut C and just do A and B.

Craig, can you think of any more choices you might make in terms of getting through those three beats if you had to lose and compress stuff?

**Craig:** No, I mean, those – you’ve got the permutations. And the fact that you’re using A, B, and C kind of, that’s the giveaway that what we’re talking about here is essentially the multiple scenes being reimagined as multiple beats in one scene. Right?

So, setup a conflict, a reversal, a complication, and payoff. This is roughly how these things go. So, what we’re saying here is if someone comes to you and says we have to squish this down your job is to analyze these three beats and say what is actually the purpose of all of this. What am I trying to do here? Is my purpose to show that Denise and Alfonso are a stronger couple than they realized? Well then I need to see the guy hit on Denise in front of him and I need to see probably them already mid-search, freaking out over something together that maybe somebody insists isn’t there. So four people are searching but only Denise and Alfonso smell it. It’s the thing that binds them together. See what I mean? The point of all this can’t be the plot.

The point has to be, well, probably relationship of some sort or even if not a relationship some sort of internal character growth, that’s the part you need. And so now your job is to figure out what is the most essential other bit required to get that part to work.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And a lot of times what you find when you do this exercise is you’ve made things better. Because you’re essentially pre-editing with a good editor, not a dumb-dumb. And we don’t necessarily need to see lots of things. This happens all the time in the editing room where we’re not making these cuts or compressions to save money, we’ve already shot it. We’re making them to tell the story better.

**John:** Yeah. And if you were able to do this in the writing phase versus when it’s on the nonlinear editor in front of you can do a better job. I mean, you can do amazing things in the editing room, but you can do much more cogent and clever things if you do it while you’re writing. I should have said another option is you cut A, B, and C and just find a different way to achieve those same ends. Maybe there’s going to be too much shoe leather to get you through all those beats if you are trying to do this. Maybe you don’t need the animal removal guy and there’s a different way to achieve what you’re trying to achieve by that whole sequence that can be done as a scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** A reason why I often find myself doing this in scripts as I sort of think retrospectively about stuff I’ve written is the too many endings problem. Is that a lot of times when I’m compressing and collapsing things it’s because the movie wants to be over and I’m not letting it be over. And so if there’s stuff to pay off rather than have multiple scenes that are paying off one thing I need to get those all to sort of be part of one movement, as part of one action. Because the reader and the audience get tired of things just closing and ending. And they want to be done. And so sometimes you need to compress those moments down.

I’ll often find those beats though in the first act, too, where it’s like I know why I’m setting these things up, but if it feels like we’re just setting stuff up it’s not going to work. So I need to find ways to compress those beats and combine those beats into a single scene rather than have multiple scenes stacked up one after the next.

**Craig:** Yeah. The flow of this stuff wants to be concise. I think it’s a fairly common syndrome for people to want to stretch out. Maybe because some of the movies that turn them on initially are movies that feel very dialogue-y. Many people have remarked that Pulp Fiction gave birth to a million terrible scripts because it seemed like they were Shaggy Dog scenes that would just go on and on and people were talking. And some of them were. But the dialogue was fantastic. And things that were happening as it turned out were pieces of a fairly intricate clockwork mechanism.

A lot of times your instinct is to stretch out and just play through moments and find what matters and find what’s impactful. But ultimately things want to compress. You want less. And so you are going to start collapsing. Even as you’re writing inside of moments you’re going to start collapsing.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Until what you thought was a sequence of A, B, C, D, and E you realize is really just a sequence of A and B. That’s all it is. It’s just two things. So let’s just two-thing it, not five-thing it.

**John:** Yeah. Great. So that is collapsing scenes. Let us do a big transition to our special guests for this episode. So, about two weeks ago on June 12 the WGA Committee of Black Writers put out an open letter to the town calling for systemic change on a host of issues. To talk about those concerns let’s welcome the co-chairs of this committee. Michelle Amor, Hilliard Guess, and Bianca Sams. Now, we’re all talking on Zoom so we can see each other, but it’s challenging when we have five voices on a podcast. So, Michelle, can you introduce yourself so we can hear your voice and know who is talking?

**Michelle Amor:** Yes. Hi, I am Michelle Amor.

**John:** And Michelle, where are you from and how long have you been writing in Los Angeles?

**Michelle:** Oh, I’m from Chicago. I moved to LA in 2010 to attend UCLA to get my MFA. And I have been writing professionally since just right before that, but also I’m a fulltime professor of screenwriting over at Loyola Marymount University.

**John:** Fantastic. Hilliard Guess, talk us through how long you’ve been in Los Angeles and how long you’ve been a writer. What’s your background here?

**Hilliard Guess:** I’ve been in LA since ’96. I’m a former actor turned writer and producer. And I’ve been writing since about 2000/2001.

**John:** Excellent.

**Hilliard:** I now do film and TV. So I’m back and forth.

**John:** Fantastic. And Bianca could you introduce yourself and how long you’ve been in LA? What’s your background here?

**Bianca Sams:** Hi. My name is Bianca Sams. I am the vice chair. And I’ve been in LA about five years. I was a playwright and an actor. Moved into film and TV. I came for the Warner Bros program and have stayed. And yeah.

**John:** Excellent. Now, Michelle, let’s start with you. So in your letter you start off talking about the public statements that the studios and other companies made in the wake of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other Black people killed by police. How important was it for you that these companies made these public statements, or saying that Black lives matter? How important was it for them to say that?

**Michelle:** It was very important. I mean, at the end of the day it’s very frustrating to be a Black American. I mean, I think a lot of people now are seeing how frustrated we’ve been. I mean, most of the people I know for example we’re contributing members to our society. We work really hard. And we’re just constantly oppressed in so many ways. So, hearing even just the words, it definitely helped. And it inspired us to think about responding to it. And that’s why the letter also had the historical context because it’s important to know where you’re going knowing where you came from.

So we couldn’t let that slide without talking about things like Birth of a Nation and all of the issues that we face every day.

**Craig:** Well I like the fact that you’re not letting things slide. Because I think for a long time that’s kind of been the nature of things, right? People complain and then everybody yes, yes, yes, and then they let it slide. That’s been everyone’s default position. And I want to read this line that you guys wrote which in and of itself is a gorgeous piece of writing. So that’s why I want to read it, because I like reading good words.

It says, you said, the three of you, “Basically either you commit to a new institutionalized system of accountability with and to Black writers, or you prove that you’re putting on just another strategic virtue signaling performance deemed necessary to survive the times.”

First of all, bravo. That’s awesome. And I love the clarity of it. And I particularly love the word prove. Because I think it’s fair to say at this point after about a thousand virtue signaling performances that that’s exactly what the studios and networks have done for all of these years. They’ve just done what they felt they needed to do so they could just survive and not be canceled as the kids say.

So, tell me about the thrust of that because I’m sure there was probably some debate about how to temper this statement. How strong, how aggressive, how not aggressive, how conciliatory. Talk to me a little bit about if there was just an automatic unity of thought of how you should proceed with this statement.

**Michelle:** So, yeah, the whole thing was like, OK, let’s come with facts. Let’s hit them hard. But let’s also leave the door open for real change. Like we understand that we want to work in this business. We’re not saying like blackball us and kick us out. We’re saying, listen, we’re here because we want to tell our stories, too. And now we want you to follow those statements up with some real action. And we used our numbers so you could understand that we understand where the problems lie. If, for example, we’re 15% of the population but we only make up 5.6% of the film writing jobs then that’s a problem that we can work to correct.

**Craig:** Right.

**Michelle:** And those are things that we really wanted to be sure of. And let me just be clear here. It was very important to me specifically that the statement not only said what we wanted to say but it said it very well. We knew we were going to send it out to a mostly writers community. And we didn’t want anyone, “Look at those Black writers. What are they saying?” We wanted to impress the hell out of all of you. We wanted you to look at those words like, “Ooh, look at the command.” That was very thoughtful.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** Now Hilliard one of the recurring points in the letter is about accountability. So, let’s talk about that because every year the WGA puts out pretty detailed reports about who is getting hired or not hired. We also see university reports about representation on screen. But that feels like a way of counting, and it feels like in your letter you’re really arguing more for a moral accountability that you’re looking for. That you want an outcome that’s not just pure numbers but is actually what you’re describing is a systemic change.

So you say, “We need to revolutionize the way our industry hires writers.” What does that look like? What are some parameters, some benchmarks? And what does the change look like if it happens?

**Hilliard:** Let me just give you a couple things, just to think about it like this. If we have people in higher places, more people will be hired. That’s just the way it is. The reason why a lot of white guys are being hired is because their white friends are there. So it’s the same thing. Which is why, as you see, my favorite line in the entire thing that Michelle wrote was this line. “You need more Black friends.”

So if you think about that, right, then the system will change itself. Because if you had more Black friends in your rooms and not just one, you know, that the system would change itself. So we need more people in places to hire. We need more people in rooms. We need more people in the place with a voice. And we need the opportunity to fail. You know? Three or four key things that I know if you just did that alone things would change.

**Craig:** We’ve been talking a lot about the opportunity to fail. It’s a weird one, because it might be maybe a first instinct to not talk about it, because it has the word fail in it. But there is nothing shameful about failing. Writing is – what is writing? It’s failing a thousand times in a row and then you get what you call your last draft. Right? What’s rewriting? It’s just fixing your failures.

And allowing people to fail, it’s how they learn. It’s how they learn. And I think one of the issues that we know as a town, we were talking I guess it was last week, we were talking about the difficulty of some of the diversity programs whether or not their heart is in the right place, it sort of makes it like come on in, and then if you fail, well, I guess you failed so that’s a diversity failure. Next person in, please. It just doesn’t connect.

**Hilliard:** One of the things that a lot of the TV shows forget when they staff, these writers coming out – and Bianca was in an actual program so she can speak to this specifically, but they forget that she got into that program as an example over like 3,000 or 4,000 other people. You’re talking to the top people.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Hilliard:** You know what I mean? So their script is better than every staff writer that’s staffed. Do you know what I mean? So you keep forgetting that. And I actually just told this to Jack Melbourne yesterday. I’m like, dude, you guys got to be better. [Unintelligible] it’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, go ahead Bianca.

**Bianca:** No, but it’s also even the idea of failure. Like that’s why they’re not moving up or why that’s not happening for them which is honestly usually not in fact the case. They’re only paid for for one year. And when they have to pay for them then they cycle them out for another free person and they’re not in fact encouraging the mentoring and moving them up. They’re seeing them more sometimes as tissue people. OK, here’s a spot at the bottom. You have the least amount of power. You have the least amount of ability to change the culture in the room. But you have a spot for the moment. Next. Onto the next.

But to go back to something that John said, actually I think the numbers are very important. And I think it’s a thing that if you want to make something better you have to be able to track it. You have to be able to analyze it. And you have to put your energy there to be able to improve it. So you have to be very specific though, right? Like if you have – we don’t have complete numbers, for example. So it’s hard for us to say OK here are really the problems. We’re kind of glossing over and you’re kind of maybe looking a little bit here, and maybe looking a little bit there. And it might appear on the surface that things were improving but in reality if you can’t tell me well how many Black writers are moving from staff writer to story editor, and how quickly? If they’re being asked to repeat four or five times then we can’t actually see that that’s a pattern. It happens year over year over year. How do you go back except for anecdotal information and change that problem?

And I know for myself, numbers again is my thing, I’ve asked for these numbers, I’ve looked for these numbers, and depending on where you go they’re all very different. And it’s hard to just be like what are the Black writers. What are the Black female writers? What are the Black male writers? We can’t get that kind of data. And oftentimes it feels like we’re putting Band-Aids over dams because it’s like, OK, we do this one thing over here and we have these two little things and everything will be fine.

**Craig:** Because there’s this sense that the companies are looking for an answer that will make this all be quiet. But there is no one answer and we’re missing certain – like baseball has a thousand new statistics. I love all of them. But we need an upward mobility statistic for writers in Hollywood in all groups who have been marginalized. Right? We just don’t have that – whatever that factor is, we don’t have it. Sorry, John, I cut you off.

