Scriptnotes Transcript

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).

The original post for this episode can be found [here.](https://johnaugust.com/2019/assistants-arent-paid-nearly-enough)

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig, Craig, fo-feg, fonana-fana fo-bleg – I don’t even know how that works – Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 422 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And Hollywood assistants.

Last we asked for listeners to tell us how much assistants in this town are getting paid and the impact of those wages. And oh boy.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s the most mail we’ve ever received on a topic. More than 50 of you wrote in. So we’re going to assess where we’re at with assistant pay. And the challenges ahead. So buckle up.

**Craig:** Let me tell you. There is umbrage coming the likes of which few have ever seen. Few have ever seen. You are about to take a raft ride down umbrage river my friends.

**John:** We’ll also be looking at videogame writing.

**Craig:** More umbrage.

**John:** Spec features. And thesauri. Craig, are you ready?

**Craig:** Nah, I love thesauri. I can’t be mad at you, thesaurus.

**John:** Let’s start with some follow up though. Craig, will you help us out with Heidi who wrote in about things to watch out for?

**Craig:** Sure. Heidi wrote, “It’s not as horrifying as sexual abuse, but I think and hope we will talk about the long hours that writers, especially comedy writers, are required to be in TV writer’s rooms. It’s commonly known that on certain shows writers have sleeping bags in their offices. They’re in the room till early morning, get a couple of hours of sleep, then buy new clothes to change into at the studio store. Even without technically sleeping over, comedy writers are sometimes expected to work until after midnight for days at a time.” Yikes. I have heard these stories.

**John:** Yes. And it was a thing I associate more with previous generations but I think it still happens now. I think it’s very much show by show. And one of the first questions you ask when you talk to a TV writer is what is the room like. And is it a room that is crazy or is it a room that actually has reasonable hours? And you kind of don’t know until you’ve talked to people who have been in that room.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like you, I had heard this mostly as a story of in the past when you were in a world of 14 sitcoms, each of which were churning out 22 episodes that people would go through these processes. I think if it’s happening now it’s because the show is poorly run. I don’t know what else to say. There is no intrinsic value in running a show like that. If you’ve fallen that far behind it’s because the show is being poorly run.

Now, there are certain times I know when showrunners – I did a panel at the WGA with Rob McElhenney who is the showrunner and star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And he says sometimes you’re hoping that a staff writer’s draft is going to get you in the ballpark. And every now and then it just doesn’t. And you’re behind. But to have an entire room of people there all night until early morning routinely is madness. And also frankly if you’ve got your staff there overnight why are you sending them to buy new clothing at the studio store? Shouldn’t you be as the showrunner be, I don’t know, supplying them with amenities? Find a hotel room somewhere for them to shower? It just seems crazy. I don’t understand this.

**John:** Yeah. The other big challenge with this, in addition to being unhealthy, it makes it impossible for some writers to work on a show like that. So people with kids. It makes it impossible to have a sustainable life when you’re doing those things.

Now, we’re talking about writers here, but of course there’s an industry-wide problem with long hours. And so we’ll put links in the show notes to other articles that talked about the long hours worked on set and how dangerous that can be for cast and crew. So KJ Apa obviously of Riverdale was an example of that.

Industry-wide we need to look at the unsustainably long hours and look for what the solutions are. One example is French hours that sort of make it so you’re only working a certain number of hours per day. You might work through lunch but you’re actually getting home at a reasonable time. We need to be thinking smarter and more sustainably about how we’re making our film and television.

**Craig:** Well, here’s a shocking bit of information for people. They’re always surprised when I say this. There is no, as far as I know, there is no real hard limit that anyone recognizes for working. So when you’re in production I’ve worked 21-hour days. And no one should be allowed to work 21-hour days. It doesn’t matter whether they’re paying people or not. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s dangerous. It’s just dangerous. We need to have some kind of legislation that caps the amount of days.

Now, what is the cost to doing that? Money. Money. So, this is the theme for today. And now let me begin my anger at our oh-so-progressive business, which is populated almost entirely by Democrats, you know, people that vote the Democratic Party. People who believe in progressive policies and social policies and people who profess to be as woke as woked can be. And yet when it comes to this stuff, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. So this is going to come up over and over and over. And easy calls to just say it doesn’t matter if working people to the bone for 21 hours straight puts more money in your pocket. Don’t do it. It’s wrong, with a capital W.

**John:** I also think there’s an overlap between Hollywood hours and startup culture hours. Because every film and television project kind of starts as a startup. It’s this new idea you’re struggling to work hard to make this thing come to life. And there’s the excitement and the joy, but recognizing how unhealthy that is in the long term is something we all have to keep in mind as we work on these projects that we hopefully love. So, yes.

And that could be the mantle that we’re taking up. It could be the charge that we’re leading, but apparently it’s not the charge that we’re going to be leading this year on Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** No, no. We have more important fish to fry. We have one more important fish to fry.

**John:** But, Craig, I want you to stretch before you get into full umbrage. So this I think is a good warm up umbrage here.

**Craig:** OK, cool.

**John:** Martin from Detroit writes, “My question is more of a concern. It’s regarding your segment How Would This Be a Movie. Have you ever—“

**Craig:** Hold on. I just want to interrupt. So this is already bad. Because do you know what a concerned troll is, John?

**John:** I know what a concerned troll is. This is actually definitional concerned troll which is why I left it in the outline.

**Craig:** Wonderful. Go on my friend from Detroit.

**John:** “Have you guys ever thought about all the screenwriters out there who may be affected by this segment. I mean, I know you guys don’t personally care about ideas being ‘discovered or stolen’ as I’m sure you get offered high profile assignments from existing IP all the time. But so many of us don’t. We have to search and find our own IP and it tears us apart after we spend so much time in research and development of the idea to only realize that a ‘bigger fish’ is also making the same project.

“It’s happened to almost all of us and it sucks every time. I think with all the great stuff that you guys do for screenwriters this segment of how could this be a movie is a detriment to working screenwriters. Sure, it helps all the studios and bigwigs to go out and grab one of your proposed ideas, but it does nothing for us. Each time you do one of these segments I feel like Obi-Wan when Alderaan was destroyed. I grow faint and need to sit down as I feel other screenwriters’ pain across the world.”

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** “All the while praying that you don’t mention any of my ideas that I have spent months, even years, researching and prepping. I thought this was a podcast for screenwriters, not for bank-rolled producers. I know you guys love the segment and think it’s fun, but well, just think about it. Signed, Concerned Screenwriter.”

**Craig:** Hmm. Let me think about it. Let me think about it. Well, I guess Martin what I would say is that you use a lot of words incorrectly. There’s so many fundamental flaws with what you’re saying here. For starters, I don’t know what you’re calling IP. I have no idea what you mean by that. Do you mean a book, a novel? Do you mean something that actually is intellectual property, because that’s what I and P stand for? If that’s what you mean then I don’t know what you’re talking about because we can all talk about it all day long. I can tell you all about the new Joe Hill book. Doesn’t matter. I don’t have the rights to it. Do you have the rights to it, Martin? If you do, it doesn’t matter what John and I do, because you have the rights.

But I don’t think that’s what you mean. When you say IP, I think what you just mean is topic. I think that’s what you’re saying. And Martin I have terrible, terrible news for you. When John and I do that segment we’re reading about topics that are in the newspaper. And they’re on the Internets, which means everybody already knows. It’s out there.

Now here’s another thing you need to know, Martin. You can’t own any of that. And you’re a fool to think that if John and I merely refrain from talking about it on our one podcast that no one else in Hollywood has noticed. Let me explain how it works, Martin. Every single thing we’ve ever seen has also been dumped into a hopper in front of an assistant – and we’ll get to them shortly – who have to go through all of this. These are all compiled and submitted every day, minute by minute, second by second. You have found nothing – you hear me? – that they don’t know about.

The only thing you can do if you’re talking about stuff that isn’t actually IP but just topic is to find something that they know about but don’t care about because they don’t see in it what you see in it. Which, by the way, would define say me and Chernobyl. It’s not like people didn’t know about Chernobyl. They just didn’t, I don’t know, they just didn’t care that much. I did. There you go. That’s how it works, Martin.

We don’t do this show for bank-rolled producers. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nor do I think anyone is growing faint and screaming out in pain as we blow up Alderaan on a week-by-week basis. I don’t know what to tell you, Martin. I disagree with everything you’ve said here completely. But maybe nothing more than the way you’ve phrased this all as a concern.

Thank you for your concern.

**John:** I think the most crucial word that Martin is missing is How. And the idea of the topic is How Would This Be a Movie. So it’s not saying like there’s an idea out here and we’re going to make this into a movie. It’s really talking through what are the opportunities and challenges of this idea in turning it into a movie. And what are the many different avenues you could take?

Because you and I often don’t agree on sort of what the way into a story is. And that is the job of a screenwriter is to figure out given this idea, given this notion, how are you going to approach it. Who are the characters? How do you think about this idea as a screenwriter? That’s really the purpose. So, while we might brag about how many of the things we picked ended up becoming movies, it’s just because those are ideas that could become movies. We really are focused on the how. Like what are the actual mechanics, the characters, the storyline, the tone. What is it suited for? That is the purpose of the exercise. And that is what screenwriters do every single day.

**Craig:** Yeah. Martin, why don’t you just write something that other people can’t write?

**John:** Do that.

**Craig:** There’s a thought. Just do that.

**John:** Good. All right. Craig, are you properly stretched?

**Craig:** Dude, I woke up stretched for this. I don’t need stretching for this.

**John:** We’ve got another question. Matt writes about narrative games. “I’m a writer/narrative designer in the videogame industry who has worked at many well-known story-driven studios throughout the years. I heard a rumor about the WGA awards dropping the videogame writing category for 2020. My question is simply what gives?”

Craig, what gives?

**Craig:** Well, the guild has done it again. Well done Writers Guild. So here’s how this goes. The Writers Guild in the mid-2000s decided in its wisdom that one of the ways it could maybe help organize videogame writing would be to include videogame writing as a category in its awards. So they were going to use awards as sort of bait. And the way you could qualify for those awards ultimately became signing onto a kind of a Writers Guild – it’s not even like a real – it’s like a side agreement. It’s not like a full agreement. And so they did this for a while. And what happened was – big shock – big videogame companies did not – they did not unionize. Their members did not vote to join the Writers Guild. But we still hand out the awards.

And so then the Writers Guild said, oh, we have a great idea. Let’s just stop giving the awards. Because I can only presume the Writers Guild trophy costs thousands of dollars to forge in the fires of Mt. Doom. And we have to save that money. So now they’ve just given a huge middle finger to the videogame writing industry.

And here’s my problem. We have the worst of both worlds now. The writers that appreciated recognition for their writing are angry because all they see from their side is, oh, I guess we’re not writers in the eyes of the Writers Guild anymore. And on the Writers Guild side they’ve gotten nothing from this, except bad press. And again whatever they saved from the forging of the trophies in the fires of Mt. Doom.

I personally believe that videogame writing is essential. I think that a lot of videogames are vastly bigger than the movies and television shows that we write. I would love to see certain videogame shops unionize for the Writers Guild. We haven’t actually done the work to do it. All we’ve done is offer awards. Waited for something to flop out of the skies in our laps. It didn’t happen and now we’re taking our ball and going home.

It was a bad strategy. I don’t understand it. I don’t know why they did it this way. This was something that I was urging Patric Verrone to do, oh god, all the way back in 2006, starting with Bethesda. I thought that was a good place to start. But I can think of a number of companies where switching them to a proper Writers Guild agreement and getting them into the fold would be amazing for us. And we just haven’t done it. We don’t have the right inroads to that business. We’re not talking to the right people. It’s not a priority.

We have other priorities right now apparently, which I also don’t agree with. So, this is angering to me. And on behalf of all of my brethren and sister-en in the videogame business, all I can say is yeah this is a screw job. I hate it.

**John:** All right. Counter point. First let me validate the things you said that I think are absolutely true. Which is that videogame writing is truly writing and it is writing that is analogous to what screenwriters do. If you look through some of these narrative games they’re literally written in screenplay format, especially for cut scenes. It is very much the same kind of writing. And so the same way that I wish we had the foresight back in the ‘30s to cover animation writing, we should be looking at how we cover videogame writing. So you were right back then when you talked to Patric Verrone about wanting to make sure that videogame writing got covered. You’re still right now to say that videogame should be covered.

Craig, how often do you go to the Writers Guild Awards?

**Craig:** Well, John, as you know until recently I was not a heavily nominated writer. But I have gone to the Writers Guild Awards most recently to support our mutual friend John Gatins who was nominated for an award for his fine screenplay for Flight.

**John:** Very good. At those awards you took careful note of all the awards given out and at no point did you say, huh, that is funny that they are giving out an award to an area of business that they do not even represent writers in that field?

**Craig:** I’ve got to be honest with you. I didn’t pay heavy attention to that. I was having a good time. I was drinking a little. You know, sometimes you have a – and for me you know what that means. It means I had a full two glasses of wine.

