Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/bonus-die-hard).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin, ho-ho-ho.

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

On this very special episode we are going to be looking at the 1988 film Die Hard, how it works on a story level. We’re going to focus on what screenwriters can learn from it and some of the mistaken lessons people have tried to learn from it. This is not going to be a detailed look at the history of the film or its place in cinematic canons, because we’re not that interested in that kind of stuff, are we?

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t really care. I just want to know what about this works so well. You and I both started in the early ‘90s. And in the early ‘90s there were a few movies that you were lectured about over and over. And Die Hard was definitely one of them.

**John:** So, Craig, what is your first exposure to Die Hard? Do you remember seeing it the first time? What was it for you?

**Craig:** Yes I do. I was a perfect age for it. I was 17 years old. I saw it in the movie theaters. I don’t remember when it came out.

**John:** Summer of 1988.

**Craig:** Yeah, so it was a Christmas movie in Summer. Summer of 1988 I was 17. What a great time. And I remember thinking it was a blast. I mean, it was fun, and you got the sense that you had shown up for a dumb movie and gotten something that wasn’t dumb at all.

**John:** Yeah. So weirdly I don’t remember seeing Die Hard the first time, but I do remember the first exposure I ever had to Die Hard as a concept which was summer of 1988. I was over at my friend Ethan Diamond’s house. His older brother, Andrew, came back from seeing Die Hard in the theaters. And we were standing in Ethan’s kitchen and Andrew said like, “I saw the future of movies and it is Die Hard.”

**Craig:** That’s kind of crazy. I mean, I remember thinking that when I saw The Matrix. I don’t know if I thought that when I saw Die Hard. In fact, I remember thinking this is just a really good version of for instance I think around that time I remember going to see Commando in the theaters with Arnold Schwarzenegger who gets weirdly name-checked in Die Hard. And I thought like, oh my god, this is like the best version of Commando ever. Yeah.

**John:** So we just did a special live show and Kevin Feige actually mentioned Die Hard as being the first time he saw a “normal” movie that he really liked, so a thing that didn’t involve super heroes, or fantasy, or elves, or gnomes, or dwarves. It was just a really great action movie. And so I think it has had an influence on even things beyond the normal action movies. And I think you can’t look at a lot of modern action movies without having some sense of what Die Hard did.

**Craig:** I agree. Die Hard gave us a sense of action pacing that I don’t think we were used to. And it also had a very odd modernity. Now, when we look at it we’re going to look at it also through the lens of its time. It is one of the most Reagan era movies possible.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** But the fact that it said we’re not going to be in space. We’re not going to be out in the open field. We’re not going to be doing car chases, running around. We’re going to dump all the things we normally do in a big cops and robbers movie and we’re just going to stick it inside a building and let the confined space and the weird specifics of that building work to our benefit. That was pretty revolutionary.

**John:** I would also say the comedy that’s consistent throughout the movie, and characters who show up very late but are given very specific character comedy bits, has had an influence on sort of how we think about all these kind of movies. There’s that sense that you kind of don’t make an action movie without some sense of what the comedy is going to be owes a debt to Die Hard.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you could say that all Ryan Reynolds movies should pay a little bit of money to Die Hard every time they happen, because Ryan Reynolds’ character is kind of the best evolution of the wise-cracking tough guy. So he’s in great shape, he can run, he can shoot, he can kill if he needs to. When it is time to punch and get serious he can. When he needs to be heartfelt and care about a person and a relationship he can. But a lot of the times while he’s doing it he’s just tossing out these sardonic one liners. And Bruce Willis kind of invented that.

**John:** I think so.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So today on the episode I want to talk through a couple different areas. We should talk about characters. How we set up characters. How we know who is who. The characters have arcs. They’re shallow but they’re there. And I want to talk through arcs. How you find the beats in those arcs, the motivation behind characters. And how we signal to the audience what the characters want, both in the very near term and long term. Sort of what their overall goals are. This is a great movie in talking about hero weakness and villain strength, because the relationship between hero and villain is very different in this movie than we might expect.

And it’s also a great example of something we want to show to other action stars about like this is how you can be an action star and not be perfect in every moment. And it’s his weakness that I think makes the John McClane character so endearing to the audience.

**Craig:** Absolutely. He repeatedly shows fear, which I think we generally like. Maybe some actors don’t understand that. But we in the audience really, really appreciate it.

**John:** Now, rewatching this movie for this segment I was really impressed by sort of how well-structured and plotted it is. It is a jeopardy machine. And we have come to expect that out of movies, but I was surprised that there were very few scenes where you say like, oh, you could cut that scene and it wouldn’t have any impact. Everything that is there is there and very necessary. And it is setting up and paying off stuff constantly. So as we go through the movie from top to bottom we’ll try to point out situations where they are setting this up really well and they are going to pay it off and they have a whole plan. I feel like if you were to put this movie up on the whiteboard you would see like, OK, this is a really tight film just on an outline level.

**Craig:** No question. It does a brilliant job of setting things up and paying them off. And I’d actually forgotten how some of these little tiny things – I mean, the movie begins with one of the strangest conversations ever. And that conversation actually becomes incredibly important.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It has repercussions throughout the film. You just don’t realize it then. But it kind of works. It’s pretty remarkable in that regard. They’re really good at that.

**John:** We won’t get a chance to single out every joke, but what we were saying about the comedy of the movie and the specificity of the characters is really important. These aren’t just types of characters going through roles. They are very specifically drawn, which is nice.

But, Craig, you did in your How to Write a Movie podcast, you talked about theme and central dramatic question. And my rewatching of this I didn’t feel like that was a primary unifying element behind how Die Hard holds itself together. Did you in rewatching it do you feel like there’s a central dramatic question it’s trying to ask and answer?

**Craig:** Barely.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Barely. And it turns on the relationship and it’s very simply encapsulated by the beginning and end of John McClane’s interaction with his wife, or maybe ex-wife, separated wife Holly. He comes to visit her, but they’ve been separated. And he essentially says in so many words, “I’m more important than you are.” And by the end he understands, no, actually we together are more important than just me. My needs don’t matter. I want to be a good husband to you. Very simple. Very, very, very simple.

But, essential. If you don’t have it, it really just is a guy running around a building and you don’t care.

**John:** Yep. And I think that’s a lesson that was mislearned by a bunch of people who tried to be Die Hard in a blank is that they didn’t do that work of what is the emotional journey he’s trying to go through.

**Craig:** Yeah. I remember at the time somebody made the joke that they were going in and pitching Die Hard in a building. It was really funny. So we had a spade of Die Hard – Die Hard did Die Hard on a plane, and Die Hard in an airport. There was a Die Hard in an everything. And Die Hard in a spaceship. And it got really, really frustrating.

Well, I mean, look, the gender politics are incredibly regressive. I mean, we have to talk about for a second how brilliantly this movie encapsulates the Reagan era. So very briefly you have a story about a woman who dares to have her own career. And her husband doesn’t want to follow her to Los Angeles because he’s a New York cop. And bizarrely has a backlog of cases? That’s not how policing works. He can just go ahead and be a cop in LA if he wants to. He can join that police department, I’m sure.

So this is the root of their marriage problems. She has dropped his name and is using her own. At the end, the way he saves her ultimately is by getting rid of this token of her success, which is the Rolex watch.

**John:** The Rolex watch.

**Craig:** She earned because she’s really good at her job. That has to go. And also she takes his name again because she must resume being his property, fully more. And this is really where I love Die Hard for being so Reagan era and honestly Trumpian in this regard, too. The ethos of the movie is that the people in charge of stuff like the bureaucrats in charge of law enforcement and the FBI, they don’t know anything. They’re stupid and incompetent. The media elites are terrible, unethical liars who don’t care about anything. The only people that can save you in the end – oh, and Europeans are trash.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The only people who can save you in the end are just good old American men.

**John:** Working class men.

**Craig:** Working class men who are constantly rolling their eyes at the stupidity of those pencil neck “experts.” The insanity of the way that these police go about their job, not the police man we’re rooting for, but the police in charge. So like we’re procedure junkies now. We were not in 1988. So we watch this movie and we’re like, huh, I guess that’s how the police might. So there’s a cop car that’s been riddled with bullets, and a body also riddled with bullets has fallen out of a building onto the cop car. But the deputy chief of police is like, meh, I’m sure it’s nothing. OK, I buy it. No.

**John:** No. All right, but let’s talk about the gender politics for one second before we get into this, because looking at Bruce Willis’s character arc which is shallow but it is there, McClane does say, “Tell my wife I’ve been a jerk. I should have been more supportive.” He does have that epiphany as it comes through it. So I would say that they’ve drawn that relationship in a way that is meaningful within the course of the movie as presented. And I did like that it didn’t go out of its way to punish Holly’s character for being successful and being ambitious. They try to acknowledge that she should be able to do these things. The movie as a whole, everything gets destroyed, but I didn’t feel like they were trying to single her out.

And even though she is the woman who is being rescued, it didn’t have the very classic rescue princess tropes. She didn’t feel helpless through a lot of it. She was never screaming or panicked.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** She was incredibly competent.

**Craig:** But in the end they damseled her.

**John:** They did damsel her.

**Craig:** And it’s definitely a movie about a man rescuing a woman. She’s perfect. She has no flaws.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** Except for her weird insistence on being successful. [laughs] And a good mom. The Rolex thing is sort of startling. And the fact that at the end she’s like, “I am – no, my name is Holly McClane.” Look, it was 1988. I mean, she actually was a terrific character up until the kind of inevitable damseling. But I love the scene, and we’ll get to it, where she confronts Hans Gruber just in terms of you put me in charge. It was very well done. And Bonnie Bedelia.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** A spectacular job. And this is a great place for us to stop and mention the writers that we’re talking about.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about the background of all of this. This is a 1988 movie released by Fox. Directed by John McTiernan. Screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the PDFs we have of it. Also we’ll have it up in Weekend Read. The script that we’re going to be talking about is a pretty close approximation of what the final movie is. So as we’re talking through this today we’re going to be talking in terms of like minutes in the movie, but the screenplay actually matches up pretty closely. The script I looked at was 127 pages and that feels about right to what the movie is.

**Craig:** It’s about a two-hour, ten-minute movie or so.

**John:** It’s based on a book by Roderick Thorp called Nothing Lasts Forever. I have not read the book, but I have read up some background on the book and I was surprised to see that the book actually has a lot more of the movie Die Hard in it than I would have guessed. Some of the stuff that’s in the 1979 book, so a retired NYC police detective, Joe Leland, is visiting the 40-story office tower headquarters of the Klaxon Oil Corporation, that changed, on Christmas Eve, where his daughter, Stephani Gennaro works. While he’s waiting for his daughter’s Christmas party to end a group of German Autumn terrorists take over the skyscraper, led by the brutal Anton Gruber.

**Craig:** Their gang name is Autumn-Era? So cool.

**John:** Joe had known about Gruber through a counterterrorism he attended years before. Barefoot, Leland slips away and manages to remain undetected in the giant office complex. Aided only by Los Angeles police sergeant Al Powell and armed only with his police issue pistol Leland fights off the terrorists one-by-one in an attempt to save 74 hostages and grandchildren. So that’s a Wikipedia summary, but there’s a lot of Die Hard in that summary. And so some of the things that are apparently in the book is McClane going through the air ducts, which is also a big pet peeve of mine.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** The C-4 bomb down the elevator shaft. Jumping off the exploding roof with a fire hose attached to his waist and then shooting through a window to gain reentry, which still feels like such a movie moment, but apparently was in the book. Taping his gun to his back in the climax. The book was apparently inspired by The Towering Inferno, which is obviously a clear prior to all of this.

Interesting piece of trivia. So Frank Sinatra starred in the first book in this series called The Detective and so he was offered the role of John McClane, but he would have been 70 when this–

**Craig:** I would love to see that.

**John:** It would be amazing.

**Craig:** Hey Hans–

**John:** You can really see him going through all the physical activity.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Well, I mean, the fact that the character of John McClane is running around. He’s a smoker. Looks like he’s, you know, getting close to 40. He’s a smoker. And he has incredible cardiovascular fitness.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** By the way, this is back when you could smoke in a car, smoke in an airport, and you could bring a gun on a plane.

**John:** A gun on a plane.

**Craig:** Gun on a plane. Yeah, no big deal.

**John:** All right. Let’s talk about the movie. Let’s start at the top and we’ll be going through it. From the very start we need to setup John McClane. We need to know that he’s a cop. That he’s from NYC. That his wife works here now. We need to establish that he’s still interested in women, so we see him making eyes at another woman on a plane.

**Craig:** Classic. Yeah, so his character is family man, trying to get his wife back, but still, you know, he’s hot-blooded American. And he makes eyes with the, well, they were stewardesses then. It was 1988. But before all of that he has the weirdest exchange with this guy.

**John:** Tell me about it.

**Craig:** So like normally speaking you don’t want to start a movie with a long conversation about nonsense with a day player. But that’s exactly what Die Hard does. It begins with John McClane having a conversation on the plane with his seatmate. John McClane is clearly scared to fly. It’s a great opening shot. He’s white-knuckling, literally. And the guy next to him is like, uh, you’re not a good flyer. And he says something that literally makes no sense. It’s a non-sequitur. He goes from “You’re not a good flyer” to “I’ve figured out how to – what you do when you land.” Which doesn’t make any sense. “To get accustomed after you travel you take your shoes and your socks off and you walk around on the carpet in your bare feet and you make little fists with your feet.”

And I’m thinking what cocaine-fueled nonsense is this? But it makes sense later.

**John:** It is incredibly useful later on. And I feel like as the movie starts you’re kind of free to do anything. So you can put in that nonsense business at the very top of the movie because no one has any expectation about what’s supposed to happen.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So you can just do it. Yes, it is sort of nonsense-y, but it totally works. And of course it’s setting up that he’s going to be barefoot through a lot of the movie. And so his barefoot-ness becomes a huge crucial plot point.

**Craig:** A huge crucial plot point.

**John:** All right. So we’ve established that John McClane is arriving in Los Angeles. Now we need to setup his not quite ex-wife, Holly. We need to see her at her office. We need to establish that they have kids. The kids are with the nanny.