**John:** Yeah. So it sounds like what Bianca is describing is we have good numbers that are trying to speak to equity and access, like sort of being able to get into the system, but we don’t have good numbers about equity of opportunity, equity of outcome. That the same person who is at the same job can move up the ladder in the same ways. And so tracking that and having meaningful statistics that actually follow the path of people through it will help, because like everyone else on this call I’ve heard all the stories of writers having to repeat at levels that they should not be repeating, or not being able to move from being paid out of a different fund out to being the real staff member. And we need to actually be able to chart that better.

**Michelle:** You know, I was talking to a showrunner yesterday about not just getting in as a staff writer, but how many Black EPs are in this town and how many Black show creators have shows on the air and how many Black writers have overall deals? Because that’s where the real power is. When you talk about that power seat, you talk about where are we in a position? It’s like Hilliard said, when you have Black showrunners nine times out of ten they’re creating what we would consider Black content. So they’re going to hire Black writers. And that’s really what’s happening on I would say like the white side or the mainstream side.

But, you know, we can write on any show. That’s the other thing, too. This idea that, oh well, I don’t have any Black characters, I don’t need a Black writer. It’s like excuse me? I love action. I love sci-fi. I love horror. We can write on any genre. And to assume that we can speak for voices outside of our own yet others always try to tell our story. That’s frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. White people aren’t shy about writing on Black shows, are they?

**Michelle:** Not at all.

**Hilliard:** Exactly.

**Michelle:** And I think some people, you know, really don’t get how insulting that is. Where you’re not even represented in your own way. Like I sold a show to CBS last year. I remember having discussions with executives about this Black woman. And they were like, mmm, they were not Black, they were not women, and they were really kind of pushing back on me telling them who I am. And I remember I was like, hmm, this is weird. So I’m saying that to say it’s frustrating because we’re constantly fighting to even just tell our own story because so much of who we are it’s like stereotype and frustrating.

**Hilliard:** And when I signed to one of the big four agencies I remember sitting down at the table with them and they were all excited about me. They were going to do all these great things for me. And before I left I said in front of everybody, “Here’s the last thing you need to know. Do not just send me out for things that are Black.” I live in a white world. I know everything about you guys. We’re consumed with you. So to assume that we don’t know you is the most ridiculous thing.

Now, for you to get me is where I’m impressed. For you to get the nuance that we have that’s when I’m impressed.

**Michelle:** Yeah. I always tell my students, I mean, I teach at LMU. Most of my students come from Republican/conservative white families. And I’ll say to them when they say, “I want to tell a story about a poor little Black boy.” My first question is why. Because I say to them you’re probably going to screw it up. You’re not going to get it right. And your reasoning is because you’re being told, oh, I’m won’t get a job in Hollywood because I’m a white guy. And I tell my white male students that’s a bunch of crap. I’m like, no, don’t go in there. You still tell your own story, whatever that is. Don’t feel like you have to try to tell mine.

First of all, you’re not going to get it right. And it’s frustrating because you’re seeing it even in the schools and that’s carrying over. And so professors like me, I’m constantly fighting to teach students to tell their own truth. I don’t care if you’re from a little town in Colorado. Whatever. Tell your story. Tell me about your funny uncle. Tell me about your experience. And that’s what we’re going to be drawn to.

But if you’re trying to force it, and I’m seeing too much of that now. And it’s honestly – it’s just frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s no lack of cynicism. In every corner of this business, I guess it’s endemic to who we are. But I’m wondering as you guys have gone through this process of witnessing and experiencing both the events of the last we’ll say month and a half but also the events of your entire lives, and looking at the way people are responding now, and I think there I’m pretty much saying white people and white businesses, are you feeling any sense of hope in that there’s a difference? Or is too soon to tell?

**Hilliard:** Well, I mean, a lot of people have asked us, you know, myself, Michelle, and Bianca, what has Hollywood’s response been. Guess what? We haven’t heard from hardly anybody. And by the time we’re through here. Now, we’ve heard from some showrunners going, “Wow, you guys wrote an amazing thing,” but we’ve not heard from the HBOs, the Netflix, the people that we called out going, hey, you guys are the ones claiming this stuff. Do you know what I mean? Let’s see what you guys are doing. Sit down with us. But nobody has done that.

**Michelle:** But I will say this. I have been reached out to several individuals, some of whom have a bit of power, and I think that there’s conversations that are happening. I’m hearing, for example I heard yesterday that one of our top execs in this town on a call and said that he wants to see all of his shows change as far as seeing Black writers on these shows. And it came from a pretty good source. I won’t say who it is.

But I’m saying that to say it’s coming – I’m hearing things. We just don’t want it to be something that’s sporadic all over the place. We really want systemic. And a couple years ago I actually pushed the guild for a Rooney Rule. I really wanted to go out to the studios and have them sit down and come up with a plan, similar to the NFL, where you have to interview us. I mean, again, we’re not asking you to give us anything. We’re saying at least have something in your company where you say, OK, for every job we have to go out to so many Black writers, so many writers of color, etc. And find a way to track that so you can say, OK, we interviewed these number of writers. We were able to hire these many. And over a period of time you can at least track to see how that’s impacted.

Because what’s going to happen is this. If the studios and the production companies and all the networks suddenly change the way they do business then the agencies have to. And we get right now the whole issue with agencies, but then the agencies will say, “Oh, we have to go and find some Black writers because everybody wants some.” We can then get the opportunities that we’re saying we simply would like to have. As opposed to, as Hilliard knows, we always get showrunners that come to our committee and ask us, “Hey, you got any writers? We’re looking for writers.” But they’re afraid to say out loud “Black.” Because they’re like, oh, we can’t just ask for Black writers. I’m like why not? You don’t have any. The first thing is being comfortable enough to have the conversation and say, “We have no Black writers in this room. And we need to change that.”

And so if you can say the words then you can start working to feel some of those positions.

**Hilliard:** And we need them in higher positions is the problem. They hire these staff writers with no voice.

**Bianca:** And if you have a voice you’re penalized for having said voice. You’re at the bottom of the table.

**Michelle:** But let me also add they are looking for Black showrunners. Here’s the problem. Due to the systemic racism – we had writers back in the ‘80s and ‘90s who were incredible writers on incredible shows. As you know the ‘90s had a lot of Black shows. Those writers were never allowed to get past story editor. If they were allowed they would now be showrunners. We would have probably 20, 30 additional Black showrunners in this town who are so talented. They’ve not lost their talent because they’ve gotten older. They just were not able to get the opportunities. And so part of what we’re trying to do at the guild is bring those writers back into the fold and bring them back up. Because they were really torn down. They were devastated.

They were done really dirty. We do stand on the shoulders of some truly talented people. And so part of it is things were taken from us and they need to be restored. The value needs to be restored. Because it’s one thing to say like, oh, we don’t have anybody. It’s like, yeah, because you intentionally prevented that from happening.

**Bianca:** But we’re also recreating those problems now. When people are repeating, and repeating, and repeating. Right? To repeat staff writer four, five, six, seven times you think about how many times are you supposed to, or more people normally. One, two times maybe. Four, five, six. You’re not getting script fees. You’re not [growing pension]. People leave. People fall out. People have a harder time moving up.

So if you think about somebody being four years at staff writer where would they have been in those four years if they were promoted like other people? Or six years? And so we’re doing it now to a new class of people. Last week there were people asking for mid-levels and they’re like, “Oh, well we can’t find any.” And I’m like well maybe look at somebody who has been here for six years, been working on shows every year getting scripts. They’re clearly capable of producing episodes. But they’ve also been kept back. And are you willing to say I’m going to look at an executive story editor who has been here who has repeated staff writer for four years, wrote three, four scripts. Repeated story editor a couple times. Now is an executive story editor. And might actually have more experience than somebody who is technically mid-level but their title says something different.

And so we’re doing sort of the same thing now where we have classes of people who have been stuck. I know myself I’ve repeated staff writer four times. I was asked seven times to repeat staff writer. And I literally had to walk away from things until somebody decided – like until somebody offered something else I would not do it.

And so there’s a system in place as well right now that’s recreating those problems in real time.

**Hilliard:** Which also goes to they always assume that the Black staff writer has no experience whatsoever. They forget most of us have shot movies and produced them. Have produced our own pilots. Have produced proof of concepts. Dozens of them. You know what I mean? So when we get in a room I’m already a co-EP in my head over these other people.

**Michelle:** I mean, true, everyone is not capable we get of running an entire show. It requires a lot. But there’s some pretty dope people out there who could do it. You know? And people do it all the time.

**Craig:** People do it all the time. I mean, it’s hard to get those jobs, but it’s hard for – I mean, it’s hard for everybody in a sense. Like everybody that’s playing here is playing at a professional sports league level. But, yeah, so it’s hard for everybody. The point is people can do it. We know that. It’s doable. So—

**Michelle:** Yeah. Has it been perfect? No. But we’ve done a really good job. And I think back to what Hilliard says, you know, we should be allowed to fail.

And let me talk about because of this we’re artists. Like who wants to create under these stressful situations? Just like everyone, like I want to create beautiful, vivid worlds. John, you don’t know this but one year I went to Sundance and we snuck away and went to go see your movie Big Fish. And I just remember thinking like, yes, like I love movies, I love television, and I just want the opportunity to create my own Big Fish. Like my own work that people can look at and be also as moved.

And that’s why we’re here. So when you’re creating and you’re constantly worried like, oh, I have to represent the whole race. That’s exhausting. Right? I want to get on a show. I’m sure you don’t think like, oh, as a white guy, I’ve got to represent all white men.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I’m trying to not represent white men. That’s my new thing. [laughs]

**Michelle:** We want to represent the world and have fun, you know. I know Hilliard loves like cool cars. I’m sure that would be something in his show. And Bianca probably has some like mad genius or something in her world. I don’t know. Those are things that made us want to come into this industry in the first place. And we get that Hollywood is a microcosm of America. But to your question, I do believe there is a change. It’s why the statement was written. We think that there is a paradigm shift. What we plan to do though is to hold them to it.

So we’re not done. We’re also preparing to, you know, take some more action.

**Craig:** Good. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s talk about those next steps. So, if I’m a Black WGA member listening to this and I want to get involved, what do I do next? How do I reach out to you? What happens?

**Michelle:** Well, we have a committee. And we meet – of course, because of the pandemic things were a bit off. But we’re going to have a new meeting in August. We also have an incredible meet and greet coming up in July. We have 100 of our brightest, most talented writers. There are going to be 33 showrunners. Like a speed dating session.

**Hilliard:** Meet and greet.

**Michelle:** So we have a lot of things that we do already for our committee behind the scenes. And a lot of people don’t realize. It’s like oh wow what’s going on over there. But because of the pandemic we had to, of course, slow things down. But we’re planning a bunch of virtual panels and events for the remainder of the year because as you know in America Black people are dying at the highest rate from COVID-19. So we are not going to take a chance on our lives.

That’s another thing. You know, with the industry opening, it’s like are they fully thinking about Black lives? Again.

**Craig:** The answer is no.

**Michelle:** You get the virus. Yeah, we get that you could live. But—

**Craig:** Yeah, right. I think, yeah, staying home is a good idea. I think staying home is a great idea, actually, for all of us.

**Bianca:** Another quick thing if they haven’t already, just for stats purposes as the number person, if you have not already self-identified on the website that is really, really helpful. I’ve been getting most of my staff from there. And some of it is that people have not self-identified. You can also email us and join the CBW if you are a Black writer. And come to the meetings and figure out how you too can get involved. We have a lot of great things coming up. Financial literacy things. Things outside that aren’t just about the industry straightforward.

So, get involved. Get excited. And, you know, we’re moving and shaking.

**Hilliard:** We have a Facebook page, too, that they can join.

**John:** Cool. Bianca, Hilliard, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on this. It was so good to talk with all of you.

**Craig:** That was awesome. Thank you guys.

**John:** Thanks for all your hard work. And we look forward to hearing what happens next. We’ll keep an eye out for you.

**Hilliard:** Awesome. Thanks for having us man.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. Keep going. Keep going.

**John:** And Craig it’s now just you and me. It is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** One Cool Thing.

