Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/bonus-1917-qa-with-sam-mendes-and-krysty-wilson-cairns).

**John August:** Hey, it’s John. So, one perk of the Writers Guild is that almost every week there are screenings of new films, often followed by Q&A sessions with the screenwriters. This past Saturday the film was 1917 and I sat down with the writers after the film to talk about the process. There are spoilers, obviously, and really truly if at all possible I’d urge you to see the movie with as information as possible in advance. That’s how I saw it and I really dug it. So, once you’ve seen the movie come back to hear what we talked about. Enjoy.

Hello. My name is John August. And it is a pleasure to be welcoming the writers of the film, Krysty Wilson-Cairns and Sam Mendes. Come on up.

**Sam Mendes:** Thank you.

**John:** Congratulations. This is a remarkable achievement.

**Sam:** We’ve got the credits playing over our faces.

**John:** We’ve still got the credits. Absolutely. It’s nice.

**Sam:** It’s a nice effect.

**John:** Tell me about the genesis of this movie. What was the first time that this idea became possible as a movie?

**Sam:** As you can tell from the dedication it was inspired by my grandfather who told us stories of his experience in the Great War. He fought between 1916 and 1918. He enlisted as a 17-year-old. But he didn’t tell any of his kids the stories. He only told his grandchildren, so he didn’t speak about it until he was in his 70s.

And I was first aware of it, I suppose, because he used to wash his hands incessantly and we used to laugh at him, me and my cousins. Then eventually I said to my dad, “Why does grandad wash his hands all the time?” And he said, “Because he remembers the mud of the trenches and the fact that he could never get clean.” And it struck me even then. I was probably 12 years old or something that it was so strange that somebody who was so confident and such a great storyteller, he was a novelist and a great bon viveur, and a great charismatic person. And that it should be so much part of him, still, all those years later.

Anyway, the stories he told us were all – they were none of them stories of bravery and heroism. None of them conventional stories. They were all about luck and chance and how fortunate he was to have survived when his friends died standing next to him. He told one story about his best friend being hit by a shell directly and just disappearing. And there being nothing of him to bury. Nothing of him left. And you tell those stories obviously to an 11-year-old, 12-year-old boy and you don’t forget them.

But he told one particular story about carrying a message through No Man’s Land. And he was a short man. And in the winter the mist in No Man’s Land hung at six feet. And they would give him the message because when he ran he would never appear above the mist, so he couldn’t be seen. And that image of that one little man alone with his message, surrounded by death, that stuck with me. And although it took me a long time to come to write my first script, when I eventually did sit down that was the story that was sort of pulling at me.

And then I spent maybe three or four months researching and trying to construct a moment in the war – trying to discover a moment in the war when a long journey was possible, when that man could carry a message longer than just 200 yards. And worked out a story structure. And then I stalled and I kind of put it down. And it was my producing partner, Pippa Harris, who said why don’t you get someone to help you turn it into a proper screenplay, a real writer in other words.

I’d done two, well three projects really with Krysty. I was exec producer on Penny Dreadful which was her first job. And then I asked her to write a screenplay for a project called Voyeur’s Motel which was also for DreamWorks which didn’t come to anything, but it was a wonderful screenplay. And we had a shorthand. I loved working with her. And I wanted a totally different perspective and someone who thought fast and wrote well, which she does. And she was the person who kind of crystallized it and brought it into screenplay form. Without her it would still be sitting on my desktop saying Untitled WWI Project. Gathering whatever the computer version of dust is. Pixels.

**John:** Yeah. So, Krysty, he had a way into it which was from his grandfather’s stories. What was your way into it? As you first were approached with the story what could you hold onto? What was the way in?

**Krysty Wilson-Cairns:** Well, I mean, what was a little random and pure luck was that I was a massive World War I nerd. I had grown up just fascinated by that sort of, well both World Wars, the idea of humanity. Humans pushed to their absolute extremes. Just always interested me from like a character point of view before I even knew I wanted to be a writer. So I had always wanted to write a big WWI story. And I think when Sam told me that one image of this young boy, essentially 17 years old, lost in the fog of No Man’s Land carrying a letter I thought, my god, he’s going to tell a story that’s personal, that’s character-driven, and it’s unlike any other war story.

So I never really had to work hard to find a way in. I was just completely excited to be there.

**John:** How early did the character structure of the story begin where you knew you would start with two characters and then there’d be a reversal? How early in the process did you figure out who you were going to follow and sort of what the directions and misdirections would be in the story?

**Sam:** I think we knew fairly early on, didn’t we, that one of them was going to [carpet/cop it]. One of them was going to die. I felt that Schofield always, who I had quite a different idea of than George when I first imagined him. George I thought brought something wonderful and extra. But he was always going to be the through character. The second character, Blake, was always going to die. But Krysty added something that was pivotal which was Blake’s brother.

You know, when I pitched the project to her he was going to save a number of men, however many, and one of them was going to die. One of the two men was going to die. Krysty halfway through the process of turning it into a screenplay called me and said, “I’m really enjoying it. And it’s going well. But I think we need a personal reason as well. And what if Blake had a brother?” And I thought that’s a brilliant idea. So I just said, yes. You know, great. Let’s try and factor that in.

And why that was interesting in terms of the story structure was it’s the character who has the brother who I suppose unconsciously perhaps you don’t expect to be the person who dies. So that gave us a sort of slight misdirection which I really liked as well in terms of the narrative.

So, yeah, that came to you about halfway through the writing process, didn’t it?

**Krysty:** Yeah. Well the real reason that started to kind of eat away at me when I was in the first draft was because of the nature of this film you can never show the 1,600 men you’re going to save. They become faceless uniforms. And it occurred to me in the first sort of writing, the first sort of well act if you will, but it’s not really an act structure, was that what was so crucial was the personal element. It was the thing that drove you through the entire film. You loved Blake and Schofield. You want them both to live. You want them to get their message delivered. And I thought well we need to do that with the 1,600 men and by the nature of problem solving I was like, hey, what if one of them is Blake’s brother? Because you love Blake and he’s so young and innocent and I thought well that would be perfect. We’ll kill him.

**John:** [laughs] Now, let’s talk about the priors going into this, because every other war film made, you know, we sit down as an audience with all of the expectation of other war films. But watching this I also felt like – and tell me if I’m wrong here – first player videogames or sort of the sense of playing videogames as a continuous journey is something I definitely noticed in this. The sense that you can’t ever cut away or escape to anything else. How early on in the process did you get a sense that you wanted this to be continuous time? That this was going to be really locked in focus on these characters?

**Sam:** Well, the pitch, I mean, for me it was always two hours of real time. And shortly after that I thought it should be one shot. And I never changed off that from the very beginning. So even my story structure was based around that idea, what could credibly happen within a two-hour period of real time. I call it real time. Obviously there’s a break in the middle when he gets knocked out. But in terms of the way you experience time you experience it as the central character does. And every second that ticks down for them is one for you, too.

And once that you understand that you’re locked into that and you can’t escape you begin to judge image differently, too. You know that you’re not going to jump space. You know you’re going to do 200 yards down the hill. So you begin to both lean in for information and also at the times when we wanted within this dance of the camera to shift from the intimate to the epic, from the subjective gaze to the objective gaze, and push them further away, you were able to scrutinize the land around them in a different way and observe their environment more like you observe your own as you’re walking through it.

So, for example No Man’s Land, we weren’t pointing to dead people. But they were always in your peripheral vision, that sense of death, being surrounded by death of different, you know, of the people who dwell in No Man’s Land – the rats, the crows, you know, and the different shapes that when you first look at that, the pictures of No Man’s Land just appear to be flat land. In fact, it’s a whole world of destruction. Once you’re up close to it it’s endlessly detailed and strange and haunting.

And, you know, the videogame thing, I think some of the most incredible, I mean, you know, anyone who has played Red Dead Redemption and got lost in that world, you know, is aware of the extraordinary creativity of the people who put these things together. I mean, and infinitely more complex in some ways than a movie structure. But it’s also a lazy comparison because, you know, it’s for a start you’re not in control of this. And it’s a human being. You’re asking for and hoping for a different level of emotional engagement. And you’re being told a story so you are not – you are passive. And I believe people like to be told stories and not necessarily to be a part of them in an active way. That’s what you must believe if you want to make movies. You know, you’re not asking for people to contribute anything but their attention.

And so it operates in a different way and it’s trying to tell a story that is both in real time and also simultaneously compressed in odd and interesting ways. So, I guess, you know, it occurred to us, but it didn’t concern us massively.

**John:** Now Krysty talk to us about, you know, we’re talking about compression, because usually what we’re doing as screenwriters is trying to compress a bunch of things down in the tightest versions of things. Was there tension between the normal job of a screenwriter sort of trying to get a bunch of information down into a small thing and to let this real time thing play out? It must have felt different writing this script.

**Krysty:** Yeah. It was completely different. In fact, every morning when I started writing I had to be like, no, not that way. Because you’re so used to as a writer, I mean, you do it visually. You should write visually. I believe that when you write a screenplay whoever is reading it should be able to see the cut of the film in their head. Not the final cut film, but your best version of it. And with this every day I had to remind myself no I can’t cut, so instead of suggesting a wide shot and suggesting a close up, a tear rolls down his cheek, you had to suggest every movement of the camera in between, which is just not the normal thing that’s done.

So then you have to then pack every sort of frame, every image in a sense for the reader. And so you are writing incredibly visually and it was only really possible because Sam knew what he wanted as a director. And so the collaboration was absolutely key to getting this right because the rhythm, everything like that, had to be set.

The way I describe it is usually a script is a blueprint. It’s like a map to a destination. Whereas this script had to be the destination. It had to be the final film.

**John:** Absolutely. I mean, we talk about editing as being the last rewrite of the film. And obviously there’s an editor. There’s tremendous work being done here. But you can’t make a massive change here. On day one you’re starting to shoot this film and it needs to be the movie you’re shooting.

**Sam:** Yes. I mean, in that regard it was much more like I use the muscle I use in theater which is I use the part of my brain that judges rhythm and temp and pace and shape without recourse of editing. I’m not unused to putting a story together that lasts 2.5 hours that has no cuts in it. Because that’s a play. And so for me I was having to engage that part of my brain. And at the same time the moviemaking part of my brain because the camera and the actors were a constantly shifting relationship. And in a sense the audience and the audience’s perspective on the characters was changing constantly, as was the landscape.

But I think that one of the things – forgive me if anyone was here last night, and this is the same theater, I made a point I think about the reason why we worked so hard to get exposition out of the script. You know, because the sense in which you’re being dropped down and you want to experience two men who are just idly chatting. You may lean in and just ever so small details that just begin to mount up. So they have two different relationships to home. One of them wants to go home. The other is not so sure. One of them has been there longer than the other. One of them has won a medal. And the different relationships with how long they’ve been there. Their own experience of the front. Those things are revealed gradually. And obviously there are some very key pieces of exposition that are left right to the end of the movie.

You don’t know that Schofield has a family until the last shot of the film. You don’t know what their names are until the last scene of the film, their first names. So those are things that are very deliberate. That gradual revelation of their past, of their backstory such as it was.

But one of the things that we struggled with the most, Krysty and I, was the scene in the truck. Not struggled but the biggest challenge which for me is you’re dealing a lot of time in the movie with displaced emotion. Because you’re in the present tense, confronting the fact that most human beings are not able to process things that have happened over them, you know, great extremity in the moment. They don’t sob just in the moment that their friend dies in their arms. They are literally incapable of understanding what they’re going for. And their practical brain is saying in the case of Schofield I need to get the letter. I need to – I’m going to have to show his brother that he’s dead. I’m going to have to give him his valuables. So I’m going to do those things. And I’m going to need to lie him down somewhere where – I can’t leave him in the middle of this here.

All of those practical. And it’s only later when he gets in the truck and he starts to realize what’s happened to him. But how does he express it to the men in the truck? You know, we needed it to be possible that by the time he got out of the truck they knew what he’d been through. Do you put a speech into his mouth in which he says, “You know how difficult it is to have your friend die in your arms? You don’t understand.” No. That is always the pressure. Express it in words. But what you’re trying to do is turn psychology into behavior, not words. Not speech. So we had to find a way to dramatize what he was going through. And that’s when we came up with the idea and it took us about two weeks walking around the streets of New York of the truck getting stuck in the ditch. And him trying to push it out and screaming. In that moment he’s expressing all the rage and impotence and the hurt and the grief of his friend dying.

And when he gets back in the truck every single person in the truck knows that something is wrong. And all he has to say is, “There were two of us.” And everyone in that truck knows what’s happened without him ever saying my friend died. They all intuit it. And that to me is what we were searching for all the way through, trying to find a way to turn psychology into behavior. And that’s what informs the whole second part of the movie. You know, Schofield is barely conscious for the descent into hell as the journey through the burning town. He’s working on instinct. And so many things bubble to the surface that he’s unaware of. So it’s just trying to find a way in to that, into the unconscious.

**John:** Krysty, we talk about exposition and how much information an audience needs to get started, and what were the tensions, what were the pressures there? Because you could watch this movie and not know what WWI was and sort of end this movie kind of not knowing what WWI was, except you would have a sense of what it felt like, which is what movies have such a hard time doing.

**Krysty:** Well that was hugely deliberate. Even though Sam and I are both obviously very interested in the war, we didn’t want to write a film where you had to know on April 6, 1917 the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. Because what would be the point of that? It wasn’t an education, not a we don’t want to eat your pees kind of film. We wanted to create an experience, an immersive experience in which you understood what it was like to live through that war. And so reality became our North Star. And in a way I think in the script, and perhaps every department to an extent was trying to disappear. We were trying to be invisible so that you wouldn’t feel the author. You wouldn’t feel the hand that moved these characters through. And that’s really tricky.

Because exposition is super useful. And so it was just a case of problem solving exposition. How do you work around it? How do you – as Sam says through contrasting the two characters you understand their differences. And a lot of it came down to treating the audience as intelligent people who wanted to engage. The very first draft we did we made a rule no exposition. And then I think I phoned you up and said, “Some exposition?”

But that no exposition rule was a really great foundation to start from because it meant everything was stripped back. And so anytime you put something in you could see it. And then it was almost like woodworking. There’s the knot and you were just sanding, and sanding, and sanding until it just felt natural. So I mean the lazy version of the first draft might have been something along the line of Blake waking up and being like, “Oh, I miss my mother so very much.” Because you would never do that in real life. So everything had to come back to how would you behave in real life. How would we behave if we were there? And I think that lends it to obviously making it very character-driven.

**John:** Now the behavior is very human, but there are movie moments. And so, I mean, it must have been an early decision – there are moments that are of great suspense. Great sort of ups and downs and upheavals. Did that scare you at all as you were working on this very naturalist sort of realistic behaviors but there’s still movie stuff that happens? Mines collapse. And planes smash into barns. And remarkable things happen. Were there long walks around New York talking over those things, too?

**Sam:** Weirdly not. I mean, everything was discussed obviously. We talked about everything. But I felt like there were so many ways. I mean, there are so many possible dangers in this world. The challenge was to make us feel like something was constantly potential. You know, there was a potential danger at any moment, but it came from the least expected places. In the first half of the movie as you say the two action sequences as such are caused by a rat and a bag and a plane. But for me in both of those cases what was important was the prefiguring of those things that are actually in the movie long before they happen. The rats come into the No Man’s Land long before. So you’re almost used to the rat. The rat is not a special thing for them when they see it the second time in the German dugout.

The planes feature twice before the third time they crash into the barn. And in both of those you establish the sort of wonder and admiration for those people up there. But their distance from them. A sense of them being on a whole other plane, on another plane, excuse the pun, on another level entirely. But you also in that first time when you hear the planes in No Man’s Land feel their power and their scale. So you’re prefiguring them so when they do happen they don’t just get conjured out of nothing. They’ve already been there in the movie, you just haven’t really been aware of what the significance is until it crashes.

**John:** Let’s open it up to the audience if there’s any questions. I see a hand right there in the middle.

Male Audience Member: First of all, I loved the movie. I thought that was so great. And I had high expectations and you met them, first of all.

**Sam:** Thank you.

Male Audience Member: Second of all, I thought that – movie scores are kind of out of style and I thought the score for this was amazing. And so I was just thinking like what was the creative process with figuring out the score? Obviously you had an incredible composer. But what was your involvement with it?

**Sam:** Well, I mean, I’ve worked with Thomas Newman on all my movies, so I’ve been working with him 20 years. And even though we did two Bond movies together and that was a challenge for both of us, this was the most difficult. And it was partly because the moment there was too much – the music – heavy inverted commas – it felt like it was commenting. And it took you away from it. So a lot of very, very subtle, low grade underscoring that exists for the first part of the movie. There’s not an enormous amount of expressive music.

But then the movie shifts when it goes into the nighttime town into a kind of – something much more hallucinatory and surreal. And for the first time the camera detaches from the actor. And it’s moves in a way from being a naturalistic story into being something much more mythic. It’s a kind of descent into hell really. And at that point the movie becomes much more expressive. And we use everything available to us.

And it was a really tricky process and time-consuming, but I would say it’s the score he’s written for me that has the greatest dynamic. In other words it goes the quietest and the loudest. And it has an enormous shape to it. It’s very daring.

But, you know, the other thing that happened which has never happened before is Tom normally waits until the movie is finished and then starts to write music based on our temp score. But on this one he sent us quite a lot of pieces early on because we were putting the movie together in great chunks very quickly. You know, Lee Smith who you would think would have no job as an editor at all actually was incredibly crucial to the process because he was putting the movie together straight away and feeding it back to me so I could judge whether the take that we had selected we were going to match to the next day. So the back and forth was – and he was also putting music on. So the movie was emerging quite fully formed very quickly.

And we got Tom to write some temp score that we used and it’s still in the movie. I mean, some of the stuff he wrote instinctively in the moment is in the film exactly as it was written. Just recorded in a studio. And that’s never happened before as well. So it was both instinctive and highly wrought kind of at the same time.

**John:** Another question right here. Great. I’m going to repeat back the question because people in the back sometimes can’t hear them. First is like what does the script actually look like because there’s giant chunks without dialogue in them? And the second is about Steadicam.

**Krysty:** So when I first was told it was going to be one shot, which was at the end of a phone call, and then I was hung up on. I’m not angry about that all. I didn’t actually know how a one shot script would look. And so I started Googling it and then I couldn’t find anything. And so I was like, well, we’re just going to have to kind of invent as we went along. And so to make it manageable in a production sense we actually broke up by location. But everything is obviously continuous.

