Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-future-of-the-industry).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 389 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we will be discussing nothing less than the future of the film and television industry.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** With special guests to talk about the ongoing agency negotiations and a new initiative to bring the special magic of Sundance to more filmmakers around the globe. But first, Craig, I have to ask why have you destroyed my Twitter timeline?

**Craig:** It’s fun? Oh no, I know the answer to this. Because it’s there.

**John:** Argh. So here is what happened this last week is somebody asked like a screenwriting formatting question, or basically like was it a “we see” kind of question, or directing from the page, and tagged both me and Craig into this question. And then for the next week my entire mentions is nothing but this question and people responding to this question.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, we were joined by other writers like Rian Johnson and Chris McQuarrie and James Mangold and Beth Schacter and so everybody brought all of their people along. So there was a lot of interest in it. But you know, John, you can just say ignore conversation.

**John:** I can ignore the conversation. I should just ignore the conversation. I was curious at some points what people would say, but mostly I felt like we had talked about it so much on the air. That’s my frustration. I wanted to point people to the podcast and say like, no, no, we really have gone through this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But for people who haven’t been listening to the podcast, and we could just sort of dispense with this in a little five-minute chunk, let’s talk through some of what came up in that thread and why it’s nonsense and how to move on past it.

So I think the initial question was the sense that are rules about what a screenwriter can or can’t put on the page and that it crosses some sort of line at which it is directing from the page. So classically things like, oh, you shouldn’t put camera angles there. You shouldn’t say “we see.” We shouldn’t do any of that stuff that is a director’s job rather than a writer’s job.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And the answer to that Craig is what?

**Craig:** That that’s the stupidest thing in history. Because for whatever reason, and I don’t know why they do this, a lot of these screenwriting gurus or sometimes sadly screenwriting professors will push this narrative that screenwriting follows the same sort of union divisions as like work on a set where an electrician can’t move equipment and a grip can’t plug something in. That’s not at all the case. There’s this feeling that somehow if we “direct” on the page we will be offending a director. No we’re not. And if they are offended, screw them.

Our job is to create a movie in your mind. That means of course we’re directing on the page. In fact, I would argue that’s what screenwriting is. It’s literally directing a movie or a television show on the page. So, this comes up all the time. Now, of course, of course, two things we’ll get back all the time. One is that a lot of amateurs will overuse things like stage directions, camera directions, and so on. Of course. You can do anything poorly. They also write dialogue very poorly, but we’re not saying you shouldn’t write dialogue.

Secondly, people will say, “Well OK, that’s true for you guys because you’re established.” Let me ask you something, John. Before you were established did you ever write “we see” or “close on?”

**John:** I 100% did. It does not matter sort of where you are at in the industry. You don’t cross a threshold in which like suddenly you can do anything on the page, where there’s a certain set of rules for what’s on the page before a certain point. And as I was scrolling through these things and not trying to engage with the conversation, I would see people saying like, “But you don’t understand, it’s harder for a young writer.”

**Craig:** Ugh.

**John:** “Or for a writer of color or for other people.” That can all be true. That can all be true that it’s hard for people in different circumstances to do stuff, but that does not change the words on the page or sort of the rules for the words on the page and the over-insistence on a set of rules that someone made up at some point. So that thing your screenwriting professor taught you about you can’t do that thing, always question it.

**Craig:** Always. Always. And whatever makes your circumstances uniquely difficult, the one thing I can assure you is that it’s not that you’re not able to write “we see” or “push down” or “tilt up” or “pan right.” None of that is a problem for you. We did hear quite a few people say that their professor at – or professors at Chapman, I guess it’s the dodge school, just sort of laid out this orthodox you cannot write any of these things and if you do you will fail.

So, I want to go there. [laughs] And I just want to say like, what, you can’t tell them – that’s malpractice.

**John:** It’s silly. So, here’s the best counter example I can offer to folks is that one of the best things that’s happened in the last 10 years is that all of the Academy nominated scripts are available online. You can find a PDF of every screenplay for pretty much every movie that’s been nominated for an award.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** So read these scripts. Read these scripts and you will see that they are full of things that professors might call directing from the page. And then the next person will rush up and say like, “Oh, but it was a writer-director so it’s OK for that writer-director.” It’s not any different. There is not one standard set of rules for how it all has to work. You can do stuff in the scene description that creates the experience of watching the movie. That’s all you’re trying to do. And if to do that you end up saying “we see/we hear,” if you end up invoking a sense of angles or like shots, that’s fine. That’s good.

There’s clunky ways to do things and so we are totally not arguing for clunkiness. We are arguing for the best way you have to express what it is that would feel like to be in that theater experiencing this movie.

**Craig:** I wonder why film schools that are so invested in pushing the auteur theory are also apparently invested in convincing us that directors should be feared even when we’re writing on the page. Huh? Huh? Hmm. Pfft.

**John:** Pfft.

**Craig:** Only in academia could something called the “auteur theory” not refer to the actual person authoring a movie. Oh my god. Don’t even get me going.

**John:** Yeah. Now, let’s talk about sort of what things are useful to learn as you’re reading through these screenplays. Because hopefully you are taking advantage of this wonderful time we live in that you can just read all these screenplays. It used to be so difficult when Craig and I were starting. You would trade scripts will people and you would actually have to physically copy scripts and stuff. Now it’s so easy. So you have all of these resources.

I would take a look at how are they conveying the information that they want the reader to get about what the movie will feel like. How are they describing how characters are interacting with their space? How are screenwriters describing what you will be seeing and what you will be hearing in that scene? Look for how they’re doing that and you’ll find there’s different techniques. And different writers will have different techniques. It’s OK to use multiple techniques. It’s OK to use whatever works best for you. A voice is partly deciding what the things are that you’re going to focus on.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**John:** That’s great. So find what works for you. Experiment. But don’t just be beholden on someone’s rules that you cannot do X, Y, or Z. Quentin Tarantino, you know, labels the kinds of cameras and angles he’s using. He really wants that very specific classic cinematic feel on things. So he and James Cameron will both reference cameras and specific lenses at times. Great. If that works for them, if it gives you a sense of what it feels like more power to them. That doesn’t mean that you need to do that, that you have to do that, or you can’t do it. It just means that is a way of conveying what something is going to feel like.

**Craig:** Amen brother.

**John:** All right. So this is going to be an unusual episode for us because generally when Craig and I are recording an episode we are on Skype together and it’s all kind of happening largely in real time. This episode is going to be cut together from different conversations that we’ve had over a couple of different days. And so when we come back from this break we are going to be sitting and talking with Chris Keyser about the agency negotiations.

And we’re back. Chris Keyser is a writer and showrunner whose credits include Party of Five, Tyrant, and The Last Tycoon. He’s also a two-time former WGA president and frequently leads the MBA negotiating committee along with David Shore and Meredith Stiehm he’s leading the negotiating committee for the ongoing talks with the agencies. Welcome back, Chris.

**Chris Keyser:** Thanks John.

**John:** It’s nice to have you here. So I think last time you were sitting talking with us was about an MBA negotiation a couple years back.

**Chris:** I only show up for–

**John:** Ah, he’s here to talk through stuff. But let’s recap what’s happened so far with the agency stuff because it’s been a while. So the guild met with members about the issues regarding agencies as we came out of the last MBA negotiation. So you led the last MBA negotiation. What were those conversations? You were just sitting down talking with members about where they felt the industry was at?

**Chris:** Yeah. We talked about a bunch of different things and the pressures on writers and one of the conversations was about the way in which the relationship between writers and agents might be affecting the downward pressure on writer’s pay for example in television and features. Or the inability of feature writers to actually solve some of the pernicious problems.

**John:** So, every three years we have to negotiate with the studios and that’s called the MBA, but what I wasn’t aware of until I joined the board is that there’s also an agreement with the agencies called the AMBA. And we negotiate that once every–?

**Chris:** Well, it’s been 42 years I think.

**Craig:** That’s a normal cycle. Yeah.

**Chris:** I think it’s like six times, or seven times Brigadoon.

**John:** Yes. So it’s a crazy document. It comes in this yellow folder. And it is not – you try to read it and it doesn’t make much sense because it’s describing a time that is so different from what we’re in right now.

**Chris:** Right. By the way, can I back up for a second and just explain? You know, the guild is the legal representative of writers. The guild in fact is the only organization that has the legal authority to negotiate for writers. But because writing is not the same thing as some other professions because writer’s salaries vary based upon their experience and their success, the guild has allowed individual contracts to be negotiated by agents. In order so that we franchise those agencies. And that franchise agreement, the AMBA, which they have to sign on to, permits them to negotiate for individual members. Similar thing happens in the sports world and a few other places.

**John:** Yeah. The most analogous situation is if you’re a professional football player or professional NBA player you have a union, but you also have an agent who is negotiating for you above those minimums.

**Chris:** Right. So we negotiate for minimums. We negotiate for pension and health and certain working conditions. The things that unions usually do. And the agents are changed with negotiating over scale pay for our members.

**John:** So in your conversations with members you’re saying some of them felt like the agencies weren’t doing their jobs in negotiating those above scale things?

**Chris:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** So in order to change this agreement, this franchise agreement the AMBA, we had to give a one-year notice. Part of the actual existing agreement was that you had to give a one-year notice. And so we had these member meetings and then we gave notice to say that we would like to renegotiate this agreement. And then nothing publicly happened for a very long time. So–

**Chris:** Well there were member outreach meetings through last year. David Goodman, the president of the Guild.

**John:** But that was before we signed–

**Chris:** In and around.

**John:** Yeah. Around that time. And then we sort of went quiet because there was kind of nothing to do publicly because you didn’t want to have a protracted conversation when there was not actually a thing you could solve or fix at the moment.

**Chris:** Right. And we were spending that time, the guild was spending it’s time – you know because you were on the board – spending your time thinking about what the new AMBA should look like, what specific requests we would have at the agency to sign onto. I guess requests is the wrong word.

**John:** What we were looking for. What the actual outcome was that we wanted. And so then we started the member meetings and that’s been two or three months. We talked with the captains. We talked with screenwriters. We had this big meeting at the Sheraton Universal a couple of weeks ago with like a thousand people.

**Chris:** 1,500 writers have shown up. Maybe more at this point. It’s a fair percentage of the guild.

**John:** And the public goal was to really talk with every member about sort of what was going on.

**Chris:** Right.

**John:** And so then at those big meetings and smaller meetings we had – David Goodman would read his speech. That speech is probably out now for everyone to see or to read. And there’s more details specifically about what we’re asking the agencies to sign onto, sort of what we would like the agreement to look like. Plus there should be some FAQs out answering a lot of the questions that you and I get. So we end up getting emailed a lot of questions and so that’s been really useful because we can talk to members about sort of what their concerns were, but now there’s FAQs that can really answer a lot of that stuff.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And I think that’s good language that you’re saying what it is that we’re asking them to agree to, because in a very real way this is the opposite of how things go with our negotiations with the AMPTP. In those negotiations we’re asking a concern to give us stuff. And in this negotiation, whether they know it or not – and I’m not sure they have yet come around to absorb this – the agencies are asking us for something. We’re not asking them for anything. They’re asking us. They’re asking us to be allowed to represent writers. So, we’re kind of in charge. Well, in charge, I think anybody that’s in the giving side of a negotiation has a little bit of a built-in upper hand.

**Chris:** That’s right. I mean, in this case we get to say what’s in that AMBA. And if they don’t sign on to it, they are not permitted to represent members of the guild.

**Craig:** Right.

**Chris:** Whether we can’t – what we decide to ask them to sign onto depends upon what the membership votes to, you know.

**John:** So there can likely be a vote sometime at the end of March about stuff, but we’re not there yet.

**Chris:** We should get back into that. We should be clear about what that means, what the vote is going to be about. But that probably takes a little bit more conversation about how we get to the point of that vote.

**John:** So at some point there could be a vote from the membership asking whether we want to sort of impose this agreement. Basically–

**Chris:** Let me put it this way. So right now we’re in the middle of negotiating with the ATA, which is the organization that represents talent agencies. A number of those meetings have taken place already and they will continue to take place between now and the April 6 expiration of the AMBA.

In those negotiations we’re trying to hash out exactly what the terms of the AMBA will be. If those negotiations do not provide us with a fruitful resolution it’s within the guild’s right to impose a code of conduct, much like the code of conduct that professional sports unions have imposed on agents there. And David Goodman for example mentions that all CAA agents who are part of their sports management group they all sign on to the player’s association code of conduct.

The vote by the membership at the end of March will be to approve the code of conduct, say we should adopt this code of conduct onto which the agencies must attach their signatures.

**John:** So what is the single issue that is at the heart of this discussion/negotiation?

**Chris:** The heart of the conversation is about conflict of interest. The idea that the agency practices have ceased to align their economic interests clearly and solely with the economic self-interests of the writers whom they represent. And that’s a fundamental problem.

**Craig:** And so for people, I think a lot of people probably have a general sense of how this is supposed to work. Agents represent writers. Agents get writers work. They are allowed to do that by the very power that this AMBA grants them. And then whatever the writer earns, the gross, the agent takes 10% of it. Seems very simple. And in fact they used be known as ten-percenters.

And so the more the writer makes the more the agent makes. But as it turns out that simple reality isn’t really the reality at all.

**Chris:** No, in television in fact essentially the standard method of payment now for agencies is to take what they call a packaging fee. And that packaging fee is tied both to the license fee of the show and ultimately the profits the show produces. So the agency makes – and we talk about this and if you read or have seen David Goodman’s speech he’s pretty explicit about this – 3, 3, and 10 is the standard formula. They make approximately three percent of the upfront license fee for a show, although that’s negotiable, somewhere usually between $30,000 and $100,000 an episode. There’s three percent of the backend that’s differed that is not often collected by them. And then 10% of the adjusted gross.

**Craig:** And that’s great information, but again just to sort of simplify it for people what we’re talking about with these packaging fees is instead of the agents taking 10% of what we earn as writers what they do is they don’t take any commission from us. Which, ooh, great, we get to keep that 10%. Except, what they are getting in return is more than that from the studios that are producing the television shows.

**Chris:** That’s right. And in fact they make deals specifically with the studios and in our budgets we see the results of studios that are made independently between the agencies and the studios, often without the writer knowing about it, that identifies what the agency is going to get. And what they get is not tied to how well we do but how much money is spent on the show on the one hand and how much the show makes on the other.

**Craig:** Correct. Essentially in this arrangement rather than the agency being concerned, financially at least, with the amount of money their client is earning, what they are concerned with is the amount of money the show is earning, meaning the amount of money the studio is earning. So suddenly their interest is in aligned with the studio’s performance, not their own client’s.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**John:** Now, I want to separate out two terms that I think get conflated a lot and we really need to think about them as separate complete concepts. So there’s packaging which is a verb. And what packaging really means is that you have a writer or a script. You have a piece of talent like an actor. You have a director. And sometimes agencies or management companies will put these elements together and that will be a package. And through this packaging process they create value because they can get more for that client, they can get more for the writer, they can get more for the director because they have a full thing together. They have a script, they have a director, they have an actor. They can sort of sell that on the town and get good money for everybody.

That kind of packaging is good. That kind of packaging can help a writer get his or her script out there in the world. It’s attaching that piece of talent. It’s attaching that director. That kind of packaging we don’t really have a big issue with. The problem is the noun of packaging fees. Packaging fees is that 3-3-10, or is that other cut that the agent is taking that is not related to a person’s commission. It’s not that 10%. It’s a special fee that they’re getting for the work that they’ve done to put this thing together which in some cases is really kind of no work at all.

**Chris:** Yeah. Maybe no work at all. And even if it’s a good deal work, the argument you would make or certainly used to be made is every person you add to that package, every attachment you make of talent you get 10% of that individual salary. So you have a writer, and a director, and an actor, maybe a couple of actors on a show. You get 10% of all of their salaries and the total of that is how much you ought to make for a show.

Here’s a thing that gets complicated for us because one of the arguments that the agencies are making back to us and are almost certainly making to their clients individually which is this: you want to eliminate packaging, which means you want to eliminate our ability to make your shows more valuable in the presale moment by attaching talent to it. What they’re essentially saying is if you don’t pay us the outside fees we’re not going to do our job. It is essentially the same thing they’re saying to the studios which is – and here’s the reason – why do studios pay these packaging fees? They don’t need to pay the exorbitant packaging fees. They pay those packaging fees because in a sense the agencies have said we have all of our talent corralled behind a fence. If you want access to them in order to get access you need to pay a kind of ransom. You need to pay a packaging fee to us which is over and above what we would make from the show.

Now they’re saying to us if you don’t allow us to charge the studios that exorbitant, over scale compensation we won’t actually do the work of attaching your script to a writer or a director. Well, if they don’t do that what else are they doing?

**Craig:** Ah-ha. Exactly. I mean, look, when we are wooed by an individual agency – and I’m talking about the big ones. So the big four agencies that we talk about in town here are CAA, WME, UTA, and ICM. When they’re trying to grab somebody from say CAA to go over to William Morris, but it’s Endeavor, but it’s always the same – look at all the other people we have. We can help you get your movie made. We can help you get your television show on the air because we have all these other people. They don’t say, “But only if you accept a circumstance by which we may make more money off of your work than you do.” They don’t mention that.

And the interesting thing about the circumstance is they are free I suppose to engage in this kind of extortion with the studios because the studios don’t have necessarily any kind of legal gun to the agencies’ heads. But the agency does apparently have a legal gun to their head behind held by us. And their behavior I think up until this point has been to essentially ignore that face. And so we’re entering this fascinating and somewhat disquieting period where the way that things have been going for decades is now suddenly not just being threatened to be toppled over the way that for instance a strike may topple over the labor market for who knows up to a year or something like that at most, I suppose. But permanently. We may permanently topple a kind of bedrock manner in which the business operates because packaging has been going on for decades as well.

**Chris:** Yes. That’s true. You said a lot of things and I want to comment on all of them, but now I can’t remember the first few you said.

**Craig:** That’s how I do it.

**Chris:** Exactly. Let me say a few things about that that strike me. The first one is this. Those packaging fees they’re requiring, they are doing that because they claim to be attaching actors. Now what work are they doing for actors, for example? It may be that as a writer I can bring my script to the agency and that agency can say we’ll submit this to the studio. That’s the job we’re going to do for you. If you want us to do more you have to pay more for that. I don’t think that’s true.

But what do they say to the actors? We’re not going to introduce you to a particular project.

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**Chris:** What is that work that they’re doing? I don’t think it’s anything at all. The other thing we should say by the way is that packaging is more insidious than packaging fees and the system by which talent is corralled and then packaging fees are assessed on the basis of having that talent in your stable can be very detrimental to writers because – and you probably have had this experience, both of you. If you are at one agency looking to for example attach a director from a different agency, or an actor from a different agency, what you end up with is a lot of resistance often from that agency because they’ll end up having to split the packaging fee.

And so I just heard another story just the other day of a writer who said my project is being delayed because of a contentious negotiation between two agencies about who is going to get which packaging fee. By the way, splitting of packaging fees belies the entire notion of packaging because it means you’re not even attaching two things. Two different agencies are attaching pieces of talent to it.

**Craig:** Exactly. They have something called a half packaging fee, which tells you everything. What you’re kind of getting at is there’s absolutely no service that agencies can provide in return for this packaging fee that they cannot and should not provide just in return for the normal 10% of our earnings.

**Chris:** Right. What writers need to be aware of though is they’re going to hear this argument back. They’re going to hear the conflation of packaging fees with packaging which means attachments. Here agencies say to them you’re going to be a big risk for ending packaging fees because it means you’ll no longer have the advantage that you had by signing on with CAA, WME, ICM, or UTA and having access to this other talent. That’s not true.

**Craig:** Of course not.

**Chris:** Business itself will take care of that. The studios and networks that want movies and television shows made need the actors and writers and directors attached to each other. And so if those particular agencies refuse to do it except for an outside fee, someone else will do it for them.

**John:** So, the idea of packaging fees has been around for decades. That’s not a new thing. But what is relatively new is producing. So this move by talent agencies to really become direct producers of material. And so the notable ones in town right now are probably Endeavor Content which is related to WME, wiip which is related to CAA. So they are affiliate companies. They are not the same company. It’s not literally CAA producing, but they are very closely connected companies.

And to be clear the problem isn’t with those companies, it’s with really any move by an agency where they are directly owning content. Where they are competing with the studios for content. And puts a writer in a situation where that thing you write may be owned by your agency. Where you are actually an employee of your agency rather than them being an employee of the writer.

**Craig:** I mean, can you imagine? That’s exactly why the law that allows agents in California, the Talent Agency Act, that allows them to represent us – so they need two things, right. They need the Writers Guild to allow them to procure employment on our behalf. And they also need the state of California to license them to procure employment on our behalf. And in exchange for that right, that exclusive right, they get two limitations. One is they can only change 10%. And the other is they cannot be financially interested in the employment that they’re procuring for us.

**Chris:** Right.

**Craig:** What they’ve done is they’ve set aside these little side companies, but I believe the first time I ever heard of this was I think MRC, which was tied into Endeavor, I think, maybe even before it merged with William Morris, and all sorts of alarm bells went off in my head. But it is spreading now like Kudzu. This is not a good thing for us as writers at all.

**John:** Well let’s list some upsides, because sometimes you’ll hear upsides. That they’ll say like these are the good reasons for having these affiliate companies.

**Chris:** We hear a lot of writers talking about the fact that they’re getting better deals. The agencies themselves say we’re more generous in our backend. We often for example in television have less onerous spend requirements. All of these kinds of things.

**John:** We’re already your friends. We’re already on your side.

**Chris:** We just want to provide new opportunities.

**John:** Our clients are asking for these opportunities and we’re providing these opportunities.

**Chris:** And you don’t need to take it if you don’t want it.

**John:** Absolutely. And sometimes they’ll say like well we require that you have an outside attorney to review the deals. So those are things that they are saying. The downsides are also pretty obvious. So you can fire your agent. It’s very hard to fire your boss. You are competing with them for IP sometimes. Like if you want that book they may own that book. And so you’re actually in competition with them for the things you’re trying to buy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s also just the most classic conflict of interest possible. Something that David Goodman says in his speech is you wouldn’t want Peter Roth negotiating your salary. And that’s ultimately where you’re kind of getting to.