**Craig:** All right. Let’s talk about race in this movie for a second. Let’s get the tough stuff out of the way. This movie has some very strange racial stuff going on, not surprising for 1988. Holly has a housekeeper/nanny. She is meant to be Latin-American of some kind. She is Latina. Her accent is bizarre. I get the feeling that that actor may not actually have had that accent. Also, they did a thing that movies used to do with people like that. Characters who were from another country would insist on speaking back – they can understand English clearly. So Holly speaks to her in English. And the nanny answers back in half-English/half-Spanish pointlessly. Like for instance she’ll use the word Si instead of Yes. Just pointlessly as if to say, see, I’m from another country, but I’m nice.

It’s bizarre.

**John:** But let’s talk about why that character exists. It’s because they want to establish that they have kids, but the kids are not going to be in the movie. Until they kind of very late in the story are in the movie. But that they’re not going to be a crucial factor in this. They’re not in jeopardy.

**Craig:** Correct. And if that character and those kids never came back again it would feel a bit cheap, like fake stakes. But they do interestingly enough in kind of a key scene later. So, again, the screenwriters here are doing an excellent job of making sure that they’re setting up pins. And I like it when movies setup pins and I don’t understand that they’re pins. I just think that they’re things. And then later I go, ooh, OK. I get it. I get it now.

**John:** So once we’ve established that Holly and John McClane have kids, that they’re with the nanny, we meet Argyle, who is to me a very problematic character in this story.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He was a good idea who has like three or four beats. None of the beats where Argyle is by himself work especially well. This initial scene where he’s sort of welcoming John McClane to Los Angeles is probably the best of his beats.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s the only one really where he gets to be kind of vaguely human. I mean, look, Argyle is a regressive racial stereotype. And that’s not any offense to the actor playing him. That guy did his job, right. He was paid to do a job. He was an actor. And this is reality. This is why Robert Townsend made Hollywood Shuffle. I mean, this was the deal back then.

But it is kind of this kind of over smiley stereotype. And in fact when John McClane realizes that Argyle, even the name alone feels regressive, when Argyle is going to be his chauffeur he looks at him like, uh, really. They sent me a black guy as a driver? You feel like he’s a racist in that moment. Like all right I’ll give you a chance, kid. I mean, it’s weird. It’s weird. Argyle’s insistence on being super friendly to John McClane is weird. It doesn’t…ugh.

**John:** Yeah. So I think of all the subplots this is a subplot you could entirely take out and the movie would survive well. Because Argyle does nothing especially important throughout the rest of it.

So John McClane could take a taxi to the building and the same conversation could have been happening with the taxi driver.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, honestly Argyle weirdly seems like he’s there to close one of the strangest plot loops ever, which is the two black guys in the movie have to like – one black guy has to knock the other one out. You can only defeat a black man with another black man. It’s the weirdest – it’s 1988. It’s, oof. Yeah. Not great in that regard.

**John:** So here’s a moment that I really enjoyed as I watched it again was that once John McClane gets to the iconic–

**Craig:** Nakatomi Building.

**John:** Nakatomi Plaza Tower. So if you are coming to Los Angeles you will see the Nakatomi Plaza Tower because it is still kind of by itself. It is at the edge of the Fox Studio lot. If you’re parking there you will often park in this parking structure where Argyle parks.

**Craig:** It is not actually the Nakatomi Building. It is the Fox Building.

**John:** It is the Fox Building. And it is nearly as empty now as it was during the time of this because everyone has moved out of Fox.

**Craig:** I have never been in that building.

**John:** Oh I’ve been there.

**Craig:** Who is in that building?

**John:** Well, different stuff is in there at different times. And it’s not entirely Fox stuff that’s in there. I think it was business affairs-y kinds of things would be in the Fox Building.

**Craig:** Business affairs-y kind of things.

**John:** Yeah. So he arrives at this building and in singing in he has to use a computer screen which felt like very impressive for sort of the time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s just there to establish that his wife is not using his last name. And that is both a character moment but it becomes a very crucial plot moment because it’s why Gruber does not recognize that Holly is McClane’s wife.

**Craig:** And this is something this movie does really well over and over and over. It’s not content with a very simple linear I’m going to show you a thing because it means one thing. They’re really good at multi-purpose use of things. And we love that as an audience. When we think we know why something is in a movie and then the audience says, oh no, no, no, no, there’s another reason why. It gets us very excited.

**John:** And so that front desk will also become a recurring set because they will be putting in their own fake person at that front desk who Al will be interfacing with. So that becomes useful later on.

**Craig:** At this point in the movie I think we’ve met Hart Bochner playing Harry Ellis.

**John:** We have met Hart Bochner. So this is another like only in the ‘80s kind of character we could find.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** So Hart Bochner as an actor, great, whatever, loving it. But like as a character I would say a smart choice to make somebody that you actually hate more than the terrorists, who you really want to see die.

**Craig:** Yeah, he was an incredibly broad comic character. I mean, someone said we want you to play – so again, 1988 politics. America was obsessed with Yuppies. So children, gather around. A Yuppie was a young, urban professional. Back in those days people were angry that there were people who were young, urban professionals. They hated them. They hated them for things like eating quiche. Quiche is delicious.

**John:** Delicious.

**Craig:** It’s eggs and cheese. If you have scrambled eggs and cheese, then you’re a perfectly fine He-Man trucker. If you eat cheese, then you’re no good. You’re Yuppie scum. And so they said to Hart Bochner we want you to play the scummiest, skeeviest Yuppie ever. And he probably showed them a version of it and they said, no, bigger. And then he’s like, OK. And then they were like, no, bigger. Snort coke. Say bubby. Be a total jerk. Bigger. Bigger!

And he did it. He hit the mark.

**John:** That’s what an actor does.

**Craig:** Listen, he followed his direction. Hat’s off. It’s not his fault.

**John:** So when he ultimately meets his fate we’re not that sad.

**Craig:** No. But I don’t remember necessarily feeling like thrilled either, because he just didn’t seem like a human being.

**John:** That is true.

**Craig:** He seemed so ridiculous. Whereas Bill Atherton, who made a wonderful career in the ‘80s of playing dickheads – “Yes, it’s true, this man has no dick” – from Ghostbusters. He’s playing the exact same character from Ghostbusters. A vicious prick. And he manages to seem real.

**John:** Yeah. A fine line. All right, so John McClane reaches the party. So to me it feels a little bit weird that you go to the party and not go to see your kids, but anyway he goes to the party.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But I buy it. At the start of this movie where I’m just learning the rules I bought that he’s going there first. And I do like that he’s seeing his wife. And it also feels like they might be getting – things might be going OK. And then they fall into their old patterns. And I thought those scenes were well handled.

**Craig:** I mean, there really is a scene. I mean, they have a scene. So he’s in her office which is more like a hotel room than an office. It just makes no sense.

**John:** Well, an executive bathroom.

**Craig:** Right. But then she says she’s really envious of Hart Bochner’s executive bathroom, which makes no sense because she’s technically his boss. I don’t understand any of it. And also she has a bathroom. It looks really nice. By the way, this is one of those movies that is simply impossible in the age of cell phones. But let’s put that aside.

They have one scene. And in that once scene you get the sense that she still loves him, which is important for us in the audience to know. That there’s hope. And then he has to be a dick about it because of the name thing. And when she marches out of there angry – oh, and I should say he’s washing up and in doing so he has removed his shirt to have his wife beater tee underneath. Did that cause any feelings for you as a young man?

**John:** Oh yeah. I think there’s a whole conversation to be had about sort of the wardrobe, but really Bruce Willis’s body which is sort of a central thing that changes so much over the course of the movie. He keeps stripping down to less, and less, and less.

**Craig:** But I didn’t remember that – in my mind I think he just flew out to Los Angeles in his wife beater tee-shirt. I forgot that he was wearing clothes and he just happened to have taken them off when things go down. So that’s such a – as a kid watching it I must have just thought, OK, he’s running around. Now I watch it and go, oh my god, there must have been so many meetings. And Bruce Willis was like, no, this is the one.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This one makes me look great.

**John:** And also if you look at sort of the wardrobe department and also makeup, having to figure out like how dirty he is at every moment.

**Craig:** Continuity. Good lord.

**John:** The continuity of that would be so tough. Because his tee-shirt goes through at least 17 shades of brown and gray.

**Craig:** I mean, I’ll say this much at least. For a movie that costs, I think it was like $25 million which was quite a bit back then, it couldn’t have been all blown on his wardrobe. You can get 1,000 of those tee-shirts to have 1,000 different stages of distress and you’ll be fine.

**John:** Yep. He arrives at the party. A guy kisses him. He freaks out about that.

**Craig:** He goes, “California.” But what he’s really is like, “Gay.” I mean, the whole thing, it’s so clear he’s just like, “New York is straight and California is gay. Argh.” Yeah.

**John:** And then suddenly we are in plot. We’re in a heist plot. And so this is 20 minutes in. We have the first hero shot of Rickman. We’ve taken out the security guard. And we’re starting to establish this misdirect that they are some kind of idealistic terrorists and quickly we’ll learn that they are just actually thieves.

**Craig:** No in today’s era because of our – in a weird way Die Hard is one of the movies that starts to accelerate first acts. Because the first act is rather short here. If you want to call it acts. I mean, one of the nice things about watching Die Hard is you never feel an act ever. It just sort of proceeds. Today people might say to you, “We need to start with these terrorists doing something terrible so we know who they are before we meet our guy.” No. This is a much better way. And in so many ways this movie is special and works because of an actor that we were introduced to, the late, great Alan Rickman, who seems like he has parachuted in from an entirely other genre.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** He’s like a Bond villain almost. He’s brilliant. He’s so well spoken. And fascinating. And small in his behaviors. And we’d never had villains like that. Traditionally in these movies we have psychos or we have steroid freaks.

**John:** Yeah. And so if he were the Bond villain then we would have a James Bond opposite him. So to have like an ordinary guy opposite him is fascinating. The other thing I think works so well about Alan Rickman’s character is from his perspective he’s Danny Ocean and this is Ocean’s 11.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so, yes, he’s willing to kill some people to do it, but like killing people and doing evil is not his goal at all. His goal is the $640 million of bearers bonds. He has a plan for how he’s going to do that. And he is methodical. He has assembled a team. You could have a whole other movie which is just about him putting the script together and planning this heist.

**Craig:** Yeah. And what’s really interesting about his whole the villain is the hero of his own movie essence is that while we have a very simple motivation which we need, we’re certainly clear about what he wants. He makes it clear to Takagi, “Who said we were terrorists?” So that’s the first big twist. Like, oh, they’re not terrorists, they’re thieves, which was great. But later you also learn that he was a terrorist. He was part of a terrorist movement. And they kicked him out theoretically because he actually was just more interested in being a thief. That’s a fascinating guy.

I’m not as interested in zealots as I am in calculating people who are just one millimeter away from the reality of what our hero is like. A man of purpose, as it were.

**John:** So thinking about him as the Danny Ocean of this movie, he has a plan and a timeline and they lay out the timeline very clearly. So, it’s going to take two hours to break this code, then 2.5 hours to break through these different locks. So, you know, we very explicitly put out the exposition of this is what’s going to need to happen. You’re giving the audience a road map for these are the things that are going to have to happen for this to progress so we know that, OK, the movie cannot be over until all these things have happened.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s perfect. Of all the mechanisms to provide an audience with a sense of structure. When we talk about structure we’re saying something is holding all of this up. There’s a spine. And to say here’s this big ass vault and it has seven locks. And it’s going to take me a few hours to get through one through six. But I’ve already told you I don’t know how to get through seven. And Alan Rickman says, “Don’t worry, I’ll handle number seven.” We know that there is a countdown of locks. Literally a number. And we can watch them as they go. It’s not a ticking clock at the end. The whole thing has a clock to it and that’s gorgeous.

**John:** Yeah. Once they start shooting up the party and once things start going down, John McClane has escaped from there. He’s running through the hallways. He’s going up the stairs. And he starts to do what I think is appropriate. What is the best thing for me to do right now? And he doesn’t just charge in to try to save everybody. He’s like I need to get help and he works on trying to get help, which is a good, natural response, and not a movie hero response, but is actually what a real person would try to do. How do I get somebody to show up here?

**Craig:** Right. And there’s a line that Jeb Stuart and Steven de Souza have in here. He is present but hiding when he sees Mr. Takagi murdered by Alan Rickman. And he runs away. They hear him. They chase after him. But they don’t see him. He escapes. And when we see him next he is by himself and he is saying, “Why didn’t you do something, you idiot?” And then he goes, “Because you would have been as dead as he is.” So in his mind he’s talking it through so that we know – and this is important – you can feel the note on this. So is he a coward? No, he’s not a coward. He literally says out loud, “I’m not a coward. I’m smart.”

**John:** His plan is to contact the police and get police out there and get this handled. He tries to do it and this is the first of many classic examples of just like he has a plan and it falls apart because of this obstacle, things he couldn’t anticipate.

The police just don’t take him seriously.

**Craig:** Right. This is the beginning of incompetent police work. But before we get to the police we have another relationship that we learn about, for a very fleeting moment, but it is perfectly efficient. It is the relationship between Karl and his brother. These are two German brothers, although one of them is a Russian in real life. A ballet dancer at that. And they are both criminals, obviously as part of this gang. Karl seems to be a bit of a hot head. His brother is a bit more methodical and careful. And that’s all we know. That’s all we need to know. Because what’s going to happen is Karl’s brother will be the first terrorist that dies, not because McClane murders him, importantly because they fight. He doesn’t murder him. They fight and they fall down the stairs and Karl’s brother breaks his neck.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Smart choice. And now we know that Karl, hot head that he is, has become essentially the nemesis here, which is really smart. Hans Gruber is the brain. He’s the real villain. But Karl is like nature. And you can’t stop Karl. Wonderful. We do have gratuitous nudity as well, very classic 1980s. Classic.

**John:** Yes. Hard to fit into a modern movie than before.

**Craig:** Wouldn’t do it.

**John:** We’re fast forwarding through the movie as we look at this. One of the things I will say is that I was impressed by the photography overall in Die Hard. A thing you definitely notice about 1980 that was hard to do is big wide night shots. We just didn’t have the technology to make those look great. And so there are moments where the helicopter gunships are coming and it’s OK as long as they’re in the city space. But there’s just not enough light to sort of light the city of Los Angeles. And some of the big nighttime shots are really dark.

**Craig:** Yeah. They do a great job here. They also use so many different environments in this building. You feel like they devoured this building and used every possible piece. You have cinderblock environments. You have construction areas. And they even set up the fact that the building is not complete. Takagi says, “It’s still a work in progress.” And you can see that. So that’s explained.