The script itself, there’s descriptive text but it’s all emotionally descriptive text, or just stuff that you’re seeing that’s incredibly relevant to the characters. Then the dialogue of course. So, you know, I think it runs about 112 pages. But then there’s a whole other script which Sam and Roger and the producers and Dennis Gassner put together which was 45 pages which is the kind of movement of everyone so the two characters, the camera, the sets, the turns of the camera. And so that allowed us to keep one script to be a purely emotional character-driven piece that was engaging rather than be something like “and now we move into, and this becomes, and this screen goes here,” which I think was very important because while the script was proof of concept that the studio would work and any time we were making changes it needed to be that emotional through line that you could understand.

**Sam:** Yeah. We had 45 pages of schematics, basically maps with the diagram of where the actors moved and where the camera was going to go. But as Krysty says, we did break it up. And actually you say there’s very little dialogue. There’s actually a lot of dialogue. It’s just that what it feels like. But there’s an enormous amount of dialogue in the first half of the film. They almost never stop talking. So it did look like a conventional script really. It wasn’t that different. There was a lot of description of things like No Man’s Land. What exactly they were seeing at any given moment.

So it read a little bit like an action section of a Bond movie which is just blocks of – just chunks of descriptive prose really.

The Steadicam question is interesting. About 20% is shot on Steadicam. But most of it is shot on stabilized heads which is different. And moved differently. So we were on a stabilized head, we called it the Stable Eye. Two different Steadicam rigs. The Trinity and then a little thing called the Dragon Fly which is a mini Steadicam. But then there’s wire and dolly and crane and truck and motor bike and, you know, etc.

But the key was to keep this slightly, this stealthy forward motion, this slightly threatening, never rushed, you know what I mean? It feels like a kind of snake moving forward through the land. And that was the feeling I wanted it to feel like and we’re being pulled through the movie by gravity. And the motion I talk about with Steadicam is the sea sick motion, this is this movement as we go, and we eradicated that as much as we could, as much as humanly possible.

**John:** Another question. Right there.

Female Audience Member: First of all, bravo. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a movie where I’m literally on the edge of my seat.

**Sam:** Thank you.

Female Audience Member: So very well done with that. I’m really curious about some of the photography which is mind-blowing. Again, back to the long shot. So just technical questions. How many long shots were there? I think if my eyes didn’t deceive me the first one was cut with the dog.

**Sam:** No.

Female Audience Member: It was longer?

**Sam:** But a good try. Shorter.

Female Audience Member: OK.

**Sam:** Just so you know, I don’t want to be coy about it. It’s a serious of long shots stitched together obviously. Some are shorter than others. And some are long. Genuinely long. You know, eight, nine minutes long, which anyone who has tried to do a two-minute Steadicam or a camera move knows that nine minutes is an eon in movie terms. So the reasons for changing from shot to shot sometimes were practical. We’re moving from one location to another. Or we’re going from an exterior to an interior which would be constructed on a stage and we’re going through a little patch of dark or something like that.

Sometimes they were emotional. The character, you know, the actor I just thought he needs to get to the end of this beat and take a breath and keep moving. And sometimes they were to do with the rig themselves were shifting from a wire to a – you know, we literally couldn’t move the camera any further without stopping and changing the rig substantially. Although that was often the least reason, because you know there are many shots that start with two grips holding the camera, hook it onto a wire. The wire crosses let’s say the big crater in No Man’s Land or the canal. Then gets unhooked, dropped down. They follow him under the bridge, up the stairs, you know.

So you’ve got multiple rigs within one shot often, which was beautiful to watch. I mean, it was a lot of motion behind the camera. I mean, something that looks simple, for example, the Erinmore scene, the Colin Firth at the beginning, in which the camera enters the room, floats across two tables, becomes a two-shot, pans while they go over to get their provisions, and then looks back into the room to see Colin Firth sitting having his cup of tea and saying good luck. And quoting Kipling. That is a techno-crane pushing across. And then the grips unhooked the camera from the techno-crane, pan, and as they’re panning the techno-crane retracts its entire – the whole techno-cam retracts. The wall opens up and the back of the set closes and then the ceiling closes just in time for the camera to come around and see Colin. That looks so easy that move, right? But there were so many people in that room. Colin was like, it’s like right at the last minute everyone just disappeared and there was Colin.

So, and then you go back to Lee Smith and the editor who is like the first three or four takes people were looking a little uncomfortable, I don’t know why. And he had no idea what was going on. Even the editor. And he’s a sophisticated watcher. So a lot of it was just, you know, the feet frantically paddling under the surface of the water while the duck kind of…

So, you know, that’s what it felt like sometimes. And then other times it was very simple. Just one person. We also constructed a new camera. Well, Roger Deakins, obviously cinematographer of genius, and was a huge, huge part of the whole film from the very beginning, but he has a great relationship with Arri and Arri understood were developing a small bodied Alexa LF which is their best camera. And he got them to give us the prototype. So we had a camera that was not much bigger than a transistor radio. It was about this big. And we needed it because we were going in holes and dugouts and down trenches with people on both sides. It was pretty intense.

And in many ways we couldn’t have made a movie like this 10 years ago, because the technology wouldn’t have been there and the camera size wouldn’t have been – it wouldn’t have been possible to get an image like this anyway. Put it that way. And sometimes it was comical because you had a 200-foot crane with a tiny little thing on the end of it. It was like an iPhone. It was like where’s the camera? You know, and it’s just a little dot.

So, you know, it was a remarkable feat from the grips and everyone behind the camera. They were incredible.

**John:** Now, with the script being broken apart from the choreography plan for things, were there any moments in storytelling where the necessity of how you were doing things had to change some stuff in the actual writing in your script, Krysty? What were the things that changed just because of this plan?

**Krysty:** Not much. Structurally we never changed. In fact, the structure is the same structure we sat down at your kitchen table with, which has never happened to me. And I wonder if it has happened to anyone.

I think the only times we ever really changed anything was perhaps if I’m remembering correctly the rehearsals for the Erinmore dugout. We needed to change the way we shot it. So we changed the order in which some lines were delivered because we wanted to see a reaction shot from the voices. So we kind of reshaped scenes occasionally like that. But again it was like surgical reshaping. It was never oh we need to do a complete rewrite. Most of the rewrites happened before we started the rehearsals.

**Sam:** Yeah, I mean, I had certain rules of myself. If I reached the point where I thought ever I wish we could cut here, then I’d got it wrong and I had to go back and either rewrite or restage. And mostly it was restaging. And there were a couple of moments where right to the end I was nervous. Even the scene with Richard Madden, with Blake’s brother at the end, which plays almost entirely on Richard’s face, was a big leap of faith that the audience would intuit what Schofield was thinking in that scene. But there’s a key moment which is he turns towards camera for a couple of beats and it gives you an opportunity to reengage with him before he goes back into that conversation. And that’s an example of a piece of staging that just allows you access to the character before the second part of the scene, which would be the equivalent of, you know, a reverse which we couldn’t shoot.

So sometimes there was a physical way of solving the issue, which normally you would say – without thinking you would blame the script. You would say, oh, we’ll just shoot a reverse. And it makes you realize working this way how – not how lazy – but how we simply take editing for granted. And you don’t ever – you often don’t push through and find a different solution and a more challenging solution.

You know, for me the one-shot thing, that’s how we experience the world. We walk through it facing in one direction. We look back, we can look forward. We can’t look both at the same time. And editing, which has become the grammar of film, obviously is an amazing tool in which you can jump time and distance. But it is so often overused. And every line and a piece of dialogue, back and forth, back and forth, we’ve got to see every line. Why? You know?

And if you think about it editing obviously is something that there’s now the given in filmmaking mostly. But it was created in large part, or rather the inability to move the camera was because the cameras were big and heavy and immobile and you could only shoot for two minutes at a time, and then four minutes, and then 10 eventually. But even until – even if you were shooting a movie now, it’s only 10 minutes. You know, you have to cut after 10 minutes. There was film projection. You know, every reel there was a cut. There’s a change. You know, even the best projectionist there would be a little jump.

So until very recently this was not even possible. And even though we’re all involved in a kind of excitement of what editing can do post-MTV, you know, there hasn’t been a commensurate movement in the other direction. Well how else can you express things with a camera and characters in space? There are multiple ways. And we immediately default to close up, close up, over the shoulder, over the shoulder, two shot, moving shot, fancy shot, every three scenes, boom. 16 set ups. Let’s go. And it’s like, what?

You know, that’s not the only way. But it has become the only way. And I think that anything that challenges and pushes in the other direction has to be a good thing. For me, therefore, people say is it a bit of a gimmick? It’s like, you know what, if you think about it editing is the gimmick. Not just training a camera. That’s the trickery. That certainly made me rethink how I shoot films and how if you commit to something how you will find solutions if you think hard enough.

**John:** Krysty, Sam, thank you very, very much for your movie. Congratulations.

**Sam:** Thank you.

**Krysty:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium here](scriptnotes.net)
* [1917](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8579674/)
* [1917 Behind the Scenes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hSjs2hBa94)
* [Krysty Wilson-Cairns](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4880670/)
* [Sam Mendes](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005222/)
* [Krysty Wilson-Cairns](https://twitter.com/WeWriteAtDawn) 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 Michael Karman ([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

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/holiday-live-show-2019).

**John August:** Today’s episode of Scriptnotes contains some explicit language. Also, for this live show we have three guests, one of whom uses sign language. So you’ll be hearing the voice of her interpreter. It will make sense in context, I promise. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** And my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is the Holiday Live Show 2019 for Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, tell the listeners at home where we are.

**Craig:** We are currently recording live in Hollywood – I was about to say that, live in Hollywood – live in Hollywood at the LA Film School.

**John:** It’s nice. So we do this benefit every year for the Writers Guild Foundation which is a fantastic foundation which does a lot of great work throughout the year. A question though for the folks here in this audience. It’s a very packed house. Do we have any assistants in the house? Oh my god, look at all those hands going up. That’s really nice.

**Craig:** Why aren’t you at work?

**John:** So, we have heard from a ton of assistants over this last couple of months, and so it’s so great to see so many folks here.

A tiny bit of news happened this past week. Verve, the agency, stepped up and decided to pay its assistants more, which is great. We are always happy to congratulate the folks who are doing better, so we don’t have to chastise the folks who are doing worse.

**Craig:** Yes. Although, well, I actually love that.

**John:** Because they’re not a bad guy.

**Craig:** I feel like that’s not the last.

**John:** I hope it’s not the last.

**Craig:** Of the important organizations that employ assistants.

**John:** Absolutely. So, hopefully we’ll be also applauding the second, the third, the fourth, and the 15th places that do step up and start paying assistants better. It’s certainly a goal for 2020.

**Craig:** And then we collect a little piece, just a little taste. Whatever your increase is, just, you know.

**John:** Is that called a Vig? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** A little something.

**John:** A little something.

**Craig:** You know, wet my beak.

**John:** It works out. Now, Craig, while we’re talking numbers, I think it’s important at the end of the year for us to sort of review our numbers and really take a look at where we’re at and sort of where we’ve been and where we’re coming to. So let’s take a quick look at the numbers here.

**Craig:** Statistics.

**John:** Statistics. So Scriptnotes, where are we at in terms of the numbers? You’re the guy who crunches the numbers, so tell us.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, I’ve worked real hard on this. We are currently at 430 episodes of Scriptnotes.

**John:** Nice. That’s good.

**Craig:** Yes. For which I have been paid zero dollars.

**John:** Not a cent.

**Craig:** We have every week an average of 80,000 listeners.

**John:** 80,000 listeners across the world.

**Craig:** 80,000.

**John:** We have listeners here from Germany, which is awesome.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Our staff is you, it’s me, it’s Megana, our producer, and it’s Matthew our editor.

**John:** Yeah, that’s good. Every week that’s what we get it done with, four people.

**Craig:** Although I do notice a former staff person here.

**John:** Aw, Stuart Friedel is here.

**Craig:** Stuart. You know, we used to talk about the Stuart Special, but it’s our Special Stuart.

Every week we receive on average 103 emails.

**John:** That’s a lot of emails. Megana is reading a lot of emails. So thank you for sending in–

**Craig:** 99 of them are stupid, but man, those four. Whew.

**John:** Some of them are good emails.

**Craig:** We get some winners. And, of course, we continue to provide transcripts for every single episode.

**John:** Every single episode. So transcripts are a way for people who can’t listen to the show to experience the show. Also it lets me Google to see how often we’ve mentioned Kevin Feige on the show, which is a ton.

**Craig:** Yeah. Weirdly. Mostly critical, so we’ll get into it.

**John:** Yeah. Now.

**Craig:** Because I want to commit career suicide.

**John:** That’s a good idea. All right, so last year at this show we were talking – the big thing was about all the mergers, so we had Disney and 20th Century Fox was merging. That was a big, god, remember that?

**Craig:** I do. For sure. That was crazy.

**John:** That happened. We had Comcast and AT&T.

**Craig:** Wait, I thought AT&T was Warner Bros?

**John:** Oh, I did make that wrong. Somebody else was buying out – it’s so confusing.

**Craig:** That’s Warner Bros.

**John:** Who owns who now?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** That’s the thing. We don’t know who owns who.

**Craig:** I’m pretty sure that that Death Star owns Bugs Bunny.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So I got a little freaked out this show last year because I was worried like should we merge with somebody, because we could just be swallowed. So I was thinking we could merge with Pod Save America. I mean, that feels like a good, safe choice.

**Craig:** It’s a good show.

**John:** S-Town. S-Town is really popular. I mean, like there’s some problems with it, but it’s a popular show.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And then Dirty John. Really the serial killer thing.

**Craig:** Dirty John.

**John:** Yes. I could be a serial killer.

**Craig:** It’s the partner of Sexy Craig. Dirty John.

**John:** So ultimately though you convinced me. Craig, what did you convince me?

**Craig:** That we should stay indie, man. Because my indie cred is crazy. Yeah.

**John:** So this is to announce we’re not merging with anybody. We’re staying the same way we’ve always stayed.

**Craig:** Which is free.

**John:** Free.

**Craig:** With no ads. It’s sad that I have to look at this to tell you I’ve done 430 of these. We come out every Tuesday as you know.

Now, only the most recent 20 episodes are available freely to everyone. And generally speaking we didn’t do a lot of bonus stuff.

**John:** We didn’t. So we do have a premium feed. For the last couple of years we had a premium feed. And the premium feed has all the back episodes. It has bonus episodes. It requires a really janky app.

**Craig:** That app was jank. It was called jank.app.

**John:** So frustrating. At least like 45 of those 100 emails are about the app. And it’s confusing. Signing up for it was confusing. So we asked our listeners what would be better. And they said anything would be better. And so we’re making some changes here.

**Craig:** We like clear feedback, it’s our favorite feedback.

**John:** So people wanted things to be simple. People wanted to use their own player rather than the janky player. They wanted more bonus stuff. And they wanted all the back episodes.

**Craig:** I know what, let’s use Patreon.

**John:** We talked about Patreon, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’m sorry.

**Craig:** No, we didn’t do it.

**John:** So, here’s the problem. Patreon is simple, kind of.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** You use your player. Great.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** More bonus stuff.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** The problem is we couldn’t get all the back episodes in Patreon.

**Craig:** Also just like me.

**John:** There was no way to do it. So, we ended up going with the folks who do Slate. So we partnered up with them. They didn’t buy us out, though. We’re still indie.

**Craig:** Indie, man.

**John:** Indie, man.

**Craig:** No sellouts here.

**John:** But this is Scriptnotes Premium. Scriptnotes Premium is now the thing. Simple. You can use your own player, whatever you use to listen to normal Scriptnotes in. Listen to it in this. More bonus stuff. And all the back episodes.

**Craig:** Now, as you know, I’m not great with this. So let’s say I have a way I like to listen to podcasts. First of all, let’s imagine I listen to podcasts.

**John:** Yeah, Craig who hosts like multiple award-winning podcasts.

**Craig:** I host them, but listening is–

**John:** I know.

**Craig:** So, let’s say I have my favorite app. But now there’s the thing. How do I get it to go to my favorite app?

**John:** OK. Three steps. First step, you join. You go to Scriptnotes.net. You put in your email address and your credit card. That’s it. There’s no password. There’s no username. Just those two things.

**Craig:** This is where the money comes to me?

**John:** You click subscribe. Then you can subscribe to the Scriptnotes Premium feed, any of the back episodes. We broke it down by seasons so you don’t have to download everything at once. Finally you just listen to it in whatever app you like to use.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** That’s pretty cool.

**Craig:** That is pretty good.

**John:** Craig, you get confused sometimes about sort of how stuff works.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We made stuff even simpler. So you just put in your phone number and it will send you a link to how you actually install it in the app. So it’s pretty–

**Craig:** So then I just tell it what I want it to–

**John:** You don’t have to use Siri at all.

**Craig:** I text back, “I use this.” So I’m talking to a robot.

**John:** You tap a link. Can you tap a link?

**Craig:** I talk to a robot all the time.

**John:** Ha, you do. You tap a link. You tell it which app to install it in. It’s installed and it’s there.

**Craig:** This is fantastic.

**John:** And you subscribe.

**Craig:** Even I can do that.

**John:** So you get all the back episodes. All the new episodes. We’re going to do some bonus stuff, too. Craig, talk us through some bonus stuff that we might end up doing.

**Craig:** Well you know we like to do a deep dive every now and then on a classic film.

**John:** Absolutely. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Little Mermaid.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** What should we do first?

**Craig:** I’m thinking Die Hard.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I think Die Hard should be the first episode we do. Let’s have it come out on Christmas.

**Craig:** Let’s. Shall we? Because it is a Christmas movie.

**John:** A couple other things. Scriptnotes comes out every Tuesday. Honestly, Megana gets it done on Monday. You get the episodes on Monday afternoon when she’s done.

**Craig:** That Megana.

**John:** And we’ll also try to do things like advance tickets for shows like this. Because we now have your email address, which we never had your email address before, which was weird. So that is the–

**Craig:** To recap, if I may. Nothing is changing about the classic Scriptnotes that theoretically you love.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Scriptnotes Premium does not require that weird, janky app anymore.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Huzzah. And there’s a bunch of new stuff, including early episodes and bonus segments. So that’s pretty great. And you can literally subscribe now to it, although again I just want to make it clear I get none of the money.

**John:** No, Craig will still get nothing.

**Craig:** None of it.

**John:** This money will pay for Matthew. It will pay for Megana. And honestly we probably need to hire somebody new because it’s just been a lot. So it will help us pay for–

**Craig:** The emails alone.

**John:** The emails on assistant stuff alone has been crushing. So, this is Scriptnotes.net. You can sign up for it on your phone right now. But no one in this room should do that because we are going to draw one ticket and that person is going to get a free lifetime subscription to Scriptnotes Premium.

**Craig:** Lifetime.

**John:** Craig, that box is right behind you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Take a seat and draw one of those cards.