**Chris:** Right. I would make two arguments about this, one on either side of it. On the one had we’re fully in favor of the idea of more buyers, more people making content.

**John:** 100%.

**Chris:** They just don’t need to be our agents. And those studios that they’re forming, they can exist if they want as long as they are separate from – really separate from – our agencies. In the same way that MCA in the 1960s, in 1962, the largest talent agency in the country–

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Chris:** Was forced by the justice department to choose between its talent practice and becoming Universal Studios. And they chose to become Universal.

**John:** And what happened to all those agents? They became agents somewhere else. That agency business kept going. But they separated completely.

**Craig:** Or they moved on to become producers. And Lew Wasserman, who was the head of that talent agency became the head of Universal and in many ways became even more powerful. And that’s fine. You can do it. You just have to do one–

**John:** That’s fine. We’d love another studio.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just one or the other. The whole reason that writers, actors, and directors want agents is not just merely to do the formality of being a buffer between us and the people paying us, because lawyers can do that pretty well. It’s because we need people who understand aspects of the business that we don’t necessarily understand or are as invested in. Giving us counsel. What would be the right job to take? Who would be the right person to work with? What should we avoid? How far should we push it?

All of these things are what we agree to pay 10% for. And behind that is the theory that their bargaining acumen will also pay for that 10% because they’ll be able to bargain that much more than we could on our own. But, if they are involved in the production of the work we’re doing there’s absolutely no reason to think that nature and quality of the advice that we’re getting isn’t going to be infected by this very different role. Essentially we are asking them to manipulate us for their benefit instead of ours. Whether or not an individual agent does so, you won’t know. And that’s the problem with conflict of interests.

**John:** There have been so many times in my career where I’ve run into a situation on a project with an employer where I’ve had to go to my agent for help. And I needed that agent to be a separate person who had my back and didn’t have the other person’s back. And that is a crucial role for an agent to play and I just don’t know how you play that role when it is your own agency that the person is working for.

**Chris:** Right. I think the risk for us though is that at least early on these studios may be offering pretty good deals. You know, maybe even loss leaders.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t exactly–

**John:** They may be offering more backend. I think it’s good to have outside people who want to spend some money and build stuff up because that’s good and it can help push other deals up or help push other studios to try to match those deals in order to attract talent. So outside folks, fantastic. And Endeavor Content, the wiips, they have outside money because outside money wants to make stuff. They want to make content.

I think that outside money would find a way to do it that’s not through these two giant companies.

**Craig:** Now, I want to ask you guys something. What do you think they say to outside investors who are considering investing in Endeavor Content or wiip? What’s their big selling point do you think?

**John:** They have access to all of the best talent. All the best writers.

**Craig:** Bingo.

**John:** The best directors. And the best actors.

**Craig:** There is literally – there is nothing else, literally nothing else, they have to offer that would distinguish themselves other than that. So one of the things that I think we are all struggling with right now is that as this kind of creep has occurred, right, where it started a little, and then a little more, and a little more, what’s happening is the people that are supposed to leverage our talent and our efforts into more for us are leveraging our talent and our efforts into more for them. And I do not like being somebody that’s being – like I famously told this story. The way I found out that CAA was packaging Chernobyl, I did not know. I literally didn’t know.

What happened was one day I got a check from CAA. And I didn’t know why. And I think a lot of people get a check and they’re like, yay. I get a check that I didn’t ask for and I’m like, mm-hmm. Somewhere someone is taking advantage of me. And that’s how I kind of delved into this world of packaging. And in the end what concerns me more than anything is that they are using us. And on a principle level it’s driving me crazy.

**Chris:** Right. I think that our big challenge is to remind writers of exactly what you’re saying, Craig, which is that their value is inherent in themselves. That it doesn’t come from the agent who represents them. As generous as that moment was when that first agent said I see something in you, ultimately it is our talent that’s making the profits for these studios and for the agencies. And while when we negotiate with the companies at the MBA we have to respect the fact that capital and the risks they take give them some real reasons to push back against us. In this case the agencies have nothing but us. There is nothing of value. The leverage is our leverage and not theirs. But it’s hard for writers to think of it that way. In part because the agencies have cultivated a kind of aura of – we talked about – and people talk about this all the time – that we work for them. You said it yourself. You got your check from your agency. It said CAA on it.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Chris:** You walked into their palace.

**Craig:** Did not like that.

**Chris:** Nicer than any office you’ve ever had. And the feeling that you get from that is I’m working for them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Now, Chris, you also lead our MBA negotiations often, so I want to sort of both combine and separate out a little bit of stuff that’s happening here, because I think what’s also true is that at this moment we are in a really strange place in the industry and time, where we have consolidation of these mega corporations. We have Netflix really upending sort of how things are done.

Agents will argue that this is the wrong time for this fight because now more than ever we all need to be working together to confront the challenges ahead of us. So what do we say to agents as they propose–?

**Chris:** I entirely agree. Now more than ever we need to be working together. But we need to be sure we’re working together for this. It is a time of very great risk and therefore writers cannot afford to have studios looking to take advantage of us in whole new fresh ways. And agencies who are conflicted and make their profits off of the success of our shows rather than our own success.

**John:** We want to be rowing in the same direction. And I don’t feel we are.

**Chris:** The fact that this is antagonistic to whatever extent it is is because this has gone on for a long time and it’s hard to make change. But in the end we see agents as our allies, true allies, are what we need. So we’re working in that direction. But I want to say this about the MBA negotiations in relationship to the AMBA. Because in the long run although we’re all upset about the thing that smells bad about our agents using our leverage for their gain, and the fact that they are almost certainly violating their legal obligation as fiduciaries to us, maybe, both California statutes that require them to do that and we will find that out in time. There have been economic consequences to the fact that the agencies have behaved the way they have. And one of the things that we realized is that as we push writers to take risks in our MBA negotiations to shore up their salaries, to increase minimums, to decrease spans so that their above scale is not driven toward minimum we’re losing what we gained in those MBA negotiations because the above scale negotiations that our agents are doing has consistently failed to keep up.

So, in the last decade or so while the industry is expanding, while company profits are skyrocketing, while as far as we can tell from all the outside evidence because their books are closed agencies are doing better than ever, writers are doing less well. And our writer surveys that we sent out in 2016 and 2018 prove that. In television over a period of time at one point writer above-scale income went down 23%. That’s what concerns us. Because when agencies say, “Hey, this is fine. Yes, we’re getting a lot out of this but periodically you save the 10% on your commission and you’re doing OK. You should be quiet about it,” we need to think good and hard about whether we’re going to ask writers to do something that’s actually ultimately going to be in their financial best interests.

**Craig:** That is a really important point, because I think a lot of people might say, OK, hold on a second. The people that are kind of getting ripped off the most are the showrunners because what’s happening is the agencies are converting the showrunner’s work into these massive profits that otherwise would go into the showrunner’s pockets but they’re not.

Let’s say I’m a rank-and-file writer. I’m a staff writer. And honestly I’m not getting any of those anyway. And I am not having to pay 10%, so why am I going to be cannon fodder for these rich showrunners? And to that I always run this little experiment. You are on a show that your agency doesn’t package. And the studio calls your agent and says here’s the thing, we want to bring back Chris but we’re a little squeezed on budget this year so we want him to take a pay cut. What does your agent do? I’m going to guess says, no, and fights. Because her money comes out of your money.

But if they do package and the studio calls and says, listen, we’re on the fence about bringing this show back. We need to reduce. Can you convince Chris to take less money? Why wouldn’t they say, sure, I can do that? Because their money comes from the continuity of the show, not you.

This absolutely impacts rank-and-file writers. It’s really important that they know that this is not about making sure that showrunners get their pockets stuffed with even more money. It’s about protecting their ability to be represented effectively by their own agents.

**Chris:** I think that’s right. That’s right. Each constituency in the guild is affected in a different way. Showrunners affected because their backend may be hurt. Showrunners may be affected because their inability to access talent across packages is hurt. But the rank-and-file members are hurt because their agents, they have been unable to defend their quotes because by and large in agencies whose money comes from packaging fees rather than the specific weekly income of writers are either less inclined to push for that or more inclined to rollover on studios who say we’re sorry that’s just all there is. By the way, that’s another thing we have to deal with.

We have to deal with these myths on how that in eras of rising budgets for shows and for movies that the only thing set in stone is how much money writers can make and there’s no one out there who can get us a single penny more. These agencies who have defended their own packaging fees without any reduction over all these decades somehow will be entirely incapable of budgeting those writers.

**Craig:** Great point.

**Chris:** And, by the way, that’s true for screenwriters as well.

**John:** Absolutely, so let’s talk about screenwriter issues, because packaging does exist in features. It tends to be much more invisible because it happens as part of foreign sales. It happens as part of an early gathering of talent. It’s more complicated and it’s hard to sort of see it at times. And there will be times where you have sold a movie and not even realize that it is a package. So it is confusing on that level.

But there’s fundamental things that you also rely on your agent to do like to protect you from abusive employers, or for like that ninth revision on a script that you thought you turned in. So, a lot of the work that I’ve been doing with the screenwriter subcommittee this last year for the WGA has been doing stuff that we kept saying like isn’t that the agents’ job? And it is the agents’ job but they’re not doing their jobs and so we’re trying to sort of make up for the agents not doing their job. So when we do our campaign for No Work Left Behind, we’re just encouraging people like don’t leave that stuff behind. Your agent should be the one who is telling you not to do that stuff because agents should know that it’s a terrible idea, but that they’re not actually communicating that. So they’re telling you to, oh sure, go on, send in that treatment, do that free work for people. It’s ridiculous.

And then this is the second thing we implemented this last year was the Start Button. And so the Start Button is a way of tracking like this is when a person started on a project. This is when he turned in a draft. All the stuff that we built, the system we built to track especially feature projects and the steps you’re going through on a feature project we built that because screenwriter contracts were not being sent through from the agencies the way they are supposed to be sent through. If we had all the contracts we wouldn’t need to have the Start Button at all because we would see where people were at in their drafts and be able to figure out, OK, are they getting paid on time?

**Craig:** And there’s always been a certain built in conflict of interest that’s unavoidable simply because your agent represents 30 different writers let’s say. So there’s only five studios. If they push it too hard on your behalf they may lose out on another client’s behalf. So there is always a little bit of a balancing act there.

I personally–

**Chris:** Craig, let me tell you a story. A bunch of years ago, about five years ago, the guild tried to institute a policy by which the agencies would agree to send us the invoices for contracts when drafts were done. And we actually met with all the agencies and they all agreed to do that. And we said let us be the bad guys. You don’t need to do it. We understand. We’ll do it. We’ll actually consolidate those things and we’ll go back to the studios and say here are the writers you haven’t paid on time. We’re going to collect the money that’s owed in interest.

And almost no one ever followed up. Even when they were not actually going to be implicated in it, we just couldn’t get their energy up for–

**Craig:** They don’t care. In the end, that’s not really their gig. I will say that I’ve never – whether or not there have been packaging fees associated with a script that I’ve written that’s gone into production, I’ve never not paid commission. So I suspect that that hasn’t necessarily impacted me. But one of the reasons that I think this is becoming a much larger issue now and one that the agencies can’t simply skate by on is that the divide between features and television is collapsing. Not simply because there’s so much television production that a lot of feature writers are also dabbling in television like I am. But because the nature of what is theatrical and what is television is smooshing together into one thing.

So, at this point now this issue of packaging fees ultimately impacts everyone. And I do think that A-list feature writers have a really interesting role to play here. Because for a long time our relationship with our agents was not and has not been tainted by this. We have the ability to start talking with our agents in a kind of clean way that isn’t soaking in a certain amount of recrimination and regret and say, “Listen, going forward this makes sense. How do we get you guys to kind of get your colleagues come around to be the kind of agent that you have been for me in features?”

**Chris:** We’re having a conversation and we’re being pretty tough on the agencies here. And they deserve for us to be tough on them after all these decades.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Chris:** That’s not the same thing as saying those things about our individual agents. And it’s hard to hear somebody say, hey, this is an attack on a system that has not actually played out in your own personal economy. I’ll say a couple of things about that. The first is in cases of all guild action this is not really about our individual experiences. This is about systemic problems. And trying to solve a problem for the membership as a whole.

The fact that you have a wonderful relationship with your agent is not a counter argument against the fact that the system as a whole is disadvantaging writers. And even your wonderful agent, by the way, has not succeeded in ending the scourge of late pay and free rewrites and one-step deals or the downward pressure on income both for screenwriters and for most mid-level writers in television. They haven’t been able to buck that trend.

They do however work if you are represented at one of the big four agencies for companies or they are partners in companies who make massive profits off a system that takes advantage of writers. They take that money home. And so that friendship that you have with them, as meaningful as it is, it comes with an extra price that you’re paying that they’re not paying. And that can’t go on forever.

**Craig:** Yeah. And normally in those circumstances the people that we call are our agents. And so in a strange way what I’m suggesting in particular for feature writers because as you know that’s the drum that I will bang forever is just making sure the Writers Guild continues to fairly and properly represent its feature writer segment is talk to your agents. Have the conversation. And be armed with all the facts that we’ve given you here. And if they say something that contradicts it write it down and then talk to the guild about it. But have the conversation.

I think it’s important that we all start talking about it, because the more we talk about it I think the more they’re all going to feed back upstairs that this is a thing. Because what I don’t want is for these talks to be so unproductive as to ultimately end up sliding off the edge of a table. There is a certain value to a stable working environment in any industry. And there are great costs. And great costs to upending an apple cart so thoroughly.

So, talk to your agents. I think that’s really important.

**Chris:** And then privately be OK with your own anxiety about this.

**John:** That’s what I think is crucial, too. That’s the takeaway I lead with a lot of people is that I think it’s OK to feel unsettled because it is so different. I mean, you have a relationship with your own agent which is different than you have with a studio executive or any other thing. So it does feel different going into this because when you go into a MBA negotiation, you know this as well as anybody, that it’s going to be a range of outcomes. We’re going to ask for X. They’re going to say Y. And we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

This is going to be a big change sort of no matter what happens here. And six weeks out we can’t tell you exactly what the world is going to look like as this all shakes out.

**Chris:** Right. No one will be asked to walk off a job.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Chris:** We don’t face that kind of risk. But we face a real anxiety in putting under stress what may be for many of us are most secure relationship.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Chris:** In the business. That’s no small thing to ask. And by the way John you and I, we’ve been dealing with this for a year, coming to terms with it. But many of our members, they’re just hearing about it for the first time. And even in MBA negotiations it takes a while to process what exactly is being asked of you. What are the gains?

**John:** I always try to remind myself of that, is that when people say like, “Oh, this feels so sudden and so rushed,” I’m like this has been 16 months. But if they hadn’t come to one of those initial things a year ago and they’re only just now hearing about it, it does feel like but what.

**Chris:** And if you do feel anxious, you have concerns, you disagree with anything that the guild is talking about, you think it’s wrong, you have a counter example that you want to provide, you have to talk to somebody. Because the guild wants to hear from everybody. It’s impossible actually to hear from every individual person, but the more we know about what member experience is the better we’re going to be at making a deal.

**John:** Yeah. So I would say obviously good resources are take a look at the speech, but take a look at the FAQs because they are written in a way that is meant to anticipate what your concern and your question is and can maybe address that question. But come to one of the meetings and ask your question or ask a question of us.

**Chris:** Or talk to a captain if you’ve got a captain.

**John:** Absolutely. So almost everybody is going to have a show captain, a screen captain.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think it would be good if you’re experiencing anxiety or concern or fear about this, the other reason I think it’s important to share that with your agent is because you need them to feel it, too. I think the first – if I were an agent the first thing I would be doing right now is assuring and reassuring my client that everything is fine. The guild is incorrect. The way it is now which say has been serving at least in appearance my client well this is the way we’re going to keep going. Don’t you worry. Everything is going to be fine.

Because that’s generally what agents are doing for us anyway. They’re reassuring us and calming us down. In this case I think it’s important that they start to feel the anxiety, too. Because that’s the only way they’re going to start talking amongst themselves and more importantly to their superiors because while they work for us in a sense, they’re also working for somebody that can literally fire them. And if enough people start saying, no, no, no, you don’t understand, we are now panicking, then things might get precipitated, or at least it might help.

**John:** Chris, as we head into these last six weeks can we have you back as our uncertainty grows and things change?

**Chris:** Sure. Of course. I’d love to come back.

**John:** Cool. So obviously we’ll follow up and sort of as stuff develops we may have special episodes just about things that are happening. Because as a once-a-week Tuesday show that’s great for some situations, but there may be cases along the way where we have to do some special episodes on stuff.

**Chris:** I can’t believe you’re making me say yes to this on air, but that’s OK. Fine.

**Craig:** That’s how he does it. He does it on air to shame you.

**John:** Thanks Chris for coming on the show.

**Craig:** Thank you, Chris, so much.

**Chris:** Thanks for having me. Bye.

**John:** So, Craig had to head off to deal with more Chernobyl drama. But now I’m joined by a new guest. Michelle Satter is the founding directing of the feature film program at the Sundance Institute which for the past 37 years has worked to foster independents, risk-taking, and new voices in film and narrative storytelling. I know her from Sundance Labs where I am often an adviser.

Michelle, welcome to Scriptnotes.

**Michelle Satter:** It’s great to be here with you John. Thanks.

**John:** I mostly know you from the Labs, and so the Labs experience from my perspective is I get to go up there as an adviser.

Before I’ve gotten up there I’ve read through these screenplays by some really talented filmmakers and I get to sit on these one-on-one meetings with them and talk to them about these movies that they want to make. And the first time I did it I was like well this is magic. Who could have ever thought up this idea of doing it this way? And it was you. You are the person who came up with this idea of the Labs. This place for filmmakers to sort of have other filmmakers help them out on the things they’re trying to shoot. Congratulations.

**Michelle:** Thank you. It’s a very simple idea but it works. And we’ve revised it along the way because we’ve been doing it for a long, long time. We were just thinking about it today in terms of is there anything that we want to change. Not much about it. Because the opportunity for writers on a project that they’re developing to have that deep dive and dialogue with a working professional screenwriter is like nothing else.

You know, you can say it’s a secret sauce of Sundance, but that kind of investment in a project on the part of an adviser like you and others and getting to go on a thought experiment, getting to learn about craft, specifically on a particular project. I mean, all that work that you all put into it preparing for it. And then that incredible experience of a two-to-three hour meeting which is as much about feedback as it is about an interrogative approach and going deeply into a project and finding out what the intentions of the writer that you’re working with.

**John:** What I think is so great about the process is that usually as a writer is getting notes that person who is giving notes has some agenda. So either they are a producer who has a vision for what they want the movie to be, or they are a friend or loved one who really wants to support that person but may not be an expert in that field. As we’re up there as advisers we’re just there to help. And so your sense of like what is the intention that is exactly always my first question. What movie do you see yourself trying to make out of this? How can I help you make that movie? I have no intention, no motivation other than just helping you do your thing.

**Michelle:** Yeah. And that’s a very – you know, that creates that safe space. Because no one is trying to impose anything. And, in fact, you get to do whatever you want once you leave Sundance. But the best thing you can do is go in very open but also with a clear vision of what you’re trying to communicate. What is the story that you want to tell that only you can tell as a writer? And every writer is so helped on craft, which is such an important part of it, because we often select a little bit more for voice and potential and where they need to learn is more about the craft.

That intersection or that connection of craft to story and voice, you know, is kind of perfect.

**John:** It is perfect. And what’s perfect about it is it is a small, safe environment. So generally we’ll have 12 to 15, maybe a few more fellows up there. We’ll have a few more advisers because advisers are talking to multiple fellows. But it’s a small, safe place and you’re in Utah. You’re up at this resort. You’re sort of isolated from every place else.

Now you’ve taken that same model and you’ve gone around the world with it. So, there’s Labs in different places and sometimes you’re helping establish the lab and it just runs by itself. So, you may have come up with the concept but you didn’t trademark it. You didn’t patent it. You’ve let other people do what you’re doing. But it feels fundamentally like it can’t scale all that far. It’s constrained just by it takes so many resources of advisers, and the logistics of getting everybody physically together in a space to do.

**Michelle:** Yeah. We’ve looked at numbers along the way and we have found that kind of perfect number. Because intimacy is really important. The fact that everybody gets to meet everyone and be in dialogue, not necessarily in a one-on-one meeting, but get to be a part of a community and build a family together is so key to the experience of the lab. And it has to be small.

**John:** There’s also the question of access because in order to go up to the lab you have to be able to take that time off from work or I know you sometimes have funds that can help bring those people to the labs, to help support them to some degree. But not everyone can sort of join you up on the mountain in Utah. And the question of how do you get some of that expertise and how do you get that experience to people who couldn’t show up there.

So that’s really mostly why you’re here today is to talk about this new venture that you’re coming up with which can sort of broaden that access to people. So this thing is called Sundance Co//ab. What’s the motivation behind it?

**Michelle:** For Sundance it’s opening access. It’s being able to reach many more writers, many more creators. Being able to reach out to parts of the world that we haven’t been in or even haven’t selected writers to support from. It’s looking at more under-resourced and underrepresented communities. You know, how do we create an inclusive, generous learning space and community for global creators.

**John:** Well there’s certainly, so Co//ab is an online community, or at least the first of it you see is an online community. So you go and there’s a website and it’s a really well put together produced website. And there are other websites out there that are about filmmaking or about sort of stuff, but deep down it’s like they’re trying to make a buck and that’s not sort of the impetus behind Co//ab. It’s not an attempt to corner the market on narrative storytelling on the web.

What is the model? If this is really successful five years from now, what do you hope it will look like?