You’re in elevator shafts. You’re in ducts. You’re in these beautiful offices. You’re in an atrium. They really do use everything, every part of this building. And then that great roof. I never – and I still don’t – understand exactly how a building like this is put together. It seems like it has been put together for the purposes of a movie. There’s all these cool railings and grills and fans and things. But it never crosses the line into what I would call Michael Bay-ville where everything seems art directed. It doesn’t. It actually seems real even though it’s not.

**John:** In terms of talking about the physical spaces, watching this again I noticed that there’s a pinup poster on one wall. And we come back to it a second time. He notices it the first time and he comes back to it again. And it’s a very useful way of reestablishing, OK, we’re back on that same floor. Because things would otherwise be very confusing.

**Craig:** Again, using gratuitous nudity.

**John:** But it helps you remember that you’ve seen that thing before and we’re back in that same place.

**Craig:** I remembered it.

**John:** Otherwise rooms could look the same.

**Craig:** No, exactly. And this was another way that they could answer these questions. And these are the kinds of questions that you and I get all the time. I remember when I turned the first script in for the first Chernobyl. One of the questions was, “How are we going to tell all these people apart? We don’t know the actors. We don’t know their names. And they’re all wearing the exact same thing.” And we were like I guess we’re going to have to cast carefully. But the truth is these are the things you’ve got to worry about.

**John:** You do.

**Craig:** I could see in Die Hard like how are we going to know what floor we’re on. Well, most of the times you don’t. But some of the times – there was a computer room. That was its own thing.

**John:** I had no sense of where that computer room was in the building. It does not matter at all.

**Craig:** Doesn’t matter.

**John:** I know the lobby is on the ground floor. I know the party is up high. The reason why we needed that pinup is because the fact that we’ve been there before means he has a knowledge of how to get out of that floor, which is very important.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** All right. So finally he gets up to the roof. He uses the radio. He calls the police. They don’t believe him. But ultimately they say, “OK, we’ll send a car to do a drive by.”

**Craig:** It’s insane. So in this world the Los Angeles police department their special thing that they monitor, they’re all in some kind of weird Death Star environment. It’s this dark room with blinking lights. And they don’t believe anybody who calls them about anything.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** There’s even gunshots in the radio. They don’t care. And John McClane bizarrely – oh, well, he doesn’t identify himself as a police officer in part because he knows that they’re listening. And then you get this other relationship in the movie which frankly for me as a kid was the relationship I felt, more than his relationship with Holly.

**John:** Well let’s talk about Al Powell. So Al Powell is the guy who shows up. When we first meet Al Powell he is buying Twinkies at a convenient store. It’s not an amazing scene. It establishes him as an ordinary Joe. Again, a working class man.

**Craig:** You know–

**John:** He’s not eating the fancy pastries. He’s eating Twinkies.

**Craig:** If you watch this movie one thing you will notice is that everything that happens that’s funny happens when Alan Rickman is doing it, or when Bruce Willis is doing it. If those guys aren’t in the scene and funny things are happening they are not funny.

**John:** They’re meant to be funny, but they don’t really work.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think John McTiernan was necessarily the funniest director. So, your choice there is he’s an overweight cop and he’s buying Twinkies, but he has him buying like 12? Who can eat 12 Twinkie boxes?

**John:** They’re talking about his wife being pregnant. It didn’t make sense.

**Craig:** None of it works. None of it works. Similarly when Hart Bochner is giving his whole, “Hey, bubby, I’m going to…” Doesn’t work. It’s just not funny. Rickman is funny and Willis is funny. But, Al Powell is instantly likeable.

**John:** That’s what you needed.

**Craig:** He is a sweetheart. He lets the 7-11 guy kind of push him around even, you know. And he’s smart, clearly. And we’re immediately on his side. We feel good about this. We’re just a little worried that maybe he doesn’t fit the action hero vibe. So if this is the only friend that our action hero has, what does that mean for our story?

**John:** The other crucial thing about the Al Powell/John McClane relationship is that McClane can’t be honest with him about certain things because other people are listening in.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So it’s that challenge of how you establish a relationship with somebody you don’t know and who cannot be fully honest with you. And so that starts the whole cowboy discussion. And call me Roy. All the stuff that they’re doing, they can talk about some things, but there’s a limit to it. And that’s a great obstacle to put in front of your characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, Al Powell literally says to his awful boss, who was the awful teacher from Breakfast Club, “I think he’s a cop, because I basically have a hunch.” Meaning we’re talking guy talk to each other. Like we’re men. We’re having a man conversation. Again, you pencil neck twerps would never understand. But that is the bond they have. They’re two regular guys.

And that eventually will blossom into something really meaningful when they have this kind of – one of the more famous “my brother fell into a lake” stories in any movie ever. Which is the story of what happened to Al Powell.

**John:** Yeah. So when we get to one hour, one minute into the film we introduce a brand new obstacle, brand new character, which is the news reporter who wants the scoop. And so this conversation that has been happening on the radio, they get word of it. They get word that there’s an incident happening at this tower. The news reporter is obsessed with getting the scoop and getting there. It’s late to establish new characters, but one of the things I love about this movie is that this movie is not afraid to introduce new characters late and just create new problems and new obstacles. So this is a character who has a three or four beat arc and it mostly works.

**Craig:** It mostly works. Look, one of the beautiful things about casting is sometimes that solves your screenwriting problem. If you cast William Atherton in 1988 and you put him in that suit and that tie you know he’s a problem. He’s a jerk who cares only about himself. He’s going to be arrogant. And he’s going to screw things up in a way that makes the audience go, “No, you idiot!” That’s what he does. You don’t need a lot of explanation.

But all these pins have been lined up. We know that this marriage is in trouble. We know that Holly knows that John’s running around the building because only John can make people that upset.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We know that Karl is a hot head who now has a reason to hate John McClane irrationally. We know that Hans Gruber is a cold, calculating man. We know that there’s a guy out there who understands what’s going on but he himself is limited. He seems scared and timid. All these things are all set up and the pins will fall.

**John:** Yes. And consider the studio note saying like, “Oh, can we set up the news reporter earlier?” The answer is no. Because if we set up the news reporter earlier we would expect to have an arc or more important stuff and you would need to be checking in with that character again. And we’d really have the same problem that we have with Argyle in the limo which is like there’s not enough for him to do, and so we have to sort of keep checking in and giving him BS stuff to sort of remind you that he exists.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would be cut. You don’t need – I’m sure that they looked at Ghostbusters and said, yeah, they didn’t need to set up the EPA guy either. Just being him in. Announce that he’s EPA and have him start being a dick.

**John:** That’s all you need.

**Craig:** That’s all you need.

**John:** All right. So then we get to another big action sequence. Send in the tank. Which is the first idea – send in the car which is really this tank which is going to charge up. It’s the first time we see that – this is also very 1980s. Very sort of like bring in the military, like bring in the big power stuff. And we also see that the bad guys have [unintelligible] grenades and they were prepared for this.

**Craig:** Just like John McClane warned them. But because they are elitists, probably globalists, they don’t care. They are too self-assured. And through one of the strangest exercises of chain and command ever they make one of the dumbest possible decisions that no police department – I mean, police must have been so frustrated watching these things back then. But regardless, it goes poorly for them.

And this is important because what the movie continually reinforces for us is that the only way this is going to be fixed is by one guy in that building. Not only is the cavalry not going to help. They’re going to make things worse over and over and over. And they’re going to make things worse in a beautiful way.

When the cops finally do arrive Hans Gruber says to his men, “OK, calm down, it’s a little earlier than we thought. But it was inevitable. It was going to happen no matter what. And in some ways it needed to happen.” Well that’s an interesting bit. And I definitely didn’t pick up on that as a kid as being somehow foreshadowing in any way, shape, or form. But you got the sense that that wasn’t normal. Like this guy really is in remarkable control.

One more screenwriting note that I love. John McClane makes his presence known to the terrorists by after he kills Karl’s brother he duct tapes him to a chair. He writes, “Now I have a machine gun, Ho-Ho-Ho,” on his shirt, which is the greatest thing of all time.

**John:** Writes it on a [crosstalk].

**Craig:** And he sends him down the elevator. Alan Rickman is explaining to the hostages that there’s nothing they can do. They have thought of everything. Nothing has been left to chance. And then the elevator door opens and there’s one of their guys murdered. It’s really funny. And it makes us appreciate the whole thing. That little bit of kind of counterpoint was I thought really well done. And again Alan Rickman makes it funny.

**John:** Yes. All right. So the tank did not go well. Basically we see the police fail again and again, because they are not doing what John McClane would have them do. John McClane has limited ability to influence what they can do and he doesn’t want to reveal who he actually is.

**Craig:** Obstacles.

**John:** Yes. These are obstacles. These are all good things. Now, Ellis, who is another person we know is going to be a problem, because we set him up from the start that–

**Craig:** He loves cocaine and he wants to sleep with Holly.

**John:** And he wants to intervene. He wants to prove that he’s the person who can solve the situation. He goes in to negotiate.

**Craig:** More great Alan Rickman stuff. Because Hart Bochner is like, “You know, the way I see it you guys are…” And Alan Rickman just goes, “Amazing. You figured it all out.” He’s just so great. He’s so funny. And as that’s happening you’re like, oh man, Hart Bochner. You’re going to die. I can’t even get excited about you dying. You’re so definitely going to die.

**John:** But what surprised me watching this again is I assumed that the Ellis character was going to give up Holly. And instead he tries to play this thing that they’re old friends. And for a moment you’re like, oh, you’re not as dumb as I thought you were. This could work out. And you have little moments of hope. And then it doesn’t go well and McClane says like don’t believe this guy.

**Craig:** He’s trying to save him. And this is a classic hero moment. Great thing for screenwriters to do. When your hero attempts – is such a good person, despite the many killings that they are doing, that they’re even trying to help somebody that’s trying to betray and hurt them.

**John:** Yes. Ellis does not survive this discussion.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** Nope. And a good escalation. After Ellis has been killed, Rickman takes the radio, holds it out to the crowd so that McClane can hear everyone screaming. Making it clear to McClane and to the police outside this has ratchet up a notch.

**Craig:** And now you get the sense that Hans Gruber is punching back. Also incredibly important. So one of the things that I talked about in How to Make a Movie is when your character is kind of doing well, you have to punish them for it. Because you need to feel that what they eventually have to do has to be really hard. You just don’t want to give them too many wins. You want to make it hurt as much as you can. So in the theory that you’re an angry god punishing your hero, Die Hard does a great job.

**John:** Absolutely. Rickman asks for some prisoner releases. He wants these terrorists released from prison. Again, it’s a misdirection. And at this point we fully know that it’s not real. But it starts things scrambling. And it’s also going to be a way to involve the FBI because it goes beyond what the local police could do. And we realize that Gruber actually wanted a certain plan to be put into place.

**Craig:** It’s a great plot twist. The FBI is even stupider than the Los Angeles Police Department, which again – note, again, when Rickman or Willis are not on screen the jokes are not great jokes. The whole like we’re two FBI agents with the same names, it just–

**John:** Actually I kind of liked that.

**Craig:** It’s fine, but it’s not ha-ha funny.

**John:** Here’s what it was. I liked that they showed up and they were given some line and some bit of business to let me know – some sense that they did exist before they walked onto that screen.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** There’s also a moment in the helicopter where they say, you know, “It reminds me of Saigon.” I was in Junior High. There is a tension there before this all happens.

**Craig:** Sure. Yeah. It’s just broad.

**John:** It’s broad.

**Craig:** It’s broad. I mean, that’s the thing. When you look at what – I mean, Alan Rickman, who I didn’t know Alan Rickman before Die Hard. He walks over and he looks at that shirt and he says in his accent, which is barely German-tinged, but mostly just Alan Rickman, “Now I have a machine gun.” And they were so smart to smush up the shirt so he has to push it down. “Ho-Ho-Ho.” It’s so great. He’s so funny. Ah, the best. I miss him.

**John:** So an hour and 28 in. We go back to the newsroom and this is a scene that no one remembers, but they have an expert on terrorism there who has written a book about terrorism. And they’re interviewing him and they say like Helsinki, and then he goes Sweden, no Finland, just to show that they’re buffoons.

**Craig:** Experts are stupid and bad. And only the average Joe on the street can solve a problem.

**John:** Looking at this I was trying to decide why it stayed in the movie and I think it’s actually just to provide a little space between some other beats. I feel like this scene could be dropped, but you look at what’s before and after they needed just a tiny breath and this little scene with this terrorism guy gives you a tiny breath. And reminds you that the news people are going to be in this movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. It does. It may also be the result of personal ax-grinding. I mean, sometimes when things stay in movies it’s because somebody goes, “Yeah.” Like maybe Joel Silver was like, “Yeah, screw you experts. I love it. It’s staying in.” You never know with these things.

**John:** Now, one hour, 31 minutes into the film a surprising moment happens which is a face-to-face meeting between Gruber and McClane, which is completely unexpected and it’s not set up. It’s suddenly just happening. Gruber is for some reason looking at the detonators that are on the ceiling. We don’t know what they’re there for. Is it a bit of a stretch that he’s doing this himself? Sure. But most of his men are dead, so OK. But it’s one of the sort of signature moments that happens in this film which is that you have the two characters together. They don’t know who each other is. And we see that Gruber is really smart in the moment and is playing himself as a hostage who escaped.

**Craig:** It is one of the best things I’ve ever seen in a movie because until it happens you don’t even realize it was possible. You’re so surprised by it. It’s not like you’re sitting around going, you know, they haven’t seen each other’s faces. He doesn’t know what Hans Gruber looks like. What if he runs into Hans Gruber? Will he know? Because they’re in a building. I mean, Nakatomi Corporation apparently is a business corporation that does business. We don’t know what they do.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** But they’re all in suits and ties. And so is Hans Gruber.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** In fact, he makes a point of saying that he’s dressed like them. That he has suits just like Mr. Takagi. Ah, it’s gorgeous. When that happens it is so shocking, it is so delightful, and it’s also terrifying. Because your hero that you root for has never been more vulnerable. The movie actually becomes a horror film at that point. And it is awesome.

**John:** So let’s talk about who has access to what information, because that becomes a crucial thing throughout all of Die Hard is that as the audience we tend to have more information than any of the characters do. We’re largely omniscient. We get to see everyone’s point of view. So, we know a lot of things that McClane doesn’t know. We know things that Gruber doesn’t know. That’s all really helpful.