**Craig:** The price will go up yearly. So, ultimately this will be worth millions of dollars.

**John:** Now, technically I should say that this has no cash value. I think it’s something about a raffle, you’re not supposed to say–

**Craig:** I said a million dollars.

**John:** A million dollars.

**Craig:** It has absolutely no value. That’s a weird thing to say. We’re raffling off something that is absolutely valueless.

**John:** Worthless. Last four digits maybe?

**Craig:** Last four? Got your tickets out? 3-2–

**John:** Yeah, people sweating there.

**Craig:** You guys are going to walk out and leave. Raise your hand if you’ve got 3-2. Who has got 3 and 2 so far. Oh god, we’ve got to winnow this down. 7. I know. Who do we have left now?

**John:** Stuart Friedel has his hand up. If Stuart Friedel wins we’re drawing again.

**Craig:** Really? We so are. Stuart, with your fingers what do you have? You lost. Again. 1. Yes.

**John:** Sir, what is your name? James. After the show find me or find Megana and we will sign you up. All right. Hooray. That is the introduction of all this.

Now it is time for our actual show. We are so excited with our guests. We’ve had amazing guests in previous episodes. I’m sort of especially excited by this group of people we have. We have acclaimed writer-directors. We have acclaimed writer-actors. We have a person who created a whole cinematic universe. This is going to be good.

Our first guest is Lorene Scafaria. She is an actress, writer, producer, and director, best known for Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Meddler, and most recently for writing and directing Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, and Julia Styles. Welcome back to the program Lorene.

**Lorene Scafaria:** Thank you so much. Appreciate it. This is very nice and overwhelming.

**John:** Overwhelming in a person who has had a movie that has played everywhere that has gotten huge acclaim.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Still overwhelming?

**Lorene:** Yes. You guys are going to use big words and I’m not going to understand half of them.

**Craig:** We won’t be sesquipedalian I promise. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.

**John:** Lorene, I’m going to take a chance here.

**Lorene:** Oh god.

**John:** So April 2018 I was in the backyard of Dana Fox’s house. There was a benefit dinner thing. And I was talking with you about a movie that had just fallen apart. Was that this movie?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** This is Hustlers. It had just fallen apart. You were really frustrated and heartbroken and I felt so bad for you. And now I’m so happy.

**Lorene:** That’s very nice.

**John:** That it got back together again.

**Lorene:** Yeah, thank you.

**John:** So Hustlers is an amazing achievement. On the show often we talk about How Would This Be a Movie. And this is something that’s based on and inspired by an article. Can you talk us through the How Would This Be a Movie for you? What was it about this story that was the first impetus of like, oh, I see how this could be two hours of amazing entertainment? What was the click for you?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was an incredible story. It was really compelling. I read the article that it was based on in the summer of 2016. And it just felt like a world that we haven’t really seen through a certain group’s eyes. We haven’t really followed dancers in a strip club in this way before. So, I was really just taken in by the world and the story and these characters who I think are often misunderstood.

And then there was a crime drama. And a friendship story. And it touched on so many themes I was really excited to talk about. Gender as it relates to the economy and women under capitalism. And all that good stuff.

**Craig:** And when you’re going through that article, the article is just facts. I mean, they create a bit of a narrative but mostly it’s facts. Do you instinctively start to go I’m going to use that, I’m going to use that. That I can’t use. This I got to change. How fast does that happen, that engagement as a writer?

**Lorene:** I would actually look back at the article every now and then just to see if I could read between the lines, if I missed something. You certainly have to embellish a lot. Have to add a lot. It’s obviously creating scenes and dialogue. But that central relationship between the two characters, in real life I think they were more like business partners and it didn’t run that deep, and it wasn’t that mentor/mentee dynamic.

**Craig:** Mother/daughter kind of.

**Lorene:** Yeah, mother/daughter. Whatever kind of love story that is being told. So, yeah, there’d be a sentence that would talk about Christmas. And I would think I can’t wait to see what Christmas looks like for these women. And then my own research, obviously, talking to strippers. Going to clubs. And speaking to people. That all informed a lot. But, yeah, it always felt like the crash, the financial crisis was kind of the end of act one and where to go from there. There is a rise and fall story. There are a couple different timelines. It jumps around. And it’s kind of a reflective story that Constance Wu’s character is telling to this journalist played by Julia Styles. So, there’s some back and forth there. And that was in my original pitch actually for how I would adapt the article.

**John:** Talk us through that original pitch. So is this an article that you found or someone came to you?

**Lorene:** No, it was sent to me by the producers, by Gloria Sanchez and Annapurna who was the studio at the time that was making the film. And they sent it to me. It was certainly not my job yet. And they wanted to know what my take was and how I would adapt it to the screen. So I went in for that meeting and, yeah, gave them my whole pitch and talked about why I thought it was an event movie at the end of the day, even though I thought there was a really nuanced conversation to be had and a very specific way to kind of see their world it felt like at the end of the day. You know, we were going to bring the club to the theater.

**John:** So in that original pitch how closely does that resemble the movie that we saw? So in terms of its central protagonist/antagonist relationship between the Jennifer Lopez character and the Constance Wu character, and in terms of the flashback structure. Did you have all of that when you walked into that room with those producers?

**Lorene:** I had a lot of it. I mean, I look back at my old notes and we stayed pretty true to what I originally set out to do, so that was certainly nice to realize with a large group of people. So, yeah, it was pretty similar. I knew that the journalist was a really compelling, important part of it, not just a device, but a very integral part of the relationship and the dynamic and the judgment that the audience sort of imposes on these women. There was a lot of that in there. And certainly a tone that I think that the tone was what was shifting a little bit. I think the concentration on that central relationship, that love story between them, that changed a lot.

There was an unreliable narrator in the article that I kind of hung onto for a little too long that no longer felt important at some point. So that was different.

It felt more like a story being told by these two different characters. And it was kind of pitting them against each other in a way. So I did a million drafts. The movie fell apart. We lost a home. We brought the script around town to everybody who hated it. [laughs]

**Craig:** Hollywood. Always with their finger on the pulse of America.

**Lorene:** Well, I think maybe a lot of them identified with other characters in the movie.

**Craig:** Huh. Do you mean Lizzo?

**Lorene:** Yes. That’s exactly.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Lorene:** So, yeah, it took a minute to find the right home and we were certainly questioning a lot. I kind of did this page one rewrite after we found this new home and kind of just smashed the script on the ground and opened up at title page and changed it to Destiny and Ramona, the two main characters. And then wrote this love story, this relationship. And, yeah, it was different. A lot of scenes came out of it. The training sequence that’s there. The sort of dynamic between them. That came out of it, that mother/daughter relationship.

But it ultimately wasn’t the right movie, so had to kind of smash it on the ground again and start from scratch.

**Craig:** And you get it to a place where you feel like you got it right. You do have a home. They have given you the funding. You have this great cast. And now I’m always fascinated by writer-directors, how did director Lorene handle her relationship with writer Lorene on a day-to-day basis?

**Lorene:** I did refer to the writer often as—

**Craig:** An asshole?

**Lorene:** An asshole. Yeah, painted us into a lot of corners. And wrote really something too ambitious. It was a $20 million budget which sounds like a lot but it’s not. It grew.

**John:** Oh. For listeners at home she was pointing at Kevin Feige at that moment.

**Craig:** Kevin earlier asked me if the budget for this was $20 million. So he has no sense whatsoever. None.

**Lorene:** And shooting in New York for what it was, so we had a seven-week prep, a 29-day shoot, and an eight-week director’s cut. It was all pretty brutal. Don’t recommend it.

**Craig:** That’s actually a great way to think of it. On any given day you had a plan. And when your writing your plan is perfect. That’s my perfect plan. And now you’re short on money, you’re short on time, you’re dealing with weather I assume occasionally here and there.

**Lorene:** Yeah. Actually out of those 29 days it rained 26 days.

**Craig:** Of course it did.

**Lorene:** Because it was April.

**Craig:** Yeah. So on those days how do you adjust without losing maybe the heart of what it was that you needed to do that day for that moment between those characters?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was certainly a race every single day to finish it, but those fights happened in prep. The cast wasn’t fully on board other than Jennifer and Constance before we got there. So that whole journey I remember there were days where they said like, “Well you don’t need to shoot anything on Wall Street.” And I was like I don’t know about that. I think that’s actually a pretty major part of this, something that we really need to see. So you make compromises here and there. But I think part of it was to go in with a really strong plan and to shot list everything. And to sort of continue to make the arguments that we wouldn’t need much in order to achieve this. We need these locations. We need this amount of hair, makeup, and wardrobe. We need to create a period piece. We need to capture the authenticity of this place. We need a real strip club. We need 300 extras.

**Craig:** Extras are surprisingly expensive.

**Lorene:** They’re really expensive.

**Craig:** Bob Weinstein, true story, once looked at a tent full of extras and then turned to me and said, “Do we pay them?”

**John:** No, Craig, they’re just there for the fun of it.

**Craig:** No, they’re slaves, Bob. Sicko.

**Lorene:** I’m sure they were.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re expensive.

**Lorene:** They are. They are. And, I mean, yeah, dressing them is expensive. And dressing them in 2007 clothes requires its own truck. And that truck costs money.

**Craig:** You could have just come to my closet. That’s what I’m in right now.

**Lorene:** Well that was just it. Eventually we kind of had to ask these guys to bring your own bad shirts.

**Craig:** No problem.

**John:** Now, Lorene because you’re here I get to ask you a question that struck me the moment I saw your film. Which is the moment that Constance Wu comes up on the roof and she sees Jennifer Lopez there in the fur coat is iconic. As you were filming it did you know this is the movie? This is the moment when people will gasp and recognize I’m in the hands of a master.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** You knew it at that moment? You knew as you were shooting it?

**Lorene:** Yeah, Jennifer Lopez is in that outfit underneath that coat sitting on that rooftop.

**John:** To stipulate it’s absurd and absolutely marvelous. It’s such an iconic thing.

**Lorene:** Oh that’s nice. I mean, I say yes, obviously, just because we were in the throes of it and it was so exciting to finally get there. It was the first scene that I wrote in the whole script. I think the last thing we shot. Or second to last thing we shot. So they had already come full circle their relationship. They were so close by then so there was just that magic in the air. But, you know, a lot of thought went into it because I had thought this was the scene. This was the crux of the whole movie. The moment that Jennifer invites Constance into her fur coat. That really is the moment that everybody’s lives is changing.

So, yeah, it felt really, really important. The rooftop felt important. We built that sky light. That fur coat was a journey to find and to convince people that it was something that we needed. You know, just making sure they sat in the right position. I remember there was a moment where they were sitting next to each other and I was like crumbling inside going like, no, it’s not what I was imagining all this time. So, you know, we just found that rhythm. And, yeah, it felt magical.

Honestly, when she reclined with the cigarette that was not something that I had fully envisioned. That was something that just happened in that moment and I thought, yes, we need to cut to this. We need to – when we found that in the edit we first played it for people, it was this laugh out loud moment. And sometimes an applause break.

**John:** Oh yeah. In my theater people did applaud. That’s magic.

**Lorene:** That’s wild. That’s, obviously, but I credit Jennifer Lopez with half of that certainly.

**Craig:** And I’m going to bring up something from your past slightly.

**Lorene:** You guys.

**Craig:** No, but it’s – years ago when they would talk to you, they meaning the press, there was probably something that would come up a lot. Do you remember a name? A special kind of name that would come up frequently? Fempire. Do you remember the Fempire?

**Lorene:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** Back in the day female screenwriters were so rare that they had to give you a special name, like Seal Team 6. And it seems like without saying that we are where we should be, as one of the women that was there in the beginning for me, you know, where I was beginning you were beginning, how do you think it’s going in terms of progress? Bad, good, steady?

**Lorene:** Oh, it’s definitely not steady. I think it’s good and I think it’s muddy. And I think it’s like soup that we’re all kind of sitting in right now and trying to figure it out. So, I don’t know. I think a lot has improved. Obviously the last few years have shed light on a lot of bad behavior and we’ve rooted out some of that. But I think there’s work to do at the root, you know. I think there’s something to just speak to and have nuanced conversations about what the root cause is of all of this and how much of this is unconscious. And not just the broader strokes and the numbers which are important to speak to. But I think also there’s something about female stories and viewing them cinematically. And what does that mean? So there’s something to talk about, the percentage of female directors and all of that, but I don’t know. It’s like I want to get into it a little bit and get a little more nuanced about it. And not just that kind of black and white story.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** All right. It is time for a game.

**Lorene:** Oh, good.

**John:** We are going to read you a list of award shows. You need to tell us if it’s a real award show or if it’s a fake one that I made up.

**Lorene:** I’m so happy about this.

**John:** Now, here’s the twist. Several of these you’ve been nominated for.

**Lorene:** Oh, that’s torture.

**Craig:** So don’t screw those up.

**Lorene:** That’s bad.

**John:** We’ll start with the Gotham Award. Real or fake?

**Lorene:** That was real. I was really there.

**John:** Yeah, Hustlers was nominated. Marriage Story won. Chernobyl lost.

**Craig:** Lost. I like that she got nominated and I got lost. It was the same thing.

**Lorene:** I didn’t win. You lost. I just didn’t win.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. I lost hard. Viewfinder Award.

**Lorene:** Fake.

**Craig:** Fake. It’s so fake.

**John:** The Hollywood Film Award.

**Lorene:** That sounds real.

**John:** It is real. Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonzo won this year for Avengers: End Game.

**Lorene:** Hey, congrats. That’s awesome.

**Craig:** How about National Film and TV Award?

**Lorene:** You know what? This, I’m not kidding, I am so confused because I saw one tweet, only one, that said Jennifer Lopez won.

**John:** You’re right.

**Craig:** She did.

**John:** It is from the UK and she did win.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** OK. But I only saw one tweet so I was like this could be someone just playing a trick on all of us.

**Craig:** That’s a pretty generic name for an award, I got to say.

**John:** Hollywood Critics Association Award.

**Lorene:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. You are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Female Director.

**Lorene:** Oh, thank you guys so much.

**Craig:** Houston Online Film Critics Association Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** No.

**Lorene:** Oh.

**Craig:** No, there is no online critics association.

**John:** They merged them. So it’s all one critics association, online and print in Houston.

**Lorene:** What do you mean? Now what is it?

**Craig:** It’s just Houston.

**Lorene:** Houston. Just the city of Houston.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** The Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh, I am wracking my brain. They are very real.

**Craig:** Deeply real.

**John:** Jennifer Lopez is nominated. Craig is nominated, Chernobyl for four Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh my gosh. Craig! That’s amazing. Four.

**Craig:** Well. Golly. The Rose Door? The Golden Rose?

**Lorene:** Why are there are two names.

**John:** It’s French.

**Craig:** I’m just translating it for you. The Rose D’Or. D’Or. Door. The Golden Rose.

**Lorene:** I mean, it sounds real just because of all this fanfare. But I’m going to say no.

**Craig:** It’s absolutely real. Chernobyl won two of them.

**Lorene:** Congrats.

**Craig:** I got two Golden Roses, my friend. I’m a double-roser.

**John:** The Satellite Award.

**Lorene:** That’s real. And that was the only thing I’ve ever been nominated for before Hustlers.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Nice.

**Lorene:** We got one of those somewhere.

**Craig:** OK. The Palm Dog Award. Palm Dog.

**Lorene:** No. No, no, no.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** No.

**Craig:** Yes it is. It’s a yearly alternative award presented by the international film critics during the Cannes Film Festival. And this year it went to Sayuri for her performance as Brandy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

**Lorene:** So it’s for dogs?

**John:** It’s an award for dogs.

**Craig:** It’s for dogs.

**Lorene:** We had a great dog in Hustlers.

**Craig:** Not great enough.

**John:** Something to shoot for, Lorene. Something to shoot for.

**Lorene:** You have no idea.

**Craig:** Step your shit up, Lorene.

**John:** Lorene, the Annie Award?

**Lorene:** Real.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Animation.

**Craig:** Animation. AARP Grownups in Film Award.

**John:** That’s AARP.

**Craig:** I say AARP.

**Lorene:** Hell yeah. It’s real.

**Craig:** It’s totally real. Jennifer Lopez nominated for an AARP award, which should be pronounced the R-P.

**John:** The Spotlight Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** Yes, real. Jennifer Lopez won for Hustlers. Palm Springs International Film Festival.

**Lorene:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** The Dorian Awards.

**Lorene:** I mean, that can’t be real.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** Location Managers Guild Awards.

**Lorene:** No, no, no.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Chernobyl won.

**Craig:** Yeah, we won.

**Lorene:** Really?

**John:** They did.

**Craig:** Our awesome location manager, Jonas Spokas. Great job, Jonas.

**Lorene:** Wow. I might have to boycott, because we had a great, great–

**Craig:** Not great enough. Saturn Awards?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes. Of course.

**John:** Aladdin was nominated for a Saturn Award.

**Craig:** Well done Aladdin.

**John:** Finally, the last one here. The BRAs.

**Lorene:** It’s real.

**John:** It is real. It is the Black Real Awards. An annual awards ceremony hosted by the Federation for Augmentation of African Americans in Film. Hustlers is nominated.

**Craig:** You got a BRA.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Lorene:** I didn’t know that. I got a BRA.

**Craig:** You got a BRA nom.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, congratulations on your film. Congratulations on all the nominations and the awards.

**Lorene:** Thank you. It’s been nice.

**John:** I’m so, so happy for the journey that’s come from that backyard at Dana Fox’s house. I’m so happy your movie is out there in the world. It’s so damn good. Lorene Scafaria.

**Lorene:** Thank you. That’s very nice.

**John:** Craig, introduce our next guest.

**Craig:** Oh, I’m so excited. I was lucky enough to meet Shoshannah. We were doing a panel at the Television Academy, a place that up until recently would have had me removed by security. Shoshannah is fantastic. She is an actress and a writer, known for her roles in Jericho, Weeds, The Hammer, and Supernatural. You left off my favorite, Another Period. Spectacular on that show.

She currently stars in This Close, a dramedy series about two deaf best friends navigating their 20s in Los Angeles. Shoshannah co-created the show with her actual best friend and fellow deaf writer-actor Josh Feldman. Spectacular work. Shoshannah Stern, come on up.

**Shoshannah Stern:** I’m disappointed that you have the mic because I want to make – drop the mic. I never actually used a microphone in my whole life, so I wanted to drop it once.

**Craig:** It turns out they’re expensive actually.

**Shoshannah:** I’m sure it is.

**John:** Shoshannah, a thing Craig and I were talking about this afternoon, your show is fantastic. And impossible to watch.

**Craig:** Not because it’s hard, because you can’t find it.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. Yep.

**John:** So your show is made for Sundance Channel, but it’s hard to find on that. Sometimes you find it on YouTube. Is it frustrating to have made something–?