**Michelle:** That’s such a good question. Four hours today thinking about what do we want it to be. What’s the future that we can imagine for Co//ab? And part of it is we have to look at where we are today. This is not a money-making venture for Sundance but we will charge a fee for courses and masterclasses and some of the things we do.

So much of the site, I would say over 50% of the site is free. And it’s an opportunity for people who are interested in writing especially right now, although we’re expanding to directing and producing and all the other creative disciplines that Sundance works in, but this is an opportunity for you to learn from some of the greats like you, John August, in a video that’s about the writing process for you. And sort of taking you through in a very short amount of time. They’re about eight minutes long because we know people have shorter attention spans. But you get nuggets of really important learning and inspiration from these what we call our learning library or videos.

But as importantly it’s creating a community online. It’s an opportunity for writers to share their work and get feedback. Get feedback from the community but get feedback from advisers who are rotated and on and are, again, giving back.

Tiger Williams who was our first instructor, and he teaches at USC, and he’s also an adviser at Sundance at the Sundance Lab, and was really exciting for this group of writers. They were from all over the world. People were up in the middle of the night to take part in this course. So it’s taking from a new idea to getting to an outline of what the story might look like going forward. You know, big focus on developing characters and character work as character evolves story. So a lot of the core elements of screenwriting.

But here’s what was beautiful about it, because I was worried about it by the way. I was thinking how do we take what we do at Sundance in person and bring it to an online community?

**John:** Because the Sundance experience is very much like we’re across a very short table and we’re just looking into each other’s eyes and down at the page. It’s a very intimate thing. And online can’t be that, so what does it feel like?

**Michelle:** Well, first of all you’re in a virtual community. We use a link. There are a lot of conference links. We use Zoom as a conference link. What you have to do is you have to get used to that space first. But what people felt is that they were there with Tiger in that space. They were learning about screenwriting. He spent one of the session just going through Moonlight as an example of great writing and choices that Barry Jenkins made as a writer and also as a director.

You know, it was pure gold.

**John:** Yeah. I would say that from our Scriptnotes listeners we have a ton of writers who are just off on their own someplace and really don’t know anybody else doing the craft of screenwriting. So the common things that happen again and again if you’re not in a group where you can sort of see like, oh, she’s struggling with the same thing that I’m struggling with, that can be hard. And so having some sort of group activity, some sort of group focus can be really good. Because it’s not just the feedback you’re getting on your own project. It’s what you’re hearing from the people around you can be great.

So, something like Tiger’s class, how many students would be in one of those classes?

**Michelle:** Well we went big. Not huge, but bigger than our intimate lab of 12 to 15. We had 30 people.

**John:** 30 people. So more like a traditional class.

**Michelle:** It was more like a traditional class. And Tiger was, by the way, worried about it.

**John:** Yeah. I can understand.

**Michelle:** It’s like I’m used to working with 12 in a workshop.

**John:** So let’s talk about access. Is there an age limit? Do you have to be a certain age to sign up for one of these classes? Do you let 16 year olds take this class, or do they need to be adults in college?

**Michelle:** Well, we don’t ask for their age.

**John:** All right. So as far as you know the people were old enough to do it. But I mean obviously the geographic thing is a huge aspect because I’m sure you had a bunch of international writers in this, but people in the middle of the country who are not around anything like this it’s a chance for them to actually talk with other writers and sort of explore.

**Michelle:** It’s a great opportunity for them. And it’s a great opportunity for writers who are working internationally. It’s interesting in forming Sundance we were very aware that – this was, as you said 37 years ago, we were very aware that there was very little instruction in writing at any of the universities, at any of the schools. Now, that has changed to a great extent.

But the value of that is sometimes questionable.

**John:** The cost of it is not questionable. It’s really expensive.

**Michelle:** It’s prohibitive for a lot of people to do that. And so we saw that not only in the US but really all over the world where there was no instruction around screenwriting, there wasn’t a value placed on writing in terms of teaching.

**John:** Well, also a lot of places around the world there isn’t even a concept of screenwriting. It’s just that a director makes a movie and the director might write the movie first, but there’s not a sense that like there is a writing process and a thinking process. You get your movie on the page first so you can use that as a jumping off place to make your film. And a lot of international communities don’t have that as their basis for how they’re telling their stories.

**Michelle:** Yeah. And what was surprising to us is there’s literally people up in India, you know, in Lebanon, in Australia, all over, Kashmir, I mean really all over the world who wanted to connect to learning about – to this community and also learning about writing.

**John:** Great. So right now the site is up and some people are using the site now. It’s growing. If listeners want to check it out, they go to – what is the URL they should go to?

**Michelle:** It’s collab.sundance.org.

**John:** Great. So they can check that out. They can check out all of the free stuff and then if they’re curious about the online classes, those just come up regularly right? So there’s new ones starting all the time in different topics?

**Michelle:** Yeah. There are. Our next screenwriting class is starting in about a week. And then the one after that, that’s our winter class. We have a spring class and it will start sometime in April. And we ask people to apply for the classes. And the reason for that is we want to make sure that people are serious about wanting to make a commitment to the class.

We’re not looking for sample work and we’re not reviewing the project that they’re working on. But it’s really important for us that the people that are going to connect with Sundance in a course at least this is an opportunity for them to really do the work.

**John:** While I have you here I want to make sure that we don’t miss any other aspects of the Sundance Institute process because Craig and I are often hyping the episodic labs and sort of the other things. So when I first got started with Sundance there was the screenwriting lab which tied into the directing lab. And so they were sort of two poles of it. But it’s really grown tremendously over the years.

And so I know there’s a producing lab. There are composer’s labs. There’s a theater lab. There’s episodic television, or episodic storytelling I guess, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s a network drama or some sort of webisode kind of thing.

What I admire about Sundance is the way you’ve recognized that storytelling exists in all these different media and there are common threads linking them all in that sense of what is the story that you uniquely can tell. And that’s what I always stress to people who say like, “Oh I’m going to apply for the Sundance Lab. I have this thriller about corporate espionage.” And it’s like that can be a great thriller. That does not sound like the kind of story that only you could tell. And that’s the thing that I think Sundance is so good at helping people do is how to excavate that story that’s inside you that you are uniquely qualified to tell, in whatever the media is.

**Michelle:** Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s an interesting process, you know, to work that through and find those projects that we want to get involved with. But one of the things that’s interesting to us and we don’t get enough of is comedy.

**John:** Oh, of course.

**Michelle:** Thrillers. Horror films. I mean, we really are open to all genres. And also right now looking at hybrid. What is the fiction/nonfiction story to tell? We supported Bart Layton on American Animals and that was such an interesting process. We want to be challenged, too, and our writers to be challenged. I remember when we brought Beasts of the Southern Wild to the Sundance Lab and it was a very early stage script. And Ben described it as an unruly child, which was interesting. But to really help him shape that beautiful idea that came full cloth out of him was a long road, both in the writing process and in the editing process.

But look at the result of it?

**John:** Oh, absolutely.

**Michelle:** I mean, just a gorgeous film. So, yes, we’re supporting writers/creators across all forms, all formats. We also have a new Frontier Lab and we’re supporting artists and it’s very much a collaborative. I mean, it’s always a collaborative process, but artists working with technologists, working with biologists. I mean, it’s scientists, architects. You know, it can be anything. You know, a lot of the work more recently has been around virtual reality storytelling and augmented reality. But there’s so much going on with AI and mixed media. It’s really exciting. So Sundance has also become an incubator for that kind of work.

But what distinguishes us even in new frontier is we’re grounded in story. There’s a lot of so-called incubators out there supporting – and hackathons – and supporting a lot of really great, and interesting, and innovative work. But Sundance takes it back to sort of what is the story that you’re trying to tell. What is uniquely compelling and complicated and complex about these characters? And what’s the movement of this story?

So we’re looking at, in some ways very conventional craft, but bringing it to different forms and different formats has been incredibly exciting and an incredible learning experience for everybody.

**John:** Great. Well I can’t wait to see what happens with Sundance Co//ab. It seems like a really well thought out project and a great way to sort of – you describe it as widening the funnel just so that you can actually reach people who couldn’t actually make it to the top of the mountain in Utah and really benefit from what you’ve been able to create there.

Michelle, thank you for coming on the show and thank you for talking about it.

**Michelle:** This has been fun. And thank you. And I hope your listeners will check it out. We’re also looking for feedback, always. So if there are gaps or things that you want that you might be missing or that Sundance could be doing online let us know. Reach out to us.

**John:** Will do. Great. Thanks Michelle.

**Michelle:** Thank you.

**John:** And, Craig, you’re back. And so we are back because it is time for our One Cool Things. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing for us this week?

**Craig:** I do have a One Cool Thing for us this week. As people know I am a big crossword nerd. I’m a mega crossword nerd.

**John:** You are. Everyone knows that.

**Craig:** Everyone knows this. And as you proceed deeper and deeper down the path of crossword nerdiness you start to accrue more crosswords to do. So I used to just do the New York Times crossword every day. And then it was like, OK, I’m going to do the New York Times crossword every day and I’m going to do the Washington Post Sunday by a guy named Evan Birnholz which is fantastic.

Then I’m also adding on Matt Gaffney’s meta crossword every Friday and the Wall Street Journal meta crossword every weekend and it just goes on and on. I’m collecting these. Fireball. And American Variety Crossword. Anyway, it’s out of control.

But there’s one that I wanted to draw people’s attention to, even if they’re not big crossword people but they’re just generally interested in social progress. There’s a new subscription crossword service called Inkubator. And it’s run by two women, Laura Braunstein who herself is a super crosswordy person, and Tracy Bennett who also similar crossword maker-builder-constructor. And the two of them are seeking to address this very stark issue – and believe it or not there are stark issues in the worlds of crosswords – and that is that by and large crosswords still are primarily authored by men, at least I should say the ones that get published in major newspapers.

The gender balance is wildly out of whack. And yet I think the demographics of people who solve puzzles are not at all out of whack. So what they’ve done is essentially put together this incubator with a clever INK Inkubator to not only bring puzzles constructed by women to crossword solvers like myself but also to start to train women who are interested in constructing crosswords how to do it. Just like David Kwong kind of trained me how to create a crossword puzzle.

So it’s a really cool thing they’re doing and the puzzles themselves are really interesting and oftentimes feature answers you would never see in the New York Times. So, if you go to inkubatorcrosswords.com you can see how to subscribe and support the excellent work that Laura and Tracy are doing.

**John:** Fantastic. That sounds great. My One Cool Thing comes from those videos you probably see online where a person is singing with themselves. And so you have videos where a person starts singing and then it split screens and they’re singing with themselves and they’re forming harmony with themselves and they’re doing sometimes really elaborate orchestrations of just them singing with themselves.

And so it is entirely possible to that with just off the shelf stuff and you just splice it together in an editing program and make it all work. But then this last week I noticed that someone had posted something that was done in an app called Acapella which is not new, I had just never seen it before. But it makes it incredibly easy to do that sort of split screen singing with yourself stuff, where you record one track and then you listen to it in ear phones and you sing along with yourself. And then you sing along with yourself again.

And it’s really just fun to do and really simple. And on the app you’ll see a bunch of examples of other people doing that kind of thing. But it’s great. And so I’ve had fun playing with it. So, it’s Acapella. It’s in the iOS App Store. Try it. Craig, you would love it.

**Craig:** I’m pretty certain that Jessica Mazin is all over that.

**John:** That sounds like a very Jessica thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, but I’m going to double check. My guess is that I’m going to say hey Jessie have you heard about Acapella and she’s going to roll her eyes and say, “Oh my god, dad. I’m on to the fourth thing behind Acapella.” You know, because they know everything. Did you know that, John? Did you?

**John:** They know. Yes, teenage girls especially.

**Craig:** My god.

**John:** They know everything.

**Craig:** Everything.

**John:** And any given thing is either not worth their attention or it’s old. And so occasionally I will introduce my daughter to something that is just about to break and she’s like this is dumb and this is stupid. And two days later she loves it, but she will never acknowledge that I was the person who interested it to her.

**Craig:** To be fair I then also play the role of teenage daughter in your life. Because I do that to you all the time.

**John:** So we cut this out of the live show in Seattle, but it was the only time in Scriptnotes history where I was about to recommend something and Craig said like, “No, no, I already recommended that on the podcast.” Because that’s happened before. So it was the book Less, which is a fantastic novel. And Craig it turned out was right and he had actually recommended before I recommended it.

**Craig:** Oh my god, you cut it out? Ugh.

**John:** It was a long episode. So, Matthew had to find things to cut.

**Craig:** That’s fair. That’s fair. You know what? You’ve owned up to it here and now. And, of course, you know better than anybody you would have totally gotten away with it.

**John:** He never listens. And I may have Matthew cut this out, too.

**Craig:** Ah!

**John:** And that’s our show for today. So I want to thank Michelle Satter and Chris Keyser for coming on the episode to talk to us about the future of the industry. Our show is produced Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by XLNYC. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we love to answer.

For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. John is @johnaugust. I might mute your conversation if it goes on for more than four days, but you’re welcome to start a conversation.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. Craig, thanks again. It was good to have you back.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Good to be back.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [WGA Agency Agreement 2019](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement#list)
* WGA President David A. Goodman [Speech](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement/wga-membership-meeting-david-goodman-remarks)
* [Agency Campaign FAQ’s](https://www.wga.org/members/membership-information/agency-agreement/faq-agency-campaign)
* [Co//ab at Sundance](https://collab.sundance.org/)
* [Acapella App](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/acapella-from-picplaypost/id924635678?mt=8) for iOS
* [Inkubator](https://inkubatorcrosswords.com)
* [Less](https://andrewgreer.com/less) by Andrew Sean Greer
* [Chris Keyser](https://twitter.com/chrskeyser) on Twitter
* [Michelle Satter](https://twitter.com/SundanceSatter) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* Submit entries for The Scriptnotes Pitch Session [here](https://johnaugust.com/pitch).
* You can now [order Arlo Finch in the Lake of the Moon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/162672816X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) is Epic Jingle by XLNYC ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/38920-20The20Future20of20the20Industry.mp3).

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

**John August:** And we’re done. Yes.

**Craig Mazin:** So great.

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

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

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

We are here in Seattle for our first ever Seattle live show.

**Craig:** Hear that, John? The sound of people that have been freshly enriched by a higher minimum wage.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They’re excited. They’re caffeinated. They’re full of their legal marijuana and they’re excited. Excited.

**John:** They are excited and why would they not be excited?

**Craig:** No, of course.

**John:** So, the Northwest Screenwriters Guild has been gently stalking us for several years to try to convince us to come up here and they finally succeeded, so a good lesson is to just stalk somebody for a very long time sometimes pays off. So Northwest Screenwriters and TheFilmSchool, all one word apparently, got us up here. I was here on my Arlo Finch book tour. You generously agreed to like hop on a plane and fly up here.

**Craig:** What happened was – thank you – John said come to Seattle and I said OK.

**John:** [laughs] Yes.

**Craig:** I don’t really do a lot of thinking or what I would say independent thinking or decision making.

**John:** No, it’s not planned.

**Craig:** Normally just John tells me what to do. Earlier I didn’t know where he was and I got scared. So, just so you guys understand, and you probably do, how this works. It’s that.

**John:** Yeah. I text Craig like meet me in the lobby in five minutes and he’s like OK-K.

**Craig:** OK. Yeah. And I was on time.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Do not show up late for John August.

**John:** So let’s just get a general sense of what’s happening in the industry overall because we’ve done a live show in New York and a live show in Austin, which are both big film towns, a lot of film happens here. But not a lot of film happens in Seattle. So I was curious why Seattle wanted us up here. And so we got a chance to talk to the Northwest Screenwriters Guild at dinner and a lot of the folks who are in this guild who are doing stuff they want to be writing movies. They want to be telling stories cinematically and it’s a group that got together to help them figure out how to do that. And some of their members have gone on to do big cinematic stuff.

You know, there’s cinematic storytelling that’s not just about making big movies. It can be about video games. It can be about animation. There’s lots of other things that involve some of those characteristics as qualities.

**Craig:** Everything is kind of smooshing together these days which is nice. You guys are also kind of on the backdoor of one of the largest production cities in the world. And it’s something to think about. I know you have to sneak across the border. Obviously it’s a little trickier these days with the wall.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] The wall between us and Canada. Ridiculous.

**John:** International listeners might not understand that Seattle and Vancouver are just next door neighbors.

**Craig:** Kissing cousins.

**John:** And they are so close together but so much production happens in Vancouver. So little production happens in Seattle because of tax breaks and exchange rates.

**Craig:** And also the general politeness of Canadians. I mean, we should give them a little bit of credit.

**John:** Give a little more credit to the Canadians because the Canadians deserve–

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not saying you guys are rude. It’s not a “Hey!” See, it’s like “hello, how are you.” Oh, dual citizen? So you’ve learned to be rude?

**John:** So she’s a Canadian today but other days she’s an American.

**Craig:** Yes. Your alternate side of the street parking with your Canadians. Well, anyway, the point is you’re very close but I would imagine also that means there are probably a lot of training and educational resources here that you might not find in another city of Seattle’s size. I happen to be a huge fan of Seattle. I think it’s an amazing city.

Not every city has the spirit of art running through its veins. This one clearly does. So, I think–

**John:** It’s got a spirit of art and a lot of money. These are good combinations for a town.

**Craig:** Art and money.

**John:** Art and money.

**Craig:** Most of the people making art on the street do not appear to have the money. However, there are opportunities here. And so this is actually of all the places I think this is one of the – I don’t know, I think you guys are in a pretty great place. That said, you should probably move to LA.

**John:** At some point.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You should move to LA. So this was a Twitter thread that I actually got into today. And so I was retweeting some folks about when do you stop your day job which is a really good question. These were novelists who were talking about when you quit your day job, but as screenwriters it’s a tough question of like when do you stop working your day job.

For people who get staffed on a TV show, well, the choice is made for you. You’re now a full-time employee on a TV show so you’re not going to go to your day job anymore. But for screenwriters it’s a much tougher call. And so Shannon and Swift who are a writing team who do a lot of stuff they were saying like they were on the front page of Variety having sold their script and they still went to work that day because you just don’t know. You just don’t know when that next job is going to come, when you’re actually going to get paid. So, that idea of you made it, you didn’t make it, when do you stop working your day job is really tough.

**Craig:** I went through the same thing. The first thing I sold was in I think 1995 I want to say, possibly. And I don’t think I actually quit that job until late in 1996. So for a long time you’re just sort of waiting, which is smart. I mean, honestly a lot of people sell a script. Not to bum you guys out. You guys will sell many scripts. But some people only sell one. Boo those people.

And so I was kind of scared, but it was a weird thing to be – because you feel like you’ve made it. You know, you and I have talked on the show there’s no making it. There’s no breaking in. It’s not a thing. There’s just this strange progression. And then one day someone says to you, “I need you working on this now. You can’t go to your safe job anymore.” And that actually is a scary day.

**John:** It is a scary day. And if you get staffed on a TV show, well great, so you have 20 weeks of work, but then what happens – or hopefully 20 weeks, maybe it’s 10 weeks of work. But what happens after that? And a thing you guys should understand is that as television has gotten just shorter and shorter seasons, well that’s great for a viewer. I like a short season. I like being able to get through all of it. But as a writer that can be really tough because if you’re only working on those 10 weeks, those 20 weeks, well you’ve got to get on another show. You’ve got to find ways to fill a whole year.

And so I think we’re going to see writers having to do a lot more scrambling as they jump from show to show to show, or trying to find the next show down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah. So maybe just quit now.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe just stop. That’s really our message. Or our anti-message.

**Craig:** The crazy part is there’s more jobs than ever before. It’s pretty awesome actually. You guys are in a pretty great time. There are more jobs than ever before. Almost all of them are in television, but that’s OK because television is more movie-like than ever before. But it is true. There is a certain pressure now on the way you live. That said, people are living that life quite successfully and some people are living it incredibly successfully. And I would add that aside from money there are other parts of this job that are so fulfilling and so lovely that they’re worth almost as much as money.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which you don’t hear very often, but they are.

**John:** So, so much of this conversation we could have every day in Los Angeles. We do sort of have it every day in Los Angeles. But when we decided to come up here to Seattle my first question to Craig is like, well, who should we have on the show? Who is a special Seattle person we could have on the show? And Craig was like, oh, oh, ooh, I know exactly who we should have on the show. So tell me what was your instinct behind having Emily.

**Craig:** So Emily Zulauf is somebody I’ve known for many, many years. I met her when she was working at Pixar. Pixar does this interesting thing where – so they’re Oakland. I was going to say up in Oakland, but it’s down in Oakland. And they are always looking for people to write. You’d think like, oh, they’re Pixar. But the way that animation is done, some of you may be familiar with this, there are so many people creating and so many people writing that a lot of times they’re looking in places for writers that you might not think. And a few years ago Emily came down with Mary Coleman, another development executive from Pixar, to meet some people who they had read some scripts and liked and I was one of those people. And I’m a huge Pixar fan. And we had this lovely lunch. And then I guess about a year later we ran into each other again at the Austin Film Festival which is a fun thing. I don’t know – has anybody gone to the Austin Film Festival?

**John:** There’s some hands up. Great.

**Craig:** Look at all you. Good for you. So we ran into each other there and we just decided – she was like we decided that we would be friends, but mostly I was like I don’t like anyone, so when I meet somebody that I like I’m like, OK, we’re friends now and they don’t have a choice because it’s hard for me to meet people that I like. Because I’m a bad person full of umbrage.

So, we became friends. And she’s got a remarkable story mind and she also came out of this place that is legendary and has created some of the most incredible stories of all time. And, in fact, is one of the few institutions in the world that I think is mostly just obsessed with pure storytelling. And she’s actually in a different endeavor now. She’ll tell you about that. But maybe we should welcome her down.

