Scriptnotes Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/the-worst-of-the-worst).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 378 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to dash hopes, ruin friendships, and destroy things we love most.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** As we talk about why bad things need to happen to characters we love. Plus, we’ll be answering questions about WGA signatories and old TV scripts.

**Craig:** Well that sounds fun.

**John:** Yeah, Craig, it’s nice to have you back.

**Craig:** It’s good to be back. I’m so sorry I missed – since I’ve been working and traveling, you’re working and traveling, and then I had some needle shoved into my spine last week.

**John:** Oh, no, not good. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. There was a medical professional doing it.

**John:** All the kids are doing it.

**Craig:** All the kids are doing it.

**John:** Yeah, just inject – first it was Juuls, and then they’re injecting things into their spines.

**Craig:** Exactly. So that was why. Initially it was supposed to happen first thing in the morning and our podcast interview with Phil and Matt was going to be in the afternoon, and then they had an adjustment. So when I got out of that thing I was about two hours away from doing the podcast and just feeling really weird and oogie. So, yeah, but I’m back. I’m back.

**John:** He’s back. He’s no longer oogie. He’s full of boogie. And you can see Craig in person on December 12th which is tomorrow as this episode comes out. We are doing our live show in Hollywood. Our guests are fantastic. Zoanne Clack of Grey’s Anatomy, Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville, plus Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie and the new Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So we are hyping this show, but for all I know we’re sold out and it’s just–

**Craig:** We should be based on that list of people. By the way, Zoanne Clack I think is a medical doctor.

**John:** She’s a medical doctor. So if Craig has an emergency, she’s the person.

**Craig:** We’ll be talking about my spine on that show. But this is an amazing lineup of people. Totally – everybody from different places – well, we do have three representatives of animation come to think of it. All right. All right. Lord and Miller, I mean, boom, Pam Ribon has got this huge movie out. Everybody is famous. And you know what? Why would anyone not want to go to this show? Plus, me and you.

**John:** Well that’s us. I mean, that’s the other celebrities in this whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sometimes we like try to land a big name and then it’s like, you know what, let us be the big names sometimes.

**Craig:** We’re the big name.

**John:** Zoanne Clack, yes, she’s a medical doctor, but what I really want to talk to her about on the show is how she’s transitioned from being a doctor to writing a show about doctors. Because we get so many questions from listeners about like “I am a police detective, but I want to write detective stories.” And that’s an interesting, fascinating transition. She has done it, so she will be able to tell us what that life is like.

**Craig:** Maybe she can also chat a little bit about our episode where we went through all the mistakes that, like the fake medicine on TV. I wonder if she’s ever – well, you know what, let’s save the Zoanne questions for when we’re with Zoanne.

**John:** Absolutely. We also have another live show to announce. I’m very excited to announce that we are doing a screening of Princess Bride and an episode afterwards in which we’ll be talking about the movie we just saw. So, William Goldman passed away this past month. We are going to be doing a series of screenings for the WGA. This is going to be at the WGA Theater on January 27th. So, Craig and I will watch the movie then discuss the movie afterwards with the audience. And so this is I think going to be open up to everyone. So once there are tickets there will be a link in the show notes for that. I’m very excited to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too. It’s one of my favorite movies and William Goldman was a giant. So it’ll be nice. It’ll be nice to do that in his memory.

**John:** Absolutely. And so this will be kind of a trial run also because I’d like to do more of these on the whole. So if this goes well there’s some movies down the road I want to do a deep dive on. We’ll screen them and then do a deep dive. So we’ll let this be a test run.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**John:** Brilliant. We have some follow up. First is from Partis about the Start Button. Craig, do you want to take this?

**Craig:** Sure. OK, so Pardis writes, “The problem with the system you outlined on the podcast where the WGA can be the bad guy if you ask them to, calling the studio on your behalf to enforce the terms of your writing agreement is that the studio knows the WGA is only calling because you, the writer, have asked them to. And since writers are more dispensable than directors, yes, you can get labeled as a diva or as a problem child or as more trouble than you’re worth and lose out on future writing assignments as a result. So, what’s the solution?”

Pardis says, “A system whereby the WGA is alerted to commencement on a feature automatically. And a system whereby the WGA checks on progress for all feature products automatically without asking the writer first. That way the studio can’t blame any specific writer for asking the guild to be the bad guy. There’s just automatic oversight across the board. But, how can we put this system into place if the guild isn’t already alerted to commencement automatically?

“Option number 1: Negotiate a meaningful financial penalty into the next contract for studios that fail to file their paperwork for new project with an X number of days of the agreement being signed. That money can go toward covering the guild’s increased oversight and enforcement costs.

“Option number 2: Create a small financial penalty for writers who fail to alert the WGA that they’ve started work on a new project. Option 2, because then the studio can’t get mad at writers for alerting the WGA about new projects because writers have no choice but to inform the WGA directly less the writers be penalized themselves.”

**John:** All right, so let’s take a look at Pardis’ suggestions here and sort of how Pardis is laying out the situation. So, I think what Pardis is suggesting overall have some merit to it. You want the WGA to be the bad guy. You want the WGA to step up and do this work on behalf of writers. And if it feels like the WGA is only calling the studio or only getting involved because the writer complained I can understand that hesitation.

That said, the goal is for this to feel like it is just automatic. It’s like changing the way we’re just doing this on a regular basis. And so that even without a financial penalty for failing to hit the Start Button and report a new project, that it will become a matter of course for writers to do this. And the WGA has increased already the number of enforcement people there are to do that work. And so they are going to be checking up on people anyway. And so regardless of hitting the Start Button or not hitting the Start Button, there’s a lot more outreach to say like, hey, what are you working on, how is this going, and are you being paid on time? Is anything going on? And that is one of the overall goals and functions of the WGA is to make sure that our members are being paid and are treated appropriately.

**Craig:** These ideas, all ideas really, have been discussed ad nauseam since I have been involved in WGA stuff, which is, you know, over 14 years ago or something. But I would say that Pardis you’re not the first person to suggest that we should maybe start penalizing writers. But good luck. It’s not a great idea, honestly, to essentially crack down on writers to solve the problem that is created by studios. We already have enough problems. You’re dealing with writers that are already being abused and now they have to send money to the guild because they’ve been abused? It’s not great.

Can you get a meaningful financial penalty for studios that fail to file their paperwork? No. Probably not. And again when things start is kind of fuzzy. So, the Start Button actually is the best idea I’ve seen to date. And I think it will bear fruit. So I would say, Pardis, patience.

**John:** Related aspect here is that when you are hitting a Start Button or even now if you’re not hitting the Start Button, you are supposed to upload your contracts. And so I have been uploading my contracts. Everyone is supposed to upload their contracts that show all the steps of your deal. When the WGA has this information they can be checking on it independently so they don’t need to necessarily wait for you to say that there’s a problem. They can say like, hey, according to what we have this is what’s happening on this project – is this accurate? And you need to answer that honestly. And so that is a way in which the WGA can become involved, even if you are not reaching out to them to say help me here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hopefully this works the way we would want it to in an ideal situation where the guild is helping you without feeling like they’re bonking you on the head. And in getting in your work process. So, let’s see how it goes.

**John:** Second bit of follow up, a previous One Cool Thing was the show Please Like Me. And last night I was out and randomly bumped into Josh Thomas the creator and star of Please Like Me. And so I want to talk a little bit about sort of what to do when you meet somebody who you’ve only seen their work in person. Because it can be sometimes kind of awkward. So what I did is I said, “Oh hey, you don’t know me, but I thought your show was fantastic and you do great work.” I asked him if he moved to Los Angeles fulltime and is writing here and he is. And then I left him be and let him sort of go on and be about his night.

So maybe we’ll get him on the show at some point and he can talk about what he’s doing here. But as a person who gets approached like Josh Thomas gets approached in that situation I want to talk about sort of best practices when you’re going up to talk to someone whose work you admire, but it’s in a social situation. Because, Craig, you must encounter this, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s not on a daily basis by any stretch of the imagination, but it does happen. And mostly people seem to do it well. You know, I haven’t had any weird encounters. Any actor that’s on television has astronomically more of these encounters than you or I. And my guess is just that numbers wise they’re going to run into some odd ducks, probably at least once a day.

**John:** Yeah. So I would just say I would encourage – if there’s a person who is doing great work and you want to say like, oh, I really like the thing you’re doing. It’s good to say that, because sometimes it’s just good to hear that you’re making stuff that the world appreciates. But I would say if you’re going to make that approach plan for an out that’s going to get you out of that conversation within 30 seconds to a minute, because they were going about their life before you interrupted them. And so you want to be able to say what you need to say and then like let them go off and do their thing. If they want to keep engaged, they can engage. But make sure you’re giving them the release to get out of the conversation.

**Craig:** And take a look at their face before you walk up to them, because listen, everybody is a person. Everybody is going through stuff. Sometimes we’re in a nice happy mood, sometimes we’re in a neutral state of mind. Sometimes we’re concerned, we’re running late, we’re sad, we’re nervous. And then we don’t want anyone talking to us. Anyone, by the way. Much less people that we don’t know. So, just take a look. I know it’s hard because – and again, this isn’t something that I think anyone has towards somebody like me – but when people see a movie star in their minds they think you know what it doesn’t matter how they’re feeling and it doesn’t matter what’s going on. This is my moment to shake Tom Cruise’s hand and I’m doing it. Because the rest of my life I shook Tom Cruise’s hand, right? I had that moment. And he’ll get over it and he will. He will. But, you know, it’s not that big – who cares? I guess that’s my whole thing is like who cares.

**John:** My ground zero for getting recognized, well of course Austin Film Festival I get recognized a lot there, which is – I sort of go there knowing that’s going to happen. The lobby of the ArcLight I get spotted a lot. And sometimes at the Grove. And there was one time I was walking through the lobby of the ArcLight and this guy goes, “Wait, you’re that writer guy. You’re good.” I’m like, OK. I guess I’m good. Thank you, random stranger. That’s nice.

**Craig:** You’re that writer guy. Well, that’s pretty much right. This is one of the nice things about living in La Cañada is that nobody cares. Nobody cares. They don’t care.

**John:** Let’s get to our marquee topic which is bad things and bad things happening to the characters that you love. This came up for me this morning because I was working through the third book of Arlo Finch and I was looking at my outline and just looking at how many bad things happen, which is just a tremendous number. I think partly because it is the third and final book, so if something could happen this is the last place where it could happen. But also the character has grown to a place where he can handle some things that he couldn’t otherwise handle. So, there’s a lot of serious stuff that happens in the third book.

But I want to talk about it because I think there’s this instinct to sort of protect our heroes, protect our characters, and it’s hard to sort of get us over the hump of like, no, no, no, you have to – not just allow bad things to happen but make bad things happen to your heroes in order to generate story. And this is really very much probably more a feature conversation than a television conversation because in ongoing series there will be conflict within an episode, but you won’t destroy everything in their life every week. But in features that’s a really important part.

**Craig:** It’s a huge part. And, yes, you’re right. In television you need to make sure that people come back the next week in roughly the same shape you found them. So there will be little mini ups and downs. But in movies we feel narratively like we have to see people torn apart. And this goes all the way back to the bible.

**John:** Oh, the bible.

**Craig:** The story of Job.

**John:** Tell me the story of Job.

**Craig:** I will. And I should mention I don’t believe in anything in the bible. However, the bible is evidence of something. And it is evidence I think of deep seeded instinctive narrative patterns in the human mind. They are expressions of these things that are in us. They are not always sensible or logical, but they are there. So, that’s how I’m going to take a look at the story of Job. It’s a very simple story. Job is a very pious guy. He believes in God. He’s just super godly. And God therefore rewards him with a fortune and health and, I don’t know, bountiful crops, or I don’t know, whatever God would give people. And God is hanging out one day with Satan, as he used to do, and Satan says, “You know, Job only loves you because you reward him.” And this is a general moral conundrum that has been dissected over time. You watch The Good Place, right?

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Of course, so they refer to this as moral dessert. The idea that you behave well so that you get your reward from whatever metaphysical/supernatural deity you believe in. And God says, “No, no, no, no, no. Job loves me because he’s a good guy. And I’ll prove it. I will remove my protection from him and you go ahead and do whatever you want to him. And you’ll see. He’ll stand by me.” And so that’s what happens. God removes his protection and Satan begins to torment Job – torment him – torment his health, and ruin his crops, and scatter his children. It’s just awful. Like every bad thing you could do to somebody he does to Job. And Job just stands by God.

And in the end, you’re the winner Job, and God rerewards him and gives him even more crops and frankincense or whatever they had back then.

So, why am I bringing up the story of Job? Because there’s a moral inherent to it that I think is why we need, narratively, to torture our characters. And the idea is that our goodliness or our growth or whatever you want to call the evolution of our selves, the betterment of our selves, it doesn’t count to other people unless it is perceived to come at terrible cost.

Now, is that actually true? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly possible to become a better person without suffering. But when it comes to narrative it seems like we need it or we don’t believe the change.

**John:** Yeah. We didn’t see the work. We didn’t see the struggle. We didn’t see sort of the cost and it doesn’t feel like it was merited.

**Craig:** Exactly. So what we like to see is somebody that has experienced a trauma and they’re going to get over the trauma but only by facing it in the most hard and difficult way. They are going to repair a relationship with somebody by that person leaving them. They’re going to appreciate what they have because they lose it all. So, every character starts with this flaw and then we as the writers we torment them and force them to confront it through a series of increasingly difficult trials the way that Satan did to Job. And through that there is this falling apart. Break you down to lift you up. And we call this the low point.

The low point in a movie is the low point because the writer has tortured the hero to the point where they give up. They finally give up. That’s what you have to do is – you’ve lost your, whatever your ego is, and your hubris, and you give up and from that you will rise back. But those moments are so notable. And one of my favorite versions of that is the Team America puke scene which is just perfect. It’s perfect.

**John:** Let’s play a clip from the Team America puke scene.

[Clip plays]

So this scene classically is a character who has lost everything and then sort of loses more and in this case is literally vomiting up the last they have left. But let’s talk about some of those things that a character can lose and list off some of those classic things you’ll see characters losing here.

