Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/wga-elections-2018).

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

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

**John:** And this is a special mini episode about the upcoming WGA Board Elections. If you’re a WGA West member, you’ll probably find this fascinating and incredibly relevant. If you’re not, then this probably won’t be either of those things. But Craig is going to rant about something at the very end of this episode so you might want to stick around for that.

**Craig:** It’s always worth it.

**John:** It’s always worth it. Craig, talk us through why we’re talking through the Board Elections.

**Craig:** Well, every two years half of the board, that is to say eight of the 16 board members, are up for reelection, or if they’re vacating their seat then that seat is open for general election. And so we have a number of candidates. This is the voting period right now. And these votes are important.

I mean, this is kind of our equivalent of midterm elections, because of the way we divide up our elections. Half of the board runs for election at the same time as the officers do, half of the board does not. This is one of those not years. So there will probably be lower turnout which is stupid, because, frankly, arbitrarily the membership is just apparently less interested in half of the randomly selected members as opposed to the other half. They’re all making big important decisions like you do on the board and like I did when I was on the board.

And so this is a very important vote. These people will be a huge part of how we approach our next negotiations and how we administer the union and how we spend money and how we collect money. All the things that happen as professional writer members of this union will be determined one way or another by the board.

**John:** Yep. And we should say that we’re talking about the WGA West. There are of course two Writers Guilds, the Writers Guild East is also having their elections right now.

**Craig:** Whatever.

**John:** So we’ll put a link in the show notes to all the people who are running for that. It’s important, but I also didn’t know any of those writers. And they have some different things happening in the East. They have folks who are not film or TV writers who are covered by the East. So it’s all fascinating, but we’re only going to focus today on the folks running here in the West.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** As Craig mentioned, I’m currently on the board. Craig was on the board years ago. And I’ve learned so much in my year on the board. And I think I have some priorities that are different now than in previous years when we talked about who is running for office.

So, some of my priorities as I’m looking for things are people who are smart and focused, obviously. People who aren’t crazy, which is always a good sign. But what I’ve really come to appreciate this past year is how important it is to have people on the board who represent different perspectives. And especially perspectives that aren’t going to be represented by anybody else on the board. And so we’re losing Courtney Ellinger who is a news writer. So she was our only news writer on the board. And so without her on the board anymore we don’t get that perspective.

I can tell you right now we’re not going to have anybody who writes for late night variety shows, or a game show. We’re not going to have anybody who writes for daytime soap operas. So if there’s a common them in the people that I’m endorsing and the people who I think you should vote for it’s that I’m trying to get a broad range of experiences on that board so we just don’t miss out on crucial things happening to our members.

**Craig:** Which is an incredibly admirable way to approach this. Now, as a voter my interest is selfish. I’m one of the selfish voters.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** My interest is in correcting what I see as a longstanding historical neglect of feature writers in our union and issues that concern feature writers. So, of course, I’m going to be far more interested in sort of pushing that agenda, but I get my one vote, right? The nice thing about you being on the board is that you get to vote on the important things over and over and over.

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. So as we talk through these candidates you’re going to find a mix of feature writers, TV writers, folks who do other things, and so hopefully you’ll find candidates that are going to be representing your views, but also views of the greater membership.

So, let’s just get into it. There are three incumbents who are running for reelection. Jonathan Fernandez, Patti Carr, and Patric Verrone. Jonathan Fernandez is a person who gets my vote because he was actually a guy I met first time picketing in front of Paramount. He was part of my little picketing group during the 2008 strike. I met him during that time. He decided to run for the board. This will be his third time on the board. He’s great. Writes features and TV. He sort of talked me through some stuff about getting set up on the board. But he’s been really focused on the screenwriters’ issues. And so he’s a member of the screenwriters subcommittee that Michele Morrone and I had up. And he’s been great. And even the times where I’ve disagreed with him I like how clearly he can articulate his point of view.

If you look through his member statement he talks about the 25% problem which is I think a really good way of framing this weird way in which we give away 25% of our salaries just sort of off the top to managers and agents and lawyers. And as a guild we need to look at sort of whether writers are getting the value for that 25%.

**Craig:** No question. I like Jonathan a lot. I’ve supported him a number of times. I don’t have any reason to not vote for him again.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But I’m also aware of the incumbency thing, which is to say incumbents get this weird benefit of the doubt. Like, OK, well I know you’re not nuts, so I guess I can vote for you again. That said, things haven’t changed in a way that I find appreciably better for my constituency in the time that Jonathan has been on the board. So, if I do vote for him again I’m going to put a lot of pressure on him to actually step up and try and make a difference. Because I don’t see a huge difference yet.

**John:** All right. Let’s talk about some of the other people who are running. So these people who are new to me, so one of the things I did this year was as people would recommend these candidates I said like well I should actually sit down with them. So I sat down with a lot of the folks who are running this time. And everybody who I’m endorsing it’s because I sat down with them and talked over sort of what their priorities were.

The first of these people was Betsy Thomas. She was just recommended by folks who knew her and had met with her on the nominating committee. And she’s fantastic. I can’t believe I had not met her before this. She writes multicam. She’s consulting producer level on that. If elected she’d be the only person on the board who is doing multicam, which is a crucial perspective that she has. But I just loved her and I think she’s going to be a great addition to the board so I heartily endorsed her.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** Second person I sat down and talked with was Travis Donnelly. Travis Donnelly is a TV writer. I think he’s on Bull right now, but if you look through his campaign statement he’s very much about the experience of being a middle class TV writer and sort of the struggles that we’re having, because even this era of peak TV, TV writer salaries are not going up. And so you feel like in a situation where there is so much demand for TV writers we should be able to increase salaries. We should be able to better the working conditions for these writers. That’s not happening.

So he had a lot of smart thoughts about that. I think he would be a champion for the sort of middle class TV writers, especially drama writers, the same way that I wanted to focus on screenwriter issues. I think Travis has a really good handle on how to focus on those issues for TV writers.

**Craig:** I think he’s a very nice person. He’s normal. He’s not crazy. I think that’s important. People underestimate how important actually that is. I mean, you’re on the board. I was on the board. There were at least three or four crazy people on the board while I was on the board. And it was distressing because they would talk nonsense and everybody else was forced by the rules of Robert and collegiality to listen to their nonsense. It just soaks up energy and time. And it’s brutal. You need people who have a strong administrative mind and who can think legally and who can speak concisely.

**John:** Yep. And I would say I’ve been very lucky this year on the board. I think we kind of got that for a change. People noted that it’s a much better functioning board than we’ve seen in a long time. I want to keep that tradition going.

Dante Harper is another person I endorsed. I think he would continue that tradition. He’s a feature writer. He’s a weird case – well actually not that weird – in that he has worked on a ton of movies that his name is not on. That’s a thing that just happens as feature writers. But in talking with him that was a thing he wanted to look at, because he’s on the screen credits review committee with you right now Craig. But in a general sense I like that he’s very pro-union and in his statement he talks a lot about the existential threat to unions overall. We’ve seen it happening in the public union sector, but I think it’s going increasingly happen on the private sector front. And I think he’d be a good voice for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. And by and large what used to be my overriding concern which was electing people who seem to have moderate approaches to union governance, at this point now because I’m so concerned about what’s happening to feature writers I’m supporting practically every feature writer I can. So I say yes.

**John:** Next person on the list is a feature writer, Eric Heisserer. You know Eric.

**Craig:** Eric is the best. Eric is a good example of a screenwriter who when I met Eric he was very junior. He was just starting out. Very much kind of clawing his way into the business by writing specs. I mean, we’re talking – geez, when I met Eric I think we’re talking like 14 years ago or 15 years ago, something like that. And it’s great to see how he has turned into a proper A-list feature screenwriter and he’s written some wonderful movies including Arrival. And he absolutely belongs on the board. I think that he’s the kind of guy who has the right sort of temperament and also the breadth of experience.

I think he can well remember what it was like to be the middle class writer and the new writer and we need a voice like him. We also need, board members frankly, a good mix of board members who are either new to the business, or middle of the business, but we also need big names like you and like Andrea Berloff and Zak Penn and Eric Heisserer. They mean something to the other side which maybe one can consider unfair but it’s reality.

**John:** Yeah. When I sat down to talk with Eric about running for the board what I hadn’t realized is that he’s also doing TV stuff and he’s writing for Riot Games. And so he’s writing video game content which is an area you and I continually talk about being important that we try to find coverage for video games. And so he’s a person who actually has that perspective and experience and that is so invaluable to have on the board.

**Craig:** Got to elect Eric. Yeah, he needs to be on there.

**John:** The last person I talked with was Deric Hughes. And so Deric Hughes is a writer on The Flash right now. But what I liked about my conversation with him is that he was actually one of those writers who got caught in the sort of weird mini room situation where they are developing a show and they will pay writers at sort of minimum to come up to write eight episodes and then they’ll just put them on hold for a while and not let them shoot the show. Not let them staff on other things. So, as he was talking through that experience I was so angry on his behalf, but I think he would provide a really great window into what’s happening to writers who are writing in these mini rooms or writing on these short season shows for streaming. It’s a whole new world and we need writers who are dealing with that whole new world.

**Craig:** Let me ask you a question. Can we take a second here and talk about why we shouldn’t elect Patric Verrone again? Can we please stop with the Patric Verrone? Is that OK?

**John:** Before we get to Patric Verrone, let’s talk about how many people you should vote for.

**Craig:** OK. That’s a great point.

**John:** So, we’re electing eight people. So you can choose to vote for eight people. And there’s maybe a good reason because you want these eight people to be elected. Some writers will choose to vote for fewer than that because in some ways spreading your vote across eight makes it less likely that your top picks will get elected. That’s just sort of how math works. I’m picking six people here that I want make sure get elected. But you might choose a slate of eight.

And here’s where I’m going to shock you, Craig. If I were to vote for eight people Patric might be on my list of people I vote for.

**Craig:** What a ringing endorsement. “If I voted for the maximum he might be on it.”

**John:** Before you say why people shouldn’t vote for Patric Verrone, what I will say is that in my earlier statement that you want a range of experiences, Patric Verrone has the most experience of being on the board as anyone that’s going to be there. Because he used to be president of the guild. And Craig disagrees with almost everything he’s done.

**Craig:** That’s right. Yep.

**John:** But, having served on little subcommittees with Patric, his knowledge of the history of why certain things were done certain ways can be really useful. And so institutional knowledge can be important. So that would be a reason to keep Patric Verrone on the board.

**Craig:** If only Patric Verrone had the same respect for institutional wisdom that you have. Part of the sins, the many sins of Patric Verrone, was his insistence on purging people who had tremendous institutional wisdom simply because they disagreed with him, in a very Trump-like manner by the way.

Before I explain why no one should vote for Patric Verrone, I want to say that I really like Ashley Gable. I really like David Slack. I don’t know Patti Carr, but I hear good things.

So, anyway, going for my screenwriting peeps who are out there.

**John:** One thing we haven’t acknowledged is that Ashley Gable, Patti Carr, Dante Harper, and David Slack are running as a slate of four people. I’m not pro-slate, and so I picked one person out of that slate to sort of endorse. But I don’t like slates running together. And Patric Verrone of course was notorious for slate running.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it is and it isn’t. I mean, a proper slate is one in which you’re running eight people to essentially create a majority on the board, assuming that you can have one other person on there or a sympathetic officer. These are just people running together because they agree on things. I don’t think this is a slate. In and of themselves, if the four of them were elected they would not have any kind of ability to impact a majority or anything like that. And I can also tell you as somebody that was involved in guild politics in the heyday of slates, they fall apart almost instantly. I mean, I was on a slate with Dan Wilcox who literally I don’t think I agree with anything on.

So, anyway, I wouldn’t get too hung up on that. I don’t really think it’s a slate. That’s my personal opinion. Here’s what I am hung up on. Do not vote for Patric Verrone. It’s enough already. It’s enough. You know, I mean, first of all, we have a general diversity problem anyway on the board. So, maybe time for some new blood regardless. But Patric Verrone represents a bygone era. He was in my mind a terrible leader. And also not trustworthy. And so I found him unethical in a number of ways. He’s incredibly smart. But I can also say the same thing about Ted Cruz.

So, it’s just enough already. And frankly Patric Verrone is sort of a weird island unto himself. I think he’s just doing this to keep busy. Which is not a reason to have somebody on the board. Enough already with him. Go. Go away. Let’s get some new people in to lead this union. We need fresh blood. It’s really, really important.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s not about kicking people out because – I mean, the staff, any bit of sort of institutional wisdom that Patric has, somebody on the staff has that plus more. They’re really good about that. That’s where we need to be really careful about getting rid of people who have been around for a long time.

There’s a guy named Chuck Slocum who works for the Writers Guild. I have disagreed with Chuck probably 80% of the time. But Chuck is an enormous repository of conventional wisdom and I wouldn’t dare suggest that we should get rid of Chuck because I disagree with him about a bunch of things. He’s really important to the union.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Patric, not alone. Patric Verrone simply not important. And should go.

**John:** OK. You’ve heard it from Craig.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** A few names we didn’t mention but they are also running and we will have links to all of their candidate statements in the show notes for this. So VJ Boyd, Spiro Skentzos, and Deborah Amelon also running. And so if you are curious what their statements are you can look in the book, but we also have links to the candidate statements online.

Some of things you’ll find in the candidate statements are – there’s stuff that’s going to be in every one of them because they’re ubiquitous evergreen issues. But I think this coming year if I had to predict these are the sort of marquee things we’re going to be talking about. The negotiations with the agencies about the AMBA. That’s going to be coming up. We’re going to have continuing focus on sexual harassment, sexual harassment that’s happening to writers in the workplace and how we’re going to deal with that as an industry. We’re going to have to be prioritizing what our goals are going into the next MBA negotiation. And I can safely predict there will be one giant iceberg that we don’t see coming that will come and will become a crisis that we’ll have to address head on.

**Craig:** The unknown unknowns.

**John:** The unknown unknowns. And that’s why you want a range of people in there with a range of experiences so you can actually deal with it when it happens.

**Craig:** Yeah. All right. Well that was very useful. I know who I’m voting for now.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Should I say who I’m voting for?

**John:** Yeah. Say who you’re voting for. I think it’s fair.

**Craig:** OK. Here’s who I’m voting for. I’m voting for Deric Hughes. I’m voting for David Slack. Ashley Gable. Jonathan Fernandez. Travis Donnelly. Dante Harper. Eric Heisserer. That’s seven. And with my eighth vote if I could I would cast negative five votes for Patric Verrone. But I’m not allowed to.

**John:** All right. I’m going to strongly endorse Betsy Thomas, Travis Donnelly, Dante Harper, Eric Heisserer, Deric Hughes, and Jonathan Fernandez as my six who I think people should vote for.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool. Now, Craig, there’s one other bit of WGA business that you can address better than anyone else can. So the revisions to the credits manual, the screen credits manual, are out there so people can look through what the revisions are. And some folks have come up with a problem that they see as being a big issue. Craig, describe what the problem is and tell us what’s actually happening.

**Craig:** The problem is not a problem. Here’s exactly what’s happened. A lawyer, I won’t say who, but a big time lawyer, has essentially authored an email that he’s been sending around. And so some screenwriters, I think mostly clients of his, have been circulating this with a kind of handwringing “Oh no what does this mean?”

To put a little bit of this in context, the proposal that we have out to the membership right now is simply that we amend our credits manual to make it clear and to put in place certain policy things that have already existed. There are no substantial changes to the way we determine credit. This should be the least controversial credits referendum we have ever had and yet.

So here’s essentially what’s happened. There’s this letter going around and it says, hey, we have been involved in credit arbitrations and it’s a competitive process. And it’s really important that the writer’s statement be properly crafted in order to make sure that a proper verdict is rendered. And it’s really hard to do. It’s really hard to write a statement according to this email.

Oh my god, there’s so much information. A daunting volume of literary material. And if you happen to be in the middle of another writing assignment, my god, you’re overwhelmed. What will you do?

Well, my guess is you would probably reach out to one of the brilliant people out there that exist to help you do this if you pay them money to do it. But, what has happened with this proposal, well, it used to be that you had 24 hours to write this, but you could get extension. Now it’s saying you only have 72 hours and no extensions. This is terrible.