**John:** Emily Zulauf will you please come and join us here.

**Emily Zulauf:** Hey guys.

**John:** Emily, so at dinner I was trying to figure out how I should introduce you. Emily Zulauf is a blank – but you do so many things. Talk to us about what you’re doing now and how you would describe yourself on a resume.

**Emily:** Oh god. So right now I am running story for a new video game company that I can’t talk about.

**John:** She’s under so many NDAs.

**Emily:** I’m so scared.

**John:** There’s like a red dot aimed at her forehead right now.

**Emily:** I know. It was my honest reservation about doing the podcast was I can’t talk about any of this. So that’s what I’m doing right now in secret. And, yeah, prior to that I did some freelance writing. I was the executive director of a nonprofit for a hot second. And I was at Pixar for almost eight years. I was the script supervisor on Inside Out and I was in creative development for about 3.5 years.

**John:** That’s great. You are also a friend of Tess Morris.

**Emily:** Yes.

**John:** Who is a very frequent Scriptnotes guest. And so I always think of you with Tess Morris, because I always see you at the Austin Film Festival right with Tess.

**Emily:** Yeah. That’s a great association. I totally appreciate that. I want to keep that going.

**John:** You know what? We’re happy to have you by yourself. So, when we have–

**Emily:** Yeah. No more Tess.

**John:** No more Tess. This is a Tess-less episode. So, there’s so many things about what you’ve worked on that I want to get into because they’re different than what we normally experience as screenwriters. First, I want to talk about process because Pixar is just a very different story and creative process than what we’re used to as screenwriters because Craig and I we just go off in our little rooms and we beat ourselves up and we write our stories. That’s not the Pixar way at all.

I remember going up to a meeting at Pixar where I gave a little talk, gave a little class, and then they were like, “Oh yeah, and then we’re going to do a two-day offsite to work on this one moment at the end of the second act.” I’m like I would kill myself. But it works for Pixar. So, how does it work and why does it work?

**Emily:** Like how do people not kill themselves?

**John:** How do people not kill themselves?

**Craig:** There’s actually quite a high suicide rate there.

**Emily:** It’s a very tall building.

**Craig:** They’re dropping like flies.

**Emily:** It’s a very tall building.

**Craig:** There isn’t. No there’s not.

**Emily:** It’s totally a joke.

**John:** People hanging themselves from a little lamp.

**Craig:** So touchy here.

**Emily:** Starting dark.

**John:** So what is – I mean, that two-day offsite was probably a real thing and you probably do that.

**Emily:** Yeah. We didn’t make that up.

**John:** That actually does happen. So, what is the process? So something like an Inside Out, is there a script at the start or is it just an idea that – tell me.

**Emily:** Yeah, so usually what it has been traditionally, and I guess I want to caveat this by saying I’m not there now. They’re obviously in a transitional period and so this might be changing a little bit. But sort of traditionally what it has been is that the director is identified first by some group of the executive team. And that director is responsible for coming up with three different pitches of stories that that person wants to do. And so part of what we do in creative development is sort of support them as they’re trying to figure out what that is that they’re interested in. And coming up with sort of a rough pitch for all of those. And then they pitch that to whoever is in charge.

**John:** Whoever is in charge. Let’s stop though for one second though. When you say a director is pitching three ideas, they’re really pitching sort of three story areas, or they’re pitching three like I want to do a story that’s about this, or about this idea, but it may not have the exact characters or sort of what’s going to happen.

**Emily:** For sure. Yeah, it’s definitely like the roughest outline. It would fit on probably a page or a half a page depending on how much they fleshed it out. And it’s usually trying to find three areas that feel distinct enough and different enough that the president of the company can say I like this direction. You’re certainly not – you know, when they buy off on an idea they’re certainly not buying off on something that looks like a full treatment or definitely not a full script.

**Craig:** And they’re basically saying go ahead and take some time to dig at this little vein in the mountain and see if there’s stuff there.

**Emily:** Exactly. Like run that direction. But certainly not at the point of like this makes perfect sense.

**Craig:** I heard a story that Finding Nemo just began as – was it Andrew Stanton?

**Emily:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Saying “fish.” Just started with fish. And everyone was like, yes, of course, fish.

**John:** We’re going to do fish.

**Emily:** There’s a pretty wide variety in how much people have prepared for those pitches. And some of it has to do with how comfortable you are. You know, we’re asking people to – I mean, with any director you have a lot of different skillsets that have to exist in one person. But certainly we’re asking somebody whose job is not pitching to figure out how to get up and pitch effectively.

**John:** To how big of a group would that person need to be able to pitch?

**Emily:** Well, ultimately – and this is where I’m going to fudge around on it again – historically that was just John Lasseter. I assume now that is mostly Pete Docter. But there certainly are other people who will show up in those meetings. But ultimately there’s sort of one decider at the studio. It’s just sort of how the hierarchy is structured. And depending on how comfortable you are makes a big difference in how you pitch.

**Craig:** I mean animation in and of itself has so much pitching from moment to moment that at some point I assume people just get over whatever kind of baseline of fear they had because story artists are constantly pitching.

**Emily:** Yeah. And the majority of our directors come out of story, too. So most of them do have a baseline of at least being comfortable enough to get up and talk about story. But there’s always a process that everybody goes through when you’re new at anything. And pitching to the head of your company is not the same as pitching to the rest of your story team.

**Craig:** Right. When you know like I have a job now, so the worst thing that happens is I have to just keep doing my job.

**Emily:** Right. Exactly. And then I think they’re doing I think a really wonderful job right now of starting to pull from other places more. So, if you’re coming and I’m totally making this up, I don’t know that this is true. But if you’re coming out of lighting for instance like that’s not necessarily going to be your area. So part of what we would do in creative development is just pitch prep, is just help people get comfortable to talk about their story and how to do it and what the beats are.

**Craig:** I had no idea. That’s so nice.

**Emily:** Isn’t that nice?

**Craig:** You’re a good person.

**Emily:** We’re very nice.

**John:** There’s a whole department that does not exist at a traditional studio at all because–

**Craig:** I feel like this is the opposite department where they teach you – they just remind you repeatedly before you go into a room that it’s quite likely you’ll fail.

**John:** That you’re all terrible and it will never get past here.

**Craig:** But good luck.

**John:** So because we’re in Seattle, Amazon headquarters, I know that Amazon has this policy of when they’re going to start on a new project one of the first things you have to do is write the press release announcing the finished version. And it feels so different from what you’re describing. So these directors who are pitching these story areas they don’t really know what the final movie is. They don’t even know what sort of happens in it. They’re just describing an area, a vision, so it’s not a specific kind of thing.

When Craig and I go in to pitch something, like we’ll get called to the mat on details about like well how do you get to the second act moment.

**Craig:** I just tell them, I’m like shut up.

**John:** Shut up.

**Craig:** It’s a pitch.

**John:** Shut up Sean. I can do it.

**Craig:** Just shut up, Sean. I’ve never said shut up to Sean. He’s a nice guy. Super nice.

**Emily:** In fairness I think they do usually have a story sketched out. I think the difference is that it will change–

**John:** They know it’s going to change.

**Emily:** So dramatically. So a lot of times even though you go in and you pitch a story you’re really pitching the world. And you’re really pitching like do you want to live in this space for a while.

**Craig:** And you’re pitching to a creative person. You know, most of the time for us – not that producers aren’t creative, but we’re pitching to people that don’t write. So a lot of their expectation is tell me a story. But when you’re pitching to people that do write, when a writer friend pitches something to me, sometimes it is just fish because a question that I will always ask somebody, like somebody says, “OK, can you read these first 20. I’m lost. What’s happening here?” Sometimes the question you just ask is what made you feel fascinated in the first place and maybe that’s kind of what happens in those meetings is someone just shows this little piece of spark because they want to tell, there’s like a little thing. Well let’s go back to that seed.

**Emily:** I think that’s totally true. And I think that’s also sort of what our job was in creative development too is to start poking at those questions and help you articulate why does this matter to me so that when you walk into a meeting that’s what you’re–

**Craig:** When they ask you why does this matter to you.

**Emily:** And you’re like I don’t know.

**Craig:** I need my healthcare. That’s not a great answer.

**Emily:** I really enjoy money.

**Craig:** Yeah. I bought a car I should not have bought and…

**John:** Well, Emily, here’s a crucial difference though is these folks who are coming in to do this, the people you’re working with, they’re already working for Pixar so they’re already getting a paycheck. So it’s not that like I’ve got to make this happen or else I’m dead. They’re already working there. So you can support them because they’re already part of your family.

My question though is how many people are pitching their kind of project at Pixar? Because you’re only making two or three movies a year. How many folks are trying to get one of their movies up and running? Is it 20? Is it 30?

**Emily:** No. You have to be invited to pitch a feature.

**John:** OK. And to be invited you probably were a super star on some previous project.

**Emily:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Or you get a Golden Ticket.

**Emily:** Right. Or there’s a line outside the studio and one person comes in a year.

**John:** One person gets the ticket.

**Emily:** But if you want to make a short it’s a much more open process. So that ends up being more of a training ground. And then there’s some people who made a short and did it successfully and then moved on to features. But, yes, if you’re getting to pitch a feature it’s a small group.

**John:** Now, one of the rare things that you get to do which I don’t hear other people talking about is Pixar brings in writers to work for a time on a project and it was part of your responsibility to find those writers who would come in to do that stuff. And so we have a lot of people who want to be writers in animation or writers at all and how would you find their scripts and what are you looking for in those scripts that might say like oh this is a person who could help us out. What are you looking for in scripts?

**Emily:** It’s a lot of matchmaking because we’re trying to match with a very specific director. Right? So it’s matchmaking also in the way that, you know, if your friend asks you to set them up with somebody you have to read between the lines of what they think they want and then what they actually need. And there’s a little bit of that that goes on as well.

**Craig:** That’s why I keep failing at that. I just do what they told me.

**Emily:** Like, OK.

**Craig:** That’s not what they really – argh!

**Emily:** No, I know. Wants and needs, Craig, we’re going to talk about it later.

So a lot of times it’s sitting down with a director and talking about what they think they need for the project. And then, you know, knowing who they are and understanding how they traditionally worked. And so sometimes the people that you filter to them are actually a little bit more informed.

But generally we were looking for people – it sounds sort of cliché because we’ve said it so many times – but it’s smart with heart. People who can write in this space that is both funny and where the character – where the humor is really coming from the characters and driven by the characters.

The thing that we get a lot that we don’t need is people who’ve written children’s animated scripts. Because we make children’s animated movies it’s a really logical idea that this is what we would want to see. And, in fact, we’ve never hired anyone off of a script like that. We’ve only ever hired people off of – you know, we hired Mike Arndt off of Little Miss Sunshine, for instance, which it would be hard to say that that’s like children’s animated.

**Craig:** Talk a little bit more about the heart part. Because I think sometimes people struggle as they’re starting out or continuing their path as a writer to figure out how to be emotionally moving without being formulaically saccharine or sentimental. Can you see what the difference is? Where is the line? And what makes something proper heart as opposed to formulaic sentimentality?

**Emily:** I wish I had like a really easy answer for that.

**Craig:** Take your time. We’re on radio. Take an hour.

**Emily:** I’m just going to sit here.

**John:** I think we’re done. I do have a theory though and maybe you can expand upon this. Is that when you see sort of false heart it’s just spread over the top of it. It doesn’t feel like it’s earned by the characters and it doesn’t feel like the movie itself is generous, that the movie is generous with its characters. That it’s letting them struggle but ultimately overcome some of the things that they’re doing. It doesn’t let them make bad choices and learn from them. It’s just kind of spread over the top of it like frosting on a cake.

**Emily:** And it’s also easy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well that to me, because the thing about Pixar movies that’s always fascinated me is how brutal they are to their heroes.

**Emily:** Totally.

**Craig:** Tortuous. Brutal and mean. And when they figured out how to be terribly mean to a character then they add one more thing on to make it awfully mean. And in a weird way I think sometimes when people are aiming for heart what they’re aiming for is happy. They’re aiming for like a happy cry and a wonderful moment. But in fact heart comes from misery.

**Emily:** Yeah. And I think – and I agree with you. I think they do [laughs] – that’s the end.

**Craig:** So you guys got a shot at this.

**Emily:** Heart comes from misery.

**Craig:** Heart comes from misery. Well, because I don’t really care in the end if something nice has happened to somebody whose prior experience was a little less than nice. I want it to be awful. I mean, that’s classic literature.

**Emily:** I totally agree with you. And I think obviously they’re not afraid to let their characters, you know, hit that point. I will say not to – I feel like I’m pitching Michael Arndt today.

**John:** Well Michael Arndt is fantastic.

**Emily:** He’s fantastic.

**John:** He’s a good guy.

**Craig:** We love Michael Arndt.

**Emily:** But when he did – I watched his Endings talk that he did which I guess this is now just a pitch for his Endings talk. But I thought that was also really, really insightful about just this idea that you can’t just flip one set of stakes at the end. You really have to flip the sort of philosophical stakes of what your movie is saying and what it’s about.

**Craig:** Which means you have to know that your movie is supposed to be saying something in the first place.

**Emily:** Well, yeah, there’s that, too.

**Craig:** Your movie is supposed to be saying something in the first place.

**John:** Your movie should have a point.

**Craig:** Yeah. There should be an arguable point. An arguable point.

**John:** Yes. It’s sort of like what we always say. Your question at the end of this has to actually be a question. Your movie actually has to make a philosophical argument that it actually answers at the end of this.

**Craig:** What’s your movie about? Brotherhood. No.

**John:** No, no, more than that. There’s not a challenging thing there.

**Craig:** Family. Hmm.

**John:** Oh, no, no, no.

**Craig:** No. Sometimes the best thing you can do to show love to somebody is to let them leave you. Possibly permanently. When they are all you have.

**Emily:** Which also I have to say–

**Craig:** Doesn’t that feel like a movie? They should make that movie but with fish.

**Emily:** I’m a real sucker for movies that don’t end like “happily,” where you get the emotional catharsis of the film but you don’t–

**Craig:** If at the end of Finding Nemo the mom came back. Like it turned out she wasn’t eaten at all.

**John:** Oh, Nemo.

**Craig:** Oh look, and she’s here. And Dori remembers everything.

**Emily:** Right. I mean, genuinely I think one of the things that Pixar does really well is they do set up that hurt at the beginning. And they don’t undo it.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Emily:** So, once you set it you let that–

**Craig:** They lean into it.

**Emily:** You lean into it. And you let that be the thing that’s guiding your character. And so I think you know, when I read scripts I’m also looking for that. I’m looking for people who are willing to let bad things happen to their characters.

**Craig:** Let bad things happen.

**Emily:** And then let the character react to it.

**John:** So Emily tell us about, like these scripts you’re reading, where do those scripts come from? Because Pixar is not a WGA shop so you don’t have to be a WGA member to be writing for Pixar. Where are you finding scripts that have this smart with heart that work for you?

**Emily:** Well this is the news that I feel like nobody is going to like, which is they’re mostly coming from big agencies. They have–

**Craig:** Well they’re all represented at big agencies.

**John:** Oh absolutely.

**Emily:** Yeah, no everybody. Like me too. You know, mostly they are coming through that way. But we also look at the Nicholls and we look at Austin.

**Craig:** What about short films that come, so not scripts, but rather little films, short films or any kind of expressed art that is coming in not from an agency but something that you just find out in the wild?

**Emily:** I think those are always sort of exciting little gems but they have to be – for us – backed up with written words. So, we have to see, you know, a lot of what we’re asking a writer to do is we have this incredible team of people of story artists who are all dedicated to making the story great. So you’re not by yourself, but you are – if you’re the writer you’re the person who is actually putting words on the page and like dialogue in the mouths of the characters. And so even if you’ve made an amazing short film, unfortunately part of what we’re looking for from a writer is to make sure you can do the structure. Make sure that you understand–

**Craig:** But that’s kind of fortunate in a sense because what you don’t get is fooled by auteurs and directors that aren’t really – because I think sometimes there are people that can make beautiful shorts that aren’t really writers. They’re just doing this little impressionistic wonderful thing. But these people are writers. So that’s a good sign.

**Emily:** Yeah. And I think that the truth is, I mean, anybody who has tried to write a short and then tried to write a feature knows that those are two different beasts, right? And so if you can write a great short but when you try to go expand it into a feature it very quickly–

**Craig:** Jog around the block/marathon.

**Emily:** Yeah. And so I think if you can make a beautiful short I think that’s fantastic and I think that’s an incredible thing to have and it’s another thing in your portfolio. But for animation you’re going to have to have an actual script.

**John:** Emily, my question is like let’s say you meet with a writer and is it a phone call first to talk with her about the script you read and then you bring her up to see if she’s a good fit? What is the dating process like for–?

**Emily:** Thank you for saying her John.

**John:** But you’re trying to get this writer to work on this project and see if it’s a good match. Obviously there’s a personality thing. Let’s say you all agree that this is the writer. This is the one we want. But what is she actually going to do? Is she going to write a full script or is she going to work on some scenes? Because that’s the thing I never really understood about Pixar is does any one writer actually finish a whole script or is everyone just working on little sections and it’s all getting assembled over the course of years?

**Emily:** At the beginning, like when you’re first in development, you probably do have one writer who writes a script all the way through. And it’s like the first draft and it’s really rough and no one will ever see it. But once you get into production everything becomes a big jigsaw puzzle. So everything goes out of order. You start boarding the sequences completely out of order which means you’re rewriting the sequences out of order. Sometimes depending on the project sometimes that writer will be the only person who writes. But a lot of times on a lot of projects there’s either a story artist who also writes or a director who also writes or a co-director or head of story. And so while the writer is still the writer and is still sort of the main person watching the full script you will often have people sort of come in and touch things along the way. But, yes, it’s a big giant jigsaw puzzle. And one of the most difficult things I think for our writers is that you do have to, you know, here’s all these moving pieces. They’re changing all over the place. And yet you still have to have the whole thing kind of in your head, which is–

**Craig:** That’s the job.

**Emily:** Just like a–

**John:** But it’s a very different job than what Craig or I usually do.

**Craig:** Well, it is, but I would say–

**John:** Well, in production I guess.

**Craig:** When you get in production that’s happening.

**John:** So that would happen, I mean, it happens for you on Chernobyl. It happens for me on a Charlie’s Angels where everything is just crazy. But you’re like, oh no, no, this is actually the movie we’re trying to make and you’re trying to remind people. But, there’s a lot of voices. So when I talk about that like we’re going to do a two-day offsite about this thing, so who would be in that two-day offsite? There would be storyboard artists. There would be the writers – writer or writers who are on. The director. And is everyone just pitching ways to get through this moment or new things? What happens?

**Emily:** It would depend on the nature of the offsite. Most of our off-sites are actually brain trust off-sites. So that would be all the other directors at the studio.

**John:** OK, great. So it’s like a council of elders looking at this project.

**Craig:** Nothing creepy about that in any way, shape, or form.

**John:** A brain trust. So they wheel out the brains in jars. They all stare at the project.

**Craig:** We are offsite.

**Emily:** We give them a little special–

**Craig:** Why do they have to go offsite? That building is amazing.

**Emily:** I know. It’s huge.

**Craig:** Where do they go? Like a La Quinta or something?

**Emily:** Denny’s.

**Craig:** Denny’s?

**Emily:** We go all over the place. It’s just sort of wherever the producer finds. But it’s like the idea–

**Craig:** That’s what happens when every movie makes a billion dollars. You’re like we’ve got to spend some of this money. Literally it’s coming out of the pipes. Uh, let’s go to Yosemite.

**Emily:** I don’t think we’ve ever been to Yosemite.

**Craig:** See?

**John:** Yeah. Good idea.

**Craig:** There’s an idea.

**Emily:** Somebody is going to hear this.

**Craig:** Mountains!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh no, you already did – volcanoes did it. Pixar did it.

**John:** So, coming out of one of those sessions you would have new ways to sort of get through this thing. But the brain trust thing is really interesting. So we had Jennifer Lee on the show to talk about Frozen. And she talked about the brain trust and like the Disney brain trust that you’re showing these early cuts and all of the other directors and all of the other big powerful people are watching this and seeing this thing which is not very good in front of them. And having to figure out how we get it to this next stage. And she actually stepped up in Frozen because she had the answers and she became the writer of Frozen.

Because they had all these pieces and she’s like, oh no, the way you do this is to do that. Here you go. Let’s make this movie. And I’m sure–

**Emily:** It’s her own fault for talking.

**John:** It’s her own fault. Now she’s running Disney.

**Emily:** What a tough path.

**John:** It worked out pretty well for Jennifer Lee.

**Craig:** It can happen to you.

**Emily:** Speak up.

**John:** It can happen to you. Speak up with the right ideas.

This brain trust thing is a kind of thing that I think could only really happen in animation because animation is the only cinematic art form where you have this constant iteration. So even on live action features we go through cuts and stuff but there’s only so much we can change in a cut versus a Pixar animated film. You could change fundamental things. That sidekick character could become the main character. You can really revise stuff.

**Craig:** Well in live action there are people whose job is simply to get everyone to stop changing things. There’s an enormous compelling force once you start spending money to stop changing things. And very typically as the writer you’ll come on set and someone will walk up to you and say, “You didn’t change anything, did you?” Well, that’s what they’re paying me to do. “Ugh, OK. But now we have to figure things out. We were going to shoot here. Now we have to shoot here. This person was going to wear this. Now they have to wear that. They’re not even available on that day.” And so on and so forth.

Whereas in animation, change it.

**Emily:** Yeah. I mean, in fairness there’s a schedule in animation that–

**Craig:** That they blow through constantly.

**Emily:** That they blow through constantly. There’s still poor long suffering people whose job it is to keep us on schedule who like–

**Craig:** No one listens to them.

**Emily:** They try so hard.

**Craig:** They’ve been moved offsite.

**Emily:** They’re having a permanent offsite.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Emily:** It’s a Denny’s.

**Craig:** And not in the United States anymore.

**John:** So most of the animated features I’ve done have been stop motion, which is a different beast because in stop motion we can’t tweak anything. So we’ll do cinematic sketch versions, but once we shoot a frame it’s just done and we can’t fix or tweak anything.