**John:** Yes. Because 1.5 we have stipulated is enough for a podcast, but two is too much.

**Craig:** Right. Two is a party. But, no, it didn’t bother me.

**John:** All right. So I was not part of this decision to remove this category from the awards this year. There have been other awards that we decided to over the years award or not award based on sort of what seems to make sense. And giving out awards is a continuously flexible thing. I would not be surprised if the videogame award comes back in the future.

The challenge is that often the number of eligible entries for something will be like two. And so when you’re giving an award and there are only two possible things you can give it to it becomes a little less meaningful of an award. And so I think that all factored into the decision not to award the videogame category this year.

I do hear your frustration that this was not messaged properly and that you saw this as a rebuke of videogame writing, which I think you and I both agree is cinematic writing.

**Craig:** I’m just waiting for when the Writers Guild does message something properly. It’s been a while. It’s been a while. Just sort of set your watch to this. I don’t understand why they do these things.

**John:** So Craig here’s my frustration. Here’s my genuine frustration with your approach here is that I honestly could have flipped a coin and it could have – if they had awarded this award I could have imagined or some other screenwriting-ish kind of award but for an area that we don’t cover, I could imagine you saying, “What a stupid choice for the WGA to be offering an award for a category of writing that they don’t even cover.”

So, something like Best Writing for Reality Competition Shows. And that’s my frustration. I do think that you perceive anything the Writers Guild does as a stupid bad choice when sometimes it’s just a choice.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think that’s true. The Writers Guild does make some stupid, bad choices from time to time. No question about that. If the Writers Guild had made a awarding reality shows awards, like Writers Guild Awards while they were trying to pull them into the fold, which they did for a while. I mean, they were trying to organize reality writing for a while. I think that would have made sense. I would have understood that.

The problem with giving people awards is once you start giving them to stop giving them is a bit of a slap in the face. I don’t think I would have had a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with everything the Writers Guild does. I have a problem with almost every kind of way the Writers Guild handles messaging about touchy things. Particularly in the last six months where it just seems to be one blunder after another. I don’t know who is in charge of that. It’s not the individual writers on the board. They don’t write press releases. But somebody is bungling this over and over and over. And, so no, I don’t think it’s fair to say that I just decide a la Republican Senators and anything that comes out of a Democrat’s mouth is bad.

No, I’m thinking critically about this. I assure you. I feel like they just – I can’t remember the last time they said something and I went, “Well done.” I really can’t. I’m an annoyed member of my union. What can I say?

**John:** All right. Let’s move on to a topic where I think we will find much more agreement. This is the issue of assistant pay. So to remind everybody, in a previous episode we asked – this was in relation to the #MeToo movement – what issue do you think we’re not paying enough attention to now that in a few years we’ll look back and say, oh my god, how did we not focus on this thing as being a huge problem? And someone wrote in to say I think you should be paying much closer attention to how little assistants in Hollywood are being paid and how that is a huge barrier to increasing representation, diversity, and just sustainability within this business.

So we in the last episode asked, hey, if you are somebody who has experience as an assistant in Hollywood tell us about your experience. Tell us what you’re making if you feel like telling us that. And what needs to change. By far it was the most email we ever got in on a topic. And the person who had to read all those emails is our producer, Megana Rao. So Megana Rao, welcome to the podcast.

**Megana Rao:** Hi guys.

**Craig:** Hi Megana.

**Megana:** Hi Craig.

**John:** So, we got a zillion emails that came in. So if we’re going to quote anybody from these emails we should stipulate that all the names have been changed. We’ve removed anything that can individually identify a person. And I should also say that some people were concerned that even by saying that “some assistants are getting paid as low as X dollar figure” that we could actually force wages down. And we’ll get to why that can be a problem is that even people who were able to unionize it sometimes had a negative effect on how much they were actually bringing home each week.

So this is complicated. And so this is not going to be the episode where we fix all these problems. This is going to be an episode where we describe the nature of these problems and invite discussion on how to improve things for everybody.

But I thought we might start with some context because a lot of the assistants who wrote in were writing in about television. And Craig has made a television show. He won an Emmy for it. But it was not a traditional television show. And so I wanted a better sense of what traditional TV assistants were like. So I emailed Aline. She wrote:

“On a show there’s typically a writer’s production assistant who gets lunch and runs errands.” So a writer’s production assistant. “Then there’s the EP assistant who works for the showrunner,” so who works for Aline. “Then a writer’s assistant who is in the room and works with all the writers, but especially the showrunner. There’s also a script coordinator who handles the mechanics of getting a script properly distributed.” So she’s describing four people.

And she says that some shows combine these roles in various ways but that’s how Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did it. So, we’re looking a showrunner’s assistant, a writers’ room assistant, a writers’ room PA, and a script coordinator. And the script coordinator is the one that classically has been a union job. Megana, can you tell us about Lance?

**Megana:** Lance says, “I’m a script coordinator on a network show. The IATSE union minimum for a script coordinator is $16.63 per hour. That means that even with overtime and a 60-hour week guarantee I make about $44,000 a year after taxes. And that’s if I work all 52 weeks out of the year, which as anyone who works in TV can tell you basically never happens. $44,000 a year is pathetic for any full-time worker trying to pay their rent is Los Angeles. But it’s downright laughable considering what a script coordinator is responsible for.

“We manage and distribute the scripts, act as the liaison between the writers’ room and the other departments of the show and process the guild union paperwork to ensure that writers are properly credited and paid.”

**John:** So Craig, working full-time 60 hours a week bringing home $44,000 a year.

**Craig:** Yes. That’s bullshit. That’s just absolute bullshit. And we haven’t even gotten to – and we will – get to what we’ll call the assistant-assistants, right, like the classic assistants. Now we’re talking about somebody that’s actually doing a job that has even more responsibility or authority than a number of assistants.

What’s happening here essentially is theft. OK? It’s theft. Because any normal business – any normal industry that was relying on somebody to do the things that Lance is describing here would have to pay them more than that. More importantly, the way they’re doing this, and this is a theme that’s going to come up over and over, is essentially relying on the fact that they can get rid of Lance. And somebody else will be there. They’ll shove them in. They’ll train them and make them do it. And then they’ll get rid of them.

It comes down to just a callous disregard for people. They don’t care. They don’t care about Lance when he’s not there, or she’s not there. They don’t care what’s going on in the morning and what’s going on in the evening. They don’t care if they’re trying to start a family. They don’t care if they have bills or medical problems. They don’t care at all. They just want what they want. And if you can’t give them what they want then they get rid of you. And I will say it again. In our business it is disgusting to think that this is how companies treat our lowest paid people.

Think of this. Lance, Script Coordinator, is sitting there on a network show where I presume at some point or another there was a storyline about how hard it was to work in today’s economy, or get laid off, or be underpaid or overworked. And Lance is there with his 60-hour work week getting paid $16.63 an hour. Working for a company where no doubt the CEO has tens, 20s, 30s, and 40s of millions of dollars or more. It’s sick. It’s a sick business. This is honestly a sickness.

And you and I, John, we’re going to change this. I swear to god. As god is my witness. The god that I do not believe in. We are going to change this. I swear. I swear it.

**John:** All right. Let’s set the table a little bit more. So we talked about assistants in television. So there’s four different kinds of roles you might look for there. We also heard from agency assistants. We heard some real horror stories from agency assistants.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Evelyn wrote that she currently makes $16 an hour working at a talent agency which she is told among the higher numbers. Man, we got some horror stories there.

We heard from studio assistants. We also heard from temps, which I found was fascinating. Megana, can you tell us about Miguel?

**Megana:** Yeah, so Miguel says, “To preface I’m currently working as a temp going between HBO Max, Skydance, and Disney+. And temping pays more than any assistant job I’ve seen or had. I’m currently covering for another temp that has been on the same desk for eight months and we both make $20 an hour. When you factor in the temp company my employers end up paying $30 an hour and $45 an hour when it hits overtime. I’m constantly asking how companies can pay $30 an hour for a temp for eight months, yet I’ve never made more than $17 an hour as a full-time assistant for four years. I’m pretty sure I get paid more than the person I’m covering for, even without the premium the temp company takes which is 33%.

“Short term, it’s actually better for me to stay a temp right now than to work full-time.”

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

**John:** That illustrates the hypocrisy that’s happening here. Because if a company can pay $30 or $45 an hour for a person in that job they can pay the actual person that money. They’re paying for the convenience of having a temp that they can just not think about or worry about. But it’s crazy.

**Craig:** See, OK, so what they’re doing is they’re saying if we hire somebody permanently we take on certain burdens. We have all this payroll tax we have to pay. We have to pay for some fringes like healthcare, which we don’t want to pay for. But even worse, we’re stuck with them. Because it’s hard to fire people unfairly. And I know the laws are so awful. You can’t just fire people willy-nilly because you don’t like their face. Or maybe, oh my god, what if a woman gets pregnant. Dun-dun. What do we do then?

You know what the best thing to do would be? Let’s not hire anybody ever. Let’s just use temps. Let’s just rent human beings. And maybe it comes out to be a little bit more, but that’s OK because we have the convenience of just getting rid of them whenever we want. And that is essentially the Uber-ification of the assistant business.

If you go back to Evelyn, our agency assistant who wrote in, what she is saying is essentially she comes home with roughly $480 a week. That’s about $1,900 a month. That’s including overtime. OK. That’s the difference, right? So, they’re “stuck” with Evelyn because they’re employing her in a traditional normal way that it’s supposed to work in America. And they’re giving her what amounts to about $22,000 a year.

When I moved here in 1992 my first job paid me $20,000 a year. OK, she’s talking about take home. Fine. It’s roughly then, you know what, it’s the equivalent. $20,000 a year, it was barely survivable. It’s even less survivable now. And it’s unconscionable. And more to the point, and this is what blows my mind, these people – Miguel, Evelyn, everyone writing in – these people are at the heart of this enormous pillar of our economy, of our American economy. Our entertainment industry is enormous and it is one of the few exporting industries we have. And all of these people know everyone’s phone number, address, credit card number, Social Security number, the gate code to the house, the alarm code to the alarm. They know everything. They see financial statements. They handle scripts that are confidential. There are a thousand Evelyns out there who are being terribly underpaid and all of them can destroy every secret we have in Hollywood.

So is this how we’re going to run our business? To save those dollars because we can while CEOs. And even forget CEOs. Even just like the senior vice president of something is making so much money. No. You can’t do it. I’m not saying that you have to pay Evelyn $300,000. But I think $20 an hour is a pretty reasonable place to start, don’t you?

**John:** I do. So, Evelyn actually wrote more about this, so let’s go on to – she talked about the expenses of living in Los Angeles and how she’s being paid the same amount as she would have in 1993.

**Megana:** So Evelyn says, “I’ve had this conversation with our head of HR,” and Evelyn also works at one of the big four agencies. She says, “I’ve specifically asked how companies can justify paying assistants this low. And the response was not the greatest. I mentioned that agency assistants made the same amount of money in 1993 that we make now in 2019. The response was that our working conditions have improved since then. And they were salaried and abused working 16-hour days. We are hourly now.”

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Megana:** “The amount of money however still comes out to the same and in addition the response was the value of the dollar is much different. In 1993 everything was cheaper. Cars. Gas. Apartments. Bills. Food.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Megana:** “My apartment would have been a third of the price 25 years ago.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Did they say it’s better now because they’re not abused? Is that what they said?

**Megana:** I think that was the point. But this was the real kicker. This HR person responded to her, “Low wages should push people to work harder, to get more experience in order to make the next step and make more money.”

**Craig:** OK. Now we get to the heart of the stupidity and the greed. Which is this ugly puritanism. You’re being paid less, they say, because it’s good for you. Let me tell you dear friends at home that nobody succeeds simply because they were being underpaid. There is not one person that is powerful and rich today that is powerful and rich because they were super freaking angry at their low pay when they started. Nobody works at McDonald’s says, “Oh my god, this sucks so much. I have to be the CEO of a company.”

People who are going to be successful are successful because they want to be successful. They have a drive and ambition and a talent and a work ethic. And sometimes they just have dumb luck. But one thing I know for sure is getting underpaid doesn’t make you want to be successful more. What it does is sap your energy, demotivate you, make you believe you’re working in an unfair system, because you are, and it makes you resentful. It is bad for your health. It’s bad for your family. It’s bad for your relationships.

And that person who said that is just wrong. I want to believe that they weren’t actually saying something they believed but rather they were lying. Because I feel better about them. I’d rather that they be an evil greedy liar than someone so stupid as the think that paying people less than what they deserve is good for them.

**John:** The other challenge here is that if you were making that same money working at In-and-Out you walk away from In-and-Out and you have no other expenses or needs related to that In-and-Out career. But the career that Evelyn wants is very different. So she goes through her budget and sort of like how she breaks out her expenses. She says she has $208 left at the end of the month. “But as an assistant I should also be going to comedy show, script reading, networking events that may cost money, so there’s another $20 gone each time.” So the networking expenses. The clothes expenses. Or a car.