OK. Here’s the situation. The people that are circulating this have a vested interest in taking your money from you. They are not writers. I mean, they are writers who are recirculating, but the people who came up with this are not writers. Who they are are bloodsuckers that charge writers money to write their statements for them. Beyond why that’s stupid, and I’ll get to that, what they’re saying even on its face is violently inaccurate.

So here’s what’s actually going on. We have an existing rule. The existing rule says that the writer statement is due 24 hours after the writer has noticed that there’s a protest. OK, what that means is if one of the writers involved says I don’t like this proposed credits thing from the studio, I want to protest, all the writers have exactly 24 hours to turn in a statement. Or if there’s an automatic arbitration once the writers are notified they have 24 hours. But, OK, the union can give extensions. Why can the union give extensions? Because the notice that there is a protest or there’s going to be an automatic arbitration comes before all of the literary material is even collected.

So what’s happening is technically the writer has 24 hours to write a statement, but they don’t even have all the materials. That rule never made sense. OK. So, what happens is you do have some writers who follow that rule and work hard to write that statement. And then you have other writers who have lawyers call and as a matter of routine demand extensions over and over and over because they can afford those lawyers and they can afford up to the $10,000 that they pay certain professional statement writers. But there is at least a reason there, I get it.

What the rule is now changing to is that writers have 72 hours, that is three times as much time, after the writers are notified by the guild that they have all of the literary and source material. This can happen literally a week or two weeks or three weeks after the notice of arbitration. But time will pass.

So, really what’s happening is we are changing both the amount of time you have to make it more and we’re changing the trigger of when that clock starts, which is way more time. So in effect what we have done is created a rule that makes sense.

Now, this whole thing about then saying well there won’t be extensions. You will have enough time. At this point you have enough time. First of all, you can start writing your statement whenever you want. If it’s you and one other person and you’re the second writer and you have their script, and the first person can get the script from the studio, you guys can work on it now. But then the guild collects their material and they send it to you and then the clock starts.

Two. We have a situation now where rich writers are gaming the system by having lawyers try and jam up the works and then using that extra time to spend money to have other people write their statements for them. And what this is doing effectively is harming the arbitration process itself. Not because those statements are better. They’re worse. I have gone on record a hundred times and said to every writer I can do not hire those people, not because it’s unethical, although it is, or abuse, though it is, or exploitative of writers that maybe can’t afford that, because it is. But don’t do it because as an arbiter I can tell you those statements stink.

Also in general statements don’t matter. I know this freaks the lawyers out because they think that these statements are like lawyers making an argument in court. They’re not. Because in court lawyers introduce evidence. In a credit arbitration the evidence is the scripts. And the scripts are given to us. We don’t need any statements at all. But I get it. We get them. Fine.

Point is that when these people do this, they shrink the amount of time that we have in order to do the actual arbitration. In short, they are expanding the time that is required to write the stuff that doesn’t matter, and shortening the amount of time the arbiters have to read the stuff that does matter.

Now in this letter this lawyer in a very lawyerly way says “Hey look, in the MBA it says if the material, meaning literary material, is voluminous or complex, or if other circumstances beyond the control of the guild necessitate a longer period, because we normally get 21 business days to make this decision, in order to render a fair decision and the guild requests an extension of time for arbitration the company agrees” – get ready for this John – “the company agrees to cooperate as fully as possible.”

Then, the lawyer says, “So even though the studios rarely have a pressing need for an immediate credit determination and are almost always amenable to extensions, dot-dot-dot,” stop. That is a lie.

**John:** That is not true. I can tell you that.

**Craig:** It is not true. In fact, it is aggressively not true. It is the opposite of truth. The studios constantly have a pressing need for immediate credit determination and it’s getting worse and worse and worse. Why? Because, A, the amount of time that’s required to post produce a film shrinks just because of technology. B, the amount of times that they engage in repeated post-production work, new filming, new writing, increases. The window of time that we have is not from, OK, the studios made a suggestion of what the credits could be to the movie is coming out. It’s way, way earlier than that because you have to finish the credits and put them into the actual movie.

So, the guild is constantly sweating. Sweating to get this stuff done. And when you have a project where there’s been eight or nine writers and a novel and there’s a lot of work to be done to make a determination they need to find three writers who are willing to do that, two of whom are experienced arbiters, and then give them enough time to make that decision, all in time to get this back to the company within 21 business days.

The companies are not always amenable to extensions or even almost always amenable to extensions. They hate all of that. And the last thing we want to do is rely on the good graces of the studios when it comes to credits.

Now, the most offensive thing, the most offensive thing about this letter which is absurd that’s been going around is the suggestion that somehow this is going to – this rule change will benefit powerful writers. The specious logic goes like this. “The producer writer will have access to all the literary material throughout the process therefore could start writing their statement sooner.” I have so many problems with that. But the biggest one is this: no, that’s not how it works. At all.

At all. No one writes their stupid statement while things are still going on. They can’t write the statement until they know what the studio’s proposal of credits is. And even if you ask the studio what their proposal of credits is they might say one thing but they’ll give you another. Because here’s the fact. The people producer-writers or writer-producers talk to are not the people that make those suggestions. The person that makes that suggestion is usually a lawyer sitting somewhere in a smaller office. It just doesn’t work this way. So what they’re doing is they’re saying please don’t make this change. It will help rich writers. When really what they’re saying is don’t make this change. It will hurt rich writers. This is the most lawyerly bananas obfuscation. It is Trumpian in its fake newsiness where they’re trying to convince essentially lower income writers to resist a change that will help lower income writers because it does essentially level the playing field.

There have been times where writers have followed the rules, done what they’re supposed to do, and then the guild says sorry this arbitration will be slightly delayed because another writer’s lawyer demanded an extension and the first writer is saying but why don’t I – oh, because I didn’t hire a powerful attorney to come and threaten you guys? It’s stupid.

So, we’ve eliminated that. We’ve given writers more time. This is the bottom line. You now have more time both through the triggering of the event and the time you have to write your statement which, A, doesn’t matter that much, and B, should be written by you. And we have taken away in part a little bit of the flexibility that the outrageous charlatan industry of professional statement writing has to deliver their useless goods to writers for the exploitative amount of thousands and thousands of dollars. That’s what’s going on. Vote yes on this thing. Vote yes on this thing.

**John:** So, you will get a chance to vote on the credits proposals I think in October. I don’t think actually the ballots are out yet for that. It’s an e-ballot thing. But I don’t think you’re voting for that quite yet. But when you get the opportunity to vote for it Craig and I will remind you to vote yes on that.

But voting for the WGA candidates that is happening right now. Ballots are due September 18. You can also vote online so you should just make sure you vote. And that’s it.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** That’s our mini episode. So we’ll be back–

**Craig:** Oh, that felt good.

**John:** Yes. We’ll be back on Tuesday with a normal full episode. But just thanks for listening to our ranting about the WGA.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

Links:

* [WGA East Elections](https://www.wgaeast.org/for-members/2018-council-elections/2018-candidate-statements/)
* [Jonathan Fernandez](http://jonathanfwritersguildboardofdirectors.blogspot.com/)
* [Patti Carr](https://wgasolidarity.squarespace.com/patti-carr)
* Patric Verrone
* [Betsy Thomas](https://www.betsyt4wga.com/)
* [Travis Donnelly](https://www.donnellyforwga.com/)
* [Dante W. Harper](https://www.danteharperwga.com/)
* [Eric Heisserer](https://heisserer4wga.com/)
* [Deric Hughes](https://wgasolidarity.squarespace.com/deric-a-hughes)
* [David Slack](https://wgasolidarity.squarespace.com/david-slack)
* [Ashley Gable](https://wgasolidarity.squarespace.com/ashley-gable)
* [Spiro Skentzos](https://spiroskentzosforwga.wixsite.com/2018)
* [VJ Boyd](https://twitter.com/vjboyd?lang=en)
* [Deborah Amelon](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pdYtGz-d8KV6-6qtFRIb3XHZSDxx3Fmq_8-sBShW68g/edit?ts=5b57d7ec)
* [WGA Sets Referendum On Proposed Changes To Its Screen Credits Manual – Update](https://deadline.com/2018/08/wga-screen-credits-manual-referendum-on-changes-1202453690/)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [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 Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed)).

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You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_extra_WGA_elections_2018.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/tying-things-up).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is [sings] Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 366 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to be looking at how you end things, both in a narrative and in life. Specifically, what happens to your work after you die?

Hey, Craig, in general what happens after you die?

**Craig:** Nothing. So I asked my dad this question when I was very young and he gave me what I still consider to be the very best answer anyone has ever come up.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I said what happens after you die and he said, “It’s just like it was before you were born.” And that is the correct answer.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nothing. You’re done.

**John:** Yep. You do live in people’s memories until they die.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s meaningless. This is a meaningless ride. It’s a great ride. I love this ride so much. I’m so sad that it will end, but it doesn’t mean anything. Like no one goes on a roller coaster ride and says, “Now, when this ride is over do we live forever in a magical place in the sky?” No. No, no, it’s over. But you enjoyed it. Simple as that.

**John:** So today we will talk about what happens to your work after you die and the decisions you might want to make about your work for after you are no longer on this mortal coil. But first we have some news and some follow up.

So you and I are both on a different podcast. Sometimes we cheat on each other on other podcasts, but this time we went in together. We were sort of swingers. And we went on a different podcast. We went on Jordan, Jesse, Go! which came out last week. It was a fun time. Did you have a good time?

**Craig:** I did have a good time. It’s so funny because as you know – as everyone knows – I don’t listen to podcasts. So I’m never quite sure what to expect with any particular podcast and I always just assume that it’s going to be exactly like the one we do and it never is. First of all, everyone has much better equipment than we do. But I feel like we sound pretty good.

**John:** I think we sound pretty good, too. And also they had a good soundproof room, but they were banging their microphones constantly. Did that drive you a little nuts?

**Craig:** No, I didn’t mind that so much. I was just – mostly – our podcast is a little bit like us. You know, you and I, even though we seem very different, I don’t actually think we are that different. I think we’re both fairly rigid in our ways. And they were much more loosey-goosey improvisational fun. Like you got the feeling that if they wanted they could just spend an hour talking about anything at all and we’re not like that. We like routine. We’re set in our ways.

**John:** We have an outline. We have a structure. We get back to it. Theirs is just basically pancakes and sex toys. But it was a great conversation about pancakes and sex toys and mountain cabins.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was nice to take a little vacation from a structured podcast and actually just go bananas. It’s the morning zoo of podcasts. But in a good way. I like morning zoos. I’ve always liked them. I like a nice drive time banter.

**John:** Always good. But let’s get back to our structure. Dean wrote in to say, “You mentioned on the podcast that, ‘It would probably be quicker for you to write a half-hour than to pull together a pitch for it.’” I’m not sure which one of us said that, but I believe someone said that.

He continues, “I can guess as to how that might be the case, but explicitly what takes time in prepping a pitch? How much time would you spend on a pitch versus writing up a half hour of television comedy?”

So, you and I don’t write half hour comedies, but the overall idea that sometimes it’s just quicker to write it does feel kind of true. When I talk to people who write half hours, it’s really fast. They might spend a lot of time in the room figuring all the beats out–

**Craig:** Well, there you go.

**John:** But then when you actually write it it’s quick. Here’s what it was. I bet it was when I had Mindy Kaling on the show and she was talking about pitching a show versus writing a show. And sometimes you can just actually write the show more quickly than you can sort of pull together the full pitch.”

**Craig:** Look, the thing is if you put a stop watch to it, I doubt that that’s true. However, there is something called ease which is different than speed. Sometimes it’s easier to write the half hour, or write even an entire feature film than it is to pitch it. Because the problem — pitching requires you to know everything ahead of time so you already have to kind of write the movie anyway in your head, or a lot of it, or a lot of the show in your head.

And then be able to, oh, trippingly convey it to somebody in a non-audio visual form and just you talking, right? There’s no show. And that can be very strenuous and very nerve-racking. And you are incredibly aware that it is entirely based on the feeling in the room and whether or not you forget something or trip up or if you use words that are slightly ambiguous because, I mean, remember a script is already an audio-visual work that has been reduced or compressed into text only. Now you’re going to take sort of oral relaying of a text-only version of a thing that’s eventually going to be audio-visual. So at that point you think to yourself, ooh, you know what, the other problem with a pitch is they view it as an act of faith to buy a pitch. Why don’t I just not even go through all that mess? Why don’t I just write the damn thing?

And certainly if you’ve gone through the work that’s required to create and deliver a pitch, you’ve done the work that’s required to write the 30 pages or the 110 pages. So, in those cases the math might work out in your favor to just write it.

**John:** When David Iserson and Susanna Fogel were on the program they talked about how they ended up specking The Spy Who Dumped Me because it just felt better to write the whole thing and be able to deliver the whole thing versus going in and trying to pitch that idea around town. Sometimes writing is just a process of discovery. So sometimes you really won’t know what the movie is, what the show is, until you’ve written those characters. And so that’s a good example of why you might just want to write the half hour to see what it feels like.

There have been definitely times where I’ve gone in for a pitch and I’ve written scenes that would be in that final movie just to get a sense of the character’s voices, to get a sense of like what is this actually going to feel like.

So, that’s not blanket advice. I won’t say that you should always plan on writing that half hour. And ultimately if you write that half hour and you’re trying to sell that show you’re going to have to be able to pitch it further than that. You’re going to have to be able to describe this is where the show goes, this is how it grows. They’re going to need to sit across sit across from you and understand that like you are a person who can deliver this thing. But maybe writing that 30 pages will help you understand what the show is you want to make.

**Craig:** The other thing to consider is that when you’re pitching you are essentially in salesman mode which means that they’re in arms-crossed suspicious mode. When you have a script, then there’s an object to discuss. Work has been done. And so it’s a little realer. You know? I mean, people get burned by pitches all the time. I mean to say the pitch buyers get burned by pitches all the time. And they are well aware that sometimes writers need money. And they’re pitching something, they’re pitching their butts off for money, but then the money is just as the writing that you’re going to do is speculative, the money giving is speculative. We don’t know what we’re going to get. And they have been burned. So when you have actual writing I think it just changes the tenor of the conversation anyway in a much better way.

It’s not to say that you shouldn’t or can’t pitch, because I have. It’s just that, I don’t know, the gun is in your hand I think when the writing is there. And the gun is in their hand when you’re dancing for your supper.

**John:** Yeah. So Dean’s question about how much work are you doing before you go into a pitch, it varies wildly. And so the project I’m writing right now was a pitch. And so I went and I sold the pitch and I got hired to do it. And Megan, our producer, saw me sort of working through developing the pitch. And I think she was probably surprised at sort of like how little I had actually done. How little I had actually put down on paper. But I had done sort of the internal mental work of what is the conversation about this movie and I was able to describe the feelings and sort of what the overall goals of things were. And so if I didn’t have all the plot points really figured out, that really wasn’t the crucial thing for going in to pitch this movie.

It was basically like let me give you this take. Let me show you what this world will feel like. And that is ultimately what they were hiring me for for this movie.

**Craig:** Well, I will say though that Megan shouldn’t draw too much of an object lesson from that because you are in a different position. Over time the more you do it the less concerned and wary people are. They know that you deliver time and time again. They know you are a responsible professional. It’s a bit like actors when they start out they have to audition. They show up, read the lines in a scene, walk away, hope. And then later on the next step is I’ll come in and I’ll have a general discussion with you but I’m not going to actually audition by reading lines. We can just discuss the character. And then the third step is offer-only. And writers kind of follow those things, too. And we adjust it slightly as do actors depending on the part.

There are plenty of actors who, like for instance if you want to hire Jason Statham to be in your action movie, that’s offer-only. We know Jason Statham can do action. There’s no need to have Jason Statham come in to discuss the character with you. He can do it.

If, however, Jason Statham wants to spread his wings a little bit and maybe, I don’t know, Spielberg is making a movie and there’s this fascinating dramatic part and he wants to play a war surgeon, he might have to come in and meet. He might even want to read for it. You never know. And similarly with us. If there’s something that’s kind of – like if you want to write a Star Wars movie, my guess is you got to have a pretty lengthy conversation about what it is you want to do, especially if it’s their movie. And it doesn’t matter who you are. But if somebody is calling you up, John, and saying, “Listen, we have this movie. It’s going to be kind of, well, it’s family but family plus. So sort of elevated family entertainment.” You’re going to say, great, offer-only.