**Craig:** Well it’s like live action animation.

**John:** All of the challenges of animation with all of the challenges of live action, just put together. How difficult can we make it?

**Craig:** The South Park guys who did Team America.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** On day three: why did we do this? This is a nightmare.

**John:** This is a terrible, terrible choice.

**Craig:** Yeah. And we’re stuck. We have to keep going.

**Emily:** It’s true. If you are an indecisive person animation – like computer animation is your jam. It’s a great idea for you.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** I think we’re going to go out of sequence here because this feels like a good moment to introduce a brand new game. So, when we come back from this I want to talk about naïve characters, but before we get to that I want to try this new game. So, as I flew in here last night I had this vision for a game. And it partly came from sometimes – and I’m curious what you guys do about this – when you have an idea in the middle of the night do you actually get out of bed and write it down or do you just like, oh no, I’ll remember it in the morning. Craig, do you write down the stuff you think at night?

**Craig:** Yeah. My iPad is over here so I might email it to myself. That’s my quickie note thing. Except it so rarely is any good.

**John:** No, it rarely is any good.

**Craig:** A lot of times it’s just Ambien talking, I’ve got to be honest with you.

**John:** Sometimes I have no idea what the idea was. I just see these things together and I’m like I have no idea what this is. Emily, do you write your stuff down?

**Emily:** Yeah. But I have Evernote on my phone and then I type things. But also I’m really tired so I don’t check to make sure it’s spell-checked, made sense or anything. So, very, very often I open it like a couple days later and it’s actually nonsense words. I did it too fast and it didn’t autocorrect correctly. And then I’m just staring at orange sofa couch and I’m like I don’t know what that is.

**John:** Yes, but it was very important to you at like 12:30 in the morning.

**Emily:** It was so important at the time, yeah.

**John:** This idea kind of comes from that, but it also comes from a very Hollywood concept which is the open writing assignment. And so what an open writing assignment means is that there is a project that a producer or a studio has and they’re looking to hire a writer on this open writing assignment. And it can be just a very vague idea, but they’re bringing in writers to pitch their take on this open writing assignment. And so new writers will spend a tremendous amount of time coming up with takes so they can pitch on an open writing assignment. It’s one of the things you do a lot as a new screenwriter.

And so I thought tonight we’d do some open writing assignments and we have a great audience here who have helped us figure out some of the things we need to incorporate into this open writing assignment.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** I gave some people some homework in here. Raise your hand if you did the homework that’s on the slide up there. Oh, a lot of people did this. All right. I’m going to pick six people at random and I’m just going to come to you and ask. And I’m going to ask each of you one piece of what you did up here. So, raise your hand, someone in the second row. What is the genre of the movie that you wrote down?

**Fe**Male Audience Member:**** Drama.

**John:** OK, so we have to write a drama.

**Craig:** I can do that.

**John:** OK, we need to write a drama.

**Craig:** I’ll email it to myself.

**John:** What is the general setting of this drama we’re writing?

****Male Audience Member:**** Los Angeles.

**John:** So it’s a drama set in Los Angeles. All right, I’m going to come up here. I feel like a game show host here. What is the profession of the hero in the movie?

****Male Audience Member:**** Weatherman.

**John:** OK. It’s a drama about a weatherman in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** They’ve made this movie, but OK. Keep going.

**John:** How about you right here.

**Fe**Male Audience Member:**** Find out what is killing people.

**John:** Oh, it’s a drama about a weatherman in Los Angeles who has to find out what’s killing people. And who is the villain? You right there, who is the villain in our story?

**Fe**Male Audience Member:**** Classicism.

**John:** Classicism. Classicism is the villain. Oh, this is really good.

**Emily:** Oh no.

**Craig:** Someone has been to college.

**John:** Right here, I need a big trailer moment.

**Male Audience Member:** A meeting of gangs in the parks.

**John:** A meeting of gangs in the park.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, what was the last category?

**John:** A big trailer moment. It’s a meeting of gangs in the park. So I think what we need to come up with a pitch on is a project that is a drama set in Los Angeles about a weatherman who has to fight classicism–

**Craig:** And find out what’s killing people, which is classicism.

**John:** Find out what’s killing people, which is classicism, obviously. And there has to be a big meeting of gangs. So I kind of have a vision of The Warriors a little bit. Emily, talk me through—

**Emily:** No, I had a little moment of like wondering if you get some sort of weird like weather patterns that are only affecting certain areas of Los Angeles.

**John:** Microclimates.

**Emily:** Microclimates if you will.

**Craig:** Like douchebaggery is causing sleet over Brentwood?

**Emily:** And killing people.

**Craig:** And killing people that we want to die.

**Emily:** It’s a really short movie.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Well, how about actually–

**Craig:** It’s like over Howard Schwartz’s house.

**John:** But like lightning bolts. Like a lightning bolt could come down–

**Craig:** Schulz. His name is Schulz, right?

**John:** Howard Schulz, yes.

**Emily:** Also, he’s here.

**Craig:** What’s that?

**Emily:** He’s here.

**Craig:** Howard Schulz is in the audience?

**Emily:** No, no. Here in Seattle.

**John:** Hello! Please don’t run for president. Thank you.

**Craig:** I know. He employs most of the people here.

**Emily:** Do you think he listens to your podcast? Wouldn’t that be great?

**John:** Oh, it would be amazing if he did.

**Emily:** Wouldn’t it be amazing.

**John:** What if we were the people who convinced him, no, no, no, stop this right now. Crazy.

**Craig:** He should.

**John:** He should stop. I mean, he should stop.

**Craig:** I mean, he has four billion coffee stores. That’s good. You did it, man.

**Emily:** You did a good job.

**John:** You won. You won the race.

**Craig:** You win. Right.

**John:** Stop running.

**Craig:** We don’t open coffee shops.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** We don’t do that. Anyway.

**John:** Is it a Howard Schulz kind of character one of the villains, like the classicism thing?

**Emily:** Oh.

**John:** I think we have a little thing going here.

**Emily:** Interesting.

**John:** The hero is the weatherman, so maybe the weatherman hero is trying to figure out why these weird lightning strikes are killing certain people, or there’s some sort of–

**Emily:** They’re killing all of Howard Schulz’s primary opponents.

**John:** Holy cow.

**Craig:** This is called Geo Storm. They made this movie, again.

**John:** That’s right! It’s Geo Storm 2.

**Craig:** What if there’s like a science fiction kind of thing where as the weatherman realizes that in areas where income inequality is growing the weather starts getting more and more severe.

**Emily:** Which is actually what I was pitching.

**Craig:** That was? No, no, it’s not crashing down on rich people or anything.

**Emily:** No, no, you said the rich people thing. I was saying, I agree with you, I think it should have to do–

**Craig:** Well what you’re actually saying is I agree with you.

**Emily:** No, I really agree with you. I think we’re the same person.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Ah. I was wondering if you were doing the thing–

**Craig:** Shush.

**John:** You say the exact same thing the woman said and you take credit for it.

**Craig:** No, I thought I was saying a different thing.

**Emily:** You said a different thing.

**Craig:** I thought I was saying a different thing. I really did. Your circuit is misfired.

**John:** Oh OK.

**Craig:** But I agree with you. I think that’s awesome. But the meeting of the gangs, now it feels like there’s two groups of people that know the truth. And the weatherman gets pulled into one group that’s like we’re going to use this to bring the system down. And then another group is like, no, we have to stop this from happening. The system needs to keep going. And so there are two gangs and they meet in the park.

**John:** The park.

**Craig:** That’s a rough one.

**John:** Parks are a natural open environment. Weather happens in parks.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Also fascinating that the Weathermen were like a big gang of the time. So, that is an historic. Nothing said this has to be present day.

**Craig:** Can we switch it then? Yeah, so make it the Weathermen. Because that will really make this a lot easier.

**John:** Also it would make so much more sense that they were called the Weathermen if it was actually about weather. Because history is really confusing.

**Craig:** Here’s what’s killing us. Classicism rather. That’s not a villain. That’s a problem. It’s not a villain.

**John:** It’s very abstract.

**Craig:** It’s abstract. Your villain can represent something abstract like classicism, but it has to be someone. Let’s make it Howard Schulz.

**John:** A thing I want to stress here is that as absurd as this is so many projects that you will encounter are kind of like this.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** So I think we talked about this on the show before. For about 20 years there was an Imagine project called Clipped. And it was about a guy who got a paperclip shoved up his nose or in his ear or something and Brian Grazer is like well that’s got to really change a person. And so we all had to go in and pitch on Clipped. I pitched on Clipped. You probably pitched on Clipped.

**Craig:** I refused.

**John:** All right. Let’s get another open writing assignment going here. I’m going to go in the back of the audience here because I like walking around.

**Craig:** I’ll write this down again. I thought we did all right with that one.

**John:** We did pretty well. I think it was a good start.

**Craig:** We tried.

**Emily:** Shameless applause.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a pity clap if I ever heard it.

**John:** Who up here did your homework? Can you please tell me the genre of the movie we need to write?

**Female Audience Member:** A rom-com.

**John:** It’s a rom-com! We love rom-coms. We saved rom-coms. I don’t know if you remember that. But Tess Morris was on the show and she helped us save rom-coms.

**Emily:** I’m going to be the poor man’s Tess Morris on this.

**John:** The general setting of this rom-com we need to write?

**Female Audience Member:** England during the Regency period.

**Craig:** God.

**John:** England Regency rom-com. I like this very, very much. Who else up here has – please tell me the profession of the hero.

**Male Audience Member:** He’s an assassin.

**John:** Ooh, an assassin. This is so good.

**Craig:** Well at least you didn’t say something like an electrician because that would have been hard.

**John:** That would really be a tough thing. All right, so we have a rom-com set in the Regency period of England about an assassin, that’s his profession or her profession. Right here, can you tell me what is the main goal of this assassin character?

**Male Audience Member:** It’s a rescue mission.

**John:** Oh, an assassin has to make a rescue mission.

**Craig:** As they do.

**John:** As they do. Anyone else back here, right here, can you tell me the villain of this story?

**Male Audience Member:** His old mentor who ruined his career.

**John:** Ooh! An old mentor. I like that very, very much.

**Craig:** An old mentor.

**John:** Finally I need a big trailer moment. Who has got a big trailer moment for me? Going once, going twice – oh right here. Tell me what your big trailer moment is.

**Male Audience Member:** It’s anachronistic. Jumping from a horse onto a tank.

**Craig:** A tank? A tank. In the regency period.

**John:** A tank in the regency period. We’ll get jumping from a horse. I’m not sure we’re going to get to tank. All right. So we’ve got this Regency rom-com. That feels really promising. Assassins are good.

**Craig:** Everything is good except rom-com at this point because that’s, yikes.

**John:** Think about like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If you could take that.

**Craig:** No, you know what? You can do this.

**Emily:** Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

**John:** You can do this.

**Craig:** Or, or, or – all right, so we have an assassin, oldie England, and he’s been trained by his mentor, but then he does the thing that mentors want you to do which is to become great. He becomes so good that the mentor gets jealous and blinds him. Right? He blinds him. And so now our blind assassin has to be led around by this – let’s make the blind assassin a woman. She’s a woman and she has to be led around by a guy who becomes like her eyes. And then they’re separated and she starts killing people because the guy helps her to kill people. So they start falling in love while she’s killing people, but then he gets taken away and she has to go rescue this guy. But he is her eyes. She’s blind. And she has to find her eyes in the dark.

And…and…has to jump on a horse. [laughs]

**John:** OK. These are fascinating choices. But what I will say–

**Craig:** Did I not get the job?

**John:** So, Craig, we really liked a lot of what you did there, but I would say–

**Craig:** Congratulations on the first–

**John:** Congratulations, yes. But what I will say that in a romantic comedy the villain, the antagonist, often is the other person in the romantic comedy. So I’m wondering if this other mentor character actually is a romance about that which feels very good for like Regency period. It could be sort of like an Emma. It could be like an Emma like this character who you don’t ever think of as being a possible love interest because they’ve always been older or a teacher figure, like oh this is the person. So maybe a young female assassin falls for her assassin–

**Craig:** Daddy figure.

**John:** Daddy figure.

**Craig:** Well, this is getting problematic.

**Emily:** Can we make it a woman?

**Craig:** Can we make it a young woman who falls for an older woman?

**Emily:** Yes.

**Craig:** Why not.

**Emily:** Takes away a little bit of the problematic-ness.

**Craig:** Yeah, we’re going to come up with other problematics.

**Emily:** Slightly.

**John:** There will be problematics.

**Craig:** The presence of the tank will definitely be problematic.

**Emily:** Carry on.

**Craig:** All right, so this is a lesbian romance in Regency England between two assassins, a December-May romance between assassins, but one of them is – so the older one has ruined the young one? No, the young one has ruined the older one’s career, what about that? That’s a natural kind of thing. You trained me to take your place and I did. And now the older one does not want to let go.

**John:** Yes. It’s an All About Eve.

**Craig:** I just got rehired.

**John:** Yeah. Craig brought it back through.

**Emily:** Turned it around.

**John:** So here’s what’s good about that is their relationship is fascinating and why am I forgetting the name of this movie that’s the Rachel Weisz movie—

**Audience:** The Favourite.

**John:** The Favourite. Like that’s sort of The Favourite is what you’re pitching. It’s a funnier version of The Favourite.

**Craig:** Yes. I’m getting replaced by the younger, newer thing.

**John:** Yes. And so that’s a good dynamic and that tension is really interesting between the two of them.

**Craig:** And it’s also something that is always relevant. I mean, doesn’t matter what time period and doesn’t matter what their jobs are. Doesn’t matter what their sexuality is. The notion that you are going to be eclipsed by somebody that you love is something every parent probably on some level considers.

**Emily:** I feel like I’m putting on this development hat and I have so many questions.

**Craig:** Do it. Go.

**John:** Go. Ask your questions.

**Emily:** What is the driving plot thing of our story? Has our older assassin been pushed out at the beginning of our story and it’s a story about them – what’s our driver there?

**Craig:** I think they’re in love in the beginning of the story. I think it’s perfectly good. But there’s a little bit of a thing, right, where the older one feels that the younger one isn’t ready, and the younger one is kind of thinking the older one is holding them back. And then the older one realizes that the younger one is better than her, everyone thinks the younger one is better than her. That’s a terrible moment. She retreats. And now she has to prove herself. But she doesn’t want to let on.

But then she’s going to try to kill the person that the younger one has to kill. So they’re both racing to kill that person. And then I think where it has to go is she has to ultimately probably sacrifice herself because she loves that younger person somehow.

**John:** So I’m going to be Tess Morris here.

**Craig:** Do it.

**John:** I worry we’re losing the rom-com quality of it.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** That’s the only thing I want to say here.

**Emily:** I think that’s fair.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What you’re pitching didn’t feel especially comedic. So–

**Craig:** I don’t like rom-coms. [laughs]

**John:** Ah, after all this you don’t like – we saved rom-coms and Craig still doesn’t like them.

**Craig:** No, you guys saved them. I mean, I was happy for it, but it’s not like my jam. You know, I’m like, meh.

**Emily:** I feel like maybe if you don’t have her pushed out at the beginning but she’s starting to feel like a little instable – unstable/instable? Why can’t I? You know, all of those things. So that the journey is like a lighter journey between two people who are–

**Craig:** OK, so then here’s the question. So then comedy wise what’s – so when we’re talking about a comedy between two characters and a situation. What is the thing between them that now starts to be this fuel for funny situations? What’s the funny fuel? Because if they are – if one of them is helping the other – if one of them is the person the other one has to kill and they know that but they don’t want to get killed, then you could see some farce happening maybe. Or–

**John:** But I think we don’t want to just make a farce most likely. I think we want some real emotional stakes there.

**Craig:** I agree. Where’s the machine? Where’s the machine of the funny?

**Emily:** I also sort of feel like from a rom-com perspective we either need them to – you need some – like they’ve just broken up at the beginning or it has always been a very strict mentor/mentee relationship that is like–

**Craig:** Or it’s in that bed-death phase where they had it but they’re losing it and they’re on their way to losing it.

**Emily:** Yeah. A little bit like – I feel like that’s hard. That’s a hard place to–

**John:** Well it’s interesting when you have characters who are part of Regency England. They have a very rigid social structure. And yet they’re also assassins.

**Emily:** I forgot about the Regency England part. [laughs]

**John:** But they’re also assassins so they’re already outsiders.

**Craig:** And don’t forget the horse.

**John:** And the horse. So they jump off the horse onto the water tank. It didn’t say a tank-tank.

**Craig:** Rejection. It’s not exactly a great trailer moment. Like wah!

**John:** Yeah. Can you turn the tank and water it now. It’s not so good.

**Craig:** Whilst is there a tanketh in our midst?

**John:** At dinner we were talking about sort of naïve characters and so we were talking about Inside Out and the Joy character in there is so – she’s just – I don’t want to say she’s one note, but she has one drive, one focus, and she’s so naïve. And yet she’s not annoying and she’s not dumb. How do you find that balance? And that feels like the kind of situation where on a weekly basis you’re asking like does this actually make sense. Is this actually going to track? I want to talk about naïve characters because I think Pixar has a lot of those naïve characters.

**Craig:** Buzz Lightyear.

**John:** Buzz Lightyear. Wall-E.

**Craig:** Wall-E.

**John:** They’re very naïve characters, and yet they’re not idiots.

**Emily:** Although Buzz is not like the driver of that story, so his naiveté is sort of there for humor and there for comedy as opposed to him being sort of the emotional drive of the story.

**Craig:** Until that moment where he actually has to come face to face with the fact that he is naïve.

**Emily:** Right. Right.

**Craig:** That’s the one value I think of naïve characters is that they always provide that moment. The same thing happens to Joy. This is Pixar. God, they define a terrible weakness that would just ultimately murder this person emotionally and then they do it to them. That’s kind of the gift of those characters I think. I think Pixar does them really well.

**Emily:** And I will say with Joy especially like that character didn’t work for a long time because she was – I guess I can say she was really annoying. She was so happy and peppy and then we played with a whole bunch of different versions of her where she had more edge and less edge. I’ve never been a part of a project that noodled with a character that much. And really honestly the difference was Amy Poehler signed on and Amy Poehler has a level of joy and enthusiasm to her that is kind of infectious. And she’s peppy but she is like pumped about it in a way that we weren’t able to find on the page. And then when she walks in the room and you’re so rooting – like it’s so earnest and it’s so genuine and so even when it’s like over the top and if somebody else did it you’d want to punch them, when she does it it’s like you’re with her and you feel the joy and infectious energy she has.

**Craig:** Well she had this thing in her performance, but I also give all the writers and animators credit for also putting it there in the character and the conception of the character, that Joy isn’t just happy and naïve and loves to be joyful. There’s a desperation underneath all of it which is I’ve got to keep dancing because the second I step dancing I have to look at some painful things I don’t want to look at.

**Emily:** For sure.

**Craig:** And that was fascinating to me. It’s a little bit of a cheat, right? So one of the things about Inside Out that was a little cheaty and it had to happen—

**Emily:** Am I going to be mad at you?

**Craig:** No! Is that you’re taking a human being and you’re fragmenting them into these parts of their personality. But we’re with those parts of the personality and inevitably what we need is to see that that individual part has parts inside of the part. It just has to be there otherwise it doesn’t work.

**John:** Because Joy has to get sad in order for–

**Craig:** Joy has to be aware of it. Joy has to almost be joyful because if I just stop being joyful, whereas Sadness also kind of needs to understand – Sadness is sad that she’s sad. That’s a different thing, right? So that I thought was kind of fascinating. I mean, obviously you have side characters where they can just – Anger is anger, just be angry, it’s funny.

**John:** So we had Pamela Ribon on the Christmas episode and she was talking about–

**Emily:** Oh, I love Pam.

**John:** She’s so great. And she was talking about Ralph Breaks the Internet. And so during the process of that she played Penelope. She played that throughout the whole process. Does a similar kind of thing happen in Pixar where you have temp voices and you’re just trying to do stuff?

**Emily:** Yeah.

**John:** And so somebody else had to play that character who wasn’t Amy Poehler and is that part of the reason why you couldn’t find the voice and the approach?

**Emily:** I don’t think so. I mean, the woman who did Joy for us is a woman named Alyssa Knight who is fantastic and actually a very good actress in her own right. Sort of the thing that you’re talking about – we didn’t have a lock on Joy. We couldn’t figure out what was happening inside of her that was – it just took a long time. Literally I think I was on that project for four years and it took us – yeah, which is like oh my god.

**John:** Four years on a movie.

**Emily:** It took a good two of those years just to find where her center was.

**John:** So I want to talk through this part because during those two years of trying to find her, you know, how she was going to work you did have to map out the rest of the movie. So there were people whose job it was to figure out set pieces and all this stuff. But you still weren’t sure if you had the right character at the centerpiece of this movie who is in almost every scene.

**Emily:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s got to be scary.

**Emily:** Yeah. Almost all the movies hit a point where they hit the skids and it’s really – they’re bad, and they’re really, really bad. And we’re totally lost in the woods. Like quite literally, I mean Pete our director would spend two weeks walking in the woods like at some point.

**Craig:** Oh, he was legitimately lost in the woods.

**Emily:** Legitimately he went into the woods.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Emily:** And he walked around.

**Craig:** He knows that’s just an expression though, right? He doesn’t have to go out there.

**Emily:** He’s a very literal person.

**Craig:** Fair enough. Works for him.

**Emily:** It worked. It worked really well.

**John:** But talk me through that it’s bad because at this point is it bad in a way that there are reels of temp animation that you can look at and it’s like well that doesn’t work and everyone can see that that movie is not actually a movie? You’re looking at a real thing and not just words on a page?