**John:** You got one?

**Craig:** Yeah, I do. I don’t know, your dog Lambert – is Lambert a picky eater?

**John:** He was a very picky eater when he first came to our house. He’s a less picky eater now. What do you got?

**Craig:** Well, we have our wonderful dog, Cookie. She is fantastic. She is also just a little princess when it comes to food. Good, she’s so, mmm. So dogs can’t just eat treats all day. They need real actual kibble and stuff like that. Or some certain wet food. But she just literally will turn her nose up at it. She’ll look at it and then her nose will go up and she will walk away.

So, it’s getting frustrating, especially because sometimes she gets so hungry that she’ll barf.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** They do that. Because they have too much bile building up. And you’re like, well, if you’re that hungry just eat the food. But she’s like, no, I don’t want to. It’s gross.

So, in looking around I had some other stuff that I used to crumble on it and put on it. And it sort of worked a little bit but not great. Now – now I have Marie’s Magical Diner Dust.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Marie’s Magical Diner Dust is made my Steller & Chewy and it’s some kind of horrifying – it’s like basically the stuff that dogs like the most is the stuff that would make us puke the most. It’s like it’s made of skull and chicken dicks and stuff. So it’s just dried up little powder. So I sprinkled a little bit on there and it was like I had brought out some cocaine in the club. She just went bananas. And just immediately started eating. So, thank you Stella & Chewy for your Marie’s Magical Diner Dust for dogs. So gross. So effective.

**John:** Excellent. When Lambert first came to live with us he did not like our food. And so we experimented with different foods to get one that would work with his system well. But then he would still be really picky about eating it. When Megan McDonnell would dog sit him she couldn’t get him to eat at all and she would have to like sort of hand feed him kibble.

What we discovered was pretty useful which if other people want to try this before reverting to dinner dust is you take a tiny bit of peanut butter and rub it on the inside of his bowl and that was appealing enough that he would start to lick the peanut butter and he was like as long as I’m here I guess I’ll eat the kibble too. So we would soften his dry food.

Now he’s just gotten over it and so eats his food. We wet it down a little bit and he’s a good eater.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, so I’m envious. This dog, trying to get her to eat, ridiculous. What about you, John? You got a One Cool Thing for us?

**John:** I do. So mine is an immersive light field video with layered mesh representation.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** This is from SIGGRAPH 2020, so a big visual effects conference. Click through the link here, Craig, and it’s something I’ve sort of speculated we should be able to do soon but we finally now have the computer processing ability to do it. If you can imagine if you took a whole bunch of Go Pros and layered them all around a big sphere you could get a full 360 view of things. They’re doing that, but then they’re doing incredibly computational intensive processing to make a full field view from that. So, you can film something and then in real time move to any space in that video in any space in that world. You click through in the little sample videos you’ll see a guy with a homemade flame-thrower.

**Craig:** It’s really cool. Yeah.

**John:** And so you can move around in 3D space while it’s happening, so it feels kind of like a videogame, because it is kind of using videogame engines to take real video and figure out the surface mapping of stuff and create 3D models out of it. It’s really impressively done. So I would just say it’s a little preview of stuff you’re going to be seeing in movies in about six months.

**Craig:** In six months?

**John:** Well, I think you’re going to see application of this kind of stuff in movies coming really soon. Because the moment you can do stuff like this in a demo everyone is looking at this and it’s like I already sent it through to a director I’m working with. Oh, we’re doing this, aren’t we? He’s like, oh yes, we’re definitely going to do that.

**Craig:** Look, it’s awesome. I’m looking at it. It’s really, really cool. I can definitely see how it would actually enhance videogames for sure. I don’t know if I would want to watch a passively observed story like this.

**John:** Oh, no, no, no. I’m not saying you’re going to see the whole movie that way. But I’m going to say like bullet time in the Matrix, there’s things like that where I can imagine us moving through a space and moving through a battle sequence where the different fields of planes are in different timings. You could just do really amazing things if you had this kind of information.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s the kind of thing which, again, you could do right now with just pure visual effects. But to actually have the real photography behind it will enable some amazing things.

**Craig:** That’s very cool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very cool.

**John:** And that is our show for this week. So stick around after the credits for our discussion of professional sports. But if you’re not a Premium member you’ll have to just wonder. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is a classic Matthew Chilelli outro. He’s done some of our best ones. It’s actually how he became our editor is by doing a whole bunch of outros for us.

If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send longer questions or things like we read today. For short questions, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Just today Craig replied in a really great thread about someone’s question and concerns, so thank you for doing that, Craig.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** So follow Craig. We have t-shirts. We have t-shirts at Cotton Bureau. They’re terrific. You should check those out. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

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

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, baseball is coming back. Basketball is coming back. I am weirdly excited for both of them.

**Craig:** Are you? [laughs]

**John:** I’m excited because it’s a new thing and I’m really curious how they’re going to do it. I also feel like I like when systems and structures try to react to the outside world and find a new normal.

**Craig:** Oh my god. That’s the most robot thing you’ve ever said. Sorry, that’s the second most robot thing you ever said. The first most robot thing you ever said was immersive light field video with a layered mesh representation. [laughs]

**John:** So, for our international listeners who may not be following what’s happening in American professional sports, the NBA, the National Basketball Association has announced that they are planning to kind of resume this season. They’re moving all the players and families and coaches and staff to Orlando, Florida where they will be playing a truncated version of this season and going into the playoffs. And we will have a national champion. Do you call it a national champion? What do you call the winner of basketball?

**Craig:** Oh man. It’s just the champion. It’s the champion. NBA champion.

**John:** NBA champion. That’s what I was looking for. So they’re going to do that but it’s going to be a highly tested environment. But even as we’re recording this today like a bunch of players already tested positive for it, so there you go.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** But so basketball I think will probably work. I mean, the teams are relatively small in these pretty controlled environments. Baseball is outdoors, which is great.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** But, you know, usually teams travel and so it’s not like everyone is going to go to one place where they will do all baseball.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** I just don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah, how will they do baseball? This is the most important question. Look, I think – I’m more worried about the NBA. Because basketball is a contact sport. We don’t think of it in the way that football is a contact sport where you’re encouraging contact, where it’s required on every play, but basketball players are in each other’s faces. They are up against each other physically. They are sweating on each other. And they’re smashing into each other and falling down on each other. Whereas baseball, everyone is actually quite far apart.

I mean, some players, when you’re in the field are really far apart.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, who is close together? And I’m going to remove the dugout from the situation. So in the dugout all the players are waiting to have their turn at bat if they’re in the lineup. You can work that out. You can have sort of a social distancing dugout kind of situation. In the field the catcher is pretty close to the home plate umpire and the batter. But if they are wearing – I mean the catcher is already wearing a mask. And you should be fine.

Beyond that there is not a ton of contact in baseball. People slide into base and they’ve already reduced the amount of contact just per the rules to reduce injury. So I’m not so concerned transmission during a game between players. It’s what happens in between the games that’s obviously the problem. Because it’s just hard to keep people who are working together from, you know, being near each other and potentially infecting each other. And all those players – sorry, many of the players have wives and they have children. And, you know, there’s more vectors for infection.

Obviously there’s not going to be fans. We’re not doing that. Have you seen what they’ve done, I think it was in South Korea where baseball is very popular, they filled the stands with stuffed animals.

**John:** Which is exactly how it should be at all times.

**Craig:** So great. It was so great. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And then I saw one photo of an orchestra that was playing–

**John:** To potted plants, yes.

**Craig:** Yes. An audience of plants, which is very sweet. It will be weird.

**John:** Well, so baseball it feels like all your potential concerns and objections, like they have families, they’re going to encounter other people. Yes. And also everyone else who is going back to work in any capacity is going to have those same problems.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So it’s similar to that. Except there’s additional travel with baseball and it looks like they’re taking efforts to travel less than the other ones would.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if they can reduce the travel down, because obviously far fewer games are going to be played. I don’t think anyone is going to look at this season as a “real” season, no matter who wins the World Series. It will have an asterisk a mile wide next to it because it’s just a weird year. There was a strike-shortened season where there was another asterisk World Series winner. So, it’s just a weird one. But the players want to play. And the owners want the players to play. And there is money to be made from the television rights. And I would watch, for sure.

I did years ago when–

**John:** Craig, one moment though. Because from a television viewer perspective, someone who is just watching a baseball game, it doesn’t necessarily going to feel any different. I mean, I don’t know that you would necessarily know there was a problem–

**Craig:** It will. Oh yes.

**John:** Tell me why it will feel different.

**Craig:** Because it’s silent. So, baseball games are loud. Baseball stadiums are much larger than indoor arenas where NBA teams play. They are not as big as football stadiums, but you’re talking typically about somewhere between 25,000 to 50,000 per game, outside, cheering.

**John:** If only we had a way to pipe in sound that wasn’t actually part of a scene when it was recorded.

**Craig:** That would be awful. If you had artificial crowd reactions it would be the worst.

**John:** Bum-bum-bum-bum. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would be just awful. It would all sound like a videogame.

**John:** So it’s going to feel like golf is what it’s going to feel like.

**Craig:** It’s going to feel like golf. There was a game that was played years ago when Freddie Gray died in the custody of police in Baltimore and civil unrest occurred which as we know solved the problem of police brutality. Anyway, just amazing, right? We’ve been doing this – that’s a whole – I’m not going to go down that road again. But just, argh, police.

So, Baltimore had a curfew. They were essentially shut down for a day or two. But I can’t remember which team, maybe the Angels, were in town to play the Orioles and they played a game in an empty stadium. And it was the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Because like you just heard stuff. It was weird. It was just like – yeah.

**John:** I watched, this past week was the worldwide developer’s conference for Apple. And so some years I’ve gone. I always watch it and there’s always a live keynote. And it’s a big thing and it’s a huge crowd. And obviously they couldn’t do any of that this year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And they made choices like, you know what, we’re going to change the format completely. We’re going to lean into it and not try to do the normal things we’re doing and they did a much better job. So I think it will be weird at the start but I bet they can also just find ways to film it differently so that you’re not expecting some of the moments that you would normally expect with the crowd.

**Craig:** I am laughing at you, not with you. Because the thing is we don’t really film – I mean, yeah, occasionally you’ll look at, they’ll have a crowd shot. But by and large it’s just the sense of the crowd reacting as things are happening is part of what’s going on. And there’s always this low crowd hum.

It’s a little bit like when they show you–

**John:** The sitcoms without the laugh tracks?

**Craig:** Yes. It’s that eerie. It’s just eerie.

**John:** Oh, that would be so good.

**Craig:** Because it’s like, OK, it’s 3-2 and bases loaded and two outs. This the payoff pitch. And in those situations the crowd is at a fever pitch. Every little moment is just adrenalized. And in this one it will just be like…and he struck out. Silence. Everyone just walks back. It’s gonna be weird.

**John:** Yeah. It’s gonna be weird. But let’s talk about how weird basketball is. So they’ve made a completely different choice. It’s sort of New Zealand’s choice of we are going to isolate this group of people and not let them have any encounter with the outside world. In theory that should work. If you actually keep a tight quarantine on these people they can be as in each other’s face as you want because there will be no virus for them to transmit.

**Craig:** Right. Good luck.

**John:** Yeah. Good luck. I genuinely wish them good luck. But it’s going to be tough.

**Craig:** This virus, I mean, COVID particularly, it’s like water. It’s going to find any little crack and it will get through. It just doesn’t seem realistic. It really doesn’t. If they can pull it off, great. Just remember people are going to have to be feeding them. There’s doctors and there’s food service and there’s janitorial service and there’s shopping. You can’t – it’s not Bio-Dome. You can’t seal them up.

**John:** Yeah. My mom is in a senior living place and it’s kind of Bio-Dome-ish. They are pretty – they’re vigilant. And, again, I’m not confident that there will never be a case at her place, but they’re taking the precautions that they can take. And so I guess on the NBA side I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s worthwhile to try doing what they’re doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can theoretically Bio-Dome folks who generally have reduced mobility and independence anyway. Bio-Doming 20 to 40 year old men and their wives, their significant others, their children. Listen, obviously I’m not rooting for anyone to be sick. I hope it works. I really, really do. And weirdly I would say basketball – it will be less weird to watch without a crowd because basketball is a playground sport. It’s everywhere. So we all have the experience of watching basketball where there’s no crowd. You just go down to any of the basketball courts, like Venice. When you go down to Venice here in LA there are these famous basketball courts. It’s where they shot a bunch of White Men Can’t Jump.