Christian writes in about how important it is to have a car as a writer’s production assistant.

**Megana:** Yes. Christian says, “I want to point out the fact that it’s nearly impossible to do a writer’s production assistant job, keep in mind it’s supposed to be entry level, or any other assistant job with elements of personal duties without a car. And that the wages we make god knows none of us can afford car payments. So that’s just another way our wages, combined with the requirements of the jobs, ‘Must have car,’ has been listed on so many job descriptions I’ve seen. It keeps those who come from underprivileged backgrounds from breaking in.”

**Craig:** I’m going to lose my mind. So these folks like Christian are writer’s production assistants. That means they’re working for a show. Right?

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** Give them a car. It’s a TV show. It has a budget in the millions. In the millions. Go out, buy an $8,000 used piece of crap and there. Now you have a show car. It’s disgusting. I just don’t understand. Like come on. Why would you do this to them? Why would you do this? Some people, if you’re not going to pay them a proper salary then you can’t also penalize them for other things that you need from them. It’s all backwards. And it’s disgusting. The only way – I really believe this – the only way we’re going to fix this is by continuing to talk about this and shaming somebody interesting doing the right thing and going, “You know what? I don’t know what we were thinking here. Duh. Let’s just get a car so the writer’s production assistant has a car that they can use during the day that we pay the insurance for and we put gas in and we wash.”

Oh my god. I’m going to lose my crap.

**John:** So a car is obviously a huge expense, but rent is a huge expense, too. And so we had people who wrote in sort of what rent is like. But, Megana you recently moved to Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not an inexpensive city to live in. So, what was your experience like trying to find a place to live? And how do you find a place to live in Los Angeles as an assistant?

**Megana:** Woof. OK. So I joined a few Facebook groups and reached out to a bunch of friends. I ended up finding my current apartment through Craig’s assistant, Bo. But every time I was looking for an apartment and I would find something sort of reasonable maybe around the $1,000 range it was always a shared—

**John:** So $1,000 that you’re sharing?

**Megana:** Yes. $1,000 and it was like $1,000 would be my monthly rent. It was always a shared bedroom or like a hostel sort of situation where I would be like in a bunk bed. Or just probably an hour commute to get to the office. So, it was rough.

**John:** Well, also, you’re single. You’re in your 20s. I think there’s an expectation that you can get by with a little bit less for that now.

**Megana:** Definitely.

**John:** But like if you had a kid. If you had other expenses it makes it impossible to be an assistant if your rent is going to be that high for you. It rules out a huge number of people who could be working in that job because they simply couldn’t afford to work in that job.

**Megana:** Totally. Or finding roommates who would be OK with me coming in with a family or a partner just adds a totally extra layer of difficulty.

**Craig:** I mean, not to mention a lot of people in this position have student debt that they have to pay off. It just blows my mind. The reality is such that where we’re going is the only people who can do these jobs in Hollywood are people that have independent sources of money. They come from money. That’s who we’re going to get. We’re going to get people with money already. Well I don’t want those people. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I wasn’t one of them. And I think it’s best if we open the door wide for all sorts of people. That’s kind of the point. And, again, liberal progressive Hollywood, these cities are attractive places to live and to work. So the rents are going to go up and up and up.

And if you as a boss don’t understand what these numbers are and you still think it’s OK to pay your assistant $15 an hour and not help them out in any other way and force them to work ridiculous hours, you’re a dick. You’re a dick.

And you’re company is a dick. And I’ll say UTA, ICM, CAA, WME, if this is what you’re doing you’re dicks. And Universal and Sony and Disney and Warner Bros and Lions Gate and Fox, dicks. There. I’ll light my whole career on fire. I don’t care. It’s wrong. They have to stop this. It’s just wrong.

**John:** To that point let’s hear from Kyle. So Kyle is working at a management company.

**Megana:** So Kyle says, “While working for a miniature golf course in 2015 I was making $14 an hour. That is in 2015 dollars. So I assume the pay rate there is even higher today. I now make $15 an hour at my current job as an assistant to a talent manager. That is after renegotiating it up after a year of working here. I had asked for more money when it came time to evaluate my performance, but my boss found that he could not afford to pay the extra $5 a day I had asked for.”

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Megana:** “This is while I have to listen to him making deals for his clients for hundreds of thousands of dollars from their jobs. Jobs that I submit them for. Jobs that I work 45 hours a week on making sure that they are happy and satisfied with. I currently have to share a bedroom in a house with six people because I do not make enough money to have my own room.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s going to be a war.

**John:** A revolution of some kind.

**Craig:** You can’t keep this going. This is disgusting. It has to stop. And what we’re doing is creating an entire generation in this business that is disgusted by this business. And who looks at their own bosses as gross hypocrites, which they are. Which they are. Not that, you know, when you and I started John I’m sure we both looked around and saw a lot of disgusting crap, too. This has been going on for a long time. But I feel like the economic portion of this has gotten ridiculously bad. There is no excuse for it. None. It’s not like we’re in lean times economically in Hollywood. We are not. The compensation packages are outrageous.

How do these people look these 25 year olds in the eye and say, “I need you to take my Tesla to the car wash, take my Armani to the dry cleaners, take my $5,000 designer dog to the vet. I need you to then drop my kid off at her $50,000 preschool. And then I need you to come back and do all the work I demand that you do and here’s $15 an hour. Enjoy the taxes on top of that. And, no, I can’t afford to give you an extra $5 a day.”

**John:** No, Craig, you and I think back to when we had those entry level jobs. Because you were saying you started – you were working for nearly nothing. It was a marketing company. I was a reader, not getting paid very much at all. And I think the reason why I was OK doing it is because obviously I always had my parents I could fall back on, but I also had a sense that this was only going to be for a year or two. That there was clearly a path up. There was a way to sort of move forward. And as I would talk to folks who worked as like a PA, like a writers’ room PA, there was a path. There was a ladder to move forward and to move up.

And one of the things we heard consistently in these emails is that I think a lot of times employers believe that ladder is still there, that there’s still a clear trajectory, and that trajectory doesn’t exist anymore. And one of the reasons it doesn’t exist is the systemic changes in the business, specifically short seasons and small rooms.

If we can jump down, take a look at what Barry writes about how short seasons and long breaks affect how he can move up in the business.

**Megana:** So Barry says, “I currently work on a successful TV show. I worked for five months on the first season. Then we took nine months off. Then I worked for five months on the second season. Then we took an entire year off before the third season started. It should be pretty clear why the folks who make the least amount of money and have the fewest contacts and don’t have agents or managers repping them for other jobs are going to be hit the hardest in this scenario where the new world order is that the majority of jobs only last a couple of months.

“This is a huge difference even from when I started in the industry, where getting a job on a hit show would at least mean that you had a few years of steady work before you had to start looking again.”

**John:** So what he’s describing is traditionally if Barry had been employed on an old fashioned TV show that had 22 episodes a season he would have been employed basically the whole year. And he would have had a whole year to prove how good he is at his job and attract the attention of the showrunner and might get a script in the second year. There would be a way to sort of move forward and move up.

But if it’s just, OK, we’re going to write a bunch of scripts and then we’re going to go off eventually and shoot the show and then we’re going to take these giant times off, Barry is hopping from show to show to show to show. And can never get to prove his worth to the people who are supposed to be there noticing how good he is and sort of give him that next step. And so this system that we set up makes it so hard to do what was pretty easy for me and Craig and other folks who came into the industry 20 years ago.

And I think so many employers still think we’re in that system of 20 years ago.

**Craig:** Well yeah. I mean, look. What a great deal for them. They can run these shows this way and then they can hire people for a ridiculously small amount of money. They don’t even have to pay for their cars or pay for their gas or any of that stuff. They can work them to the bone when they need them. Kick them out the door when they don’t. And when they finally show up and say I’m sorry I can’t afford to live this way they go, “Fine, bye. We’ll just get the next person that is excited to do this and they’ll do it.”

There is this feeling see that if they pay you more, like what you’re worth, that you will be demotivated. I really believe that like a lot of these people believe this stupid notion. You know, when I started and I was paid my $20,000 a year my share of rent was $700. And that $700 was for my own – I had own little bedroom that I could close the door to. And it wasn’t in a great neighborhood, but it wasn’t, you know, in a bombed-out zone or anything.

And $20,000 with $700 a month rent was doable. It wasn’t great but it was doable. I could handle my expenses.

Now, that place, which was not exactly Fox or Warner Bros or anything, still had an opportunity for me to prove myself and soon enough I was making $28,000 a year. In other words, there was a sense that there was growth. I think a lot of these places go, “Why would we offer you growth? We don’t care about you. We just want you to do this job. If you don’t want to do it, go away. We’re a McDonald’s now. There’s no growth at McDonald’s. Just come here. Do the job. If you don’t like it, F-off. We’ll get another sucker. There’s like people knocking on our door.”

Just because a lot of people want these jobs doesn’t mean you can get away with paying people little for them. There’s going to be a riot. And again I will just say to them, I will say to all of you that are underpaying these people, you are playing with fire. They have your emails. They have your information. Wizen up. If you don’t want to do the right thing because you’re a good person, do the right thing because you’re a prudent person.

**John:** Yeah. We heard many stories about folks feeling that supply and demand made it impossible to negotiate on their own behalf. And one writer wrote in and she said that – she was working on a show and the studio was trying to basically pay her less than she’d been paid on her previous job. And it wasn’t until friend of the show Aline Brosh McKenna stepped in and said, “No, you have to pay her this amount.” She was able to keep her very low hourly salary.

The other thing which I was not as aware of until we got all of these emails is the idea of 60-hour work weeks. And so we were just talking about how people work too long. But for many of the assistants who were writing in they are working under the assumption – they’re hoping to get a 60-hour week. Because they’re paid at a certain rate and they go into overtime after 40 hours. And without that guaranteed overtime there’s no way for their life to be sustainable.

But sometimes that can backfire. We had situations where time sheets were doctored to hide overtime or basically there were blanket statements that you cannot possibly do overtime. So weekend reading, well that does not count as part of your work.

**Craig:** Yeah. So this is an area where they can screw around all they want, right? And there’s not much you can do to prevent people from wriggling around rules. But what you can do is prevent them from just generally not paying you enough, right? We know – this is a little bit like with screenwriters and producers and free passes. It’s hard to stop bad people from getting what they want if they want to wriggle around rules and spin on technicalities. But what you can’t do is fudge an overall number.

So, in reality no matter how these companies are managing these hours with their employees, they know what they’re paying them. They know. They know exactly what the average salary is for every single person in that position. In every single position. They have the data. Easy enough to run. That includes how they actually effectively spend for overtime or for not overtime. Take that number and make it bigger. It’s as simple as that. Because what they’re doing is wrong. We have a moral requirement as far as I’m concerned as people who are well-off in this business – you and me – to speak out on behalf of those who are not. Because we’re not seeing – I don’t think – anything remotely close to fair treatment. And it makes me feel gross. And I and you can’t solve this problem. Not with our own pocketbooks. But every single company can.

So the real question is how much would it cost. How much would it cost a company like say WME to guarantee that every single one of their assistants is making $20 an hour and that’s across the same amount of hours they were working before. The same amount of paid hours. I don’t know what it would cost them. Maybe it would cost them like, I don’t know, $20 million. They have it. That’s not a problem. I know exactly what they have. I saw their stupid IPO. I saw the stupid amount of money that the guys in charge make.

And I also know that they’re also happy to host big fundraisers when Elizabeth Warren comes to town. Well, I guess not her. She doesn’t take their money. Pete Buttigieg? I don’t know. But when people come to town to talk about the death of the American dream and income inequality these mega millionaires show up and applaud. And I’m telling you that they know where to go because their assistant reminded them. And the assistant handled the RSVP. And they’re not paying the assistant enough. So, why don’t you take a good long look in the mirror if you’re paying your assistant less than that amount?

Right now take a good long look in the mirror, dickhead, and then pay them more.

**John:** So, I don’t want to stop at the assumption that $20 an hour would actually solve anything. I don’t want to anchor that as the set point, because I think it’s really dangerous when we put a number out there and say, oh, as long as we hit that then all the problems are solved.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s a place to start.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about solutions overall and the range of things that are going to need to happen for this problem to be improved. So increasing pay to some number would be a start. Just the way there’s a movement towards a national minimum wage. Some sort of realistic minimum for Los Angeles that factors in how expensive it is to live in Los Angeles. And the requirements for putting on these people in terms of how they have to dress, especially if you’re at an agency. You know, that you’re supposed to have a car if that’s a requirement. If those things, even if it’s just like kit rentals or something that sort of really reflects the true cost of trying to do this job.

**Craig:** Kit rentals? So if people don’t know what kit rental is, if you’re working as like the key grip on a movie you may charge them a kit rental which is there’s equipment that needs to be used on the movie that you own and you rent to the production. It’s one of the ways that a lot of people make money. Sometimes they’ll call it as a box rental for computers. If you need somebody to use their own computer you pay them a box rental. You’re renting their computer from them while they work for you.