I mean, I’ll have a conversation with you if you want, but basically the point is if we’re having the conversation that means you want to hire me because you know I do this.

**John:** Absolutely. And when you and I are brought in to do weekly work, those are essentially offers only. Basically it’s just like, “Hey, we need help on this thing.” And if we go in it’s very clear we can do this job in front of us. But you doing Chernobyl, that is like Jason Statham doing a dramedy. That is not something that everyone would necessarily know is in your wheelhouse, so you do need to be able to describe your vision for what this is more fully.

**Craig:** Right. And that’s exactly what I did. So I went in with Carolyn Strauss to HBO and sat with [Carrie-Anne Follis] who is the head of their limited series department. And I pitched. And I pitched and I pitched. And I pitched how the series would work, who the characters were, the stories that would happen inside of it. I tried to keep it, you know, somewhat compressed. And it wasn’t kind of an overly rehearsed thing.

What helped there, in television there are so many different ways to stop people from working as they go through. All right, you’re going to write a bible and then you’re going to write an episode. And then we don’t have to do anything after that. And, of course, also in that field, too, is an understanding of and you’re not getting paid what you get paid to write movies. So that all made it kind of easy, but even so there was no question that when I went in there my track record, none of it mattered. None of it. Nor should it have.

**John:** I mean, your track record in terms of being able to like actually deliver something, like that you’re not going to run off and just disappear into the woods. You would actually give them something, but was it something that they actually wanted? They wouldn’t know that until they’re sitting across from you and ultimately until they’re reading the words.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if my track record accomplished anything it was simply that I could get that meeting. That at the drop of a hat I can probably sit down with somebody who runs any division of anything anywhere and say, listen, I have something I want to tell you. But they’re under no obligation to buy anything. All the burden of proof is on me. If somebody wants to make an R-rated comedy where two adults are doing crazy things on the road I don’t really think I need to audition. I’m not going to. So there you go. You’re just going to have to pay me to do that. I’m not going to sit down and dance for that. That’s kind of offer-only. That’s sort of the way it works.

The only thing I think that you or I can count on track record-wise is that we can at least – you like, what’s the job, like have you written horror, like a Leigh Whannell kind of movie?

**John:** Yeah. I’ve written one of those and I did have to sort of like pitch more fully sort of what my take was on that because it was very off the rank and normal track for me.

**Craig:** Then you there you go. And so the good news is you can get that meeting no matter what.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But then you got to work for it. So, it all depends. And obviously when you’re just starting out everybody is dancing for everything. First of all, you’ve got to convince people to even meet with you. And then you got to do a full dance. It’s pretty exhausting, but that’s what youth is for.

**John:** That is youth. All right, now further follow up, so on last week’s episode it came up that Craig really dislikes ventriloquism. No, no, no, I think you actually hate ventriloquism. You don’t understand ventriloquism. You find no artistic value in ventriloquism.

**Craig:** None.

**John:** And I think this is actually a call for a whole new segment on the Scriptnotes podcast so this is being inaugurated right here.

**Craig:** Oh, new segment.

**John:** New segment. Change Craig’s Mind.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** Yeah. So Craig has very strong opinions, but one of the things I like so much about Craig is that he also believes that other people can change their opinions about things they are obviously wrong about, such as vaccines. Like vaccines are good.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this will be an experiment to see whether we can change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the artistic merits of ventriloquism. So, I welcome all your suggestions for things we can throw at Craig that will make him see that ventriloquism is a true art form. I’m going to start. I started by Googling. I started by Googling “best ventriloquist” and the first video that came up was by a performer named Nina Conti. It is I think terrific and Craig is watching it right now.

So I will describe for people, obviously there will be a link in the show notes, but here is a woman who brings a man up on stage. She affixes a mask to him that she can control the mouth of the mask. And she basically uses him as a ventriloquist dummy. He is helpless and has no control over what he says. Craig, what is your reaction to what Google has told us is best ventriloquist?

**Craig:** If this is the best ventriloquist ever I can think of no better defense for my position than ventriloquism is crap. Because she’s actually figured out a way to make ventriloquism even easier than it already essentially is. I mean, the hardest part it seems to me of being a ventriloquist is manipulating the multiple things on their stupid dummy. The stupid hands and that dumb face, the eyeballs and the mouth. What she’s done here is, and she seems like a very nice person, don’t get me wrong. A very nice Scottish lady. But what she’s done is she brings somebody out of the audience and puts a little mask on that covers his nose and mouth with her hideous dummy nose/mouth. And then she has that connected to a little thing in her hand that makes the mouth go up and down. That’s it. Now she’s got the hardest part down to just pushing a button repeatedly while she does the silly talking like this.

And he just stands there while people laugh at him. This is terrible. I think it is terrible. I understand why it’s vaguely funny. I do. But it’s just – this is sort of like I never understood Gallagher. Like why are people laughing when he hits the watermelon with the thing? I don’t know. And to me it’s all in the same world of Gallagher. I don’t get it.

**John:** All right. So a thing I’m surprised you’re not appreciating is the fact that she is talking constantly. So, her breath control is remarkable because it seems like she’s having a conversation with this other person, but she’s actually doing both sides of the conversation. How she’s breathing, how she’s making that all work, do you see the skill involved there?

**Craig:** No. Ella Fitzgerald had great breath control. Patti LuPone has great breath control. I mean, I can do this because I’m talking like myself and then I’m talking like this. But if I ask you a question, yes, well I just want to know how, how, I just want to, I’m thinking that, well why don’t you just spit it out already? Anyone can do this. Literally anyone. It’s not hard. Just take breaths. And then while the audience laughs you breathe. Because they’re laughing – and listen, I have been accused of making audiences laugh with garbage. So I sympathize on that level.

I’m just saying I don’t get it. I don’t get this. Why ventriloquism is funny. Or hard.

**John:** All right. So this example has not changed Craig’s mind.

**Craig:** No. Made it worse.

**John:** But I remain hopeful that there is something out there that will change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the art form of ventriloquism.

**Craig:** I will say that it was refreshing to see a woman doing this as opposed to that weird Vegas-y, fake face, bad toupee type of dude.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** You drive around Vegas, like impressions. I don’t understand impressions. Why is that cool? I don’t get it. It’s not that great.

**John:** Like Rich Little is not a person for you?

**Craig:** OK. You sound like those other people. But I could just – those other people are entertaining. That’s why you want to sound like them. But why don’t I just watch those other people. I get it. Anybody that does a Christopher Walken impression. Cool. You’ve made yourself like Christopher Walken. Which reminds me, I’m going to watch a Christopher Walken movie now. Impressions are also just like, meh, OK.

**John:** I remain hopeful that we will get you there at some point, Craig, and thank you for humoring me with the first installment of Change Craig’s Mind.

**Craig:** Oh, no problem. Yeah, I can’t wait for my mind to be changed. I like a good mind change. You know, my thing is all my opinions are strongly held but not firmly held.

**John:** Great. Good. All right. But let’s get to our feature topic, or one of our two feature topics. This is a Craig Mazin suggestion, so Craig start us off.

**Craig:** Well, you know, we’ve been doing all of our various segments, old and new lately, but my fondest kind of episode is the one where we talk about craft, probably mostly because I just want to put film schools out of business. So, it’s not with me as always any kind of pro-social thing. This is more vindictive.

It seemed to me that one of the things we hadn’t talked about over the course of our many, many, many episodes is the end. Not the end the way people normally talk about the end, when we say well how does the movie end. Usually people are talking about the climax and there’s all sorts of stuff to be said about the dramatic climax of a film and how it functions and why it is the way it is. But the real end of the movie comes after. The real end is the denouement, as the French call it, and this is the moment after the climax when things have settled down and there’s actually a ton of interesting things going on in there. It is the very last thing people see. And it’s an important thing.

I’ll tell you who understands the value of a good denouement. The people that test films. They’ll tell you if you have a comedy and you have one last terrific joke there it will send your scores up through the roof. If you have one last little bit of something between two characters that feels meaningful it will send your scores through the roof. The last thing we get is in a weird way the most important. So I wanted to talk through the denouement, why it is there, and what it’s supposed to be doing.

**John:** Great. So denouement is a French word. Denoue is to untie. To unknot something. And so it’s interesting that it’s to unknot something because we think about the tying everything up, but you also think about undoing all the tangles that your story has created. Sort of like straightening things out again so that you can leave the theater feeling the way we want you to feel.

So as we’re talking through, if we’re imagining the prototypical 120-page screenplay, these are the very last few pages, correct Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. Absolutely. This is after the dust has settled. There’s going to be inevitably something, and we’ll talk through it. Like for instance sometimes it’s one single shot. Typically it’s its own scene. But there’s something to let you know this is the denouement.

And in that sense you – I guess the first thing we should do is draw a line between climax and denouement and say like, OK, what is the difference here. And the climax, I think we all get the general gist there. It’s action, choices, decision, conflict, sacrifice. And all of it is designed to achieve some sort of plot impact.

In the climax you save the victim or you defeat the villain. You’ve stopped the bomb. You win the – whatever it is that the plot is doing that’s what happens there. And the climax dramatically serves as a test of the protagonist. And the test is have you or have you not become version 2.0 of yourself. You started at version 1.0. We know some sort of change needed to happen to make you better, fix you, heal you, unknot you. Have you gotten there yet? This is your test.

And at the end of the climax we have evidence that the character has in fact transformed into character 2.0. The denouement, which occurs after this, to me is about proof that this is going to last. That this isn’t just a momentary thing but rather life has begun again. And this is the new person. This is the new reality.

**John:** Absolutely. So, in setting up your film you sort of establish a question for this principal character. Like will they be able to accomplish this thing. Will they be able to become the person who can meet this final challenge? In that climax they have met that final challenge. They have succeeded in that final challenge generally and we’ve come out of this. But was it just a one-time fluke thing or are they always going to be this way? Have they transformed into something that is a lasting transformation. And that is what you’re trying to do in these last scene or scenes is to show this is a thing that is really resolved for them.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that is why so many denouements will begin with six months later, one year later, because you want to know that, OK, if the denouement here is right, I used to crash weddings like a cad, but now I’m crashing my own friend’s wedding because I need to let this woman know that I really do love her and I’ve changed. And she says OK. We need six months later, one year later, to know, yep, they did change, they’re still together. They’re now crashing weddings together as a couple. So, they have this new reality, but it is lasting and their love is real. We need it, or else we’re left wondering, oh, hmm, all right, but did they make it or not?

Now that said, sometimes your denouement can happen in an instant and then the credits roll. And it’s enough because of the nature of the instant, particularly if it’s something that is a kind of very stark, very profound reward that has been withheld for most of the movie. Karate Kid maybe has the shortest denouement in history. Climax, Daniel wins the karate fight. Denouement, Mr. Miyagi smiles at him.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** That’s it. But that smile is a smile that he has not earned until that moment. And when he gets that smile you know that he’s good. This is good.

**John:** So as we’re talking I’m thinking back through some of my movies. In Go the denouement is they’ve gone back to the car at the end and Manny’s final question is, “So, what are we doing for New Years?” So it’s establishing that like they’ve been through all of this drama but they’re back on a normal track to keep doing sort of exactly what they’ve been doing before. That the journey of the movie has gotten them back to the place where they can take the same journey the next week, which is the point of the movie.

In Big Fish, certainly the climax is getting Edward to the river. There’s a moment post-climax where they’re at the funeral and see all the real versions of folks. But the actual denouement as we’re describing it right now is sort of that six months later, probably actually six years later, where the son who is now born and saying like did all that really happen and the father says, “Yep, every word.” So essentially we see the son buying into the father’s stories in the sense that there’s a legacy that will live on.

So, they’re very short scenes. They’re probably not the scenes you remember most in the movie, but they are important for sending you out of there thinking the characters are on a trajectory I want them to be on.

**Craig:** Yeah. The climax of Identify Thief is that Melissa McCarthy’s character gives herself up so that Jason Bateman’s character can be free of her and the identity theft and live with his life, which is a huge deal and that’s something she does that’s a self-sacrifice she does because of what he’s kind of helped her to see and that’s what he’s now learned from her. And the denouement which is important is to see, OK, it’s a year later and she’s in prison, which was really important to say, look, it’s real. Right? She went to prison. But what’s happening? Well, Jason and Amanda, who plays his wife, they’ve had their baby and everything is OK. He’s got a great new job. He’s doing fine. She’s been working hard in prison and studying so that she can get out and come work for him. And he then has something for her which is he’s found her real name, because she doesn’t know who she is. And he found her birth certificate and found her real name.

And so you get a kind of understanding that this relationship did not just stop right there. And it could have. She was a criminal. But it didn’t and that they’re going to go on and on. And then she punches a guard in the throat because the other thing about the denouement is typically it is a full circling of your movie and it is in the denouement that you have your best chance for any kind of fun or touching full circle moment. So in Identity Thief you have both. She at one point says she doesn’t know her real name. Here we find out her real name, which is Dawn Budgie, which is just the worse name ever. And the way she met him originally was by punching him in the throat and here’s she going to go ahead and punch a guard in the throat because you change but you don’t change completely because that feels gloppy, right?

But, both of those things are full circle moments. And in the denouement if you can find those, or if you’re wondering what to do in your denouement start thinking about that and looking for that little callback full circle moment. It is incredibly satisfying in that setting.

**John:** Yep. And a crucial point I think you’re making here is that the denouement is not about plot. It’s about story and theme, but it’s not about sort of the A plot of your movie. Your A plot is probably all done. It’s paying off things you set up between your characters. It’s really paying off relationships generally is how you are wrapping things up. It’s showing what has changed in the relationships between these characters and giving us a sense of what those relationships are going to be like going forward.

**Craig:** Oh, and that’s a great point, too. You’re absolutely right that it is showing what has changed and therefore it’s also showing what hasn’t changed, which can sometimes be just as important. So, for instance, if your theme is all you need is love, then it is important to show in the denouement that, OK, our protagonist has found love. She now has fulfilled that part of her life. But the other things that maybe she had been chasing aren’t there. So, if your problem is, OK, my character is Vanessa and Vanessa thinks that it’s more important to be successful than to be loved, which is an incredibly trite movie. I apologize to Vanessa.

At the end I don’t necessarily – if she’s found love I think maybe that’s good. I don’t need also then success. Because then I start to wonder, well, OK, what was the lesson here? Sometimes you just want to show nothing has changed except one thing. At the end of Shrek he still lives in a swamp and he is still an ogre, but he’s not alone. So one thing changes and the denouement is very good for almost using the scientific method to change one variable and leave the others constant.

**John:** Absolutely. So you’re saying that if you did try to change a bunch of variables, if the character ended up in a completely different place, in a whole new world than how they started, then we would still have a question about sort of like what is their life going to be like. We just don’t understand how they fit into all these things. But by changing the one thing we can carry our knowledge of sort of the rest of their life and see that and just make that one change going forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. It’s a chance for you to not have to worry about propelling anything forward, but rather letting people understand something is permanent. And permanent in a lovely way. Very often the denouement will dot-dot-dot off, the way that a lot of songs just fade out, right? Some songs have a big [Craig hums] and that’s your end, and you can do that. And some of them just fade out, which is also lovely. The end of Casablanca is a brilliant little fade out. You know, he says goodbye to Ilsa. She’s off on the plane. The plot of the Nazis is over. Everything is finished. And then, you know, two men just walk off and say, you know what, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And therein is a dot-dot-dot. And they just walk off into the fog. A plane takes off. And you understand more adventures are ahead, but for now everything is OK.

**John:** Yeah. It’s nice when you get a sense that there will be further stories, we don’t necessarily need to see the sequel, but you get a sense of where they’re generally headed and that you don’t need to be worrying about them an hour later from now.

Here’s the counter example. Imagine you’re watching this film and you’re watching Casablanca and for some reason the last ten minutes get cut off, like the film breaks. That is incredibly jarring because you’ve not been safely placed back down.