In this one small tiny moment the delicious agony is that we know that McClane is in great danger and McClane does not know that he’s in great danger. And we are terrified that something bad is going to happen to him. And the movie has to make the decision about are we going to show to the audience that McClane has caught on or not. And I bet they went back and forth 100 times over that.

**Craig:** It also does this incredible service to the ending, because what you don’t want is for them to come face-to-face at the end and go, oh, that’s what you look like. And now let us have our final. This creates an additional level of relationship between the two of them. There is a formidability to this back and forth. And if you are looking at Die Hard as a celebration of the common man against the snobby thinkers of the world, the so-called smart people, this is what you would do. This is where the common man may take a step back because that smart guy is plotting and scheming the way that smart people do. They can manipulate. They can fool you. But in the end you’ll beat them with your heart and muscle.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it’s a great moment. And I think that there’s a moment where he realizes that Hans Gruber is not–

**John:** Watching it again, it doesn’t telegraph itself too big or too loud that he really is ahead of him. It’s not until you actually hear the click-click that the gun is empty that you realize that McClane was onto him or at least was suspicious.

**Craig:** Right. There’s apparently a scene that was cut, or a moment that was cut where, a bunch of moments, where every time McClane would kill one of these guys, when he first kills Karl’s brother he–

**John:** Takes off the watch.

**Craig:** Yeah. He checks his shirt and goes, OK, they’re dressed in fancy Euro clothes. But, yes, he looks at the watch and apparently he was supposed to look, and there’s footage of him, looking at all their watches. Because they all sync their watches in a scene that was also cut. So when he notices Hans Gruber’s watch that’s when he apparently in the cut version, the cut scene, that’s when he actually put it all together on screen.

**John:** Following this moment is another iconic Shoot the Glass.

**Craig:** Shoot the Glass.

**John:** Basically there’s a lot of automatic weapon fire happening. Somehow desks are able to withstand a tremendous amount of bullets.

**Craig:** Yep. [Unintelligible] armor.

**John:** But by shooting at the glass he sees that McClane is barefoot. We’ve established that Gruber knows that McClane is barefoot and he tells them shoot at that glass because it will hurt him.

**Craig:** One of the best and strangest moments in film history. A German man says to another German man, “Shoot the glass,” in German. And the other German man just looks at him like, what?

**John:** [Speaks in German].

**Craig:** And he repeats it in English and that’s what the German guy understands. Shoot the glass. It is so odd. I have been laughing about this since 1988. But I love it. What can I say?

**John:** So if this wasn’t bad enough, at one hour and 38 minutes the news reporters have discovered John McClane’s home address. And so we know that’s a thing that’s going to happen.

**Craig:** Oh, William Atherton. So this accelerates the ending. So this is what’s pouring fuel on the ending. And now we know that there’s a real ticking clock. So we have the ticking clock of the vault being opened. But the ticking clock for John McClane isn’t enough like we’ll kill you. The real ticking clock is we know who you are, so we know who Holly is, so now she’s in jeopardy.

**John:** Yep. She’s in individual jeopardy.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** As he’s picking glass out of his feet we have this scene which I think you referred to earlier on which is the Al scene of “I shot a kid.” Talk to me about that.

**Craig:** Correct. So we sometimes talk about this about “my brother drowned” scene. A character will tell a sob story about their past. It usually involves somebody dying that they couldn’t save but wanted to. And in this case it’s a variation of that. Al Powell shot a kid and it was a mistake. It was justified. They craft the story very carefully so that you understand he wasn’t like some hot head jerk cop. He really did think his life was in danger. He just was wrong. And he’s been beating himself up over it ever since. And therefore can’t get back on the horse. He’s not suitable really to be a real cop because as we know from these movies real cops shoot people.

**John:** They do.

**Craig:** That’s what they do. They’re constantly plugging people and they don’t hesitate. So that’s his damage is that he actually feels bad about murdering someone, which is amazing. But, it is the kind of hetero male bonding that was allowable in 1988.

**John:** Absolutely. I think it’s an important moment. It gives Bruce Willis something to do other than just pick the glass out of his feet. Bruce Willis is doing a great job of acting the pain of that. And it’s a gruesome moment. But if he hadn’t had a conversation during that time you would never have been able to stay in that scene as long as you did.

**Craig:** This is the last break you get. And it’s important to give people a break. Actually it prepares them. Because what’s going to happen from this point forward is a relentless race to an explosive end, and then another explosive end. It’s going to be exciting. They need a breather. And they need some context. And they need to feel something, especially because this is going to set up the ending for Al Powell.

**John:** So once the news report happens Gruber realizes that Holly is McClane’s wife. A great line I loved here, she says that, “He’s a common thief.” “I’m an exceptional thief. And since I’m moving up to kidnapping you should be more polite.”

**Craig:** Right. And the way he says these things is just so great.

**John:** And the FBI of course is going to accelerate things in stupid, dumb ways. So first off they want to cut the power. That was always part of the plan because the electromagnetic locks–

**Craig:** He says in the beginning, their hacker safe cracker says, “The problem with the seven is it’s an electromagnetic lock. And the power cannot be turned off locally. It has to be the whole grid.”

**John:** Does that make any sense? No. But it doesn’t have to.

**Craig:** Doesn’t have to. Makes no sense. But Hans Gruber, he knows that the FBI as a matter of protocol will shut the power off on the grid. Which again, OK, fine, not sure about that either. And he says something that has been rattling around in my brain for all these many 32 years. And that is, “You ask for a miracle, I give you the F. B. I.” And now musically, there’s been little hints of Ode to Joy throughout this whole thing, and weirdly usually presented with Hans Gruber in a kind of weird creepy style. And now the full Ode to Joy begins. And, again, this is a smart again.

**John:** Yeah. Again, this is the Ocean’s 11 part of it. He’s Danny Ocean. He had a secret special plan. This is also around the time where a van backs out of this truck, or an ambulance backs out of the truck which is meant to be their getaway thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It doesn’t really pay off right. And in reading about that it looks like there was a different thing that sort of got cut and moved about that. But we’re seeing their whole plan and it does look like their plan is going to work out properly.

**Craig:** Precisely. And you want that. You want to believe that they have many more tricks up their sleeves. You want to feel like your hero is behind the eight ball here because the only way they’re going to succeed, the only way that John McClane is going to save his wife and defeat Hans Gruber and these kidnappers and save all these hostages is by doing something we can’t foresee. Something that is going to require him to do things he didn’t even know he could do.

**John:** Yep. Including defeat the giant Russian guy in a fist fight.

**Craig:** Correct. And that is something that we’ve been waiting for the whole movie. We’ve been waiting for this beast, this uncontrollable irrational beast that even Hans Gruber can’t control to face off with John McClane because, well, he feels like death is coming for you. He’s huge and he’s angry. But, you know, the good guy always wins.

**John:** The good guy is going to win.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. He chokes him with a chain.

**John:** With a chain. So by being smarter and more wily he’s going to beat him. Because he’s not going to beat him through–

**Craig:** You can’t punch that guy out.

**John:** So the plan was to blow up the roof when the helicopters land because it will create such chaos. It won’t be clear who lived and who died. The roof does blow up. John McClane does jump off the building with the hose. It really is an amazing–

**Craig:** It’s awesome.

**John:** Amazing idea. Amazing moment. Really well shot. It works great.

**Craig:** It’s great.

**John:** And I loved that the second beat of like shooting through the window, getting in, and getting dragged back out by the weight of things. Just remembering that gravity exists. Terrific.

**Craig:** The physics of it are great. It was beautifully directed. I mean, John McTiernan did an incredible job there. Yeah, no, love it.

**John:** Cool. Finally, we get the final showdown. So Holly is now a full damsel hostage. We have Gruber and one guy who is still left alive.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we get to the moment of John McClane only has two bullets. There’s no way he’s going to be able to make this thing happen. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to do, but we see him looking at some wrapping people and such.

**Craig:** Because it’s a Christmas movie.

**John:** Because it’s a Christmas movie. It’s fundamentally a Christmas movie. He ends up when told to drop his weapon he drops his weapon. Of course he has the gun taped to his back.

**Craig:** His police gun.

**John:** His police gun. His real gun.

**Craig:** The only gun you really need as a cop.

**John:** Absolutely. Because only terrorists use–

**Craig:** Only terrorists. That stuff, it’s like poison. No, a man uses a gun that fits in his hand.

**John:** And then with two amazing perfect shots, because he’s apparently an amazing shot.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Even though no one tends to get hit by actual bullets in this movie, he is able to hit two people in precisely a single shot.

**Craig:** Storm Trooper rules at work.

**John:** Absolutely. Gruber goes through the window, still holding on to Holly.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** The watch has to be removed.

**Craig:** The watch needs to be removed because honestly, you know, she needs to come back home. It’s regressive. But regardless at least it was set up. And Hans Gruber falls to his death with this great look on his face of like how did this happen. Like this is not how this is supposed to end. He seemed so confused.

I also like the fact that honestly, so 1988 green screen was still kind of, you know, it had been used for about a decade or more, but it was still a little funky. And I kind of like that it’s funky. It made things special back then. Now I just feel like, oh yeah, it looks so real that it’s fake.

**John:** So the legend is that they actually dropped Rickman before they said they were going to drop him and that’s why he has that expression that he has. They said we’ll drop you on three and they dropped him on two.

**Craig:** Oh, I like that. That’s cool. I mean, he definitely looks scared.

**John:** He does look scared. Let’s do the Lindsay Doran, making sure that we’re talking about what the real victory is in the movie versus the fake victory. Because Alan Rickman’s death is not the victory of the movie. The victory of the movie is getting back with Holly. And it is walking out of the building with the wife. You’re both wearing your first responder jackets over your ruined clothes.

**Craig:** As you should in these movies. You always have to wear a blanket or a jacket because saving the world makes you cold. We know this for a fact. But in the end there are two relationships we care about. John McClane and Holly. And John McClane and Al Powell. And both of those relationships are how this movie ends. That’s how a movie should end. Karl rises from the near dead–

**John:** Classic Fatal Attraction. You have to.

**Craig:** Classic Fatal Attraction. But who kills him? Al Powell, who has regained the courage to murder people. [laughs] I assume he gets a promotion because of that.

**John:** Absolutely. It’s like a Christmas Carol in a very messed up way.

**Craig:** I can kill people. [laughs]

**John:** The miracle of Christmas.

**Craig:** Yes, Merry Christmas everyone.

**John:** Oh, and then Argyle drives them home.

**Craig:** And then Argyle.

**John:** And gets the last line of the movie.

**Craig:** What is the last line of the movie?

**John:** Last line of the movie is, “If this is their idea of Christmas, I got to be there for New Year’s.”

**Craig:** Well there you go. There’s your sequel setup. That also feels like Joel Silver.

**John:** It does. And so watching the movie I was like, oh my god, like the last line of Go is almost the same line.

**Craig:** What is it?

**John:** I had no idea. “So, what are we doing for New Year’s?”

**Craig:** It’s also the last line of Chernobyl. [laughs]

**John:** It’s a great last line. It makes sense. To me the going home with Argyle in the limo, fine, whatever.

**Craig:** It’s full circle.

**John:** It’s full circle. It is full circle.

**Craig:** They’re together. They’ve solved all their problems. And they’ll never have another problem again. Now, of course, Bruce Willis does have many more problems. There’s been a Die Hard 2, 3, 4, possibly 5?

**John:** I think there’s only four.

**Craig:** Four. One of the problems, sequels are really, really, really hard. And one of the problems is that the movie that happens in 1988 is of its time. As the years go on this guy isn’t really of his time. So, you know, it was harder and harder. I mean, I didn’t mind the sequels. Just, you know, this was special.

**John:** Well, also coincidences can happen once. And so–

**Craig:** It’s a little Murder She Wrote. Like maybe you’re the terrorist.

**John:** Yeah, maybe you’re the problem.

**Craig:** Maybe just stay home.

**John:** So let’s wrap this up by talking about what lessons we should be taking from Die Hard and which lessons we should not be taking from Die Hard. My lessons are that it is important to really be thinking about who is the central character in this story and not it’s this genre in a blank. And sort of like don’t just create the environment. You actually have to create who is the fascinating character in this environment who you want to follow through it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would say that the big screenwriting lesson that I draw from Die Hard is if you want something to happen that solves a problem in a cool way in your script, that’s great, now go back and set it up. And don’t set it up in a way that’s obvious. Set it up in a way that will make the eventual emergence of this thing surprising and fun. Gives the audience a sense that there was an intelligence working behind the scenes that they weren’t aware of.

**John:** Yeah. The bad versions of this movie that I’ve seen since then, they do things in the setup that feel like, oh god, that’s so clearly a setup that’s going to payoff later on. And so when you can hide the setup that is so smart. So like the computer system with Holly’s name. That is a hide the setup kind of thing. And that’s what works.

**Craig:** Correct. One of the great terrible setups of all time is in a movie I love. Real Genius. I love Real Genius. William Atherton is in Real Genius.

**John:** Again.

**Craig:** Playing a dick. And early on in the movie he says to Val Kilmer, “I hate the smell of popcorn.” [laughs] Val Kilmer is eating popcorn. He goes, “What is that? I hate that smell. I hate the smell of popcorn. It’s disgusting.” Which is weird. And then at the end of the movie the big comeuppance is that they fill his house with popcorn. It’s just – when you see it you’re like there’s literally no reason for this to be here except to set something up later. So, yeah, don’t be obvious with the setups. They’re really good about this. And I also think there’s no wasted energy in this movie. Everything feels like it’s needed and necessary. And every scene propels to the next one.

**John:** Which is very crucial. Craig, thank you for this deep dive Die Hard. Merry Christmas.

**Craig:** Merry Christmas, John. And you know what?

**John:** What?

**Craig:** If this is your idea of Christmas, I can’t wait to see what you do on New Year’s.

**John:** Thanks.

Links:

* Read the DIE HARD script on [Weekend Read](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/).
* [Feminist Analysis of Die Hard](https://anotherangrywoman.com/2016/12/18/making-fists-with-your-toes-towards-a-feminist-analysis-of-die-hard/)
* Sign up for [premium here](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Andy Roninson ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/from-broadway-to-hollywood).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August. And this is Episode 430 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig is off an assignment. He is literally stuck in a writer’s room. But luckily we have the incomparable Aline Brosh McKenna here to pick up the slack. Welcome back, Aline.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Woo!

**John:** Woo! Aline!

**Aline:** Let’s dance.

**John:** Today on the program we’re talking about TV musicals, LA versus New York. Pitch decks. And a bonus segment on online stan culture.