I think it’s a brilliant idea, John, to say that there should be kit rental for clothing. If you require a certain kind of clothing level at your company you should put in an amount that is essentially compensation for the clothing that that person has to purchase. Of course.

**John:** Yeah. Unions. So classically when workers are not able to demand the things individually unions are a way to gather up all those workers and demand more things. And so some of the people who wrote in are members of IATSE. So IATSE is International Alliance of – oh, god, I’m going to mess up what it actually stands up for.

**Craig:** Television and Stage Employees.

**John:** Employees? Great. IATSE is a giant umbrella union that covers lots of different things. So some of the folks who wrote in are members of IATSE, which originally represented script coordinators and also represents some writer’s assistants on certain projects. It doesn’t sound like it’s been a blanket wonderful solution. Some people talked about how it actually forced their wages down because the overtime things that kicked in.

IATSE is not a great union. It’s kind of not. But the idea of union representation is not the wrong one in the sense that it hopefully can raise the floor for everybody. It’s just it’s not going to sort of solve the problem I think by itself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not sure that the union is going to be the answer here. The union meaning it would – because it’s not going to be the Writers Guild. It’s not going to be the Directors Guild. It’s not going to be SAG. It’s not going to be a creative guild. It would be some kind of service union kind of thing. And it would be a long and expensive war. And it could make things possibly worse. But it could make things amazing. I mean, in its best incarnation it would solve the problem completely. But you will get there faster, I think, if you use shame and start calling out places.

But I guess also my favorite is reverse shame. What I would love as a result of this, honestly, is for a major company – meaning a big agency, a major agency, like one of the big four agencies, or one of the major studios, or one of the major networks – to stand up and say, “We’re actually going to do this. We are going to improve across the board all assistant pay. And we’re not going to do it with games to take it away on the other side. We’re legitimately going to put more money in the pockets of our assistants.” Because once one place starts it will spread. That’s what it will take. It will take one brave company to look their stupid shareholders in the eye and say stop being greedy for five seconds and realize this is good for us. We can’t push everything in a race to the bottom. That is not the answer.

**John:** Agreed. So in addition to the companies actually stepping up and taking more responsibility for this, I’ve really been heartened to see how many assistants have gathered together and started to share their own information about how much they’re making. So, in the process of putting this episode together we got a look at a lot of this secret spreadsheets that have been passed around where assistants are talking about how much they’re actually earning which gives people a sense of what the ranges are or sort of you can actually get this much at a certain place and can help these assistants make better choices about where they’re working and sort of what is reasonable to ask for and how hard to push.

One of the things that was really helpful to see from the emails that we got in was some guidance for showrunners. And Boris I thought actually had a really great point which I’d never considered. So Megana can you tell us what Boris wrote about assistant’s scripts?

**Megana:** So Boris says, “Read your assistant’s scripts before you hire them so that you know what kind of writer they are. And if there’s something about them or their writing that will make it impossible for them to advance on your show I think a lot of showrunners in this industry don’t want to be the bad guy. So they avoid these kind of tough conversations with their assistants. But they are so necessary to have. Most assistants want to move up. And if we’re working sometimes up to 90 hours per week on your show everyone has to be on the same page about what the payoff for that work could be. Because I can tell you from experience it is really hard to hear from a boss who you have spent years working for that they never had any intention to promote you, or do much of anything to help you professionally. And their assumption was that you just figure out your career on your own somewhere else.”

**John:** Yeah. So that relationship between showrunners and assistants is crucial. I mean, that showrunner is trusting that assistant with so much information about not just their lives but their vision for the show. And what Boris is asking for is to just be a little bit more honest at the front about what you potentially actually see in this person.

And I think there’s actually potential for showrunners to make a big difference here. I can imagine some showrunners really stepping up and saying, “Hey, look, let’s go through all of our budgets and really take a look at how much our assistants are getting paid. And how we can prioritize paying them a true living wage so that person can make a living doing this job.” They can still have the same aspirations of moving up through, but it’s not going to be survival until they can actually get a staff writing job or a script on a show.

**Craig:** And you know where that money can come from, right?

**John:** It’s going to come from the massive overall deals they’ve signed with streamers?

**Craig:** Voila. And even if you’re not at a massive overall deal that you signed with a streamer, even if you just have your one show on basic cable and you’re the showrunner, you got enough. Take care of your people. They’re your people. They work for you. OK? And if you want to go fight the fight with the studio and say, “Hey, you guys got to give me more money to pay my assistants,” and you want to argue with them that they shouldn’t take that money out of your salary, do it. I don’t care. Have that argument. Or, just give them money. Either way, don’t stop until your people are taken care of. If your people under you are not making a reasonable amount of money and you need to ask them if they are. You really do.

Have the conversation. And find out how they’re doing. I guarantee you that if you’re a halfway decent person and you have that discussion with them and you hear about what their deal is you’re going to hear something that makes you go, “I think I might need to vomit now. I think I screwed up. And I think I need to take care of you better.” And then do it. Figure out how to do it and then do it. It’s how it starts. It’s got to start somewhere, right?

**John:** Be the change you’re seeking in the world.

**Craig:** Well, also seek the change. Because, look, a lot of people, they’re busy and they have their lives. And the assistant comes along as somebody to say, “I’m here to help you.” And that’s incredibly wonderful. And if you haven’t had an assistant and suddenly you do and they’re taking care of things for you, you feel like wow. And it’s easy to take that person for granted. Do not. Listen to them.

Because a lot of times they’re terrified of you, whether you know it or not. The way I was terrified of every boss I ever had when I was 22.

**John:** So let’s talk about the way forward for assistants and also for our discussion of this topic on the podcast. So we read aloud some bits from this, but truly there is a book of stuff that people wrote in. So we’re going to look for some way to form a document that can actually be downloaded or looked at on the site to get more of these anecdotes in there, because we really just scratched the surface of what people wrote in.

Keep writing in as more stuff comes up. As you get ideas listening to this. Or reading other stuff about how to fix this and sort of the parts of this conversation that we’re probably missing. Because there is a lot to talk about here clearly. Off-mic Craig and I will be doing work talking with folks as well about how to fix this situation. So, I just want to thank everyone who did write in.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** Even if we didn’t read any of your stuff, it helped inform all this discussion and will help us moving forward.

**Craig:** I want to be your Che Guevara. [laughs] Seriously. I do. I’m so angry. I’m so angry about this. It’s just not fair.

**John:** And Megana thank you for all the hard reading you did this week.

**Megana:** Of course. And thank you to everyone who wrote in. I read all of them and it was tough.

**Craig:** I bet. I bet.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some simpler questions. Craig, Rob asks, “My agent tells me that no one is spending on feature development. So the only solution is to spec. I have concepts in light treatment form about five pages, but it seems crazy to invest months of work taking them further without clear interest. To me if there’s enough interest for me to write it there should be enough interest for someone to pay to develop it. I get why companies want things to be a certain way, but surely this can’t be the only way?”

Craig, what’s your feeling in terms of writing out that spec versus essentially I think Rob is talking about pitching the thing for someone to develop?

**Craig:** Sure. Well, Rob, first of all you have to understand that what your agent is saying is that no one that talks to him is spending on feature development. Meaning no one that’s willing to take his call or her call. OK? So, your agent sucks. Because of course they have feature development money. They have entire funds that are there for nothing but feature development. They do take pitches. They do develop things.

Now, if you are new and you don’t have much of a track record, taking a pitch from you is a high risk endeavor for them because they just don’t know what they’re going to get. If you have original concepts in light treatment form then putting aside your agent’s utter failure, it probably is in your economic interest to write it if you can. It doesn’t matter what the interest is. You make interest with the writing. No one is going to say, “We can’t wait to see your script about blankety-blank.” If they are, well, it costs them that much breath to say it but little else. It doesn’t mean anything.

**John:** Yeah. So some context on this question which I realized as I pasted it in. Rob is British, so he has a British agent, which is why he still has an agent at this moment. I agree that there is feature development that is happening off of pitches. Pitches do sell. Katie Silberman was on the show talking about the pitch that she sold recently.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And she did another one after that. So, it does still happen. It happens with people that they’re excited to work with. And so if you happen to be a person they’re excited to work with that can happen for you.

I think the crucial thing to be thinking about is in this period of time where you have these five pages of ideas, you’ve got to be writing. You have to always be writing. And so you need to pick one of those ideas Rob. The one that you’re most excited to see as a movie. And write that script. Because if you stop writing scripts because you’re not sure that they’re going to sell that’s not being a writer. That’s not moving your career forward. You always need to be writing something. And if they’re not paying you to write it, then you’re going to need to write it yourself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, when you say, “To me if there’s enough interest for me to write it that should be enough interest to pay to develop it.” It will be once they know that you can write to their satisfaction. It will be. I guarantee you. But until that point it’s not. And therefore you should write it and, I mean, hopefully you know this, Rob. The amount of money they’ll pay you to develop something is vastly less than the amount of money they’ll pay for the actual script of that thing, if they don’t own it. So, if they love what you write they will pay a lot for it. If they love what you might be able to write they’ll pay a little for it.

So the question for you is do you know what that is. How much effort would it take to write it? And then bet on yourself. There is a certain entrepreneurial aspect to this job. There’s no way around it.

**John:** The other thing I want to challenge is no one spends on feature development. Well, Rob, why does it need to be feature development? Because you know where they do spend money in development? Is in television. All television is is development. And so it’s coming in with an idea, a writer they’re excited about, and then paying that writer to write the script and decide if they want to shoot a pilot. It’s the way television has always worked. It’s the way it works in streamers right now.

So, take a look at some of those ideas and ask yourself does this have to be a feature idea, or could this be a television idea? Could this be an idea for a streamer? Because that may be the way that you get paid to write that thing you really want to write.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Jack asks, “Just wanted to ask if you could recommend a good thesaurus website. I get stuck on emotional descriptions sometimes and find myself frequenting the Internet for synonyms and the like.” Craig, do you have a favorite synonym site?

**Craig:** You know, I bounce around all sorts of them. Merriam-Webster, m-w.com – maybe just mw.com now – is quite good. But I bop around all over the place. It’s not like there’s one great one or anything. The nice thing is they’re all freely available to you. So, no need to rank them. Just type in a word and then type synonym and then see what pops up.

**John:** That’s always a good way to do it. When I’m in the middle of a sentence in Highland and I just need to find an alternate word because I’m repeating a word, I’ll right click on a work and pop up the thesaurus that’s there. So that’s Apple’s built-in thesaurus, which is pretty good. So for finding that matching word that can swap in.

For more in depth searches it’s probably been a One Cool Thing before. But Rhyme Zone is a really amazing website that I mostly go to when I’m doing song lyrics and need to find what could possibly rhyme with this word. It’s great for that. But its thesaurus ability is also really smart.

It was developed in a really strange way in that rather than sort of relying on experts to find synonyms, it’s just going through and figuring out with all the text in the Internet trying to figure out what words match up to each other. And so it’s really a weird way to get to thesaurus, but I find it works really, really well. It finds words that sort of cluster in meaning that aren’t necessarily direct synonyms which could sometimes be more useful. So, Rhyme Zone is the place to go.

**Craig:** That’s a good one. And another one, if you ever find yourself suffering from tip of the tongue syndrome, where you are trying to remember what a word is. Like weirdly yesterday I just needed the word digression. And it was one of those weird mental blocks where I’m like what is the word again? You know, the word that’s like D-something and it means wandering off from your conversational topic. I’m just having one of those gear locks.

So there’s a terrific website that a lot of puzzle solvers will use called onelook.com. And it’s got all sorts of wonderful uses, but one of my favorites is it can search for words based on criteria you enter including wild cards and question marks. An asterisk means any number of letters could go here. A question mark means any letter could go here.

And so you can say for instance, D and then asterisk. That means it’s going to return every single word that’s D and then some amount of letters after, which obviously that would be too many. But if you hit colon, then you can type in a word that you’re saying limits this search by definition. So I can say D-asterisk-colon “conversation.” And then it will just find all the D-words that are vaguely related to the concept of conversation. And, voila, there’s digression.

So, very, very useful website for me.

**John:** And I just looked it up. One Look is by the same people who make Rhyme Zone.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** So it’s all fitting together here nicely.

**Craig:** Gorgeous.

**John:** It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is Untitled Goose Game.

**Craig:** This is everywhere.

**John:** From Panic. Oh, it’s so good. I’m just so delighted. So, now I think I’ve talked about it on the show before, is like I refuse to install games on my computer because then I’ll be playing games on my computer rather than doing work on my computer. And so this game is available for Mac, PC, or Switch. So I bought myself a Nintendo Switch just so I could play Untitled Goose Game. And it was worth the purchase. So I’m greatly enjoying it.