Some bad things might be to take away their home. So you might literally burn it down, or you might cast them out of society. You might take away their support system, so taking away their friends, their family, the institutions, the organizations that they’re a part of. You might have the rest of the world see them as the villain. And so you have a hero who is being perceived as the villain which is horrible. Incarcerate them. I have a note here sort of incarceration, also the weird case of Paul Manafort at this moment. So as we’re recording this, this is a guy who is going to probably be in jail for the rest of his life and he’s acting really strangely which leads me to believe that there’s something else he could lose, which is always fascinating to speculate on that. There’s something worse than being in prison for all this time and so he’s acting on behalf of that. So figuring out what that is.

You can kill a character. You can lop off a limb. You can force them to act against their own beliefs, so classically they have the daughter kidnapped and so therefore they have to do things that they can’t believe. You can sew tension and conflict between their allies. You can destroy the item they love most, so it’s like he finally gets that car he’s been hoping for his all his life and you destroy that thing.

So, those losses are bad things you’re doing to your character and they’re pretty crucial. If you don’t do some of those kinds of things over the course of your movie it’s probably not a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, what you’re doing is burning away what needs to be burned away. And it’s unpleasant. And we need it to be unpleasant. We need to see this character suffer. What is it, hamartia I think is the Greek word for suffering. And then catharsis is essentially vomiting. Which is one of the reasons why I like that scene so much because they just did it.

Humiliation is something that we see all the time. The writer creates circumstances in which the hero is humiliated. Where they lose all sense of self-worth and pride. We can kill or harm the people they love the most. We can make them feel terribly guilty and confront them with the consequences of what they’ve done. It’s good because it’s tortuous.

There’s that scene, people of our age always remember this moment in the second Superman movie from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s where Superman willingly gives up his power so that he can marry Lois Lane. And he gets beaten up by some guy in a bar. And it’s crushing. It’s crushing because you see someone brought low. I remember seeing that scene in the theater and feeling terrible inside. And it was the same feeling I had when I watched the animated The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe when all the evil Snow Queen and her minions shave the mane off of Aslan.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Take his hair away and reduce him to just this pathetic wretch. And, yeah, it’s – you need it. You need it or else when they come back you don’t feel anything.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about the timing of when these bad things happen, because there’s a couple different moments over the course of a movie where you see these things happening classically. So, the first is the inciting incident or whatever you want to call that moment early in the story that sort of kicks this story into gear. And so, you know, in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a story where a change has happened. This is the village is raided and the hero’s parents are killed. This is a big change has happened that is starting this story with this character.

Often the end of act one. So you’ve arrived at a new place. We’re not in Kansas anymore. The hero’s house has burnt down. We’re entering a new world. There’s a big change and the hero has lost something. They may be excited about what they’re headed towards, but there is a loss. They’ve crossed into a place where they can’t get back to where they were before.

There’s a lot of times, moments in the second act that are going to be losses, where allies turn on them, where new obstacles arise. There’s a plan that fails, seeing things that were important to the character that we were hoping for for the character don’t come true. And then classically the biggest of these losses, which is probably the vomit scene from Team America, is the end of act two, sort of the worst of the worst, which is you’ve gotten to this point and you’ve lost everything. It should generally be the character’s lowest point, or at least the lowest point in this character and how they’ve evolved over the course of the story. That thing that looked like it was potentially in their reach has been taken away from them. And that’s classically the end of the second act.

**Craig:** It’s the end because there’s nothing left to lose. You, the writer, have beaten it all out of them. They have no pride left. They have no resources. Or whatever it is. You’ve removed the stuff that they were relying on. Their crutches are all gone.

It’s important to note that when you visit these bad things on your character you must do so sadistically. It’s not enough to just have some bad things happen. You have to do them in a way that is deeply ironic and miserable. Especially miserable. Because then oddly the more exquisite the torture the more we feel positively when they overcome it.

So, the example I always think about is Marlin at the beginning of Finding Nemo. He’s a happy fish and he’s there with his wife and their hundreds of little babies. And they’ve found a place to live. And then his wife is eaten and all of the babies are eaten except for one. And that is very bad. But then Pixar understood it’s not bad enough. They have to make that little one disabled. They have to give him a bad fin so that he will need even more protection. And then that’s not enough. He is the one that goes missing. And so you have to go get him. And that’s not enough. In the end you have to let him go into more danger to save a friend. And then that’s not enough. You have to feel like he died there. And in that moment where Marlin thinks that Nemo is dead, he flashes back to holding him as a little egg and if you’re human you cry. Because the torture has been so exquisite. And therefore the relief and joy is beautiful and our appreciation for how far Marlin has come as a character is real.

They earned it. Did I ever tell the story of Jose Fernandez, the pitcher?

**John:** No. Tell me.

**Craig:** So this sort of goes to what I think of as the essential ingredient of character torture is irony. It’s not enough to just sort of make bad things happen. You have to do it in a way that feels ironic, as if the world had conspired against them.

So, it’s a guy named Jose Fernandez. Like a lot of baseball players he came from Cuba. So he had to escape from Cuba and he escaped on a small boat with – it was one of these crowded boats full of refugees and at some point on the voyage the boat gets tossed and turned and someone says, “Someone has gone overboard,” and without even thinking Jose Fernandez just jumps into the ocean to save whoever that person is. And he does. He grabs them. He brings them back on board. He pulls them up. They live. And it turns out that the person he saved was his own mother. He didn’t even know it.

He arrives in the United States and he becomes a baseball player. Not just a baseball player. He is an amazing pitcher. He plays for the Marlins. He is fantastic. He is going to earn many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. So, just the kind of dream come true for somebody that had to escape Cuba on a small boat and rescue his mother from drowning.

Unfortunately, two years ago he died. He died in an accident. And if I told you that he died in a car accident you would think that’s bad. But he didn’t die in a car accident. He died in a boating accident.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** And that is ironic in a terrible way. It implies that the universe was doing something. It had its thumbs on the scale so to speak. It is tortuous to think of. And when we write our terrible tortures for our characters I think it’s important for us to think of that. Because – and it’s a sad thing of course – but the worse it is and the more ironic it is the better the ending feels.

**John:** Yeah. Well let’s talk about sort of how those bad things come into the story. Because I can think of three main ways you see those bad things happening. The first is an external event. So that’s the earthquake. That’s the world war. In Finding Nemo that is the – is it a shark who eats the fish originally?

**Craig:** No, he gets grabbed by some fishermen who are looking to capture fish to sell, like for aquariums.

**John:** No, but at the very start of the movie where–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, it’s like a barracuda or something like that.

**John:** So that’s really an external threat because that – so barracuda is not the primary villain of the story. I don’t remember Finding Nemo that well. That barracuda itself never comes back.

**Craig:** Correct. It was just nature.

**John:** It’s nature actually. So some external force that you cannot actually defeat comes back. But sometimes it is the villain itself who is the character who arrives who is the one who is causing the suffering. So, every James Bond movie. Many fairy tales. Die Hard is an example. So, there’s a personified threat. A villain who is doing the thing that is causing the suffering. That is beginning the suffering.

But in some of my favorite movies it is the hero themselves that is doing the action that is causing the problem. So if you look at Inside Out or Ralph Breaks the Internet or Toy Story, it is the hero who is causing the problem. The hero who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the characters are going through. And that’s often great writing. Because it gets back to the idea of like what is the character’s flaw and something about that character’s flaw is causing the suffering. And we see them having to address that flaw in order to stop the suffering.

**Craig:** No question. It’s very common with Pixar movies. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a Pixar movie where the bad stuff is majority villain driven other than Bug’s Life, where Kevin Spacey, a real life villain, portrayed a villainous grasshopper. But typically in Pixar films – and sort of I guess in The Incredibles, but yeah, mostly they bring it upon themselves because it is more interesting.

**John:** I mean, in The Incredibles movies there’s sort of an attenuated thing where it’s like it’s because of past actions, it’s a boomerang effect that sort of comes back in, but it’s not a thing we saw them do at the start of the movie. It’s not generally responsible for most of the suffering.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But movies are about consequences and if characters are allowed to freely make choices and then have to suffer the consequences of those choices, that is good and appropriate and compelling storytelling, especially for a feature which is something that is designed to happen just once.

So, a television show theoretically should be able to repeat itself ad nauseam. A feature is sort of a one-time journey for a character. And so that one-time journey is going to about big steps and big swings and big failures when they happen.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So some takeaway on this idea of bad things happening to your characters. I would say really as you’re breaking a story you have to be thinking about what are the biggest worst things that could happen. And when I say the biggest worst things that are in the universe of your story. So, obviously you can’t stick a tornado in space. But within the context of your movie what are those and what are the character effects for it?

I think so often when we get notes about like well the stakes feel light here, sometimes the proposed solution is to make it be – it’s the end of the world. Like if we don’t do this then everyone else around us dies. I think that sometimes that’s mistaking the bigger scale for more personal consequences for the things that the characters are going through. So, making sure that it feels like a punishment very specifically tailored to this character that you’ve created.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you don’t have to – you don’t have to substitute volume of badness for quality of badness. In the beginning of John Wick the bad guys basically kill his dog. Which in and of itself would be like OK that’s bad, except it was the last gift he received from his deceased wife. That’s all it takes. I’m good.

And, you know, it doesn’t have to be this massive visitation of problems. Sometimes it’s just the cruelty of it really. Little bits of cruelty.

**John:** The Wizard of Oz, she’s trying to take Toto away at the start. That horrible woman is trying to bicycle away with Toto. That’s horrible. And that’s absolutely the right scale of problem for that movie so before the tornado comes that is what we’re experiencing. We can see it from Dorothy’s eyes like this is one of the worst things she can imagine ever happening.

**Craig:** A lot of times I do think about The Wizard of Oz when people start harping on stakes in meetings. Because I’m like what are the stakes exactly? What are the stakes?

**John:** There aren’t stakes in a classic way. It’s not like the Lollipop Guild was being horribly oppressed. It’s not like there was – she ended up changing the world but kind of by accident.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess the stakes were that she would get killed or something. I don’t know. But yeah, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s really more about how closely we empathize with the character and the stakes are whatever is stakey to them. It’s about what makes them feel. And if you make me feel what they’re feeling, those are stakes. That counts.

**John:** Absolutely. In a previous discussion we talked about want and want versus need, which I think is a false dichotomy. But when characters express their wants they have a positive vision of the future. So they can imagine a future and in that future their life is better because they have this thing that they want. And that’s a positive vision. Fear is a negative vision of the future. And so they are afraid. They’ve seen the future and in the future their life is worse because this thing has happened or has been taken away from them.

That’s really what we’re talking about with these things we’re trying to – these horrors we’re trying to visit upon our characters is that those things that they feared or those things they didn’t even think they had to fear, those are happening to them now in this story and they have to figure out how to deal with it.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some listener questions. First off is James in Napier, New Zealand. I assume it’s Napier, but maybe it’s pronounced a different way. It feels like one of those words where it could be Napier, or Napier.

**Craig:** I think it’s probably Napier.

**John:** Napier. James writes, “How in god’s name do you make sure a TV script is the right length? There’s a lot of flexibility in how feature film scripts can run. I know the one-minute per page rule is a rough guide when you’re writing. TV and radio are much more time-constrained so how do you make sure the script is exactly the right length to start with? And how do you keep it that way during production?”

Craig, you just went through TV.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re doing this right now. Don’t panic over here, James. It’s no big deal. Generally speaking, you know, we’ve got this rough 30-page/60-page guideline for half an hour or an hour. But the truth of the matter is it’s all guess work. The pages don’t really conform clearly to one-minute per page. Things are going to get cut. Some things are going to be expanded.

The good news is that we don’t really live in the world where the vast majority of television is constrained by rigid time formats. Everything is far more loosey-goosey now which is nice. If you’re writing for network television, different story. But with that point I would say, again, don’t panic. You can edit. And you can speed things up or slow them down editorially. So just generally, you know, get roughly in that zone and that’s what it will be.

And, you know, my experience at least with Chernobyl so far is that the scripts – at least for the first four episodes – are around 59 to 63 pages and they’re all timing out to be about an hour.

**John:** It does work that way. I was talking with Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie and other shows and Rob hates the one-page-per-minute rule because he feels that sometimes networks try to value it too much. And so the way he writes it doesn’t really match up that well. He believes that you could probably actually do a word count that would more accurately reflect how long something really will take to fill.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s an interesting experiment. The truth though is that once you start making a show, so iZombie or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or any of Derek’s Chicago shows, they know. Ultimately they get a sense of like, OK, our scripts need to be about this length because this is what the episodes cut out to be. And even then there will be episodes that are running long for a while and they have to find way to get two minutes out of it. And when we had the Game of Thrones creators on, Benioff and Weiss, they were talking about how in the first season their episodes were too short. They didn’t understand sort of how long stuff was going to play. And so they needed to add additional scenes to sort of fill them out because they just didn’t have a sense of how long an episode was going to be based on the script page.

**Craig:** Exactly. All right. Joe has a question. He writes, “I am a WGA member. I have an offer on the table from a reputable Middle Eastern production company looking to produce a more Western style show. The offer is about 15% less than WGA minimums. They won’t go any higher because they say lower budgets and the Arabic-speaking portion of the MENA territory,” Middle East, I don’t know, “simply doesn’t support it. I asked the WGA and they said flatly I cannot work for any company who is not a WGA signatory.

“I asked my reps and was told the WGA does not have jurisdiction here and becoming a signatory should not be what stands in the way of signing this deal. To be honest, the WGA response rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like they were using me to gain signatories when they didn’t have anything to lose and I did. A job.

“That said, I owe a lot to the WGA. I’m eking out a meager living as a writer and I recognize the WGA is part of that. But I don’t have so much work that I can just turn stuff down willy-nilly. So, does the WGA actually have jurisdiction here?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think there’s probably some situation in which you can be hired by a foreign company as a WGA member and they don’t have to pay you minimums. But this is probably not one of those situations. I know there’s international working rules, essentially one of the things the WGA needs to make sure never happens is that international companies sort of come in and sort of scoop up American writers to really write American things but try to pay them less than that. So I think that is why the WGA’s response is that.

But, Craig, you know more about the rules. Tell me.

**Craig:** Well, I have an understanding here, but it will be interesting. I would love to get the WGA’s official position on this. My understanding is that the WGA here is correct. The issue is that Joe is here and the WGA’s jurisdiction covers the United States. It is chartered by the Department of Labor. So, if you are a member of the WGA and you are writing something here in the United States it has to be for a WGA signatory. You cannot go lower than that. Period. The end. Assuming that there is an applicable collective bargaining agreement which obviously there is here.