**Shoshannah:** It’s on YouTube?

**John:** Sometimes.

**Shoshannah:** I mean, I hope it is. I hope it is.

**Craig:** It is not.

**John:** So my question, so many of us are making shows for streamers, for other places, and I’m so happy they made your show, but it’s frustrating that you don’t know if someone is going to be able to watch your show. As you’re writing this, as you’re putting it together is that a worry for you?

**Shoshannah:** It was. I think I’ve made my peace with it, so there’s only so much you can really do – that’s really in your control. And I think it’s like as a woman and as a deaf person creating a show, you know, we’re just reminded that there is no precedent for it. And you sort of have to prioritize what you have to worry about and sometimes you can’t because you just kill yourself over it. So, one of the things that I, you know, unfortunately yes it’s impossible to find the show. But the reason why that happened is because we actually made it for Sundance Now, which is a streaming service for AMC. And then we re-aired it, the first season on Sundance TV while we were shooting season two. I guess we just showed up and we were shooting it and they said your show is doing better than anything. So, we’re like, great, all right. So they were like we’re taking it. And I said, oh, OK, cool, great.

And I thought it would be cool because then I thought people would be able to find the show by just clicking, flipping through their channels, and they might happen across it, and they would find it. Because on Sundance Now you had to buy it, you had to purchase it, in order to find that show.

So, apparently it is now just impossible to find.

**Craig:** It’s very upsetting to me because I – so you said, “You got to watch my show.” And I said, you’re right, I do have to watch your show. And there’s one episode of the new season that’s available online for free. And so I watched it and I was like this is a great show. I mean, I legitimately got into it immediately and I want to watch the rest of it. So, I kind of did ask you to bring me a USB of bootlegged episodes of the show.

**Shoshannah:** You said that like I know how to do that.

**Craig:** I know.

**Shoshannah:** Biggest Luddite ever.

**John:** A question for you. So we were talking with Lorene about how she was pitching Hustlers. What was the pitch for This Close? When you were describing the show to people how were you describing it?

**Shoshannah:** We kind of had to pitch it three times, but in three different iterations. First of all, the idea with my writing partner Josh was about a deaf woman and her hearing gay best friend. And I think I was just so conditioned to seeing a deaf person on screen with a hearing person, a hearing scene partner, a hearing foil, really. You had to have a hearing foil. A deaf person always had to have in order to explain this is my life and it’s different than yours. So really that was what we were used to seeing on the screen.

So we pitched the show that way. And with one production it seemed like it was going pretty well, better than it had in the past. And then finally at the 11th hour they came to us and said, “You know, it’s a great show but we don’t really get why your character has to be deaf. Does she have to be deaf?” And I was like, well really I tried to explain the rationale and I couldn’t tell them. I needed to show it to them. So, I was like, OK, fine, cool. That’s where we’re at.

And we decided just to do it ourselves. It was in that hour that we made a decision over happy hour. We were just like we should just do it ourselves. So we decided to do that. And then just like why don’t we just go balls to the walls and make both of the characters deaf. Because we felt at that point like no one is going to do it anyway. So Josh said to me, “But who is going to play Michael if we do that?” And I just looked at him like, um, and he gave me an expression like, o……kay. And I looked at him and said, ah-ha, that’s who is going to play it.

**John:** Now, Shoshannah you are an actor. You’ve been acting for years. But Josh was not an actor. He was just a writer. And so he does great on the show. And you guys have a wonderful chemistry. Did you know it was going to work from that initial moment? Was there any fear whether the two of you together could work onscreen?

**Shoshannah:** No. I didn’t know. We were just drunk.

**John:** All right. That’s perfect.

**Shoshannah:** I think I just knew that if the show were going to work that it would have that chemistry. And I just felt like we needed to see two deaf people on the screen and if we’re going to have two deaf people and at the heart of show it’s about a friendship and my friend is sitting right here across from me at happy hour. So yeah.

**Craig:** That story kind of mirrors I think in a way the tone of the episode that I watched. The only episode that is available.

**John:** I watched the first season.

**Shoshannah:** Because it’s impossible to watch. Yes, I am aware of that.

**Craig:** Correct. We will keep re-traumatizing you about that.

**Shoshannah:** Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** No problem. But the show does a beautiful job of tone shifting. It is funny and it is also very, I don’t want to say serious, it’s earnest at times in the sense that it’s real. It’s not a sitcom but it has no problem with somebody fainting and dropping out of screen, which is hysterical in that particular moment because it’s set up beautifully. So, I’m just curious how you guys maneuver that – it’s a very difficult thread to maneuver. You don’t get too broad. You don’t get too sugary. You find this interesting way to move back and forth without feeling like the tone is jarring and the shifts are jarring.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. I don’t know.

**Craig:** You got drunk again?

**Shoshannah:** Well, yeah. Sure. That’s the answer. We’re drunk pretty much every day during filming. No. I think we just wanted to write things that felt real to us. And we also knew what we didn’t want to write. What we didn’t want to see. I think we knew more about what we didn’t want to show than what we did initially. We wanted to show characters that are centered, not have it be about them being deaf. I felt like that was my problem with the characters that I’d seen before on the screen. Characters that I’ve played to be honest. But the reason why I started writing with Josh is because I had an awful, awful audition and it’s hard to find truth in a character that’s written from somebody else’s perspective about what they think your life is. And you’re trying to find truth in something that’s actually not truthful. So, especially it’s hard when the character is written as a mantle, you know, to carry, you know, like Jesus. You know, Jesus you’re just carrying. I represent all deaf people in the world. It’s impossible.

You can’t write one female character that represents all of the women on the planet. And so there are characters that are underrepresented, misunderstood, and that often happens – it happens more often than we know. So we wanted to write situations that were messy. You know, that were in the gray areas. Deaf characters are messy, too.

**John:** Can I ask you about process? Because we’ve talked to other writing teams who write stuff together. What is the process with you and Josh? Are you in the same room together writing? Do you write an outline and split up? What is the process for you guys going through a script?

**Shoshannah:** Josh and I have a very odd process. You know, it’s sort of what the fuck are they thinking is the process. And that works for us. So we sit in a room and we outline it together. And once we have the outline we go off and we write our own version, each of us, of the script. On our own. Separately. Completely. A complete version. A to Z. And people are like, wait, a complete version on your own, separate from one another? Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s what we do.

So we go off and do that. And then we merge together again, which just means that one of us sits at the computer and the other person is breathing over their shoulder pretty much and says, oh, I like this line better than that line and we kind of merge our two versions together and we submit that. And we get 5,000 notes on it. And then we do it again.

**Craig:** Do you have some epic fights because, man, that sounds like it’s good fuel for arguing?

**Shoshannah:** You know what? Never.

**John:** That’s what a gay best friend will do.

**Shoshannah:** There you go.

**Craig:** It’s true.

**John:** Now, we have a game to play and we would love for the two of you to help us out with this game. So this is something that Craig actually introduced at the last show and Craig set us up.

**Craig:** OK. So this is a game that I originally – it was originally a puzzle that I included as part of a puzzle hunt that I did with David Kwong at the Magic Castle that you attended. And Lorene were you at that one? You were at the one before. Shoshannah, are you a big puzzle solver/crosswords? Oh, OK.

**John:** She’ll be good at this.

**Craig:** And we’re going to have you come to the next one then. So the idea here is – well each of us, we’ll all do this in turn, we read a movie quote and we have a contestant trying to figure out what the quote is.

**John:** We actually have two contestants. So we pre-drew the contestants. Can you come down here to this microphone and re-introduce yourself?

**Craig:** Come on down contestant one and two.

**John:** Hi Zoey. I remember you from before. I’m sorry I forgot your name.

**Zoey:** It’s OK.

**John:** Do you watch a lot of movies?

**Zoey:** I watch some.

**John:** You watch some movies. That’s probably all you need for this competition. And behind you is another person coming up to the microphone. So Lauren and Zoey. Here is what’s going to happen. We are going to read a quote aloud from a movie, except that Craig has–

**Craig:** I’ve basically just created literal versions of these quotes. You’ll get it from the start. Shoshannah is going to do number one because she said earlier that she liked it, so I’m going to let her do number one.

**John:** Fantastic. All right. So Shoshannah is going to give a quote and you need to figure out – so whichever one figures it out first raise your hand and then you’re going to say what the actual real quote is. All right.

**Craig:** OK. So you’re ready to do number one.

**John:** No one yell out in the audience.

**Shoshannah:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship.

**John:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship. Do either of you – Lauren or Zoey, can you name this famous movie quote?

**Female Voice:** I’m really bad at this.

**Craig:** You complete me.

**John:** You complete me. That is what we’re going for. You complete me, from Jerry Maguire.

**Craig:** You got it. This is going to be bad.

**John:** This is hard, Craig.

**Craig:** I mean, that was the easy one.

**Shoshannah:** We have to work together.

**John:** Craig, try the next one.

**Craig:** I’ll do the next one. Strike it from your memory, JJ, or whatever nickname you go by these days. This neighborhood is largely populated by immigrants from Asia’s largest nation.

**John:** Any – all right? Yes, Zoey.

**Zoey:** Forget about it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**Craig:** Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**John:** All right. One to nothing right now. We will say first to four.

**Craig:** Malodorous tokens of authority. None are in our possession, nor are they necessary. Therefore I’m not obligated to display them as such.

**John:** Do either of you know this?

**Craig:** Audience?

**John:** It’s the we don’t need any stinking badges.

**Craig:** The audience is pretty good. I got to say. All of them together are a little bit better than the two of you.

**Female Voice:** Yeah, this is embarrassing.

**John:** Lorene.

**Lorene:** OK. None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**John:** Well let’s try it one more time. Laughter was high.

**Lorene:** None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**Female Voice:** Just give it to the audience.

**Craig:** Audience. That’s your Malcolm X right there. OK, Shoshannah do you want to do number five?

**Shoshannah:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**Craig:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**John:** So melee – it’s a very D&D word.

**Craig:** Is it?

**John:** It is a very D&D word. It’s a melee round.

**Craig:** I think of it as a French word myself.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** It means fisticuffs. Nothing?

**Female Voice:** Sorry.

**Craig:** Audience?

**Audience:** First rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

**Craig:** Again, the audience a little bit better than you guys, I got to say.

Female Voice: It’s pretty obvious afterwards. It’s like you’re standing up here, but then when they say it you’re like, yes, it makes sense. But they’re not standing.

**Craig:** We’re not accepting your excuses. No, no, no.

**John:** No, no, no. Zoey and Lauren, what you guys can’t see is I see a lot of people are like moving their mouths as if they’re talking with the crowd. They really didn’t know.

**Craig:** All right. How about this one. You got this one. They got this one. Ready? Don’t turn away.

**Female Voice:** I want to watch.

**Craig:** No, that’s called cheating. Look at me. Here we go. You’ve got this. Early salutations, country once known as French-Indochina. Early salutations country once known as French – oh, they’re just blatantly cheating now. Go ahead. Go ahead.

**John:** Go ahead. Say it.

**Female Voice:** Good morning, Vietnam.

**Craig:** Yes, good morning, Vietnam. Yes! Yes! I do love this one. Lorene, do you want to do number seven, or the next one?

**Lorene:** Explain your grave nature. Explain your grave nature.

**John:** I have the answers and I kind of don’t get this one.

**Craig:** It’s a hard one.

**Lorene:** Explain…

**Craig:** The speed with which you just gave up was remarkable. Audience? Why so serious? OK. Shoshannah, would you like to do this one?

**Shoshannah:** Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Craig:** Hmm. Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Female Voice:** Oh.

**John:** One person got it.

**Craig:** Audience? Yes, just you?

Female Voice: I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark.

**Craig:** Yes, Mr. Stark I don’t feel so good. OK, you guys are dismissed. You did a great job.

**John:** Hey, hey, thank you very much for playing.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Craig, I think this was actually a really good moment for everyone in this room in defining sort of like what you’re like and what I’m like. Because you picked something that was wildly too difficult for this.

**Craig:** No, I’ll tell you what’s too difficult. It’s the bonus question.

**John:** All right. Bonus question. See if the audience can get the bonus question.

**Craig:** Audience, this is for all of you. And this is a TV quote. And I’ll help you out. It’s from a show currently on the air.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So I’ve limited it to 14,000 television shows.

**John:** Including This Close.

**Craig:** Weirdly that one is not, because we can’t find it. OK.

**Shoshannah:** Oh, you’re killing me. Oh, my heart. I’m stomping on it.

**Craig:** Sanctified female parent splitting in two like a road. Clothing for a torso. Round objects. Sanctified – you got it? Holy mother forking shirt balls. Nice work.

**John:** Well done.

**Craig:** That’s my kind of guy right there.

**John:** From The Good Place.

**Craig:** From The Good Place.

**John:** All right. Thank you for participating in this game. Craig, thank you for putting together this game.

**Craig:** No, no, the hell with them. I’ll make it harder next time. I’m going deeper.

**John:** All right. Our next guest, Kevin Feige, has been the driving creative force behind the Marvel cinematic universe. In his current role as producer and president of Marvel Studios Feige is hands-on producer who oversees Marvel Studios’ feature film productions, whose 23 films released have all opened at number one at the box office. And collectively grossed – that can’t be right – $23 billion worldwide.

**Craig:** $23 billion dollars. That’s the same budget – oh, no, you said million. I’m so sorry.

**John:** $23 billion dollars. And you have Black Widow coming up next. Kevin Feige, you are the person who has been mentioned most on Scriptnotes without ever actually appearing on Scriptnotes.

**Kevin Feige:** Is that true? Why is that true? I want to know.

**John:** Tell him, Craig.

**Craig:** We actually like you.

**Kevin:** Oh, phew.

**Craig:** It would have been weird if it had been like, here we go. You’re like the Final Draft guys. Oh, that was a great one. Kevin, we were talking earlier, and I have an interesting question. I think it’s an interesting question. And maybe you don’t have the answer, but you have such a unique job. And I’m sure that while you have your own kind of definition of what it is, is there anybody else in Hollywood that does the job that you do? Or is it separate and apart from what everyone else does? Because that’s how it seems to me.

**Kevin:** I produce movies and I oversee movies. And I think there are a lot of people that do that. I think there are a lot of creative producers out there, many of whom I work with at Marvel Studios, who do what I do which is try to shepherd projects to the screen. The nature of the Marvel element of it, which is fun, and which gets a lot of the attention is the interconnectivity of them which is fun and which early on – I’ve been at Marvel almost 20 years. August of 2020 it will be 20 years, which is almost half my life, not quite.

And for the first six years at Marvel we worked with – we were the IP holders that didn’t have a lot of contractual control, but on the other studio films, on the Fox Fantastic Four films and X-Men films and Daredevil films on the Sony Rami Spider Man films. But I was around and wanted to be in the room where it happens as they say and be a part of the brain trust.

I’ve forgotten what the question was now.

**Craig:** This happens all the time.

**Kevin:** Oh, nobody does it. Yeah.

**Craig:** You’re different, right? I mean, it feels like you run a studio of a kind.

**Kevin:** Yes.

**Craig:** But you’re also a producer. But you’re also planning all of the movies. You are kind of an interesting hub it seems.

**Kevin:** I’ve been a part of maybe ten Marvel movies by the time we became Marvel Studios. And we knew with Iron Man 1 one of the things that could set us apart, because we didn’t have the “A-list” characters, was that we could start interconnecting them. Like the comics did.

**John:** We talk a lot to showrunners on our show, and your job is kind of analogous to a showrunner in that you have a bunch of things that have to continue. So it’s not just this one episode, it’s how it’s going to fit into this greater pattern. The knock we sometimes hear when some of our showrunner friends come on is that like, oh, but you didn’t know what you were doing, or you were vamping, you were making up as you were going along. To what degree as you’re starting Iron Man 1 did you have a sense of where you wanted to be three movies in, six movies in, nine movies in? And how much could you anticipate what the plan was?

**Kevin:** It’s a nice balance. It’s a nice combination of knowing exactly where you want to end up, but changing the ways, being open to changing the ways that you get there. And when we started Iron Man 1 the goal was very simply make Iron Man 1, and also the Incredible Hulk which we were doing at the same time. Go from being fully responsible for zero movies a year to we have to deliver two by summer of 2008. And that was an amazing experience of being like, you know, you take it for granted. I think people still take it for granted that when you see a poster in a movie lobby and there’s a release date on it the movie is coming out on that release date. That is not a given. There are a lot of people that have to work to make that happen.

And there was one terrifying moment during Iron Man 1 where I went that’s us. We’re the ones responsible for making that happen. And the dream was always because we’ve got thousands and thousands of comic books that you make a movie that succeeds and the reward is you get to make another movie. That’s always been the viewpoint that I’ve had. Let’s succeed so we get to do another one. And that was very true with Iron Man because we would not have been a studio if Iron Man didn’t work. And Marvel would have lost the film rights to ten of its characters.

So, we knew midway through Iron Man 1 around the time Sam Jackson agreed to come do a little cameo for us in a tag that we wanted to get to Avengers. That we wanted to do those first five, six films in phase one. After Avengers we started building out towards what became End Game.

**Craig:** So you have this interesting combination of fear that you won’t even be able to hit a release date for your one movie, but you’re planning for like five movies. And I like that combination. But you did have, of course, the benefit – I was a Marvel kid growing up. There’s Marvel kids and there’s DC kids. I guess there’s some kids that are bi-comical or whatever. But I was a Marvel kid. And there was this big book that was like the Marvel compendium of characters.

**John:** Oh yeah, it’s great.

**Craig:** I would just flip through it and there were so many. There’s so many. And so you have this interesting possibility. But I want to read you something. This is I think the first time we brought up, this is without even mentioning your name, but the first time we kind of brought you up. This is all the way back in Episode 44. July 6, 2012, Ah. Remember that?

**John:** Oh my gosh. What a different world we lived in.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Back then Craig didn’t have an Emmy.

**Craig:** I would trade everything.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Craig:** Everything. OK. So John said, we were talking about Avengers I believe had just come out at that point. And John said, “Joss Whedon was kind of a risky director to pick for that movie. The director hadn’t made anything of that size and that scale. But other studios aren’t going to learn that lesson. They’re just going to learn that it was big and therefore it’s good. Whereas Marvel is smart. Marvel is smart. But that’s not the only lesson to take from that.”

And I said, “No, the lesson to take from that is hire a director and a writer, in this case it was the same person, with a specific point of view and a proven track record with an audience. And have him deliver the goods as best he can. That’s a risk worth taking. It doesn’t always pay off. But to me that’s so much more interesting of a risk and so much more potentially rewarding than the other way of thinking about it with I guarantee you is going on right now where people are sitting around going, ‘OK, please list for me at my studio here all the various heroes we have, create a team for them to be on, and do our version of the Avengers.’ And I guarantee you that that is going on.”