In this game you play a goose who is trying to do things and just annoy people. And you just feel like a small child who is an annoying brat and it’s just a delightfully fun little game.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s basically the story of my life, man. It’s how I move through the world. It’s Untitled Craig Game. It’s me. I’m just wandering around honking at people.

**John:** You are that goose. You are honking at the world.

**Craig:** Honking at the world. Certainly honked at them in this episode.

My One Cool Thing is a repeat but it’s the second year, so it’s all new. This is Queer Qrosswords. So this is a pack of 32 crosswords. They are all LGBTQ+ themed. They are all by LGBTQ+ constructors. They did it last year. They’ve done it again. It’s out today as of this recording. We are recording on National Coming Out Day, October 11.

**John:** Happy National Coming Out Day, Craig.

**Craig:** Happy National Coming Out Day to you, John. And last year they raised nearly $25,000 for LGBTQ+ charities. So here’s how this works. They don’t take money from you. Rather, you prove that you have donated at least $10 or more to one of eight suggested charities, all the ones you might imagine are on there. You send in your proof of your fresh new charitable contribution, and they send you a packet of 32 crosswords. And the constructors are terrific. A lot of the constructors are people whose names if you are a crossword puzzle solver like myself you have seen time and time again in the New York Times. There’s also my most preferred escape room cohorts Trip Payne. And then most importantly, most importantly, my – you know I’m absolutely obsessed with the puzzles of Mark Halpin. I talk about them all the time. He, I think, is the best cryptic crossword puzzle constructor in the universe. And he had an amazing one last year. And he has, of course, another one in this packet. His crossword alone is worth a $10 or more contribution to an LGBTQ+ charity.

So, Queer Qrosswords. We’ll put a link in the show notes. But that’s Queer and then Qrosswords. They cutely spell Qrosswords.

**John:** Very nice. And that’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. Thank you, Megana. It was edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Naomi Randall. 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 like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net, or you can download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, thank you for all the umbrage.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. And Viva la revolución.

**John:** All right. See you.

Links:

* [Hollywood’s Grueling Hours & Drowsy-Driving Problem: Crew Members Speak Out Despite Threat To Careers](https://deadline.com/2018/02/hollywood-safety-drowsy-driving-long-work-hours-crew-1202275319/)
* [WGA Will No Longer Award Video Game Writing](https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/03/wga-will-no-longer-award-video-game-writing)
* [John’s Post on Assistant Pay](https://johnaugust.com/2019/hollywood-assistants-have-always-been-underpaid-but-this-is-different)
* [Untitled Goose Game](https://goose.game)
* [Queer Qrosswords](http://queerqrosswords.com)
* [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 Naomi Randall ([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_422_assistant_pay.mp3)

The original post for the episode can be found [here.]( https://johnaugust.com/2019/follow-upisode)

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 421 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re following up on things that we’ve discussed in our first 420 episodes.

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** So, you should probably listen to those first.

**Craig:** Yeah. Do us a favor. Hit pause. Just give a quick 420-hour listen. And then come right back.

**John:** Yeah. The character voice you’re using there is the voice of Flune who is a terrific character that you played in our last D&D session.

**Craig:** Frune.

**John:** Oh, Frune, sorry.

**Craig:** Frune. You don’t get his name wrong.

**John:** Sorry, yes, Frune. And Frune was a great character that I hope others get to experience in some way, because it was a great character voice choice there Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you. They won’t experience it the way I do it. I’m special.

**John:** There’s so much to get through because after 421 episodes a lot of things have happened. Let’s go all the way back to Episode 5 where we talked about copyright and work-for-hire. And there’s a development just this past week which I thought was really interesting. So, Craig, talk us through what’s happening with Terminator.

**Craig:** Yeah. So Terminator, like a number of movies, right now is subject to the original writer’s effort to terminate the copyright grant. And in this case the copyright grant was made 35 years ago. So, when you’re looking at these cases, right now if you were to write something original and then you sell it to a studio you are granting them the copyright – you’re transferring them copyright.

One of the things that we know from US Copyright Law is that it permits authors, or in the case of death the estate, essentially surviving spouses or children and so on and so forth, to terminate grants of copyright assignments and licenses that were made on or after January 1, 1978 when certain conditions have been met. And one of those conditions is you can’t do this any earlier than 25 years after the execution of the grant. Or in some cases 30.

And so there’s a window that you kind of arrive at. And it’s all tied to a date. The important thing to know here is that we’re hitting that window. And for a number of interesting projects. And this depending on how this shakes out could have very serious impacts on how Hollywood does stuff. Because some of the things that these writers are looking to terminate grant on are huge properties. Huge.

**John:** Huge.

**Craig:** Like Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street. And you’ve got not small authors but huge authors like Stephen King and David Mamet who are going to war to kind of get back their right to their work.

**John:** Yeah. So one thing that complicates all of this is that sense of copyright as it applies to screenplays is complicated because as we’ve talked about on the episode we’re referring to, but other episodes, one of the useful fictions that we engage in in the United States is that I can write a script and sell it somebody and we sort of pretend that they wrote the script. So that copyright is with the person who bought the thing rather than the person who wrote the thing. It’s a useful thing that lets us have a Writers Guild. And these are complicated questions.

The Friday the 13th which happened this past year was pulling apart some of that fiction. And it’s going to be interesting to see how it all sorts out. So the Friday the 13th original writer was able to sue and win to get back some of the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise. So, this is going to be really fascinating.

Now, the article we’ll link to, it seems like in the case of Terminator what’s probably ultimately going to happen is they will make a deal with Gale Anne Hurd who I should stipulate I do know and is a friend. They’ll basically pay her some money so they can keep making Terminator movies. But in the case of some of these other properties it could become really complicated, especially the things that are books that were then adapted into things. Well, if that author is able to take that book back then someone else could make a completely different property based on that book.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you’re also dealing with companies that maybe weren’t paying attention to this. So, Skydance for instance acquired the rights to The Terminator franchise from his sister – David Ellison runs Skydance. His sister Megan Ellison runs Annapurna. And so it was an interesting inter-sibling business exchange where David Ellison bought the rights to Terminator from Megan for $20 million. So that’s $20 million just for the rights. That hasn’t paid for a script, or actors, or production, or anything. Just $20 million for the right to make these.

And then suddenly someone comes along and says, “Oh by the way that’s not an absolute right. You paid $20 million for something that I could theoretically revoke.” So what happens is you’re right – you enter a situation where basically people are trying to figure out, well, I have something that is worth a lot unless you say it’s worth nothing. And you have something that is worth something to you, but without me not as much. So, how do we work together?

It’s fascinating. But I could also see circumstances where an individual writer just says, “Yeah, I don’t actually care about money. I don’t want you to make more movies of this. I’m killing it.” And that’s interesting. Generally speaking our business, once they identify a problem like this will go into overdrive to figure out how to prevent it from biting anyone else in the butt in the future. So that’s what I’m actually kind of curious to see happen.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll be curious whether there’s legislation or other things that sort of work to sort of protect the folks who believe that they are copyright holders because they’ve made properties based on it.

Now, we should stipulate that for most of our listeners who are writing their own things, don’t think about this, don’t worry about this. This is 30, 35 years down the road from whatever spec script you sell. So, while we wish you all to have 35-year careers, that’s not a thing you need to be thinking about.

But as we approach projects that we’re being brought in to work on that may be a question we should start asking. Wow, do I want to spend three years working on this property not sure that it’s actually a movie that can be made because of weird chain of title problems.

**Craig:** Yeah. Honestly I’m just excited for people to live 35 years. Period.

**John:** Yeah. That would great if they did.

**Craig:** That would be great.

**John:** Back in Episode 2 we talked about how to get an agent and/or manager. So you and I tackled the big fundamental question that people always asked us. They were asking us on our blogs for a long time. And we tried to answer it. This past week I was talking with a writer who was asking me, like, “Oh, is it OK for me to be trying to get an agent?” This is a non-WGA writer. “To try to be getting an agent during this time?”

And I told him yes. I think actually it’s an OK time to try to get an agent. And in a weird way I feel like there’s going to be a lot of lower level agents, literary agents, who are really not doing a lot at the moment. So I said like, yes, it is legitimate and OK for him to do this. And it’s also legitimate and OK for a person at this point to try and get a manager.

I think managers are probably busier than they’ve been traditionally, but it is legitimate to do this. So if you’re wondering like, oh, is this a time that I could be looking for an agent, I’m not a WGA writer, yeah you could.

**Craig:** I mean, I think the only difference between now and then is that it’s going to be much, much harder I think for somebody to get an agent now just because the amount of agents has been reduced down. The supply is very small. So, you have a lot of Writers Guild members that – I mean, look, I can’t tell if anyone – I mean, I know you did. There’s like two or three people that I’ve seen. But like generally speaking I’m not sure if it made really any changes.

**John:** Oh, I think we’re talking about two different things. So, yes, there have been quite a few people who – working WGA writers who moved to agencies that have signed the deal. What I was telling this writer is like is it OK for me to talk to one of the big agencies that has not signed a deal. Yes. It is actually OK if you’re not a WGA writer. You can do that.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean as a non-WGA writer.

**John:** Exactly. As a non-WGA writer.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, well, I mean, sure. You’re not bound by anything.

**John:** Yeah. In a weird way this moment is a better moment for that non-WGA writer to be read at these agencies than when a deal is signed because suddenly there’s going to be a lot of movement and a lot of frantic reading at all those agencies. So, this is not the worst time to do it.

**Craig:** Well, the only thing to be aware of is if you sign – let’s say you’re not a WGA writer and you sign up with UTA for instance. The second you sell something–

**John:** You’re going to have to drop the agency.

**Craig:** You’re going to have to drop the agency. So I don’t really recommend it. I don’t quite get the point of it. And I’m not sure why they would take anyone on with that. Oh my god, we have to solve this thing. I can’t believe this is still going on. You’re not on the board anymore so I can be more frustrated about this, I think. I’m just so frustrated, John. So frustrated.

**John:** Craig, I hear your frustration.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Episode 389 we talked about the future of the industry. We talked Endeavor Content, the parent company of mega-agency WME, and its plan to become a public company through an IPO. That IPO was scheduled for last week. And it did not happen. It was pulled at the very last moment. So we’ll link to an article Kim Masters wrote for the Hollywood Reporter which was good how Ari Emanuel’s outsized IPO dreams were dashed. There’s an article we can link to by Lawrence Meyers saying why Endeavor’s IPO U-turn was a surprisingly brilliant move.

What I’ll say sort of in framing on this, I was opposed to the idea of Endeavor Content and thus WME becoming public companies. I said this several times. I feel like a company whose responsibility is to shareholders really can’t have its responsibility also be to its clients. And that’s why you also don’t see law firms as public companies. It’s just not a thing that tends to work out well. And I didn’t see this working out well.

I was surprised honestly the IPO didn’t happen. It looks like it was really more sort of the state of the market made it not a great time for them to be launching other–

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** WeWork most famously, and we’ll link to an article about WeWork which was great, and Peloton did launch and went down a lot. So, you know, I can say that it was probably the best choice for them not to launch because it didn’t seem like it was going to go very well.

What I did tweet on the day that it happened is that I want to be really clear that I’m not rooting against the production arm of Endeavor Content. It’s great to have more buyers. I’m not rooting against the agency of WME or William Morris, whatever you want to call that thing. I don’t think they should be the same company and I really don’t think they should be a public company. But I don’t have some desire to destroy them. I want them to find a way to get through this. Partly because I want those agents who are working there – and especially the younger agents working there – to be able to have jobs and be able to do this as a living. And I think agents are a really helpful and important thing in our industry. So I don’t want to see them go away.

**Craig:** Like you I despise the entire idea of the sort of publicly traded agency responsible to shareholders, although to be honest with you it’s already too late to the extent that all of the big agencies, and a number of the mid-sized ones, or even god knows smaller ones, are already essentially in the pocket of private investors, institutional/private, you know, venture capital. So that’s already kind of happened, but I didn’t like the idea of the IPO either.

I mean, some people – god bless them – really do think that the WGA killed this. I just want to hug those people and say, ah you. No, we didn’t. This was the market for sure. And I was thrilled. Thrilled honestly that the market ruined it because I hate the idea of it. And unlike you I don’t like the idea of the Endeavor production company. I do wish that that would be destroyed. I would love to see all of those destroyed. I’m way more militant about those things than you.

**John:** Let’s tease this apart. So I like the idea of independent production companies. And so I’m envisioning a scenario in which Endeavor Content who makes film and television shows is not affiliated with the agency. So I would love the production entity there sort of like an Annapurna, like an A24, to exist, like another buyer is a good thing. I would just like a buyer that doesn’t have its own agency.

**Craig:** But that’s what it will always be. I mean, so they’ll say, “Look, we are what you just said. We’re two different corporations.” Blah-blah-blah. And everybody will go, “Oh, shut up.” You know, we know. Yeah, you are, but the whole reason that you’re interesting as opposed to some other place is because you can say we have all these clients that we can funnel towards this. I think those things should die.