So, no, you can’t do that. Listen, Sony, right, owns Columbia. We call them Sony now. Well obviously Sony is a Japanese company. So why wouldn’t Sony just start saying everybody who works for Columbia Pictures, we’re actually employing you under the Japanese branch of Sony, so you don’t have to do WGA. No. That doesn’t work that way. At all.

**John:** So I suspect that where we could get to with Joe is if this company was willing to fly you over to the Middle East and put you up there and you were doing your writing services there–

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** They could pay you less than that and that would not be a great situation for you. So not only are you giving up 15% of this money, which by the way 15% of scale is not a ton of money. I just feel like they could find that money for you. But, you are giving up your credit protections. You are giving up kind of all the stuff. Health and pension. You’re giving up much more than you sort of think to take that job. So that is why we have protections like this so that you cannot be undercut by a foreign thing.

So could this company form a WGA signatory? Yes they could. It would be great if they did.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think the WGA, by the way, Joe is using you to get this company to sign up as a signatory. I don’t think they care about this company. I think they care about everybody else that’s in the WGA and the value of our minimums not being degraded. So, what I would say here is you can say to them, listen, this isn’t me asking you for anything. I’m not allowed to do this. And, by the way, company, if you come here to the United States you can’t get anybody in the WGA to do this. None of us will be able to do this. You’re going to have get a non-WGA writer.

So, you know, which generally speaking won’t probably be as good. So, that’s where they’re at, Joe.

**John:** All right. Kofi from Woodbridge, New Jersey writes, “My question pertains to the release of completed scripts after a television show has aired or a movie has been released to the public. Who decides whether or not the completed script will ever be released? I’d love to read the script for every episode of my favorite shows, but usually only the scripts for the pilot and episodes selected for awards are available. Movie scripts can be hit or miss, too. Why isn’t every script made available to be read for educational purposes?”

**Craig:** Well, there are certain circumstances where the writers actually have the publication rights over screenplays. If you have separated rights in feature films that means you have a Story By or Written By credit then I believe you have the right to publish your screenplay.

But, look, by and large they don’t do it because it takes time and it costs some amount of money and it takes some tiny bit of effort and they’re just not willing. It’s no one’s job. It’s a massive company and they can look around and who wants to be the person responsible for scanning and posting 4,000 screenplays. Nobody wants to do it. And there isn’t really a huge clamoring for it, which, you know, is a bit of a bummer. That said, there are plenty of kind of underground swap meets for these things online. I’ve seen them around.

So, yeah, it would be nice. But it comes down to sheer laziness and lack of interest, I think.

**John:** So, the situation is actually a lot different than it was 25 years ago when Craig and I were starting. I remember when I arrived at USC for film school they had a script library. You could go down and could check out two scripts from this library and they were literally printed bound scripts. Not even brads in them, but these special posts that sort of like are sturdier than brads. You could check them out and read them and take them back in. And it was a great experience for me to read all of these scripts from classic movies I loved but also things that had never been produced and it was a really good experience.

So, I think reading scripts is fantastic. But, now there’s the Internet and now there are PDFs of screenplays. And so while Kofi can’t find all the screenplays he wants to read, he can find a ton of them. I mean, even just in Weekend Read we have hundreds of scripts. Things that are going for awards, those are posted online and those things are easy to find. It’s harder to find the scripts for movies that are not sort of award contenders. But, you can kind of find them.

But Kofi’s more interesting point is he wants to read the episodic scripts. Those are harder to find. You tend to find pilots or just those marquee episodes of things. And it’s great to read the normal episodes. That’s one of those things where it actually is much easier to do if you are in this town. Because then you just have networks and assistants at places who can get you copies of scripts. They’re not really under lock and key. They don’t have a lot of value in and of themselves. You can’t do anything with the scripts and so no one is trying to sort of keep them from you. But what Craig said is like it’s no one’s job to publish them or post them. That’s why they don’t happen.

**Craig:** That’s why they don’t happen. Well, keep looking. And by the way, Kofi, spent a lot of time in the mall over there in Woodbridge myself, so just waving hi to you back there in the old country.

And we’ve got one more question here from Cory right here in LA who writes, “I’ve got an award-winning short film and I just hired a screenwriter to adapt it into a feature. Though I’ve come up with much of the story, he will be hitting the keys to bring the story and script together. I am a one-man production band with a small production company. I’d like to make sure that I am setting both he and I up for success.” That should be him and I. Setting both him and me. Yeah. Because, right. Anyway.

“I’d like to make sure that I’m setting both him and me up for success and possible WGA membership or eligible points toward. First, should or must I make my company a WGA signatory? Second, since I or rather my company is self-financing his writing of the screenplay do I need to adhere to WGA payment standards to allow him eligibility? Finally, if I’m the creator of the original work and I’ve come up and will be credited with Story By is there an opportunity for me to earn WGA points or is that just for the screenwriter?”

Oh, excellent list of membership questions there, John. What do you think?

**John:** Absolutely. So, I don’t have all the answers but I will tell you that you’re not the first person to encounter this and I think the WGA has done a much better job over the last ten years dealing with these kinds of situations. I think Howard Rodman deserves a lot of the credit for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What you’re describing is probably a low budget independent film. And if you go to the WGA website there are resources there to talk you through what happens with low budget independent films. Classically these were done outside of WGA jurisdiction. But recognizing that some of the best work was happening there and this was obviously writer’s first work they set up these low budget agreements so that you can do this kind of stuff. That you don’t have to pay people the full amounts for writing services and other things but still allows for things like credit protections. It allows for other parts of what you get with a WGA package for these productions.

So, I suspect you will click through on the site, we’ll put a link in the show notes, and see what you need to do and how you sort of put the script into a place where it’s eligible for these low budget agreements. And I don’t think you will have to become a full signatory. I think there’s just ways you can sort of use an associate membership to get you started here. So, it’s good you’re doing it. It’s good you’re thinking about this now. But just read the stuff and then make the thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Definitely you want to take a look at that low budget independent film agreement. To become a full-fledged WGA signatory there are quite a few hoops to jump through. I mean, it’s not trial by fire or anything, but for instance you need to show that you have enough financial resources to be able to cover your residuals obligations. So in this case because it’s just you and this is just one independent film I think that’s the way to go. Take a look at it.

In terms of credit, the original work will be considered source material. It was written outside of the WGA so it will be based on a short film by blah-blah-blah. If you want proper WGA story credit, on the title page of the screenplay it would need to say Screenplay by Jim, Story by Jim and Corey. And that, of course, requires Jim to agree. The truth is the story in the original film is essentially akin to the story in a novel. The novelist doesn’t automatically get WGA credit for the movie of it. They have to actually do some work. So in this case what you would need to do to warrant Story by credit or Shared Story by credit is to work up a written story for the new movie that you’re talking about, either on your own or with the screenwriter that you’re hiring, and then that is now part of this chain of title of the work that’s leading up to this film that would be covered by the independent film low budget agreement.

Hopefully that makes sense.

**John:** I think it makes sense.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing feels like a Craig One Cool Thing, but it’s the story in the New York Times by Moises Velasquez-Manoff and it’s about how emergency rooms and other medical professionals are starting to examine ketamine as a suicide prevention or a suicide drug for dealing with people who show up suicidal and it seems like it is potentially a quick life-saving drug to be using for people with severe suicide ideation.

So, it’s a really nicely written up story about the potential of a drug which we only think of in sort of bad context possibly having some really good uses.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a fascinating article. Totally my kind of thing. Ketamine is one of these drugs that’s been around for a long time and it’s kind of one of those – I think the World Health Organization has their list of essential medicines, like if you were building your doomsday locker of medicines you’d want ketamine in there. It is a sedative. It is kind of a tranquilizer sort of thing. It can be used anesthetically, you know.

And what they found, and I didn’t realize this, but in this article they are saying that very small doses of ketamine can almost stop suicidal ideation in its tracks. So you have somebody coming in who is in severe distress who was just taken by the cops off of the side of a bridge and brought to the emergency room and you give them this tiny injection of ketamine and suddenly they don’t have that anymore. They don’t want to jump.

And, now, that doesn’t last obviously, right? So then there’s work to be done after that. But what they’re pointing out is that suicidal ideation, kind of underlying depression, to reverse that pharmacologically with say serotonin reuptake inhibitors takes weeks. Maybe months. Same thing with talk therapy. But if you need to make sure that someone doesn’t hurt themselves over the two, three, four weeks, this may be a viable deal.

Now, part of the issue is that it can be used recreationally and if there’s a certain dosage you start to have hallucinations and, you know, psychoactive effects. So, that’s why I think in general people are a little, you know, but we have to kind of get over some of this stuff. You know?

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Doctors in the emergency rooms are pretty good at figuring out who is there because they’re actually suicidal and who is pretending to be because they feel like getting a ketamine dose.

**John:** You look at sort of this work, you look at work on LSD, you look at work on ecstasy, these are clearly drugs that should be studied for what they can do in a clinical setting and sort of what good can come out of them. But instead they sort of become demonized because of dangerous uses of them recreationally.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t use them recreationally if they didn’t work on some level. So, yeah, obviously how much we use and all the rest. So, anyway, that was really promising. So you did that and I went the other direction. I went all the way over into computer world. So I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, and I want to call out the people that worked on the environment because it’s so good. It’s the best environment experience I’ve ever had playing a videogame.

There was a moment where – it’s not just the detail of the appearance of things, which is quite extraordinary. But it’s the way it interacts sort of synergistically. Just sort of trotting along on my horse and I’m going through sort of a path with some trees on either side and the wind kind of blows and leaves rustle off the trees and kind of swirl in the air around me and then fall to the ground. And I’m like, what? This is getting good.

The wind people talked to the tree people. And then the tree people decided, you know what, some leaves come off when wind blows but not a lot of them, not all of them, and how do they come off? And what happens when they go? And it’s perfect. It’s really amazing how well they did with those little things. And you and I know because we work in movies and television how much work goes into making something look effortless.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** God only knows how many hours were spent trying to make the wind make the leaves go just right. It’s really well done. So, tip of the hat. My One Cool Thing this week the people that did the environment in Red Dead 2.

**John:** Very nice. Those leaf physicists, they did God’s work there.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Michael O’Konis. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

But short questions are great on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the links in the show notes for the things we talked about, so that’s at johnaugust.com. Just follow through to the links there. Or if you’re listening to this on most of the players swipe and you will see a list of links there.

Come see us at our live show tomorrow night if there are still tickets. But also January 27th is our big show for William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. Looking forward to that.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there, leave us a review. Those are lovely. We need to read some of those reviews aloud so we’ll try to remember to do that.

Transcripts go up within the week and so you can find transcripts for all the episodes back to the first episode. You can find the audio for all our episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It is $2 a month for all of those back episodes and bonus episodes, too.

**Craig:** So cheap.

**John:** So cheap.

**Craig:** So cheap.

**John:** Craig, I will see you tomorrow for the live show.

**Craig:** See you tomorrow for the live show, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Tickets](https://go.wgfoundation.org/campaigns/8810-the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show) are on sale for the Holiday Live Show!
* The Team America: World Police [puke scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqGXeX9LhQ), with some bad language
* The opening of [Finding Nemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3L98NFyro)
* Aslan’s sacrifice in [The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ6VAGyhWXM)
* [Can We Stop Suicides?](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/opinion/sunday/suicide-ketamine-depression.html) by Moises Velasquez-Manoff for the New York Times
* The environment in [Red Dead Redemption 2](https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/)
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
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Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_378.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/double-ampersand).

**John August:** Hey this is John. And Merry Christmas to those folks who celebrate Christmas.

So today’s episode is a short one. It wasn’t really even meant to be an episode originally. What happened was I got invited to do a Q&A with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens for Mortal Engines, the movie they were promoting. And it was a great conversation. So I asked for the audio and this is the audio from that conversation because it’s Peter Jackson.

So, the movie you may have seen, you may have not seen. There’s no huge spoilers in it that’s going to ruin the experience for you. But I thought their conversation about the writing process, especially the writing process with the three of them, was actually kind of fascinating. So I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you have a great end of 2018 and we will see you again in 2019.

My name is John August and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this screening and our three writers are here with us and I want to talk to them about their movie. So if we can please welcome Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, and Philippa Boyens. Come on down.

So, welcome to the WGA Theater. Welcome to the United States. You guys just got here recently right?

**Fran Walsh:** Yep. Yesterday.

**John:** Can you talk to me about the origins of this movie? Because I wasn’t familiar with the books, but you read these books years ago. How did these books come into your universe? Whoever wants to take it – Fran, do you want to start? What was the start for you guys?

**Peter Jackson:** Well Pam Silverstein, who works for our manager, Ken Kamins, she mentioned that these books were pretty great. And I hadn’t heard of the books, but by the time we read them there were four in the series. So we were able to sort of like binge read, like sort of a Netflix show. Read the first book, and then the second, third, and fourth.

So, I mean, I got really excited because I could just imagine, you know, great films. And you’ve just seen the first of potentially four. But the books are really the life story of Hester Shaw and Tom. And I just thought, you know, wow, this would be pretty cool. Because they’re fantastic characters, you know, complex in a way that you don’t normally see in these types of stories. And a world that was completely new. So, yeah.

**John:** But when was this? How long ago were you reading these books?

**Peter:** 2008?

Female Voice: No, it was earlier, because I remember 2007 we met with Philip Reeve in London.

**Peter:** That’s your – OK, so about 2006 or 2007 then, yeah.

**John:** And so you were just waiting around. You weren’t doing anything else in the meantime? You were just killing time?

**Peter:** At that time we were finishing up Tintin and District 9. So couldn’t jump into it straight away. And then by the time we began to do work on it we began to do sort of some previs and some visualization, starting to think about the script. And then The Hobbit came along. And that was six years of working on that. So Mortal Engines got shelved basically for six years because I’m not really one of those people that can work on two things at once. I’d like to, but I just–

**John:** You were making three giant movies.

**Peter:** Yes. Yeah.

**John:** But let’s talk about the work that you guys together because you are the only double ampersand team that I can think of. And you’ve made two trilogies. You’ve made other movies. What is it about the three of you working together that works? Because I’m curious what is even your process? Are you in the room together? Are you at a giant whiteboard breaking stuff? Are you dividing up scenes? What is your process for figuring out story?

**Peter:** That’s the right term. I haven’t actually heard that before, the double ampersand. It’s like an Orson Welles, The Magnificent Double Ampersands.