**Aline:** Ooh.

**John:** Special guest Tim Federle will join us in a moment, but first we have follow up on assistant pay. So let’s welcome back Scriptnotes producer, Megana Rao, to get us caught up. Welcome back, Megana.

**Megana Rao:** Hi, thanks.

**John:** Hi. So, Megana, the big news this past week was that the results of this big assistant survey came out. There were more than 1,500 assistants, current Hollywood assistants who responded. What are some of the takeaways we got from this survey?

**Megana:** Yeah, so I think the results of the survey were pretty validating for most assistants. So we saw that 64% of respondents reported making $50,000 or less per year. And as we talked in the town hall you need a minimum of $53,600 to not be considered rent-burdened in LA.

**John:** And rent-burdened is, you know, the idea is that you shouldn’t be spending more than 30% of your take home pay on rent, right?

**Megana:** Correct. So this means that those folks are spending 30% at least on just housing costs in LA.

**John:** So let’s break down the after taxes weekly pay. So, after everything is subtracted what they’re getting in their bank accounts. So it looks like 14% of these assistants were making between $500 and $600. 19% were between $600 and $700. 22% were between $700 and $800. And 17% basically were between $800 and $900. So, all these levels are pretty challenging to make a living. That upper tier is probably the sweet spot where someone can actually sort of do the thing they need to do just to stay in Los Angeles.

**Megana:** Exactly. And I think something else that you see from this survey is that, you know, with the nature of Hollywood and the way you get work you’re not consistently working every week. So, that’s just for the weeks that you are able to find work.

**John:** Right. Now, Aline, you were a showrunner on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. So, it was probably your first time having staff and having assistants. Did these numbers surprise you at all?

**Aline:** No, in fact, my assistant Jeff Kasanoff is sitting here.

**John:** Hi Jeff.

**Aline:** And we were talking about this yesterday that none of this was surprising. So, what I didn’t realize and what I think we’re going to talk maybe a little bit about how people can help, but one thing is that when I first had assistants they were hired by the studio and I didn’t think to ask. You know, you sort of assume like they are a big, responsible studio. This is what they do. They’re probably doing it correctly. That’s dumb.

So, you have to ask and find out. It took me a little while to figure out like, hey, what are you making? How much overtime do you need? You know, to sort of be proactive about making sure that the assistant is being taken care of if you’re working for another employer. But, no, I’m not surprised. And particularly I know that the agencies are really challenging for people to work at. And it’s why they have a large percentage of people – assistants there are children of.

**John:** Now, Megana, some of the emails we got in were talking about, you know, I was pressured to pay for some things myself. And I wondered whether that was just anecdotal or if that was a systemic problem. Based on the survey it looks like 28% of assistants felt like they had to pay something for themselves out of pocket. So, between $100 and $200 out of pocket.

So we had the example of the guy who had to sort of make up the overages for the lunch orders. But other stuff that the assistant was basically just not reimbursed for. So, it looks like that’s a pretty systemic problem.

**Megana:** And that’s just for $100 to $200. But a lot of assistants are paying like a little bit each week that they, you know, don’t feel comfortable getting reimbursement for. Yeah.

**Aline:** I mean, that’s just – that’s horrifying.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So, again, just to skip ahead to some suggestions I’m going to make later, you know, one of the things is that you really have to work on the communication a lot upfront with an assistant so that they feel comfortable coming to you, especially because they may have worked in other environments that were scary, where they were not acknowledged for coming forward on things. So, when someone starts you can’t just say my door is open. Because just try and remember when you were 20 to 30, or 20 to 35, whatever. It’s intimidating. You can’t just say my door is open. You have to go and say, hey, I noticed you used your own credit card for these coffees. Did everybody pay you back?

You have to be proactive because there’s a big barrier that people have in those entry level jobs. They’re just afraid to say like, “Hey, I didn’t have enough on the P-card and so I bought the Thin Grams that everybody wants for the room. I bought them myself.” So that they feel comfortable coming to you and telling you that.

**Megana:** Especially because it seems like a lot of assistants in their past or maybe their friends have been dismissed for much smaller reasons than approaching a showrunner and asking these difficult questions about salary.

**John:** Aline, it strikes me as strange that you are a person who is running a show, you have so many responsibilities on your back. Are you the best person for that assistant to be coming to or should there be someone else on staff who is responsible for that kind of managerial function?

**Aline:** I mean, I think if you’re in charge you have to be in charge. I mean, you can encourage people to direct them to the person who might help them, but then you have to make sure that they got the help. You have to understand that like this is the most vulnerable class of folks and that it might be an intimidating environment for them and step forward and try and intervene. And that really is something that I learned over the course of the show which is that not just assistants by the way but young writers or PAs or anybody on the show really might not feel comfortable coming to you. And the idea of my door is open doesn’t quite do it, because it is intimidating to walk through that door.

So, just try and keep your eye on it, but not only that but to say really come and pull me aside and say, “Hey, this is a bummer for me. I’m having trouble with the studio getting reimbursed for this, or even getting my P-card.”

**John:** What is a P-card? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

**Aline:** Oh, it’s production. It’s the card that they give you so you can buy stuff.

**John:** So it would be like the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend production credit card?

**Aline:** Yes. But it takes a while to get it. And then going to pick it up and then what you’re doing in the meantime. And I wish that I had known more when I started, because it took me a little while. And the other thing I would say, this is true of all showrunning things, even if you are a very experienced, seasoned, come up the ranks TV writer which I was not, ask the people who do the job to tell you best practices. So, when I started with the writer’s room I went around and said tell me the best and worst practices from your previous shows. And we got so much information from that about how to run the room. And I would rely on them and the same thing I learned to do that with the assistants which is to say like what’s the best way to handle this? How would you like me to handle this? Who do you want me to talk to? What do you think is the best idea here? What would be the most helpful for you? Because they know way more about being an assistant than I do. I don’t know anything about being an assistant in 2019.

So, you ask the folks. If you’ve hired people you like, they’re well-meaning, hard-working folks, they will tell you how to do stuff. I asked Jeff how to do stuff, what’s the best way to do stuff all the time. Do you think we should do it this way? Should we do it this way? So they know. And they can let you know if you ask.

**Megana:** Can I also ask how much sort of freedom or leeway did you feel like you had with the studio to ask for these things?

**Aline:** So, you have some. You don’t have all. Like can’t reset everybody’s pay to what you want it to be. But you can ask the assistant like what’s the best setup for this for you so that you’re making what you need to make. And then also when we transitioned out of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I had an assistant and I was hiring her myself we went over like what do you need, what do you need for this, what’s the best setup for this for you. So have some, but you’re under the pressure of budgets for everything on the show. And, again, communication is important.

The problem is as the study so aptly showed is that sometimes we just system-wide in the culture are not putting enough money in those budgets. I would really love to see a company step forward and say $53,000 is where we start our pay for assistants. If one company would do that that would really make an enormous difference for everybody to say like, hey, we’re committing to paying this wage across the board. That would be a huge, you know, huge step forward from a company standpoint.

Because if you work at an agency in particular where they really pay very little, as a boss I think there is a limit to how much you can do.

**John:** Megana, we got an email in about sort of what else bosses can do. And so do you want to read what Alex in the LA wrote for us?

**Megana:** Yeah, so Alex wrote in and said, “I’m an independent non-writing producer without an assistant but have nonetheless been listening with great interest to the recent discussions. One situation that I see way too often is producers and directors not inviting their assistants into creative meetings. They’re dangling at ‘apprentice for low-pay carrot’ but not letting them into the room where it happens. I realize this is the opposite of the writer’s room situation where assistants are being asked to do too much without compensation or credit.

“But producer, or director, or feature writer assistants will learn more from sitting in and listening to and hopefully contributing to one hour of a lively creative meeting than they will from reading a week’s worth of bad spec scripts.”

**John:** Yeah. I think this is a really important point that we haven’t talked enough about on the show is that you’re doing this job as an apprenticeship and you can only really be an apprentice if you’re there seeing the work happen. And a lot of the work of writers is those conversations, those meetings, those times in the room. That’s why Jeff is in the room here as we’re recording this is to see how the process works.

**Aline:** Well we are sort of effortlessly touching on all the things I put on my list, because my door is open was one. And then I wrote “fun stuff.” And, you know, I really think that some of the assistant stuff is just like, you know, we moved offices and Jeff has had to break down a lot of boxes. And like the boxes have to be broken down, but if you know that you’re doing something fun and you’re in exciting meetings with people – and also ask your assistant what they’re into. Because I’ve had assistants who are like – we had an assistant who wanted to be an actor. She’s now on Glow, Britney Young. She’s amazing.

But like ask people what they’re excited about. Some assistants want to be directors, so you can say, hey, come to this meeting with me. Or they want to be writers. Or they’re fans of John August. You know, find out what they’re excited about and give them that because that’s something to look forward to in a day which might have more menial tasks to it. So I think that’s something.

And then the other thing I would say is like we were sort of making a list of our core values at our little company, because I’m sort of transitioning into having a little company of my own. And one of the things I wrote down was like “we have fun.” You know, we try and do things that are fun. We were looking at some office space and then we stopped in Koreatown and we went to a store. And I bought Jeff a windbreaker. And we went to Gong Cha. You know, you’re so busy. Like yesterday we had back-to-back-to-back meetings. But just to find time to have a laugh.

And the other thing I think is important thing for bosses is like this is a pipeline to meet cool, young, fun people. I mean, this is an opportunity for that. One of the assistants from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is on High School Musical and working with Tim. And I’m going to a craft fair with one of my old assistants tomorrow. And I’m writing a series with another one of my assistants. Like what a great opportunity to get to know people.

And I think one thing Jeff and I talked about in the car on the way over is people want to be seen. Everybody wants to be seen. You spend so much downtime with your assistant in a car or sitting in an office. And where are you from? What are you about? Develop some nice private jokes. I mean, seeing it as an opportunity rather than an obligation would be a nice way.

The thing that I can’t speak to because I don’t – if you’re throwing things at people, then I have nothing – I can’t help you. Everything I just said you won’t have heard. And you need – no, I’m serious. Like, there is something really, really wrong with you. And you need to either do anger management or really delve into some therapy. I mean, that is – I can’t even – I know that that’s true not only from the survey but from anecdotally every assistant I know has a story like that. I just profoundly don’t know what to say about that except that that person is so deeply miserable and something is broken. And you need to go and get some help. Because whoever that is is just not going to be able to get all the wonderful benefits of having a smart young person in your office that you can have a nice interchange with if you’re that enraged.

I truly actually don’t even know what to say about that. Except that–

**John:** We’ll put a link in the show notes to the results of the survey, including that 104 respondents reported having an object thrown at them, which is not good.

**Aline:** Can we find an article which is like get help or like can we link to an anger management or a mental health or something?

**John:** We will.

**Aline:** Because these people are very distressed. Because what I’ve heard is throwing things, items of food, and pieces of computers, and cell phones. Obviously that person is distressed to the point of not really being capable of being in charge of anything, including themselves. I’m not even sure I want them in a car. One of the things that is really challenging that I’ve been aware of for many years is getting people into this pipeline is extremely challenging for a lot of reasons that are not that easy to see.

You know, one of them is people from other parts of the country, who are not from the sort of upscale college pipeline, don’t even know these jobs exist. You can’t interview for them remotely, which is a must. You have to have a car to do these jobs. They just assume, especially if you’re a writer’s PA they assume you have a car. So that’s going to lock a lot of people out of these jobs. And so I think there are some really basic broken things in terms of how we wick people into those first jobs to begin with. And I think the next phase once we ameliorate the really just sort of baseline human necessity for the people who are currently doing the job is to figure out like how are we finding people from different areas, getting them here, acclimating them, helping them find transportation, explaining to them how the system works?

Because right now it’s a very self-perpetuating in terms of the types of people who are here and who they know and who knows about the job. And you have to be on the Facebook group. But like, you know, what if you’re a college student in South Florida and you don’t know any of these people? Or just a high school graduate somewhere and you think I’d love to do this. You just have no – it would be like trying to apply to NASA. It’s such a closed system just to get in that door to begin with. And that’s one of the reasons that we don’t have the representation later in the business is because we’re just not getting those people into those entry level jobs. So I think there’s a lot to be done here just to ameliorate the salary and not having things thrown at their heads. But I think beyond that because I have tried to mentor – have mentored people into this process and they have a tremendous amount of challenges with like, you know, can’t fly to LA to interview, or can’t fly to New York to interview. So, basic things like that.

Assume. So many things about this assume you are a rich kid who went to one of these 50 institutions.

**John:** And, Megana, before you go let’s talk sort of next steps that are going to be happening probably mostly in the New Year. So, in the follow up on the town hall there’s a move towards smaller meetings where we talk about very specific issues. So things like assistants at agencies. Personal assistants. Assistants in the writer’s room. And try to break down best practices because while there are issues that are common to sort of all industry assistants, there are some very special things that are happening in certain parts of the industry that we need to really focus on.

And then, of course, hopefully reaching a number that is sort of what a person needs to make as take home pay as an assistant per week. Because I think if we can establish this baseline at least everyone understands if I’m moving to Los Angeles I need to be making this much money or else it’s just not a sustainable career. So those are things we’re going to be focusing in on at the start of the New Year.

**Megana:** Yeah. I think that’s great. And making sure that that number is flexible with rising costs. And also I think we’re going to do more intimate support groups as well as a bigger session, or a closed door session on mental health.

**John:** Great. Megana, thank you so much.

**Megana:** Thanks so much for having me.

**John:** One more bit of follow up is that in Episode 427 Akiva Schaffer wrote in about the waste generated by screeners. This past week I realized for the first time the Academy – have you used the Academy screener app?

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** So, the Academy actually set up an app that’s on Apple TV and other places where you log in and you can get screeners for most of the things. Anything you would have gotten by DVD you can now see on the app, which I think is good.

**Aline:** There are not as many on there. They’re not all on there. There’s a sort of percentage. I think we’re working on it. I think we’re going to get there. Eventually it will all be that. I’m so distressed by the amount of junk that I get in the mail. And one of the writers from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Audrey Wauchope, who is amazing was so distressed by the amount of stuff that we got from Amazon, plus she and her husband are in several guilds, so they got like six pink suitcases and six – I mean, I’m exaggerating. But I think between the two of them they got six of those.