And they play. You’re just used to it. You’re not used to seeing baseball games with no one there. It’s just not really a huge thing. And so it’s just going to be interesting.

**John:** Yeah. A good experiment. We’ll see how it all plays out. No one is expecting the NFL to come back. Correct?

**Craig:** If the NFL came back that would be madness. I don’t know. It would be absolute madness. But they might. I mean, that’s the thing. The amount of money behind all of this is extraordinary. Yeah. But until a vaccine happens – I mean, yeah, I don’t know. That one seems weird to me.

**John:** And so it seems like none of these issues will impact anything in our direct lives, but literally I was having a conversation with a network about plans for this thing I may be working on. They’re like, “Yeah, it’s really going to be a question of whether NBC does the Olympics or not, or when those happen.” We’re trying to think like two or three years out for where stuff is going to be. And it’s like, yeah, that’s right. The Olympics is a huge, huge – obviously it’s an athletic event, but also three weeks of solid programming. And if you don’t have that, that’s important.

**Craig:** I think a lot of the folks that are in those executive suites are doing the only thing they can do which is make plans. But as they’re making plans I think they’re all well aware that their plans are pointless. They are doing what – they don’t want to sit there and do nothing, but no one knows how this is going to go. No one. Anybody that has any kind of certainty is a lunatic.

**John:** Yup. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

 

Links:

* [WGA West Committee of Black Writers Call on Hollywood to Revolutionize the Way Our Industry Hires Writers](https://deadline.com/2020/06/wga-west-committee-of-black-writers-co-chairs-call-on-hollywood-to-revolutionize-the-way-our-industry-hires-writers-1202958013/)
* [Immersive Light Field Video with a Layered Mesh Representation](https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/)
* [Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Raw Marie’s Magical Dinner Dust for Dogs](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SM1QT2J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
* [Hilliard Guess](https://twitter.com/HilliardGuess?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [Bianca Sams](https://twitter.com/writesamswrite?lang=en) on Twitter
* [Michelle Amor](https://twitter.com/MichelleAmor?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [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 Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/458standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/getting-staffed-in-comedy-variety).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 457 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast we’re going to be talking about comedy and variety shows, how they’re written, and how you get a job writing them. We’ll also be talking about studio diversity programs. Now, you might say John and Craig how much do you really know about these things?

**Craig:** Oh so much. So much. [laughs]

**John:** And the truth is not a lot.

**Craig:** Oh, right, sorry.

**John:** Which is why we have a very special guest joining us.

**Craig:** I forgot, it was not a lot.

**John:** Ashley Nicole Black is a writer and performer whose credits include Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Bless this Mess, and a Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO. Ashely, welcome to the program.

Ashley Nicole Black: Hi, thanks for having me. It’s so weird to be able to talk back to you guys.

**Craig:** I know. Finally. I mean, all of those moments where you were frustrated or angry or disgusted, you get to express them directly at us in real time.

**Ashley:** Well usually I’m just washing the dishes more so than very angry.

**Craig:** All right. Well don’t do that now. Right now I think you’ve earned the right to not wash your dishes while you do this particular episode.

**John:** But we wouldn’t be upset if you were washing your dishes. If we hear some clinking it’s absolutely fine. Now, starting any conversation with a person these days has to begin with how are you holding up. So, how are you holding up, Ashley?

**Ashley:** You know, I had really found a rhythm with isolation and was doing really well. And then with George Floyd and the protests I got sucked back into that 24-hour news cycle. So I’m just starting to get back to the like being able to work and not being glued to the news portion of quarantine.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Now, you are working now, right? Because we’re scheduling this after you just finished a writer’s room. So are you back in a virtual room?

**Ashley:** Yeah. I’m in a virtual room on an Apple show. I don’t know if I’m allowed to ever say the show exists.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Craig is also on an Apple show. So you guys both have Emmys. You both have Apple shows. You are pretty much the same person.

**Ashley:** Soulmates.

**Craig:** Yeah, I feel like maybe John if you want to just go, just go. Because we have secret Apple/Emmy stuff to talk about.

**Ashley:** Emmy-winner convo.

**Craig:** So much interesting information about that. [laughs]

**John:** I’ve just done the virtual Skype version of CC’ing two people into an email chain and now I can leave.

**Craig:** And then backing away. I love that move.

**John:** Now, we’re going to talk about comedy variety writing, we’re going to talk about diversity programs, but also for our bonus number I want to talk about fireworks because I know you and I actually we have opinions about fireworks and I want to get into that for our bonus topic for our Premium members.

**Ashley:** Oh, I have so many. I’m excited about that.

**Craig:** This is going to be good.

**John:** Now, while we have you here, you are in a writer’s room. We asked on last week’s program for tips for people who are in these virtual writer’s rooms, what they’re using in the room. Chad wrote in, and Craig can you read what Chad wrote in for us?

**Craig:** Yes. Chad writes, “I’m a long time Scriptnotes listener and I got my first professional writing job right at the end of March. We’ve been using the virtual whiteboard tool Miro for everything from breaking out macro story beats across all the episodes of the season to laying out choice maps, player activity for individual scenes. More seasoned writers, particularly those who work primarily in TV in our room had differing opinions on the effectiveness of this tool, but I really like it. And I started using it for my personal projects on the side.

“We use Asana for organizing due dates for deliverables, distributing scene work for a given week, and tracking what stage each scene is in currently, first draft and review, revision, and that sort of thing. Honorable mention to Google Docs and the almighty Zoom, but I’m sure those are pretty well known at this point.”

Sounds like Chad’s working in videogames, yeah?

**John:** Yeah. So I cut off the little first part of that, but it was a hybrid videogame kind of project. Now, are you using anything like Miro for a whiteboard? What are you using in your room right now Ashley?

**Ashley:** No, we’ve just been using Zoom and Google Docs, which means you have your Zoom really tiny on one side of the screen so you can also see the Google Docs. So it’s not ideal.

**John:** And who is responsible for updating the Google Doc? Is everyone typing into the same thing? Is there a writer’s assistant who is doing that work?

**Ashley:** The writer’s assistant, yeah.

**John:** Now, talking on Zoom, how deep are you into the show? How many weeks is this now that you’re in.

**Ashley:** It’s only been a couple of weeks, so we haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty where the technology is going to fall apart yet.

**Craig:** Right. I was about to say. Because the deeper you go the more stuff that goes on the normal whiteboard, and then there’s the erasing and the boxing around a thing. The different colors. I’m particularly fond of the different colors. So, it does seem like as you get deeper in it’s going to become a bit of a struggle to maintain it. I’m kind of curious, Ashley, if you feel like there’s any – is there an impact on just the creative flow simply – I mean, obviously not being in a room together is one thing but literally just the virtual board versus the actual board, do you feel like it’s impacting anything?

**Ashley:** The biggest difficulty I’ve found, and we haven’t like I said gotten that far into story yet, is just like the inability to interrupt each other. I didn’t know how important that was to writing.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I mean, there’s probably a little bit of an upside there. Perhaps people that had been interrupted or talked over a lot maybe get a chance to finish?

**John:** A thing I’ve noticed on a lot of these conference calls I’ve been having on Zoom is that when someone starts monologuing it’s very hard to send the signal that they need to stop, that they’ve been talking too long. And there have been times where I’ve had to text a person saying like, “OK, please stop now because you made your point and it’s time for us to move on.”

**Ashley:** And sometimes you can tell that they know. Like you can tell that they know it’s time to stop talking, but no one is making them.

**Craig:** It’s so great. I love that. I call that like failure to land. They know they’re supposed to land. They’ve been cleared to land. They just don’t know what to do. So they’re circling the ending of a remark. It’s amazing to watch.

**John:** Silence also plays so differently on a Zoom call than it does in a real room. Because there’s moments where when people are physically together where that silence is kind of meaningful. Because everyone is like OK we’re all thinking together. You can sort of see the process, the shifting in seats. It doesn’t play that same way in Zoom, so there’s this instinct to have to fill up those silences. And I don’t know that that’s healthy either.

**Ashley:** Yeah, you don’t get that feeling – there’s just a feeling in the room when everyone loves something but they’re quiet, or when everyone hates something but they’re quiet. And you don’t know. You just know that people are quiet.

**John:** Is there any good way that you’ve found to sort of signal your excitement about something or signal your disapproval? Are you guys using thumbs up? Is there any way that you can tell somebody that, yes, I really appreciate that idea? What are you guys finding – also, I don’t know how big your room is, but people are not muted normally, or are they muting? What’s the policy with your room?

**Ashley:** I’ve been muting, I think most of us have, just because like I have a dog who might bark or whatever. So I usually mute. I’ve been doing a lot of nonverbals, like vigorously nodding my head, just trying to visually communicate. But one really funny thing that happened was that one of the writer’s baby toddled in to the Zoom. And we all like raised our hands and cheered, because she was so cute. And then our boss was like, “Why are you making fun of me?” And we’re like, no, no, there’s a baby. [laughs] We can see a baby.

**Craig:** So cute. I do the same thing, by the way. I’m a big believer in the very broad nodding yes and shaking head no.

**Ashley:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And don’t do it like once or twice the way you would normally do it in real life. Because everybody has kind of peripheral vision in real life. But the cameras take away our peripheral vision. So somebody has to actually notice your thing. And so you kind of do it until you realize that they know. And it’s a way to sort of get to the heart of it without having to talk and interrupt people and hijack the audio.

**John:** So please keep sending in your suggestions for what’s working in your writer’s rooms and if you have some best practices or just little policies that you guys have figured out in your rooms that seem to be helpful, send those in and we’ll compile the best of them because we’re all learning together how to do this crazy stuff of writing virtually.

I mostly want to focus on comedy and variety, because this is a topic that a bunch of writers work in this space and we really have not had kind of any guests on to talk about writing for this space, how you get started writing for this space. And Ashley I kind of just want to start from the really basics. When we say comedy and variety what kinds of shows are we talking about? Name brand names so people can get a sense of these are writers working on these shows. What kinds of shows are comedy/variety?

**Ashley:** Yeah, the ones that come on late at night. So it’s Full Frontal. It’s all the Jimmy shows. Saturday Night Live. Sketch shows. All those shows that you stay up late to watch.

**John:** Great. And something like a Black Lady Sketch Show, which is a once a week. It’s a series but you’re writing those sketches as a room or people are writing those individually. Is that still under the auspices of what we consider comedy variety?

**Ashley:** Yeah. I think it’s variety sketch in the Emmy category.

**Craig:** I like that. Variety sketch. You know, variety shows used to roam the earth like dinosaurs. You know, when there was like – so it was like sketches, and then there would be a song, and then there would be like a weird dance thing. Like when I was a kid we watched the Mandrell Sisters. My sister and I would watch the Mandrell Sisters.

We don’t do that anymore. So it seems like mostly it’s going to be a comedy show. Like a sketch show is a sketch show. And I have to say they’re much better now. We’ve come a long way.

**John:** Well, what’s also weird about it is there’s a whole genre of show that is about that genre of show. And so like the Dick Van Dyke show is about writing a late night show, or a variety show. 30 Rock is about writing a weekly variety show that’s like SNL. So it’s weird that we have onscreen representations of what it’s like to write those shows. And yet I still don’t think I truly understand what it’s like to write. So can you talk us through, you were on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. As a writer on that show what does your day look like? What is your responsibility on that show?

**Ashley:** So, that show is a weekly show that shoots on Wednesday. So our week starts on Thursday. And we would usually start the moment with like a big pitch meeting. Everybody in one room. People pitching stories that are of interest to them. And typically you want to have a take at that stage, but even if you don’t you can still bring in like an interesting story and let’s talk about this.

So we would pitch act twos which on that show is the slightly more evergreen act. So you could pitch that on a Thursday and spend a week or even up to a month working on something like we did one about rural healthcare. Like, issues that are going to continue to be issues a couple weeks from now. And then typically you would get assigned anywhere from one writer by themselves to the entire staff to work on an act and come up with a take together as a group and kind of a way through it. And then everyone go off and get their chance to write their draft alone, which is like my favorite part of the process that we would work on a take together but then you do get to have your own draft, which is great.