And, look, we’ve got a lot of buyers right now. The one thing I don’t think we’re short on is buyers.

**John:** I would say a change that’s happened over the time that we’ve been doing this podcast is while I was really saddened to lose Fox and that consolidation sucked, it is weird that we have a tremendous number of buyers right now. And I think that’s why we’re seeing more writers employed than ever.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. So sure, I would love a big studio. Another big studio would be amazing for movies. But just in general for buying there are a ton of options. And I would love to see all the agencies getting out of that business entirely because I think it’s a distraction. I think there’s a danger that they just care about that. I think in the case of WME it’s not even a danger. It’s just a fact. That’s what they care about. They said as much. Yeah, an interesting thing. I sort of giggled at it because I was happy because I don’t like the idea of that and it’s not anything we did. If we want to comfort ourselves with that we can. But I completely agree with you that we need to get these agents back to work and working for us. So, again, let’s fix that.

**John:** Let’s fix that.

**Craig:** As quickly as we can.

**John:** A term I’ve been thinking about this past week is sustainability. And how do you find a sustainable business model? Because I wonder and I worry whether this idea of growing bigger and bigger through venture capital is just simply not sustainable. And I would sort of urge us all to be thinking about some of these decisions through that lens for the next couple months in terms of how do you get to a place where you’re setting up systems that can keep going on that don’t have to rely on constant growth.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. And the best check I believe on these agencies are the clients. Not necessarily a union. If an agency begins to cease to be valuable to its own clients they’re going to leave. And that is the ultimate check on this marketplace.

Now, there are certain things that these agencies can do that are kind of anti-competitive. We know that. But there’s at least enough of them where we’re not in the situation where there’s a monopoly. So the real question is can we find an agency that is large sized and competitive that isn’t also kind of ignoring certain activities that they need to pursue on behalf of their clients. I think we’re not in a dangerous place yet there. But, it is worrisome. I mean, one of the reasons why I was so supportive of the Writers Guild action in the first place is because I think these agencies needed a wakeup call. And the easiest wakeup call to deliver was the one on affiliated production. The packaging thing is just never going to change.

I mean, you can change, but it’s never going to go away. At least that’s my opinion. So I’m hopeful that we can get there. I do think that there has been a good adjustment.

What we haven’t seen is what was predicted to happen within two or three weeks of our vote which is either one of these large agencies collapsing or signing our agreement or high-powered agents splintering off to form a new agency. Actually agency business has shown itself to be incredibly resilient and incredibly stable and incredibly resistant to large change.

So, where this goes from here, do not know. But we know where it’s not going. It is not going towards an Endeavor IPO any time soon.

**John:** I will say that – you say that the agency business has been shown to be remarkably stable. I would say that there’s not been visible signs of that cracking and fissuring. But I don’t think we know the internal workings of those agencies.

**Craig:** No. I’m sure that there are things that they’re doing internally. I mean, they have to respond to the world around them. But they have managed to weather this crisis by any definition of the term weathering. And they’ve weathered it well. I’ve been surprised to some extent, but also to some extent not. And it does call into question just how much money they’re making without us. Seems like maybe quite a bit.

So, you know.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s do some quick answers here. Jason Reed asks, “I’m curious what happened to Scriptnotes producer Godwin. He had a short stint and disappeared. I assume he got hired in TV or similar, but I don’t remember it being mentioned.”

Godwin Jabangwe is writing for Netflix. He got a Netflix deal. He went through a program at Imagine for writing and he’s been writing a thing for Netflix. I spoke to him a couple weeks ago and, you know, I think he’s doing well.

**Craig:** And it’s not on the air yet though?

**John:** It’s not on the air.

**Craig:** One day we may see the Godwin show?

**John:** One day we’ll see the Godwin Jabangwe name showing up I suspect.

**Craig:** The Jabangwe Jump will occur.

**John:** It will.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Adam LaMarkin asks, “What celeb most impressed Craig with the congrats on Chernobyl?”

**Craig:** Well, this is kind of cool. The night before the Emmys I was at dinner with our Chernobyl family. And I was sitting next to our director Johan and suddenly there was just somebody behind us. And I turned. And that person said, “Are you Craig?” And I said, “Yeah. Are you Sean Penn?” And he said, “Yeah.” And then we had a whole discussion with Sean Penn.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Big Chernobyl fan. And, you know, I’ll tell you man, six months ago Sean Penn doesn’t stop to put a fire out if I’m on fire. You know? And I think that was pretty cool. He really liked the show a lot.

I would love for Chernobyl to be able run theatrically, like just for one crazy weekend. The Cinerama Dome or something like that. I don’t know if we have the materials that would make it work mix wise. I don’t know if we ever mixed it for that many channels. But, he said, “All right, if you do that I’ll present it.” I said OK.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** All right Sean Penn. That’s pretty awesome. That was pretty cool.

**John:** Follow up question from Adam LaMarkin. “Has Craig seen cocaine now that he’s won an Emmy?”

**Craig:** So if you crack the Emmy open it’s full of cocaine. That’s what weights it down.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, no.

**John:** Greg Titto asks, “What good D&D moment earned John an Emmy inspiration token?”

**Craig:** John, I cannot remember. Why did I give you inspiration?

**John:** So I won inspiration because I was helping to make peace in a fight between Michael Gilvary and Kevin Walsh.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** So they were arguing over a familial death vengeance thing and I being the peacemaker argued that in the afterlife they’d be able to solve these questions.

**Craig:** That’s right. You came up with a way to shut them both up. And if that doesn’t get you inspiration after a 30-minute argument about why they should both kill each other what does earn you inspiration at that point? It was great. And also it was very true to your character. Your character believes that he is at the center of a cult that is worth joining. So you speak with confidence. Pure confidence.

**John:** My character is essentially sexual Jesus. So it was nice.

Jim Bond asks, “Will there be an Austin Three Page Challenge Craig?” Because you’re running Scriptnotes by yourself at Austin this year. So is there going to be a Three Page Challenge?

**Craig:** There’s not. I believe the issue is that I’ve got two other things I have to do. I haven’t confirmed this yet but I believe I’m going to be moderating the Dan Weiss and David Benioff panel, which is going to be a big one. And I have my own panel on Chernobyl. And we’re doing the live show. And I judge the pitch contest final.

**John:** Yeah, so you’re being busy.

**Craig:** I’m pretty busy. And, you know, I don’t like doing Three Page Challenges without you. That just seems weird. Oh, and I saw by the way on the schedule some other guy is doing the first three pages. Yeah.

**John:** Um. OK.

**Craig:** He’s doing a thing called The First Three Pages. And I’m like, huh. Well, you know, it’s not patent-pending or nothing.

**John:** No, it really isn’t.

**Craig:** Yeah. Good luck.

**John:** You could do the first four pages. I don’t know. You could change something.

**Craig:** Just change one thing. [laughs]

**John:** Just one thing.

**Craig:** Just one thing.

**John:** Scott Turner says, “Please remind me that I will survive this page 68 funk that I’m in.” He’s referring to Scriptnotes 152, The Rocky Shoals. Craig, how will Scott survive?

**Craig:** He’s not going to. Unfortunately it’s over, Scott. You’re never going to make it. No, of course you’re going to survive it. Scott I also recommend maybe listening to the episode I did recently called How to Make a Movie, because I do believe that one of the more useful aspects of that little talk is how to approach that section of the movie so that it’s not something you fear or get lost in, but rather it’s your favorite part of the movie. Because the truth is it’s my favorite part. That second half of the second act is actually my favorite part of any movie I’m writing.

So take a listen to that. But, yeah, of course you’ll survive it. You’ll survive everything until you don’t.

**John:** You don’t. Several listeners wrote in to ask about t-shirts. So over the course of making Scriptnotes we’ve had all sorts of t-shirts. Probably 12 different designs. We’re going to be putting all of them up on Cotton Bureau for print on demand. So if you would like one of the old Scriptnotes t-shirts, including like the Scriptnotes tour shirt, or Camp Scriptnotes, we’ll try to get all of them up there that we can. So maybe in lieu of a new shirt this year we’ll have all of the old shirts up. So if you’ve worn out your favorite Scriptnotes shirt you can replace it.

**Craig:** You could make a Joseph-like Technicolor t-shirt coat.

**John:** Oh wow. Just stitch together all you old ones. Make a coat of many colors.

**Craig:** That’s right. A coat of many colors.

**John:** A Dolly Parton reference. In Episode 42 Verbs are what’s happening, your One Cool Thing Craig was about which e-cigarette brand you preferred. And pointed to the Joytech 510 with the [low carbonizer] and E-Juice from Johnson. Craig, how are you feeling about e-cigarettes at this moment?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t use any vaping anymore, because you know unfortunately it’s just too easy to get hooked on the nicotine. So I quit it just because I didn’t want to deal with nicotine craving, although I do love nicotine. This technology that I cited here, it is like Model T Ford stuff. So, almost everybody now that vapes is going to be using something like a Sub ohm mod box with the cool, you know, like the whole other thing with double coils and blah-blah-blah. Johnson weirdly their juice started to really be awful because they had to make some flavor changes.

But there’s a billion places to get all this stuff. There has been a controversy in the news recently because a few people were suffering from what appeared to be some sort of mysterious lung disease. And the mystery has been solved. They were vaping kind of off-brand/back store cannabis products which have been mixed with some weird oil. And the oil was essentially coating their lungs and making them sick and possibly threatening them with death. But that’s been about, I don’t know, like 14 people.

People who are using regular vaping products from reputable sources are not going to have that problem. I think that the hysteria around vaping is a shame. Cigarette smoking is so much worse for you.

Now, it is a problem that kids are vaping at enormous rates. And the problem there is not that they are going to die from strange vaping disease. The problem is that they’re going to be hooked on nicotine which is going to screw up their moods. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed John but teenagers are a little moody to begin with.

**John:** They can be moody.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it’s a huge problem. And the Juul Company has essentially been at the forefront of the problem. They are the company because of the design of their product. If I could wave a magic wand and do some regulatory work I would think that all vaping products would need to be able to make some sort of noise when used. It wouldn’t have to be a very loud noise but something that would be enough to alert a teacher. Because kids are literally just vaping into the sleeves in class. And that’s not correct. That sort of has to go.

All that said, this train may have left the station permanently. I’m not sure there’s a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube or pick your analogy.

**John:** So I was at a dinner with some doctor-y friends and one of them is a researcher who is studying literally flavored vapes and figuring out what is the chemistry happening inside of favored vapes. Her point, which is – so I’m not reporting final research, I’m just reporting what she’s observing so far – is that the compounds that these things are creating are not things that have been well studied. We certainly haven’t studied what they do in lungs. So, while I would like to, like you, believe that it is significantly safer than smoking, I don’t think we actually have science to back that up. So, I wonder if in a future follow upisode four or five years down the road we may look back at this and say like, oh no, oh no, no, vaping was really bad. And that is a concern.

Because I actually had sort of misunderstandings of it even based on your initial description. Because I literally knew nothing about vaping before you mentioned it on the podcast episode. I assumed that you were breathing out water vapor. You are not. You’re breathing out glycol. And that’s not a thing that you necessarily want in your lungs a lot.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll push back on that.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Propylene glycol is considered one of the safest substances you can breathe in. In fact, every time you’ve been at a concert or a show that had a fog machine you were breathing in and breathing out propylene glycol. That’s what that is.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It is inert. There’s also a substance called vegetable glycerin which is just as safe and inert. And that’s the other thing. So generally speaking you’ll see a mixture of those two things. But you can also just say, look, I just want vegetable glycerin. I don’t want propylene glycol. For some people it irritates their throat or something.

I do think you’re right. We could come down later and say, “Oh my god.” I think there are certain flavors that they are already starting to pull out because they’re concerned that when you heat them they can change chemically and cause a potential problem. But to compare them to the 400 compounds in cigarettes that we know are carcinogenic, it’s a bit like saying, “Well, we haven’t tested this bicycle yet so we don’t know if it is as dangerous as this wood chipper.” Logic tells us that it can’t be more dangerous.

So the question is for people who are trying to quit I would have no problem saying to them every single time please if the only way you can quit is to switch over to nicotine through vaping, do it. Because it can’t be worse. It literally cannot be worse.

But, if you are just looking to have some fun for the first time, maybe just don’t do anything like that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But keeping people from starting smoking would be wonderful if we could. But, you know, look, underlying all of this stuff regarding drugs and humans using drugs recreationally is the innate organic desire to do so. Even animals will seek out hallucinogenic vegetables and eat them because we like it. Just living people like messing with their brain chemistry. And so the trick is trying to figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t ruin your life or your body. Vaping I still think – I just think that there’s a certain hysteria around it and a moral judgment around it that I’m uncomfortable with. It reminds me of the way people used to talk about marijuana to us. And now all of a sudden marijuana is wonderful and everyone should have it in all of their facial creams. And I just feel like we need to take the moral component out. There’s a judgy-ness going on that I think is unhelpful.