There’s a social contract that happens when a person starts watching a movie. It’s like the writer and the filmmakers say if you give me about two hours of your time I will make it worth your while. And you trust me and I will take you to a place and I will deposit you back safely where you started. And if you are not putting people back safely where they started they’re not going to have a good reception, a good reaction. And that’s what you find when you do audience testing is so often what’s not working about the movie is that they didn’t feel like they got to the place where they expected to be delivered.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I suspect that people, well, reasonably invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and thought into building their climaxes. And then the denouement becomes an afterthought. And for me it is the actual ending. That’s actually the ending I back up from is the denouement.

**John:** Well, OK, let’s talk about that literally, because I literally do write those last few pages very early on in the process. I don’t know if you do that as well. But sometime after I’ve crossed the midpoint of a script I will generally jump forward and write the last ten pages. So some of that climax but really it’s that denouement. What are the final images of the movie? What are the final moments, the final words of a movie? Because if I know that, I know where I’m going, that second half of the script is much tighter and better and cleaner for where I’m headed towards.

Also, I like to write those last couple pages while I still have enthusiasm about the movie. So often you’ll read endings of scripts and you kind of feel like people were just rushing through the end. It’s like they were on a deadline and just plowed through those last pages and they spent so much time on their first act and spent so little time on those last ten pages which are sort of loose and sloppy because of when they were written.

**Craig:** That just infuriates me. The very thought of it. Because I obsess over those, the way I obsess over the first ten. And I don’t write out of order the way you do. But I think I plan very stringently in a way that you don’t. I try and write the movie before I write the movie essentially. And so I definitely know what those things are. And I don’t really have spikes or dips of excitement. I’m more of a kind of – you know, I think you write the way people probably think I write, and I write probably the way people think you write.

**John:** Probably so.

**Craig:** You know what I mean? I’m very robotic about it in a certain kind of procedural way, creatively obviously inside the robot management. I go all over the place and lop the heads off of giraffes and so forth. But I’m very kind of, you know, I’m a big planner.

**John:** I’m very instinctual and I will not know necessarily what the next scene is as I’m writing the current scene.

**Craig:** You know what? I think you and I just are so surprising to each other.

**John:** All right. So let’s wrap up this conversation of denouement because the denouements are about wrapping things up. So, the key takeaways we want people to get from a denouement is that it is a resolution of not plot but of theme, of relationship, of sort of the promise you’ve made to the audience about these principal characters and sort of what is going to happen going forward. What else do we want people to know?

**Craig:** I mean, that is essentially what they’re going to do. You’re going to show them that last bit whether you’ve done a good job or a poor job. When they see the last bit of the movie they will in their minds add on the following words: And thus it shall always be. And if you have done it well, and thus it shall always be, it’ll be really comforting and wonderful for them.

By the way, sometimes it’s not comforting. Sometimes it’s sad. You know, I mean, honestly the denouement of Chernobyl is quite sad and bittersweet. No shock there. Fiddler on the Roof has one of the best denouements of all time. Fiddler on the Roof opens with a guy playing this [hums] and it’s very jaunty and he’s on a roof and it’s silly. And Tevye is talking to the audience and saying, oh you know, our life is hard and tricky. And we’re like a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a simple little tune without breaking your neck.

At the end of the show, they have been driven from their town of Anatevka by pogroms and they’re trudging off to a new home. And the fiddler is the last person to go and he plays that same little tune, but it’s so sad this time. And the denouement is there to say and thus it shall always be, meaning we know based on the timeframe that what follows the people who leave Anatevka in whenever that takes place, let’s just call it 1910, is going to be worse. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better and thus it shall always be.

So, it doesn’t always have to be “and happily ever after.” Sometimes it can be and sadly ever after. But the point is it will be thus. And it shall thus always be. So, if you think about it that way the denouement becomes incredibly important because that’s where you’re sealing the fate of every single character in your film.

**John:** Yeah. Everyone is sort of going to be frozen in that little capsule that you created there and that can be placed up on the shelf. That is the resolution for this world that you’ve built to contain this story. So, that’s why it’s so crucial that it feel rewarding. So whether it was a happy ending or a sad ending that it feels like an ending.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s transition to our real endings, which is basically our short time on this earth and at some point we will not be on this earth, but some of our work will still be around. And so I think this was a question from Pam Stucky on Twitter. I couldn’t find the actual tweet that sort of led to it. So if it’s not Pam, if it was somebody else, I’m sorry. But someone asked a smart question about like, well, have you guys ever talked about what happens to our work after we die? Or how stuff gets inherited? And I don’t think we really have.

So I wanted to dig into this a little bit and talk about two things. What happens legally to our work? And what happens creatively? What are the creative choices we might make about how we want to see our work passed down in the future? So some of the stuff is really straightforward and some of the stuff is a bigger discussion.

But legally you own copyright to the things you write. And that copyright is a real thing. It is an asset that can be passed along to your heirs. And if you don’t lay it out in your wills and other documents to describe where you want that copyright asset to go to, it will get passed along just like your comic book collection or your couch. So, it’s worth thinking about who you would like to own the rights to – the copyright to the stuff you make.

Copyright is worth a lot potentially for certain properties because it’s reproduction rights, it’s the ability to make more copies of that thing, so for a book. It’s distribution rights, who can sell and distribute your work. Performance rights, which is incredibly important for playwrights in particular. And adaptation rights. So, for authors it’s the ability to take that book you’ve written and turn it into a movie or turn into a TV show, or to remake it.

So, these are crucial things for the original works that you are creating. But, of course, as screenwriters so much of what we’re actually doing as our job isn’t original works. They are works for hire.

**Craig:** Right. And interestingly the term length is much different for individuals or for people commissioning works for hire. So in general we’re talking about anything that’s made since 1978, if you – John, you’ve written Arlo Finch. You are the copyright holder of Arlo Finch. The copyright protection lasts you how long?

**John:** My life plus a certain number of years, 75 years?

**Craig:** 70, yes, correct.

**John:** 70 years.

**Craig:** So, as long as you live and then the day you die a clock starts ticking and there are 70 more years for your daughter to gather up those delicious Arlo Finch royalties. At which point after that theoretically it goes into public domain the way that say the works of Arthur Conan Doyle are in public domain. And anybody can do anything they want with Sherlock Holmes.

But if there is a work-for-hire and that covers every time say Warner Bros. employs you or me to write a screenplay, the length of term there is 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of its creation. Now you can say well life of the author plus 70 could be more than that, but you know, typically people aren’t getting copyright to important works when they’re 10. So right now as you and I both approach 50 and maybe we’ve got another let’s say 30 years in there, they’re starting to even up.

And that number is going to get longer and longer because every time Mickey Mouse almost becomes public domain they seem to get an extension.

**John:** Yep. And so this will not be the episode where we actually talk about copyright systems and the weird ways it has been perverted to benefit – to really do the opposite of what copyright was supposed to do which was to get ideas out there in the public. But you could say, well, it doesn’t matter the things that I’m writing for Warner Bros. because I will never control copyright, therefore my heirs will get nothing. That is not true.

**Craig:** That is not true.

**John:** So, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which was a movie I made for Warner Bros. that pays me residuals. Residuals are collected by the Writers Guild of America. And those residuals are based on every time they sell the movie through iTunes or license it to Netflix. I get checks. I get checks every quarter for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it’s quite valuable. Those checks will keep coming after I die. And that is a very good thing. And those checks will keep coming as long as that movie is worth something and it is being licensed under copyright. So as long as Warner Bros. has copyright on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie I’ve made, residuals will keep coming. And that is a good asset down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s basically the long and short of it right there. We do have a kind of perpetuous income source with the residuals. And that’s why we have residuals essentially to simulate royalties, to overcome the absurd fiction of the work-for-hire, which I guess is sometimes is not a fiction but a lot of times it is. So, yeah, that’s basically what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with 90 or 120 years following creation of or first publication, or first publication or creation of. That’s how long it lasts. So when we die it kind of doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t really care, in our case, because our death is not actually triggering any time constraint.

For you it will matter on Arlo Finch. Or interestingly for you and I have both written music for movies, so we’re in ASCAP and we get ASCAP royalties. Those I think will be tied to death and copyright and all that, the publishing.

**John:** They should be. Yeah. That’ll be interesting to see. And also it’s complicated because it’s comingled with people who did the music for it, so it’s me and Danny Elfman and I don’t really know how that all sorts out. I’ve choose not to worry about it. But, Craig, while I have you on this call I have a question about separated rights.

So, separated rights would also pass to an heir, correct?

**Craig:** I believe so. They pass to your estate.

**John:** Yes. So if you are a person who writes a work for which you receive separated rights, which is a complicated topic but essentially it’s the ability to derive money from sequels and other things based upon your original work that should pass along to your heirs. Sometimes there are even creative choices that come along with that. So that’s another useful thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, separated rights are at times tricky to invoke because the companies hate that they exist. But for instance if you write an original screenplay and sold the original screenplay you will maintain a separated right for dramatic exploitation under certain circumstances. In other words, you have the rights for a play to be done of the original script you wrote. And when you die that doesn’t go away. That stays with the family.

**John:** Yep. So quite famously J.F. Lawton who wrote Pretty Woman controlled the separated rights for Pretty Woman and did not want there to be a Broadway musical for a very, very long time. And could stop it. That separated rights is giving him that ability.

But let’s talk about sort of the creative aspect of this. Not the legal, but just sort of creatively what you might think about down the road. And so you may have specific intentions for how you want to see your work used in the future. A zillion years ago I worked on an adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time which was not the same thread of the current Wrinkle in Time. But Madeleine L’Engle had already passed away, but her estate had tremendous controls over what could be done with that property. So not just who could do it, but like specific things that had to be in the script or could not be in the script. They had creative controls. And that was given to her estate.

Edward Albee’s estate has sort of famously tangled with people who wanted to make casting changes to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

And I was talking to Andrew Lippa, my friend, about stuff he’s doing with the Dramatist Guild for playwrights and musical writers who want to be able to think about their works after they’ve passed away. And so there’s some things like basically a council of playwrights that will look at people’s intentions with plays at the time they were written and sort of how they should change down the road, so that after playwrights pass away there can be some consistency about sort of what kinds of things are done with a play. So it’s a fascinating topic creatively.

**Craig:** Again, for those of us in movies and television, not particularly applicable in that regard, other than the minor separated rights. But that ultimately comes down to your family or whomever you have assigned the executorship of your estate. Yeah, you know, I – it’s funny, I just don’t think much about this sort of thing. Probably because I don’t have any concern that I’m going to be watching either from heaven or from hell as people make bad decisions with the things I’ve done. I don’t think I’m going to be around.

**John:** A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently though, and it probably started with Morrissey and Morrissey being a crank on Twitter. And I loved Morrissey’s songs, but now it’s like I don’t want – ugh, Morrissey shut up. And it got me thinking about whether I want to put some system in place where I would deputize three people of different generations and if they agreed that I needed to retire or basically move out of public view that I would have to take their decision. Basically a council of advisors who would say, no John, you need to stop. Because you look at people who have decided to step away and like maybe that was a great choice that they stepped away.

So Robert Redford recently announced that he’s retiring from acting. He’s not retiring as a public person, but he’s retired from acting. Daniel Day Lewis did it. Gene Hackman did it. And maybe there could be good cause for someone to give advice to somebody about this is the time to stop. Craig, what do you think about that?

**Craig:** I don’t think – the problem is if you become a crank then you’ll just say I’m not listening to these people anymore. Look, everybody has a moment where they should probably put it down, but then some people don’t. Some people go all the way to the end and you’re thankful for it, you know.

Look, it’s a personal decision. Sometimes these actors announce that they’re retiring from acting and I just think or just maybe retire from acting and not announce it. You know, stop. Just stop. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything to retire. That’s the beauty of retiring. An announcement that I’m no longer going to be doing – oh, do you need one last round of attention here? I think it’s more interesting when you discover that like people go, by the way, did you know that Gene Hackman apparently retired? That’s the best way to do it I think.

So when I finally retire – no one will care anyway.

**John:** Craig, do you think you will retire?

**Craig:** I think I will be retired. In other words, I hope that when I look at my own work and my mind and I have an assessment that it is of diminishing value that that will come either simultaneous with or slightly ahead of everybody else’s similar determination. The bummer is when everybody else figures out that you’ve lost it before you do. You don’t want to be that pitcher who is still going out there and getting shelled and guys are like, dude, you can’t throw a 95 anymore. You’re barely touching 90 and your stuff is flat. Maybe it’s time to hang up the spikes. No, I got one more season in me.

I don’t want to be that guy. But, you know, I keep a fairly careful eye on myself and I have a tendency towards self-loathing anyway, so I think I’ll be OK. I think if anything I will constantly try to retire and if people don’t want me to, or they need me to do something they’ll say, “No, no, no, not yet,” and then I’ll feel bad and do it. That’ll be the ideal situation.

**John:** You and I both know writers who sort of functionally got retired and they basically kind of stopped working. Like people stopped hiring them. And it is sad when they want to keep working and no one is hiring them. Ageism is a real thing in Hollywood. And this is the kind of insight in which if I actually went to therapy I probably could have had ten years ago, but a thing the last few weeks I’ve realized is that I think part of the reason I keep pursuing new things or stuff that I kind of don’t know anything about, like writing a book, writing a musical, software stuff, is that it’s nice to be the new person in something. It’s nice to feel like I am actually a beginner. That I’m a younger person in that field rather than sort of like the person who has been a screenwriter for 25 years.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There’s something nice about that. So I don’t know that I will ever retire, but I can also envision some point where I’m basically not writing movies anymore because I’m just doing other stuff, where I haven’t been doing it for 25 years.

**Craig:** No question. I mean, it’s just like video games are very difficult in the beginning when you’re weak and you’re confused and you’re not quite sure how the controls work and they’re a little scary. And then there’s that wonderful process of slowly and steadily mastering what’s happening, until you get to a point where you’re so powerful it’s boring. And the more you do something, even if it’s not in terms of power it’s just in terms of mastery, it can get – like I don’t really want necessarily to write rated-R comedies anymore, because I feel like I’ve done it a lot. And I’m a little bit bored.

And it’s not even to say that I’ve done it well, or that I couldn’t do it better. But there’s been a lot of it. And there’s been a lot that people haven’t seen, also, where my name is not there, but there’s more work than people know. And so I agree with you that changing things up and trying new things is delightful. I’m 100% in that place with you.

I think sometimes with some of the people who get retired, forcibly retired, ageism, yes, I think truly is a thing. However, Ted Eliot did point out something many years ago that had the ring of strong truth to it, which was that there are people that kind of happen in Hollywood. They make a big splash with a thing. And it’s a shiny thing and people get excited and they begin hiring that person. And slowly but surely as they go from project to project to project the word spreads that maybe they’re actually just not that good. And that some of these people aren’t aging out, they’re just being found out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And they just weren’t as good as people thought. And there’s been a bunch of those. Also some people behave poorly and they get retired out because all things being equal people would rather work with somebody that’s nice than not nice. Especially these days I think that’s more of a consideration than it used to be.

But, yeah, it’s a tough thing because the market is cruel, but not irrational necessarily. Racist though. It’s definitely racist. See that one there’s no question about.

**John:** Yeah, there’s a little of that. So a thing I found is at a certain point you become – when you first start in this business you are younger than the people hiring you, and then you end up becoming about the same age as the people hiring you, and then you become older than some of the people hiring you. And at a certain point it becomes challenging to take instructions from people who have less experience than you do. And that I think is probably true in all industries across the board. It is weird to be working for somebody younger than you. That is naturally a part of it.

But I think another thing that happens is that sometimes if this executive is used to working with young writers who will do 50,000 drafts and keep smiling and will try to incorporate all the bad ideas because they’re hungry and desperate for a job, the fact that the more experienced writer isn’t so hungry will change the nature of that relationship. You know, if a writer says, you know what, I’m not going to try to implement that ridiculous note that won’t conceivably work because it’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

That’s a thing that the older writer might say that the younger writer wouldn’t say and ultimately that older writer I think gets hired less and less.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, I have found that there’s been a nice shift in a weird way. I was – I think it’s different for everybody. Honestly it’s just the way you carry yourself and how you are. I think some people as they get older they just don’t refresh their minds about the world around them and I try and do that as best I can.