And then someone, either the head writer or the supervising writer, would take all of those drafts and compile them into one. And then we would have rewrite which is again everybody back in a room going through line by line, beating every single joke, cutting stuff, getting it as funny as possible. And then you rehearse it. And then you do that again. And then you shoot it. And then you’re like, oh, OK, wow, that was exhausting, and then you start it all over again the next morning.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** So talk to me about, so you say in a room, how many people were in a room for something like Full Frontal with Samantha Bee? What was that room like bodies wise?

**Ashley:** That was a smaller show. I think anywhere between seven and 10 at the most. But some shows would have like 14 staff members.

**Craig:** Now, a show like Saturday Night Live, they have this hybrid format where there are a number of people who are just writers, and then there are a number of people who are writer-performers. I suspect there a probably a couple of performers that don’t do much writing, but it’s kind of a blend. On your show, on Black Lady Sketch Show, was that kind of the way you did it? Were the performers also writing fulltime? Or was there kind of one group of writers, one group of performers?

**Ashley:** There’s one group of writers and one group of performers. I happen to be in both. But some of the performers are not.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** Now, going back to a more traditional weekly show like Samantha Bee, you know, talking about, so you’re pitching your takes. And so you Ashley would show up to work on Thursday morning saying like these are two or three things that I think are good story areas or good topics. Your job is really kind of pitching. How long is a pitch for that kind of thing is what I’m asking? How fully fleshed out is it or is it just an area that you’re trying to pitch?

**Ashley:** It really depends on what you’re trying to pitch. Because there are some stories, like a Trump story as soon as you hear that he had a hard time walking down a ramp you know what’s going to be funny about that. And you can just come in in the morning and go, “Trump had a hard time walking down a ramp,” and you’ll probably get approved. But if you’re doing something like we did a piece about the people who are suing the Catholic Church about sexual assaults that happened to them. The humor there is not apparent. So you’re probably going to do a lot more work before you bring that in to be like, “I promise you I have an angle and a way to write jokes around this topic.”

**Craig:** You’re drawing off of a certain substrate of facts when you’re working on something like Samantha Bee. There are topics. There’s facts. There’s journalism. And there are people. And then you’re kind of building this thing around it. But for A Black Lady Sketch Show this is just pure fiction. You are creating something out of nothing. Which do you find – a two-part question – which is harder and which is more satisfying?

**Ashley:** They’re hard and satisfying in really different ways. It’s very hard to take some of these political stories and make them funny. It’s not an easy thing to do. But the stories exist. So if you need a pitch, you don’t have a pitch that day, all you have to do is go to cnn.com and you’ll find something.

**Craig:** There it is, right.

**Ashley:** Whereas like on the sketch show you don’t have to draw from the news, so you can just do things that are funny to you in your heart. But on a day where you don’t have a pitch there’s nowhere you can go to find one. You really have to pull it out of your brain.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Now, talk to us about money. So, on these shows—

**Ashley:** Yes.

**Craig:** Get specific.

**Ashley:** I love talking about money. [laughs]

**Craig:** Can you please just quickly scan and email your tax returns? Because we want to get really granular about this.

**John:** Are you paid on a weekly basis? Are you paid – because you’re not paid on drafts? As screenwriters we’re thinking about drafts. But you’re paid on a weekly basis I’m presuming.

**Ashley:** Yes.

**John:** Are you guaranteed a certain number of weeks? How does it work when you’re hired on to one of these shows?

**Ashley:** I think it differs from show to show. On a lot of shows I think you have a 13-week contract. I think it’s different on every show.

**John:** And so for those 13 weeks you are exclusive to that show and what are your hours? So you’re saying you’re starting the pitches on Thursday. Are you working through the weekend? What is your actual life like? Or is it more a Thursday, Friday then crank on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday again? What is your life like when you’re on one of those shows?

**Ashley:** It varies from show to show. So when we started at Full Frontal the show aired on Mondays and so we did find ourselves working over the weekend a lot. Because if something changed on Friday like you can’t air old news. We would have to work over the weekend. That was one of the reasons the show moved to Wednesdays because people didn’t want to work weekends. But I know like on John Oliver’s show which I think they shoot on Sunday they work one weekend day and have another weekday off. So it kind of depends on the schedule of the show.

But the schedule is forever. Like there are definitely nights – I would say on a normal night I would get home by seven, but there are definitely midnight nights. There are two in the morning nights. There are I never left the office nights. The first time I was on a half-hour I was like we’re going home at 5:30? Really, we can all just stand up and leave? What? [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, everything I’ve read it does sound like comedy sketch shows or I guess we can move in the sort of news comedy shows into that same category are brutal jobs in the sense of the time commitment and the idea that it is timely. It’s repeating. And if you don’t have it you just got to keep going until you do. Is it healthy? That’s my question.

**Ashley:** I mean, no. I used to – I would get up at six o’clock in the morning and turn on the news in my apartment and have the news on while I got ready in the morning. I lived across the street from the office, so I would just walk out the door, walk back in the door. There are televisions showing the news on every wall, including in the office, like directly in front of your face. And it’s on all the time. And you’re watching these tragic horrible things happening and your brain is going I have to turn this into a joke? Which is just a weird place to live mentally.

But that being said the people I did that work with are my best friends in the world, because sometimes I remember one of our writers, Eric Drysdale, will just come in my office, lay down on the couch, and hug a pillow. And I’d be like, “You’re good, buddy.”

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s me every day basically.

**John:** It does sound like it’s this weird hybrid of like all the challenges of journalism where you’re having to keep on top of this moving thing with all the challenges of normal comedy writing which is how do we actually make this thing funny. How do we iterate, and iterate, and iterate until it’s as funny as it can be? Yet the lifetime of it is so transitory. Like, you know, an episode of that show doesn’t have very much of a life after that time. So, you know, yes that second act piece that you did might still be relevant months later but all the topical news it vanishes, just disappears. That’s so different than other kinds of writing that we do. Or you transitioned to half-hour writing. So talk to us about that transition because moving from where you have such a rush and a hurry to get this week’s episode up to you can actually kind of plan for things and there’s scripts. What was that transition like?

**Ashley:** I think it made me really good. Because you can’t be precious about your writing at all when you’re writing on a daily or a weekly schedule. Like whenever I wrote that, the President fired Jeff Sessions, we’re throwing that thing away, we’re making fun of Jeff Sessions. It is what it is. And so when I got to half-hour I was really used to writing very funny, very fast. And the schedule is just slower and more spread out. And I remember texting my friend who was still in a late night room like “We spent the whole day today talking about if two characters should kiss. And then we went home at five o’clock.” [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s this other thing that’s sort of fascinating about – I guess we’ll call it topical humor or kind of fast humor. So, Saturday Night Live is both topic and week after week after week, and the same thing with something like Oliver or Samantha Bee. And that is that the stuff that you’re creating for the moment, but it’s there forever. And as we move through time the one thing I think we’ve seen over and over again is that what people think is funny as opposed to what they think is offensive or not funny or unfair changes.

And there’s an interesting kind of danger in that business. And I wonder if when you were in those rooms if there was ever a sense that you were going to be held accountable for the work down the line.

**Ashley:** You know, interestingly I don’t think that was something I thought about a lot because on both of the comedy variety shows I’ve been on they were very feminist, woman-focused shows. And so we were already punching up. And it’s like that will probably always be OK. But there were definitely times like on Full Frontal where like news had changed and we had covered something and we’re covering it again and it’s like do we play a clip of Sam saying something about this thing and now she has something more or different to say about it? There were like self-referential moments. Like I remember one of our first shows we covered a mass shooting. And then there were like seven more mass shootings. And at a certain point you have to say how many times am I going to stand here and talk about this and acknowledge the fact that we’ve done this before.

**Craig:** Right. Interesting.

**John:** Something like Samantha Bee, she has a very distinctive voice. Do you need to learn to write in her voice? Do you learn these are things that fit sort of Samantha Bee and wouldn’t fit other people? Was there any challenge of getting used to her flow and her format? Or is it just you naturally sort of feel it? Did you feel like you were writing to a character named Samantha Bee? Or were you writing what you wish you could say?

**Ashley:** A little bit of both. I definitely like when I was doing my packet, went to sleep with headphones on listening to her voice. Like I definitely studied and learned her voice. But also as a Black woman there were moments where I was like here is something I wish a white lady would say on TV. And I had one that I could give words to which was an amazing gift.

And then sometimes I would do that and Sam would be like, “You’re crazy. I’m not saying this. You’re in the show.” And I was like, no, I want you to say it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Samantha Bee is smart.

**Ashley:** Yes.

**John:** So, Ashley, you refer to your packet. So I think it’s time to transition into that part of it, because the packet is part of how you get hired in late night and comedy variety. Before we get to it let’s talk about how you got started here and sort of what is your background before writing on these shows? If someone has the goal of writing on these shows where should they start and let’s start with where you started. What was your route to getting to this point?

**Ashley:** I started at the Second City. So I actually grew up here in Los Angeles and so I actually knew as a kid that TV was a job and there were other jobs other than just being an actor. But I always wanted to be an actor. But there was no one on TV when I was a kid who looked like me, so it didn’t seem accessible to me. So I went to grad school. I did my masters and most of my Ph.D. hoping to teach performance studies. And while I was doing that I took a class at the Second City and did sketch comedy once and was like, oh, this is it. Because you got to write for yourself and that was the part of acting that didn’t work for me was letting other people write for me.

So I started doing sketch at the Second City. And a lot of people who come out of there end up going into late night. And people would always talk about packets. But it was always like this truly evil thing where people would be like, “Yeah, that packet we did last week was tough, huh?” And everyone would talk about it. And I’m like, oh, last week, so it’s over. You didn’t mention it until it was over.

**Craig:** Ah. Man, behind the scenes. So tough.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s define some terms here. So, what do we mean by a packet?

**Ashley:** So the shows will send out usually to agents and managers, and then comedians get their hands on it and pass it around amongst their friends. A packet, like the list of things that you can write to sort of audition for the show. So it’s going to be all the things they do on that show. So like at Full Frontal it’s going to be monologues and field pieces. On Jimmy Fallon he does like desk bits and sketches, so that’s going to be in there. It’s basically whatever they would do in a normal week. You’re going to write like a couple examples of that. And probably also just some loose jokes which probably you already have in your Twitter. And send that off to them so they can see that you can write that style of show.

**John:** So when I first joined the WGA board someone reached out to me on Twitter saying like, “Hey, could you take a look at late night writing packets because it’s crazy how much work they’re asking you to do. Basically to audition for a job.” It’s like if you want to be a writer on CSI and they said like, “Write us a CSI as a sample.” There was just a huge expectation of work going into this. Hours and hours of time and a lot of material. And the sense that like even if that material wasn’t directly making it into the show it kind of could be leaking into that show.

The whole writing packet process is fraught. And I think we’ve been able to make some changes both in the East and the West with some best practices going into that, but I want everyone to be aware that this is a thing that happens in comedy variety that does not happen in half hours or hour-longs, in traditional scripted TV. That sense that you are specifically writing an audition piece for that show that you’re applying for.

**Ashley:** And it can weed out people who don’t have leisure time, right? Like my packet for Full Frontal was 25 pages long. I was someone who had been writing for a long time and could write 25 pages in a week and had like a job where I could take the hours to do that. But if you work like retail and you can’t take time off you’re writing 25 pages in the middle of the night. That’s just such a disadvantage compared to someone who has like leisure time.

**John:** And a lot of times these shows would also say like, OK, bring in your references and your research for these things. So basically you’re not just can you tell funny jokes, it’s like can you research at this thing and provide a lot. So it’s a huge amount of expectation of work there.

**Ashley:** And it’s work you would never have to do, because once you’re on the show there are researchers. But to do the packet you have to do all your own research.

**John:** Now Ashley, those researchers on the show, are those people who want to be writers on the show? Is that an entry level job for them?

**Ashley:** It isn’t. And that is a misconception that I’m happy to dispel. So a lot of the researchers are journalists, or like studio producers. If you want to be a writer you will find being a researcher very frustrating. And so I think sometimes people do take other jobs in late night hoping to move over to writer. And you can do that, but it will be harder on your show. So if like you’re a researcher on Full Frontal then do a packet and try to get on John Oliver’s show. You can definitely do that. But you’ll be frustrated if you become a researcher and think it’s going to turn into joke writing.