And then Modern Love from Amazon, they also sent out a similarly sized thing. And because Audrey and her husband are in multiple unions they had a giant pile of suitcases. And she was so distressed that she put a call out and some other people picked up on it and they’re taking the suitcases, filling them with art supplies, and handing them out to public schools.

**John:** Great.

**Aline:** But, I mean, it would be maybe awesome for people to start instead of doing that maybe making donations or something. Because it’s like you pick up a headline and it says the earth is going to be uninhabitable in 40 years. And then the mail comes and it’s just filled with like I don’t need a glossy bound script for – please just send me a link. I will read. I promise you I will read the script online. It’s so distressing to me.

**John:** Yeah. So I just want to highlight the good thing. I think the Academy screener app is a good idea. Netflix sent through a thing which is basically a free couple months of Netflix, and everyone gets a card for that. Great. It’s like I don’t want a DVD of a Netflix show. The point of Netflix is that there are no DVDs. So, I just want to encourage more of that. So, carrots and sticks. Let’s reward with some carrots people who are doing things well.

**Aline:** Yeah. I mean, I will say the Mrs. Maisel pink suitcase is adorable. And I love that Audrey is putting it to better use. But it’s just–

**John:** Stop.

**Aline:** Oh, someone’s landfill is going to be filled with strange swag suitcases.

**John:** All right. It is time to introduce our special guest. A former Broadway dancer. And award-winning novelist. A screenwriter of the Academy and Golden Globe nominated film Ferdinand. Tim’s career has taken him from Broadway to Hollywood and like many of his works his current project reflects that. He is the showrunner and executive producer of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which he created for Disney+. Welcome to the program, Tim Federle.

**Tim Federle:** Thank you. Long-time listener, first-time guest. I’m genuinely honored to be here.

**John:** And you are here because of Aline.

**Aline:** Yes! I like to be acknowledged.

**Tim:** It’s true.

**Aline:** So I heard Tim on the Writers Guild podcast. I had been loving the show. So I loved the show, so I was like who created this special wonderful, amazing show? I looked up. I saw your bio. I found the podcast. And then the beauty of John August, so I emailed John and I said, hey, maybe we could do a thing with Tim someday. A day later we were on emails. And four days later we’re sitting in John’s office. So thank you for doing that. I love an episode where I can geek out about somebody’s work.

**Tim:** Thank you.

**Aline:** But in addition to loving the show, one thing I really think is great that you can speak to is, you know, a lot of the folks who write movies and television followed a very similar trajectory to get here. And your journey is different and I think it would really inspire people to know that you can be in the business in some area and you meet a lot of performers who dream of being writers and they don’t really know how to make that transition. And I love the story of how you got to being in charge of this wonderful show I think is so inspiring.

**Tim:** Thank you so much.

**John:** Let’s talk about what the show actually is, because people may not have seen it yet. So it takes places in a universe where the High School Musical movie exists. The show is set at the high school where the High School Musical was filmed. So stop me when I get any—

**Tim:** No, this is great. It’s like a really gay Inception when you described it. I love it. I’m so down.

**John:** So there’s a meta quality to it in that the characters in the show have seen High School Musical and know that they are enacting some of the stereotypes from that show. And they are in the process of putting on at their high school a version of High School Musical. So, there’s many layers sort of happening there. On top of all that, it is structured a bit as a documentary, or it has that feel of where characters can speak to camera, but more in the Modern Family way than in The Office way. There’s not literally a crew.

**Tim:** Right. I kind of pitched it originally as Modern Family meets Glee was sort of the idea. A little bit Office elements. For two reasons. Because I was so inspired by Christopher Guest films growing up. Everything from Best in Show to, of course, Waiting for Guffman. And also because I think the original movies of High School Musical were shot in such a specific bright way that I wanted to just from a camera style perspective like right away announce this as something different.

**Aline:** It sounds more meta than it is. I mean, one thing you said on the podcast which I think is really true is the second you start watching it there’s nothing confusing. It’s not Inception. It isn’t dense. It’s very heart—

**Tim:** It’s a group of kids putting on a high school musical. And I think what makes it meta at least for season one is that the high school musical happens to be High School Musical shot at the school where they did High School Musical.

**Aline:** But I love that you have some of the kids don’t know anything about it.

**Tim:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Like one of the leads has to go watch it. I think that’s awesome. And it’s so real. It feels really real because the reason it doesn’t feel to me gimmickly meta is because young people live in this world where everything references other things.

**Tim:** Right.

**Aline:** I mean, I sometimes turn on TikTok and I just know that there’s private things happening that—

**Tim:** Totally.

**Aline:** And memes obviously. But this is kind of an effortless way to like refer to an existing piece of pop culture while creating something else that’s just as valid and wonderful and interesting but is in conversation with another piece.

Time: Yeah. I mean, I think I felt like – I’ve worked for Disney in a lot of ways over the years. I was the dancing catfish in Little Mermaid on Broadway. I was a Christina Aguilera backup dancer right out of high school at one of the Super Bowls that ABC produced. And so I’m like a Disney kid. I famously didn’t get cast in the Newsies film, but I did have a callback after an option audition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m 108 years old when I describe my life.

But when it comes to this kind of High School Musical thing it was how can we be self-referential. And what I was surprised by, because we often think of Disney as a bunch of suits, is actually them so embracing the irreverence of what I wanted to bring to it I think in launching this new service. And saying like we’re going to announce that we can have fun with our own brand. And that’s been refreshing as a creative person.

**Aline:** I agree. It’s a great flagship property for them because it shows we’re going to be fun, we’re going to be irreverent, but clean.

**Tim:** Right.

**John:** So before we get into your bio and background, talk us through—

**Tim:** Did I say Christina Aguilera too early on the podcast, John?

**John:** No, no.

**Tim:** I know it’s somewhere in your bullet points.

**John:** It’s never too early for Christina. But my question is how did this project come into your universe?

**Tim:** You know, about a year and a half ago Disney kind of sent an all-points-bulletin out to the agents in a world where we used to all have agents and they said we have this title, High School Musical, that Disney+ wants to reboot and we just don’t have an idea. We know it’s a great title. But we don’t want to do a sort of craven money grab where we just do like a fourth movie. And so I was one of probably 25 writers who went in and pitched a take. And the short version of it is I had just finished binging American Vandal on Netflix. And was so inspired by the sort of reality of that docu way in and that teen culture of today that I walked in and just sort of said it’s a documentary about a group of kids putting on a high school musical.

And they bought it. And that was a little bit built on the back of the fact that I had this Broadway background. And so I think they felt like I could bring something kind of legit to it as opposed to the theater shows that I love but that are the sort of larger than life Smashes that are a different kind of show.

**Aline:** One of the things that you share with American Vandal is I love in American Vandal how young those kids actually look. Because I have a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old son.

**John:** Oh wow.

**Aline:** And like what a 15, 14, 16-year-old looks like you forget. You know, and we’re just so conditioned to seeing these movies where it’s played by a 25-year-old and they just are different. So American Vandal I always loved how young they kids were and looked. And the same on your show. I really appreciate that.

**Tim:** Thank you. And we fought for that. That kind of idea that CW sort of has that great 30-year-old teenager thing locked down. And I love those shows, too. But I was like one way we can do this different is cast a 16-year-old who can really sing live. And we’re immediately going to say this is not your grandma’s High School Musical. And it’s been really exciting.

**Aline:** Tim, when I think of how many 13-year-old theater geeks are watching this show and like so inspired and freaking out, I can just picture them all on their iPads in their bedrooms in their frilly canopy beds, not that I had one. Maybe I had one. Just freaking out because they’re really seeing. And that experience of being – I actually think even if you played a sport in high school, just that feeling of the high school being in a group.

**Tim:** Well, and I think for the same reason I watched every episode of Friday Night Lights even though I don’t know anything about football. I hope people discover the show and go like, oh, there’s something here for me. Because it’s ultimately like Bad News Bears. That’s sort of what these stories are.

**John:** Underdog stories.

**Tim:** Underdog stories.

**John:** The ones putting it together. So you say you go into the room and you say that you had watched American Vandal. That you had a basic take on it. Can you describe a little bit more though what that first meeting is like and what did you go into that room with?

**Tim:** Process. [Cross talk] process. Absolutely. So it started with a phone call with a group of creative execs just saying, “We want to get to know you.” I had written a spec script about a guy who hits his head and sees the world as a musical, which there’s actually a show coming on the air that’s actually very similar to that, which is what it is. And it was one of those spec scripts I had written interesting he dark being like is anybody going to read this.

So tip number one, have a toolbox fool of spec scripts if you can.

**John:** But at this point you already had Ferdinand done?

**Tim:** Ferdinand was done.

**John:** You were already a writer who was hirable because you’d actually had something that had been produced.

**Aline:** Can we take a break to sing a song? Is anyone ever going to read this?

**Tim:** Yeah, totally. I mean, that is the age old – but yeah, Ferdinand had come out and done pretty well. And so I get this sort of phone call that says we’re the creative execs, we have a High School Musical sort of title, do you have any ideas? So the initial phone call is me just kicking the tires and trying to sort of “yes and” the conversation. Like OK, they’re sort of into the idea of a documentary. OK, they don’t love the idea of that, so let’s go this way.

And then what I usually do, my technique is I follow up with a really personalized email direct to the execs. I take the agents out of it, or the managers these days. And I’m like this is going to be a personal relationship anyway, so let me see how this goes. And I usually follow up with an email that’s just like headlines from what I think they liked. And that led to, “Great, let’s explore this further.”

And then the truth is I probably did a month of free work, where it was just like I kept sending ideas. And the after that became a three-pager. And then it became–

**Aline:** Before you got hired.

**Tim:** Yeah. And then it’s like there’s you and three other people who we’re interested in. And I’m a New Yorker. I lived in New York for 20 years. And it’s like we’re just going to do this over FaceTime with the head of Disney Channel. And I was like, OK, great. And I flew myself to LA. Because I knew that thing about being in the room opposite the person really matters. And I flew myself to LA and put myself up in a crappy Airbnb.

**Aline:** This is all before you got the job?

**Tim:** All before I got the job.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Tim:** And I walked in and I just sort of monologued at them. You know, one of the advantages of being a former performer is that you have a little bit of that improv thing in the room that helps people understand what the feel of the show is. And I remember taking a Lyft away from the studio and getting a call on the 405 that just said, “We’re going to hire you to do this.”

**John:** That’s great.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** So let’s talk about the free work you did. Because free work is a thing that is sort of bugaboo for me in that it’s awesome that you got that job, but a bunch of other people were probably going up for that same job and were also doing that free work. And so Disney+ and the makers got to see a bunch of written versions of things. And so you don’t know the degree to which your writing is being compared against other people’s writing or ideas cross-pollinate. And so one of the other five finalists for that thing is probably listening to this and being a little bit frustrated that they did the same work.

So, that’s a real thing.

**Tim:** Yeah. And I don’t – you know, what’s interesting and what I will say is, and this is probably protecting themselves, but I don’t think I was ever asked to do anything but like keep talking to us. And yet I as a writer feel the instinct to put words down. And I know that you don’t really sell something till they can read it. I didn’t write a script but I certainly put real thought into these are the characters, these are the journeys, these are the arcs.

So, a certain amount of free work – maybe it’s my background of auditioning for so many things that I didn’t get.

**John:** That’s what I was thinking, yeah.

**Tim:** That I’m just like, yeah, you put yourself out there and you get – I saw a tweet last week that made me laugh so hard that was like, “Writers don’t give up hope. I had 48 rejections before I got my 49th rejection.” And I was like, yeah, that is my life as a dancer. That I used to take the bus from Pittsburgh when I was 18 to New York. It would be ten hours. I’d get off the bus. I’d audition for the Radio City Show. I wouldn’t get a callback. And I’d go back to the bus station. So I’m sort of used to a certain amount of putting myself out there for no pay. But it’s tough.

**John:** Yeah. But you wouldn’t actually – but you wouldn’t perform on stage for no pay? Well, maybe you would.

**Tim:** My eyes are glazing over because I’m thinking of the number of benefits I’ve done. No, you’re right though. I wouldn’t. And only recently there was some project that I’ll have to remember what it was. Oh, yeah, I was talking to Warner Bros. about something and they had a really great system in place that they were like before you do these five pages we need to get a deal in place.

**John:** Great.

**Tim:** In case this happens.

**John:** That’s what we want.

**Aline:** An if/come kind of deal.

**John:** Good.

**Tim:** Exactly. Shout out to Clint Levine who is one of the best execs in the biz.

**John:** Nice. So you get the job. You’re on the 405. You’re in that Lyft headed home. I forgot if it was the 405 or a different freeway. I want to make sure we’re accurate here.

**Tim:** I’m a New Yorker. I just put my head down in the car.

**John:** So you are a New Yorker, so now you have to come to Los Angeles. And so what was the process from getting the yes, then did you write a script or did you immediately go to a room?

**Tim:** Oh no. It was a big process. And yet also a condensed process because they had this platform to launch. Right? So I think I sold it over the summer and it was green lit by, no, I sold it in January of 2018. Green lit by the summer. And the period in between was making a deal which was to say this is not an immediate green light, it’s not an immediate slam dunk. And so I went through a pretty traditional development process which just like your listeners know this already, but I’ll say it quickly. Which is here’s my ten-page outline for the pilot. Here’s their ten-page notes back. We finally settle on an idea we all like. I write it. They give notes again. I write it again. Notes again.

And I think I wrote three drafts of what the pilot would be. And then built into my deal, which a lot of times is these days, is the idea of create a bible for the series. So we should talk about this because I put great expense into this actually. Because my feeling as a showbiz guy is that very few people get into showbiz because they actually like to read. Like we get into showbiz because we like the experience of being moved. So my feeling about putting together a pitch deck was that it should feel like the show.

So I hired Rex Bonomelli, the book cover designer behind all of Stephen King’s books, who is just a dear friend from New York. And I was like I’m going to send you ten pages of like Microsoft Word text about my show. Make it look like something. And here are the visual references I want. And he whipped out this glorious bible. The punchline being I never had to turn the bible in because someone at Disney+ read the pilot and they were like we’re going to do this.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Tim:** So I paid him out of my own pocket, which is just something I’m used to doing now. And it’s now just this very beautiful document that will never be seen.

**John:** Well, so what you’re describing is sort of like a pitch deck. And so generally it’s the kind of thing you might do early in the process to sort of show what the world feels like. When I was doing Grease I put together boards to show like this is what the world feels like, this is what the universe feels like. I’ve done it for other projects, too. And for Aladdin it was so helpful because I point to things and we could talk about characters and say like this person here. And that’s the kind of work I feel like is so valuable because it’s getting them thinking not about the script they’re going to hire, but the actual project they’re going to make. Like what it’s going to look like, what it’s going to feel like down the road.