And John says, “Yeah.” And then I say–

**John:** I say yeah a lot.

**Craig:** And I say, “And all those movies are going to be annoying. And people are going to smell it.” It does seem like people have tried to copy the model of what you do. Is there any hope for any of them? I mean, legitimately would you say to them, “Please, no, you’re never going to get there. Or yeah, there’s actually a way for you to do this with any of your stuff?”

**Kevin:** Well, first of all I compliment the transcript because it clearly comes in handy that you do that on every podcast. That’s impressive. The truth is as I just said we set out to make a movie. We didn’t set out to make a universe. We happened to be making movies based on our comics and our comics are an interwoven universe thanks to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the whole team there that came up with what may be the longest running fictional narrative ever. So it didn’t seem revolutionary to me that I worked at Marvel Studios and wanted to try to emulate what was in the comics. But I wanted to do it slowly because I wanted to make movies. And I wanted to make a lot of movies. And make a lot of different kinds of movies, which is why our first ones were a technological thriller/sci-fi Iron Man film and a crazy outer space Norse god film and a WWII film leading up to – and a monster movie – leading up to The Avengers.

Because what was always cool about Avengers to me in the comics wasn’t that it was a bunch of heroes together, that it was a bunch of heroes that I cared about from other stories interacting with one another. So, I always say we never set out to make a universe. We set out to make movies. And that’s still true today. We set out to do individual stories that have the fun of, a bonus sometimes, of interconnectivity. But we spend as much time going it’s too much. The movie has to stand on its own more, in the development process. The movie has to stand on its own more.

**Craig:** I mean, essentially your advice is stop doing the thing that you people are doing. Because what they do is they start by saying here’s a bunch of our IP, which is a phrase I hate anyway, and let’s make a universe out of it. Absolutely backwards.

**Kevin:** When I started working at Marvel people used to talk about IP and I slowly got the nerve to ask what is IP.

**Craig:** Good for you.

**Kevin:** What are you talking about?

**Craig:** It’s sad. People talk about IP – the first time I heard it I was so depressed. But I think of this as art. And you guys are talking about it as intellectual property, like a product. Same thing when I heard franchise. I was like, ugh, now they’re like McDonald’s now. Now everyone says franchise they’re like, yay, it’s our favorite franchise.

**John:** You will have writers, directors, there’s filmmakers you want to work with. People are coming in to talk with you about doing movies based on your characters, based on movies you want to make. What is it that clicks with you about a certain person to do a certain project for you? What is it that you say when that person comes in the room that makes you say like, OK, that is the right person for me to bring onto this project? What are the things that work for you?

**Kevin:** It varies. I mean, we always start – we don’t have open auditions, so to speak. We don’t have people coming in and going here’s this character, would you make a movie about this character, would you make a movie about this character. We internally at Marvel Studios decide what movie we want to make, kind of what the movie is. So Thor, we decided we wanted to do a third Thor film because we love the character and we love Hemsworth and we thought there was great potential there.

But we knew we wanted to break the mold a little bit. And I was on the set of Age of Ultron talking to Hemsworth and he was in his full regalia for a big sequence. And he was saying, “May – what are we doing for the next one, May? What are we doing?” And I said, well, the truth is on the first Thor, Thor was blond hair, a red cape, and a hammer. Now Thor is you, Chris Hemsworth. So we can smash the hammer, we can rip off the cape, we can cut off the hair. So that started leading us into a general direction of what we wanted to do with it.

It was Taika Waititi that turned it into what we all know and love as Thor: Ragnarok with those elements. And we wanted to put The Hulk in it. And so we have these discussion documents that we call them, share them with writers or filmmakers, and then have them come in and pitch us a better version of it that sometimes is very similar and is sometimes totally different but way better. And that begins the then two to three year process of working together intensely.

**Craig:** You guys are drawing from this enormous base of what I consider to be literary work. I mean, comics are drawn, they’re illustrated, but I always read them. No one says I looked at a comic today. I read it. And because we’re writers and this is a show about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, you know, I’ve had this interesting experience in television and I know you guys are getting into television in a huge way where as a writer they say you are the author here, go and create something. In features, traditionally, the writer has just sort of been a widget. And then the director is viewed as the author.

At Marvel because you seem to be kind of in the, like I said, the hub, in the middle, how do you – and this is not a trap. Don’t worry. They won’t attack you. Feel free to, by the way, if he answers wrong. But how do you balance the authority of the writers and directors that you employ because you do employ a lot of the same ones over and over like Marcus and McFeely and the Russos, etc.

**Kevin:** Yeah. That’s the perfect case example. And, again, it varies person to person of course. I don’t think writers are widgets. I think that they make the whole thing possible. And when you find great writers like Marcus and McFeely who are willing to dedicate their art and their talent to projects you love and want to do, it’s amazing. And that’s why we got to Infinity War and End Game is because of those two.

You know, we were in either post on Iron Man 1 or prep on Iron Man 2 when we were taking meetings and first met Marcus and McFeely to do what became the first Captain America film. And the relationship with Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Anthony Russo is great. Yes, the Russo brothers are the directors of that film, but the authors of the film are the four of them, myself, Trinh Tran, Lou and Victoria from my team at Marvel who spend years together in a very relatively small conference room with more index cards than you’re ever seen in your entire life, putting together those movies. So it does vary.

When you find writers that are as authorial as Marcus and McFeely you keep them around and the directors will listen to them. When you have writers that you’re just starting out with and it doesn’t work, then you find another writer. That can happen with filmmakers, too.

In television, though, it is different as we’re learning. Because we’re trying to do our shows as close as we can to the way we did our films, which is to say it’s one filmmaker on the entire series. And one head writer on the entire series. They have a room because there’s so many–

**Craig:** So many scripts to write.

**Kevin:** Yeah. Although that was the understanding going in. There have been a few moments where that needs to be clarified that in the writer’s room the writer is overseeing much of it. On the set, the director is overseeing it. We haven’t gotten to post yet on those two projects.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun. I would like to just come by to watch that. I don’t want to watch what’s on the screen. I just want to watch the people in the room.

**John:** So you’re now moving into a new phase of things. At the end of Avengers: End Game a lot of the characters and the relationships we built up are done and now we’re moving into a new phase. Is it weird for you that you’re both in this moment, but you’re also many years ahead? So is it hard for you to sort of flip back and forth to like, oh that’s right, the rest of the universe doesn’t know that this is a thing that’s happening? Do you find yourself–?

**Kevin:** Only when I’m speaking in public like this is it hard to realize, oh, it’s not 2023 yet so I can’t talk about that. But when you’re in it, no. And, again, like with Iron Man 1 the movie that comes out next gets the most attention. Because sort of nothing else matters. So in that case right now it’s Black Widow. And the primary focus is Black Widow, even though we have another film in production, another film about to go into production, two series in production, another one about to go. What comes next is the focus.

**Craig:** I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up Scorsese-gate. But I don’t want to just—

**Kevin:** Is he here?

**Craig:** Yes. Huge fan of our podcast.

**Kevin:** How many times have you mentioned him?

**Craig:** Way less than we’ve mentioned you.

**John:** That tells me a lot about our show.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Which kind of feeds into this question. Because it’s not so much what he said, but rather what I find interesting is that the movies that you guys make have—

**Kevin:** What he said. And what he said again. And what he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about. And what he said again.

**Craig:** I see you’re not at all sensitive about it.

**Kevin:** OK. I understand.

**Craig:** That aside, so you’re not the only one that I traumatize. I like to do this to everyone. Except Lorene. So, your movies occupy an outsized place in global culture from the time that you started with Iron Man to now. They have made an impression on the world. And they are now interwoven with just our global culture. And I’m kind of curious, rather than talk about what’s cinema and not cinema, because I don’t even know what that word even means. I’d rather just ask you where do you think Marvel films sit in our culture. What do you think they actually mean to people?

And is that what you want them to mean? Or are you airing for a kind of changing place in our culture?

**Kevin:** I think in ways that are both flattering and not flattering over the past decade the word Marvel has come to mean blockbuster movie. Blockbuster movies, “blockbuster movies,” that have a genre spin to them, or have action to them, or have visual effects to them have been the dominant form of box office entertainment my entire life. And that’s why I wanted to make movies. Those are the movies – I’m going to listen to your Die Hard episode on December 25. That movie I loved. And I remember thinking this is the best regular movie I’ve ever seen. And what I meant by regular was there was no time travel, there was no space, there were no aliens.

Because that was my primary – there were no super heroes, no super powers.

**Craig:** Best regular.

**Kevin:** Best regular movie ever. So those have always been the dominant, or maybe just to me, maybe just to my focus. In terms of place in the culture I never, ever think about it. I think about making movies that I always wanted to make with people that I’ve always wanted to work with. And make the movie that we would want to see.

And we have eclectic tastes. And the great thing about the Marvel comics is you can sit down and go, yes, we want to make an Iron Man movie, we want to do another Hulk movie. But we could also say I want to do a WWII movie. We want to do an outer space adventure. I want to do a time travel movie. I want to do a heist film. We want to do a ‘70s political thriller. We want to do a story, which is shooting now, about immortals who have been on earth for years.

All of those genres exist within the Marvel comics. And you can find them and flesh them out. And, again, Black Widow is our 24th film that Marvel Studios has produced in my almost 20 years. We want to keep doing different things. Disney+ has allowed that with the series that are also very different than things we’ve done before. So having the platform to continue to do lots of different types of movies that are shared by two things. One, they originated at some point in our comics. And, two, they have a genre element/sci-fi element to, which I enjoy in movies.

**John:** Kevin, will you come back on Episode 800 and talk us through how the next couple phases went?

**Kevin:** We will see. We’ll see if the references go down between now and 800. Yes.

**Craig:** I think you’re saying you want to keep being mentioned.

**John:** That’s what we’ll do.

**Craig:** Not a problem. Keep making those movies and we will keep praising them.

**John:** All right. We also do a thing on our show called One Cool Thing where we talk through small recommendations. Craig, did you remember One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** I do. I have a One Cool Thing. I’m an enjoyer of the Twitter. And lately a little bit of an issue with Nazis. Just I encounter them and I say things to them. And they get upset. And so I find myself getting into arguments with Nazis, which is generally bad. But one of the upsides is you start to figure out who the Nazis are.

**Kevin:** Nazis are not your One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** No.

**Kevin:** To be sure. Sorry.

**Craig:** Not since forever. But every now and then you run into a head Nazi, like the head vampire, and just like in movie mythology if you can kill the head vampire – if you can kill the Night King all – all – of the dead people go, right? So I encountered a head Nazi the other day and I was like I’m going to block her but I also want to block every one that follows her.

And there is a way to do it.

**John:** Oh, tell us.

**Craig:** It’s called Block Chain. Ah, amazing. So, it’s an extension that you can use in a Chrome browser. So, you know, that’s the only thing you use Chrome for. That’s fine. And you put in the person’s name that you want to block and you also want to block everyone that follows that person. And it’s smart enough to know that it shouldn’t block any of her followers that you follow, because sometimes people follow weird people to see like I’m going to keep tabs on that Nazi, which is fucking bizarre, but regardless. And this particular Nazi had about 80,000 followers.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Well, she probably had 400 humans and a whole bunch of Russian bots. But regardless, they all got blocked. I just watched the number – it was incredibly satisfying. So, if you do manage to run into a Nazi here and there, block chain. Spectacular.

**John:** Nice. My One Cool Thing is a very simple little thing. It’s called AI Dungeon. Some people here may have tried it. It’s an AI thing that generates, sort of like a text-based adventure like Zork. Did you ever play Zork? Ah, yes, you played Zork.

**Craig:** I played ever InfoCom game there was.

**John:** And so what’s clever about it is you’re doing the same things like, you know, look at door, pick up thing, but it’s all using AI. And so you can tell it to do anything and it will change whatever is happening around it to sort of fold that in. So if you said teach Craig to dance it will generate stuff like, you know, you start playing some music and Craig starts dancing.

**Craig:** So if I said pick up knife it will just say, ah, there’s a knife there.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Great game. I’ll play that.

**John:** Tonight. Kevin Feige. Do you have a One Cool Thing to share with us?

**Kevin:** I was given this question early and just did nothing but give me anxiety and go what am I going to give – what’s one cool that that’s going to be interesting. Because I knew you guys would have something super cool and interesting. Nazis.

**John:** Nazis.

**Craig:** And AI.

**Kevin:** And I got in my car on the way over here and put on the album I’ve been listening to time and time again and thought, oh, I’ll just say that.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Kevin:** Even though it might not sound like the coolest.

**John:** Was it MMMBop?

**Kevin:** Much more obscure than MMMBop.

**Craig:** That’s Kevin Feige.

**Kevin:** There was a documentary called Bathtubs Over Broadway that has an accompanying soundtrack about industrial musicals. And I like to listen to the soundtrack of industrial musicals from the Bathtubs Over Broadway documentary.

**Craig:** Oh wow. That’s awesome.

**Kevin:** That’s a cool thing that I’m enjoying right now.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**John:** Thank you very much. Shoshannah Stern, do you have something you would like to recommend to our audience here?

**Shoshannah:** Yeah. I do. But it requires a backstory. So my daughter is four and three-quarters. And I had an unplanned C-section, which I did not want to have. But it happened very quickly. And I asked if in the OR if I could see her. And they said, yeah, sure.

But at the last minute then I was in the OR and I couldn’t see her. This was the first time that I was really responding to having a physical reaction to sound. Because I heard her cry and I knew that it was my baby and I couldn’t see her. And I had some kind of attack of some sort and I was seeing all of the doctors standing around me looking at me. But I could only see their eyes. I couldn’t read their lips. I couldn’t see anything because they were just looking at me with these masks. And there was this sound but I didn’t know who was talking.

And I just was like, I screamed, “Stop. You’re crucifying me,” because of the IVs and I couldn’t sign. So I was just like grabbing at the IVs. So they brought me my baby. Yes, they did. Thank god. But I was like wow, it’s kind of fucked up to be a deaf person in that situation.

So two months ago the FDA approved a brand new kind of a mask where there’s a clear plastic area on the face mask so that deaf people can actually look and see the lips moving of the people who are wearing them.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**Shoshannah:** I won’t have to go through that fucked up situation again. Or a fucked up situation like that ever again.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, top that.

**Lorene:** Why?

**John:** [laughs]

**Lorene:** Dolly Parton’s America Podcast.

**John:** Dolly Parton’s America. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Almost as good.

**John:** Almost.

**Craig:** Almost as meaningful.

**Lorene:** Humiliating. It’s really good.

**Craig:** Is it that good though?

**Lorene:** Nope.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** And that is the end of our show. So we want to thank our amazing panelists. Lorene Scafaria. Shoshannah Stern. Kevin Feige. Our producer, Megana Rao. Megana! Our editor, Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** And of course this is all in service of the Writers Guild Foundation and the Writers Guild Foundation has supported us in putting this event on. So of course we want to thank Enid and Dustin and all the volunteers from the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** Tonight I want to extend an extra special thanks to our amazing interpreters, Elizabeth and Robby. Thank you very, very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you to LA Film School, especially Hunter and Jared for tonight.

**Craig:** And finally we’d like to thank you. Our listeners. And a reminder that you can sign up now at Scriptnotes.net. This is why we’re ad-free. You can sign up now at Scripnotes.net. Scriptnotes.net for the Premium Feed. Happy Holidays and good night.

**John:** Happy Holidays everyone. Thank you all very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

We have someone lined up here at the microphone.

**Male Audience Member:** Just to say thank you. This is amazing. My question is to Kevin. But before I do I want to say to the ladies thank you. As a writer-director you guys are an inspiration. Thank you.

**Lorene:** Thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Kevin, last year at the Produced By Conference I asked you about Ms. Marvel movie and you said you’re going to focus on the Captain Marvel and then you’re going to introduce. Now it’s going to Disney+ with Bisha attached to it. I was wondering if you’re ever going to bring it to the movie world or maybe with Wolverine or something. What are the future–?

**Kevin:** That’s two different questions I think for me. We shifted to Wolverine. Ms. Marvel is coming to Disney+. Yes, Bisha is our head writer on that. And, yes, the intention with that character very much is to introduce her on a Disney+ series and then bring her into the films. And everything we’re doing at Disney+ will start to go back and forth between the streaming service and the movies. Some characters like Falcon, Winter Soldier, and Wanda Maximoff and the Vision and Loki will go from the big screen to Disney+ and back. Some characters starting with Ms. Marvel will be introduced on our Disney+ series and then go into films.

**Craig:** I honestly thought he was asking about Lorene. I heard Wolverine, I heard Wolverine. I think he’s suggesting that Lorene direct.

**Male Audience Member:** Why not?

**Lorene:** That’s what you’re here for. That kind of pressure.

**Craig:** Just putting that in the world. Put it in the universe, see what happens.

**John:** Hello, welcome.

**Male Audience Member:** My question is for Kevin as well.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Male Audience Member:** So you said the comics gave you a good framework for the interconnected narrative. But I’m sure there’s some points where you were at a fork in the road deciding to adhere or to depart from what was already given to you. Can you talk about some specific examples and some of the harder decisions you’ve made and how you decided whether to stick or to depart?

**Kevin:** Well it’s always that decision of how close do you stick to the comics. The comics are both inspiration, sometimes very specifically, sometimes generally. Marcus and McFeely had the task of Civil War when I decided that now was the time to do Civil War. And it was a great comic and ten years before we were developing the movie reading the comic month to month. It was published. It was amazing. Going back and looking at it, it did not apply. It took place, as all the comics do, in the narrative of that moment of the comics’ universe. Did not match up hardly at all with what the Marvel cinematic universe was. But the general idea of Iron Man and Cap representing two different sides of a theological argument was the inspiration. And Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Ant fleshed that out based on where we were in the cinematic universe. So that’s one where it was very specific, even taking the title from a comic, storyline, which we rarely do. But really that was a jumping off point.

**Craig:** I don’t want to stereotype the group that’s waiting, but—

**Male Audience Member:** I got you, Craig, don’t worry about it. My question, not actually directed to Kevin at all. I’ve never heard of any Marvel movies. But I know that there’s this whole Pay Up Hollywood thing. And something that’s very new. And the question that I have to John and Craig is where does accountability come into play? Obviously this is a very difficult city to make it in. And everything that we’ve heard is I can’t afford $1,500 rent. OK, well maybe you need a roommate. I can’t afford to put fuel in the car. Well, you have a car. That sounds pretty nice. And I can’t live off $50,000 a year. Well, there’s seven million people who make that happen.

So, where does accountability come into play?

**Craig:** I have an answer for you. Before I ask people who are making $50,000 to be accountable I’d like to ask the people who are making $50 billion to be accountable. I am, listen, I’m a parent. So I’m always thinking about how to make sure that my kids understand the value of hard work and the value of responsibility. But the fact is that the people who do these jobs, and we know them, and we’ve seen them, are not being treated fairly.