**John:** Absolutely. You want clear observations without moral judgment on it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s talk about Episode 419, catching up to the present.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Professionalism was an episode we did. I listed some characteristics that I thought demonstrated professionalism and things you should look for when you talk about professionalism. Phil Hay, our friend, tweeted to humbly offer these additions. “Commitment to dignity, yours and others. Good boundaries. And doing what you say you’re going to do.” Those feel like good general purpose things to add, just like you added humility to it. So dignity/humility I think could maybe be put together. I think those are two ideas that sort of fit well together.

But, yes, I think those are all good additions to a code of professionalism.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, commitment to your own dignity and to others’ dignity, and good boundaries, I think is directly answering the way our business has changed over the last couple of years. And he is exactly right to say it. It used to go unsaid. Well of course it’s unprofessional to harass someone or to make somebody feel uncomfortable in a sexual way or to grab someone. But it turns out you actually need to say it. You have to actually say it out loud, “That is unprofessional.” So I think it’s really good to establish that. And I loved when he said, “Do what you say you’re going to do.” Because I’ve always said every time I walk into a room with the producer or a studio executive I’m bringing with me the ghosts of every writer that screwed them over. And, you know, they do.

I mean, when I hear these stories I’m just shocked. Shocked at what writers do. I mean, then I’m like why am I the guy that actually panics about making sure that I deliver something on time or whatever, much less deliver it. Right? I mean, there are writers that have taken money and then just never done anything.

**John:** Ghosted.

**Craig:** Yeah. Ghosted. How the hell? It just seems like you would go to prison. Theft. [laughs]

**John:** Kieran from Ventura writes in about professionalism, “Amateur comes from the Latin word for love, Amo Amas, Amat. And it’s easy to see the connection and meaning there. A professional was originally someone who would profess an oath to start their occupational journey, such as a doctor, a lawyer, or a priest. So the solemnity of this oath-taking seems to point to the seriousness that is required when trying to conduct oneself in a professional manner.”

So I like that idea. I like that idea of professional being the sense of like professing or commitment to the thing that you are doing beyond just the love of the thing. Useful Latin-ing there.

**Craig:** I agree. I think that sometimes “professionals” believe that they’re only professional because they’re being paid, and yet they act like amateurs. And that’s a problem because they can say things like, “Well I fell out of love with this.” And I’m like, OK, but you took money and therefore there’s like an oath, right, that you’re going to fulfill your obligations because this is serious business. And, yeah, I think that’s a really useful way of thinking about it. I mean, ideally you want to stay in love with your work but also behave in a way that is consistent with the promises you made to the people around you.

**John:** Yeah. Eric writes in, “Be sure to include social media decorum as an evolution of what blogs and forums used to be,” because my original post was very much about blogs and forums. He writes, “No one owes you their attention. Don’t spam people. If they choose to interact be cool with it and don’t expect anything else. Don’t be a dick goes a long way.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like we’ve talked about how to Twitter-er before right? I mean, haven’t we talked a little bit about that?

**John:** We have. I think it is constantly evolving. Even as we started the show Twitter was a very different medium. Like we live in a kind of different universe, which is a good segue to an extra episode we did called This Feeling Will End. That was in November 2016. Do you remember the topic of that episode? It was a bonus episode that we recorded after the presidential election.

**Craig:** That was the election, yeah. Has the feeling ended? [laughs]

**John:** Has the feeling ended? This is a fascinating week for it to come up. Because I remember the just despair and wonder and confusion I felt in that moment. And I feel a different thing this week. But it’s related. That sense of like, wow, have all the systems in place just completely broken down? What kind of form of government are we living in? I do feel some of that.

So, I don’t know that this feeling did end. It certainly changed. How are you doing?

**Craig:** Yeah. I would agree with you. I think there was probably a little too much optimism built into that. A sense that the structures around one person would continue to behave as those structures behave. They did not.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** It’s not the failure of one man. It’s the failure of an entire institution. And, yeah, I think that the feeling has changed but it hasn’t gone away. And the new feeling I have, the new question is, “Is there any way back? Or is there simply a better but different place that we can get to?” I mean, eventually this ends. But how and when and what does it mean, I don’t know.

**John:** Looking back to the actual title of the episode, The Feeling Will End, for me I was living in France during that year and the feeling ended, or at least that initial feeling ended with the Women’s March. Because the Women’s March was like, oh wow, I’m not alone. Everyone else acknowledges this is a crazy thing that’s happening. And so participating in the Women’s March and sort of that mass demonstration was helpful and meaningful.

And so since that time I’ve been in a lot more sort of protests and marches and really come to appreciate that as a political forum and political act. So, I do wonder in this moment that we’re in right now if something like that will be what is required for us to sort of shock the system and actually get to that place where we make everyone who has to do things recognize that they actually have to do a thing. That we’re not willing to settle for rolling along with this slow motion car crash.

**Craig:** Well, at the very least we can say that we don’t quite know, or at least we cannot predict from the current situation what the final outlook will be. When this began with Nixon, first of all he had the single largest landslide in presidential election history, or if not the single largest really close. He had won nearly every state. And then when this started there was just a lot of people saying this is ridiculous and it’s nonsense and it will go away. And it just didn’t. And slowly but surely people came around. Not everybody, but enough to say, “Yeah, no, that’s enough with you. You’re done.”

**John:** So we’ve recommended on the podcast before, but if you have not listened to the Slow Burn season about Watergate it’s a terrific short podcast season that really talks through what it felt like to live in Watergate. And so useful in this moment.

Episode 335, Introducing Launch, that was the episode in which I introduced Launch which was the podcast series I did about the launch of my book series Arlo Finch. A part of that Launch series was about the film and television rights and how I decided not to sell the film and television rights. So the follow up is I’m now in the process of shopping those rights. And it’s been really fascinating talking with people about Arlo Finch as a movie or a TV show. And those conversations are really cool.

It’s nice to sort of see the thing that I’ve made with a different lens and sort of with a different placement in the entertainment universe than even when I started to write these books. I think so much has changed so quickly. I was looking at it as like, oh, is this going to be a three-movie series. And now it’s like, oh, is this going to be a streaming series? That change happened so quickly that it’s sort of nice to go back and think about what I believed the [unintelligible] rights were for Arlo Finch as I was writing it and what they are now.

**Craig:** That is a great point. And if I had to guess – I’m not trying to handicap anything – but if I had to guess I’d say, yeah, streaming service. I see the way my daughter watches things. Like, man, she just devoured Umbrella Academy. You know? So I think, yeah, streaming service is my guess.

**John:** We’ll see where it ends up. I will report it here when it happens. Also back in Episode 419 we talked about the premium feed. So this is people who are paying us money to listen to all the back episodes, the back catalog. And the suggestion that we might end up moving from the Libsyn service that provides the Scriptnotes app to something like Patreon. An update here is I’ve been talking with the other folks in places who do this thing and I think we may have a good alternative here. So I suspect we probably will move on from our current set up. But I also want to thank all the people who wrote in on Twitter and we got 10 or 15 people who sent in feedback on what they were looking for. Some highlights of what you guys most want is access to the whole back catalog. So the episodes that we’re talking about today. Some bonus content certainly. And the ability to get to those things easily. So not just through a web interface, but getting to them on your own player rather than through a dedicated player seems to be the call. So that is what we’re looking at doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. That sounds, I mean, I’m along for the ride obviously. But you know me, I love a change. Let’s mix it up.

**John:** Yes. Craig, do you want to take us through another topic from 419?

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. So in 419 we spoke about #MeToo and asked what other issues are we not paying enough attention to now that will seem head-smackingly obvious in a few years. And Kelly wrote in with something really interesting. She said, “While it’s not quite the same as the Harvey Weinstein scandals, I think there will be a big come to Jesus moment in the next few years about how low assistant pay is still a massive gatekeeper to the industry and prevents meaningful movement for diversity. I’ve been an industry assistant for almost eight years now and I’ve worked in an agency, on a show, and for a few different production companies so I’m pretty ingrained in assistant Hollywood.

“When I moved to LA to try and become a writer I worked as an unpaid intern for months before getting my first job that paid me $375 a week. This was in 2011. You would be shocked at how many assistants have a similar story. For assistant Hollywood the intersection of low pay and lack of diversity is so obvious. And while I’ve seen some high level showrunners tweet about assistants being paid more, very little has been done to create any sort of meaningful change. For the most part it seems like an issue that higher level writers, studio, and agency heads etc. choose to be willfully naïve about as they then turn around and lament the lack of diversity in Hollywood and how few experienced people with diverse backgrounds are available for employment.”

John, what do you think about Kelly’s point that this is a big thing we’re just all of us not paying enough attention to?

**John:** I think Kelly is right. And she’s right on a couple different levels. I think what she’s pointing to is a longstanding assumption about who assistants should be. That assistants should be folks just out of college. They’re seeing this job only as a stepping stone and don’t actually need to be able to live on this job. Because they have family money, they have some other way of earning. And in a weird way it’s almost like a hazing to we’re going to pay you so little now but it’ll be worth it in the end.

And I think that is a destructive and bad tradition that we’ve sort of ignored a little too long. I don’t know how you’re feeling about it, Craig, but I’d be happy to spend some time over this next year on this show, but sort of in the real world looking at what assistant pay is, how it is a barrier, and how it is keeping people from really entering the industry and what we can do about it.

**Craig:** I am so in on this. Kelly is 100% right.

So, one of the things that makes me vomit about Hollywood, and there’s a number, but one of them is that as she points out there’s a kind of lovely progressive narrative that everybody shares, but when it comes time for a group of them running a corporation to determine how much their least paid people get paid, they just will not give them what I would consider to be a living wage. They just don’t do it. So, they are doing incredibly hard jobs. And by the way, they’re being entrusted, all of these assistants, with all of our confidential information. They are essentially the machine oil that makes this machine run. And they are being woefully underpaid at studios and at agencies. And these are studios and agencies that have the money to pay more. And they are studios and agencies where the people at the top are being compensated with tens of millions of dollars. Sometimes those people are bad.

And so we see Les Moonves and how much money he makes. And I think of whoever the assistant is making $15 an hour. And you may say, OK, hold on, I’m out here in Little Rock and $15 an hour is pretty good. In Los Angeles $15 an hour is not going to get it done. Especially when you need to show up at work wearing a certain kind of amount of clothes. You need to have a certain amount of access with your phone. You have to watch everything on every streaming channel. And then they expect you to go out and network with people which means go to dinner and have drinks and all this stuff. It’s ridiculous. Assistants in Hollywood are not paid enough. And you and I think can actually make a difference here. I really do.

**John:** So let’s try.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think we should. I don’t know who to talk to. We need a Che Guevara. But basically I just want to start shaming places. And I would love actually if assistants who are having a great experience could write in and say, “Look, here’s the part that’s good. I’m being paid this. This seems livable and fair. Here’s the part that’s rough. The healthcare that we get is wonky because of blankety-blank-blank-blank.” Let’s start collecting some interesting data so that we can start shaming places that don’t live up to that standard, because we have to take care of our assistants. We have to. It’s just cruel. I’m so glad that Kelly – I’m not sure if Kelly is male or female – but I’m so glad they wrote in to turn our heads towards this.

**John:** Absolutely. And what I would say is that any solution, both the information about sort of what’s really going on on the ground and sort of like what steps need to be taken to rectify it sort of should come from the people who are in it right now. And I think too often we try to fix problems from just the top down without understanding what the actual situation is and the people who are doing it right now. So that’s why we need input from people who are at that rung right now, which I think is probably a lot of our listeners.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So write in and tell us what you know.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** All right, let’s jump down to Episode 403, How to Write a Movie. Alexander Angle wrote in and actually attached audio, so let’s take a listen to what his question is.

Alexander Angle: Hey there. Question for Craig. So, I’m re-listening to Episode 403, AKA the Craig Episode, and in it you talk about theme and anti-theme with anti-theme being what the character pursues at the beginning of the story. My question is simple. Is pursuit of the anti-theme the same thing as the character’s tragic flaw? Are they just interchangeable terms? Or is tragic flaw something totally separate? That’s it. Thanks a bunch.

**Craig:** What a good question.

**John:** So in your schema of things anti-theme and tragic flaw, they’re clearly related. Are they the same thing?

**Craig:** They’re not the same thing. So, one thing I would say, first of all Alexander, is I don’t think a character is necessarily pursuing the anti-theme at the beginning of the story. They are living the anti-theme. They are living in accordance with the anti-theme. So it’s not anything aspirational. It’s just part of who they are. Why they choose to believe that anti-theme, the reason they live in accordance with it, that is connected to a tragic flaw.

So tragic flaw as we commonly understand is a character aspect that is an imperfection in the way somebody perceives or thinks about the world. They are terrified of losing someone that they love. They think the only way to love somebody is to possess them. That is a tragic flaw. Jealousy is a tragic flaw. Hubris is the classic tragic flaw.

But those things aren’t necessarily organizing principles around what you live your life. Nor are they particularly useful for the construction of a plot. So there is some specific kind of philosophy that the character already believes in quite firmly that is a symptom of their flaw in some ways.