**Tim:** Totally. And I’m now interviewing DPs for season two. We’re doing a DP change. First season was great, but we’re doing a new DP. And when I can point to anything visual, even if it’s like watch this ten-second Modern Family clip with the camera work. I want to emulate this. That’s what our business is. And so it’s this odd thing where our words have to feel like something.

**John:** Aline, when you were doing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend you had a similar process where you had to go out and pitch to a bunch of places. This was your original idea, so it wasn’t you’re going to one place. But it was you and Rachel going into the room. What did you bring into the room as you were pitching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?

**Aline:** We had just a verbal pitch. But in that case we also – they could watch Rachel’s videos and that gave them a sense of how the musical – I mean, our musical numbers very much resemble Rachel’s videos just with way more money behind them. So we had that.

So, I think that using them as a creator to communicate with people because in the pilot process or when you’re making stuff you don’t have the thing to show. Like when we started Crazy Ex-Girlfriend we had a shot pilot. So when we were staffing and hiring people it was like well this is it, guys, and something to look at.

But if you’re trying to get people to understand, in addition to the script, I think a pitch deck made by the filmmaker/the writer is very helpful. The reason that I suggested is we’re now in a universe which has really been making me giggly where I get all these pitch decks that are made by companies and producers and they’re the most typo-ridden documents. Like I saved one of them because on every single page there’s a hilarious typo. But I think people now understand that they work well for writers and filmmakers. And I actually just worked on a short film program and the woman who made this short film she made the most beautiful little look book/pitch deck thing. That’s one thing.

But when a company is trying to get you to do a project and they sort of get a bunch of Clip Art and write some crazy prose, it’s been making me so giggly. I think I’m going to start a file of just saving them. Because it’s the non-sequitur theater plus the typos. And I feel like – and the other thing is then you’re going to give it to a writer. They’re often given to me to be like, oh, this is what we’re thinking of for the show. And it’s like, well, now you’ve filled my eyeballs with things that have limited my ability to imagine this thing. And I would rather that somebody say, “We want to do a movie about deer in the forest.” Then I can build my own reference of images as opposed to getting sort of then they’ve clipped a bunch of pictures of Bambi and whatever. And had somebody who is not a writer try and jot something down.

We’re in a little bit of pitch deck fatigue right now because the technology is so available to people.

**John:** After this episode I will show you my Bambi pitch book.

**Tim:** I was going to say my deer in the forest.

**John:** No, literally. I will show you my–

**Aline:** Oh, hilarious.

**John:** No, I went in on Bambi.

**Aline:** Hilarious. But, look, again, I think if it’s part of your – as a filmmaker it’s part of how you’re communicating your vision. Totally fine with that. It’s just like Flotsam and Jetsam from the Internet translated through probably somebody who is like, “Oh dude, what am I supposed to do here? They asked me to do a thing.”

So, anyway, I think they’re really great for what you were doing. I was surprised that you didn’t take that and show it to your staff and your DP and stuff because it probably has—

**Tim:** That I did. And I showed it to the cast, too. I’m still stuck on the fact that I understudied Flotsam and Jetsam on Broadway in Little Mermaid. So it’s like for me this is a real wakeup call this morning. But I will also say just on the pitch deck it’s not quite this, but this idea of the way we sell ourselves these days. You know, everybody knows like the first thing that happens if you’re up for something is you’re Googled. Or, you know, my assistant, Chandler Turk, fantastic guy who per the earlier conversation by the way now writes social media posts for our show the way Ilana Wolpert did for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, now she’s on my staff. It’s just what you try to do.

But Chandler, of course, sets up my calendar so that right before I interview somebody or I have their bio and I try to get my head around them, but even for staff writers these days there’s so many improv actors who are going out as writers. And so even before someone walks in the room like think about what your YouTube results are. Because that is like the first impression of who you are and what you’re going to bring into the room.

**Aline:** That’s terrifying.

**Tim:** Half of the people who are interviewed for things these days have like a really specific like oh they did that open mic at Rockwell. Or they did blah-blah. And it’s a real sort of calling card, which can be a great thing.

**John:** Now, you’ve sold the show. You’ve written the pilot. You’ve gotten the green light. At what point do you hire a staff? At what point are you in a room working?

**Aline:** And you didn’t come up from rooms, so how did you–?

**Tim:** I did not.

**Aline:** How did you figure out how to best utilize–?

**John:** Like you’re like Aline, where you’re–

**Aline:** Well, I had been in many rooms, because I did TV in my 20s and then also I’ve been in so, so many roundtables that I ran.

**Tim:** Right. And so in a funny way coming out of animation with Ferdinand, that was its own kind of room environment. It is–

**Aline:** Collaborative, yes.

**Tim:** It’s totally collaborative and it’s the best training for like nothing is precious, because on an animated project you write like a thousand pages for two jokes. The short answer is it all happened fast. It was like summer 2018, I think. And they paired me with a showrunner, Oliver Goldstick, who is fantastic and came from the Pretty Little Liars world. And we began talking about the season. And we hired a staff of six people. And then fairly early into the process when we were in production I think it became clear. There were so many things Oliver wanted to do and so many projects that he was lined up for that I took over as showrunner in a way because I think when you come from a theater background you have so much experience with just rolling with stuff.

Like everything from the understudy is also sick, so you’re now going on for the understudy for the lead role. So much of showrunning is kind of making the show continue to run. And that’s how we did that.

And when it came to hiring the room I almost doubled the staff this year. Well, it’s a Scriptnotes exclusive that we actually have more episodes this year than we had in season one, which I haven’t told anyone. And so we hired more writers this season. But in season one it was reaching out to old friends and also staying open to people who came through the door who came from less traditional backgrounds.

**John:** Now, you have a plan for making this, but in terms of bringing on this cast, I read that you basically cast one guy who was like the 16-year-old, and sort of cast around him. Basically that became the template for how you were doing it.

**Tim:** Totally.

**John:** And then was there something equivalent of like a 29-hour or a workshop process where you could sort of put people together and sort of get the musical?

**Tim:** That was so Broadway musical of you, John August. A 29-hour reading is a thing we do over in New York.

**Aline:** It’s funny. I was thinking this is just a podcast of three people who have done musicals.

**Tim:** It’s true. And the answer is no. So, what we did was we cast Joshua Bassett. He was the first audition tape I saw. He was 17 at the time. He held the guitar, sang the song, nailed the scene. I was like we have him. We have the show. And I think by casting a “real teenager” it also helped me prove my point which was let’s pivot the casting around that. And then a month and a half later – now we didn’t do a 29-hour reading, but we did a table read for the studio and the network and everyone important. And I will say the thing I brought to it and pushed hard for was I come from the Broadway world, so it’s like every performance is a performance.

So, I had the assistants go out and they tracked down like every music stand in LA that they could. And we did it the way you present Broadway musicals where I had the cast sitting in front of the room instead of around a table hunched over with no energy. And every time they had a line they stood. And the pulled the mic stand up. And it was complicated, but it made it come alive. And the big idea of that big table read was I was in a not heated conversation but in a heated debate with Disney if we could really have people sing live in the show. And they, to their credit, were like we’ll give you the shot, but ultimately we need to lip sync everything just in case.

And Joshua Bassett who is himself a brilliant young songwriter and a true like whiz kid, I was like, Josh, bring your guitar to the reading. And he stood up and sang this song and I watched an entire room of executives melt because it’s that magic thing that only theater people can do.

**John:** Yeah, yeah.

**Aline:** And ultimately you do a mix, right?

**Tim:** We do a mix. Because it’s really hard.

**Aline:** It’s really hard. We went through that, too, ultimately. And I had the same thing. Because it bums me a lot when you go into like a very produced sound.

**Tim:** Totally.

**Aline:** But ultimately what we found our music producer, Adam, he was like I can make things that are not live sound live. And so ultimately like there were times where we did where we ear-wigged people and we picked it up. But from a standpoint it’s so challenging.

**Tim:** It’s so hard.

**Aline:** But you get very good at figuring out how to do your mixes, like in your final mixes you find a way to be like, guys, if a big violin swell comes in here it’s just going to take us right out, so we just need to really dry up this mix.

**Tim:** Totally.

**Aline:** One of the things that’s really interesting is some people are great at lip synching. And some people are not. And it actually has a lot to do with how they sing and where they sing from. And we had some actors who just the way they use their mouths really lends itself to lip synching. And some people where the way they generate their sound it doesn’t. And so we definitely had – in our mix we definitely had challenges with some people, even though it is in sync it doesn’t look like it’s in sync.

**Tim:** Right.

**Aline:** So I’m familiar with that challenge. But you can actually do a lot. I think one of the reasons it’s a bummer is that some people just are very comfortable when someone starts singing you go into like full—

**Tim:** Totally.

**Aline:** Chain-smoker production mode. And it’s like you can actually do a lot.

**Tim:** And I think actually modern audiences are much more forgiving of that in a way than I am. I think they’re like it’s a musical, sing.

**John:** Glee was clearly – you can’t watch your show without thinking about Glee, because it’s a high school musical. And Glee from its inception, the minute they started singing it’s full production value.

**Aline:** And that was their aesthetic.

**John:** That was their aesthetic.

**Tim:** And it’s glorious, by the way. Fantastic.

**Aline:** That was their aesthetic. But I think because your aesthetic because of the docuseries aspect of it, because the kids are that age, you needed to have a little more grit on it.

**Tim:** Yeah.

**John:** You moved to Los Angeles from New York. That’s a question we’ve been trying to answer on the podcast recently. Advice for people who are moving from New York to Los Angeles. So we’ve gotten a couple of people who have written in with very sort of beginner advice, but for you what was the process like? What were the biggest changes you saw and how did you manage the process of moving from New York to Los Angeles?

**Tim:** I have a good friend, Kevin Cahoon, who was just on Glow. He’s an actor. And he says LA is great when you have a job.

You know, I think as someone – I grew up in San Francisco, then we moved to Pittsburgh, and then New York for 20 years. In my dance career New York is home. But I was getting to a point where I was like prototypically ready for some sunshine. And I quite literally for two decades have had apartments that looked directly on brick walls. So for just like a straight up day-to-day standpoint I was ready to embrace that part of LA.

I’m also kind of extroverted loner. And so I get my energy from alone time, despite the fact that I have a performer spirit. And so a lot of people who struggle with LA struggle because they need that bodega, and fill in the blank if your city doesn’t have a bodega. They need to run into the guy who knows the girl who they met at the haircut. And I’m actually like super good checking out of the writer’s room and going home for the night.

And, in fact, one of the challenges for me is to keep my life up in addition to the show, because–

**Aline:** That’s the blessing for your staff. That is such a blessing for your staff. Because when you work for people who don’t want to go home, I mean, I worked in my early 20s for a guy who would be like, “Oh, I’m so excited for when we’re going to order pies at 2am.” And it was like, please.

**Tim:** No, I feel bad when I keep them past five, because I’m insane. Because also I’m like LA in the winter, it’s dark at 4:15.

But for pragmatic New York to LA stuff, I pretended I didn’t live here for the first six months. I had a boyfriend in New York, trying to make that work. Really challenging. I still have an apartment in New York. So I took Lyfts everywhere. Disney had a generous relocation package so I rented a place in Los Felix and felt OK about that. And it was really only after going back and forth to Salt Lake City where I shoot the show and then got picked up for a second season before the first one aired that I was like I think I kind of live in LA now.

And so now I’m trying to figure out what that actually means. Like buying a car was like a big boy thing for me to do, because I have never owned a car. And I’m about to turn 40. I’ve never owned a car. So I like bought a car. And, by the way, I bought a stick shift because I’m insane. I grew up driving a stick shift in high school, like driving myself to dance class in dad’s car. And so I bought a stick shift and I actually love it. But everyone thinks I’m out of my mind.

**Aline:** That’s great. I want to ask you a question because this is really the – having worked with so many talented performers who I knew, and I know nursed dreams of writing. So you’re dancing backup for Christina. You’re doing Flotsam and Jetsam. And at home, you’re going home and now are you writing or are you thinking I want to write?

**Tim:** I’m dating writers. It’s actually option C. So, I’m dating a novelist. Then I’m dating a guy who writes a soap opera. And then my very dear friend Cherie Steinkellner who wrote Cheers and is a screenwriter, she said to me, “Tim, stop. Be the writer you wish to date in the world.” And this was a decade ago. I was just about to turn 30. I got a job on the staff of Billy Elliot on Broadway where I trained the boys in the show. And I was so inspired by middle schoolers. I say this to a fellow middle grade novelist. I love, Arlo, by the way. It’s fantastic.

**John:** Thanks.

**Tim:** And I realized that middle schoolers are so fun because they get every joke but they’re not yet jaded. It’s a great age. And so in secret I wrote this novel called Better Nate than Ever that was about a kid who auditioned for a Broadway show. And my way of doing it was – I did not research anything about writing novels. Because I didn’t go to college. And I had in my head that if there were a bunch of rules about writing I would just–

**Aline:** Let’s stop for a second. I just want you to say that again. You didn’t go to college. You went to high school and you started dancing. So just to say to people you don’t need to go to college. You can pursue something else. So you just were like I’m going to go home at night and open up Microsoft Word and just see what happens?

**Tim:** Yep. And I was like I’m going to write a novel in a month. And so I wrote a chapter a day. Better Nate is 30 chapters. And all did, by the way, at the end of it is I would just send it off to Cherie, this friend. And she gave me the best writing advice I ever got which was keep going. It was like – I mean, we all have a different writing process, but my thing even in first drafts of scripts I’d outlined that have been approved by networks is like I have to over write and get to the end.

So I’m like, OK, I have a script. It may suck but I have a script. And that was what I did with Better Nate.

**Aline:** Totally.

**Tim:** And then my super quick screenwriting story is just that from Better Nate than Never Lin-Manuel Miranda who I barely know personally read the book and oddly and sweetly plugged it in the New York Times by the book section which got me a meeting at Fox Development where they were like can you come in and just do a week of dialogue punch up on Bobby Cannavale’s villain dialogue in Ferdinand. And a year later I went to the Oscars with Ferdinand because it was one of those things where when you’re a dancer you learn how to be OK in every room and be nice to people.