**Emily:** Yeah. What we’re looking at is storyboards that have been edited together with music and sound and voices and all that kind of stuff. And we’re watching it through. You know, the big reboot – we did a giant reboot on the middle of Inside Out where the primary relationship changed. And I think I can say this because I think it’s on the DVD. It used to be Joy and Fear. And the main story was between those two characters which felt like it made sense for a really long time. And it wasn’t until Pete sort of had this revelation that the movie was going to be about connection and the way that we get to connection is allowing ourselves to be vulnerable around people. And that we have to go through sadness sometimes to get back to joy. And it fundamentally shifted the primary movie.

And it shifted those two characters. And so that was about the time that Meg LeFauve came on and she was sort of part of that reboot of rebooting our story so that it was about Joy and Sadness and that being the central relationship.

**Craig:** This requires an enormous amount of creative bravery.

**Emily:** I think so.

**Craig:** Because everybody who has ever written anything I think in part is desperate to believe that they’ve got it. Because writing is hard. So the last thing you want to think is, well, my job was to dig a hole and I dug the hole and oh my god this is not a hole. And you have to do it again. Nobody wants that, but sometimes you just have to do it again.

**Emily:** Well and I found it really – I mean, he’s going to get tired of me singing his praises, but I found working with Pete I found that to be the gift of working with Pete is Pete will do that. He will say I don’t have it and he will go spend the time and the energy and the cycles to find it. And you know I also think there was a gift in there, too, to work on you know this movie that ended up being this huge movie for the studio and to know firsthand that the middle of the movie – somewhere in the middle it was not a movie that any of you would have paid to see. I find that really comforting actually. I find it really comforting to remind myself time and time again that the creative process takes time and it does take that bravery. It takes the bravery to say I don’t have it.

**Craig:** I don’t have it.

**Emily:** And I’m going to go ask people to help me find it.

**Craig:** And isn’t that kind of the story of Pixar. The movie that launched them, Toy Story, was just a different movie. And then they went, no, you know what – animating which was enormously expensive, to dump actual animation was unheard of. And they just said we don’t have it yet.

**Emily:** And we talk about the creatives a lot which we should, but I think there’s also enormous bravery that’s sort of shouldered by the producers because they are at the end of the day the bottom line matters for them. And that is their responsibility. And yet I think they’ve sort of assembled a group of producers who are willing to sit in that discomfort – I sound like Renee Brown. But they’re willing to sit in the discomfort in how messy it is to make something good and creative. And they’re all really, really there for their director.

**John:** That’s so in a world that’s completely different than any live action producer we’ve known.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “What do you mean it’s not right?” They’re freaking out at all moments. And an animation producer just can’t do that.

**Emily:** Well, I mean, in fairness there’s a point in every process where it’s like, OK, like we’re done.

**John:** We got to release the movie here.

**Emily:** We’re done. It’s going out like this. We don’t have a choice. But, you know, they really do do a remarkable job of shielding the directors when they need to be shielded. And I think it’s one of the most remarkable things about that place.

**Craig:** God, I wish that they would learn this lesson – Hollywood.

**Emily:** Oh, Hollywood.

**Craig:** If you treat the people that make the stories well then they will have a chance to make the stories well. That’s it. It’s so simple. And they don’t – thank you. They don’t do it. They refuse to do it because they don’t – I think on some level they’re cynical and don’t really believe it matters. Like, ah, you could do it twice as fast. Doesn’t matter. Who cares? They all talk like this. I don’t know.

**John:** Yeah. Stereotypes.

**Craig:** Meh.

**John:** Argh.

**Craig:** You know what.

**John:** We’re going to do our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** We should do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is really simple. It is the third season of Man in the High Castle, which I had let sort of sit back for a while, and then I watched the third season and it was just terrific. And so if you have fallen off watching that show, I wasn’t nuts about everything in the second season. There were a lot of pieces sort of moving around. But the third season they did really well.

And this is a very live action thing I’m about to say here, but I watched the first episode and I’m like, wow, that’s a really expensive set. I hope they use that set well, and they use those sets really well. They build all new sets and every character of that show gets dragged through almost every of the new sets they built. And as a person who has seen those line items on a budget they knew what they were doing. They planned that very carefully. They block shot.

**Craig:** I bet you they did not plan it carefully and then someone said, “If you want us to build this go back—“

**John:** And make sure every character walks on that set.

**Craig:** Through this set that we paid for.

**John:** It was really good. Craig, what’s your One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is, so you know I’m a big escape room fan. And there are a lot of sort of escape room in a box things that they’re selling now, which are kind of fun. It’s not the proper escape room experience of course, but in its own way it’s actually really entertaining. Some of them are better than others. There’s a series of them called Exit The Game that I really like. There’s a lot of them – they’re great if you have kids and if you have kids that aren’t dummies, you know.

**John:** You know if your kids are dumb.

**Craig:** I’m just being honest. You know if your kid is an idiot. They don’t like this. Just send them out there to play their sports. But, no, shut up. But roomful of writers. “Oh, you’re being mean to the jocks.” All right. But if you have a smarty in your house the Exit The Game series are great. They have a very interesting mechanism where as you think you’ve solved a puzzle there’s a little wheel and you enter a code and that takes you a card and it shows you a thing, and then success. It’s fun and you don’t have to worry about the timer. Take your time.

And it’s put out by a company called, well I guess I would pronounce it like the River Thames, but it’s spelled Thames. Thames and Kosmos. That’s with a K. So give it a shot. And they rank the games by level of difficulty. So, you can start with one of the easier ones. That’s actually a way to figure out if your kid is smart or not, so try that.

**John:** Yeah. A little IQ test. Nice.

**Craig:** Exactly.

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

**Emily:** Yes. So I watched, this isn’t my One Cool Thing, but I watched one of those Fyre documentaries which was just–

**John:** Fyre Festival.

**Craig:** Fyre Festival.

**Emily:** Insane. But it made me think about the book Bad Blood. Has anybody read this book? Oh my god, OK, it’s amazing.

**Craig:** Do the voice. Do the voice.

**Emily:** No, I can’t do the voice. So it’s a story about Theranos which was that start up that imploded in spectacular fashion and the book is totally riveting. It’s fascinating. It’s like the best beach read you’ve ever read. And it’s all true. It’s insane.

**Craig:** Great villain.

**Emily:** Great. Oh my god, it’s amazing. And they’re going to make it into a movie, so go read it before you watch it.

**John:** Figure out how you would do it and then see how they did it. And yours is probably different/better.

**Craig:** Probably won’t be as good. I’m just being honest. They’re going to get somebody amazing. It’s going to be Sorkin.

**John:** They’ll get Sorkin probably.

**Craig:** I can’t – you can’t–

**Emily:** Yeah. They will get Sorkin. It’s a very Sorkin.

**Craig:** I mean, I’m just being reasonable. Come on.

**Emily:** Anyway, go read it. It’s fantastic.

**John:** Great. We are going to do some questions from the audience. So you questions are going to be fantastic. What’s your question?

**Female Audience Member:** It’s going to be fantastic. OK, my question is you told us at the beginning to go to Hollywood and learn how to do it there and what do you want us to do when we go there? What kind of job would you send a writer from here down there to go do? Because I’ve heard other shows where you said you need to go and you need to make sure that you are on a set. And you want to learn how to write for real actors and write for people who are actually going to be using your stuff. So what kind of a job would we look for even if we were doing an internship or any kind of work? What would we do?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, I don’t know – it is incredibly useful to be on a set, but you got to – you don’t just get there right away. I mean, you can, but that’s more of like a production assistant job where you’re running around and you’re on the walkie-talkie and you’re learning the basics of film production. I’ll tell you what I did, because I didn’t know anybody. I drove out there and I went to a temp agency. Actually I went to three temp agencies. And I took their tests, which is mostly typing. And then they started sending me out for jobs.

But there’s a few of them in Los Angeles that service the entertainment business essentially exclusively. And one of them placed me in a position where I was mostly a file clerk at a little ad agency. And I did that. I did that and then I kind of found an opportunity to write something and show somebody. And then they’re like, OK, you can be a writer now. Sort of like that.

But just get a job near somebody and maybe you’re also in an apartment building where other people are just like you. And then everyone is talking. Things happen. But you’ve got to be there.

**John:** Emily, you live here. So tell us about that kind of experience living here. Two microphones.

**Emily:** Do you remember the Lady Gaga performance from the Super Bowl where somebody held the microphone like this for her? That’s what I’m into. Could you just hold it for me? No, I’m kidding. I do live up here. I’m from up here. I lived in LA for like a hot second and I did actually exactly what Craig just described. I went to like three temp agencies. I took typing tests. And they placed me at Creative Artists Agency where I was like a probably very abysmal assistant for a while. I would recommend that, too.

From up here that’s I think the best thing to do. Because unless you go down and you have all the connections in the world, which you probably don’t, I think temp agencies are the way to do it. And frankly assistant jobs turn over like left and right. So there’s always, always openings. And I would recommend that.

**John:** And I will also say when we recommend people move down to Los Angeles a lot of times it’s folks who just graduated from college. And so we say you’re going to start your life somewhere, start your life in Los Angeles if that’s what you want to do. That’s not always the same advice for somebody who is in their 30s or 40s who is looking for a career change. That’s a different thing. And I know in previous episodes, we’ll try to find a link to it, but we’ve talked about how do you know when it’s time to leave that place. It’s a different equation when you’re not at the very start of your life. 20s isn’t the start of your life, but you’re not at that transitional point.

Another question from the audience?

**Female Audience Member:** Hi. I don’t hear you guys talk much about advising screenwriters to make their own movies and what kind of exposure and success can come from that.

**John:** So I’ve made a movie for myself. You’ve directed a movie. It can be a great thing. If you are aspiring to be a writer-director you need to do both parts of that job, and so directing something you’ve written is a fantastic step.

If your goal is to be a writer, to be a television showrunner or be a television staff writer, having directed a thing may not help you out a tremendous amount. And I’m actually thinking back to even Megan McDonnell who is the Scriptnotes producer, she directed a really terrific short, and it was great, and really showed that she could direct. But that wasn’t sort of her main goal. And so it’s gotten her some attention, but it would get her more attention if she really wanted to be a director. And she really wants to be a writer. So I wouldn’t recommend somebody spend a year of their life directing a movie if that’s not their goal. Thoughts?

**Emily:** Yeah. I agree with John. I think it kind of depends on what your end goal is. And if the thing you want to do more than anything in the world is direct then you should do that. And there’s ways to do that here. There’s a lot of independent movies that do get made up here, even though I know it’s not a huge independent film town. But I agree that it’s a lot of money and it’s a lot of work if your ultimate goal is to get your writing out there.

I mean, as somebody who read a lot of scripts I can tell you there’s a lot of people out in Hollywood reading a lot of scripts all the time. So if that’s the thing you want to do I would just focus on that.

**John:** I think we can take one more question here before we wrap up.

**Female Audience Member:** So this is actually more of a craft question probably. I don’t know why I throw myself in the way of these arguments but I do. And I see the most common response to I’m having a problem with my plot/with my character/I don’t understand this that I see that drives me up the wall is, “Oh, you need to nail down your theme.” I don’t like that.

But I also understand that that means something different to every different person. So, my question is when, 1, is theme the correct solution that is something you need to look at, and 2, when is not the correct solution? When is the wrong thing?

**John:** This is a great question. So when do we need to think about themes. And you just gave a great example of that because Inside Out you had these character who represent these big thematic ideas and you had the wrong two ideas clashing together. So–

**Emily:** I will say I’m probably one of – so I’ve done a little bit of script consulting and I’m probably somebody you would hate to work with because while I don’t always call it theme I feel like theme is at the core of almost everything I’m poking at when I – I think that when you go to ask questions about what your character is doing and what it’s about and what they want and why do they really want that, I think all of that at the end of the day is theme.

So while I totally agree with you that the general note of “work on your theme” is super unhelpful.

**John:** That’s not an actionable note. You can’t–

**Emily:** It’s not an actionable note. But what is an actionable note, which is your theme actually if you dig down into it is about what is your character expecting. What do they want to have happen? What do they expect it’s going to do for their life?

So, all those questions about what your character and what’s motivating them, those are all theme questions. So I feel like when you’re getting that note what you’re actually getting – like when somebody is saying to you, “Oh, you’re theme,” what they’re actually trying to poke at I think probably not very well is that they don’t understand what your main character is doing. What do you think, Craig?

**Craig:** When we are stuck trying to describe these very nebulous things we come up with a word. And so of course when someone gives you this word it’s normal to say this isn’t – it’s not that you’re angry at them, it’s just more like you’re not helping me. What I always think about with this is what is the point of writing this. In a big way, not even inside of the characters. So like why would anybody want to go see this in the first place? Why does this deserve to be made? Why should 1,500 people in various jobs all assemble to create this thing?

And that comes down to something important to you that you’re saying. That’s you. That’s not the character. That’s not this character, or that character. It’s not about the sequence or anything. But you. That thing – that needs to be there.

And if you know what that is, this argument you’re making, this thing you want people to understand, the raison d’être of this, then I think what ends up happening is you find a way to start unifying things. So rather than having characters do things that make sense over here, and a character that is doing a thing that makes sense over here, but they don’t have necessarily some kind of relation, it’s because these things aren’t connected to the point that you’re saying the whole reason to show up is this. And once you know the whole reason to show up it actually becomes really easy to start making decisions about why people should do things. Well what should the ending be? The ending should be the opposite of the beginning and those two things are connected to this thing that you’re trying to say to everybody. This is why people should show up.

Forget people showing up in a theater. This is why people should show up to actually make the damn thing. So that’s what I think about.

**John:** And I think also there’s other useful words that are sort of thrown around that mean the same kind of thing as theme. When people talk about the conflicts, or I don’t feel like these conflicts are really advancing what the character needs, you may have thought of these great set pieces but they don’t actually do anything that your characters need to learn or achieve or accomplish. They’re just interesting set pieces that aren’t really connected to the central idea.

Sometimes we’ll talk about that central dramatic question. The thesis statement. We often talk on Scriptnotes that television sort of never fully answers that question but a movie does answer that question. As an audience member you sit down and you watch a movie expecting that it’s a character’s one-time experience that is going to transform them. And so if you’re not transforming a character, if it’s not that one unique experience then there’s something that’s not really quite figured out yet.

And what you may want to do is kind of what you’re describing here is look at what are the things we have here. What seems like they’re related? What’s the most interesting thing here? How can we bring that forward and build conflicts around it that can really explore that issue?

**Emily:** I also think it’s worth pointing out that a lot of people don’t find their theme on the first draft. So, I think sometimes we want to make it really clean and we want to say my movie is about this blank. And I think for a lot of writers I know they know they don’t have it on the first draft. So part of what you’re doing is you’re poking around and you’re trying to find out where the character wants to go and what the character wants to do. And it doesn’t even quite present itself to you until a draft or two in. And then you go, oh crap, my movie is about this. I get it. Like I had to go in this weird circuitous path to find my center, but you’ll find it.

And I guess that’s what I’m pointing out of like when you’re floating around in theme land and you can’t find it, and I think Craig is 100% right about – it’s the first time – but I think he’s 100% right about theme and that it being more about this larger question. But if you can’t find the question and you’re like, “Blech, I don’t know what it is,” I would go back to your main character and know that it might take you – you might have to just literally write a couple drafts and then it will show up.

And it might be somebody else reading your draft and saying, “You know what I think this is about? I think it’s about this.” Which is why even though this is this sort of isolating process to write something, it’s so good to have other people that you trust who can look at your stuff and help you identify those things because sometimes they’re not apparent.

**Craig:** Seems like a great advertisement for the society that has put this on.

**John:** Absolutely. Brain trust revealed. That is our show. As always our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

We need to thank Seattle.

**Craig:** Nice job, Seattle.

**John:** And there are several people in Seattle we need to thank. Certainly Jeremy and Kristen for bringing us up here. The Northwest Screenwriters Guild. TheFilmSchool, all one word. Thank you so much for having us up here. This was really fun. And have a great night. Thank you all.

**Craig:** Thank you.

Links:

* Thank you, [Northwest Screenwriters Guild](https://nwsg.org/) and [TheFilmSchool](http://thefilmschool.com/programs/) for making this event happen!
* And thank you to our incredible guest: [Emily Zulauf](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1637392/)!
* [Scriptnotes, 225: Only haters hate rom-coms](https://johnaugust.com/2015/only-haters-hate-rom-coms) with Tess Morris
* [Michael Arndt on Endings](https://johnaugust.com/2018/michael-arndt-on-endings)
* [Amy Poehler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25d7QIC27c) as Joy in INSIDE OUT
* [The Man In the High Castle](https://www.amazon.com/Man-High-Castle-Season/dp/B07FDKRJQC)
* [Exit The Game](https://www.thamesandkosmos.com/index.php/kosmosgames/exit-the-abandoned-cabin)
* [Bad Blood](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549478/bad-blood-by-john-carreyrou/9781524731656/) by John Carreyrou
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [Emily Zulauf](https://twitter.com/emilyzulauf) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) “Jazz Waltz” by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/38720-20Seattle20Live20Show202019.mp3).

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

**Craig Mazin:** We didn’t make this movie. You know that right?

**John August:** We’ll start this officially. Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And we are here for a special discussion after watching The Princess Bride. So, on our show Scriptnotes every once and a while we’ll take a movie and sort of go through and do a deep dive on it and this was a unique opportunity to show the movie and do a deep dive on The Princess Bride.

All right, so this screening is part of a special month-long retrospective of the work of William Goldman, an acclaimed screenwriter. This is our last night doing this. But when we got the email about trying to do this we jumped on this movie because this was a movie that – we’ll talk about our priors here – you love this movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s very meaningful to me. And I love it and I watched it a thousand times.

**John:** I’ve watched it four times.

**Craig:** That’s 996 fewer.

**John:** Yeah. It’s fewer. So I saw this movie for the first time in late high school/early college and I don’t love it as much as you do. So, I do really admire the movie. I don’t love it as much as you do. But I would say weirdly it’s had a much bigger – there’s many more parallels in the work I’ve done to The Princess Bride than the work you’ve done.

**Craig:** Yeah. Probably because I just didn’t think I could ever do anything quite that good. No, I mean, the work that you do isn’t necessarily always going to match up. But there are things about this that I have taken in my own stuff, specifically this movie – it wasn’t anything that I specifically thought about when I watched it. It was just something that seemed evident. It was the first movie I remember seeing that would make me laugh and then – and not take itself or movies or storytelling particularly seriously. And then the next scene ask that I do take the character seriously. And then in fact I feel – should feel quite deeply about them and I did.

So, this sense of a broad tone kind of going back and forth with a rather moving, emotional tone, mushy comedy. That is something that I took to heart. And I think this movie does it about as well as anybody.

**John:** So as I look at this movie there’s so many echoes I see in Big Fish. There’s a giant. There’s a swamp. There’s a lot of things that are similar to it. And this sort of storybook quality where you have a narrator who is talking through stuff and we’re moving back and forth in time.

But also Aladdin, which you guys haven’t seen it. But Corpse Bride. That sense of this romance has to happen. That you’re only there if this romance can be fulfilled.

**Craig:** Yes. And obviously it reminds me a lot of Chernobyl.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s talk about the history of this movie. This movie came from a book first written by William Goldman in 1973. So at that point he had already done Masquerade, Papillion, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a screenwriter. So 20th Century Fox bought the rights to the book and had Goldman do a script. That version never got made and then never happened. And so apparently Goldman bought the rights back from 20th Century Fox and his script. But then ultimately it was a Fox movie, so it went back there. But it went through a lot of directors. And we’ve both had projects that have gone through multiple directors.

At some point there was Francois Truffaut Redford, and Norman Jewison had all talked about directing this movie.

**Craig:** That would have been an interesting – the Redford version would have been interesting. I mean, I’m obviously very happy with the way it came out. There is a certain Borscht Belty thing going on throughout that Rob Reiner brought to it. And I always appreciate that. But what strikes me about the genesis of this is that William Goldman was just telling stories to his daughters, his young daughters, and these were kind of the stories he was telling them. He invented a princess named Buttercup. And this young farm lad that she was mean to, a farm boy named Westley. And he invented the ROUSes and the idea of a six-fingered man. A giant and a swordsman. These very broad Jungian archetypes. Very much a fairy tale thing.

And what I love about the way he talks about the creation of this is that when he decided to make it into a book he was really struggling, I imagine because he’s William Goldman and he’s sitting there thinking I know how a book should go. There’s all this stuff I have to do to make sense of this. And he said the thing that broke it open for him was coming up with the idea that he’s not writing it at all. That somebody named S. Morgenstern has written it. And that S. Morgenstern’s book is out of print and no one can find it. And so what’s he’s done is essentially put together an abridged version.

This story is only the best parts. And I love that because I think that ties in ultimately to what I love most about this movie which is that it is a movie about storytelling itself as an act of love.

**John:** And so part of the conceit is that he heard this story as a kid and that when he went back and found the actual book he realized it was like a big political tract and it was completely different than how he remembered. So he was using his childhood memory of the way he wished the story actually really went.

**Craig:** Which I actually had that real experience. When my kids were young I was like you know what I’m going to read you a book tonight. And they were like yay. And it’s one of my favorite books from childhood. You’re going to love this. It’s called A Wrinkle in Time. And then I started reading Wrinkle in Time and I’m like–

**John:** Yeah. So I worked on–

**Craig:** This is just a teen romance. When does the – like all the cool stuff is in the last 12 pages. I forgot.

**John:** Yeah. And you realize that many of the things that the missuses do so much of the work for the protagonist and it’s a frustrating adaptation. It was a hard movie to adapt. I tried it. It did not work.

So let’s talk about the frame story because this is actually part of the conceit. William Goldman had been telling the story to his daughters and the conceit in the book is that his father had told it to him. In this movie version, and I don’t know if it was always this way in the scripts but we have the Peter Falk, the grandfather character, telling the story to his grandson who is sick. It’s a pretty simple setup but we come back to it a lot.

And so the frame story gets us a lot. Let’s talk about why you do it and what’s helpful about it.