You can extend the argument of accountability down to anything. Well, you’re eating. I mean, a sandwich is a good thing. So, if you get a sandwich a day you should be happy. At some point, right, it’s a slippery slope. So the point is it’s not about subsistence living. It’s about being treated just reasonably.

**John:** I have a related question. A related question and answer here. So I say that accountability is useful for thinking about it in terms of you can’t direct it back at the person who is asking to be treated fairly to say like so often implicit in the answer is, well, I suffered when I came up through this scenario so it’s not – it’s the same for you.

There’s two problems with that. First off, it wasn’t the same. Second off, just because it did happen that way doesn’t mean it was ever right. And that’s a thing that we learned out of #MeToo. It’s a think we need to be talking about now.

The second thing I want to stress to all of us, and as we go into 2020 to be thinking about. It’s great news that we have a higher hourly wage happening in some places. You don’t pay rent with hours. You pay rent with dollars. And so we need to always be thinking about what is the dollars that people are making every week that is going to make it possible to live in Los Angeles. And for people who are coming to Los Angeles with this dream of moving to Hollywood and working in this industry, so they know what dollar figure actually they need to be making in order to stay and survive here. Because equity of access is the first step before we get to equity of outcome where the people who can come to this industry can actually afford to work in this industry and go up the ranks and thrive and write movies for Kevin Feige.

**Craig:** Yes. Absolutely. And I would also say that there is a temptation to think that tough love gets results. That deprivation makes people work harder. It doesn’t. As it turns out, treating people fairly and with respect will get more out of them. I do believe that. And this is a general philosophical mistake I think we make.

And so this is something that we’ve been talking about on our show a lot. And we’ve been talking to agencies. Obviously Verve made a big announcement about this. After we stop talking to the agencies I very much want to start talking to the studios about this. So we’ll be coming. We’ll be coming. But not now.

**John:** Not now.

**Craig:** Not now.

**John:** This is a fun night.

**Craig:** Thank you for your question.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Thank you. One last question. A lot of pressure on your shoulders. You’re wearing the mantle of the final question of the night.

**Craig:** And surely this is for Shoshannah or Lorene.

**Lorene:** The Hustlers cinematic universe.

**John:** Oh, I want to see that universe.

**Male Audience Member:** This is actually for all three of you. I just wanted to ask very simply what when either you’re going to your computer and you’re trying to break a scene, or you go into your writer’s room and maybe you’re trying to break a film, or a TV show, or you’re on set and you get this wonderful inspirational moment from one of your actors and it inspires a story idea, what are some creative rituals that you do before you go onto set, the writer’s room, or your computer just to kind of get those creative juices flowing? What are some places you go to to get some inspirational ideas from?

**Craig:** Shoshannah, you want to start?

**Shoshannah:** Sure. It’s really simple, but I just put my feet on the ground just to carry my weight evenly on my two feet, fold my hands. I’m not so much praying but I’m just feeling the flow. And I just try to remind myself that I’m grateful to be in this moment, right here, right now, doing what I love really. I just center myself and then do it. You know, whatever is blocking me or whatever I feel might block me I let it dissipate. I just let it go away. It’s not a very interesting answer. Sorry.

**John:** Oh my god, that was fascinating. That’s your ritual, too, right?

**Craig:** I mean, she’s kind of better than all of us.

**Shoshannah:** Say that again. I didn’t quite catch that. I didn’t hear it.

**Craig:** You heard me. I liked your first answer better which was I go with Josh to a bar and we get drunk. I think that’s truer.

**Shoshannah:** Maybe.

**John:** Lorene, do you have any go-tos?

**Lorene:** Yeah, I mean I think in my soul I think trying to reframe things like instead of saying I have to do something it’s saying I get to do something. So trying to remind myself of that at the beginning of a day, or a task. On a set I try to have three or four beverages first thing. I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before lunch and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after lunch. And no lunch.

**Craig:** That is so weird.

**Lorene:** It’s so weird. They got me a big cake on my birthday on Hustlers. It was shaped like a giant peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Humiliating. 41. So, yeah. Those are silly rituals, too.

**John:** Kevin, any rituals for you?

**Kevin:** I have relatively severe OCD that I could give you lots of rituals that utterly a waste of time and worthless and I wouldn’t recommend at all. But the notion that I have to keep in mind a lot is when there’s a lot of pressure, when you can’t think of an idea, when there’s a story problem and it gets very frustrating and I’ve pulled all of my hair out already, but you’re realizing no, no, this is a good thing. I remember being an intern and being jealous of anybody there that was employed. Anybody there that had a job. And I would hear them complain. And there was always stuff to complain about. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with complaining.

But I remember being like if I was there I wouldn’t be complaining. So, wherever I am now if I start complaining or start getting – it’s not even about complaining. It’s about just getting agitated. You realize, no, this is – exactly what Lorene said – that we get to do this and we’re very, very lucky.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** That’s a great final answer right there. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

Links:

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* [Scriptnotes, Ep 44: Endings for Beginnings](https://johnaugust.com/2012/endings-for-beginners)
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* 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/scriptnotes_ep_431.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here.](https://johnaugust.com/2019/cleaning-up-the-leftovers)

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 429 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll finally answer some long gestating listener questions. Plus we’ll look at two moves by the US Justice Department and their impact on screenwriters. Plus in bonus segment Craig and I will do a meme and compare not our faces but rather our beliefs at the start and end of the decade.

**Craig:** I used to believe in things and now I believe in nothing.

**John:** Completely. All belief has been stripped away. It’s just day by day getting through it. It’s Mad Max anarchy for Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** It’s just a howling chasm.

**John:** Can I confess that I want to say nihilism, but a part of me also thinks am I saying that word right? It’s a word I always see written and I don’t actually say it aloud often.

**Craig:** I think generally pronounce it as nihilism but it comes from nihil which I think is a Latin word. So, you could see nihilism or nihilism. And the truth is it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because if you’re a nihilist or a nihilist what’s the point? Who cares? Pronunciation is just another lie.

**John:** I Googled it as we were speaking and both are acceptable.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** There you go. So maybe I should get over my fears of misspeaking in public.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Yeah. Some follow up first. Our live show is happening December 12. As we’re recording this, which is almost a week away from when this episode comes out, there are still tickets. But maybe there are not tickets. Who knows? But our guests are phenomenal. Kevin Feige, Lorene Scafaria, Shoshannah Stern, and Josh Feldman, and other special surprises at our live show, December 12 in Hollywood. You should go to Writers Guild Foundation, wgfoundation.org and get yourself some tickets for that, because it’s going to be a great show.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re probably pretty close to being sold out by now. I think we were on the way, so you know how it is. It always is. I mean, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you get your loved one the gift that gives exactly once? A ticket to the Scriptnotes live show.

**John:** Absolutely. They can say they were there when that scandalous event happened.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Something will happen. Usually it does.

**John:** Usually does. Two Sundays ago we had the Assistant Town Hall, so this is an event that I was at along with other folks involved in the movement to try to get assistants paid better. So, we have audio from that. It may already be in your feed. If it’s not already in your feed it’s coming soon. So we cut down sort of two hours into a little bit more than an hour so people can listen to what was said in that room.

I thought it was a great event. And one of the things that I did, Craig, is I relaxed our normal rule about if you come up to the microphone you have to say a question that ends in a question mark. Because this was actually a chance for people to make statements. And some of the statements people made were really great and useful.

One I wanted to single out was a woman who said that as an assistant in the entertainment industry she feels like she has to basically carry three jobs. One is being an assistant. One is doing all the other sort of gig work, like babysitting and driving for Uber to make a living. And the third is actually writing and doing all the spec scripts that she should be writing as an aspiring writer. And it was a really interesting way of framing what it’s like to be an assistant because obviously you are going to be doing those three things and any of our aspiring writers out there who are listening probably recognizing that they’re doing two of those things, they are working a normal job and writing specs at home, but weirdly in Hollywood doing that third job where you’re also writing on your “free time” is expected as part of your first main job.

**Craig:** It used to be that the third job was maintaining a relationship with another human being. And I worry sometimes–

**John:** That’s impossible.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like that just sort of falls away and now nobody gets to have a relationship because you have a job, and a job, and a job. Which is terrible. I can’t imagine why you would have ever viewed it as a Q&A since really it did sound like an opportunity for people to just vent. But you know I’m glad that it’s happening. I’m hearing things. I’m hearing good things. There’s stuff blowing in the wind. People are noticing.

Now, has there been any large or special change? No. But I continue to hear people say, “By the way, because of what’s happened now things are being looked at differently.”

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Maybe things that were considered unnecessary to even consider before are now being considered carefully. So, things are happening. That doesn’t mean enough is happening. It doesn’t mean that it’s happening fast enough. But, it’s happening. And I’m pleased.

**John:** Yeah. One of the things we laid out at the town hall was that this was sort of a big general meeting to talk overall issues. But that in 2020 early on in the year we are planning to have sort of breakout sessions to really talk about assistants at agencies, assistants in the writer’s room. Assistants and healthcare. Assistants and nondisclosure agreements. And sort of issues that are sort of unique to entertainment industry assistants. And how do we sort of drill in and focus on those things, which are sometimes very special issues that don’t apply to all assistants but apply to a big group of entertainment industry assistants.

So I think that stuff will continue and I think the folks who came to this first event and listened in on the livestream seem very engaged about keeping the conversation going.

**Craig:** Great. I hope they do.

**John:** Now, we talked about assistants in Episode 428. We got some follow up. Do you want to read what Sylvia wrote in?

**Craig:** Sure. Sylvia writes, “Your first letter writer mentioned that they were assigned to write outlines and hoped for story credit in response. Your point was that writing outlines is essentially clerical work and shouldn’t get credit.” John, I have to stop right there. Is that what we said?

**John:** We said that there were certain – in that first letter we were talking about the spectrum of work that an assistant might do in that writer’s room, and that first letter writer I think you and I both agreed that like if you’re just taking down what’s on the whiteboard, that’s not writing.

**Craig:** Right. If you’re just assembling bullet points that’s not actually writing an outline. So, just Sylvia right off the bat I’m not sure that that is correct. But I will continue your question. “I wanted to distinguish between compiling an informal and internal outline or a beat sheet off of which the writing staff can write their draft, and writing an official outline or story document which is sent to the studio and the network. In the former case, this is clearly clerical and falls under assistant duties. In the latter, the document produced is guild-covered work. It’s like the treatment phase in features. And the use of assistants to produce these documents is widespread and almost always uncompensated.”

I’m going to stop here again. Isn’t that exactly what we said?

**John:** I think it is. I think she’s trying to distinguish though to make sure that we and our listeners recognize that there’s really two different things we’re talking about. There is this first thing where you’re transcribing what’s on the board and you’re just doing this kind of internal document which is just for the staff. That we’re saying is clerical work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I think we are fully in agreement and acknowledgment that the thing you send into the studio, that’s an outline, that’s a story document, that is really truly guild-covered work.

**Craig:** Unless, just pushing back for a second, unless a particular showrunner just sends bullet points or simple not really outlines, but just here’s somebody typed up what we said. This is what we said. Then that’s not writing because that’s just typing. So I mean this is where the difference – this is what we talked about – I thought this is what we talked about.

**John:** This is what we talked about. And let’s continue with her statement and then get into it a little bit more.

**Craig:** So let’s continue on with Sylvia’s question/comment. “I’ve been asked to do both in my career and have done so eagerly and without complaint. I’ve also been asked to take on writing scenes for group written episodes. I’ve agreed mainly because I’ve been fortunate enough to work for showrunners who made it clear to me that this work was a proving ground to showcase my abilities, something I credit with getting assigned a freelance episode of the show I work on now. But it makes me uncomfortable and I wish these practices had light shined on them.”

Well that point. Yeah. I mean, what do you think about this last bit, John?

**John:** So, listen, so we’re trying to distinguish taking notes of what’s happening in the room versus the thing you send through to the studio and those are different experiences. Like I’m thinking back to even feature like roundtable things where there’s a person in the corner who is typing what’s being said. That’s not really writing. That’s just taking notes of what’s happening in the room. The thing you send in to the studio that is real writing.

Some of what Sylvia writes here though is like well you are crossing a line into guild-covered work. And we’re recording this actually only a day after the episode dropped, so hopefully some of our showrunner friends will quietly talk to me and Craig about their best practices for sort of how their using those writers in the room to make sure they get experience but they’re not crossing into really doing guild work.

**Craig:** I agree. I will say that if the showrunner says to you as someone clearly said to Sylvia, “Listen, I want you to just do a version of this scene for us.” In terms of credit I will say it’s essentially impossible for you to be credited for screenplay work on a television episode if you wrote one scene. And you’re not the first writer. I mean, you didn’t write the script. So it’s not like someone is taking advantage of you from a credit point of view. Technically however that is writing work.

Now, is there a job called Rewrite a Scene? Nope. We don’t have that. You could be paid guild-minimum for a week. You know, which would be nice, if they paid you a little extra. But in this case it seems like what somebody was saying essentially was I’d like you to audition by writing a scene for something and then can maybe get an episode. I think if you want to audition assistants have them write scenes for things that maybe you’re not working on right at that moment because that is exploitative. And if you’re going to use that that just seems weird.

But it is an interesting area because again if you just say to somebody write a scene – we don’t really have something that covers that per se other than a time-based assignment. So she said she did it and she agreed to do it because she believed it was going to work out in her favor and it did. But she’s right to feel uncomfortable because for a lot of people it doesn’t work out. I’d love to say that there’s strong overlap between cases where it worked out and the writing was really good, meaning for a lot of the people where it didn’t work out the writing wasn’t that good and so therefore it wasn’t being used. You know what I mean? They weren’t getting ripped off per se. But there’s got to be a better way of approaching this.

**John:** Yeah. I always come back to the point that the staff writer is supposed to be the person who is doing some of what we’re talking about here. And that staff writer used to be the journeyman sort of entry level writer position on a show. And I want to make sure that we are not hiring assistants in place of actual staff writers on shows.

**Craig:** Right. And I don’t think we will be.

**John:** On some of these little like mini room shows though we’ve gotten response that they basically are doing that, which is no bueno.

**Craig:** Yeah. That is no bueno. Yes, it is possible. At some point it just doesn’t seem very sustainable for any individual show to have people writing but not really writing. You can’t – literally the network can’t use it, or the production company can’t use it. It has to be guild-covered work. It’s literary material.

So, in the case of somebody like Sylvia I could see that there’s a staff writer as essentially cover and then Sylvia is going to write a scene, but there is a guild employee. If there isn’t one, I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right at all.

**John:** No. So let’s continue to follow up on this as we hear back from other people on other shows about how they’re doing this properly.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** More follow up. Last episode Mark from New York asked for our advice on what to do when moving to Los Angeles. Craig and I did this so long ago that our advice is not current. So we asked our listeners, hey, if you’ve moved to Los Angeles recently and have good advice for Mark write in. So we’ve gotten a few in. Let’s share what Ben wrote.

He said, “I wanted to share my advice for moving to Los Angeles. I was encouraged to make the move from Chicago by the wonderful Emily Zulauf who I met at the Austin Film Festival.” Emily, a former Scriptnotes guest. She’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** “Before I started I wanted to say a quick thank you to her. Thank you, Emily. I moved to LA a year and a half ago and I had a really smooth transition. What I did first was get a job in front of house for a theater, basically plays not movies, in Culver City. I took this job because all I had to do was babysit the show and sit in the lobby. This gives me two hours of built in writing time a day, or however long the show is. Also I had some pretty big actors, directors, writers give me advice on my work who are part of that theater, so that’s pretty neat.

“The only thing I would have done differently was to try harder to get an assistant job or anything in the industry. I tried for months and months but couldn’t even get an interview and my bank account was really hurting, so I had no choice but to work a different kind of job. I have yet to get a writing job, but I’ve written two features and two novels just this year. So I feel like I’m right where I need to be right now.

“I found my apartment on Facebook Marketplace. And my roommate who posted it is super cool and more importantly sane. It’s cheap for Culver City, $990 a month,” which I assume is his portion a month. “Just make sure you message them first and get a feel for whether they’re cool/sane. I’m not in the business yet, so I don’t know if this is good advice, but it has given me enough cash to fly to Austin Film Festival, make some connections, and have plenty of time to write.”

**Craig:** Well that’s a pretty good method. I would say if you are looking to get a job as an assistant in the industry and you can’t find one, your bank account shouldn’t be hurting because you should have a job also during that time. Like never not work. If you need to work part time at Starbucks or Ralph’s or something, or take on some temp work, if you can type or answer phones. Just do something to put money in your pocket. You’re just going to be miserable if you’re sitting around just waiting.

It makes the waiting brutal. And there will be almost certainly some waiting. Two features and two novels just this year. OK. That’s way more than I’ve ever done. So, tip my hat on that one. Did not know about this Facebook Marketplace thing. This sounds like the 2019 of that weird fax thing that you and I used.

**John:** Indeed. So a couple things that Ben did here which I think are smart is that he wasn’t able to find an assistant job so he picked a job that was pretty good and also gave him time to write. And that takes me back to my days as an intern at Universal where I had a really mindless job and so at lunch I could just type up the scenes that I’d handwritten at home. It worked out great and actually had a very productive summer during that internship. I theoretically had a job for eight hours a day, but I actually had a lot of free time, and most importantly a lot of free brain space.

The job that Ben has sounds mindless and so he comes home without having used a lot of his writing brain, so that’s great.

And it looks like he knew he would need a roommate. He needed a roommate in a pretty cheap part of town. Culver City is a perfectly valid place to live. I lived in Palms, which is the even more boring version of Culver City.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Pick an unexciting place and it’s cheaper. If you pick a more interesting place you might bump into people a little bit more often, but it’s going to probably be more expensive. So he made some good choices.

**Craig:** I agree. Good job, Ben. So far so good.

**John:** So Ben thank you for your advice. If you have more advice for Mark who is moving from New York send it in and we’ll share it with Mark.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Last bit of follow up, back in Episode 419 I was talking with Craig about my speech I was going to give in Des Moines on professionalism. I did that. That went great. I posted a blog version of the speech at my site. I cites Craig and Phil Hay who had really good suggestions for things I should add to my list of professional characteristics.

**Craig:** Aw, thanks.

**John:** Yeah. So if you want to take a read through that it is super long, but hopefully useful in terms of thinking about what it means to be professional in 2019, heading into 2020. I also talked a bit about influencers and sort of the weird way that influencers are kind of professional amateurs. And how to think about influencers in this conversation about professionalism.