**John:** Yep.

**Tim:** And learn the assistants’ names and not be a jerk. And so a year later I had rewritten the movie with Rob Baird, now the president of Blue Sky Animation, and Brad Copeland who just wrote Spies in Disguise which is a fantastic Blue Sky film. And then from Ferdinand I got the meeting for High School Musical. And then I had also written a flop musical. I had co-written Tuck Everlasting on Broadway.

**John:** Oh, yeah, yeah.

**Tim:** Which was a fantastic experience. And Broadway is heartbreaking.

**John:** It is.

**Tim:** And, John, I have to tell you. You won’t remember this, but years ago I fan-girled you in the basement of the Big Fish theater on Broadway. I ran up to you and I was like, because this was right around my turn when I was trying to be a writer. And I was like, “Mr. August. Mr. August, sir.” And I ran up to you in the basement of Big Fish during previews and I was like, “I love this musical so much. I love your podcast so much.” I think you sent security after me because I was kicked out. No, it was like the greatest. And anyway it’s great to meet you, again, now upstairs.

**John:** That’s fantastic. Nice.

**Tim:** I loved Big Fish and I love Big Fish and Kate Baldwin is a dream.

**John:** Fantastic. Yeah. I get to go see it in Korea over Christmastime.

**Tim:** That’s the dream of writing a musical. Whatever happens with it, other people put it on.

**John:** That’s nice. It’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Tim:** Oh my gosh.

**John:** Are you ready for your One Cool Thing?

**Tim:** How quickly these things come and go. I am ready for my One Cool Thing.

**Aline:** I am. And I have to look at my phone, too.

**John:** So my One Cool Thing is an article on writing by Leigh Stein. So I’ll link to a NBC News post about it, but also her Medium post. So she’s an author, a novelist. She got stuck writing on her second book. She basically started doing all the writer community stuff and just became so obsessed with writer community stuff that she wasn’t actually writing her thing. So this article is about how she wrote he second book, Self Care, which was really about how she takes care of herself.

But her spreadsheets she made to track her progress kind of reminds me of what you were talking about in terms of like writing a chapter a day.

**Tim:** Right. Accountability.

**John:** Yes. Basically how to be accountable to yourself and how to get stuff done. And so I think for a lot of our listeners her process will resonate.

**Tim:** Great.

**Aline:** Well I took pictures this morning of the things I wanted to recommend. This is one of the pictures I took, guys.

**Tim:** Gorgeous.

**John:** Because we’re an audio podcast, I’ll say that is a blurry thing.

**Tim:** That’s my mom Face-Timing me on Thanksgiving.

**John:** That’s really what it is, yes.

**Tim:** That’s what that looks like.

**Aline:** So here’s what I’m going to recommend. How does my hair look today?

**Tim:** Spectacular.

**John:** Nice, yes.

**Aline:** So for those of us, the ladies who have somewhat wavy, somewhat curly, but actually frizzy hair. It might be from somewhat of a Hebraic background, my hair is a challenge. My favorite line in the Fleabag season is when she says, “It’s all about your hair. Hair is all that matters.” So I dye my hair because it’s gray. So your hair gets dry. LA is very dry. And I’ve stopped using shampoo and instead of using shampoo I use Cleansing Conditioner. And I have two brands to recommend. One is by R+Co and it’s called Cleansing Foam Conditioner. And that’s sort of like a moussey vibe if you feel comfortable with like a mousse vibe. Look at John, he’s really not.

And then the other one that I took the bad picture of is called Bella Spirit by Chaz Dean.

**Tim:** Bella Spirit is my new drag name.

**John:** That’s a great drag name.

**Aline:** It’s a little expensive, but it’s a huge bottle. And that one feels more like a regular conditioner conditioner. So you use the cleansing conditioner like you would a shampoo. You are washing your hair but you’re not stripping your hair. And then you can use a regular conditioner. My hair basically cannot hold enough conditioner. There’s not enough conditioner in the world to moisturize my hair. But it really minimizes frizz. So, pick it up.

**John:** You have no frizz happening at all.

**Tim:** It’s glorious.

**Aline:** What a delight. But it’s not masking my Judaism either.

**Tim:** When I was in high school I would read Movie Line and I would get in the bath and I’d put mayonnaise in my hair and a shower cap over it because I thought that was like–

**John:** That’s what you do.

**Tim:** It’s what a normal boy in Pittsburgh does. My One Cool Thing is a new picture book called A is for Audra that is an alphabet starring Broadway’s leading lady.

**John:** Oh come on.

**Aline:** So great.

**Tim:** So John Robert Allman. It just actually made, I thought it was like the super nichey funny idea. NPR just named it like a best book of the year. I’m so proud of him. He’s hilarious on Twitter. Johnny Allman on Twitter and the book is called A is for Audra. It’s an alphabet book starring divas and it’s a spectacular idea.

**John:** That is a great idea.

**Aline:** Somewhere there’s a boy with mayonnaise in his hair in a bathtub who is going to be really excited to get that for Christmas.

**John:** Well, see, Tim your hair is fantastic and I have no hair. So maybe the mayonnaise was – it works.

**Tim:** Listen, it’s not just for sandwiches.

**Aline:** I did that when I was a teenager. The problem is it smells after.

**Tim:** It smells awful. You’re a disaster.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Stick around after the credits. We’re going to have a discussion about online stan culture. But that’s our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did our outro this week. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Aline, you are?

**Aline:** @alinebmckenna.

**John:** And Tim you are?

**Tim:** @timfederle. Easy.

**John:** You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. We have very exciting news coming out for our live show next week about the premium feed. I’m going to give both of you a sneak peek at the premium feed after this. It’s good stuff.

Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show.

**Tim:** Thank you. Truly. It was an honor, honestly.

**John:** All right. This was proposed by – was it Aline or Tim?

**Aline:** No, Tim.

**Tim:** Tim.

**John:** Talk to us about online stan culture.

**Tim:** I’ve never worked on a project that gets immediate stans, which are super fans, or stalker fans to the Eminem origin story. And what was interesting launching this High School Musical Series was kind of watching immediately as people begin shipping certain couples, voting against certain characters, creating fan art. And it’s both thrilling and really, genuinely it’s so exciting to make something that people get that excited about. And also for me I feel so super protective of my young cast. And I know that if I’m looking through Twitter mentions and I’m looking at what people are saying about the show they are, too.

And stan culture is fascinating because I was reading something recently, Michael Schulman in the New Yorker wrote about fan culture and how on one of the many Star Wars iterations in the last ten years I believe it was that franchise – they started listening so closely to the fans that they tried something new in the follow up and like the fans just totally rejected what they themselves had pitched.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s a really interesting, because I hadn’t experienced that either, because in a movie it just comes out and then it comes out. And in TV you’re in a conversation with people. And one thing – there’s wonderful things about it obviously, and you love to see people are excited about the show. But when they’re giving you specific feedback a lot of what audiences want is resolution. And so a lot of times what they would be saying to us sort of through Twitter or other means was get these characters together. Make Rebecca happy. We want to see her happy.

And I’m like I know you think you want that, but you don’t. Because then your show is over.

**Tim:** It’s over.

**Aline:** So that’s an interesting, but it shows that your story is working that they’re rooting for the things that you want them to root for. But I agree, it’s very important to hear it. For me I can hear it and then go my own way because like Craig I have a high disagreeability index where I can hear a lot of opinions and be like, awesome, I’m doing my own thing.

I think it’s important to know yourself as a writer. Like Rachel was much less likely to read that sort of stuff, partly because some of it was about her personal stuff because she was in the show. But I am able to kind of hear how fans are responding and then kind of go my own way. So I think it’s important to sort of know thyself with respect to that. And if you’re somebody who like it’s going to bum you out, or it’s going to affect how you write the show—

**Tim:** For sure.

**Aline:** Best not to look at it. But it’s a really interesting conversation because people bring their own – as we all do – bring their own things to the show. And so they recognize themselves in certain characters and they start to get invested in certain things. And I think you have to sort of take things as information. We’re all a little older here and I think my stanning really consisted of like cutting pictures out of magazines.

**Tim:** Right.

**Aline:** And Scotch taping them to the wall.

**John:** Well a thing that’s different about when we grew up is that we might stan some things but we had no way to communicate that to the greater world. And so Tim I hear you saying that you feel protective of your young cast because these people are talking about these characters, but they’re also really talking about those actors and wanting to see those actors do things.

Sort of one of my stans is probably Brad and Claire from Gourmet Makes.

**Tim:** Amazing answer, John.

**John:** Because I love them separately and I, of course, you kind of want them together as a couple. But of course he’s married. They’re not supposed to be a couple. But I see them as characters sometimes. And I have to sort of check myself. No, that’s not cool, because they’re not actually characters. They’re actually human beings and you’re not allowed to do that.
But talk to me about sort of how–

**Aline:** That is the most adorable fan ship I have ever heard.

**Tim:** Precious.

**John:** Oh, a lot of people stan Brad and Claire.

**Tim:** But so few people go public with it, John. That’s why we’re [cross-talking].

**John:** You got to be open and honest about these things. Is part of the reason why you encounter this on your show, because your show – three episodes dropped and then it’s week to week?

**Tim:** We were actually one at a time. In the first week it was two episodes, but it was one at a time.

**John:** And so that I think also builds that stan culture. Because they’re excited to see what’s going to happen next.

**Tim:** Which I’m so happy about. You know, when I sold the show I thought it was going to be binge model and I was like, oh no, week to week. Well, now it’s my favorite thing because in this odd period where there’s so many writing jobs the truth is there’s so few things that linger because if you miss Stranger Things season four in the first week you feel like you’re out of the conversation. I want to ask you. I’m curious for you, John. Because one of the things I’ve also encountered, like with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, amazing because it’s this original idea with a fresh-faced star talking about mental health. That is a true original. And I so admire what you guys did with that.

John, you have so many original things and also are known for some like pretty famous adaptations of classic properties. And so what I dealt with with High School Musical was like, oh wow, it took people two or three episodes to go not only is it not a remake, it’s a celebration of the original. So the number one comment I see is a version of “I hate to admit this but I actually love the High School Musical.”

So I’m curious for you–

**John:** Oh, I had that on Charlie’s Angels for sure.

**Tim:** Well that’s what I was going to say. For you, John, like being so associated with of course your own idiosyncratic point of view but also these things that’s like, wow, only John August could have thought of that take on that, how closely did you pay attention to the sort of conversation around famous adaptations?

**John:** Not at all. So I would say that I would approach an adaptation thinking like what is it about this property that resonates with me. And that’s what I’m going to focus on. And so I’m not going to worry about what the conversation will be. But also partly because I am only really writing features. And so I know that it’s going to come out and it’s going to be the thing it’s going to be, but there’s not going to be an ongoing conversation about the thing.

**Aline:** Jeff and I were just talking the other day that people still want to talk to me about Devil Wears Prada about her boyfriend is the true villain.

**Tim:** I’m trying so hard not to fan girl you this morning by the way about Devil Wears Prada. Both of you. It’s pretty cool.

**Aline:** But people really want to talk to me that Nate is the villain, that narrative. And no matter how many times I say that’s not how I see it, like I gave a whole long interview where I talked about, no, no, she’s being tempted by the devil and Nate is correctly saying you may not want to be closely identified with the devil. But no matter how many times. And I gave that interview and then the next thing there was an article which was like Devil Wears Prada screenwriter agrees that Nate is the worst.

**Tim:** And by the way that’s also part of stan culture. Like literally part of stan culture is something goes so far into the psyche as your film did that you need the inevitable backlash article. That’s a hit.

I remember years ago, only slightly off topic, which is you created DC right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Tim:** And I remember listening to this podcast years ago–

**John:** That is a deep cut, because no one saw DC. I haven’t seen most of DC.

**Tim:** All I’m saying is I remember being haunted because truly when I say I listen closely to this podcast, you and Craig once interviewed, I forget his name, but he was this brilliant now psychotherapist who was once a screenwriter.

**Aline:** Palumbo?

**John:** Yes. Dennis Palumbo.

**Tim:** Yes. Who has this line that I say every time I’m giving a writer a pep talk which is that like what screenwriters need is a high tolerance for despair. Anyway, I can quote your podcast back to you. But you said something that has haunted me for years which was like the most unrestful period of your life was doing TV because you walked around constantly thinking, oh crap, like anything could be good material for my show. And I’m always thinking of story.

And I thought of that last night at 3am as I was blinking at the ceiling. Because we just got notes back on the first three outlines of season two. And the notes are great, by the way, and genuinely helpful. But all I know how to do–

**Aline:** Can I give you a tip?

**Tim:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Don’t watch a cut before bed. Ever. And try not to read material in the three hours before you go to sleep.

**Tim:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Because the first season I would watch a cut at 10:30 at night, but my editor wasn’t there to talk to, and I couldn’t be like, wait, do we have this, do we have that, do we have this? And the whole night I would just dream about the cut and dream about footage I wish we had and so try to give yourself at least three hours before you go to bed where you’re not thinking about the show.

Because I think it’s really important what you said which is like you have to have a life. You have to, you know, get a dog. You know, have to go shopping with your friends. You’ve got to do other stuff or you stop feeding your – and one of the reasons that you get to be the person who is so burnt out, you’re not doing anyone any favors by getting burnt out.

It sounds like you already know that.

**Tim:** It’s so true.

**Aline:** Because as a dancer you’re probably used to taking care of your instrument.

**Tim:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Nice. Tim, thanks.

**Tim:** Thank you so much.

Links:

* [#PayUpHollywood Releases Survey of 1,500 Entertainment Industry Assistants’ Pay, Working Conditions](https://medium.com/@elizabeth.alper/payuphollywood-releases-survey-of-1-500-entertainment-industry-assistants-pay-working-conditions-df84e4432056)
* [How Tracking My Excuses Helped Me Stop Making Them](https://forge.medium.com/how-tracking-my-excuses-helped-me-stop-making-them-8c332df929d2) by Leigh Stein
* Cleansing Conditioners: [R+Co Analog](https://www.dermstore.com/product_ANALOG+Cleansing+Foam+Conditioner_74507.htm) and [Bella Spirit](https://chazdean.com/bella-spirit-indigo-toning-cleansing-conditioner.html)
* [A is for Audra](https://www.amazon.com/Audra-Broadways-Leading-Ladies/dp/0525645403/ref=asc_df_0525645403)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](https://twitter.com/alinebmckenna) on Twitter
* [Tim Federle](https://twitter.com/TimFederle) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_430.mp3).