**John:** They’re going to find another lost Orson Welles, The Double Ampersand.

**Fran:** We don’t really, I mean, we don’t think of it as a process particularly. Usually we just write and rewrite and rewrite, and we’re in that mode all the way through production. And our general motto is just write the bad version, so that’s what we do. Just write just such a terrible draft. The first draft is always embarrassing. And then you kind of get to the point where you think we’re going to shoot that. We’ve got to revise it. And then it becomes about saving the scene before it gets shot.

Often there’s pages under the door at midnight to the cast, some of them are good about it, others complain.

**Peter:** Others have no choice but to be good about it.

**Fran:** But they complain to the producers which is us.

**Philippa:** So, anyway, we blame you.

**Peter:** But we also start though with a white board and just working out the basic plot, you know, the structure and the plot. And that can go on for a few months before we actually go out and write anything.

**Fran:** Yeah. I just think, with the writing, nothing is ever good when you start. It’s just not. You’re finding your way through and you don’t even really know what it’s about particularly. You have to – you kind of have a better sense by the time you’ve got one draft done and then you think there’s so much to fix. And then it becomes – we all have different strengths in that area.

**John:** Philippa, talk to me about this. What was on the whiteboard originally? Because there’s so many characters clearly in this story. Was it figuring out whose stories you were going to follow? What elements of the book? And I haven’t read the book, so how faithful is this to the actual details of that first book, or how much is it in the spirit? What were the priorities for you as you were figuring this out?

**Philippa Boyens:** Are there any Mortal Engines fans in here of the book? They can probably answer that. No, it is different to the book. It had to be. We always start with the premise that you have to at some stage set the book aside. The book is the book. The film has to work as a film. And the whiteboard is interesting because Fran is very visual. And you love staring at it. And sometimes you’ll just keep staring at these things. And I think what’s she doing? And then you’ll get up and you’ll rub something off and put something back in and then we’ll look at it and then we’ll go, yeah, that’s looking, yeah, that’s starting to get a balance to it.

And so my thought process of structure has taken on that visual imagery, almost a visual imagery like if we’re looking at it as a three-act structure or something like that. That’s how I’ve started to see that process, if you want to call it process, in my mind. But we do try to nail the structure.

**Peter:** What we sometimes do is we take each character’s story and create its own little three-act structure for each character story, separate to each other, and then sort of blend. So there might be three or four of those, you know, each character or relationship has its own little three-act structure. And they get sort of simpler and simpler as the characters get sort of more into the minor characters. And then we just take those and collapse them and blend them into one – don’t we? Sort of one general shape.

**Philippa:** What do we do?

**Peter:** I can’t remember. I have no memory.

**John:** Well, I mean, Fran in this one it felt like certain themes sort of surfaced up and how early did you know that? There are terrible fathers making terrible choices throughout the course of this movie. At one point did you recognize – did you always feel, like Shrike to me felt like some lost universal monster who was just remarkable. At one point did those elements surface? Or are you only looking at the individual stories originally? When did you feel like you had something that was a movie?

**Fran:** I think whenever you really connect with the story it’s because of the ideas underneath it. And you think that’s an interesting idea. It’s something that engages you in an exciting way. So that even if you don’t write it very well, the ideas are still exciting and still – you still want to express them in some way. And you feel that they’re worth perservering with.

And that was one of the ideas underneath the script was this notion of the corrupt father and the one with the pure heart. So one was human who was really at his soul corrupt. The other one had most of his humanity stripped away, but he still had that lift, a connection to Hester, and a love for her.

So, I thought that was an interesting dynamic in the story. And I mean it’s a texture if you like. It’s not really the driving force of it. Although the other kind of father element is Katherine having to kind of come to terms with the fact that her dad is not who she thought he was. So the things underneath the story are the things that engage me.

And it was about the world. The idea of this world and what we could become, or where we’re going. The idea that we could end up eating ourselves literally, hunting each other around this sort of barren globe. And so in some ways it’s very fanciful but in other ways you feel that we’re in some place at a tipping point where we are going to go blindly into that place, you know.

So I think that’s an interesting thing to have in your story.

**John:** We often think of world-building in a sort of visual sense. And this movie has beautiful visuals, but underneath there there has to be some story logic. And how did you guys first think about how you were going to introduce like this is what happened to the world, this is the way the world is now? Was there ever a feeling of like, OK, we’re going to have to have an extended voiceover. We’re going to have to start the whole thing back, you know, a thousand years ago and bring us forward. At what point did you end up with this way of telling the story?

**Peter:** You always have the conversation at some point of do we have a roller at the front, I guess it’s the hangover from Star Wars, really. And that conversation always happens – it happened on the Tolkien films, on these films. But ideally we try to avoid doing that because it just seems to us a bit – we try to have the story itself organically tell the history. And there’s a limited amount of history you really need to know. Because that’s the other thing is you have a story to tell and it’s the story of Hester Shaw and what happens to her during the course of the movie. And you really want to try to just limit the amount of history if you like or backstory to what you absolutely need to tell that story. And you’ve also got to make sure that people aren’t frustrated by the fact that they’re asking questions about how did the world get to this place and we’re not giving any answers. So we try to just sprinkle in a few clues.

But certainly the books, I mean Philip Reeve’s books have a lot of the detail. If anyone is frustrated or interested in learning how the world gets to this place, in his books they certainly fill in all the gaps. I think the idea is to do as minimum amount as you can in the most sort of elegant way that you can. Try to sort of hide it and bury it in the ongoing narrative and action of the film if you possibly can.

**John:** Your film asks us to make one sort of giant premise conceit that there are these moving cities, but everything else sort of extends through that. There’s not a second ask, there’s not a third ask. There’s not an extra magic thing that happens. Once you sort of buy the central premise of it, these cities are on the move, everything else sort of follows from that.

**Peter:** Yeah. And you’re trying to – at that point you’re just trying to make it feel real. Because that’s the other thing is that it’s incredibly fantastical, but you want to somehow believe that it’s real. And that’s important because your characters have to believe that it’s real. And ultimately the story is obviously the story of the characters. If you don’t fundamentally believe in the world, or the audience doesn’t believe in the world, then you’re leaving your characters high and dry really. Because they believe in the world. They live this world. It’s a daily life. And all the decisions that they make in the film is based on the world that they’re in which is obviously very, very different from ours.

So, we try to make it feel as believable as we can so we don’t leave them high and dry up there.

**John:** Philippa, can you talk to us about sort of the terrible things that happen to characters in this movie because one of the things I love about these films and also the Tolkien films is that terrible things happen to our characters. And we relate to them because we see them persevering through the terrible things. As you’re looking at that whiteboard and as you’re going through those early drafts is that something that’s in your head in terms of are we making this difficult enough for your characters?

**Philippa:** Yeah. That’s interesting. Tone is always important, of course, but some of those things, you know, we made a decision early on that we were going to show the moment that young girl gets that scar. These are some of the things that you think do we just gloss over it, but no, we wanted to show that. We thought it was important. Because it informs her so much that moment. And also to see the mother that she lost was going to be really important. Instead of just talking about this person, Pandora Shaw. All of that was a story choice that we made really early on.

But you have to trust your audience, I think. You know, talking to – this connects to what Pete was saying with world-building. Often we get notes back, sometimes, and I understand why, because the studio if they’re reading it can get a bit nervous about the terminology that’s in there because things like – we reference something obscure like the Nomad Wars or the Lazarus Brigade, or things like this. And you just have to trust your audience. They know that it’s part of the world. So not being afraid to do that is really important.

We had two of the characters speaking in this language that Philip created called Esperanza. That’s enough. It was great. It was a perfect moment to make that choice because it made it feel real. Made the characters feel real. So often I think what happens is, you know, just going back to that question about the darkness, it’s like what is the engine that’s driving the story. And we don’t put anything in there that’s not relevant to that process to engaging with the audience and driving that story forward. And every moment has to be earned. It can’t just be – I mean there’s lots of stuff in the book I would have loved to have just shoved in there. But you have to stay focused.

**Peter:** Yeah, I mean, as we were saying earlier, I think establishing a history for a new world is important, even though you don’t explain what the history is. You just refer to it. Because any period of time, and this is supposed to be 3,000 years in the future, any period of time – people always refer in conversation to something that’s gone on in the past. I mean, if it was us we could refer to the Bay of Pigs or the Depression or the First World War. And you don’t stop and explain what that is. But the characters are, it’s a reference, and it just makes it seem real. And so there’s no reason why in a world that’s set into the future that they shouldn’t be referring to a history that we don’t understand. But it just makes it feel – those little things that make it feel slightly more authentic.

**John:** Before we move on I just want to acknowledge a thing that happened here is that you said when the studio gives you notes, and all the writers in the audience they’re like, ooh, the studio gives them notes, too.

**Philippa:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Even you get the notes. When do you first show stuff to people you trust? When does it leave this circle of the three of you and you start showing things to other people? And what are you looking for? How are you getting feedback on the thing you’ve written or the vision you have for this thing? What is the first step for you guys? Who do you show this to first?

**Philippa:** It usually goes to the studio first after we – because we’re usually right on that deadline.

**John:** They have deadlines, too! It’s all so exciting. So, the first people outside of this group is the studio who are theoretically going to make this?

**Philippa:** Occasionally that changes. You know, like if there’s somebody very specific that we’re working with like a designer for example or something like that that you know is going to be part of creating that world. But generally you want to get it to the studio because you want to know where it’s sitting. We actually wrote this first, the script, and then it went to the studio.

**Peter:** I was just going to say because the first people to come on board were MRC who were fantastic to work with. And I thought we did the deal with MRC before we finished the draft.

**Philippa:** Yes you did. Yeah.

**Peter:** But MRC have to partner with a studio, so we did the deal with MRC based on the book and then we wrote a script, showed it to MRC, and then we went out and pitched it to every studio in town, just like you were doing. Just walked in and pitched the film. Had done artwork to show them. And ultimately Universal were the studio that came onboard at that point.

And so they had the script, too. They had the script to read as well as some artwork to do.

**Philippa:** But it has to get past the three of us first. I mean, that’s one of the good things about working as double ampersand is that extra ampersand makes all the difference. And so it has to – we kind of know I think now where it’s sitting and like Fran says it’s always like a place where we – it’s great to get feedback and it’s good, but we kind of know what that feedback is going to be. We’re pretty familiar with how it should be working.

**John:** You’ve done this a few times.

**Philippa:** We have.

**John:** You’ve made some giant movies together. So you get a sense of when this working and when this is not working. What it is that you set out to do.

**Philippa:** Fran is very good, because you have got quite an acute instinctive of how something is working. I like to paper over the cracks like nobody is going to notice, don’t worry about it. And you’re like, no, no, no.

**John:** You’re the spackler

**Peter:** You’ve also got to be – when you do get notes from the studio you have to filter them. Because a lot of the notes are based on fear. And so you have to kind of – somehow we have to create a filtration system where we’re able to – because it’s also important to respect the notes. Because you want your partnership with the studio to be a good one. Absolutely nobody wins if it’s a bad – it’s just a miserable, miserable experience. And yet, you know, so you have to somehow have a filtration system in your minds, the three of us, where the notes are coming in and we filter out the notes that are based purely on fear. And so the ones that are left are often good. And they’re often worth serious consideration. But you just can’t accept all the notes because some of them are driven by the wrong things.

**John:** The movie that opened last week and those kind of things.

**Peter:** Yeah.

**John:** Fran, you had mentioned slipping the new pages under the door for your actors. Why does that happen? What comes up? Is it something that you’re seeing as stuff is coming in and you’re like, oh, or this is a new opportunity? It’s tomorrow’s work. What is it that generates those pages?

**Fran:** Well sometimes it’s the actors themselves because you don’t really know their strengths until they’re in front of the camera. So you have to kind of figure out what are their strengths. What do they play to? And how to get the best out of that person, you know, that actor. And so that required, we were revising for cast and story. And that did mean, and plus we were dealing with scripts that needed more work. It was a lot.

**Peter:** There’s one Lord of the Rings story, if you remember in the first Lord of the Rings film there’s a Council of Elrond–

**Fran:** Oh god.

**Peter:** Which is about a 10-minute scene of them sitting around in chairs in a circle talking about what they were going to do. Now we suddenly the night before, because we shot it over about five or six days, but right in the middle of it we decided that Boromir, as Sean Bean, had to deliver a long big speech about going into Mordor. He says you cannot just walk into Mordor. Because we hadn’t had that in the original script and we just suddenly thought, well, this is opportunity to paint a picture of something that we’re not going to actually see ourselves until the third film. This is the first movie. But nonetheless we thought it was worth doing.

So on the day we’re going to shoot it we arrive with this long speech, sort of page long.

**Fran:** Poor Sean.

**Peter:** For Sean. And so if you remember, you may or may not remember, but if you watch it Sean Bean has got his head down. He says, “You cannot just walk into Mordor.” And this is because the lines–

**Fran:** The lines are right here.

**Peter:** The lines are on his knee. And due to his incredible skill he was able to sell the idea that he was reading his lines – “You cannot just walk into Mordor” – as if he’s tormented enough he’s got to stare at his knee the whole time.

**Fran:** Oh my god. He was a really good sport about that.

**Peter:** He was. But he was great. Some actors are really good, because at the end of the day I always take the view that an actor might get a bit annoyed about getting the lines at the last minute. But however if they’re good enough lines and the actor can usually see that it’s worthwhile and it’s going to improve the movie and so they ultimately become pretty good sports about it. They don’t have a lot of choice anyway, but.

**Philippa:** And also, no they don’t, this is not a democracy. No, I’m kidding. Also, in this film, cast, when Hugo got cast it actually changed the story, because we had had this conceit and in the end we realized it was just a conceit that we could fool you guys into thinking he was a super good nice guy. And then it became a sudden shock.

**Fran:** I wondered what movie you were in.

**Philippa:** Right, sorry, this one. Oh yeah, because he’s in both. That’s right. He is nice. But, you know, that we could hold on to that moment and then when he pushes him off that would be this shocking revelation. And Hugo was the one who questioned that. He said I can do that, I can do that, but why. Because he wanted to know what it was buying his character? And the fact that he thought it was going to be more interesting, especially given some of those lines that we’d written such as “they’re playing with fire,” which we thought would be a throwaway, teasy kind of light thing. But Hugo just like gave it so much more.

And then we went, oh yeah, it’s just a conceit. And it’s not necessarily adding to the storytelling. So that went out the door. And that meant a bit of restructuring had to happen.