**Craig:** Don’t be influenced by them.

**John:** You should not be.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right, now to some news. We have two bits of news about the Justice Department. So the first is the most recent and topical thing. The Justice Department weighing in on the WGA/agency controversy and the lawsuits they’re in. So this happened Tuesday of last week. The Justice Department sent a memo, a legal document, saying that in the lawsuit between the WGA and the agencies that the court should not dismiss the agencies’ complaints against the WGA, saying that the court should establish a fact pattern regarding the labor exemption.

So we’ll put a link to the PDF of what the Justice Department wrote in to say. David Goodman in his official statement said, “It’s not surprising that Trump’s Justice Department has filed a brief designed to weaken a labor union’s efforts to protect its members and eliminate conflicts of interests by talent agencies. The agencies’ anti-trust claims are contrary to Supreme Court precedent and we remain confident that the court will dismiss them.”

So this is a federal lawsuit about the agencies and packaging. Involved the four biggest agencies. The brief history of this is that the lawsuit was initially filed by the WGA in California court. The counter claim was filed in federal court. That moved the California complaint to federal. It’s complicated. It’s legal. But the simplest version to think about this is that the Justice Department looked at both sides and decided to sort of put its finger on the scale of the agencies’ side.

**Craig:** Not surprising at all as David Goodman says. But this leads me to a question. Weren’t we the ones that asked for the venue change?

**John:** No. The venue change happened because the agencies filed in federal court. So they filed this anti-trust thing in federal court, so we had to respond to them in federal court. So everything was going to head to federal court, so that’s why we pulled out of California and put it into the federal thing. Once they filed the federal it allowed us to add in some complaints that we couldn’t file in California court. That’s the short version of it, again as explained by a non-lawyer.

**Craig:** OK. So we didn’t have a choice. Once the agencies did that we had leave? The only reason I’m asking is because when some of the stuff I’ve been reading just feels like – in terms of our response – feels a little strangely naïve like what did you think was going to happen? I mean, look at this joke of a Justice Department in the way they are about everything. Of course they’re going to be – I’m kind of shocked that it wasn’t worse, you know, in terms of what they said.

**John:** They said they didn’t want to sort of weigh in on the merits of the case. They said they wanted a fact pattern. But, yeah, if you look at the guy who heads up anti-trust for the Justice Department it’s a guy named Makan Delrahim. We’ll put a link to his Wikipedia page. But he had an op-ed in the New York Post during the elections, a pro-Trump post there. He’s very much sort of in that wheelhouse. And the next thing we’re going to talk about is also his weighing in, oh, anti-trust is silly. People should be able to do what they want to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. That seems to be their position. I mean, again, I guess my question is have we been overly rosy about our chances here? We seem to have gotten ourselves into a game on someone else’s home field and it’s not going well.

**John:** I don’t know if that’s to be the case. And so nothing has been decided at all in federal courts yet. So the first thing will be these motions to dismiss. And we filed to dismiss their motions. They filed to dismiss our motions. The first round of those decisions doesn’t come until December. So, I don’t know that necessarily anything has happened.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the court is not bound by what the Department of Justice says.

**Craig:** Sure. Of course.

**John:** So all the time the Justice Department can weigh in on one side or the other and the court itself decides what it’s going to do. If this made it all the way to the Supreme Court could you imagine that given the current makeup of the Supreme Court that it would not be ideally what we would want, maybe? But existing federal law is very clearly on our side in terms of how a union can represent its members in terms of representation based on the National Basketball Players Association precedent.

**Craig:** OK. Well you have more faith in our legal minds than I do.

**John:** And it should also be pointed out that it’s not just the WGA’s legal minds. It is outside counsel that does most of this which is great.

**Craig:** So we’re paying for two sets of lawyers. [laughs] Just pointing out.

**John:** Yeah. Of course. But this is a recent blip, but what we meant to talk about on a previous episode and we forgot to put it on the Workflowy is the Paramount decree. The Paramount consent decree which a couple of listeners had wrote in about. Craig, can you talk us through the briefest summary of what the Paramount consent decree was and why it was important?

**Craig:** Yeah. Basically there was in the early days of Hollywood a kind of lock down on the business where the same small group of people that made movies were the same small group of people that owned all the theaters. So essentially you could as one of those big movie companies block out any independent film companies from really existing. Because you can make a movie, but if you don’t have anywhere to show it then you’re not going to survive.

So, at some point the government came in and said, look, this is becoming a monopoly. You’re harming competition. So what we’re going to say is a consent decree meaning all of you are going to agree without us having to pass a law that you can’t own theaters. So you can own your studios, you can make your stuff, you just can’t own the theaters that exhibit it. And that has suddenly gone away, poof.

**John:** Yeah. Well it hasn’t actually poofed yet, but there’s a very strong probability that it will go away, poof. The only other thing I want to add to consent decree is it helps theoretically protect independent movie producers because it allows them to get their movies into theaters. It also protects independent theaters that can get access to movies that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get to. So, it’s providing competition in the theatrical distribution space.

**Craig:** Correct. So what is the world going to look like when Disney can own movie theaters? So this is a little trickier. I think it’s probably not going to look hugely different. It may even weirdly look better. It’s not necessarily going to be better, but it might for a brief while look better because there really are three exhibitors that kind of exist fully in our country. Three huge ones. And I can easily see a scenario when the consent decree disappears where all three of them are essentially gobbled up by three of the large multi-nationals that make all of our content or at least most of it. So now what we’re talking about is most of it, right. Not all of it. There’s still some independent film theaters. But all of your AMCs and your Regals and that stuff, theoretically they get gobbled up. Are they going to not show competitor’s films? Ridiculous. Of course they are. They’ll all want a share. Because they all want each other’s blockbusters the way that a network that is owned by Disney is more than happy to run material on its network produced by say Warner Bros. That happens all the time.

And I think that the theaters may get a little revitalized, a little spiffed up perhaps. But what you might start to lose completely are the smaller theaters. They may just not be able to compete at all. So, it’s not great, but in a weird way we already kind of lost because the era of the consent decree did not have three huge exhibitor chains. It had lots and lots and lots and lots of individual theaters. Well, we already kind of live in that monopoly space, so the question is is this going to lead to just a name change on the door and little else? Hard to say.

**John:** So I’m less rosy than you are. So, I mean, I’m not painting you as being rosy, but if you are sort of a dark vision that has a little bit of a rosy glow there on the edges, I think my rosy glow is a little less there. I think, yes, we are currently in an oligopoly where we have basically two oligopolies. We have an oligopoly of big movie producers, the studios. And we have an oligopoly of theater chains. Combining those two oligopolies I think will be to the detriment of kind of everyone.

Maybe not people who want to buy a ticket for a nice theater. I think that could actually – I agree – that could actually improve. I think Disney probably would do a lovely job managing a space because they do a great job managing their parks.

Here’s a couple of my concerns. You and I can speak from a place in a giant city where we have all three chains essentially. We have competition among multiple places. In many markets they don’t have competition. So, there’s essentially one chain owns all the theaters in that market. That becomes problematic if Disney owns that and decides, you know what, we are going to put all the best theaters – we’re going to keep all the best theaters for our product and make it very expensive for you to get your movie onto one of our screens. That will be problematic.

And so, yes, I agree it’s in their interest to show movies and make money, but they’re always going to be preferring their own product to someone else’s product. Right now if Disney and Paramount are both trying to get a great screen at the Grove they have to bargain for it. And I think less of that bargaining is going to lead to – that decrease in competition will not be great for that screen.

The other thing is like while the big studios make the majority of our product, they don’t make everything. So I worry about things like Knives Out. Rian Johnson’s movie is a Lions Gate production. How does it find its theaters? It debuted on I think 3,000 screens. How does it get 3,000 screens? Well, in this post-Paramount decree world I think they can’t get those screens unless they let one of the big studio buyers buy in and take a piece of that movie. That’s my hunch.

**Craig:** It’s possible, but you know again I just suspect because of the nature of money if they think something is going to be a hit and they think they’re going to be able to make money off of it they’ll take it.

**John:** But they have much more leverage on the deal that they cut with Rian Johnson’s producer to get that screen. And so I think that’s my worry.

**Craig:** All right. They’re dealing with either three people this way or three people that way. But we’ll see what happens. I mean, it is an interesting situation. I’m not freaked out.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** But, yeah, I’m not freaked out but I’m not thrilled either.

**John:** No. I think the only people who are thrilled are stockholders in either of those sides, because that merger will – those mergers will happen.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** As I understand it, again, it’s the same guy who said that the agency – came out on the agency side for the agency/WGA dispute was saying that, “The Paramount decree is a long ago to the horizontal conspiracy among movie companies in the ‘30s and ‘40s and undid effects of that conspiracy in the marketplace. The division has concluded that these decrees have served their purpose and their continue to existence may actually harm American consumers by standing in the way of innovative business models for the exhibition of America’s great creative films.”

In that last segment I think he’s talking about the window. He’s talking the idea that there’s a theatrical window and then there’s a time before things show up on TV. If Disney owns both the theaters and Disney+ they can decide like, OK, three weeks after it’s in the theaters we can put it on Disney+. So that’s a change.

**Craig:** Well that’s going to happen. I mean, Netflix is already doing it. That’s inevitable. In that sense he’s right. I mean, one possible positive thing out of this is they might stop charging so damn much for concessions because that’s where these theaters make all their money. They might actually reduce some of that. That would be nice. I don’t know if they will, but it would be nice.

**John:** I don’t know. I mean, food at Disneyland is pretty expensive.

**Craig:** 100%. Because you’re there, right? There isn’t like a Disneyland across the street that you can go to instead. But I can see where like, OK, we can see this at Regal or we can see it at AMC. We could see it – you know what I mean?

**John:** Craig, my point is that you won’t be able to see it at Regal or at AMC. Because it’s only going to be at the one place.

**Craig:** Oh, I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t think that’s how – I could be wrong, but I just don’t think that that’s – they won’t – they’re leaving money on the table if they do that. I mean, the only thing I ever think about these companies is that you can trust them for is being incredibly greedy.

**John:** Of course. Of course. So, let’s make a note to follow up in five years, in ten years to see where we’re at in this.

**Craig:** Fun.

**John:** Because I do think that most likely the consent decrees are going away. I don’t see that changing unless we have a huge new administration that puts a giant priority on stopping it. I don’t see that train stopping.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some listener questions. It’s been far too long since we’ve gotten into this mailbag. So, let’s start with Justina. Justina asks, “What happens if an intercut naturally ends? For example, let’s say someone is making dinner or throwing a party inside a house while someone else is watching the sunset outside. In this case you might use intercut to show the two people doing those things. Eventually the sunset ends and the person goes inside. If you intercut between the dinner and the person watching the sunset, how would you end the intercut when the person goes inside? Would it still be a cut to?”

So Craig what do you do when you’ve been intercutting and you need to signal to the reader that the intercut has ended?

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t really bother with this intercut thing. I think it’s this overly formal thing. We know what we mean. I mean, what I generally would do for something like this is I would say INT. KITCHEN/EXT. DECK. While so and so is in the kitchen preparing food, such and such is out on the deck. And then she’s in the kitchen, I write what she’s doing. And then maybe an action, outside, and then Steve is like, “Wow, what a beautiful sun.” And then Steve heads inside. You know, heads inside to the kitchen. Eileen turns to him. “What have you been doing?”

Just get rid of all this bric-a-brac. There’s too much formality in these things. It gets in the way of just letting people see the movie. I think people get so hung up on these little tweakedy things when the truth is none of it really is useful. I mean, eventually production needs to know when this space is different than this space, but that’s what the header does. Yeah, so I don’t get all hung up on this intercut stuff.

**John:** Yeah. So I think intercut is a very useful way to signal – say the word intercut as an intermediary slug line by itself, just an uppercase line all by itself. It’s sometimes a helpful way to indicate to the reader I’m not going to cut back and forth INT/EXT every time this is going to happen, but naturally you’re going to see the two things are happening. So your action lines just read from both sides simultaneously.

Very useful on the page. Very common. I think the reason why I will sometimes say End Intercutting is if one side is continuing and we’re never cutting back to the other side again. So in the example that Justina gives and that Craig shows, if that character moves into the first scene well obviously intercut is over. You can stop with – you don’t have to say end intercutting.

But if you’re just dropping one side away then I think actually calling it out and saying End Intercutting is valid. So if you look through some of my scripts in the library you’ll see I do that occasionally, but you don’t always have to do it. Always put it there if otherwise there would be confusion. That’s really the goal of all of these things is how do you avoid the reader becoming confused.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you make that your goal rather than conforming to some suspected format then you’ll be fine. That’s generally good advice.

Jeremy has a question about contracts. He asks, “One thing that has baffled me since learning of it is that it is standard practice to not only begin work on a script before the contract is signed but that the process of finalizing the paperwork will often outlast the length of the project itself. To wit, I just happened upon this tweet from Jeffrey Lieber. ‘I just yesterday signed a contract on a script I finished in October 2018 and has been dead since March 2019. They will now pay me the last 10%.’

“This seems to me bonkers. Can you please tell me why I’m wrong in thinking that this is insane? And what the consequences of this are in terms of writers getting paid, the potential for terms to be altered after the work is completed? Etc.”

John? What do you think about this situation?

**John:** Oh, contracts. So it is true that you will sometimes begin writing on a project before your contract is signed. Sometimes you will deliver a project before the final version of the contracts are signed. But here’s what’s important to think about as a screenwriter. There is going to be a point at which the studio says, “OK, we will pay you.” At the moment at which they will pay you you’re generally OK to start writing. Some studios will refuse to pay until the final contracts are signed. Paramount is sort of notorious for this. Some will have a certificate of authorship, a COA, and that’s enough. Some will do it on a deal memo. Different studios will work different ways. It is a little weird and bizarre that things will happen before contracts are signed, but sometimes it is just so urgent to get stuff done that you just do it, especially on weeklies and things that are more timely and pressing.

It is weird. It is slightly bonkers. But it is somewhat standard practice. The important thing that I will always stress is that it is not your executive who says, “OK, you can start writing.” It is going to be a business executive who says, or a business affairs person who says like, “OK, we are good to cut you a check.” Or it is your lawyer telling you it’s OK for you to start writing. Do not just trust your creative executive to be the one saying like it’s all good, start writing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree with all of that. And this is one hard and fast rule I have followed since the very beginning of my career, since the very first project I was hired on way, way back when. And it is this: you may drag your feet about finishing a contract. But until you send out a check for delivery, meaning the check for turning the work in, I’m not giving you the script. Because the second you turn it in they don’t have any reason to ever finish the contract or ever pay you. And it will take them forever. So what I would say to somebody like Jeffery Lieber is if you signed a contract on script that you finished in October 2018, that was the day – that was the month – you should have said I’m done, you can’t have it until you pay me. We could finish the contract or you can have me just sign something else, or just send me the check. Doesn’t matter. But I’m not giving this to you until you pay me. And usually one day later a check is in the mail.

**John:** OK. I want to clarify something here. You are asking for your delivery check before you turn it in or your commencement check before you turn it in?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t like to start without a commencement check in place. So, now, sometimes I’ll get a jump on things and then the commencement check will come a week or two later, which I consider to be fine. But, yeah, no, I’m always asking to be commenced. But there are times when they’ve been dragging it out and you definitely need both commencement and delivery before you turn the script in. But also I don’t turn the script in until they’ve paid delivery. Meaning they are issuing delivery – it’s like a hostage negotiation. You throw the Idol, I’ll give you the whip.

**John:** That is fascinating to me. I can’t believe we’ve been doing this show for this long and never had this come up. I have never required delivery before actually turning in the script. And so I’ll always say like I delivered, pay me the money. And so I’ve never reversed that. Never once.

**Craig:** Usually, nine times out of ten, there is a signed contract. So I don’t have to do that.

**John:** OK. I see what you’re saying.

**Craig:** Because the contract compels it. But if they’re still working on the long form, they have to send it first.

**John:** That’s fair. So those situations, yeah, I can totally see that. Dean asks, “In the age of streaming, when an episode of a show can be any length, how does that affect formatting? Do I still need act breaks? Or is neglecting traditional TV formatting limiting my prospects purely to streamers? Should I care?”

Act breaks in scripts written in 2019/2020 – Craig, what are your thoughts?

**Craig:** It depends on the kind of show you’re writing, Dean. Yeah, I think you should care, but not an enormous amount. You’re right, if you’re writing something that feels like a streamer kind of show then it is not crucially important. I mean, the Mandalorian just on its own has blown through the last of the – it’s blown through the guardrails. We now have episodes that are 38 minutes. What is that? That’s not a thing? So, yeah, doesn’t matter there.

If, however, you are writing what you feel to be good network/basic cable procedural, you’re writing what you think is the next Grey’s Anatomy, then I think you should be accounting for commercial breaks. And the idea of structuring with act breaks makes sense. If you don’t do it then you’re going to have to do it anyway. So part of it is just figuring out what it is that you want to do, what kind of show you want to write. There’s a creative difference between those things. There are some shows where it could be a this or be a that, in which case pick the one that you think serves you best, and if you have to adjust after you adjust.

**John:** Yeah. And so 100% on all of Craig’s advice. I will say that even experienced writers who are doing this now, I was talking to a friend who is doing a pilot as sort of a sample and he’s trying to decide do I put in act breaks, do I not put in act breaks? He decided not to put in act breaks. Because it felt a little fancier and more premium cable to not have the act breaks. But he was writing a show that really could go either place and that is what he chose to do. So it’s fine either way. If you’re writing something that feels like it should be a Chicago Something then put in those act breaks.

**Craig:** Yeah. Chicago Chicago is my new idea. I’m going to pitch that to Derek.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** All right. Greg asks about staying organized. “Dear John and Craig, can you discuss the practical concerns of files, file naming, folders, drafts, when to save, how to name, archiving scripts in the computer? I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of things and there’s no going back. But there is hope for the future and future drafts to be in a clean and tidy system.” I suspect we both have very finicky little systems.

**John:** Mine is actually not super finicky, but let me talk you through mine and we’ll hear what you’re doing. I create a folder for every project. Everything is in Dropbox. But I create a folder for it. All my files go in there. I will duplicate and create a new file if it’s really truly a new draft, like I’m turning in a brand new thing to the studio, but I will basically otherwise just keep working in the same file.

As we talked about previously, tend to write out of sequence. And so I will often have a subfolder in that folder called just Scenes. And I will just type up individual scenes and I they will stack up in that folder. Then I will assemble them for the final script and that will become the first draft.

But for every project I have, be it Arlo Finch, be it whatever, it’s all in one folder. The Arlo Finch books are just separate subfolders for each book. But I keep it kind of simple. And I name things just the title of the script and generally the date. I don’t say like first draft, second draft, whatever. I use the date for the date that I’m turning it in, whatever the date would be on the cover page of that script.

Craig, talk me through what you do.