**Craig:** Well they’re letting you know right off the bat that the story that you’re seeing is a story. Usually when we tell a story on screen we want people to forget that it’s a story pretty quickly. Here they never let you forget. And in doing so they immediately excuse a lot of things that I think had they not done you would have said this is very true love. It’s so over the top. It’s over the top for a reason. Everything if you think about it, every emotion is pushed beyond to the edge. So, the true love is the truest of love. And the villains are the most hateful villains. The kiss at the end, there is the top five kisses of all time, and this one puts it to shame. So everything is taken to its extreme because it’s meant to be a fairy tale. And the actual story is the story of a grandfather and his son. Even though there’s these little tiny bits with Peter Falk and Fred Savage, to me that’s the movie.

**John:** Yeah. So obviously the frame story lets you jump forward. It lets you contextualize things. It lets you sort of fill in details that you wouldn’t have otherwise known and sort of skip past the boring parts. But let’s talk about this frame story just really quickly in terms of the progression of the relationship between Peter Falk and the Fred Savage character because it’s very simple but it’s really well sketched. And every time we come back to those things there needs to be progress. If we just came back and it was exactly the same situation it wouldn’t feel like you were moving forward. It would just feel like you were just repeating an old scene.

**Craig:** Peter Falk. Right? The perfect casting because he’s literally Colombo-ing his own grandson. You know? “OK, you know what, you don’t want to hear this. Never mind. Now you’re taking this very personally.” “No I’m not. No I’m not.” Right? So Fred Savage does a fantastic job playing like a regular – I think he’s a very regular kid there. They didn’t push it at all. Kids do get annoyed with that. They don’t want to hear about, at least in this case, you know, 1987 lovely gender stereotype of a boy that doesn’t want to hear about kissing. But I remember my son didn’t want to hear kissing stories. So that all felt very true.

But Peter Falk is playing a long con with this kid, repeatedly. “I told you.” “Yes, very good, shut up.” Wonderful. “You’re very smart.”

**John:** So let’s go into the actual story as it is being told. And so we really rush through the setup very quickly.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And it’s surprising even just watching it tonight to recognize how little backstory we know about our central characters. Buttercup, I guess she has a family. We never see them.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** She lives alone in a cabin I guess.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** She makes fun of this farmer boy.

**Craig:** It’s just the best parts. Right? So actually no one in this entire movie has a real character. No one. It’s just nice farm boy, nice slightly noble girl, a very smart Italian, a very big Greenlander, a very skilled Spaniard. And then the prince is just a dick, right? That’s his character.

**John:** But a very, very proficient dick. You also watch, it’s like, oh, he’s somehow really good at all these tracking things.

**Craig:** He’s an amazing tracker.

**John:** And so you think there’s going to be some payoff like–

**Craig:** There was a great duel.

**John:** Yes. And somehow he can smell the iocaine powder that is unsmellable.

**Craig:** Of course. Isn’t that the best? I love that.

**John:** Yeah. [Unintelligible] but sure.

**Craig:** It’s so great.

**John:** But obviously the performances are fantastic and without great performances you’d feel the artist, these little paper dolls moving throughout the story, and yet we so quickly setup who Buttercup is, the nature of sort of what the stakes of the movie are, which is basically this is the couple and we want this couple to be back together.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** That’s the whole storyline that you’re really going to get through. So no matter what happens it’s the two of them. But what’s also surprising and sort of frustrating if you’ve read a bunch of screenwriting books is your protagonist, your heroes, are not on screen a ton and they often don’t – they’re don’t have a lot of agency in their story.

**Craig:** Correct. Because they’re in a story. So you can see why Goldman felt so liberated by the technique of imagining that he’s only telling you parts of a story. Because he can literally just not do the stuff that is really annoying for us to do, to make people believe that what they’re watching is real. He doesn’t have to worry about that.

And so in a weird way the protagonist, I always think of the protagonist of this movie in the true sense of someone that has to make a choice is Fred Savage. Because those are the only two real people in the movie. And the mom.

**John:** Oh, the mom is a really crucial character there. Yeah, without that…

Also, you notice, you watch the movie, it starts with this long shot of a baseball game being played on a video screen.

**Craig:** Which thrills me.

**John:** Yeah, of course, yes. I mean, it does anchor it in a place in time, but it didn’t even need to be because it was contemporary. It’s just a really strange thing. It’s like you’re watching Stranger Things and they’re trying to say, oh no no we’re this–

**Craig:** Well they didn’t know. They thought that was the way it was always going to be.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** I thought baseball games would always look like that. But I guess they were probably trying to say look kids don’t read.

**John:** It’s true. They don’t.

**Craig:** Which continues to apply.

**John:** It does apply. So, back to Buttercup and back to her story. So, let’s track the movie from what we know of Buttercup. So somehow she goes from the farmhouse. She believes that Westley has died. And then suddenly she’s getting married to the king. We don’t know why.

**Craig:** It’s been years.

**John:** It’s been years. She’s a princess now for some reason because–

**Craig:** He had the right to choose his own bride, so one imagines that he rode through the countryside and said, “You. I want you.”

**John:** Picked the prettiest.

**Craig:** And that was it. And then, boo.

**John:** Boo.

**Craig:** God, that lady scared the hell out of me.

**John:** Absolutely. Her eyebrows alone.

**Craig:** Well, it’s the last shot. The last shot just is terrifying.

**John:** From her perspective, so the story from her perspective is I’m going to marry Humperdinck because – there’s just no alternatives.

**Craig:** She’s going to commit suicide. I mean, one of my favorite lines is, “Please consider me as an alternative to suicide.” It’s so great. So she’s never going to marry him. She doesn’t want to. Her heart was broken because she had true love, which is the ultimate magic here. So, no, she’s never going to marry him.

**John:** So let’s imagine the version of the story where we don’t have the framing device and we actually have to fill in these details.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Oh my god.

**John:** So then you have to create some stakes and reason for why she doesn’t do this then there’s some other thing that she’s going to lose–

**Craig:** How about this? Start with the fact that you have to see Westley the farm boy show up and be hired. She notices him. Or they’re both children and they grow up together. It’s like, blah, I already want to die.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I mean, because everything that’s joyous about this–

**John:** Is that you don’t know.

**Craig:** It’s the best parts-ism of it. It’s that you don’t know and it doesn’t matter. She has no other wants. He has no other wants. No one – Inigo Montoya, his entire life is one want. His I Want song is one line long.

**John:** Yeah. That’s true.

**Craig:** Brilliant. And Fezzik has no wants.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** He just is happy.

**John:** He’s happy to be there.

**Craig:** He’s done. His character is complete.

**John:** Let us talk about the biggest character in the story who doesn’t actually appear on screen which is Dread Pirate Roberts. Which is actually a really fascinating running thing through it. It pays off nicely at the end. You know Montoya will be there. But it is a really interesting amount of screen time spent on Dread Pirate Roberts as a conceit, as a way through this. You feel like Dread Pirate Roberts is going to show up at some point as much time as we spend talking about it.

**Craig:** Somewhere among my many hundreds of viewings I lost that desire to see Dread, because in part once I understood that he was the Dread Pirate Roberts and he explains that the guy that took him wasn’t the Dread Pirate Roberts, it just becomes this very brilliant explanation. Again, you see Goldman just sort of waving his magic pen and saying you don’t have to worry about that. And you don’t have to worry about that. And you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just the way it is. It’s really simple.

And the Dread Pirate Roberts thing I have heard many times in my life used as an analogy for all sorts of things. It’s incredibly useful. The idea of something that isn’t a thing but creates its own mythology to be the thing. It’s quite lovely actually.

**John:** Absolutely. Well let’s talk about as screenwriters the ways that this is brought up, because I would say that one of the reasons I wanted to do this as our movie to talk about is it’s one of the most frequently mentioned movies that’s going to come up in a discussion, in an early pitch session, talking about how we are going to do something. And so the idea of a framing device, are we going to Princess Bride it? You’ll hear that as sort of like, OK, we’re going to wrap stuff around this to sort of show – to contextualize this as a story in it.

The Dread Pirate Roberts as an idea of like this thing that’s happening, this conceit about this is not really the person, or the person has actually died a long time ago, that gets brought up in meetings.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And then there’s this very classic structure that’s taken directly from Grimm and earlier, but it comes up a lot which is the notion of trials and tests. And it goes back to Greek mythology. But the idea of using this time in your first act, or whatever act, I hate acts anyway, but of encountering tests. And going through – one of my favorite things that happens in this entire movie is just the little exchange that Inigo Montoya has with the Man in Black when he’s hanging there on the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity. You know, “I’m waiting for you. I’m bored. Come on, I won’t kill you. I’m promise.” And he’s just bored. “I swear on the soul of my father that you will meet no harm. And throw me the rope right away.” And that’s such a great way to solve a little plot problem and a little story problem by also revealing something interesting about both characters at the same time.

This guy is not only a good guy and a good sport, but there’s something that matters a lot to him. And that guy is a sort of guy that knows when somebody is telling the truth about something that matters to them and can then invest trust in them. That’s brilliant. And that little bit of good sportsmanship and Fezzik’s bit of good sportsmanship at giving him a warning shot saves those two guys from the mindset we should have of them which is that they are hired murderers.

**John:** It’s true.

**Craig:** But that’s all. They’re good sports. We love them.

**John:** All right. But that idea that you have a person who is your opponent who ultimately becomes your friend, an ally, down the road after you go through a battle sequence we do see a lot. And I’m thinking Black Panther has that same sort of moment. The waterfall cliff moment. That’s an important moment that we need to see that both men are proficient, that they can do this thing, and then coming through this we’re going to get to a spot where they can be allies down the road. Because they have each other’s respect.

**Craig:** Correct. And it’s so wonderfully circular. You find out who these people are by the actions they take with the Man in Black. You find out how good he is. It’s so surprising that he’s better than both of them. Obviously Vizzini never has a moment of surprise because he gets the most surprises when he dies. Amazing. But through that we learn that this guy is great at everything, which again you cannot do. I mean, so Gary Sue, right, I mean, this is the classic character that’s just good at everything. And never loses. Even when he is murdered by a death machine he still doesn’t lose.

And what’s fascinating is that Goldman points to it through Fred Savage. Because when it seems like he’s lost Fred Savage gets upset, which I love. “You’re telling the story wrong.” Because he doesn’t get that he’s being misdirected. But the truth is that kid understands, even though he’s never heard this story, he understands how stories are supposed to go. And I love that.

**John:** So this movie hangs on a lantern on that sense of as a screenwriter you need to be aware of where your audience is at and what their expectations are. And so moments of Buttercup marrying Humperdinck. The dream of marrying Humperdinck, of Westley dying. Those are moments that as a screenwriter you have to be in the seat with the audience watching it and go like, oh no, no, that couldn’t possibly happen. Something is wrong or broken about this movie. And so in this movie we get to call that out. We actually have a character who can say like, uh-uh, that couldn’t possibly happen.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You would have to do these sequences very differently if you didn’t have that character.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you don’t have to be quite so misdirect-y about it. Because it’s a child that’s being misdirected. It’s a children’s story. Of course she doesn’t get married there. Of course something is going to happen. We don’t know what. Did she really get married? I mean, I remember because I wasn’t familiar with the specific rights of marriage as a 16-year-old, when he says, “Man and wife, say man and wife.” “Man and wife.” And she goes, “He didn’t come.” I’m like, how are they going to get out of this? Well apparently did you say I do, that works in Gilder I guess. Or Florin or wherever they are. I never remember which one. Thousands of screenings and I still can’t remember.

**John:** They’re in Florin.

**Craig:** They’re in Florin. Thank you. But I got fooled by that. And I find it – I mean, I also got – even when Christopher Guest throws the knife he looked like –

My dad used to tell me a story. When he was a kid he would go to the movies and before the movie would start there would be a Flash Gordon. And the Flash Gordon would always end in a cliffhanger. So he said, you know, you’d go there and then Flash Gordon would get captured by guys and they would lift him up and they would throw him into this big lava pool, right? And he would be in midair and they would freeze it. How will Flash – and he’s like I’ve got to get back next because how, that’s not possible.

And when you would get back next week they just started it again but a little earlier he beats the guys up and never gets thrown.

**John:** Oh that’s horrible.

**Craig:** it’s like a massive cheat. You could get away with that in the ‘50s apparently.

**John:** Because they couldn’t go back and find the old take.

**Craig:** Exactly. They couldn’t go back and find the old tape. But that kind of cheaty misdirect is kind of fascinating. And here he gets to do this cheaty misdirect all the time which I just thought was great.

**John:** Yeah. But let’s talk about the places where he’s not cheating and where he’s doing kind of very classic things you need to do in scripts. And so as I watching it tonight I was looking at the moments where characters talk about the plan. And characters do talk about their plans quite a lot. So, from the start like after she’s kidnapped it’s like I’m going to leave this thing here and this is going to be this and then we’re going to take her to the Cliffs of Insanity and that’s where we’re going to kill her. So you get a sense of what is supposed to be happening up ahead so that if you didn’t have that sense of what was going to happen up ahead it would just seem like a bunch of random events.

**Craig:** Yes. And because they’re not really people but just archetypes, they can just announce their plans. It’s a little clumsy when Chris Sarandon says to the guy that also knows the plan, without even giving him an “as you know.” “I will do this and then this and then this and then this and then this.” But Vizzini laying out the plan it’s almost like you people are stupid, let me just say it again.

And when they come up with the plan of how to break in that’s the one where they don’t tell you how it’s going to work because there’s this big surprise that shouldn’t work by the way. It’s kind of crazy how not real that looks.

One step back for a second. I think about this all the time. If they made this movie today and everybody was – we just moved those people through time so they were still alive and that age, what would they do about the Andre the Giant voice problem? Because he is borderline intelligible. And there are times when he says things that just aren’t correct at all.

**John:** I have no idea what that was, yeah.

**Craig:** How many times does Mandy Patinkin say, “My name is Inigo Montoya?” A lot. He calls him Inigo. Inigo. Right? Which must have been the best he could do. It appears that all of it has been looped and that was the best they could do. [laughs] I wonder what they would do now.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about what they would do now because I think it would be actually very hard to make this movie now. Because I can just imagine, you know, even with William Goldman’s fantastic screenplay there would not be confidence that an audience would be willing to just go along with this ride. And there would be a desire to have just more stuff painted in. And there’s some things which are in 2019 we would make some different choices. And so I think, you know, this movie doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There’s no other female characters. You’d want to have just some other sense of who Buttercup is and have her do something, have her take some agency.

There’s a moment in the fire swamp where she just falls a lot. And it’s not her greatest moment. She picks up a stick–

**Craig:** Pokes at it, kind of.

**John:** But not especially convincingly.

**Craig:** Yeah. She seems anemic to me. Deeply anemic. And also let’s not forget the moment where Westley threatens to slap her across the face.

**John:** That’s not a good moment.

**Craig:** Doesn’t hold up. Problematic as the kids say. Also that is a moment that I never really bought. In other words Westley comes back to save her but he’s really angry at her because she wants to marry a guy, because she wasn’t loyal. But why would she be loyal? I mean, that makes no sense. His anger there makes no sense so it’s a bit of a false–

**John:** Yeah. It’s one of those situations where in a book where we can believe that she doesn’t really see who he is, but because we can see from the very first moment it’s like oh it’s him, he’s back.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. I mean, it’s a Clark Kent thing going on for sure. The mask does not hide.

**John:** Didn’t hide it so good.

**Craig:** The palpable gorgeousness of a young Cary Elwes. By the way, how beautiful are those two people?

**John:** I just want to slow motion walk–

**Craig:** I mean, the two of them, when they’re just looking at each other like on the farm. I’m like, oh my–

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** Are they the same species as I am? I mean, it seems like they’re from heaven, right?

**John:** They are. They are angels.

**Craig:** Just glowing angels. And they’re still both good-looking. I think people like that stay good-looking literally until they’re dead.

**John:** It’s out of spite.

**Craig:** But, yes, that thing does not work. And I think you’re right that in general this movie has a hard time getting made today because all movies have a hard time getting made today. And it wears its innocence on its sleeve. It wears its fairytale-ness on its sleeve. There’s no reason to cast a big movie star in it because the characters are unchallenging. It’s actually more like some of the spoof stuff I had to do. Had to do, like I was forced.

**John:** Indeed.

**Craig:** I was actually for some of them. But regardless, where the characters have no – what they say is exactly what they’re thinking. There’s no subtext ever to anything. Like there’s no guile ever. Even like when she says, “All your ships but your four fastest.” And he’s like, “Huh?” Like he forgot his own plan. And then she’s like, “But your four fastest.” And then he realizes his mistake and he still is like, oh. All you have to do is like, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Of course.” But no one has any guile.

**John:** I do agree. You get the sense that there was nothing happening offstage. She walks in and she’s–

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** She’s been in like a box and then she walks out.

**Craig:** It’s very Westworld that way. Yeah.

**John:** It is. Oh, the Westworld version of this would be fantastic.

**Craig:** Cease all motor functions.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** For sure. But that’s kind of the joy of it. You know, I mean, I love that part. The moment for me other than the moment between the two human beings, Peter Falk and Fred Savage, there is one moment that is very human and very real and that is when Inigo Montoya gets his revenge. And that’s where the movie actually said, you know what, this is a real person. He has experienced – and Mandy Patinkin also just acts beautifully there. So does Christopher Guest who played an amazing villain. “Stop saying that.” Oh, it’s just wonderful.

And that’s a moment that a guy like William Goldman figured out how to do something like a simple revenge plot except he boiled it into this little rock of crack that has just gotten into our bloodstream. It is something everyone knows. Everyone knows this. The moment is–

**John:** Repetition is also a huge help of that. He says the line so many times that it just becomes a thing. And also he’s a character who clearly articulates his goal from the very, very start.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So we know exactly what he’s after and we know that he’s probably going to get it at the end or he’s going to die trying to get that thing. He’s the only character other than Buttercup and Westley that we really have a sense of what they’re after. Even our villain, I don’t really kind of know what he wants. He wants a pretense for this war.

**Craig:** He wants a war. He wants a war.

**John:** But we don’t know why.

**Craig:** Why? Doesn’t matter.

**John:** Doesn’t matter.

**Craig:** I mean, and also if you want a war there are so many better ways.

**John:** Maybe start a war.

**Craig:** Start a war.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a thing you could do.

**Craig:** Fire upon them. Seems pretty easy to me. God, I love his – the dad, the king, so great.

**John:** One little kiss.

**Craig:** “Isn’t that kiss.”

**John:** “Isn’t that nice.”

**Craig:** “She kissed me.” Oh, god, I love that.

**John:** Let’s sort of wrap up this part by talking about sort of world-building and then sort of the future of The Princess Bride. So the world-building of this I thought was really interesting. So it would take place in fairytale land yet it’s also the real world. It’s weird for me when they reference Australia.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I mean, it feels like a bit of a reach. And when they talk about Greenland, great, that’s sort of in that little space.

**Craig:** “Unemployed in Greenland.” I mean, greatest.

**John:** It’s a great line. Australia feels like a weird reach.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s an interesting universe. And also we don’t know sort of how much magic there is in the world. There’s a tiny bit?

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a tiny bit. So it’s this medieval version of our world. No one seems to be aware of anywhere in the world except for Vizzini who is aware of everything, including Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. “Morons.” And he knows Asia and why you should never get involved in a land war there. And he’s from Sicily. Right? So apparently this is in our world, it was just this little weird – it’s like Luxembourg, you know, it’s like this little area.

Magic wise it seems like there’s just minor, I mean, Miracle Max seems like just an early–

**John:** Like an alchemist.

**Craig:** Early pharmacist.

**John:** All right. So let’s talk about the future of this movie. So we talk about sort of its history. There was discussion of Buttercup’s baby.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Right. That was William Goldman’s.

**John:** William Goldman. So William Goldman was writing a sequel book and never finished it.

**Craig:** Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it.

**John:** So he said, “I desperately want to write it and I sit there and nothing happens and I get pissed at myself. I got lucky with The Princess Bride the first time and I’d love to get lucky again.” So that was 2007, so there wasn’t one. There was a Broadway musical that was in development. A lot of it was written. It never happened. Apparently–

**Craig:** Royalty dispute or something like that.

**John:** Yeah, disputes behind that. So Disney Theatrical is apparently trying to do it again so there’s a new version.

**Craig:** Yes. And I think that that’s a fair way to approach this. Approach it as a musical because it does seem very adaptable as a musical to me. And that would not step on what exists here. There is beautiful music in this movie written by Mark Knopfler. One of my wishes for this, I wish that they would release a version where they took Knopfler’s score and recorded it with a proper orchestra instead of a synth which was I guess exciting at the time, but it just–

**John:** It feels a little thin.

**Craig:** Well, it diminishes the score and also it’s wrong. That place doesn’t have synth. You know, it’s just so weird. That makes me sad.

**John:** Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t want Craig to be sad. But I agree with you, I think the idea of doing a musical of it makes sense because it feels like these characters want to sing. So, they’re expressing such kind of simple true ideas that those feel like songs and that’s the way to get into these character’s heads. I’d be curious whether they keep the framing device of the grandfather and son. I don’t think you necessarily need it in the stage version. But you can keep it.

**Craig:** I bet they do.

**John:** I bet they do [crosstalk] simplicity.

**Craig:** And also the last line, why in god’s name Rob Reiner didn’t just fade out on Peter Falk after he says, “As you wish.” Why does he then go back and have him walk out of the room and close the door and just leave Fred Savage there alone? It’s the weirdest choice. Anyway.

**John:** We can find Rob and ask him.

**Craig:** Let’s. But that last line is the whole raison d’être of this thing. Which is you kid, just learned that love is a service that we do for others. That’s what this whole story was about. And me being here with you was my service to you. I love you. And you need that last line because that to me explains why we went through the exercise.

William Goldman effectively convinced I think everybody that reading a story, telling a story to somebody is in its own way an act of service and an act of love which is why he did it for his own kids. It is brilliant in its simplicity and I’m going to have to watch it for the 1,001th time clearly.