Having children helps. You know, having a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old makes it so that I have a certain amount of awareness of what’s going on around me. Also there’s a little bit of a sweet spot which I think you and I are probably in right now. It’s as you’re approaching 50. My guess is it’s your 50s where you’re not too old, but you are old enough where it seems like you’re kind of the vet. Like you know, like you’re a reliable vet who is going to get the job done. Thank god you’re here. I want somebody slightly older than me who I feel like I can listen to. And you’re not too old so you’re not grandpa.

That’s a real thing. I think that you and I have the best possible insurance against ageism ever which is this show. Since by the time we’re in our 60s every single person running every studio I believe will have grown up listening to this podcast. Therefore we should be fine. You and I will be OK forever.

**John:** As long as the council that we’ve appointed to tell us that we need to stop doing the show doesn’t tell us we need to stop doing the show.

**Craig:** I’m already saying no to them. I defy them.

**John:** I refuse!

**Craig:** I refuse.

**John:** Let’s wrap this segment up with just a little bit of practical advice. If you are thinking about sort of who should control your work after you pass away, at a certain point you’re going to need to make a will. So every screenwriter at a certain point wakes up in panic and says like, oh crap, I have no will, I have no estate, I have nothing planned. You go to a lawyer and do it.

I think if you’re young and starting out without a lot of assets you can probably do one of those online things or get a book or do something that way and just write the will, do whatever you’re supposed to do in the State of California. File it wherever you’re supposed to file it so it’s found after your death. And make those choices about where those things are supposed to go.

If you are a person with some substantial assets you do need to go find a person who can figure out how you should structure all the stuff, because at a certain point you’re going to put stuff into a trust and there’s reasons why you do things the way you do them. But it’s worth everyone thinking about so you have some sense of where you would like your work to go.

**Craig:** 100%. I believe you and I use the same guy.

**John:** Yep. He’s the guy. All of our friends do use the same guy.

**Craig:** There you go. Boy, I hope that guy is good or else we’re all–

**John:** Just toast. It turns out he’s just awful and made fundamental misassumptions.

All right, let us go to our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing are actually two awesome women who both write and perform. The first is my friend Erin Gibson. So Erin Gibson, she’s the host or cohost of Throwing Shade podcast which is fantastic. Co-creator, writer, and director of Gay of Thrones, which I’m sure you’ve watched. Jonathan Martin sort of recaps of Game of Thrones. They are fantastic.

But she has a book out which is also great. I went to the party. The book came out today but it’s already gotten great reviews. Called Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death. And it’s great. And Erin is fantastic. But she’s one of those people who – this is how I first met Erin Gibson.

She and Bryan Safi, who are cohosts on Throwing Shade, were both correspondents on this show called Infomania on the Current Network. And I stumbled across this show. I thought they were singularly fantastic. This is pre-Twitter I guess, so I emailed them and said like you guys are both fantastic and we ended up having coffee and they’ve been friends since then. So, Erin Gibson, a fantastic writer and performer.

The second one is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And sometimes in life you find little individual things you like and then later on realize they were all the same thing. And that was Phoebe Waller-Bridge for me. So, she is the writer-creator of Killing Eve, which is remarkable. It’s so good. You should watch it. But before that she did Fleabag, which I hadn’t seen, but now I’m watching and it’s great. And she stars in and wrote that. And then she was also L3-37, the robot in Solo, which was one of my favorite things about that movie. And so she was all of these things and is all one person. And so I’m so happy that there’s a Phoebe Waller-Bridge out there. So, Erin Gibson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge are my two great One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Wow. That is pretty cool. I love it when that happens. And that is a bit of a sign from the universe that you should be friends with somebody, isn’t it?

**John:** Probably so. So, she should probably come on the show next time she’s in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Yeah. Seems like that should happen.

Well, just like your two things, my third thing is also a video game DLC. What? OK. So, I’ve been playing The Witcher 3.

**John:** I don’t like The Witcher. So tell me why you love it.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t love it. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t love it. I like it. I did not like it to start with. It took a little bit of time to get into. And then once I got into it I was like, OK, OK, it’s pretty cool in that it’s massive. It’s sort of like do you like Skyrim? Well, what if it was Skyrim but not as good but bigger, like there was more stuff to do.

So many quests, you’ll never finish them. But, you know, not bad. Terrible video game sex in it. I don’t think I’ve seen good video game sex.

**John:** Terrible in what way?

**Craig:** The mouths don’t touch. And the hips are moving incorrectly, so it is a hideous simulacrum of sex. It’s just incredibly not arousing. The breasts do not move. They will show bare female breasts but they have no jiggle, so it’s like that’s not right. That’s really not right at all. Yeah, video game sex not sexy.

Also, this game, Witcher, from 2015 just absurdly sexist in a way that I think like I can only assume that the people over there in Poland at Project Red who are no doubt hard at work on Witcher 4 have noticed the world has changed. I hope they have. And maybe some of their women could have shirts that close. You know, that would be nice if all the buttons went up to the neck. Just a thought.

Yeah, anyway.

**John:** So, I mean, Witcher 3 is really, I mean, I played it back when I was in Paris. And it is beautiful. It really does look terrific and looks better than Skyrim kind of does. But you’re always playing the one guy and I felt like I was on rails the entire time. So I probably only played like two hours into it and just gave up.

**Craig:** The first two hours you are on rails. And when they take you off the rails, that’s the weird part, is that the first part of the game is absurdly railed and then once that’s over they’re like, no rails. Also, you have 4,000 quests to do. Good luck, bye. And then it really is fun. And never-ending. So you probably quit just a little too early. But I will say that in terms of the beauty aspect of it I got this DLC Blood and Wine where you go this new region which is essentially French wine countryside.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** And it is gorgeous. Oh, it’s so great to look at. I mean, the gameplay is the same damn thing, but it is beautiful. And you get your own vineyard estate to renovate. You have your own major domo who is very nice. You have nice chats with him.

You know, I’m not a big craft your own home guy, but when I did, like in Fallout 4 I’m like, OK, I better sort of spiff up my little homestead here you know. But the guess you can do is use terrible post-apocalyptic materials to build your weird creepy hut. Here you’re living in this gorgeous French, you know, countryside manor with fields and Bougainvillea and it’s quite lovely.

So, anyway, Witcher 3: Blood and Wine if you feel like escaping slightly to your French countryside estate while you are slaughtering Necrophages with your silver sword. There you go.

**John:** All right. And that is our show for this week. As always our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. And special thanks to Luke Davis for sending us that cool intro bit with Craig.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** If you have an outro or intro thing you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions and bits of follow up like we discussed today.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, anywhere where podcasts are found. Leave us a review. That’s always great. Links to stuff we talked about in today’s episode will be in the show notes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can find transcripts. They go up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We have nearly 3,000 of you premium subscribers. And so I think after we wrap here I’m going to talk to Craig about a special little thing I kind of want to do for those premium subscribers, because that’s pretty cool.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** All right, Craig, thank you so much for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. I will see you next week.

Links:

* You can listen to John & Craig on another podcast: [Jordan, Jesse, Go!](http://maximumfun.org/jordan-jesse-go/jordan-jesse-go-episode-546-pegging-place-john-august-and-craig-mazin)
* You can check out our episode with [Mindy Kaling](http://johnaugust.com/2018/the-one-with-mindy-kaling), or our episode with [Susanna Fogel and David Iserson](http://johnaugust.com/2018/from-indie-to-action-comedy) for some context in this week’s follow-up.
* John’s attempt at “Changing Craig’s Mind” about ventriloquism: [Nina Conti](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNAi2jB490)
* Edward Albee’s estate has [special rules](http://www.playbill.com/article/albee-estate-clarifies-position-on-casting-controversy-surrounding-whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf) about casting for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
* [Erin Gibson](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2407202/?ref_=nv_sr_1): [Throwing Shade](http://www.throwingshade.com/#tour) podcast, [Gay of Thrones](https://www.funnyordie.com/authors/gay-of-thrones), and her new book, [Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death.](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455571865/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Phoebe Waller-Bridge](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3564817/): [Killing Eve](http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/killing-eve), [Fleabag](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KUE7P8K/ref=atv_feed_catalog), and she’s the [robot, L3-37, in Solo](https://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/solo-phoebe-waller-bridge-l3-37-star-wars-1201968300/)
* [The Witcher 3: Blood And Wine DLC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher_3:_Wild_Hunt_%E2%80%93_Blood_and_Wine)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [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 Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed)). And thank you, Luke Davis, for Craig’s musical intro!

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_366.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/craig-hates-dummies).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 365 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll be doing one of our favorite features, How Would This Be a Movie, with new stories looking at McDonald’s millions, a rest home for ventriloquist dummies, and the Tinder hunger games. Plus we’ll be answering listener questions and other bits of stuff that’s left over from Craig being gone for so long.

But, Craig, you’re back.

**Craig:** I’m back. Feels good to be back in here. We are on our one year of podcasts podcast, which is exciting. I have to say I’m not cut out to be a world traveler. I’m just going to put it out there. I have gone back and forth between Los Angeles and Eastern Europe, which is not an insignificant trip, about – I don’t know, back and forth seven, eight, nine times over the last four or five months. I don’t know how people that routinely do this do this.

**John:** I have a friend who has a business in Eastern Europe and he just goes back all the time. He just loves being on planes.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Doesn’t mind – he’s a citizen of the world. Doesn’t mind jetlag. And that’s just not me.

**Craig:** Yeah. The planes thing you can kind of make your peace with. The jetlag is just, blech. You don’t get used to it as much as you just no longer fear the unknown. Now you know exactly what to be concerned about. So I know now, OK, fly on Saturday, land on Sunday. Go to work on Monday. Monday will be surprisingly fine. Don’t be fooled. Tuesday you begin to feel a bit sick. Wednesday you want to die. And then Thursday you kind of get back to normal.

**John:** That’s often how it goes. Plus you’re working very long hours doing your show because you’re there on set.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s not natural light sometimes. It’s all crazy.

**Craig:** The last week of shooting we managed to fit in some splits, which is when you shoot half-day/half-night, and then full nights.

**John:** Oh, brutal.

**Craig:** Including an hour-long drive to and from location to our hotel in Latvia, so we managed to go over the border for that. But I have to say I’m thrilled. 90 days of shooting. An incredible cast. A wonderful crew. Best creative experience of my life. I surely hope that the show turns out as well as we all think it will. And it’s very exciting. Very meaningful and exciting for everybody involved. So, a lovely thing.

**John:** I’m so excited for you. Cannot wait to see it.

All right. We have so much follow up. So let’s get into our follow up. Two weeks ago you and I talked about the Department of Justice was looking into the Paramount Consent Decree, the decades-old ruling which said that studios could not own exhibitors and vice versa and set a whole bunch of special conditions on those relationships.

Jim in North Carolina wrote in to say, “The flaw in Craig’s support for studios owning theaters doesn’t scale downward. Many smaller communities don’t necessarily have multiple physical theaters. Concentrating ownership isn’t going to support rich ecosystem of films.”

Craig, what do you think of that?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know if that’s quite right. I mean, you are always going to have a place for independent cinema and theater houses that run non-studio films and non-studio fare, just as you always have. I mean, right now what we have are very large corporations that primarily show major motion picture releases from big studios, and then we have little ones that show other things. So that doesn’t change. Frankly, when he says – Jim says, “Many smaller communities don’t necessarily have multiple physical theaters,” what do they have? That’s what I would ask him.

If they have something like an AMC kind of chain, or a Regal, or one of these big ones, well then maybe the ownership changes, but the place itself doesn’t. Hopefully it gets better.

**John:** Well, but I do wonder in that situation, let’s say Disney buys AMC as a whole chain, so that theater now in his small town is owned by Disney. Is that going to limit his ability to see movies from Warners, to see movies from Paramount? There could be some concern there’s just actually some movies may not come to his town because Disney has that theater.

**Craig:** Well, what I would suggest is that if this ever does change, and the federal government allows studios to own theaters, it can only happen if there is some kind of regulation that requires the carrying of other people’s products, otherwise you are essentially engaging in bundling and monopolistic practices. So, I would think that it’s a bit of a – look, it could happen that we go from all of the regulation that we have to none. But that seems highly unlikely. I think what would happen is a relaxation but not a complete elimination. I can’t imagine a world where the government says we’re going to go from Disney not being able to own a single screen to Disney can own all the screens at once and only show Disney product. That just seems like a rather broad leap. So.

**John:** Another case came out of Texas this week, so I’ll put a link into this. Dominic Patten wrote it up for Deadline. So this was a case between AMC, the big theater company, and Viva, which was a smaller chain that showed Spanish language versions of big screen releases. And so this was a lawsuit, it was the next round in that lawsuit, between the two. Viva has now gone out of business, but the lawsuit continues.

And I thought it was really interesting. Basically Viva is arguing that there is a significant Spanish-speaking contingency that was not being served by AMC’s screens and that essentially AMC had a stranglehold on the market and was not allowing Viva to compete for the ability to show these movies. And so it’s the kind of thing that the government gets involved with, looking at is this a restraint of trade. Is this something that’s in violation of the consent decrees, I assume.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a really interesting situation. AMC is this big theater chain. And they said, look, we make these deals with studios where we show their movies and then they don’t show that movie maybe next door to us in our competitor. And then the studios say, yeah, this other exhibitor, Viva, they only show movies in Spanish, so that’s not really competition to you. That’s a different thing. And AMC said, no, no, no, it’s the same thing. We’re not showing any of your movies unless you agree to not show them over across the street at a Viva theater.

And their argument was, look, very few – I think they said 7% of the local population doesn’t speak any English at all. In other words, 7% only speak Spanish, therefore really only 7% is what Viva is claiming is the reason they should be showing these things. And the other 93% sitting in the crowd at Viva, so they would argue with bad statistics, could just as easily see the movie over there at AMC in English.

And the judge basically said, no, even if–

**John:** No!

**Craig:** No! Even if we suggest that the only people that go to see the films at Viva are the Spanish-speaking people, he said AMC does not explain why 7% of Houston’s population is not a sufficient submarket. I mean, Houston is a big city. 7% of Houston is a lot of people.

So this, frankly, this stinks. I think what AMC is doing here stinks. And we’ll see what happens. These things have a way of eventually settling out, but I don’t like it.

**John:** Yeah. As a person who was living in France for a year, when I would see US movies or British movies in France I could choose to see them version originale, which would be it’s all in English, I could a version originale sous-titre, which means subtitles, or version originale French basically. So basically I could see it dubbed, I could see it subtitled, or occasionally I’d see it without either the dubbing or subtitles.

Some movies you could see whenever you wanted to see, you could see it with subtitles on. But some movies, like especially Pixar movies or Disney movies, they were only in that first week and only in big markets could you see them not dubbed into French.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so it became this complicated thing of like well we have to see Moana first weekend, or actually Vaiana there, because if we don’t see it that first weekend we won’t be able to see it in English. And so languages are a complicated thing. And to say that 7% of a market speaking that language isn’t significant is crazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. And this is just overreaching greed.

**John:** So, in last week’s episode that you weren’t here for Kate Hagen came in and she was fantastic talking about video stores. A thing she brought up which I think got sort of a little bit lost in the edit is this idea that, as MoviePass seems to be going away, there’s this idea that arthouse theaters in a market could all ban together and essentially make an arthouse pass. And so with it you could see as many movies at these independent theaters as you wanted to over the course of a month. That seems like a great idea.

So, I would just – if someone is working on that for Los Angeles, please let us know because that seems like a terrific idea.

**Craig:** I mean, but is it a great idea for the exhibitors?

**John:** I think it’s a great idea for those one-screen houses, for them to get together and be able to make it all work. That would be great. Obviously there’s concerns about the degree to which independent businesses can work together to do stuff like that, but it does feel like it would be a win for people who want to go see these films.

**Craig:** I mean, one thing we know for sure is that we were right about MoviePass. Holy cajole is that thing just collapsing. It turns out that offering people something that costs X for X divided by five is not a good business model. Wow. Wow, did that blow up fast.

**John:** But, you know what? I want to thank all the VC money that went into making films cheaper for people who want to see movies for a year.