**John:** So these other comedians were not telling you about the packets that they’re writing for other places. They weren’t telling you that this was an opening out there. How did you finally find out about it? How did you submit for these things? What was the process that got your work in front of people?

**Ashley:** It’s like a very specific story to me but I do think that there are practical applications. So, like I said I was working at the Second City and I had worked with Dwayne Perkins in the past. And then when Stephen Colbert’s new CBS show came out they announced – they did like a big announcement of their writer staff and it was like 500 white men and two white ladies. And it was just like, oh, Colbert is supposed to be like – he’s from Second City. Being a Second City trained person, that’s like the show I should be able to like at least have a chance to apply for. And not only did I not, but I never even heard about the packet. And I’m in with the in crowd with that show. Right?

So I had posted on Facebook back when we used to do that. And I was just like, you know, it’s so disappointing to see that he has this all white, mostly male staff. And even as like a Second City person I couldn’t get my hands on a packet. And, of course, people got angry at me and were like if you didn’t get picked it’s because you’re not a good writer. And I was like you don’t know that because I didn’t get to write. I didn’t even get a packet. [laughs] I didn’t get a chance to write.

So, Dwayne Perkins had like seen that Facebook argument and he was like, “You’re exactly right. I got a packet recently. It’s 100% for you. Put your money where your mouth is. Here’s the packet.” And it was the one for Sam Bee.

**Craig:** That’s pretty great. I do like it when racist people on Facebook are really bad at arguing. [laughs] It’s just kind of funny. Like did you not read what I said? Look at the words. Ah, Facebook.

**Ashley:** Racists historically do not like to read.

**Craig:** You know what? They’re not big readers. Or thinkers. Yeah. You know, there’s an interesting study there. Maybe it’s just like whatever weird shame, it makes you hate books and words. It just stretches to other human beings.

**Ashley:** Well, it’s the opposite. They did a study and they found that people who, like novels teach your empathy. People who read more novels have better empathy skills.

**Craig:** It makes total sense. You have to put your mind in another person’s mind. Yeah. By the way, that’s what writing is. It’s why when writers talk about things and I’m like how is it that you can write somebody that’s different than you but you cannot imagine how this person across from you is thinking differently? Then it seems like a weird deficit.

**Ashley:** The whole gig is just imagining being another person.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like, hello? WTF.

**John:** So Samantha Bee is the first time you’re hired on. What is like to be working into that room for the first time? And how do you learn the rhythm and sort of when to speak and when not to speak? Because we’ve been talking on the show about your first time in a writer’s room, traditionally you’re sort of breaking out a season of a show and sort of like when you speak up and when you don’t speak up. Any guidance for the first time someone is in a comedy variety room? Like how to sort of get their feet underneath them?

**Ashley:** Yeah. I think a lot of podcasts tell people like, oh, if you’re a staff writer you shouldn’t talk, but talking is your job. So maybe don’t take that advice. When I started on Full Frontal most of that staff had been on The Daily Show, so it was of course like intimidating because they – I had never worked in TV before. And many of them had been on The Daily Show for like a decade.

And so I was kind of quiet to start off. But then I realized like, oh, yes they have TV experience that I don’t have, but I have a perspective that’s really important that I need to speak up. So someone had like pitched a story that unknowingly would have been very upsetting to the disabled community, like from a place of pure innocence. But as I’m listening to it I’m like, oh no, Twitter is going to kill us. And I was like, well, I can’t not – so I just had to say, “You know what, I’m sorry, I hate to be this person. Everyone is so excited about this idea. But Twitter is going to kill us if we accidentally say this thing. Maybe a different angle that wouldn’t do that is this.” And our showrunner pulled me aside and was like, “I was waiting for you to realize that there was a reason why I brought you here.”

And it was so validating. It was like, oh yeah, I’m here to be that millennial who says. And then I felt better and I started pitching a lot of stories. And I actually got a lot of pitches on in the beginning I think because I purposely curated my social so that I was following a lot of activists and people who were on the front line of news stories. So they would be tweeting about something that was going to be news in two days. So I could bring that story in first.

And then also the silly little advice I give people is pitch for the cold open and the tag. Because nobody cares about those. They’re having a hard time getting pitches on. They’ll always let you write a tag.

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** Now, Ashley, I want to talk about what you said there with the disabled community was going to be on you if you ever say this thing. One of the things I’ve been hearing a lot about these last six weeks is don’t ask the person of color in the room to be the brakes. Don’t ask that person to always be the one who has to be the person saying like, no, no, that’s wrong. Don’t ask the most junior person in the room to speak up when there’s a problem. Help me square that. Because it sounds like in that case thank god they had you there to do that. But it shouldn’t always be your responsibility to do that. Right?

**Ashley:** It shouldn’t be and it’s so much extra work that only that young or junior writer of color is doing. And it’s so unfair, especially when you, the staff writer, has to tell an EP that they’re wrong. Like that’s horrible. The power imbalance feels so bad. So, hopefully you’re not putting that person in that position. But because you have unconscious bias you may accidentally do that and then it becomes about how you respond. Like I remember when I was on Bless this Mess there was a storyline that I was like, oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if I buy – Pam Grier is on that show. I don’t know if I buy a Black woman doing this. And immediately our showrunner was like, “You’re absolutely right. Thank you.”

And she wasn’t defensive. She didn’t argue me down. She didn’t get her feelings hurt. She just said thank you and we moved on and started improving the pitch. Like you would if someone said like, hey, maybe we should cut these two lines of dialogue. And that’s how you should respond to everything.

**Craig:** Well there’s this notion that if somebody challenges one of the things that you’re presenting in a room either you have some sort of core shame attached to it or you don’t.

**Ashley:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I think a lot of people have just a ton of core shame around anything that involves race or gender or sexuality. Any of these areas that we consider to be kind of slightly electrified train rails, you know. Because we’re afraid or we want to do well and then when somebody challenges you the shame kicks in and then there’s this defensiveness. And I think you’re making such an interesting point that actually there is nothing – it’s not personal. It’s the work. Right? So the work is what makes sense. What connects here? There is no need necessarily for shame. And I feel sometimes that behind some of that defensiveness is like a weird self-protection, like no, because I’m not a racist so therefore this is not racist or problematic.

**Ashley:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Well, no, no, you can definitely say things that are incorrect or problematic or upsetting without being a bad person. It’s called you didn’t make the right choice the first time. That’s what writing is also, right? That’s part of it.

**Ashley:** Yeah. Like any time in a room someone says like, “Oh, I think we can beat this joke,” we’ve like built a callous over the part of our heart that gets our feelings hurt by that.

**Craig:** Yes!

**Ashley:** And it’s just a value neutral, OK, let’s try to beat it. And I think we have to get there with these issues, too. And obviously you’re a human being. You might feel shame. You might get hot in the face. Take a walk around the block. Don’t put that on that poor young staff writer. Because I have seen people get shutdown and just stop talking for the rest of the season. It’s very easy to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, that’s such a great point. People are encouraged to grow that callous over their sense of pride of ownership, pride of authorship, and in fact it’s a bit of a badge of courage that, dude, I don’t even feel anything man. Yeah, well first of all we all do. OK? Everybody feels something. When someone says, “Don’t love that joke,” everybody – you should. You’re a human being. You’re going to feel something. But it’s contextualized. You are a funny person. You have had funny things get into the show. You will again. No one is saying that you’re not funny. They’re just saying congratulations as a human being you’re not batting a thousand. And I think that extends to everything.

That’s such a useful perspective, I think. When these moments of rubbing up against each other happen, not good rubbing up against each other but bad rubbing up against each other, that you kind of are able to sort of let yourself grow the callous over it and not feel shame. Take the walk. Don’t put it on the other person. Don’t try and make your discomfort go away by denying that anything happened problematic in the first place.

**John:** I think it comes back to the idea of an action versus an identity. And a thing I’ve seen people talk about on Twitter this last couple weeks is to do a racism is to recognize that you did a thing that wasn’t right and it could have been unconscious or whatever, but let that be a thing that happened and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are that person who did that thing. Because that’s where you get in that cycle where you start denying it and all these things.

There’s an opportunity to acknowledge and address it and move on. And that helps that young writer who pointed out keep speaking up in the room and it helps everyone just sort of figure out the way forward through this and not have it be so focused on your identity, just the work that you’re doing.

**Ashley:** And that writer’s ability to keep speaking out is going to save you a bad day on Twitter, I promise.

**Craig:** That’s absolutely true. There’s a great self-interest that you could examine and I think that is – obviously there’s a value there. But, you know, even if theoretically someone could whisper in your ear and say, “I’m from the future and you get away with it on Twitter, no one notices,” there is a human being there who you hopefully are encouraging to grow. Because definitionally you’re describing somebody that’s not in charge talking to somebody who is in charge. And we’re going to get into this whole theory of how you do let people grow and how to prevent I guess – what’s the version of the ceiling that isn’t even a ceiling? [laughs] Right?

You walk into a room and your head is already bumping up against it because essentially it’s like welcome to the entry level where you will stay forever.

**Ashley:** Yes. Hope you like it here.

**Craig:** Exactly. This is your home now. And you did have this fascinating thread on Twitter where you were investigating diversity programs and that was one of the concepts that came up. So maybe we should talk a little bit about that thread and what you were trying to say.

**Ashley:** Yeah. I’ve never done a diversity program. But I hear about them so much from my peers and it’s like among the entry level people of color one of the biggest pain points. And I just thought like, well, those people who have done one or who still hope to do one as their way into the industry probably feel like they can’t say these things. But I can. And so, yeah, I went on a good old birthday rant.

**Craig:** Oh, that was your birthday? Oh.

**Ashley:** It was my birthday.

**Craig:** Happy Birthday.

**Ashley:** Thank you.

**John:** Happy Birthday. So, some of the points you make in this is that these programs recruit people who don’t necessarily need them. And so you’re an example. Like you came through Second City so you probably could have applied for one of these programs, but you already had the training coming out of this that you kind of would have gotten in one of these programs right?

**Ashley:** Yes, OK, I did apply for them. I applied for all the diversity programs. I didn’t get in. And then I got a job on television. And a lot of my friends who were doing these programs were with me at the Second City. They had the exact same training I do. And I would watch as our white friends would get a staff writer job and our friends of color would get a diversity program.

**Craig:** Yes. And so there’s this weird thing that’s happening in two directions in this point that you’re making. One point is that there are people who have done programs like UCB or Second City who if they were white would have already then graduated from something. Essentially it’s like you’re done with your thing, so you move along. Like you don’t need to go through another thing to graduate through.

Which I think is really important to put into focus. When you have this program that then is like – it’s like putting a lobby in front of a lobby, right?

**Ashley:** Maybe this conversation is the end of my career, but when you—

**Craig:** Trust me, our careers will end way faster.

**Ashley:** [laughs] When someone presents a problem to you of like there aren’t enough people of color at your network or whatever and your solution is a training program, what you’re saying is you assume that those people need training. You’re assuming that they’re less than. And you know there was a time where people of color didn’t have access to universities or to these post-graduate training programs, but we do. So you’re now taking someone who has gone to college, gone through a Second City, and IO, a UCB, often for ten years, and then saying you need more training, even though the person who is sitting in the classroom next to you is ready.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. And you may already have more actual training than that person. Because there’s a special training bucket, you end up in the training bucket. And you know because you applied, didn’t get into those programs, and then got the thing that those programs are supposed to train you for. I have the same relationship with film schools. I didn’t go to film school. I didn’t go to any of that stuff. And then I just did the thing that I’m doing. And the point being that there is the most essential training. The only real training you can ultimately get is job training that isn’t training – a job. Right? They got to throw you in the pool and you must swim. No floaties. No little special zone in the pool. You got to go in with everybody else and start swimming.

**Ashley:** And I think the problem they’re attempting to address is like when you’re on that first or second or third even staff writer job typically someone is going to take under their wing and kind of mentor you a little bit. If it’s not the showrunner, one of the other EPs. And I’ve certainly experienced that and been so grateful for that. And I think that people tend to choose – when you choose your guy who you’re going to do that for it’s often someone who looks like you.