**John:** All right. Let us open it up to some questions. We have two stands in the aisle. If people have questions or things or comments they want to share. I guess we’ll allow comments. This is sort of a special, if someone has an observation–

**Craig:** I mean, we did not make this movie.

**John:** If people have other observations they want to share as well that’s cool, too, but we’ll sort of get your thought on this. We’ll start with you, sir.

**Male Audience Member:** Hey there. Just from the last few things you guys were saying about the synth tracks and the closing the door at the end, it occurs to me we’re not really seeing the story that’s on the paper. We’re seeing what Fred Savage is seeing. And we just saw him – we opened on him playing the video game with the synth track. And it kind of matches with what he might be imagining. And I kind of feel like that closes at the end of the movie, too, with the door closing. It’s him going to sleep. We’re not really following the book. We’re following Fred Savage in his head.

**Craig:** Right. That makes sense. I mean, I always identify with the old Jew, so that’s probably where my.

**John:** Yeah, but you’re actually raising a good point which is basically who’s POV is that whole sequence from. Is it from the grandfather’s POV or the–?

**Craig:** I always thought it was from the grandfather’s point of view personally.

**John:** You could make a good argument either way. But I think those choice of shots really matters here. I mean, an argument against it being from the grandfather’s point of view is that he walks into the scene.

**Craig:** Yes, but there are moments where Fred Savage is shocked and even says, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you said no kissing,” which makes me think that he isn’t watching the movie.

**Male Audience Member:** Well if I was going to turn it into a question the question would be you say you identify with the old Jew now, but the first time you saw it?

**Craig:** Oh, old Jew.

**John:** Craig has always been an old Jew.

**Craig:** I was born 80.

**Male Audience Member:** Hi, so weird seeing your guys’ faces move while I’m hearing your voice.

**Craig:** It’s weird for us, also.

**Male Audience Member:** I was into everything you were saying about not being able to make this movie today and the one kind of thing I wanted to bounce off of that is like in some ways I feel like I see this movie everywhere today, like everything that Phil Lord and Chris Miller do for example.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Male Audience Member:** So curious on your thoughts on like – because it seems to me know that meta-ness in movies is more endemic than it maybe was in 1987. So your thoughts on the state of that and the influence and doing it well versus doing it poorly and all that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wrote something down here. You can just imagine young Chris Miller and Phil Lord watching this and absorbing the lessons of a gentle meta-comedy. And it is very gentle. I mean, they are very gentle about it, too. I think that’s why they’re so good at it. One of my favorite jokes ever in history is “Where am I? The pit of despair. Don’t bother trying to escape.” It’s wonderful. It is meta. It pokes fun at a trope. But it doesn’t break anything. And I think that’s wonderful.

I have to imagine that they love this movie the way I do, but you know what, we’ll ask them.

**John:** We’ll ask them.

**Craig:** We’ll ask those guys.

**John:** So I agree with you that you see the same things that this movie does reflected in other things. And there are some direct echoes. Like you don’t get to Once Upon a Deadpool without this movie. But I would suspect that like the meta-ness of our culture is just there no matter what, so without this movie we’d still have – we’d probably still have Phil Lord and Chris Miller making their stuff.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I don’t think they would have perished or anything like that, but maybe they would have.

**John:** Yeah. And so no spoilers but in some of the work I’ve been doing recently, which you guys haven’t seen yet, there is that quality of like are we framing that this is a story within the world of how it’s being told. And it can be a very useful way of placing something within a larger world and a larger context. And so that meta-ness is I think you’re going to increasingly see.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like it.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Well there was one hole which again you explain in the very beginning because it is a fantasy, nothing really supposed to make sense in a way. But the beginning when the Man in Black, the protagonist, follows him he just appears. How does he know she’s there?

**Craig:** Oh, there are bigger holes than that one. I mean, how about this one: Fezzik finds a drunken Inigo and he fills him in on everything including the six-fingered man. How did he know about that? Was he watching this movie, too? There’s huge holes. But you’re like, meh.

**Male Audience Member:** But then again if you watch the comic books, what we watch, the movies all the time there’s holes all over the place. Again, it’s a fantasy, so it’s a fantasy.

**Craig:** You get away with a lot. No question.

**John:** Also, I think it’s important about setting expectations. So this movie in contextualizing it as a story it gives you a lot of buy-in for genre conventions and just the ability to skip over some things that would otherwise feel like giant plot holes. You feel like maybe this story that Fred Savage is hearing actually has some of those things filled in and we’re skipping over those.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s start over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Hi, do you feel that there is any benefit to the fact that characters like Buttercup and the other characters in the actual story we’re being told don’t grow as characters, they don’t change. If the story were made today, if this film were made today, is there any benefit to keeping Buttercup as a character that doesn’t really grow and start learning to defend herself in that way?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a fairytale and what we’ve started to do now is reevaluate fairytales and retell them in a modern way, or if you want to call it postmodern way. Disney is doing this quite a bit. You reimagine these stories and then you turn them on their ear. And you don’t just have a female be a damsel in distress.

For this movie, no one changes. None of those characters change because that’s how that story functions. The only person that changes is Fred Savage, which is why I think he’s the protagonist. But no, you can’t do that now because it won’t work. People won’t like it. And this is why it’s important to view movies in their context. And, yeah, there are moments where you go, uh, the kind of trope-iness of their characters is sort of a point. He’s telling a tropey story.

**John:** Disney’s Cinderella, the remake of Cinderella, the live action version, one of the things I really appreciate about it is it was the exact same story but they gave the characters human motivations rather than cartoon motivations. She’s a more fully fleshed-out character than she would ever be in the original animated film. And I think if you were to approach this – I don’t think you should remake this movie – but if you were to approach a remake of this movie you would be thinking from inside her point of view like how can she do some things to change her world around her. And sort of what is it unique and special about her other than just being incredible gorgeous that we’re going to really focus on.

**Craig:** So gorgeous.

**John:** So, so beautiful. Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Sure. Just watching this, having reflected on recent episodes, it’s like if there’s a scene you’re dreading to write just don’t write that scene, just move past it and see what happens. And there’s so much of – the economy of that story works so well that it feels like it’s 60 minutes long. What’s the runtime on that? Anyone? It feels less than 90 minutes it is so quick. And have you – does anyone know how close that follows the book? Did Goldman cut a bunch of material from that?

**Craig:** There are serious differences. The book was, you know, the subtitle of that book I think was called A Hot Fairytale or something like that. It was a little more adult when he put it in book form. But the basics are all there. There’s not much new there that isn’t in the book. So, yeah, that was kind of how he wrote it, right? He just was able – it’s a great experiment to free yourself from having to write everything in the story and just write some of it.

**Male Audience Member:** So many details that don’t matter. Is it Florin, is it Gilder? Doesn’t matter, it’s sword land. Who cares?

**Craig:** Does not matter. It does not matter.

**John:** Yeah, so this takes out all the shoe leather basically. Characters aren’t walking from place to place. Basically they’re just suddenly showing up there and doing stuff and that can be a really great lesson. You’re not always going to be able to have this kind of economy for very good reasons. But it’s also a good lesson in why it’s important to have something to cut to.

So, if you were to do this without the framing device it would still be incredibly helpful to be able to cut away to the other characters doing something so that you can move both stories together.

**Male Audience Member:** Splitting the party.

**John:** Yeah. Otherwise you’d be walking through all of this with them. I’m doing the third Arlo Finch book right now and man there’s times I wish I could skip over the stuff.

**Craig:** You can.

**John:** You can sometimes. But sometimes you cannot. And so chapter breaks are really helpful but like you got to finish out a scene. You can’t just summarize it out.

**Craig:** You got to finish a scene. Yeah.

**Male Audience Member:** Are you guys waiting for all the characters in that – All the President’s Men?

**John:** Oh, no, no, no. We’re not staying after that. No.

**Craig:** No. Oh, I thought you meant they were coming. OK, sorry.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** So it feels to me very [spollen] because it’s very playful the whole conceit of it. And I tell a lot of stories to my grandkids and I can jump all over the place, you know, the little mouse suddenly ends up three stories down and he finds a cockroach that he rides and like they just go with it. So, I think even though we have over-institutionalized in a way storytelling through our big brains and trying to figure it out, in the end just having a playful spirit and sort of the logic seems like underneath less important than this sense of play. So I wanted you perhaps to address how play and creating from a sense of play can inform story, like using this as a great example.

**John:** Yeah.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** So often we can sort of imagine development notes and process on this and trying to answer all of the questions. And in trying to answer all the questions the notes will forget like, oh that’s right, it’s supposed to be fun. And so they will try to fix all the problems and not recognize what was actually great and working about it and would squash some of what was great and working about it. The lines that Craig quotes, they’re just weird fun moments that wouldn’t happen if you had spent all the time to fix all the mistakes.

**Craig:** Yeah, like no one ever tells you – it just says then assemble a Brute Squad. And we’re supposed to know what a Brute Squad is. You know? I’m going to call the Brute Squad. I’m the Brute Squad. You are the Brute Squad.

But I think that that is a great sign that it started the way it started. Because when you tell stories to your children within seconds you realize you better be entertaining. I mean, the attention span is short, but when you have them they give you more attention than any adult ever would. So it’s figuring out what are those things. And big swings and exciting things. It’s not enough to have, like OK, they fell down a hill. She just got hurt. The love of her life back. If we’re not telling that story to a child they sit down and they discuss. Not these two. They go into a swamp with huge rats. And fire. And the – and the – I mean, that’s the point.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Swamp-eating fire.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Love it. So good.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** One thing I noticed while watching the film this time is how good William Goldman is at that bad guys closing in tracking beat that he also does that great in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And I was just wondering on a craft level like how do you approach writing those kinds of beats. We see them in lots of films and I just feel like there’s this great comedic interplay between the two spaces when they’re there and when the bad guy runs in. How do you balance that beat?

**John:** I think it’s recognizing that you’re going to want that moment. That you’re going to need that moment to see that this is between the two. That you see the interplay between them. Because there can also be the instinct of just like we’re going to deal with these people and then we’ll have a separate scene where we’ll see these people over there. And we’re not going to contextualize where they are in relation to each other.

And if the screenwriter doesn’t recognize like, oh, that’s a thing I’m going to need or I’m going to need to see those things, that may not get shot and may not be a thing that you have in your movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that’s right. I mean, the key isn’t so much that you have that scene or not have that scene. It’s how you want it to be. What the meaning of it – do you want to see somebody looking at somebody in the distance that keeps coming while they’re standing there? Or do you want them to be surprised by it? But it is also a chance to be really funny.

I mean, one of my favorite versions of that is in Holy Grail. He’s running, running, and then he’s there. I love that. So you can play around with it. But you have to know what you want out of it. Yeah.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** I’m curious what you think is the target audience of the film when it first came out compared to nowadays. I think Craig you said you saw it when you were 16 and John like late high school/early college. But like you said there’s, you know, with the tropes and everything it’s kind of postmodern with the meta, you know, it almost has that idea of watch Star Wars when you’re younger because by the time you see it in your 20s how many times have you heard “I am your father” and that moment now has kind of lost its impact. So, just curious on – obviously it still lives up and the protagonist in your guys’ opinion is Fred Savage the child. So, even though you saw it kind of late adolescence has it kind of grown into a movie you should see and you should introduce to someone when they’re young, they’ll really appreciate it?

**Craig:** I think so. I think the movie is designed to speak to children of all ages as they say. Talking to you when you watch it now, I don’t care how old you are, it’s just all about the kid in you. There’s really nothing, I mean, there’s no – there’s not even a hint that reproduction occurs. Do you know what I mean? It’s about a kiss. Everything feels so broad the way a child would want it to be on purpose. And they keep making it broader, and broader, and broader. And the comedy is very physical. And I love that about it.

So to me who is this – this is one of those movies that anyone should be able to watch and hopefully enjoy. Anyone.

**John:** Yeah. So the movie was not a huge success. It did OK. But it was not a big blockbuster. Go to YouTube and look at the trailer. It is the worst trailer. It has the worst music. All trailers from that time are terrible, but this is a really bad trailer. So it’s hard to say who the target audience was, but like target audience is like anybody who would watch that trailer and actually show up at the theater and go in.

What I do want to address though, I feel like part of the reason why we’re talking about this movie and why this movie has had a cultural impact is because it came out on home video at a time where home video was incredibly important. Most people saw this a thousand times on home video. I didn’t. But also it got rereleased again and again on laser disc and better and better laser disc. So I felt like it really benefited from the rise of home video and the ability to see it again and again and become a family favorite.

**Craig:** Similar thing with Spinal Tap. I mean, look, every movie got that treatment, but this one captured people. It took a while. Because it’s also very hard to explain what it is. You have to kind of see it to get it. But it is so remarkably entertaining. And so it caught on. It was one of those movies where like “you have to see this movie, I love this movie.” And it wasn’t just your friend trying to push some art film on you. It was like moms were telling other moms, “You’ve got to see this movie.” It’s for everybody. Yeah, god, hard to solve. Geez.

**John:** Over here.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** So, I’m going to kick myself if I get this wrong but I’m pretty sure that the title of the book was A Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the Good Parts, by William Goldman. Which leads to my question–

**Craig:** Nice. That is.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** I’m fairly familiar with the book.

**Craig:** Apparently.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** And I actually remember the first time the book was read to me. I don’t remember the first time I saw the movie but I had seen it many times beforehand. And I’m just curious from, you know, we’re super lucky that William Goldman got to adapt his own work and really polish up his own wonderful novel. Do you feel like there’s anything from the book that’s missing that you’d like to see in this? Or do you think he just clinched it perfectly tight?

**Craig:** Honestly, I mean, I don’t want to represent that I am sort of steeped in the novel as you are, but I’m good. This gets everything that I want. And it’s one of those things where over time a movie that you love just becomes unchangeable. Even its flaws. You come to love all of it. I mean, there is some editing in this thing that is just astonishingly horrible.

**John:** There’s some eye lines that are rough, too.

**Craig:** Eye lines are like, you know, Westley’s head is flopped this way and in the next shot he’s close up looking that way. No one gave a damn. But I love it. So, anyway I’m happy. I’m good.

**John:** So I have not read the book. But I will say just in general an adaptation is how do you tell the best story for the screen. And so we need to remember that he was a screenwriter, I don’t really want to say first, but he had written a lot of screenplays before he wrote this book. And so I think even if he wasn’t planning at the time to adapt this into a movie I think he had a cinematic sense to it. And so he wrote this book probably with a good idea of what this would be like on a screen. And so I think there’s a natural reason why a screenwriter wrote this book and why the novelist was the screenwriter who brought it to the end.

Over here.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Hey, so I have a question. We talked a lot about holes and it’s kind of a follow up to that. If each of you had to fill in a hole or had to add something I would love to hear what that is, whether it’s another element of the fire swamp, or if we actually see the Dread Pirate Roberts. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

**Craig:** Oh that’s good. That’s a good question.

**John:** I would want some Buttercup stuff where we understand why Buttercup is marrying him at the start. I just feel like she needs somebody else to talk with. Because the character is incredibly silent throughout the movie, as if she was only contractually allowed to say like 200 lines. Because there are a lot times where there’s cuts to like she just nods at the end of a scene. It’s like, well, you could say something there.

I would love to just have a little – someone else she can talk to in the movie just so I can get a little bit more insight into her.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** The albino. The albino.

**John:** Sure. The albino. That would be great. We want some albino backstory as well.

**Craig:** The origin story of the albino?

**John:** Yeah, absolutely. Why is the albino there and sometimes nothing? No, yes.

**Craig:** Love that.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** He could be the confidante.

**Craig:** I’m good on the albino. I’m going to be honest with you. I feel pretty good about that. I would want maybe I would love to see a short little bit where Fezzik and Inigo are kind of floating out there unrooted and miserable because when we catch up with Inigo he’s drinking himself to death because he’s miserable and has failed. And obviously Fezzik has just been recruited for the Brute Squad. So I would love – maybe even just Inigo Montoya, one scene where you see that it’s all unraveled for him. I would love that.

**John:** It’s kind of weird that it feels like, you know, for Inigo and Fezzik that like six months have passed, but it could only have been like 10 days.

**Craig:** Right. And no one ever changes their shirt.

**John:** No. That’s accurate. That’s accurate to medieval times.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** Over here.

**Craig:** Jay Hogan?

**Male Audience Member:** Hey, how are you?

**Craig:** He’s famous you guys.

**Male Audience Member:** I’ve been dying to be a guest on your show, so this was the only way I could do it.

**Craig:** Oh no. If you want to be on the show you can be on the show.

**Male Audience Member:** OK. Well here I am.

**Craig:** Great.

**Male Audience Member:** I was watching this and thinking as I’m watching this as a writer I’d be afraid to write this movie. And the reason I’m afraid to write this movie is there are no stakes in this movie. People don’t die. When you think they die, they don’t die. They come back to life. True love is going to save the day. It’s stated at the very beginning and proved very quickly in act one he’s going to come back, he’s going to find her. For no reason he’s going to find her. They’re going to get together. The love story is going to work. Nobody you care about is going to die. And the protagonist in your story, the little boy, is quickly into this book, pretty quickly. And into his grandfather – you could tell pretty quickly that this relationship, this bonding happens quickly.

So we’re watching this story and not necessarily getting as involved as you need to be. It’s a fairytale so you’re separated. Your emotions are separated. But that frightens me as a writer.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, that’s the thing. It’s a fairytale. So the traditional tale of Cinderella, the stakes are she’ll just keep being treated poorly and she won’t be married to a guy. And that’s pretty common. In this case you’re absolutely right. I love the fact that, oh my god, if they fail there will be a war between Florin and Gilder. Who cares, right?

So I kind of love the fairytale-ness of it. And I guess that’s enough stakes for me is will this kid like his grandpa at the end. It’s so sweet.

**John:** So Jay, what I hear you talking about is there are stakes, I mean, like you know will these two lovers get back together. Will he die? He’s being tortured. Will he die? Will she kill herself? But you know that they’re false stakes.

**Male Audience Member:** The writers’ room calls it Schmuck Bait.

**John:** Schmuck Bait. Absolutely. And so I guess what I would say is even when you recognize that it’s schmuck bait I think you can sometimes lean into a film because you’re wondering like how can this actually end well. How can this actually–?

**Male Audience Member:** Yeah. Process is the alternative to stakes. It’s like what is the most interesting way to get there even though you know where you’re going.

**Craig:** And also there’s – the schmuck bait catches a schmuck. It’s the kid. He falls for it. Right? So that’s the point. They know they’re doing it. What you’re doing is you’re watching somebody falling in love with narrative. So I’m OK with that personally.

**John:** So, Jay, you did talk about like you’d be afraid to write this because you’re just worried that stakes are so low. And I think that’s actually really interesting and thank you for bringing up that point because you do worry about is this actually going to feel – is this actually going to have the weight that you would kind of want it to have? That there’s going to be enough real emotional resonance beyond just like a beautiful kiss at the end? And I think that’s a fair thing.

I think if you were to approach this movie now there would be an expectation of–

**Craig:** Yeah, there would.

**Male Audience Member:** I would even say that the highlight, the climax, is when Inigo Montoya gets his revenge.

**John:** Exactly.

**Male Audience Member:** And it’s not when the lovers kiss, better than the best five kisses–

**Craig:** Leaves them behind, right.

**Male Audience Member:** Right. Because that moment feels like, oh, well maybe he’s really going to die. For that one moment you thought maybe he’s done. And then when he comes back that feels good. That feels like a victory. As a writer, I think my audience is engaged in that moment. But everything after that is just, well, do-di-do, fun times.

**Craig:** There’s not that much after it. I mean, they land on horses and they ride away. And then there’s a kiss.

**John:** Jay, thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**John:** And we have one more question. In the blue shirt. You get the final question of the evening.

**Male Audience Member:** All right. Hope it’s good. Just thinking about how this all started because he would tell the story to his kids and it eventually became the screenplay. As screenwriters yourselves and having kids yourselves have you ever found yourself in a similar situation where you would tell stories to your kids that you would make up and just think to yourself like, hmm, this could be a screenplay? Has that ever occurred to you?

**Craig:** I mean, never to me, because I need to get paid. I can’t do it – I just can’t. I can’t. It’s so hard to do it anyway that without my kids slipping me serious cash.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, you’d have to pay Jessie like a big allowance so she could pay you back.

**Craig:** It’s just too much.

**John:** I will confess that I find it really tedious to have to do that work of making up a story for my kid. And there have been times where like we’re on a long flight and I’m just trying to get her through something. Luckily we’re past all of that stuff. But I find it really tedious because I hate sort of falling back on those tropes. I hate falling back on sort of the “and then…” and she’ll try to introduce something. I never enjoyed that. And so I want to have control over the universe and the world. I want control over Craig.

**Craig:** See what I talk about? Know what I mean? [makes robot noises]

**John:** But thank you for the question. All right, that is our discussion.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** I need to thank the Guild Screening Series, Ian Dietchman, Scott Alexander for doing this. Casey our projectionist. Marty and Brian for putting this whole logistics together. Megan McDonnell is our producer. And listen to Scriptnotes and this will be not Tuesday but a week from Tuesday.

**Craig:** Awesome. Thank you guys.

**John:** Thank you all.

**Craig:** Thank you.

Links:

* [The Seattle Live Show](https://nwsg.org/event/scriptnotes-live/?instance_id=523) is on February 6th!
* You can now [preorder Arlo Finch in the Lake of the Moon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/162672816X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) or come to the [launch event](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/john-august-2019) on February 9th.
* Submit entries for The Scriptnotes Pitch Session [here](https://johnaugust.com/pitch).
* The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure [novel](https://www.amazon.com/Princess-Bride-Morgensterns-Classic-Adventure/dp/0156035219)
* The Princess Bride [Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnkfVvZ9q_0)
* [The Dread Pirate Roberts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts)
* [The Bechdel Test](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest)
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [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)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Cole Parzenn ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_386.mp3).