**Craig:** One year.

**John:** So, one year. But for one year they bought a bunch of people movie tickets.

**Craig:** That’s right. They subsidized the movie business for a year. It was amazing.

**John:** Thank you VC money. Keep doing it.

Second bit of follow up, just as my personal follow up, Highland 2.1 came out this week. It’s a pretty major update. One of the things we ended up doing in this most recent build is we have a bunch of international users and, you and I think of screenplays starting with INT and EXT and Cut to and we just have all of these English assumptions about how scripts should work, but those aren’t the natural assumptions.

So we’ve added the ability to customize all of those things for whatever language you want to do. You can set whatever you’d like for those things. And it seems to be very great and helpful. And it’s been really heartening to see like we have a lot more sort of Chinese users and Korean users than we had sort of expected. And they have special needs and the nice thing about being plain text is we can sort of meet those needs. So if you are a person writing in a language that is not English, I would say check it out because it is useful for those things.

**Craig:** Meanwhile Final Draft still does not have Unicode support. Amazing.

**John:** Yes. Yep. So, I mean, part of the reason why Chinese users write in to us, and thank god that Megan speaks Chinese and she can answer those support emails, is they’ve been – sometimes they’ve been desperate for a screenwriting app and because we support real Unicode and real sort of Chinese entry on stuff you can use it to write real screenplays in Chinese which is a difficult thing otherwise.

**Craig:** Indeed. Indeed. Fade In I know supports Unicode. I’m going to guess WriterDuet does because it’s–

**John:** It’s web-based.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, honestly there’s really no excuse for Final Draft at this point other than the fact that their empire is built on a crumbing foundation of nonsense.

**John:** Yeah. That tends to be a barrier.

**Craig:** You know what? New marketing slogan for them.

**John:** Crumbling foundation of nightmare. Can I use that as a blurb for selling?

**Craig:** Of course you can. You can do whatever you want, John. You know I can’t stop you.

**John:** Oh, the other one thing we added in this new version which I think people will find very helpful, because it’s a thing I needed for Arlo Finch is there will be times where you need to number stuff sequentially and stuff may move around but you need the numbers to keep updating to whatever it is, so like chapters it was for me and so I didn’t want to have to number the chapters and then go back through and renumber the chapters. So we added a variable called chapter, or series, or panel, or page, and you can put this in and then whatever the next number is it will just keep incrementing. And it’s incredibly useful for books, obviously, but especially people who are using Highland for graphic novels and comic books, because there you tend to say like this is the page, this is panel one, panel two, panel three. And to have those auto increment is useful. So, another reason to check it out if you have not checked it out.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** All right. We talked about the Editors Guild. So we got some feedback about the Editors Guild. We got a lot of great emails. I don’t know if we want to read through all of them, but I thought we might take a sampling of some of what people have wrote in about the Editors Guild. Do you want to start us off?

**Craig:** Sure. Ann writes in, “Thank you for the excellent discussion of the IA contract in Scriptnotes Episode 363, for which a link was posted on the 2018 IATSE contract forum on Facebook.” Ho-ho-ho. Interesting. “In response to your very astute comment, ‘There’s something rotten at the core of this union,’ I can explain. From its very beginning the real purpose of the IA has not been to represent the interests of its varied members, but instead to guarantee a docile below-the-line workforce to the employers. Please read Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930 to 1950, Moguls, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists by Gerald Horne.”

So we should probably throw a link to that up on here. Sounds like Ann’s got a pretty decent handle on the history here, which I admittedly don’t. She goes on to talk a little bit about something called the Industry Experience Roster. I had no idea this existed. Did you?

**John:** I didn’t.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s basically who you can hire.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s like a list of who you’re allowed to hire. This is a – this a roster that’s controlled by a nonprofit that is in turn controlled and funded by the companies, the AMPTP. And it’s a preferential hiring list. It came out of the Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist era and HUAC and all that nonsense. And it still exists. That’s insane. And, god, IA is – they got to clean up their house. Somebody has to start a little revolution over there I think.

**John:** Well, it might be Nicholas. So Nicholas writes in to say that he’s a member of the Art Directors Guild and “personally stand with the IA 700 and their refusal to support the new contract. I’m also appalled at Matt Loeb’s and the other BA’s responses to it. Craig is right that the IA is out of scale. That it can demand better. But that might require some initial sacrifice and few are up for it, least of all the leadership. Capitulation is easy, especially when it can be dressed up as winning.”

“So, Eugene Debs recognized the division of workers in the separate trade craft unions was a divide and conquer strategy and said as much in 1905.” So, again, it is old divisions and old systems in place that sort of keep people from getting to a better place.

**Craig:** It’s sort of fundamental to the purpose and function of the union, right? The whole idea is that you bring together people who individually do not have much bargaining power and you collectivize them in a way that they do. And it makes sense therefore that if you’re dealing with a bunch of unions that could move as one and coagulate all of their power into a larger fist then you should. And the tricky thing here is what it sounds like we’re hearing is that IATSE did that but kind of as part of a feint to almost take away that power from the unions that they were combining.

You know, the Writers Guild, we have our own little strange thing where we are oddly bifurcated into East and West. I don’t think I can find any reasonable person on either the East or West that isn’t a staff member of the Writers Guild of America East who says, “Yeah, this is a good arrangement. This makes sense.” It’s insane.

**John:** It is insane. Now, Craig, you may not have read the actual history of sort of why there are two unions. You’ve read that packet?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So there is an explanation for how it all happened.

**Craig:** There is.

**John:** And so TV was on one side of the coast. It’s the same kind of reasons that are stupid reasons for why we are not representing animation. We’re making assumptions that we were different kinds of writers and therefore didn’t need the same kind of protections. But we are separate unions. We get along very, very well. We have common interests. We do things together.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes. And sometimes we don’t. And the double nature of our administration is costly, it’s unnecessarily costly, and silly. And we would be better off if we just stopped and made one. Just as I think all of the unions of IA would be better off if they, I don’t know, looked out for each other and actually acted like a one total union instead of a bunch of unions that are literally being kept apart from each other by the people that run the union itself.

So, this is my once a year plea to get rid of the Writers Guild East and Writers Guild West and just make one Writers Guild. It’s absurd.

**John:** Yeah. And yet you know how incredibly difficult that would be.

**Craig:** It’s not that difficult. It’s not.

**John:** I think it’s more difficult. But we won’t solve that problem today.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Instead I think it’s time we break out our theme music because we’ve not heard it for so long.

I’m actually going to let Craig start with this because this is really a Craig announcement and I’m so excited to be able to share this with the world. Tell us about it, Craig.

**Craig:** Well, thank you. So you know I’ve been working as part of the credits committee, the screen credits committee for many, many, many, many years. We went through two elections, or I guess we call them referenda. Both of which were successful that made significant changes to the way we administer our credits. Now we have another one coming up and this one is a bit different. What we’ve done now is we’ve essentially rewritten the screen credits manual.

The screen credits manual rewrite has not changed any of our guidelines. It hasn’t changed the rules. Nothing is different in terms of how we administer and distribute credit. The reason we did this is because a lot of the policies that were in place weren’t necessarily listed in that manual and we wanted to list them. There were also some new things that had emerged that simply didn’t apply when the manual was first written, god knows how many years ago, that we wanted to add to acknowledge. And then we also wanted to make certain things more clear. Things for instance like the definition of story and the definition of screenplay and how you assign credit for one or the other. We know, just from practice, that a lot of writers don’t understand it. A lot of participating writers don’t get it. And even a lot of arbiters don’t quite get it.

So we’ve done a really careful job of expanding those areas to help both people that are heading into an arbitration as a writer or people who are heading into an arbitration as an arbiter understand best how they’re supposed to apply contributions to which credit.

So, again, I just want to repeat: this manual that everyone is going to vote on doesn’t change any rules. It doesn’t change any guidelines. It simply makes things more clear. And because one of the requirements of our union is that the membership vote on any change to the manual, even if it’s a punctuation pass, we do have to come to everybody for a vote.

Sometimes the danger of votes like this is that they’re so boring nobody shows up except the cranks, and then suddenly you lose. So, I’m going to be banging the drum to make sure that everybody does take the four seconds to vote online. That will be happening in October.

**John:** Yeah. I’m very excited. Everyone needs to read it. I’ve read the whole thing. It’s really good. It is just more clear. Craig, I can’t believe you got rid of the language about telegrams. I mean, if I can’t send a telegram then I just don’t know what I’m going to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, there was a thing that said basically if you want to get the notice of tentative writing credits by fax or telegram you have to – this is what we’ve been dealing with. So, yeah, we did do a little bit of a cleanup on the telegram situation. There were a bunch of things like that. And, you know, took out some stuff that frankly was just confusing. I mean, there were some things that were kind of explanatory in the old manual that we know we’ve been wrestling with for years because the explanation actually made things less explained. So, stuff like that.

**John:** It’s also fair to say that this more closely resembles the structure of the TV credits manual?

**Craig:** I honestly don’t know. I have never read the TV credits manual.

**John:** So as it was presented to us at the board part of the logic behind it is that it more closely resembles the structure of what people do in the TV credits manual so that you can track through them the same way. Because as a person who has gone through many arbitrations and served as an arbiter many times I did find the credits manual confusing and sometimes redundant. I do think the new document is much better. So thank you for your work there.

**Craig:** My pleasure. I do know what you mean now. We did do some reordering of things. Again, the substance doesn’t necessarily get any closer to the substance of the TV credits, but the order in which we describe things and talk about things and the nomenclature we use for certain things we did conform so that it didn’t seem like they were two different documents entirely.

**John:** Very nice. My WGA news is nothing that you actually have to vote on but something you should go attend. So this past Saturday I attended the pilot version of the WGA sexual harassment seminar. It’s run by an outside consultant named Sunitha Menon. She is terrific. But the purpose of the seminar is to talk through what TV and film writers deal with both in terms of sexual harassment in their own workplace, but also what we’re writing as we’re writing for film and for TV. And so it’s sort of a broad discussion of those things, but also some really practical suggestions for what to do when you’re encountering sexual harassment, what to do when you’re a bystander for sexual harassment, and sort of how we can change the culture for writers and sort of beyond writing through awareness and really taking some concrete action.

I thought it was great. There are going to be nine of these presentations all throughout the city, so there will be a listing of when those are coming up. But I really strongly encourage you to go to them because I thought it was great. It’s an hour and a half. It’s fun. So please do go to attend those workshops.

**Craig:** Are they going to be videoed and perhaps representable to people who can’t make them?

**John:** There will be some version of that. They did film some of this. But I would say that watching it is good, being there is very helpful because some of what you’re trying to do there is actually have a discussion about what things you would do in a room in these situations, or encountering this thing how would you react. And there is a space for just real – like I asked a question in the room about a very specific and odd thing which had happened to me a couple of times and I just had no idea where I should report this. Like what do I do with this thing? This was a really uncomfortably sexually charged moment, but I’m the only person in it. And it wasn’t really directed at me. So it was great to be actually in that room to be able to ask her, but also just to get the feeling of the room about what is the right thing to do in those situations.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the reason I ask, I completely agree. It’s always best to be there in person. The reason I ask is that there’s always the danger that you get a self-selected crowd.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And the people that need to hear the message the most are the least likely to show up, but they might watch something. So it just occurred to me that, you know, I’m just always thinking like a Cassandra about the worst case scenario and then backing out from there. It’s my nature.

**John:** It’s your nature. And the thing I should also stress is that the WGA doing these workshops does not at all diminish the actual requirement for our employers to be the ones responsible for our protection in these situations. And so the WGA is not the employer. The WGA is just someone there standing on the writer’s behalf. So this is just hopefully giving people some guidance in terms of what their rights are and sort of what they should think about their responsibilities as they see these things happening around them.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** Cool. All right, let’s get to our main feature topic, How Would This Be a Movie. There were so many great choices that were presented to us that I picked three of them, but there were – Megan had a list of like 12 more that were all really good. So, I’m going to pick these three. There’s a little bit of a recency bias. There are things that came across my feed more recently, but they’re all just terrific.

So this first one, here is the setup basically. It’s a Twitter thread I’m reading. A guy, BVD Hai, I don’t really know what his actual name is, he talks about this girl he was talking with on Tinder. They’re just chatting. They’re just texting back and forth. And she’s really busy now, but hey, later this week I’m going to – my friend is DJing this thing. Why don’t you meet up with me at the stage afterwards and we’ll go out? He’s like, great. So he shows up and there are a bunch of other guys at this stage. And it’s really unclear what’s going on. And luckily we have audio of it that we can play.

So he goes there and this is what he hears.

**Natasha:** Hi everyone. As you may or may not know, my name is Natasha. And I have everyone here today to be on a date with me. Dating apps are very difficult and I said maybe I can bring everyone here in person and see how that goes. So, do you have what it takes to win a date with me? So, we’re going to start the elimination. Half of you people here are in relationships, so those people should leave now. Anyone under 5’10”, please leave as well. No beer bellies. No long beards. No bald guys. No khakis. Or is any less than six inches. You know, you got to go. You got to go. Also, anyone named Jimmy. I don’t enjoy the name Jimmy.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** So, Craig, she does not enjoy the name Jimmy.

**Craig:** Mm, yeah.

**John:** This is a two-part How Would This Be a Movie, but let’s pause here and let’s say that this is the whole story. So let’s take Natasha as who she is and she’s done this thing where she’s getting all these people together and she’s going to pick them in person. What kind of movie is this? Where is a movie in this situation?

**Craig:** God. I mean, I presume that this is some sort of – I mean, she’s making a commentary right on the way men treat women, I guess. I don’t understand what’s happening, so I’m a little confused just in general. I mean, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s not actually a total sociopath. There’s a reason for all this. There’s a point behind it.

Those tend to be terrible bases for movies, right? We want actually somebody to do something that is sincere, or if it’s insincere it’s on a bet or a dare and then it blows up in their face. I guess any time you’re talking about a date you immediately start thinking romantic comedy. So I suppose there is a version where somebody, a guy or a girl, does this and then realizes that actually there was somebody in the crowd that they kind of had a thing with. Like before they go on stage they have a weird moment with somebody where they’re like, oh wow, you’re actually amazing. Then they get up on stage and that person hates them and they have to go get them back. But I’m just already exhausted and annoyed. I don’t want to see it.

Did you ever see, was it called Dogfight? Do you remember that movie?

**John:** I never saw the movie, but I think I know the premise, which is basically guys pick the ugliest women to go out with. Is that the situation?

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a bet. They make a bet. It was an early – River Phoenix and Lily Taylor, who is an amazing actor. And the idea is that there’s a party where a bunch of guys who are on leave from I guess the Korean War or something like that, or Vietnam War, they get into a bet of who can bring the ugliest girl to a party. And you just feel terrible. You feel terrible watching it.

And there is a comment about it, but the person that you immediately identify with and feel for and want to be victorious is Lily Taylor. And there is a certain casual dismissive kind of a bunch of idiot who are drinking go “Here’s an idea,” and then only do they realize – or at least one of them realizes it was a terrible and cruel idea. Here this is so – this is so 2018. It’s so synthetically viral. It’s so purposeful and calculated and cynical. And who am I supposed to identify with here, I don’t know.

**John:** All right. I want to make the case that there is a movie here, this clean version, this sort of first half of it. So, yes, you could have our heroine be the one who decided to actually do all these things and she goes through the arc and she actually ends up meeting the right guy, or the right guy was the guy who helped her put up this whole thing. I can also really envision the best friend character is the one who was actually messaging all these guys. Like my best friend is fantastic. You need to come meet her for this thing. Basically she’s pretending to be this one and look at all these men who could be right for you. And so somebody is trying to fix up her best friend or her sister. And this is what they’ve come to. And then if you’re those guys in the crowd, if you are interested, how do you start a real relationship when it’s begun under such horrible false pretenses.

There’s a Chris O’Donnell movie, I’m trying to remember the title, The Bachelor or something like that. It was a remake of an older film where there are like 100 women in wedding dresses–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, I remember the ad for it.

**John:** I don’t know the full premise for that. But living in a culture of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette, this does feel like a natural kind of thing you could see happen in the same way that we do these elaborate wedding proposals, it feels that sense of like it’s not real love unless it’s sort of this big, giant event love.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, you might be onto something that maybe the person to follow is not the person who has come up with this thing or is on stage. There’s a tradition in mass market storytelling where you take a man, a boy, a man, whatever age he is, usually basically a boy in his head, and you propose that this man is an idiot and he is immature and stupid and cruel and thus behaves in a boorish, childish way until the right woman comes along, at which point he must redeem himself in her eyes in order to be an acceptable human being.