**John:** So I’m going to try to restate this and see if this makes sense. A theme and therefore and anti-theme tend to be either a question or a statement, a set of beliefs. And that is challenged over the course of the movie. Whereas the flaw that you’re describing there is more – it’s probably a single word. It’s probably a single concept. So you’re saying hubris or jealousy. That is a flaw that could be informing why they’re doing what they’re doing, but it’s not the overall sort of story question the way that a theme or an anti-theme is.

**Craig:** I agree. And I think that we get a little too caught up on the tragic flaw because of the way we’re taught. We’re taught – well just classic pedagogy we’re taught Shakespeare, we’re taught the Greeks, we’re taught tragic flaw. And again very useful for analyzing work. Not incredibly useful for creating work. It is easy to extract a tragic flaw after the creation of a story. I don’t think it’s a particularly good way to go about building one in the first place.

**John:** Cool. Episode 420. That was last week. This was the one with Seth Rogen. I brought up Dana Fox’s observation that audiences will laugh when they see male nudity, but they won’t laugh when they see female nudity. We had two listeners write in about that. Anna from London wrote, “The point Seth made about the actress and her post-coital breasts was only considering 50% of the film’s viewership. If as you say male viewers would have found it too distracting to see her breasts, I can assure you that most of the female viewers would have spent the whole scene distractingly asking why the hell does she still have her bra on? As the actress in question pointed out, women, especially those who have any kind of sexual contact with men, know that having her bra on would be highly unrealistic given that men love breasts so much they find it impossible to digest comedic dialogue at the same time as looking at them.”

**Craig:** Well, I haven’t seen this scene. And I could be wrong. My sense of it was that the choice wasn’t bra or no bra, the choice was visible breasts or not visible breasts.

**John:** Yeah. So sheet up or sheet down.

**Craig:** Correct. Sheet up or sheet down. Exactly. And, yes, just to overshare, it’s like when my wife and I are done having sex she then immediately covers her chest with a sheet. That’s not how it works in our house at all. Of course not. But it is – the question then is where do you lose the most? So in terms of I’m judging as somebody writing like, OK, I need this to be funny. If the sheet is down then I think men are going to be – the boobs will upstage the jokes. And I think for women they might say, oh that’s interesting, they’re doing it the way we do it in our house. But also I think some women would say, oh, this movie is just gratuitously showing boobs for boys.

There’s a lot of ways where you can lose. So there is a safe choice there which is just to have the sheet up. Is it accurate? No. As you and I have talked about a million times neither is the fact that cars don’t have rearview mirrors in movies. It’s like a thousand things we do that are inaccurate in movies because as much as we want to be true to life sometimes it just doesn’t work as well.

I would agree with you Anna completely that when I see women in bed with their bras on I’m like what is this. Like I don’t understand what’s happening. Just put the sheet over. Because, yeah, the bra is the first thing that comes off. That’s bizarre.

**John:** Abby writes, “I’ve been around plenty of women who find their bodies and other women’s bodies consentingly hilarious. They’ll definitely laugh at boobs, booties, and other bits quicker than they’ll laugh at another dong flopped in their face.”

And that’s absolutely fair and true. I want to sort of step back from that sense that male bodies are innately funny and female bodies are innately not funny. Because I think context is really important here. And if you create a context in a movie where women consentingly laugh at bodies, that’s great.

What I do find though in most of the movies I see, or most of the American movies I see is that when a man is portrayed naked it’s a powerlessness, there’s a shame and humiliation thing that’s happening there. And so that makes it OK to laugh or with that character. When you see a woman in that situation so often there’s not that sense – it doesn’t feel OK to laugh her or at the situation because it feels like, ugh, there’s a crazy power imbalance here that makes me really uncomfortable.

I think context is key here. And I can totally imagine the scene that Abby is describing where it is funny that this woman is nude in the scene and that is OK because the scene in the movie has made it OK.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a certain aspect of the whole punch up/punch down thing. You know? When we live in a society that is patriarchal, where men have more power than women. Exposing men and laughing at their nudity is a punch up kind of thing. And laughing at a woman’s naked body feels like a punch down kind of thing. And this is where modern discourse fascinates me. Because I feel like there are circumstances where – probably only circumstances where you will dissatisfy somebody. Because if you do show women’s bodies in a way that is consentingly hilarious as Abby is describing, and therefore do so within the mode of as she says writing from the female gaze, some women will laugh and some men will laugh, and then some women and some men will be outraged that you are, you know, mocking a woman’s appearance. You’re body-shaming. You’re punching down. You are exploiting for the male gaze. I mean, the male gaze isn’t going anywhere, so we know it’s always there.

Some of these are just kind of really hard things to thread because it’s not enough – your intentions aren’t enough. Because on the one hand I’m saying, look, my intention is this. And on the other hand your intention disappears once the action hits the airwaves and it’s going to strike people in different ways.

You are not capable of hitting it correctly with 100% of people. Some people are going to say you have done something offensive to me. I’m not one of those people who is like everyone is offensive. Not at all. But the reality is you can see how sometimes you get caught because you may be trying to be respectful in this manner and then someone says well you actually were weirdly disrespectful in this manner. It’s an interesting time.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For all of us.

**John:** What I will say is I think it’s an interesting time to make the movie that does what Abby and Anna are describing which is to be realistic about those moments and actually figure out what’s funny in those moments. And I think you’re going to find the people who can write and direct those moments are going to be women. And I think we have more female filmmakers happening now than ever. So I think we’re likely to see great examples of those moments coming in the years to come because we have more women working than ever.

**Craig:** That’s the key. Right, so because I think a lot of guys will say, “It’s not fair. If I do this then they get mad at me. And if I do that then they get made at me.” And I understand that that doesn’t seem fair. But also part of the problem is that it’s the what this is. And there are certain areas where we just know, look, if you’re going to make certain interesting insights and comments about race and some of those comments are self-deprecating or touch a nerve, I would rather have the underpowered party doing that. I don’t want the white guy doing that. I’d rather see a black woman doing that because then I understand that there is a certain purity of intention there.

I don’t have to wonder if somebody was punching down or punching up or ignoring or this or that. So the key is different people coming in to tell these stories. It is one thing to say to a guy, “You should show women’s bodies as funny,” but I would argue it’s probably going to be much more effective – meaning funny – and interesting to an audience if a woman is doing that. Because I think they just have a better insight on it. So different voices, more different voices, is going to help unravel a lot of this. And expand what we consider to be fun and funny.

These are good arguments to have.

**John:** Yeah, I like them.

**Craig:** Some of us are afraid to have them because we know that inevitably we’re going to get yelled at. And we’ll get yelled at for some of this. But I’m OK to get yelled at by some people. I think it’s important that we talk about these things without feeling like everything has to be, “Ugh, PC, blah.” You know, there’s a way to talk about it where we can be a little risky but also, you know, kind of acknowledge that there’s certain difficulties we’re dealing with as we navigate a changing cultural landscape.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** OK, John, we’re running a little bit long. We were going to be talking about the fact that the WGA has canceled the WGA awards for videogame writing. And I have a lot to say about that. All of which is in favor of my videogame sisterin’ and brotherin’. But we don’t have time for this one, so let’s push it off to next week. But if you’re listening and you are wondering what we think, it’s coming. Don’t worry.

**John:** Cool. All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a website for the City of Los Angeles. If you notice a traffic light is out, if you notice a walk signal is out, like a walk button is out, your temptation is probably to say like, oh, there’s no way to really do that or fix that. You can try to call 311 but it’s a whole phone tree to get to stuff.

It turns out there’s actually a pretty good website with like a map you pull up and you just report like at this corner, at this intersection, this walk button is not working right. And so you might think like, oh, if I report it is it actually going to get fixed. But I would say, yes, it actually does get fixed. Because as I was walking my dog these past few months I’ve noticed two things that were out. I reported them and within days they were fixed and corrected.

So if you notice that a traffic signal is out or even a walk button is not working properly, report it. Because the system actually does work. It’s one of those rare cases where I can report a good governmental thing happening in my life.

**Craig:** God, you’re going to be that guy when you’re old that writes letters to the local paper.

**John:** I’m not going to be that guy. I’m never that guy.

**Craig:** You’re going to be that. I feel like you’re going to be that guy.

**John:** I’m never going to be that guy. Nope. But I will report things that are out on this website. Absolutely.

**Craig:** I love that. My One Cool Thing this week is an app-maker. As you know I love escape rooms. That’s my thing. And there are all these interesting small apps that are basically escape rooms for your iPad or your iPhone. And a lot of them are terrible. The vast majority of them, these little kind of mini ones, are coming from Asia, usually from China but sometimes from Japan. And some of them are great. Some of them are just annoying because they’re poorly done and really are there just to pipe ads at you.

But there is one developer that has come up with a bunch of them. They’re quick to play. They’re very clever. They’re beautifully designed. They’re kind of gorgeous looking. And you can disable ads on them I believe which is always nice.

So the developer’s name is Goro Sato. Goro Sato. I believe if you just search for that in the app store some of his escape rooms will come up. So go under G Sato soft. But he or she – I think Goro is a he – I think it’s a masculine name. Regardless, Goro has done a lovely job. These are not expensive games. I think they’re free and then maybe you spend $0.99 to make the ads go away or something like that.

**John:** Cool. It sounds great. I love escape rooms. Megana our producer was asking about corn mazes. And our friend Nima proposed that maybe corn mazes were the original escape rooms.

**Craig:** No. [laughs]

**John:** You don’t think so?

**Craig:** No, they’re garbage. They’re garbage.

**John:** You think corn mazes are garbage? Wow.

**Craig:** They’re garbage. Yeah.

**John:** So I think we’re going to try to do a corn maze here these next two weeks.

**Craig:** Where is the skill in that? Oh my god, dead end. Go the other way. Corn maze. Corn maze.

**John:** We’ll see what happens. But that is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megana Rao, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and features our own Aline Brosh McKenna with samples of her from episodes 152 and 182.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** It’s a really good one. It’s a dance party.

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 like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. Stuff may change in the future, but Scriptnotes.net will not change so you’ll always be able to go there to find the back catalog. Right now we still have the app for Android for iOS that lets you listen to the back episodes. If something changes there will still be a way to listen to those back episodes. I promise.

Craig, 420 episodes. Not a mistake among them. All flawless. We were right the first time.

**Craig:** Yeah. But the good news is that we’re getting canceled for this one. So, it’s finally over. Thank god.

**John:** [laughs] Ah, the end.

**Craig:** Ah, freedom.

**John:** Cool. See you next week.

**Craig:** See you next week.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, Ep 5, Copyright and Work for Hire](https://johnaugust.com/2011/wga-copyright-and-musicals)
* [Real-Life ‘Terminator’: Major Studios Face Sweeping Loss of Iconic ‘80s Film Franchise Rights](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/real-life-terminator-major-studios-face-sweeping-loss-iconic-80s-film-franchise-rights-1244737?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark) by Eriq Gardner
* [Copyright Section 203](https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html)
* [Friday 13th Screenwriter Wins Rights Battle](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/friday-13th-screenwriter-wins-rights-battle-producer-1147991) by Eriq Gardner
* [Scriptnotes, Ep 2, How to get an agent and/or manager](https://johnaugust.com/2011/scriptnotes-episode-2)
* [Scriptnotes, Ep 389, The Future of the Industry](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-future-of-the-industry)
* [How Ari Emanuel’s Outsize IPO Dreams Were Dashed](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-ari-emanuel-s-outsized-ipo-dreams-were-dashed-1244772) by Kim Masters
* [Why Endeavor’s IPO U-Turn Was a Surprisingly Brilliant Move](https://www.ccn.com/why-endeavors-ipo-u-turn-was-a-surprisingly-brilliant-move/) by Lawrence Meyers
* [WeWork: At What Point Does Malfeasance Become Fraud](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/marketing-expert-scott-galloway-on-wework-and-adam-neumann.html) by Scott Galloway
* [Scriptnotes, Ep 42, Verbs are what’s happening](https://johnaugust.com/2012/verbs-are-whats-happening)
* [Extra, This Feeling Will End](https://johnaugust.com/2016/this-feeling-will-end)
* [Ep 335, Introducing Launch](https://johnaugust.com/2018/introducing-launch)
* [Launch Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/launch/id1319436103)
* [Scriptnotes Ep 419, Professionalism](https://johnaugust.com/2019/professionalism)
* [Scriptnotes Ep 403, How to Write A Movie](https://johnaugust.com/2019/how-to-write-a-movie)
* [Scriptnotes Ep 420, The One with Seth Rogen](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-one-with-seth-rogen)
* [LA Report Broken Lights and Crosswalk Buttons](http://myladot.lacity.org/sr/ladothtml5viewer/)
* [Escape Room Apps by Goro Sato](https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/goro-sato/id412448991)
* [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 Jim Bond ([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_421_follow_upisode.mp3)