**John:** Let’s talk about, so Hugo Weaving is one of the only actors I recognized in the movie, and almost everybody else is brand new faces to me. Was that a conscious choice early on or is it just how the cast developed? What was the thinking going into this with sort of all new faces, so we’re not applying our expectations to them?

**Peter:** Yeah. I mean, I think generally with these types of movies we sort of favor – if you’re trying to build a new world or a futuristic world and have an audience believe in what they’re seeing and then to be distracted by someone that you saw in a movie last week just pulls you out slightly. So it’s a bit of a balance, because it’s also good to have some really solid sort of veteran actors if you like to sort of anchor a new cast. And so having a new cast is great, but also having those veteran kind of old hands if you like just to give it the weight in the right places is a balance.

But, you know, but of course you’re buying yourself a big casting job if you want to find newer faces. Because they are there, but you just have to audition hundreds and hundreds of people to find them.

**John:** You guys, as a writing team who has done so many things, I’d be remiss if I did not ask you sort of are you writing a new thing? Is there another thing we can look forward to? Is there a genre you haven’t tackled yet?

**Fran:** Oh, the religious epic.

**John:** A religious epic. Sure.

**Fran:** I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

**Peter:** Very unlikely.

**Philippa:** I think I could write a religious epic. No.

**Fran:** We’re all working on different things actually.

**John:** Oh fantastic. And when there are projects that it’s all of you together though, you all have to sort of fall in love with it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to really – something comes into my orbit but it’s like, yeah, but I don’t really love that. Or I have to sort of remind myself. With the three of you is it ever hard to sort of find that thing that you can all three connect to? Or has it just been lucky that’s it’s always worked?

**Peter:** It’s a good question. I mean, it hasn’t been a problem so far, I guess. I can imagine how it would be a problem, but it hasn’t. In practical terms it hasn’t really been something that’s been an issue, has it?

**Philippa:** No, we all loved this. This was such a cool project. We always hoped it was going to happen.

**John:** We have time for maybe two questions from the audience. So if you want to raise a hand, I see a hand over here.

**Philippa:** That’s such a good question.

**John:** That’s such a good question. So I’m going to repeat the question, but this is also why you come to the Writers Guild because they ask really good questions. So his question is with the rise of these amazing television shows what makes an idea one of these big television ideas versus a movie idea? And where do you think the boundaries are between those two?

**Philippa:** I mean, one of the obvious things I guess is spectacle. And it’s not just visual effects. It’s actually, I don’t know if you felt it or heard that incredible score from Tom, but also when that city starts rolling, it’s just one of the best sound mixes I think our guys have ever done underneath this. And to feel it, it gives it that extra weight and, I don’t know, that sort of visceral sensation that you get as you watch a movie in a big space that I don’t know that the technology is there yet that you’re going to have it in your own home, in your own theater. Maybe it will be in some way. Maybe it will be delivered right into our brain. God knows, I’m terrified.

But what I do know is that you’re always going to need story for sure. And storytellers. So I guess we’re the people who are going to end up answering that question as to how long this genre is going to last. And is it eventually going to fade out and become stuff shot for streaming.

**Peter:** It’s an interesting question but it goes to the heart of this mixed up time that we’re in now. Because the film industry, whatever you want to call it, is in a very strange state. I mean, to answer it personally, the things that I like watching at the moment and enjoy watching are the long streaming shows, the 10-episdoe shows, or the six-episode shows we have all the time. That’s what I really enjoy watching.

But in terms of making, I guess I’ve just got films in my blood and my DNA. So I’ve never really thought about doing anything other than films, although films are not what I enjoy seeing so much now as it is a really good 10-part show. So it’s a little bit screwed up right now.

**John:** One more question, right here. Let me repeat the question. In your process are you guys just doing it yourself or are you bringing folks in to do a read aloud of your script?

**Philippa:** Fran and I do all the characters.

**John:** All right, you’ve got to do this. That’s great. You’re printing it out and you’re going through the whole thing and just hearing it.

**Philippa:** Sometimes we have to sell each other, don’t we?

**Fran:** Yeah.

**Philippa:** We really do, on the lines.

**Fran:** But we do do round tables.

**Philippa:** Yeah, we do. We do. We do readings.

**Peter:** Yeah. But you do the round table once the film is cast, of course. So, yeah–

**Philippa:** Do you mean when we’re writing?

**Audience Member:** I mean when you’re writing it.

**Peter:** Mainly Philippa and Fran do most of the dialogue together.

**Philippa:** But we do speak it aloud. I think you have to get it off the page. Because certain things have a certain rhythm to them. And that’s what I mean.

**Peter:** Once the film is cast you do a round table with the – because once the film is cast, in order for the film to be cast it has to be green lit. As far as we’re concerned the script writing is still a fluid thing. I mean, just because you get a green light doesn’t mean that the writing stops. It just carries on all the way through the shoot and into post at times. You never stop writing. Never.

**Philippa:** When we cast Robbie Sheehan who plays Tom, he has an extraordinary sense of comic timing that’s just all of his own that can lift a line and make something funnier. And the line, “Anna Fang, you’re an idiot,” was because we’d cast Robbie and of what he was bringing to the role. So sometimes those lines are just completely organic and on the day and those sort of things.

**John:** Thank the three of you so much for coming all the way here just for this one screening. And thank you very much to the Writers Guild. And have a great night. Thank you.

Links:

* Thanks to [Fran Walsh](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0909638/), [Peter Jackson](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1) and [Philippa Boyens](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0101991/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)!
* [Mortal Engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuL5yXsOAIA) is in theaters now.
* Mortal Engines is based on the [book series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Engines_Quartet) by [Philip Reeve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Reeve).
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matt Davis ([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_380.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/Holiday-live-show-2018).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode contains some bad language. It also contains some minor spoilers for Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but probably nothing that would hurt your enjoyment of the movie. Thanks, and enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is the 2018 Holiday Live Show. We are live here in Hollywood–

**Craig:** California.

**John:** This is the state we’re in.

**Craig:** Yes, correct. And we want to thank you all for coming out. We understand it’s a little traffic-y. It’s a little traffic-y out there in Los Angeles, again. So, thank you very much for coming. And we have– I’m going to go with our best show ever. This is going to be our best show.

**John:** It’s going to be the best show we’ve ever done.

**Craig:** Yeah. We kind of went a little crazy this year. Like overloaded it with too much goodness. We should have spread it out.

**John:** There was another holiday live show where we had like 12 guests and we just kept putting them on one after another, but we have like really quality guests–

**Craig:** Right. That was a shitty show. This is a great one.

**John:** So, Larry Andrews is here. He’s a representative of the Writers Guild Foundation. And we were trying to figure out how many live shows we’ve done. Someone could probably Google this.

**Craig:** About 48. 48.

**John:** Yeah, 48 at least. We’ve been on for 50 years. The first two years we didn’t do a live show here at Hollywood.

**Craig:** You know that I believe you. Like if you say we’ve been on 50 years I’ll be like, yeah, that sounds about right.

**John:** So the 20th anniversary of Go is coming up this year, which seems absolutely impossible. [Unintelligible].

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** But nothing makes me feel older than having one of your movies be able to drive, or vote.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think we’re coming up on the – what is it – the 98th anniversary of Disney’s RocketMan, a film that if you are–

**John:** Is there going to be a retrospective screening?

**Craig:** For idiots. Yes. Yes. There’s an idiot’s screening.

**John:** An idiot’s screening.

**Craig:** Idiots love it.

**John:** So I love doing the podcast every week with Craig Mazin, who is a fantastic co-host. And, Craig, you’ve been super busy but it’s great to see you here in person and getting to talk through stuff with you.

**Craig:** Oh. Oh.

**John:** No, this is not an intervention.

**Craig:** I’m not–?

**John:** No, it’s not that.

**Craig:** But am I being let go?

**John:** No. No. No. There’s people–

**Craig:** Because this would be a shitty way to do it.

**John:** Well, yeah, but you’d go out with a bang, wouldn’t you say?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Behind you there are slides. The people at home can’t know that there are slides. But there are slides here and those slides can illustrate the things that you’ve done. It could be a retrospective of all of your greatest and lowest moments.

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** No. That’s not what I’ve done here at all. But a thing we did do on the program recently is we talked about this show and we decided that we wanted to do our first ever gift exchange. So these people are seeing the very first ever Scriptnotes gift exchange. You set a restriction on this. What was the restriction?

**Craig:** $20 or less.

**John:** The price of a ticket. So $20 or less.

**Craig:** That’s rough. It’s actually hard to buy something now that’s not awful for $20 or less.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I think I’ve done that. But do you think you’ve done that?

**Craig:** Bought you something awful? No question.

**John:** All right. That’s good. Should I give you my gift first, or do you want to – how are we going to do this? It’s sort of one of those things like who is going to say I love you first.

**Craig:** No one believes that you know what love is, so yes, do it this way.

**John:** All right. So my gift to you will be familiar to – the wrapping will be familiar to anybody who is in the industry in Hollywood. It is the paper that was sent with Marvelous Mrs. Maisel DVDs.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. That was extravagant.

**John:** So people in the industry, we get these screeners basically like “Please give us awards.” And Amazon this year for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel/Maisel–

**Craig:** Maisel.

**John:** Maisel. Sent these posters with it. And everyone is like what the hell are these posters. Wrapping paper.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s become – it’s like a big cylinder of stuff.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We just want the DVD. Just give us the DVD. Also, it’s on Netflix, right?

**John:** No, Amazon. Ah.

**Craig:** OK. We all have Amazon. We have it already. You don’t need to send the thing.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Stupid.

**John:** But I wanted to give you this gift.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** So this gift is wrapped up. So you can open it.

**Craig:** Can I?

**John:** You may.

**Craig:** Thank you for permission.

**John:** This gift was a previous One Cool Thing. Craig never pays attention to One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Liartown. The First Four Years. Sean Tejaratchi.

**John:** So this is–

**Craig:** Do you understand what my life is like? I say things and then it’s just, yep.

**John:** That’s correct. So I think you will like this book because it is really funny and really filthy. So there’s a page I blew up here. This is Anne Geddes Hello Cruel World.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** It’s a baby in an ashtray.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s pretty cool. That’s pretty great.

**John:** And so my husband Mike will tell you that it’s the thing that I will – just nonstop laughing as I go through it. So it’s an accumulation effect.

**Craig:** Holy shit. This is fucked up. This horrifying octopus Tweety bird saying Stay in School, and there’s a skull under. It’s amazing. I love it.

**John:** So some of the things you can look forward to in this book include – there’s grocery store ads for like impossible things, like owl tips.

**Craig:** Shrimp pull-ups. That’s awesome.

**John:** And this thing over on the right is a little obscure, it’s like an ongoing joke, but it’s about a Japanese businessman who is being sexually harassed by an elk. And I felt like for a person in Hollywood–

**Craig:** That’s the face you make.

**John:** That’s the face you make. So Craig I hope you enjoy Liartown.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. That was awesome. Thank you.

So, everybody knows that I do most of the work for this podcast. But one of the things that you did very early on was you designed our logo. And in doing so set sort of the tone for the show that has now been running for approximately 15 years. And I still see people wearing this t-shirt and it’s sort of become a thing. And I wanted to do something to kind of honor that. And I found these. And they’re kind of really – just take a look at this. Because also you’re very neat.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** And I wanted to do something to help you continue to be neat.

**John:** Thank you, Craig.

**Craig:** Take a look at this.

**John:** I will say that Ryan Nelson, the person who actually designed our logo, so I want to thank Ryan–

**Craig:** No, in my mind you did it.

**John:** I’m getting rid of the tissue paper here. Oh my gosh. It is a tiny typewriter.

**Craig:** But?

**John:** But, tell me more.

**Craig:** Coasters.

**John:** Oh! Typewriter coasters. Craig, this is a very, very thoughtful gift.

**Craig:** Right?

**John:** Craig, can I give you a hug?

**Craig:** Yeah! I don’t think you know how to hug.

**John:** I know how to hug properly.

**Craig:** But we’ll work on it.

**John:** We’ll work on it.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It is time for us to talk about the guests that we have on the program tonight because sometimes as we’re gathering guests we can find fantastic people but they won’t have common things to talk about. This year we did a great job I think of finding people with common things to talk about.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’ve been kind of like buddies with – can I say Pammy? Because it’s been Pammy for a long time. Pammy, me and Pammy, are buds. And it’s been kind of amazing to watch this blossom and you can see like that’s pretty good. Nothing against it.

**John:** Smurfs: The Lost Village.

**Craig:** But then, oh shit.

**John:** Moana.

**Craig:** Damn! Right? So like she’s been crushing it at the highest level at Disney Animation and Features and Wreck it Ralph 2–

**John:** Ralph Breaks the Internet.

**Craig:** Correct. Currently in theaters.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And viewable and you should all go see it. She’s pretty amazing at what she does.

**John:** Yes. Pamela Ribon will you please come up and join us? Pamela, welcome to the show.

**Pamela Ribon:** Thanks. Thanks for having me.

**John:** Our next group of guests, they have some credits of movies you’ve heard of.

**Craig:** Is this Lord and Miller?

**John:** This is the one.

**Craig:** Is it two people?

**John:** It’s two different people. Yeah. It’s not Lordon Miller. That would be a cool name though. Lordon.

**Craig:** What is it then? Lord and Miller. Lord and Miller have done everything that you like. Literally. Just run it through your head. Do you like The Lego Movie? Yeah you fucking do. Do you like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Who doesn’t like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Be honest. I want to hear. Nobody. Exactly.

**John:** One woman started to raise her hand, but then she brushed it off.

**Craig:** No, she reconsidered. She remembered how good that movie was. 21 Jump Street. I mean, it’s so boring. And they’ve done it again with the latest Spider-Verse movie. Right?

**John:** So would you please welcome up Chris Miller and Phil Lord. Welcome to the program.

**Craig:** They’re two people!

**John:** As you guys all know, Craig sees no movies, and so has nothing he can talk to about the actual things you’ve recently done.

**Craig:** Or anything you’ve done before.

**John:** But I’ve seen both your movies. They’re recent movies. And they are fantastic. They are some of the best animated movies I’ve seen in quite a long time and I loved them both immensely the moment I saw them. So, and also congratulations. You guys are both up for awards. You guys should duke it out tonight to figure out who is going to win.