This is not a particularly good use of women as they tend to just be these weird angelic props for men-children to aspire to. But the one thing no one has ever had a problem with with those narratives is the premise, which is that men tend to be infantile idiots.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** We don’t necessarily have the same instinctive understanding of a female premise in that way. We don’t necessarily presume women are infantile idiots. It’s just part of our, again, this is the gendered culture we live in, right? We tend to view young women as somehow, I don’t know, more mature, just by dint of their gender. And there have been movies that have played around with that and confronted that. And I like those movies. Though you get trapped a little bit sometimes in a, oh how do I put it, it’s a trap of realism, right? Because you want to be able to challenge things, but you also want to make sure that as you’re challenging them you don’t leave the bounds of recognizability. Because, for instance, Trainwreck, the Amy Schumer movie, that lived – to me – that lived inside of the bounds of familiarity.

We all know women like that. And they do need to grow up and they do. Just like humans, right? Women are humans. This one, however, I don’t know if there is the familiarity there. So I would be concerned that an audience of women would be watching this going, “Nope, I don’t know her.” This is where we cue the Mariah gif. I don’t know her.

**John:** I think your point about our gendered expectations of what these kind of characters can do is so true and it reminds me of I saw Eighth Grade, the Bo Burnham movie, and a scene that made me so uncomfortable but as I was uncomfortable I also realized like, wait, I would not be uncomfortable if the teenage boy character was doing this. There is a sequence in which she’s sort of having her sexual awakening and she’s about to experiment with a piece of fruit. And her dad walks in. And it’s a great, really funny button on that scene. But the moments leading up to it were really uncomfortable and it’s because we’re uncomfortable with teenage girl sexuality being a joke.

We’re used to sort of like horny boys, but the idea of a 13-year-old girl being horny was just really uncomfortable to see. And that’s, again, just our gendered expectations of things.

**Craig:** Was the fruit an apple?

**John:** It was not an apple.

**Craig:** Oh, interesting. Was it a pear?

**John:** It was not a pear.

**Craig:** Not a pear. OK. I’ll keep thinking.

**John:** You’ll keep thinking of what fruit could possibly be involved. So, let’s get to the second part of the story which I think is actually genuinely fascinating and troubling in its own right. So, there’s two New York Post stories about the even that happened, but the third New York Post story reveals that the whole thing was a viral video set up by a guy named Rob Bliss. And so Rob Bliss explains sort of what the impetus was behind this and also how challenging it was. So let’s take a listen to a piece of audio. So this audio from Rob Bliss explaining the setup for all this.

**Rob Bliss:** So I’ve quickly realized holding conversations with all these guys just isn’t going to work. It’s too many of them. So I’ve developed a system. Step one, we message with a guy on Tinder and give him a Twilio phone number. Step two, this programmable phone number is routed through an online database. This central hub can send and receive texts and be logged into from anywhere in the world. Leading us to step three, farming out this texting operation to overseas workers. Over 50 fulltime workers help us to text with guys converting a Tinder match into a Tinder date. And if you were to call any of our numbers they forward to this phone with a voicemail of “Hi, this is Natasha. I’m not available at the moment.“

So I need a meeting location for Natasha and all these guys. That’s why I’ve created a fake EDM event, complete with stage, sound, and our friend, Nick AM. Guys will be told to stand next to the stage and after she says hi to her DJ friend, they’ll go off on their date. They’ll never expect a thing.

**John:** So we’ll post a link to the video that explains a little bit more, too. But essentially, this Rob Bliss, the whole thing was designed to be sort of a viral stunt. And so Natasha is not really Natasha. She’s not really the person texting them. Basically there’s a fake Tinder profile and when people are messaging him, messaging her, they’re actually messaging 50 fulltime employees around the globe who are carrying on these conversations and then finally inviting them to come to this event.

So, there really is no – while there was a person who showed up there, it’s all a creation. She’s not a real person in a meaningful way. These men have been interacting with strangers who are not the stranger they think they were interacting with.

**Craig:** What is the point of all this?

**John:** Well, he’s a viral marketing person. He wasn’t selling any specific thing, he was just selling an event, a thing.

**Craig:** OK, so hold on a second. Viral marketing means something is being marketed. There’s nothing marketed here. He’s just an attention whore.

**John:** Sure. Well, I think all viral marketing is attention whoredom.

**Craig:** Well, for a purpose.

**John:** He wasn’t selling any specific service. I think he’s basically promoting himself.

**Craig:** Wow. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. I hate all of this. I don’t like what he did to that – I mean, does the woman that he employed to pose as this, she probably had no idea what was coming her way is my guess.

**John:** Yeah. So she was involved to some degree and she agreed to be this person here, so she knew some things about it, but she’s taking a lot of flak. And in the moment she’s taking a lot of flak. You can see even in this video that they’re cutting that these guys are really pissed and feel betrayed. There’s a reason why they have big body guards around her because they don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s so many ways this could have gone really, really south.

So this is where it becomes a Black Mirror episode where it’s like you think you’re talking to a real person, but there’s no real person there. And then you show up and it’s this weird Hunger Games situation where basically how desperate are you going to be to be on this. What happens if you show up at one of these things and you’re married? And like there’s now video of you showing up at this thing. It’s really interesting and disturbing. I think there’s a fascinating movie in that. Or there’s a fascinating idea in that of this event gone wrong and sort of what the ramifications of it are.

**Craig:** I would say all I’d be willing to take from this story is, if I’m writing a movie about something that takes place in New York, I include this character based on this guy to be the scum bucket that you laugh at because he’s so gross. Because this is just gross. This is like the most gross version. Blech. I hate it. I hate him. I hate him.

**John:** OK. So let me argue on his behalf. I’m just going to pretend to be him right now.

This is what you’re doing every day on Tinder. Every day on Tinder you are swiping on people and sorting them out in two buckets of yes or no. This is meant to demonstrate, it’s basically an art project to show this is what you’re really doing. These are the actual human beings who are getting discarded because of the systems that we’ve set up for dating.

**Craig:** Yeah. It fails on its face. The argument fails on its face. When you say no to somebody you say no. And when you say yes you say yes. Everybody understands the contract. I go on there, I show you my picture. You don’t it because I’m too fat, too bald, too short, whatever, OK, you say no. But if you say yes there’s also a contract there. Now I’m showing up and I have a feeling. You’ve created a feeling in a man or a woman that somebody is interested in them. That is a very powerful feeling. And then you say not really, I’m rejecting you. Also, I’m doing it simply to create a story that the media will look at so I get attention. It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t even sell soap.

It does nothing except hurt you to make me feel good. Ergo, Rob Bliss is a dick.

**John:** All right. And so I think the interesting version of this is what if it is to sell soap. What if it is to sell that next movie? Because that’s coming. You know that’s coming.

**Craig:** It’s also bad. But this is like next level bad. This is pointless. This is like, “Well, it’s bad when people kill somebody because they get angry at them. That’s very bad. It’s worse when someone just randomly walks up to another person and calmly kills them because they enjoy killing people.” Ugh. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. What’s next? God. Something will make me happy now.

**John:** This will make you happy or creeped out. So this is about Vent Haven. It’s a retirement home for ventriloquist dummies. So this came from a Twitter thread by Monterey Jack. That’s a pretty great Twitter handle.

**Craig:** Great name.

**John:** So you definitely want to click through the links in the show notes for these because you will see all of these images of all these ventriloquist dummies that are all together like they’re in a grade school assembly staring directly at you with their dead lifeless eyes. And it’s just a real place. So here’s a situation where there’s not a lot of story threads. This is just a remarkable environment. And so looking through the behind the scenes, the abouts on this museum, you get some sense of what might be there. But I just thought it was a really interesting environment.

So the Vent Haven museum was founded by a Cincinnati native guy named William Shakespeare Berger who is known to his friends as WS. He was not a professional ventriloquist, he just really dug ventriloquist dummies. And so he purchased his first figure in 1910, and he just kept buying more and more ventriloquist dummies.

And so it became sort of a place where ventriloquists, or vents as they are known–

**Craig:** Vents. Ugh.

**John:** A lot of times they were, as ventriloquists died their dummies would go to this place and so it’s most of these ventriloquist dummies are the lifeless children of former ventriloquists who are now staring at you from here.

I think WS might be a fascinating character. He outlived his wife, his son, and grandson. Had no other heirs. So, fearing his collection would be divided and lost he set up this foundation to keep this open as a museum you can visit.

**Craig:** Thank god. Thank god. Thank god that organization is there so you can keep visiting what is as far as I can tell a house full of absolute crap. I don’t understand ventriloquism. Let me just – this is my – I get don’t get this. Ventriloquism has always been an art form that has completely failed to – I don’t even understand why anybody is interested in it. I can say, look, I don’t particularly love a certain kind of music but I could see where other people do. Why would anybody like ventriloquism? What is going on??

**John:** Oh, see that surprises me, Craig. Because ventriloquism is a kind of magic.

**Craig:** It’s not.

**John:** It is. It is.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It has many characteristics of magic. There’s a manipulation. There’s a slight of hand. The ability to make you believe that something has happening that’s not clearly happening. It’s anticipation–

**Craig:** Oh please. When I was a kid and people would say you can throw your voice. Remember on cartoons somebody could throw their voice and that meant that their voice would actually come out of a different part of the room. That to me was awesome. But that doesn’t actually exist. Ventriloquism is just I just talk like this and then I use a certain thing so instead of saying muh I say neh, so if I want to say like hey man how you doing, I go hey man, how you doing, and then that way – anyone can do it. Literally I think anyone could do it. Anyone. It’s not hard. And then you just do a funny voice. You do a funny voice and you have a little guy and he talks like this.

I’m serious. It should be banned. It should be banned. It’s a rip off. It’s all a rip off. I mean, I’ve seen these guys make all this money. Every time we go to Vegas you see these guys with their stupid puppets making money.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s actually quite a difficult skill and I’m going to stand up for ventriloquists here.

**Craig:** You do that. The vent community is coming for me.

**John:** I had a ventriloquist dummy.

**Craig:** Of course you did.

**John:** I had a Lester dummy.

**Craig:** Of course you did.

**John:** so I had Lester, the only notable African American ventriloquist dummy at the time. He was my little guy. So I really tried to learn how to do it, I just couldn’t do it. So if anyone could do it, I certainly couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a great puppet. He just had a string.

But I held onto him through high school, and so sat on the shelf and it was just terrifying the way all ventriloquist dummies are terrifying.

**Craig:** Terrifying. That’s the other thing is that they’re ugly. There’s like a ventriloquist dummy face, and if you look at this horrifying collection so many of them have it. This weird thing of arched, really high arched eyebrows, eye shadow for some reason on everybody, men, women, boys, girls, doesn’t matter. Weird pointy rosy cheekbones. And then a very long upper lip that doesn’t have a philtrum. So it’s one of the signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. I kid you not. Is to have no philtrum and a long upper lip. So they all have fetal alcohol syndrome. They’re terrifying. And then god forbid you have one of the black ones that was built, I don’t know, in like a time when Jim Crow was considered liberal. They’re so racist. There’s like – even like the ones that are about Irish people are racist. They’re all racist towards everyone. They’re terrible.

And the most you get out of them is a silly voice where somebody does bad jokes. So, anyway–

**John:** That’s a pretty good ventriloquist voice. So I will say you’re also not acknowledging that many of them are clown-based or clown-derived.

**Craig:** Ugh.

**John:** And so it has the most terrifying aspects of clowns and zombies. Clowns and robots maybe. They’re like little robot clowns.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Who want to kill you.

**Craig:** Robot clowns. Look, the problem with making it a movie is naturally we want to make a horror movie out of these monstrosities but they’ve done it. Right? They’ve done the dummy horror movie. Great dummy horror movie with Anthony Hopkins. So, it feels a little cliché to make the dummy horror movie. Then you kind of start drifting towards Lars and the Real Girl, where you just want to tell a very sad story about a man who loved ventriloquism and ventriloquism dummies even though he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do the thing that I’m arguing literally anyone could do.

And so he begins to surround himself with these things and love them. I’m not suggesting anything untoward, but there is some sad Charlie Kaufman universe movie here that could be done.

**John:** Well, there’s also a version of Pinocchio. So look at Geppetto as a guy who creates a wooden boy who is very much like a ventriloquist dummy. And wishes for it to become real. So that is maybe the thing that can get to a non-creepy movie out of this is that you do bring these things to life, or there’s some reason why these things come to life and save the town or do something. That’s the start of a premise. It’s certainly not a whole movie. And really asks who are the characters. Is it a Toy Story situation where those are your characters and they have very specific roles and they can do specific things? Maybe.

And so what is it like to talk in their own voices? I put this on here as a disturbing image and sort of a movie world but I don’t think there’s a movie here right now.

**Craig:** Now. Another great Twilight Zone episode as well about this. I just find them horrifying and pointless. I don’t understand ventriloquism. I’m the worst possible person – no one should hire me to write this. That’s for sure. I dispute the premise of ventriloquism as a thing. People go and they sit in a crowd and listen to people tell horrendous jokes. And the problem with the dummies is they force you to make bad jokes. And they just watch somebody sit there and talk through a puppet in front of them. How is that a–?

**John:** I think it’s a skill. All right, let’s get to the motherlode of all this because when this first came across my Twitter feed I’m like, oh well, yes of course we’re going to save that for How Would This Be a Movie, but Craig is away in Eastern Europe so we’ll wait till it comes up. But then of course then it sells really quickly and then there’s a follow up on it. So this is the Moby Dick of How Would This Be a Movie. So, do you want to talk us through the premise?

**Craig:** Really simply there was this incredible article that came out in the Daily Beast about a true story and it’s one of those wonderful true stories that happened under our noses and we just didn’t notice. And there’s an amazing reason why.

But basically every year McDonald’s will run this Monopoly contest where you get these little Monopoly game pieces attached to your drink cups or your French fry packs. And my wife I can assure you has played this religiously and was really, really serious about it even though I’d make so much fun of her. And anyone who has played it even in a cursory fashion understands that the big prize comes if you get Boardwalk and Park Place. And you can get Park Place, but you just can’t get Boardwalk, right?

So there are just a few pieces that we understand are being printed that would give you the million dollar prize. That’s the big one. So the question is where is that one piece going to turn up? And what this story basically is about is a guy who was working at this tiny little company that was in charge of security for these pieces who was making I think $75,000 a year who just started pocketing them and then handing them out and then selling them and this turned into this massive conspiracy where literally for years no one could win unless this guy gave them the piece, one way or the other. The mob became involved at some point. And the FBI finally got wise and brought the whole thing down.

And the best part, I think, is that the day the trial began was 9/10/2001. So, the very next day that thing was completely wiped off the front page and no one really spoke about it until this incredible article came out, written by Jeff Maysh, who deserves all the money that has just been shoved in his pocket. Full disclosure. I made a bid for this myself–

**John:** Nice!

**Craig:** When this was – so I read this thing the day it came out and then I called up HBO and said, “OK, we’ve been looking for another thing, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do a five-part on this sucker?” Because to me this thing was – what this is about is America. This is the most American story I can think of. It’s got McDonald’s. This company that sells you crap and you buy the crap, but there’s this little chance, the little piece of the American dream that as you go through your crap you have a little bit of a hope that you could become one of the rich people. Except you can’t. You can’t. The entire thing is rigged. You can never win. And yet you still try, and try, and try, and try, and try.

And I just loved how pathetic it all was. And how the people who won were so greedy and stupid. It’s the most wonderfully American story.

So, I called up CAA and I was like, “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on with this, but you know, HBO.” And they’re like, “Well, we should tell you Robert Downey, Jr. is trying to get it. And there’s 100 people that are trying to get it.” And I was like, “Oh, OK.” So, in my mind I went, nope, not going to get that. And then the next day it turned out that it went to the Good Will Hunting boys, to Affleck and Damon. And wonderful writers, Paul Wernick, and Rhett Reese doing the script. I love those guys.