So, I think in their minds they’re thinking, oh, a person of color may not get chosen as anybody’s guy, so let’s run them through this training program. But the training program is not the same type or quality of information that you would get as being on a job and having a senior level writer take you under their rein. So they’re not replicating the thing they’re trying to replace.

**Craig:** They’re not replicating the thing they’re trying to replace. It’s such a perfect way of saying it. Everybody knows, right? It’s not like people don’t know. This person is a trainee. This person is a rookie. That’s too very different jobs. And it does seem like there’s got to be a way to get us out of that loop.

I think that people sometimes think that, oh, these are essentially positive things. But, John, my question for you is behind all of this do you suspect, what I suspect, which is that the companies are just being cheap. They’re using training as an excuse to pay less.

**John:** So, I think there is a noble intention, or there was a noble intention behind these programs. So I don’t want to put a negative – original intention on this. But I think the realities are if a studio can get away with paying less they will pay less. And in many cases the people who are coming out of these programs they’re able to pay these people a training late, some lesser rate, or pay them out of a different fund so it’s saving them money to do this. And I think it overall limits the growth of some of these writers who are coming to television this way. Because if I can pay you X or I can pay you 75% of X, you know, as a studio I want to pay you 75% of X. And I worry that that’s really where we’re at right now.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s why we probably need to take a very critical look at what we’re doing here and so that we are hiring Ashley out of Second City, not hiring Ashely, we’re bringing her into the training program after Second City. Giving her the job she should have.

**Craig:** Like Ashley says, so Ashley another point you make is because there is this trainee rate where they’re getting away with paying you less, they’re incentivized to keep you on that level.

**Ashley:** Or, to swap you out for another person of color. Because when it would be time for you to go up to the next level, like story editor, and probably get a pay bump. What is happening is that they’re just swapping that writer out and getting another new diversity program writer who is free again. And so it’s like when you tell someone that someone is worth less they’re going to treat them like they’re worth less. And it also makes it seem like writers of color are interchangeable.

Like we had a Black writer, and now we’ll just get another Black writer, as if that person is going to come in with the same experience and skills and life knowledge that they were bringing to the room.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. That idea of paying someone less makes them worth less is something we’ve talked a lot about with assistants over these years. And this is another example of that where it’s just when you give a discount for certain kinds of people in that room it has an effect. And so I think a writer is a writer and needs to be paid like a writer is where we’re coming down to.

While we’re still talking about money, I do want to circle back to comedy variety overall. Did you get residuals? Did you get paid residuals for the work you were doing on those shows?

**Ashley:** We did because the two shows are on TBS and HBO. So we did get residuals. I only found out recently that on streaming a lot of comedy variety writers don’t get residuals, which is like – that’s already nuts, but there’s no script fees in comedy variety. And there’s no advancement. You’re either a staff writer or the head writer. So there’s no like sort of guaranteed pay bumps. And there’s no residuals. So it’s just people working 45 hours a day for way less money than everybody else.

**John:** So you’re working in scripted television, working on Bless the Mess, or the show you’re working on right now, is that better pay and a better life for you?

**Ashley:** Yeah, it’s definitely a more chill life. There are a lot of comedy variety writers who only want to write comedy variety for the rest of their careers and they’re great at it. I don’t think that a lot of people are trying to move into scripted. But, they’re doing – they are a writer. They should at least be getting residuals and at least be getting the same level of financial gain that everybody else is.

**John:** Yeah. Particularly if they’re working on a streamer show, because the difference between if you’re writing a show for Netflix versus a show for HBO, and one gets residuals and one doesn’t, that’s crazy.

**Craig:** Well, you know, we’re kind of bumping up against this issue that we were discussing before. The churn of this kind of work. Because residuals ultimately are for reuse and if you have material that’s sort of got a – like I mean I guess some people sit and watch old episodes of Jimmy Kimmel, but not many. Mostly you’re just watching it that night. And so reuse isn’t a huge part of it, which means that the companies that are employing writers have to essentially balance that out so that – I mean, obviously you want to make sure that the people who are working for you can make a living. And that as an employer you are an attractive option for those people because, you know, as we’re hearing Ashley is appropriately describing the – I mean, this is like fox hole stuff. Right?

This is really hard to do. I mean, listen, just as a side note, always go for the more chill, if you can. Just always. This job is hard enough. Life is hard enough. Being a writer is hard enough. We already have our own mental problems that we’re dealing with. So chill – always I say gravitate towards chill.

**John:** We have a couple questions here and I’m curious about your perspective on these, Ashley, so I’m going to ask you first to answer these questions if you wouldn’t mind. Vito in Vegas wrote in to ask, “About a year ago a friend told me about an idea he wanted to turn into a screenplay. The idea was simple as ‘a heist film that takes place in a shopping mall’ with no other plot points, story, or characters discussed. Since then we’ve had a pretty big falling out but I really like the idea of a heist film in a shopping mall. Is it stealing if I write my own take on that idea? Does it only become stealing if I were taking plot points and characters? When is stealing an idea actually stealing an idea?”

Ashley, what do you think?

**Ashley:** I think, I don’t know, my perspective might be different as a sketch writer. Because as a sketch and a late night writer you’re going through so many ideas that to me it is stealing and stealing an idea – I don’t know why you would do it. Because you have 45 ideas a day. Just use one of the other 44. That’s such a vague idea that you could just have another one.

**John:** Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the idea, a heist film that takes place in a shopping mall, is not intellectual property. It is not copyright-able. What Vito is really asking us to make is an ethical determination. And I tend to side with Ashley here. Like, yeah, no, you could. There’s nothing your ex-friend can do about it legally. But how will you feel? And maybe is there something else you can write? And also honestly Vito that’s not a great idea. Sorry. It’s just not.

**John:** It’s not a great idea.

**Craig:** It’s not a great idea.

**John:** We’ve spared you from that.

**Craig:** We’ve seen a billion heist movies, and so it’s in a shopping mall. Who cares? I don’t care. That was also Bad Santa. So, yeah, you know, it was Bad Santa. It’s been done.

**John:** What I find so fascinating about this question is that, OK, if it weren’t an ex-friend but a current friend would you be considering it? No. You wouldn’t be considering it because that’s your friend and you’d be betraying your friend. Or at least you would talk to your friend about that. Are you going to actually write this thing or are you not going to write this thing? But because it’s an ex-friend that you had a falling out with maybe that makes it OK? No. That doesn’t change the valiance of whether it’s OK or not to do this thing.

So, move on. I think Ashley had the best approach. Because really it’s a sketch idea. It’s just a loose idea out there. You can have other good loose ideas. Leave this one be, Vito. Don’t – thanks for writing in, but don’t take this idea.

**Craig:** Nice use of the word valiance, by the way.

**John:** All right. Thanks. I try every once and a while.

**Craig:** No, I love it.

**Ashley:** It’s on his calendar today.

**Craig:** I know. Today the word of the day is “valiance.”

**John:** I ripped it off. It’s like, ooh, valiance. That’s the new word.

**Craig:** Let’s see.

**John:** Do you want to try Hunter?

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s pose this question to Ashley. Hunter from Washington writes, “This is sort of a follow up to your recent podcast about the use of police in mass media. That’s from Episode 455. Which made me wonder about my current project. I’ve been working on and off for the past two years on a drama feature about a minority teenager struggling against the nature of society while attempting to achieve his dreams. One of the characters currently happens to be a family member who is also a local police officer. The problem is I’m white and come from a middle class household so I haven’t experienced the injustice that I’ve been writing about. With the recent protests I feel like I woefully unqualified to tell the story and am worried that what I am doing will be seen as extremely insensitive should I ever release it to the public.

“Here’s my dilemma…” I’m already interested because I don’t know where the dilemma is, but let’s go on. “Here’s my dilemma. Should I continue to write this screenplay while avoiding the traps that typically appear with Hollywood portrayals of police and racism? Or should I simply accept I am too privileged to write something like this and write something else? I’m passionate about this story as some elements are personal to me, but I don’t want to write something that could considered by many to be insensitive.”

Ashley, any thoughts about Hunter’s – I’m going to downgrade it from dilemma to predicament?

**Ashley:** I feel really bad because he said he’s been working on it for two years, but he lost me at the word minority.

**Craig:** I was going to say. I don’t even like saying it.

**Ashley:** Yeah. I feel like if you’re calling your character a minority and not a Black person or a Mexican person you’re probably not ready to write the script. I’m so sorry.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. John, what do you think about Hunter from WA?

**John:** So, he says there is a personal aspect of this story. I think that’s what he needs to focus on and there’s probably some version of the story that he actually has real insight, both personal insight and emotional insight. But I think he’s trying to project it onto characters he is no ready to write and parts of the world he doesn’t understand. And I don’t think it’s going to work. And so not just because it’s like the politically correct thing to do, but I think it’s actually the correct writing thing to do and career thing to do is for him to focus on the story that he’s uniquely well-qualified to write and not try to write this thing that he himself seems to suspect he’s not the right person to be writing.

**Craig:** That’s the part that I’m kind of catching on. I mean, Hunter, I think you have to listen to your gut here. You can write anybody and you are allowed to write anybody. Writers, we are here to write characters and we should and can write characters that are not just like us. However, if you do so please be aware you have to get it right. If you’re going to write somebody that isn’t you other people that are more like that character need to look at it and go that feels right. Which means homework and listening and empathy and practice and thought and connection. So a lot of stuff going on there. And it doesn’t sound like you feel like you’re on solid ground there.

The other thing to investigate is whether or not your story is going to fit in a kind of story we’ve seen a lot of. For instance, if your story is about white people helping a Black kid, we’ve seen it. A lot.

**Ashley:** We’ve seen it more than it’s actually happened I would argue.

**Craig:** Correct. There is 1.5 of those movies for every time it has happened in reality. [laughs] So, I think that we don’t need more of those. Sometimes people think that they have a good idea for a movie because it’s just like other movies they’ve seen when in fact that’s the best argument that you don’t have a good idea for a movie. So, I think that you should listen to your gut here. You’re not a bad person. In fact, you’re a good person I would argue because you are being aware and you’re being thoughtful and you are taking the time to do something that a lot of people don’t do.

So, on that front I think well done. Listen to your gut here. And remember there’s lots of other stuff you can write.

**John:** For sure. It’s time for our One Cool Things. So, I have two One Cool Things. One of them is Ashley Nicole Black on Drunk History. So I was looking through clips and you’re on Drunk History Season 5 Episode 3 talking about Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek. It is fantastic. My question for you, so we’ll put a link in the show notes to this, my question for you is how does the drinking part and the recording of the audio work on that? Because you tell the story so well and yet you clearly have some alcohol in you. What is that experience like?

**Ashley:** That’s one of the top three drunkest I’ve been in my life. And one of the other three is another episode of Drunk History. So very drunk. And so basically like there is someone there who is very patient and whose name I couldn’t possibly remember who will get you to repeat a sentence over and over again until you get it right.

**Craig:** Oh my god. That’s awesome.

**John:** Well and it’s absolutely delightful. So people should check that out. The other thing I was listening to this morning, NPR did a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in celebration of Juneteenth. And the Emancipation Proclamation, I guess I never actually read it. It’s not inspiring reading. It’s not poetic. It’s just a list of exceptions kind of to the end of slavery except for these cases.

But what’s fascinating about the NPR reading of it is – I’ll link to the page that has it – is they have a whole bunch of NPR hosts reading different sections of it. And so the first time I’m seeing like, oh, that’s what Audie Cornish looks like. That’s what Korva Coleman looks like. All these people whose voices I’ve heard in my head all these times. Oh, that’s the face that goes with it. So, I always find it so fascinating when I listen to the radio or podcasts because I end up building a face in my mind for what that person looks like and it’s never even remotely close. And so it was a chance to see some of the faces of all these NPR people I’ve been listening to for years. So I’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

**Ashley:** Can I make a confession about this show?

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Tell me.

**Ashley:** I thought you guys were the opposite. Like, I had seen a picture of Craig at some point and thought that man was named John August.

**Craig:** Oh wow. That’s awesome.

**Ashley:** A really long time.

**Craig:** That’s so great.

**John:** That’s excellent.

**Craig:** That’s amazing. But, you know, it doesn’t really change anything, does it?

**John:** No, it really doesn’t it.

**Craig:** I mean, you just thought all that time that agency agreement guy named John August was such an asshole. [laughs] And now you’re like, oh no, that man named John August is a very nice man.