**Craig:** So, it’s done. Yeah.

**Pamela:** Oh.

**Craig:** Oh, for Golden Globes.

**Pamela:** I’m very strong.

**Craig:** Fact, Pam, former roller derby.

**Chris Miller** Really?

**Craig:** Roller player.

**Chris**: You could definitely takes us then.

**Phil Lord:** What was your derby name?

**Pamela:** Make you holler.

**Craig:** That’s so good.

**Phil:** We have a friend. Her name was Laguna Biatch.

**Pamela:** Oh, I know her.

**Craig:** Was it May Q.? Of course it was.

**Craig:** I love that. Yeah, no, she could definitely kick your ass.

**Pamela:** But Laguna is very good.

**Craig:** What if they bring up Laguna?

**John:** So, Pam, we were talking at dinner about sort of the writing process of Ralph Breaks the Internet, and so this isn’t a situation where usually on a movie a writer writes a script, then you write another draft, and then maybe another draft. How long were you employed on Ralph Breaks the Internet?

**Pamela:** I did over 2.5 years of writing.

**John:** And this wasn’t just like give us a draft and you’re done. You were physically going in there to work on a movie.

**Pamela:** Yeah. At one point I wanted to – I have a cowriter on this movie, Phil Johnston, who is also the co-director of the film. At one point I was just curious how big my Ralph file was. And there were over 800 documents – drafts and rewrites – just that I had had. And I know that those weren’t all of them.

**Craig:** How do you even sort those? Do you have an advance Dewey Decimal?

**Pamela:** We do. Yes. It is. Because you want to know, particularly because Phil and I are passing stuff back and forth, so there’s an initial situation with dates and times. Times, because sometimes it’s like three times in one day you’ll rewrite.

**Craig:** You guys don’t rewrite anything?

**Chris:** No.

**Phil:** First time and it comes out perfect.

**Craig:** First time through.

**Phil:** One and done.

**Pamela:** Very good.

**Craig:** Shoot it. Shoot it!

**Phil:** We chisel it in a mountain.

**Chris:** We write every word and then we just chop away the ones that don’t fit into the story.

**Phil:** Like every word in the universe? Oh yeah, that’s a good way.

**Craig:** Just remove the words that don’t belong.

**Craig:** Are you kind of on the same timeline for an animated feature of about 2.5 years of work?

**Chris:** Or more. Generally. That’s the thing about animated features is it’s so different of a process. It’s such an iterative process. You’re looking at animatic storyboards, various different phases, and every time you get a look at it in its crudest form and you go I thought that was going to work, but nope it sucks, so we’ve got to redo it. Again and again and again and again.

And I think that’s why animated movies end up – a lot of them end up being so good is because people had a chance to see and feel whether things work and they’ve had a chance to go over it again and again.

**Phil:** Right. They were bad ten times first. Then they got good.

**Craig:** Which leads me to a question, because I’ve been thinking about this since I guess Pixar sort of redefined how good storytelling could be on a movie screen, and I think they did. Is there any way for live action to ever catch up or is the gap even widening? Are animated features just perfecting the art of the feature narrative?

**Chris:** Well don’t you feel like live action features are becoming more animated? And weirdly animated features are becoming a little more live action.

**Craig:** Tell me how that works.

**Chris:** I mean, if you look at Wes Anderson, right, after he did Fantastic Mr. Fox his live action movies had more of an animated vibe. Right? When you look at all the big superhero blockbuster type of movies a lot of those sequences, the big action scenes and other things are pre-vis’d and CG. And a lot of that stuff is CG. You look at Gravity and that sort of thing. That one almost qualifies as an animated movie, that film. Which means things get planned out. Things get watched. Things get experienced. And that’s why some of those things end up feeling really visceral.

And then similarly in animation, it used to be a lot of like really one person isolated in a booth. I say my line five times and then I go on to the next line five times. And now certainly after we did the Jump Street movies we started trying to get actors together more often and have them improvise with each other and have things feel more natural. And so it got a little bit more of the spontaneity of live action. So I feel like they’re getting closer.

**Pamela:** Yeah. We did the same thing on Ralph. John and Sarah would want to be in the room together so that they could work with each other.

**Craig:** And that is kind of a new thing. I mean, it’s actually startling to me to think that was never that way because so many of the actors that people bring in to do voices – once they started the let’s get actors to do these as opposed to like let’s get voice actors to do them – they’re all brilliant improvisers and it seemed odd to me that there was a stretch there where they wouldn’t let them improvise. It’s crazy. It’s kind of crazy that they didn’t do it that way.

**Pamela:** Well can you imagine though, like well four years ago I said this line and I liked it. You know what I mean? We’ve made like eight versions of the movie since then.

**John:** But before Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly are in the room together you have to have a script and you have to figure out sort of what stuff is. Can you talk through what the scratch process is for you guys in terms of getting from words on the page to something recorded that you can actually see and listen to? What is that process like for something like Ralph?

**Pamela:** Well, on Ralph we do a lot of our own scratch. We’re all just trying to crack each other up. So we work together. So Phil, and Rich, and Josie and I tend to do a lot of the scratch so that we can also while we’re recording can improvise and then even in editorial while we’re putting together the screenings we can just go up and rerecord something.

**John:** So it’s like a table read but you guys – at the end of the process of that you actually have a movie you can watch with just your voices in there. And what kind of things do you learn in that process of doing the scratch and doing the temp versions of things?

**Pamela:** Well we start to figure out timing. I mean, a lot of times you’re doing an impression of the actor you’re hoping to get, or you do just have, so you start to play with their timing and the sound of them. You don’t have them for a little while so you can just start to figure out how these relationships might work. And you can land an emotional moment because you hear it in your head. And then, you know, very rarely as a writer do you get to be like, “And say it just like this.” And then have her hand go here and then her foot. You craft the entire moment and that I think becomes difficult when you move into live action when you’re used to working in an animated space.

**John:** I want to say Phil and Chris, one of the things that struck me about your movie is that the opening 20 minutes of it feel like it could be a live action movie. It’s a very grounded reality in ways that you don’t normally see in animation. How early in the process did you come to that realization that you wanted it to feel that way? And what was the writing process and the sort of boarding and scratch process to get you to that point?

**Phil:** Well I think we always thought that the movie was going to start with like a very animated montage-y sequence and then focuses down on Miles Morales and literally starts alone with him in his room and he’s listening to a song and not singing it very well. And it was actually Rodney Rothman who wrote the screenplay with me, he said we really just want to spend time with Miles and see him behave. And the movie basically starts and ends with him alone by himself in his bedroom.

And it was a really conscious choice to go I want to show you everything that a crazy super hero movie can be at the start and then I want to bring you in to a really grounded reality and then slowly we’ll start turning up the temperature on the water that this kid is in, and the movie will get sillier and crazier and more like a heightened reality throughout.

**Craig:** I mean, has technology kind of freed you creatively to write a different way? Because I think in the old days they’d be like every frame is an hour or two hours or 12 hours of someone’s time, or a thousand computers. So, no, you can’t just have him behaving. Right? You’re not allowed to do that. We don’t have that money. I mean, now do you feel like there’s a certain freedom in terms of animation to be a little, I don’t want to say indulgent, but to take a breath?

**Chris:** Well, I mean, I think if you go back to the history of feature animation you really are starting with really simple drawings on the storyboard and animators thinking of physical bits for things that kind of describe the character. So in a way it’s very old school to just give the animators some real estate to express the character through movement, which is like what animation does better than anything is that it’s a lot like dance.

It’s hard because we’re like dialogue driven dudes and you’re like jokes and when you put these movies up and build reels you take all the air out because you’re so insecure that your material is not good enough. And maybe if we go fast no one will see. So, when we are able to give characters a little bit of space you realize what dummies you are and then you realize there should be no writing. Or no words.

**Pamela:** The words get in the way.

**John:** Classically animators were people who were in charge of these movies and in this case we have writers who are in charge of these movies. What do you think you bring as a writer to an animated project that is different than somebody who comes from an art background? And in my times doing some animation I felt some friction there. Have you guys felt friction? And what are ways that writers can get through those situations?

**Pamela:** I think for me it’s always like character is the last thing sometimes that’s thought of. It’s these worlds and what-ifs and this is amazing. Why make it animated? Because it’s a place we can’t be in live action. And often the last thing thought of is who is going to be in this movie. And as a writer I think I often approach with well what’s an interesting thing I want to talk about or person I want to think about or a character. And then I put them in this fun world. So, I don’t know, do you guys?

**Chris:** Yeah, I mean, I think that when you’re writing for animation it’s just a lot of the rules that are right for writing in live action just twice as important. Like the idea of you should be able to follow the story with the sound off. Like the next door neighbor on your airplane test. If you can follow the plot of the movie without the headphones that your neighbor is – on the back of their seat – then the movie works. And I think that’s true of live action just as much as animation, but it’s especially true in that medium. So you have to as a writer think extra visually and you never want to be like, OK, here’s two people standing in a room just talking for five minutes in a way that you can kind of get away with sometimes, and certainly in live action television.

But I think in animation you really have to think visually. And then I think the other part is that you also have to be really open and flexible because there’s a lot of people, storyboard artists, designers, art directors that are like give them enough room to try with those things. They’ll come up with a bunch of crazy ideas and maybe half of them won’t work for the larger story context, but half of them will make their scene more interesting. And the same thing is true that someone will come up with a piece of concept art that’s like, oh, that’s way more – that changes everything that we’re doing here. And then you have to be really nimble. It’s why the process takes so long.

But because it’s a team project and it takes so long it’s something that can like – if you open yourself up to a bunch of ideas you get a bunch of free, cool stuff out of it.

**Craig:** And you have this incredible resource of all these people that are there to help. And in live action you’re just miserably alone. And I’m sure you enjoy that.

**Chris:** And sometimes they’re just thinking about the scene themselves. Like the storyboard artist is just thinking about this moment. What would be fun in this moment? They’re not thinking what’s going to be half an hour later, how that’s going to mess everything up.

**Craig:** Yeah. So you have to maintain a global view. On behalf of a lot of people here, some of whom I would imagine are interested in writing animated features, there’s no animated spec world, right? What do you do? How are you supposed to get involved in this?

**Chris:** There’s a live action spec world?

**Craig:** Ish. I mean like every now and then somebody buys something for independent. But, I mean, in a weird way it does seems like there should be an animated spec world because you could – like Wreck it Ralph is – there’s no IP for Wreck it Ralph, right? It is the IP, correct?

**Pamela:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I mean, granted, it’s sort of hoovering up a lot of pop culture.

**Pamela:** Sure.

**Craig:** But it’s its own thing. And if somebody comes up with their own thing then it kind of – you’d think that maybe, you know, somebody would get interested.

**Chris:** It’s possible. It’s totally possible. People pitch ideas for animated movies to studios all the time. And if it has a hooky idea, they’re looking for stuff.

**Pamela:** Yeah, now more than ever.

**Chris:** Exactly.

**John:** But in your cases you guys were both brought in to do these things. So, Pamela, you were brought in to do the second movie in this franchise. You guys, how were you approached to do Spider Man? And was it always this idea that you would take the Miles Morales character and build out the universe? What was the initial thing that got you into that meeting?

**Phil:** Well, Amy Pascal and Avi Arad came to us and said we want to do an animated Spider Man movie and we said no, which is how everything we get into starts. And then we started thinking about it and thinking about how much we liked Miles as a character and we also thought the opportunities in animation for a movie in this genre would be limitless. And then we started thinking about our favorite comics growing up and how they all were drawn by an individual artist, and I really felt the tooth of the paper that they were drawing on. You really felt like somebody was communicating visually to you. And we thought well maybe we can make a movie that feels like that. That feels like the visuals are speaking directly to you and that there’s multiple artists all interpreting different characters and they’re all living in the same frame.

**Chris:** So then we went back to them and said we’ll only do it if it can be about Miles Morales and we can make it look crazy. And they said OK. And then – and we’re like oh really? And then now here we are.

**Craig:** When that happens is there a moment where you think “Oh shit, they were just going to say yes to anything we said, maybe what we just said was dumb.” Like do you ever get worried about that?

**Phil:** Every day.

**Craig:** That’s good though.

**Phil:** We should get more worried at the start.

**Chris:** Yeah.

**Phil:** The problem is you get really worried in the middle.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, that’s a bad worry, yeah.

**Phil:** After you’re too deep to turn around.

**Craig:** Right. That’s a despair. That’s not a worry.

**Phil:** Yeah. That’s despair.

**Craig:** It’s a slightly more advanced situation.

**John:** It does feel like all movies go through a journey, a narrative arc, where like it’s fantastic, it’s exciting, there’s troubles, it’s the worst thing that’s ever been made, and then you sort of salvage it. But I feel like animation has its own special case because usually in a live action feature you’re either in production or you’re in editing and you’re trying to save it in editing. Maybe you get to do some reshoots. But it’s hard to sort of find the movie in that place.

But in animation if something is wrong you can just go fix it because you’re not so locked into the things you’ve done. Was there a lot that changed in the Spider Verse movie from – if you were to look back at your original script for it and the movie that’s nominated for a Golden Globe, how similar are they?

**Phil:** It’s like they’re the exact same movie and every word is different. Like the characters are the same, the basic plot moves are the same, the emotional ambition of it is the same, and maybe the tone. And then everything else changed and it changed completely different and then we put some stuff back the way it was. It’s a mess.

Right, you had 800 documents?

**Pamela:** Yeah. We had nine screenings. Yeah.

**Phil:** Oh yeah.

**Pamela:** It was a bunch of different movies that still kind of like the first table read four years ago.

**Phil:** Right? Like you generated three seasons worth of material.

**Pamela:** Villains gone. Whole act threes. Yeah.

**Phil:** So you learn to like not be precious about this particular moment or this particular scene or even this whole plot because that might go away.

**Pamela:** Yeah. I mean, we get notes from 400 people when you get those screenings, too. That’s a little different. Everybody sees it and then you’re walking through the room with all of them every day for weeks while they’re like, “How’s that coming along?”

**John:** This is a Disney movie and Disney has the magic hat building. There’s a whole history of Disney animation. And so I know there’s a whole process it goes through and every movie goes through that process. Phil and Chris, though, Sony Animation makes animated movies but is not nearly the powerhouse. So did you have those company-wide screenings where you had to sort of show your–

**Chris:** Yeah, we were showing it around a lot. We also had three directors and the two of us on this movie. And so every moment was debated by the five of us. How many beads of sweat are on Miles’s brow in a shot is debated. That’s the thing about animation where like in live action you just spray the mister on his head and then you start shooting. This it would be like I think there should be a little bit more on his upper lip. You’re like, ah, that’s gross.