**John:** This is I think the third project that some combination of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon has bought of our How Would This Be a Movie. So I know they bought the FIFA scandal, but I think there was one other one that they bought.

So, let’s talk a little bit. The article is great. And it’s certainly worth going through. And I think one of the things I responded to, which I’m sure would have been part of your pitch, is that it’s also just great that it was based around Monopoly because Monopoly is this game of rags to riches.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** This could be your chance for fortune. Of course, the history of Monopoly is exactly the opposite of that. It’s meant to be an anti-capitalism game. So, it’s crazy how it all fits together.

But, really want we want to talk about right now is the backstory on how the story got to be written. So Jeff Maysh is the guy who wrote the piece for the Daily Beast. But he had actually been contracted – the story had been brought to him by a person specifically looking for him to write the story that could be sold for a movie, which was a new thing to me. We’re used to these articles selling and they sell for up to $100,000 and someone goes off and tries to make a movie out of this. This was specifically written for the movie and it was brought to him by a producer whose job is taken upon himself to find these interesting things, hire writers to sort of go off, research them, and set them up in major publications. And that’s what he did. And that’s the reason why this really old story surfaced and sold.

So, so often on the podcast we talk about do you need to buy the article, do you need the life rights to these folks, what do you actually need? In this case I think what’s valuable about – and what’s maybe worth the $1 million is that Maysh did months and months of research to put all this stuff together. He not only broke the story in terms of the kind of three-act structure of it, but gave all the details that a person – you or I just going out to work on this as screenwriters would have had a hard time finding.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a brilliant idea. This speaks to one of the great benefits we all have now, and I’m now speaking to everybody that wants to be a professional screenwriter. You have the Internet. And I think so often people are terrified to put their work on the Internet because they think it’s going to be stolen. Put it on and stick your name on it. And there’s a billion places to publish these things. And you get attention and you get noticed. And nobody just rolls over you. They come to you. They want the article. It’s very common.

I personally don’t want it. And the truth is I don’t need it. In other words, if I wanted to race Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I could. I don’t need Jeff Maysh’s article. I can do my own research. This is a matter of public record. And I could do my own McDonald’s story.

The problem is I just don’t want to race those guys. I don’t want to be in that situation. And I think frankly a lot of other places will say we don’t want to be in that situation either unless you have some way of really going fast and getting out there.

Also, I wouldn’t want to do that to Paul and Rhett because those guys are awesome dudes.

Now, it’s also fascinating to see what they come up with because just the fact that they want to do a movie whereas I was thinking about a series, because I was just thinking about more of a slow burn. You know, over the course of a few episodes kind of thing. It’ll be fascinating to see. But, yeah, put your stuff out there and you’d be amazed.

**John:** Yeah. So this was written as a long feature for the Daily Beast. You could also envision a version of this which was a podcast where he went off and interviewed all those folks and those things are now selling for good money, too, and those become the IP that becomes bigger properties down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** When this gets made – I think there’s a good chance it’ll get made. We’ll have Rhett and Paul on to talk about the process and sort of what they found. I think there’s still going to be some significant obstacles ahead. So, the McDonald’s of it all is complicated. McDonald’s, if you’re portraying it on screen you can. It’s totally fair, just like you can make the Facebook movie, just like our friend John Lee Hancock made the story about early McDonald’s. But it’s complicated. And they are a giant corporation and there’s going to be some giant corporation concerns about how they’re portrayed in this whole situation.

There are other real people in there and some of those people if you’re just reporting on stuff that happened that is public record that’s great, but there’s going to be some people in there who are not going to be considered public figures and you’re going to have long conversations with legal teams about how much you can put them in there, how much they need to be fictionalized.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** What the boundaries are of what you can say about them.

**Craig:** Yep. There will be long conversations in that regard. But, on the other side of the balance sheet, Fox, and thereby extension Disney is backing Affleck and Damon and Wernick and Reese and they, too, are an incredibly large corporation with a lot of resources. So I think that they will have probably quite a bit of latitude, more than you would think.

Mostly because facts are facts. It’s a really hard thing for McDonald’s to sue over certain things when they’re facts. If they decide they want to create a potential storyline where somebody working for McDonald’s creates some sort of relationship with the Uncle Jerry, the guy that was handling these tickets, then yeah, that’s actionable. But I don’t think they would want to do that. I think they’re going to want to stick to the story as it is, because it’s good.

**John:** Yep. I agree. The story is good.

All right, so wrapping this segment up, please keep sending us the stories that you find in the news that you think might be a movie and we’ll talk about them on the air sometimes. Three of the ones we didn’t get to today but I thought were worth reading through. A New York Times story by Jacqueline Williams talks about a town of 11 where a mysterious disappearance turned neighbor against neighbor. Definitely worth reading.

This story, which was just heartbreaking and maddening. This is the story of a terrific clarinetist who turned down this great offer to study with this other clarinet master. It turned out his girlfriend had actually turned it down and had sort of basically broken into his email and done it. It will send Craig to 30 on the umbrage scale.

**Craig:** I’ve seen it. It’s so heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.

**John:** And lastly we’ll point you to a story about a US judge orders 30-year-old man to move out of his parents’ house. I don’t know that there’s actually a great story there, but as a premise I think is actually kind of fascinating in the sense of the kid who just won’t leave home so you end up having to sue him to get him to leave.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m already preparing those papers. My kids are teenagers, but I just want to be prepared.

**John:** Absolutely. You know, got to have them in there so you can deliver them. Is it like subpoenas or something where you have to have a person deliver it to them in person?

**Craig:** Oh, I’ll deliver it to them. That’s easy enough. Goes right under the door. Yep. There you go.

**John:** Our show ran long, so let’s try to do two questions so we get a little bit answered here.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** First question comes from Adam. He says, “Throughout the life of the podcast, most recently in Episode 363, Craig has joked about how he will never become a member of the Academy. Every time he does—“

**Craig:** Not a joke. That’s real.

**John:** “I wonder how does one become a member of the Academy? Are there certain criteria? Do you have to be nominated by a member or chosen by a panel?”

I can answer this question. The answer is both. And so you are nominated by members of that branch. So Craig will be nominated by members of the writers’ branch.

**Craig:** No I won’t.

**John:** And then a big committee comes together and looks through all those nominations. In some cases there’s cards that get filled out and recommendations. Other cases it’s just like a name on the list. That is a terrifically accomplished writer. It is crazy that that person is not a member of the Academy so we will invite them in.

I will predict on this podcast that within the next ten years Craig will be invited. Whether he’ll actually accept the invitation to the Academy. I predict he will [crosstalk].

**Craig:** I will accept the invitation. But I say that with full understanding that it’s never going to happen.

**John:** So this is the trajectory that I think is going to happen. I think Chernobyl is going to be fantastic.

**Craig:** I hope so.

**John:** And that will give you some credibility. Now, that’s not Academy stuff, that’s Emmy stuff. And so I don’t want to jinx it, but if Emmys love it that is great.

Off of that, one or two more things happen that are in feature land and that’s it. Because you have a tremendous number of credits and they are movies of – they are–

**Craig:** Oh, this is fun to listen to.

**John:** They are movies of professional merit. But they are not necessarily–

**Craig:** Academy movies. They’re not Academy movies.

**John:** They’re not Academy movies.

**Craig:** No, no they’re not. Well, you know my opinion. Only comedies should win Academy Awards. I still stand by this. Only comedies.

**John:** But when you have a movie that is critically acclaimed and does great they can say like, “Look at this great movie he wrote and all these other movies he wrote that show that he is an accomplished professional writer.” I think that will be the year that you get invited to the Academy.

**Craig:** Then finally I’ll feel whole as a human.

**John:** Absolutely. There’s really no validation unless there’s a committee and a procedure to validate you.

**Craig:** Exactly. Oh, now I feel good about myself. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see about that. I still maintain, Adam, it’s never going to happen.

We have a question from Victor from Maryland. He writes, “I’m an aspiring screenwriter and I was planning on getting my MFA as soon as I’m financially stable enough to avoid as many student loans as I can. I want to focus on screenwriting in my eventual career, but I wanted to get my MFA in Film rather than screenwriting because I would like some experience in every aspect of Filmmaking. I was wondering what you guys feel the value is of this course of action. What things of any could I learn from other aspects of filmmaking that could help me be a more successful screenwriter?”

John?

**John:** I can answer this. So I did not get my masters in screenwriting. I got it in producing at the Peter Stark Program which is sort of a broad MBA program in film. Victor, I think you’re making a good choice overall. If you’re going to get an MFA, I think it should be broader than just screenwriting. And so while I know folks who teach at MFA screenwriting programs, the folks I’ve talked to who’ve graduated from them over the last ten years, many of them have told me they don’t feel like it was the best use of their time and their money. Because, yeah, they got some scripts written but they didn’t learn a lot about the rest of the industry. They didn’t learn a lot about shooting stuff. They didn’t make contacts with other folks who are making movies. And I think that is going to be crucial for you if you’re going to be spending the tens of thousands of dollars it’s going to take to get an MFA.

So, if you’re going to go to graduate school for it, I would think beyond just screenwriting and think about sort of the nature of the business so that you get to know not just other screenwriters but directors and editors and really get a whole view of how movies and TV are made.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you could also just not do it, right? You’re not in a position financially to do it right now, as you say. You want to avoid student loans. I completely concur. You should avoid those strenuously. You should assiduously avoid those.

I don’t know if you need to do this. I think that there are all sorts of ways to get the experience that you’re looking for. There are individual classes that you can pick up that are much more cost-effective than entire graduate programs. I don’t know what’s going on, for instance, if you live near Baltimore, but I would imagine there’s probably some decent technical schools that teach simple things like editing, which is an incredibly important skill to have–

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** If you want to be anything. Understanding editing helps you write, helps you direct, helps you act.

Taking an acting class is a brilliant idea, because then you understand how the text actually converts into action and speech. And then reading. Just reading scripts that you like. Watching movies you like. Thinking about them. Listening to our podcast is certainly helpful.

I’m not sure you need the MFA. I got to say, if you are hell bent on it, don’t get it in Maryland. See if you can go to NYU or to USC or UCLA where you might get what I think is probably the lion share of the value of these programs which is connections to other people who are your cohort entering the business, or people that already work in the business. I just don’t know if you’re going to get any value beyond just, I don’t know, feeling like you’re purchasing certainty if you’re taking these classes in Baltimore.

**John:** Yep. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is something I did for the first time about two weeks ago. I went to my first flat track roller derby meet/match/game/competition. It was great. And so I went in knowing very little about roller derby other than having seen the movie Whip It.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And this was like Whip It, but this is flat track so it’s not the bank tracks. You really can just see everything that’s happening. I loved it. I went with my daughter who is 13 and a friend, friend Nima who programs for us, and it was just great. And I just encourage people to go see it because it’s a very cool sport. You pick it up very quickly. Sort of like what the rules are. Everyone who is doing it, like it’s not a big cash money thing. So everyone who is doing that is doing it because they love it. It’s mostly a volunteer organization.

It’s really kid-friendly. So I just really loved it. I also loved that it was all kind of run by women. It was just a very great vibe. So October is the next one here in LA for Angel City Derby. But I just really dug it. So, check it out if it’s happening anywhere near you.

**Craig:** I think that my daughter would love that.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** She likes a good bruising, you know. I think she would dig it. I think she would dig it. I’m going to take her.

**John:** And what was great about it is the women who are doing it are so aggressive doing the thing and yet they’re so cooperative in all of the moments where they’re not slamming into each other. And so the sportswomanship you see there, you just don’t see in other sports. And it was great.

Because the team that I was seeing them compete against traveled from Denver. And like there’s no money to travel from Denver. They’re probably staying on other people’s couches. And they’re doing it because they love it and so it’s just a cool sport and a cool thing to witness. It made me feel better about America.

**Craig:** Anything that makes you feel better about America right now grab onto. Grab ahold of. Because, boy.

**John:** Boy.

**Craig:** Oof. Not pleasing these days. My One Cool Thing is a follow up game to a game that you originally had as your One Cool Thing, and then I had as my One Cool Thing, because I don’t listen to your One Cool Things as you know. Human Resource Machine. Remember that game?

**John:** It was fantastic. And so I’m going to click through this. I didn’t know there was a sequel. I’m so excited.

**Craig:** Sequel. It’s called 7 Billion Humans. So it just became available for release on Steam. OK, so there’s the angry part. Steam, what the–? Oh god, I hate Steam. Just let me download the freaking game onto my computer. Why do I have to? Anyway. Anyway, putting that aside, it appears to be essentially a proper sequel to Human Resource Machine, except instead of dealing with one little man that you’re moving around with things you have lots of little people that you’re doing lots of little things with, so they’re sort of stepping up the programming aspect of it.

But they make sure to tell you we’ll teach you everything and they will. So if you dig programming or you want to learn coding, simple coding, starting from scratch like how to just add two numbers together all the way up to figuring out, I don’t know, what the prime factors of any number is, this is a cool game. Well, the first one was cool. I presume this one will be cool. So, 7 Billion Humans.

**John:** 7 Billion Humans. All right, that’s our show for the week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Edited by Matthew Chilelli, who is back from Japan. So, Matthew welcome back from Japan.

**Craig:** Oh great. Welcome back.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Timothy Vajda. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions and follow up like what we did today.

For short questions though I’m on Twitter @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. Also now on Spotify. 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. So if you want to read any of the articles we talked about that’s where you’ll find them.

You can find the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We also sell seasons of 50 episodes at store.johnaugust.com.

Transcripts for this episode and all episodes go up about four days after the episode drops, so that’s basically the only way I can sort of Google to find things we talked about. So, transcripts are really helpful for our listeners and our readers. But mostly they’re there so I can Google and see what I said five years ago.

**Craig:** Ah, OK. Fair enough.

**John:** Very nice. Craig, thank you so much. It’s so good to have you back in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Good to be back, John. I’ll see you next week.

**John:** Thanks.

Links:

* [Studios Back In Antitrust Spotlight As AMC Chain Loses Key Court Ruling](https://deadline.com/2018/08/amc-entertainment-antitrust-lawsuit-disney-paramount-sony-universal-warner-bros-spanish-language-theater-1202449780/) by Dominic Patten for Deadline
* [Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists](https://www.amazon.com/Class-Struggle-Hollywood-1930-1950-Unionists/dp/0292731388) by Gerald Horne
* [@bvdhai’s Twitter thread about the mass Tinder date](https://mobile.twitter.com/bvdhai/status/1031327009564225536)
* [Woman dupes dozens of dudes into weirdest Tinder date ever](https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/woman-dupes-dozens-of-dudes-into-weirdest-tinder-date-ever/) and [Tinder hottie dupes dozens of dopes, but it’s all a marketing stunt](https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/mass-tinder-date-was-actually-a-marketing-stunt/) by Ruth Brown for the NY Post
* [‘Tinder Trap’ model claims she’s the victim after duping guys](https://nypost.com/2018/08/23/tinder-trap-model-claims-shes-the-victim-after-duping-guys/) by Tamar Lapin and Ruth Brown
* [Monterey Jack’s Twitter thread about Vent Haven](https://mobile.twitter.com/Chan315/status/1030007153451511812)
* Vent Haven’s [official website](https://www.venthaven.org/history)
* [How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions) Jeff Maysh for the Daily Beast
* [Behind Hollywood’s A-List Bidding War for a McDonald’s Monopoly Article](http://www.vulture.com/2018/08/behind-hollywoods-mcdonalds-monopoly-article-bidding-war.html) by Chris Lee for Vulture
* [In a Town of 11 People, Mysterious Disappearance Turns Neighbor Against Neighbor](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/world/australia/larrimah-mystery.html) by Jacqueline Williams for the New York Times
* [McGill music student awarded $350,000 after girlfriend stalls career](https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mcgill-music-student-awarded-350000-after-girlfriend-stalls-career) by René Bruemmer for the Montreal Gazette
* [US judge orders 30-year-old man to move out of his parents’ house](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/judge-orders-30-year-old-man-to-move-out-of-his-parents27-house/9790312)
* Flat track roller derby, like [Angel City Derby](http://angelcityderby.com)
* [7 Billion Humans](https://tomorrowcorporation.com/7billionhumans)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [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 Timothy Vajda ([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_365.mp3).