**John:** So Craig has a beard. I could not grow a beard if I tried. That’s one way to sort of keep it.

**Craig:** Have you tried?

**John:** I have tried. It looks really bad.

**Craig:** Aw. I kind of want to see it now.

**John:** You want to see it?

**Ashley:** Quarantine is the time.

**Craig:** I mean, really.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I was just looking, by the way, at the Emancipation Proclamation. They have on the national archives they have the actual document which was handwritten, of course. And it just strikes me that it’s four and half pages long of just handwriting. Now, today any bill, even a bill to name a post office something is usually about 4,000 pages long. I just think it’s remarkable that before I think government became over-lawyered and burdened down by all these things that you could do something like free an entire race of people in 4.5 pages.

Now, you could also argue that maybe they should have been a little bit more thorough in their 4.5 pages because in fact the whole point of Juneteenth is that Emancipation Proclamation didn’t seem to take effect for a while. At least not in Texas. So I guess there’s a tradeoff. They could have used a few extra pages there it seems.

**John:** Or quicker enforcement.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That too. But there was a war, so it happened along the way. Ashley, do you have a One Cool Thing to share with us?

**Ashley:** Yes. It’s the Loveland Foundation, which is an organization that helps Black women and girls access therapy. So if you want to access therapy you can go to their website and there’s places like find a therapist. And you can also donate and help pay for somebody’s therapy.

**John:** That seems great.

**Craig:** It’s called the Loveland?

**Ashley:** Yes. The Loveland Foundation.

**Craig:** OK. Bookmarking. All right. My One Cool Thing is, you had it listed here on our Workflowy John as “also” but I’m stealing it because I was already planning on it.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Our good friend, friend of the podcast, Mike Birbiglia, he has his many wonderful shows. Mr. Birbiglia – by the way, Mike Birbiglia’s movie Don’t Think Twice is – I was thinking about that when you were talking about, Ashley, talking about people who don’t mention the packets. Like that weird jealously thing that happens in the improv world.

**Ashley:** Oh man. I saw that movie with another comic. And it was one of our first times hanging out and we both liked walked out of the theater and were like goodbye. It destroyed us.

**Craig:** I love that. He’s going to love that, too.

**Ashley:** A very good representation of what it’s like.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s sort of like he knew that world.

**Ashley:** That is a story he was uniquely qualified to write.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Indeed. Indeed. So he had this wonderful show called The New One which was referenced both to the show itself and to his new child. And he and his wife J. Hope Stein, which I love, but anybody that is a fan of Mike’s comedy knows that he refers to his wife as Clo, which is not her name. Regardless, they have a book called The New One which includes poems by his wife. She’s a fantastic poet. And her poetry features in the show.

That book is now available I believe.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Everywhere. Including in print and in audio books. So The New One by Mike Birbiglia with poems by J. Hope Stein, aka Clo, is my One Cool Thing.

**John:** So the other “also” here was because he also has a brand new podcast and he’s probably listening to us right now saying like, no, mention the podcast.

**Craig:** I know. I can hear him saying that. Why aren’t they mentioning the podcast?

**John:** Mike Birbiglia seems like a nice person, but you can tell you don’t want to get him angry.

**Craig:** That he’s the devil? [laughs]

**John:** I don’t want him angry at me.

**Ashley:** He seems nice to me.

**Craig:** That’s the best thing you’ve ever said. Mike Birbiglia seems like a nice person. But I think we all know he’s Satan.

**John:** Yeah. But he’s also driven. His new podcast is called Working it Out. It’s him working on new material with other comedians and creators each week. And it’s great so you should take a listen to that because he’s a very smart, funny person. And it’s also cool to see the process of creation happening kind of live. This is the time he would normally be out on the road working on his new thing. And instead he’s doing it through a podcast. So you should listen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are a Premium member stick around after the credits because we’re going to be talking about fireworks. But otherwise Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com.

That’s also the place where you can send long questions like the ones we answered. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Ashley you are?

**Ashley:** @ashleyn1cole.

**John:** And so you find her there. That’s actually we found you. That’s how we first met was on the Twitter.

We have t-shirts. They’re great. 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 the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments.

Ashley, absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us here.

**Ashley:** It’s going to be weird to listen to the podcast and not be on it after this I got to say.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, if you’re looking for a podcast job…

**John:** If you’re looking for a podcast job. Actually what we’re saying is please come back often, OK?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Ashley:** Would love to.

**John:** Thanks.

**Craig:** Awesome.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Now, Ashley, you live in Hollywood. I live just south of you, just south of Hollywood. Can we talk about fireworks and the fireworks situation?

**Ashley:** Has it been a month? It feels like it’s been a month of every single night fireworks.

**John:** From Memorial Day on, honestly. Just hearing fireworks all the time. Not like happy big fireworks in the sky. Just like pops and explosions. And most frustratingly during the time when Melrose was on fire and there were actually smoke grenades and stuff like that I would also hear them. And so like is that fireworks? Is there some civil unrest happening nearby? Fireworks, no. Stop the fireworks.

**Ashley:** Yeah. It’s like every night it’s like helicopters and tiny explosions. And my poor little dog is like we shouldn’t be outside. And I’m like but this is where you have to pee. It’s just like, no, no, no, it’s not good. And it’s every night I have this shivering being hiding in my bathroom that I can’t do anything for.

**John:** Yeah. My dog is the same way. So, fireworks I think are appropriate for the Fourth of July. Second tier is New Year’s Eve. Great. I can take some fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Let’s keep them special for those days. I don’t want the fireworks for the unveiling of the tree at the Grove. No. The tree is the celebration at the Grove. We don’t need fireworks for that either. I just – I’m kind of anti-fireworks. Craig, you’re being very quiet here.

**Craig:** Counterpoint.

**Ashley:** No.

**Craig:** We should have fireworks every night. Hear me out. Hear me out. First of all, the dogs will get used to it.

**Ashley:** No they won’t apparently. It’s been a month.

**Craig:** They need like a lot of them. The problem is that they’re getting random fireworks. They need to know every night at say 10pm there’s an amazing fireworks display that brings everyone together. Beautiful. We can all look up. We can ooh and ah. And we all—

**Ashley:** They can’t see color.

**Craig:** That’s OK. Because a lot of them are white and black. Like, you know, they shine so a lot of flashes of light that disappear into the night. So they can like that. And also maybe like we could put some sort of flavor in the fireworks. Like a chicken flavor or something. I was thinking of my dog. She loves chicken.

So, chicken would come down and they would be happy. And because everyone – who doesn’t love fireworks? They’re heartwarming.

**John:** No. Fireworks are not heartwarming. And I oppose their use in anything other than the Fourth of July and occasionally on January 1st.

**Craig:** So weird. You’re talking about fireworks like they’re ventriloquism or something, which as everyone knows is awful. Fireworks put a smile on children’s faces.

**John:** Because they’re special once a year.

**Ashley:** Yes.

**John:** And if we have them all the time it’s no longer once a year. It’s no longer special.

**Craig:** They should be shown every hour. I would be OK if they announced the hour change like, oh, it’s three o’clock. Fireworks. I’m down.

**John:** When I was in Scotland they actually have the gun where they fire at – I don’t know, originally it was like at noon, but they realized it was too many explosives. They were having to do it 12 times. So now they do it at one o’clock and so at one o’clock they put off the gun in Edinburgh.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Ashley:** I’ve always found fireworks like OK. I’ve never had my mind blown by a firework. But there are people who have PTSD who like it ruins they’re whole day. So it’s like I’m not going to ruin someone’s whole day just so I can go like, oh, that was cool.

**Craig:** I hear you. But I think that’s again another reason why we should have fireworks every night. Hear me out. Hear me out. If they’re every night at a set time then anybody who is noise sensitive. Because, look, we have people out there who are neuro-diverse. They can handle the noise. They don’t like it. So they just know at this time let me get some ear plugs in. Let me get some foam. Let me put something over my ears.

**John:** I put on my thunder coat. Yes.

**Craig:** So this way I don’t have to experience the sound of it but if I want to watch the light, the beautiful colors, and I can see it. But they’ll know it’s coming. There’s no random factor. So, I think again the two of you – I almost feel like the two of you work for the fireworks lobby, because you’re making such good arguments for fireworks.

**John:** Now, have either of you seen the Queen of Versailles? The documentary about the rich woman who is determined to build the biggest house in Florida.

**Craig:** Yeah, I did.

**Ashley:** No.

**John:** So put it top of your queue. It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Jaw-dropping.

**John:** But one of the things about the house that they’re trying to build is they’re outside Orlando and they build this giant window that aims towards Disney World because they can see the fireworks every night.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** So they wanted to be able to catch the fireworks every night. And the whole house is oriented towards being able to watch the Disney World fireworks.

**Craig:** They’re so good.

**John:** So amazing.

**Ashley:** And those are probably some of the best fireworks in the world. And they’re fine.

**Craig:** OK. Hold on. Hold on. Now we got a fight. When was the last time you saw the Disney World fireworks?

**Ashley:** Well not Disney World, but Disneyland probably a couple years ago.

**Craig:** I’ll grant you Disneyland fireworks – they’re good is what I would call them. You’re going to say fine. You put a little stink on it. I get it. Honestly good. But the Disney World fireworks are outstanding.

**John:** Now, but we can all agree though those fireworks which are up in the sky, that’s one thing. This sort of like war zone thing that Ashley and I are getting every night, that’s not the same thing. But it has the effect on our dogs and on our general wellbeing. Just like, oh, there’s a pop. Was that a gunshot? Was that some grenade thing going off? I don’t know. But it’s happening all the time.

**Craig:** If you don’t let people set off proper amounts of fireworks every night that’s what you’re going to get. It’s boiling over. OK? You need to give people an outlet. And the outlet I’m suggesting is nightly fireworks displaced 10 to 10:30, professional level. Professional level.

**Ashley:** It feels like what you’re describing is sex. [laughs]

**Craig:** A little bit.

**John:** Craig, I have a pitch for you. So it’s like the purge, but with fireworks.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** So on one day every year–

**Craig:** No!

**John:** We let everyone do their fireworks and we do it on the Fourth of July. How is that?

**Craig:** You’re the worst. You’re the Grinch. You just said like what if every year we have one day where a man comes down from the North Pole and puts presents in our stockings. We already have that. You’re selling me something I already have. We have the Fourth of July. I want nightly fireworks. I’m not – this is my new thing. This is what the world needs.

**John:** Yeah. It’s in his HBO contract. He gets an assistant and he gets nightly fireworks.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Ashley:** I’m going to send my dog to tap her little feet around your apartment at three o’clock in the morning.

**Craig:** I would actually kind of love that. I love dogs so much. What kind of dog?

**Ashley:** She’s a mutt. I adopted her from Puerto Rico. She’s a street dog. And she hates fireworks.

**Craig:** Is she big? Medium? Small?

**Ashley:** She’s small and chunky.

**Craig:** Oh, I like a small chunky dog.

**Ashley:** And she has Yoda ears.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Yeah. Send her over. I’m good. I’ll teach her to appreciate the fireworks. She’ll love them.

**John:** Ashley, thanks again.

**Craig:** Thanks Ashley.

**Ashley:** Thanks for having me.

**Craig:** So much fun.

 

Links:

* [Ashley Nicole Black](https://twitter.com/ashleyn1cole) on Twitter
* [Ashley’s Twitter Thread on Diversity Programs](https://twitter.com/ashleyn1cole/status/1272673440374243329)
* [Ashley on Drunk History](https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/photo-gallery/44936398/video/44936689/Season-5-Episode-3-Ashley-Nicole-Black-Nichelle-Nichols) on Nichelle Nichols
* [NPR’s reading of the Emanicipation Proclamation](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/19/880754393/celebrating-juneteenth-a-reading-of-the-emancipation-proclamation)
* [The Loveland Foundation](https://thelovelandfoundation.org/)
* [Mike Birbiglia’s Working it Out](https://www.birbigs.com/working-it-out-pod)
* [The New One](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52894214-the-new-one)
* [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 Eric Pearson ([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/457standard.mp3).