**Pamela:** And another two-hour meeting of like these are the 20 different kinds of sweat beads we can give you.

**Craig:** That sounds horrifying.

**Chris:** Excruciating.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I’m actually kind of interested, Pam in the – because these guys have kind of gone back and forth, right. And I know you’ve done live action, but this is a question that I think is sort of a – most people will say, look, you’ve been in live action. What are some of the things you can do in animation that you can’t do in live action? And people go into the idea of the worlds and the control of things. But is there a flip side to that? Are there things that you kind of miss or yearn for that you feel are easier or exclusively capable of doing in live action that you don’t get in animation?

**Pamela:** Yeah. Well I did TV before this and so that’s where you’re used to this sort of room. And so I miss being able to just really go for a run with jokes. You don’t have this kind of time. The movie has to be so short and the words get in the way. And sometimes you’re like, oh, I just would like four more puns.

**Craig:** Right. Like a chance to just live in the moment.

**Pamela:** Let’s be so silly for a minute. Yeah. And you can’t stay still. If they stop moving it looks broken. So everything’s got to keep going. And–

**Craig:** They stop moving it looks broken.

**Pamela:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s terrifying. I never realized that.

**Chris:** It’s like Speed, the movie Speed.

**Phil:** The bus has to keep going.

**Craig:** Like if someone stops they still have to have an eye twitch or something or people think the movie broke.

**Pamela:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Phil and Chris, we need you for another five minutes because you are doing another screening on the other side of town, so for people who live in Los Angeles like everyone here in this audience they know that you are going all the way to the west side for a screening. And so we are really tempting fate by having you here for as long as we can.

**Chris:** There’s a helicopter though.

**Pamela:** Oh, that’s nice. That’s big time.

**John:** The Golden Globe gets you the helicopter.

**Craig:** Just for on Waze.

**Phil:** We bumped into each other in our respective helicopters on our way here.

**Craig:** There’s a serious helicopter tie-up though heading out west. Sorry guys. It’s award season. What are you going to do?

**Phil:** What are you going to do?

**John:** Both having made animated features, what do you think live action folks can take from animation that would help them, especially writers to take from animation that would help them? Because it is such a collaborative process working in animation and that can be great but it can also be frustrating. What guidance could you offer folks who are trying to make the best movies, animation or live action, that you’ve learned, the lessons you’ve learned from doing animation?

**Phil:** I mean, I would say two things come to mind. One is what you’re getting at which is that these are collective works of art. That’s what makes them beautiful. You’ve got these huge crews. There’s a thousand people on this movie. Even a small movie that you’re making in film school is still a handful of folks and you’re cooperating and no one is getting murdered. Right? For the most part. And that’s a miracle in and of itself. And then together you’re making a work of art. That’s like to me that almost makes me cry it’s so beautiful.

Sometimes that work of art is terrible, but the fact that you’re doing that together is really great. So we try to – when we are our best selves we try to embrace that and we get a lot from our collaborators, our heads of department, and our fellow filmmakers, in this case these incredible 3D directors and it’s everyone in between. The janitor gives you notes and you take it. And that’s really important.

The other thing is that there’s an emphasis on how you visually and cinematically characterize something or someone. And that lesson should always be applied in live action. Like we start – like an animated movie that we’re directing with walk cycles and like little tests. Let’s just see a character designer move this character around on a piece of paper and see how they emote. Like when you’re talking to an actor or you’re thinking about a character on the page how do they walk? How do they move? How do they carry themselves? Those lessons are so valuable in live action because no one ever really – rarely talks to an actor about that kind of stuff.

**John:** Cool. Guys, thank you so much for joining us here. We’re going to send you guys on your way.

**Chris:** Thanks everybody.

**Phil:** Sorry you guys.

**John:** Thank you. Finally, they’re gone. All right. They were OK.

**Craig:** Jerks.

**John:** We can talk about them now that they’re gone. Pamela, thank you for sticking around.

**Pamela:** Oh sure. My brain is stuck on the sexual harassment elk. I just – hold on. I just have to get it out of my head.

**Craig:** It’s two fingers to the mill.

**Pamela:** The Time’s Up will be called The Buck Stops Here.

**John:** Hey!

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Thank you, thank you, thank you.

**Pamela:** That’s been sitting in my brain for so long. I feel better now, thank you for doing that with me. Thank you for humoring me. Thank you.

**Craig:** Hashtag.

**John:** They are gone. So now it’s time to welcome two new guests. First off is Zoanne Clack. She is an executive producer on Grey’s Anatomy. She has written a zillion episodes of the show. She is also a medical doctor. Zoanne Clack, welcome.

**Craig:** So if you guys have any “Is this infected?”

**Zoanne Clack:** Don’t come to me.

**Pamela:** Don’t. That’s gross.

**John:** Craig Mazin is the doctor on the show. But you’re an actual–

**Craig:** I am a doctor. I’m just not licensed.

**John:** All right.

**Zoanne:** I still am actually.

**Craig:** Or educated. Yeah, well you’re fancy. I cannot treat patients without committing a number of fraud felonies.

**John:** But you guys have both done autopsies, so that’s something.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I haven’t done the autopsy, but I have attended the autopsy.

**Zoanne:** I must admit I have not either done an actual autopsy. No.

**John:** That’s fine.

**Zoanne:** I’ve cut people open.

**John:** I’m a little disappointed in Zoanne. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed.

**Zoanne:** Usually they’re still alive. I try to keep them alive.

**Craig:** Yeah. They would never let me near an alive person. But I went to town on the dead ones because what could happen?

**John:** What is so surprising for all of us here is our next guest has done many autopsies. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong is an executive producer on Family Guy and The Orville. Come up Cherry!

**Craig:** She has not done autopsies.

**John:** No, I mean, I’m just assuming you’ve done autopsies.

**Zoanne:** You don’t have to answer that question.

**Cherry Chevapravatdumrong:** My parents wish. Like it’s a medical thing.

**Zoanne:** I was like, oh, there’s two of us.

**Craig:** It’s three. It’s three of us.

**Zoanne:** Sorry.

**John:** While we’re on the topic, let’s talk about parental expectations, because Zoanne Clack how did you become a medical doctor and then decide, you know what, I want to write about doctors rather than being one? What is the process of going from doctor to writer about doctors?

**Zoanne:** Well, I was one of those doctors who was told I was going to be a doctor from like the time I was like five. So, you know, I made good grades and I’m from Houston, Texas, and I’m the only daughter. Hey, Houston. I’m the only daughter of a single mom. So, all hopes, dreams, and aspirations fell on me.

So, you know, in order to be successful in African American culture, and I think a lot of others, you’re supposed to be a doctor or lawyer.

**Craig:** I can think of one other culture, for sure.

**Zoanne:** I’ve heard of your culture, Craig.

**Craig:** For sure.

**Zoanne:** And so I didn’t want to be a lawyer and so I was like I’ll do this doctor thing. So I basically, you know, I got chemistry sets for Christmas. I did that whole thing. I went straight in the science route. And then in high school I was like, wait, how old do you have to be? How old will you be when you – 26? That’s like forever, to a 17-year-old.

So I actually went to Northwestern and got into the radio, TV, film program. Oh, Northwestern. And then went home for the summer and looked at my mom and went back and did all my premed requirements because I realized that, you know, this whole starving artist thing I just couldn’t do it. My mom was a teacher who struggled through just putting food on the table, two jobs, that whole thing. So, it was like this is the stable way to go. That’s a pipedream. Just go on with your life.

And then it was ten years of straight medicine. Medical school. I went to residency. I did emergency medicine residency at Emory. No.

**Craig:** No, we don’t let those people in.

**Zoanne:** And I – east coast – I was basically burning out like my second year of residency, which usually it takes a lot longer. So I was trying to find what the next thing I was going to do and I tried a lot of different things. I worked for the CDC. I was going to do like another residency which was – that’s too much. I thought about doing binge research which who am I, I don’t know what that is.

So, it was just like I kind of refound that kind of dream that I had. And I started taking classes. And I was like, you know what, I have a pretty good day job and maybe I’ll just move out to LA and just do my day job and see what happens.

So, the most random part I think about the story is that I was kind of setting everything up in LA and I was, again, not the starving artist type. So I had my jobs lined up. I had my apartment lined up. I had friends here looking for jobs for me. And in the back of one of the emergency medicine magazines they were advertising for the ER person, like the onset consultant. And I was like oh my god that would be perfect for me.

**John:** ER the show? The show ER?

**Zoanne:** The ER show. So I sent off a letter. I heard nothing. And then I randomly mentioned it to like my mentor at Emory, which is in Atlanta, and also I never discussed like my artistic goals with my doctor/scientist friends. But I randomly mentioned it to him and he’s like, oh yeah, I trained with that guy who is hiring. Why don’t you mention my name? His name had literally been used in an episode of ER. That’s how close he was to this guy.

And so I sent off a letter with his name in it. Got an immediate meeting. Was the most excited I’d ever been about any job interview ever. Like literally giddy like a ten-year-old. Didn’t get the job. But I came out here anyway.

**Craig:** It worked out.

**John:** She’s doing fine.

**Zoanne:** This is the year 2000, so.

**Craig:** Like you guys know how the story ends. Don’t–

**Zoanne:** Like, aw. A collective sigh.

**Craig:** Oh no. Are you OK?

**Pamela:** She’s a good storyteller.

**Zoanne:** It was a hard like year. So I didn’t get the job, but I thought I wanted to act because that’s what you know when you’re from Houston. So I took some acting classes. And here’s the thing, like actors don’t just put drops in their eyes to cry. They have to drudge up all this mess. So I was drudging up all this stuff on the one hand, and as a doctor was told to push it all down. So, all of that was coming up and I didn’t have anywhere to put it. So I started writing and I was like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. And then I took some writing classes. And then when I had interviewed for ER they were like we’ll keep you in mind, which I thought was just Hollywood talk for we’ll never see you again. And they called me up like a year later and they were making Presidio Med. One of the executive producers, Lydia Woodward, was looking for a doctor. She didn’t know for what. And I was like I’ll be a consultant. I’ll be on set. But I’d really love to write.

So literally I pushed the first script I had ever written into her face and she hired me two months later.

**Cherry:** Wow.

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** Told you.

**John:** Happy ending. Now, Cherry, how did you disappoint your parents?

**Cherry:** Literally almost exactly the same way. I’m Asian. I was supposed to be a doctor. They told me I was going to be a doctor when I was five. I gave up on that and made them give up on that like halfway through high school, probably. But then after like undergrad I had a very useful psychology degree and they were like, “Yeah, no, now you should go to law school.” And that is shorter than med school. And it’s three years. And I thought maybe I could just sort of – I went to NYU and I thought secretly I could just get a job as a page at NBC or something. You know what I mean? I was just like, oh, I’ll just live in New York and then become a PA at SNL or something. And sort of get out that way.

Didn’t happen. So, wasted three years. It’s fine. It’s fine. You know what I mean? Like racked up a bunch of student loans.

**Craig:** It’s not a waste.

**Cherry:** Oh yeah, no.

**Craig:** It needed to happen.

**Cherry:** Yeah. But honestly it was kind of like three years of living in the big city, whatever, and then after that I was like confident enough and also had no more school to go to. So then I was like, OK, now I will move to LA. And then I got a job on a desk at CAA and that was my first job.

**John:** So you had the classic sort of like working at CAA, figuring out what Hollywood was, and how did you get from that to something that you wrote getting into someone’s hands that got you a job as a writer?

**Craig:** Because they want to know how can we work on Family Guy? They’re like how do we get that Job.

**Cherry:** Oh yeah. Oh my god. OK. So, yes, I did the assistant thing. I sort of like, but yeah, I worked at CAA. And then I worked for a couple TV producers. I was a writer’s assistant. And then at some point one of the – the guy that got me the job that enabled me to leave CAA, he was working on a show called Hope and Faith. He was the writer’s assistant there. Alex Carter. He works on Family Guy now. And he had mutual friends with some of the other people who worked on the show. Chris Sheridan was one of them. And I had applied to the CBS Writers Mentoring Program. A lot of the networks and studios had these programs and diversity initiatives. And as part of that I went and hung out in the writers’ rooms on the show Yes, Dear. And Chris Sheridan, who later became EP and showrunner of Family Guy, when it was canceled for the last time – he’s been on ever since, yay. But he was working on Yes, Dear at the time and I met him there. And he knew Alex Carter. So we kind of like had two ways of knowing each other.

So, yeah, when he was hiring for Family Guy he remembered me from hanging out in the Yes, Dear room. And this was a long time ago. So it’s like not being offended by jokes. He’s like, oh, she seems like she could hang. “Do you have a spec script?” And I was like yes. So that’s how – go – go through the normal fucked up shit that one would normally do in a writers’ room because that’s exactly what happened when I got the job. You got to get used to it. And, again, it’s a different atmosphere than it was over ten years ago now.

But, yeah, so that was kind of the thing. Oh, she seemed like she’d be cool. So, also, let me just make sure that the spec script is good. OK. And then he brought me in to meet with the other two EPs.

**Craig:** And off you went.

**John:** Now, Pam, you came up through television as well. Did you have the experience of being in rooms where bullshit was happening?

**Pamela:** Oh, I almost was like it was the style at the time. But I don’t know. I’m sure some level of assholery still continues in comedy rooms.

**Craig:** I really want you to say, “No.”

**Pamela:** No, every room I’ve ever been in has been very sweet. And we have tea. I was in a room that was mostly – one of my first comedy rooms was all Frasier writers. And so they just did not know what to do with me saying jokes with the word vagina in it. They were like, “What? Who is this youth?”

I came up through sketch and improv comedy in Austin and like I guess the modern day equivalent of how like you get discovered on Twitter, because I’m from the older net and I wrote online before there were blogs. And so, yeah, and then I did the Aspen Comedy Festival. And that led to a Comedy Central show where, yes, my job was to make terrible jokes that kill your soul. And then I got a sitcom after that. Started writing on those.

It’s the same thing. It’s like how much can you hang? How funny can you be? And how – you know, much like animation, you have to stay passionate but you can’t be precious about anything.