**Craig:** Pretty similar. I’ve got a – I have a folder called Scripts in Progress. And inside that folder are all the active jobs, meaning things that are still either in development or I’m writing now or I know I have to write after. So they’re in process. Each project gets its own folder inside of that. And inside of that, like you, when I’m writing a draft it’s just one file that I’m using. But because I’m always sort of PDFing my progress as I go to share with the people I work with, I’ll have a lot of like 1-8, 1-20, 1-26. You can sort of see the progress of things just by the length of those things. And then I finish the draft, it’s done. Now that gets Draft 1 as a subfolder. Then it’s time for draft 2 and the process starts again.

If it goes into production then inside I’ll also have subfolders for scouting, for casting, for budget, for schedule, all that stuff. Everything gets its own little subfolder in there. And in this way you should have everything kind of beautiful laid out and nested.

When a project is done, it goes over into the Writing Archive folder. And that’s where all the old things live. Like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

**John:** Indeed.

**Craig:** And it’s such a relief to send something that you hate, like oh god, this was the worst, I’ve been on this thing for like – they beat me up for four weeks on some production rewrite. I’m so glad it’s over. Be gone to the writing archive. But sometimes it’s sad. Like when I moved Chernobyl into to the writing archive it was like, oh man, it’s been like six years looking at that folder. Bye. And then it goes. But it’s a good way to kind of realize this is our life. You do it. It’s done. And you move on.

**John:** So a difference between you and me is you have more subfolders than I do. And the reason why I don’t tend to have a lot of subfolders is that sometimes things get lost in subfolders. Like you’re not quite sure where would it be and where is that thing. So that’s why I tend to have – there could be 100 files in the folder.

What I do find useful is if there’s a particular file or draft that I want to sort of keep going back to, like this is an official draft I turned in, I will use the label feature in finder to put a little purple label on it, so I can say, oh, that’s the one. And so for Arlo Finch for example if I have a PDF of book one that is really the definitive version, that it matches the printed book, I will have that label so I can click on that and say like, OK, this is what I called that character in this book, and so I can very easily refer back to it and know that I’m looking at definitively the true version of things.

But I’m not a big subfolder person beyond that. Of course I will subfolder for things like scouting or casting and that stuff. But for the actual writing it tends to be just one giant folder.

**Craig:** Hmm. Yep, there you go. So I guess really the answer is whatever feels good, Greg.

**John:** In terms of backups, we should always stress Dropbox is sort of its own backup, so that’s one stage of backup in backing up. I use Time Machine and I also will do a full disc dup of my hard drive every couple weeks. So, between those three I have a very good way of getting back to the state of any file.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m kind of in the same situation. I have Dropbox. I have Time Machine. And then I use Back Blaze. So it’s triplicate. Feels pretty good.

**John:** Do it. David asks a question about the trades. “Every so often you and Craig make brief mention of or reference to the trades. I understand that the trades are places to find industry information, but for someone trying to break into the screenwriting business what does it actually mean? Are the trades something I should be paying attention to? What are some trade publications or sites that I need to follow? Are some better than the others? What should I know about the trades?”

**Craig:** I mean, no.

**John:** Let’s list them. When we say the trades what are we talking about?

**Craig:** We’re talking about Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** That’s what we’re talking about. It used to just be Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. And when you and I started, and you probably I guess felt the same way, it seemed like a common thing to feel that Variety was kind of the New York Times. And then The Hollywood Reporter was the other one.

**John:** The Post.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was a little bit of The Post. And then in the age of the Internet Deadline came along and did what Internet publications do which is ruin everything. So what had been kind of a somewhat restrained business periodical turned into a gossipy crapfest. And now that’s not to say that there isn’t good journalism at those three publications. There is. Sometimes they do really interesting work. And then sometimes they just take a transcript of what you and I say and republish it and call it exclusive.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s a lot of that. And because they are now in a cycle of exclusives, which I don’t understand the value of really since it’s going to be non-exclusive 14 seconds after you publish it, they will race, they will screw up, they will not report things cleanly. It just happens all the time. I think among industry professionals there’s a certain sense that the trades need to be graded on a curve. That if they get it even close to right that’s a good day.

Do you need to read these things? No. I don’t see why. I think mostly they’re full of, you know, just junk. Like so-and-so takes job as fifth assistant VP at company you don’t know. It just doesn’t matter.

**John:** So when I first came out to Los Angeles I was in the Stark program and we got free copies of Variety every day. And so I remember going to my little USC mailbox and get my Variety. And it was actually really helpful for me to learn some lingo and sort of like learn how people talked in the industry. So I do think there’s some merit to having a familiarity with them. I don’t think you need to keep up with them every day, every week. You don’t need to know the pulse of what’s going on, because they really aren’t the pulse of what’s going on.

Megana, who is sort of new to the industry, I get Variety for free during award season for no good reason, so she will actually read them. And it’s good. It gets her up to speed on sort of like who the studios are and what they’re talking about. That part is kind of useful. But it should be the tiniest fraction of your time. Do not feel like you need to internalize this. And I will say a danger of reading the trades is as a screenwriter it can get you kind of in this hunting mode where it’s like, oh, this is what’s hot. I should be writing this thing. Or these are the sales. That’s not good. That’s not bueno. You should be writing your own stuff and not worrying about what other people are buying.

**Craig:** I agree. And I would say that if you’re quality shopping among the trades, because each one of them will provide quality at times, look for things that aren’t the news of the day. Because it’s actually – it’s the – so when I think about Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline and I think about breaking, blah-blah-blah, that’s actually usually not great.

**John:** Not important.

**Craig:** Yeah. What is good, what they do really well, are in-depth interviews with people that matter. Whether they’re on the arts side or the business side. You can really learn from those, just from the interviews alone? I think also when they have editorials or essays that analyze trends there is value there. Where it’s less interesting to me is the kind of full on opinion pieces like why did such-and-such movie flop and then here comes a bunch of retroactive explanation for something that you would have said completely differently if it had succeeded.

Or breaking, blah-blah-blah. So, yeah, just pick and choose carefully. Because there’s actually great in all of them. And then there’s junk in all of them. Which is sort of like true for what you and I do. [laughs]

**John:** It is. It is true. Let’s wrap it up with Doug’s question. He writes, “The recent episode on fantasy world-building was wonderful. I was thinking about Episode 400, movies they don’t make anymore, it seems to me the only kind of fantasy that studios are interested in are series. The Witcher. The new Lord of the Rings project at Amazon. His Dark Materials. What advice would you give to a screenwriter hoping to write a standalone fantasy? Is it worth the time for something that isn’t popping up as often? What would need to be in a pitch or other document in order to entice studios to tell a story that is fantasy without being backed by source material?”

**Craig:** It’s very difficult.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Doug, here’s the problem. They’re incredibly expensive to do. And if they are not backed up by underlying material then it is quite unlikely that they will do it at all. It would have to come with Brad Pitt and, I don’t know, everyone. It would have to be like that selfie that Ellen DeGeneres took at the Oscars. It would need all of those people in it.

So when John and I were growing up there were a billion fantasy movies and they made a billion fantasy movies that weren’t based on underlying material because they were dirt cheap to make. Go out into the desert. Put some very pretty people in stupid barbarian costumes. And have them swing swords and occasional terrible visual effects occur. That was it. So they were cheap.

But to do a fantasy series – essentially since Lord of the Rings set a bar for what fantasy should be on film. Yeah, if you don’t have either the promise of underlying material to support an ongoing theatrical experience, or you don’t have a kind of ongoing experience that as an original thing a network could see as an ongoing series, it’s really going to be uphill.

**John:** Yeah. I agree with you, because you’re talking about making a very expensive movie that’s not based on anything which is difficult in any genre. But particularly a thing about fantasy properties is they tend to be based on really successful books or other franchises and that’s why they sort of cross that threshold. So I think you’re going to be happier picking the second genre you love very much and working on that one. Or if you really want to work in that fantasy genre, you know, find a way to get on one of these other series that’s happening, because then you’ll be very happy writing one of those shows.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s exactly right.

**John:** All right. It’s come time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a cocktail. I don’t think we’ve ever done a cocktail for a One Cool Thing. So, in our house I had some parsley and it’s like there must be a cocktail to make with parsley. So I Googled and I found a Parsley Julip. It is delicious, Craig. It’s like a mint julip. It uses parsley, lime juice, simple syrup, gin. I used my friend’s Aviation Gin, which is fantastic. And it’s a delicious drink. I mean, it’s really kind of more a summer drink. But even in the winter it is a delicious drink. It is refreshing. So I would recommend a Parsley Julip if you are in the mood for a cocktail.

**Craig:** I could definitely see Melissa Mazin enjoying a Parsley Julip.

**John:** What I like about parsley is it’s not a flavor you kind of expect in a cocktail. But you just get a sense of it and it’s just lovely.

**Craig:** If you say so.

**John:** You’re not a parsley person?

**Craig:** I am literally an old fashioned drinker. That’s how. I am so old fashioned I drink an Old Fashioned. Yeah, no, and I’m not a big gin guy to be honest with you.

**John:** Generally I’m not a big gin guy overall, but this is tasty for me.

**Craig:** It’s coming back. Well I have a culinary One Cool Thing as well. As faithful listeners know every Thanksgiving I do a ton of cooking for the holiday and inevitably that involves a pie. A pie will happen. And because I like to do things from scratch I’m making my own crust. And one of the things that savvy bakers know when they’re making pie crusts is that pie weights are super useful. So, pie weights are typically little ceramic beads and you just pour them on top of the shell before you put it in the oven. And the idea is that when inevitably some little water pockets turn to steam and a bubble wants to form and blow out like a pizza bubble it doesn’t happen because these things are weighing it down.

The bummer about the pie weights is when you take your pie out of the oven you got to spill all of these hot ceramic beads out somewhere, wait for them to cool, and then put them back in their jar. Well, this year I found and it’s not like it’s new, but it’s new to me and so I’m thrilled, a pie weight chain. So instead of the ceramic beads that uses essentially ball bearings, little metal ball bearings, which do the trick just fine as well, but what they’ve done is they’ve just sort of strung them together like a long necklace. And so you put it on your pie and it does the same damn thing, but when it’s time to take it off you’ve just got to get the end and then you lift the whole damn thing out, one piece, done.

**John:** Craig, that is a very smart idea. Again, you’re saying it’s not new, but it’s new to me and I can’t believe that I’ve been wasting time with non-threaded beads to do this.

**Craig:** I mean, now when I took it out of the package my wife remarked that it looked a little bit like a sex toy.

**John:** Yeah. It does.

**Craig:** I mean, but you know what, I think in life most really useful things do look vaguely like sex toys.

**John:** Anything can be a sex toy if you’re imaginative enough.

**Craig:** As Adam Carolla once said, “Within five minutes of something new being invented, it’s up someone’s butt.” Somewhere in the world it’s gone up a butt. [laughs]

**John:** If you are looking for a gift this holiday season you can get a pie weight chain, or parsley for a Parsley Julip, but we also have Scriptnotes t-shirts that you can buy. Craig, have you gotten your Scriptnotes t-shirts? Megana was giving them to Bo to give them to you. Have you gotten your t-shirts yet?

**Craig:** I believe they’re in transit. I’m very excited.

**John:** They turned out great. So we put in a big order for all of us in Scriptnotes land. They’re great. And the one I’m wearing right now is the old Scriptnotes tour shirt, the one with the sort of metal typewriter on it.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** And so mine had become so faded you couldn’t see the typewriter anymore, but now it is nice and dark. So, get yourself a new Scriptnotes t-shirt if you’d like to.

Also we’ll put links in to Alphabirds which is a game that my office plays every Friday. And Writer Emergency Pack which has been our sort of mainstay for a while of a little stocking stocker for the writer in your life. So if you want a gift those links are there.

Stick around after the credits because Craig and I are going to talk about things we think about differently after ten years. But for now, Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by Jemma Moran. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. But for short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. We will have a new version of the premium feed coming very, very soon. But you can find all the back episodes for now at store.johnaugust.com.

All right, and now a bonus segment. So a meme that was really popular this past week was comparing the 2009 you versus the 2019 you. So people would put up side by side photos to show how different they looked from those times. I almost did that same meme, but I kind of look the same basically. Because when you’re a bald guy your visible signs of aging aren’t as pronounced, so it would just be a vanity post from me.

But I thought what we might do is talk about not what’s changed in our faces but what views we hold that are different now than they were in 2009.

**Craig:** You mean personal growth in other words.

**John:** Have we grown at all as people? Or I guess we could also be backsliding. We could have grown in a negative way.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** We could have calcified.

**Craig:** Devolved.

**John:** Devolved. I would say some views that I hold that are different, one is meritocracy, which I used to think is a good word which I now recognize is probably not a good word and actually not a really great concept. I think the idea of meritocracy is that everyone gets there based on their own worth and their own hard work and that’s what’s the key to success. I think I believed that a lot more in 2009 than I do in 2019. Is recognizing that a lot of people are successful who you would think it’s because they worked really hard, and they did work really hard, but that wasn’t the main factor on why they succeeded. So I think I’m much more aware of that than I was in 2009.

**Craig:** It sounds a little bit like it’s not that you don’t value what is inherently good about a theoretical meritocracy, but rather you’re saying we’re not in on. And a lot of the things that we’ve been told are meritocracies are not.

**John:** That is a good way to put it. Is that meritocracy as an idea is probably not bad, it’s just the fantasy that we’re living in one now is truly a fantasy.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. And I think that that kind of ties into one of the changes that I have, which is similar, and it’s that I think ten years ago I was more of an optimist not in a rosy way but rather what I would call a defensive optimist. So a defensive optimist says, OK, you’re pointing out problems but it’s important to me that we sort of look at what works right and not exaggerate the problems. Because if we exaggerate the problems we kind of fall into this sense of inertia and victimhood. And that’s a kind of defensive optimism.

And I think now I’m probably more of an accepting pessimist, which is to say I am still optimistic about things but I’m not upset by accepting how some things are getting worse or are just bad. In other words it’s not a threat to your optimism, your hope, or your sense of what is and what can be by acknowledging what is bad. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is just accept that some things are not great at all.

**John:** That’s true. And I think that’s psychologically a helpful thing to embrace is recognizing that accepting reality for what reality is and not sort of pushing it away is helpful both for your own planning but also for your own mental health.

**Craig:** Yeah. I guess what I would say is I’ve come to appreciate the joy of bad news.

**John:** OK. Here’s a very simple thing that I’m different at. Back in 2009 I think I double spaced after the period pretty consistently. I don’t anymore. I’m a single-spacer. I look at things that are double spaced and it drives me crazy.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. I think I might have been ahead of you on this one, but just barely.

**John:** In 2012 in Episode 65 I talked about my transition to becoming a single-spacer. And so I was along the way, but it definitely happened during this decade.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Craig, a thing I’ve noticed about you, and I think also we didn’t have Twitter in 2009, or people weren’t on Twitter the same degree in 2009, but as I see the things you tweet about and sort of who you retweet, I feel that you are much more politically active and engaged now than you were back then.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, mostly I like just being an annoying contrarian. I have a high disagreeability level. So for a long time Hollywood was just full of what I consider to be, and still do in many ways, lazy thinking, hypocritical, self-described liberals who aren’t really liberal and who don’t treat working people well. And who don’t treat women well. And who don’t treat minorities well. Who don’t vaccinate their children. And the sanctimonious hypocrisy that all was a joy to sneer at. And I still do. However, what has happened is that – well first of all it’s clear to me that most people aren’t that. In other words there are people like that, but they don’t define what our business is and who lives here and what’s going on.

And you can ignore for instance a coterie of Brentwood ding-a-lings and just concentrate on what good people are doing. And there are so many good people doing good things to progress. And that is really important. So when I look at for instance the Women’s March and I think, OK, maybe a tiny bunch of those people are Brentwood ding-a-lings, but really most of them are just regular people who believe something and care.

And so I’ve become a bit more – what’s the word–?

**John:** Are you generous in your assumptions?

**Craig:** I mean, I think I’m a little bit more idealistic. I do. I think that I have decided that it’s more important to concentrate on what good can come from positive thinking and ideas – and this is kind of against the background of accepting bad news – and less important on making fun of idiots. I do like making fun of idiots. Don’t get me wrong. But making fun of idiots doesn’t actually move the ball forward. So while I enjoy making fun of idiots online, and on Twitter, and I love making fun of Ted Cruz, the kind of all idiots, I contribute way more to political causes than I used to before. And I show up to political things way more than I used to before. And I read more about political things way more than I used to before. And I try and also read a variety.

So I get as much as I can from what I consider to be reputable sources.

**John:** And that’s obviously a change from 2009 to 2019 is that the notion of reputable sources is so different than it used to be in the sense that we have – it used to be much clearer sort of what the facts of things were and sort of everyone was actually talking about facts in ways that were different. And also I think I believed in systems a lot more then than I do now. Because I’ve seen, oh, the systems won’t always be there to protect you and save you. And so sometimes you have to do some stuff yourself. And that’s been an awakening I would say over these last couple of years.

Another thing that’s different about 2009 Craig versus 2019 Craig is you didn’t have an Emmy back then. You weren’t a fancy – you weren’t the fancy writer that you are now.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** That’s nice.

**Craig:** That is true. I wasn’t expecting that. But it’s not really a difference. It’s some trophies. I like trophies.

**John:** And you play more D&D now than you did in 2009.

**Craig:** Far more, which is the greatest joy of all. It’s actually fascinating to contemplate, and this is a scary number to say, 2030. OK, we’re on the doorstep of 2020. In 2030, first of all we’ll still be doing the show which is crazy. [laughs]

**John:** Imagine.

**Craig:** Imagine. And think of where our D&D adventures will have taken us.

**John:** Wow. Nice. Yeah, some good stuff. And it should have been my One Cool Thing this week. The Eberron book came out from Wizards of the Coast.

**Craig:** Did you get it?

**John:** It’s terrific. It’s terrific. It’s a great guide book, a great source book of sort of all stuff. And so little steam punky. Really smartly done. You will love it, Craig.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** That should be a gift to yourself for Christmas.

**Craig:** You’re the gift to myself.

**John:** Aw. Thanks Craig. Bye.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes Holiday Live Show](https://www.wgfoundation.org/events/all/2019/12/12/the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show)
* [Assistant Townhall Extra Episode]()
* [Assistant Townhall Full Livestream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5x_jDCftkg)
* [Justice Department](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-11-26/doj-wga-agencies-lawsuit) on WGA ATA negotiations
* [Justice Department Moves to End Paramount Decree](https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/paramount-decrees-end-makan-delrahim-1203408484/)
* [Scriptnotes T-shirts](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast) now featuring all past designs!
* [Writer Emergency Pack](https://store.johnaugust.com/products/writer-emergency-pack-single-deck)
* [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)
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jemma Moran ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_429.mp3).