**Craig:** Right. This is an interesting kind of – I like the fact that we’re doing this little dive back in history because Zoanne you were in a very interesting position. It is an easy thing I think to ask anybody how has the television business and landscape changed, and even I can sort of talk about it and I’m very new to TV. But I’m kind of curious how has it changed from inside of one show? Because how long have you been on Grey’s Anatomy?

**John:** You were telling us before how many episodes there are. You just wrote –

**Zoanne:** I just wrote the episode that tied ER which was 331.

**Craig:** 331.

**Zoanne:** And we just did the table read for 332.

**Pamela:** Wow.

**Craig:** Grey’s Anatomy starts airing what year?

**Zoanne:** 2004.

**Craig:** 2004.

**John:** We had just started our podcast.

**Craig:** Correct, yeah.

**Zoanne:** Gave them all my best years.

**Craig:** I mean, just for the youngsters in the room. 2004 was three years before the iPhone existed. And so you have seen this landscape change massively and I’m just kind of curious as it has changed around you, inside the room have you felt it? And has the show had to kind of do interesting things as the world around it has changed?

**Zoanne:** You know, our show and Shondaland in general I think was a little ahead of the curve on that whole thing. So, when I first got the list of writers I was very disappointed being a single woman because there were like eight women in the writers’ rooms and like three dudes, all of which were married. I mean, that is like kind of unheard of, especially in comedy rooms I think.

**Cherry:** Come work at Family Guy. Lots of dudes.

**Zoanne:** Are you the only?

**Cherry:** For many years. There were many, many seasons where I was the only. And if I wasn’t, I was one out of two women. So, yeah.

**Zoanne:** Yeah. Completely opposite. So, we had our share of bad jokes and that sort of thing, but they were all acceptable to all of us because we were mostly of the same gender and we were aware of that. So, the only thing I feel like that’s changed is the different writers that I have just seen come and go throughout the years.

**Craig:** That’s kind of interesting in and of itself, right?

**Zoanne:** Yes, but there’s a subset of writers that tend to do well on our show and they’re always lovely people. So, I’ve always had a great time with all new sets through the years.

**John:** So, Cherry and Zoanne you’ve both been in situations where new writers have come on and as Megan and I were driving over here tonight we were talking about like someone that starts on Grey’s Anatomy on this season is there any expectation that they’ve gone back and watched all of the previous shows? You’re nodding. That terrifies me. How about for Family Guy?

**Cherry:** People who work on the show don’t watch the show. It’s fine. You know what I mean.

**Craig:** Slightly different vibe at Family Guy.

**Cherry:** You can miss some stuff.

**Craig:** They say like watch an episode of Family Guy.

**Cherry:** You know who Stewie is? You’re hired. Ok.

**Craig:** He’s the bald one.

**Cherry:** There’s too many. There’s just too many.

**Zoanne:** Our show is so serialized that literally we’ve told people to step out of the room until they have watched every episode.

**Pamela:** Oh my gosh.

**Zoanne:** I mean, but when you get hired it starts. And then–

**Craig:** But 331—

**Pamela:** They come back with like a husband and kids.

**Zoanne:** Well a lot of them have already seen a number of them when they get there because they come in as fans. So, that’s always helpful because you can see it from a fan’s point of view which is really nice.

**Craig:** So not only are you a veteran writer of the show but you are also a repository of an enormous amount of institutional wisdom. I mean, after that many shows it’s like a history of a country at that point.

**Zoanne:** Well, there are two writers with photographic memories, so they’re really helpful.

**Craig:** That works.

**Zoanne:** And then there’s a lot in the room of this phrase, “Uh, we’ve done that before.”

**Craig:** Family Guy, you never experience that, right?

**Cherry:** Oh my, it’s we’ve done that before or The Simpsons did it. Yeah.

**Craig:** Simpsons did it.

**Cherry:** So it’s like, ugh, and then it’s like how long ago was it? Maybe we can do it again and it’s fine?

**Zoanne:** How can we make it different? Like at the beginning it was like how can we do this story that ER had but in the Grey’s Anatomy way. And now it’s like how can we do this Grey’s Anatomy story in a different way?

**Craig:** Right.

**Pamela:** On Ralph most of the storyboard artists and Rich and Jim, they’re all from The Simpsons, and they had gotten in a run on something they thought would be funny. And I was like I’m so sorry to do this you guys but The Simpsons already did it. It was you and you. And they were like, “Oh yeah, we did it.”

**Craig:** You did it!

**Pamela:** Like literally you.

**Craig:** You did it. And they forgot.

**Zoanne:** That’s always surprising when it was yours. It’s like, oh, who’s episode was – oh, mine. No wonder I liked it so much.

**Pamela:** Yeah, that’s right.

**Craig:** There’s something kind of informative. I mean, and it comes out of what you were saying earlier and what Chris and Phil were saying. The volume of notes and work that is required. The 800 files. The 330 shows. I don’t know how many Family Guy is up to now. What are they up to, 14 million?

**Cherry:** Over 300. I don’t know. Something like that. Yeah.

**Craig:** Some insane number. That what you inevitably lose is any sense of preciousness. One of the hardest things about writing something for the first time is your experience, your general world of writing is one thing. And therefore that one thing is incredibly important and meaningful and therefore every scene is incredibly important and meaningful. Every word. These guys don’t have time for that. And in a weird way that’s kind of what you need to do even when you’re starting and you only have the one thing. You have to kind of think like there are 300 things behind this so let me not obsess over this one thing.

**Pamela:** Yeah. Because really you should already be writing your second thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Zoanne:** And Grey’s Anatomy fans will know what this alludes to, but we always say the carousel never stops turning.

**Craig:** So that was an episode where somebody lives. A baby perhaps lived? And gets to ride on the merry-go-round.

**Zoanne:** I love the huge groan.

**John:** So while we’re talking about things you have to keep repeating themselves again and again, I thought we might try a special little game thing that we rolled out. The impetus behind this was a listener question. He wrote in to ask – well, Craig and I say romantic comedies. I don’t know if you guys notice. But there were no romantic comedies, and Tess Morris came on the show and talked and we solved it. And Netflix made a bunch and now there are romantic comedies. And there’s even like big screen romantic comedies because of us.

**Craig:** We changed everything. Again.

**John:** Again. And so after having done that a listener wrote in to say like hey could you save the big screen Christmas comedy. And we said–

**Craig:** Sure. We can do anything.

**John:** We can do anything. And so we wanted to talk about the big screen Christmas comedy and sort of play a little game about this. So give me one second and pull up my notes.

**Craig:** Guys, it’s a John August game. It’s happening. While John is doing that I just want to mention we have a special guest star in the audience. Stuart. Stuart is here. Stuart. There’s no Stuart.

**Pamela:** Oh, that’s your Christmas movie.

**Craig:** There’s no such thing as Stuart.

**Pamela:** If we clap our hands maybe Stuart will appear.

**Craig:** I’m ready to play this game.

**John:** So, Craig, you’ll read the parts that say Craig.

**Craig:** Well, all right.

**John:** All right. Here’s the thinking. So back in 1843 Charles Dickens published his acclaimed novella A Christmas Carol, which tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly merchant visited by three ghosts who bully him into buying a goose for his employee’s family.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. What? That is not – they don’t bully him. Bully?

**John:** I think they’re bullying him. Aren’t they?

**Craig:** Whoa, that is a weird take on that. But OK, he’s a bad dude and they’re – OK, anyway. I mean, god sent those ghosts.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** This slender book has inculcated the idea that corporations rather than the state are responsible for lifting children out of poverty and starvation. What’s worse, they’ve made it so that every Christmas story must end with the hero learning a valuable yet incredibly obvious moral lesson. But what is that lesson?

**John:** So tonight we are going to try to figure it out with a new game we’re calling Santa Claus is Bumming Me Down. Do we have anyone in the audience who would like to play this game? So you’re going to have to guess which is the right moral lesson for these movies. Show of hands, somebody? Ideally fantastic would be somebody who did not grow up in the United States.

**Craig:** There we go.

**John:** That’s you. Right there. Did not grow up in the United States. What is your name sir?

**Mario:** My name is Mario.

**John:** Mario!

**Craig:** Mario.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Italian Mario?

**Mario:** Originally I think, but potentially – I grew up in Mexico till I was like 14.

**John:** That’s good.

**Craig:** It counts.

**John:** That’s going to be good.

**Craig:** That’s not this country.

**John:** So let’s–

**Craig:** You’re lucky.

**John:** Yes. So let’s talk through and we’re going to start our odyssey of Christmas movies with Four Christmases. Four Christmases tells – it’s from 2008 – tells the story–

**Craig:** Do you know this one?

**Mario:** Do I know the movie? I think I’ve watched it.

**Craig:** I think I’ve watched it is good enough.

**John:** Yeah. Close enough. In this story from 2008 a young couple struggles to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas day, learning about each other in ways that test their relationship. Is the moral…?

**Pamela:** A, Reese Witherspoon’s character may seem controlling and uptight, but really that girl is just whiskey in a teacup.

**John:** Or is it B?

**Zoanne:** B, if you’re dating a Vince Vaughn character be warned that his family will be drawn even more broadly to make him seem sympathetic.

**Craig:** Damn.

**John:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** C, family is important, even if it seems a little dysfunctional.

**John:** Mario, what is it? Is it A, B, or C?

**Mario:** I’m going to go ahead and say C.

**John:** It is in fact C. He’s seen the movie. That’s obvious right here. Next up, Craig, do you want to take it?

**Craig:** Yeah, have you seen Jingle All the Way from 1996?

**Mario:** I don’t believe so.

**Craig:** Good. Here we go.

**Mario:** Oh wait a second.

**Craig:** Do you know who that is?

**Mario:** We probably got this in Mexico in like 1998. That’s what happened.

**Craig:** That doesn’t help this. OK, we’ll try it anyway. A workaholic father promises to get his son the hottest toy of the season even though it’s Christmas Eve and the toy is practically sold out. As he hunts down the toy with Christmas morning approaching his ethical code is tested. Is the moral A…

**Pamela:** As Kahlil Gibran writes – never had to say that out loud – “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give up yourself that you truly give.”

**Craig:** Or B…

**Zoanne:** As Charles Darwin writes “A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.”

**Craig:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** As Sinbad says in his straight to video movie Shazaam, “This movie never existed. You’re suffering from the Mandela Effect.”

**John:** Mario, what is it? What is the answer?

**Mario:** I love C, but I’m going to go with A.

**John:** It is right. That’s the moral of that story. So far you’re two for two Mario. We need to stump you here. With Deck the Halls.

**Craig:** Did you say you’re from Mexico or New Mexico? Just be honest.

**Mario:** Mexico. Mexico City.

**Craig:** I just want to make sure.

**Mario:** Yeah, no, I was born in Mexico City.

**John:** Deck the Halls from 2006. A suburban dad and Christmas enthusiast tangles with his new neighbor who has plans to eliminate his house with enough holiday lights to make it visible from space. A war of one-upmanship threatens to drag Christmas through the slush. Is the moral, A?

**Pamela:** White suburban dads are a menace to the earth and must be stopped.

**Craig:** Do we need to go further?

**Mario:** I think that was it, yeah.

**Pamela:** It’s the answer to all these movies.

**Craig:** Well, just for fun let’s hear the other ones.

**Zoanne:** The Christmas spirit should illuminate your heart, not your neighbor’s bedroom.

**John:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** Don’t cross Danny DeVito. Seriously. He’s short but he’s scary.

**Mario:** It’s clearly C. No, B.

**John:** B. That is in fact correct.

**Craig:** Although I’ve got an argument for A. I got to be honest with you. As one, I have an argument for A.

**Zoanne:** A is strong.

**Craig:** A is strong.

**Pamela:** We would have accepted.

**Craig:** Let me ask you this. Have you seen Fred Claus?

**Mario:** I have not.

**Craig:** OK, here we go.

**Mario:** Neither had I seen the previous one.

**Craig:** Ok, good. Good. Fred Claus. Here we go.

**Pamela:** I don’t know this one at all.

**Craig:** When Santa’s criminal brother lands in real trouble – this was a real movie – I’ve written worse movies than this. When Santa’s criminal brother lands in real trouble Santa bails him out and brings him to the North Pole to work off the debt by making toys. The headaches mount for Saint Nick, who not only must deal with his trouble-making brother, but also an efficiency expert – shit – who has come to evaluate Santa’s operation, threatening the future of Christmas. Really?

**John:** I didn’t see this movie. But Megan wrote up the synopsis. I trust her. You can Wikipedia.

**Craig:** Is that right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right. Is the moral…Mario is the moral A?

**Pamela:** Differences can make for a stronger team and provide opportunities for personal development.

**Craig:** Or is it B?

**Zoanne:** Vince Vaughn has essentially one character, a snarky ne’er-do-well who is barely redeemed in the third act by making the absolute minimum contribution to the social contract.

**Craig:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** Like the journalists of Slate and New York Magazine, the elves of the North Pole need proper union representation.

**Craig:** It’s a tough one.

**John:** You’re doing good. Mario, which is it?

**Mario:** I’m going to go with B.

**Craig:** B, Vince Vaughn has essentially one character?

**Mario:** No. A. I’m going to go with A.

**John:** It’s A.

**Craig:** It’s A.

**John:** It’s A. All right.

**Craig:** This is not a hard game.

**John:** No, it’s not a hard game.

**Mario:** I know.

**John:** The conceit is that there’s two funny answers and one correct answer.

**Craig:** It’s not a strong – it’s not a challenge.

**Pamela:** But doesn’t it seem like the note the movie got? Do you think this movie could be about…?

**Mario:** I noticed there’s a lot of Vince Vaughn in this movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There are.

**John:** I would say that never having seen Fred Claus, you know that Vince Vaughn hooks up with the efficiency expert. That is guaranteed based on the description.

**Pamela:** Yeah. Place is a real mess when they’re done.

**John:** Now Mario have you seen Jack Frost from 1998?

**Mario:** I have not.

**John:** Oh, all right. We’re good here.

**Craig:** Who has?

**Zoanne:** It looks frightening.

**John:** Show of hands.

**Craig:** No way!

**John:** Wow. So many people have seen this movie.

**Craig:** You guys have way too much time on your hands. Let’s go.

**John:** So, Jack Frost. A year after his tragic death an inattentive father is magically resurrected as a snowman. Given this second chance the father and son struggle to make up for lost time. Is the moral – sorry Pam.

**Pamela:** Oh my goodness. Does he hug him? There’s so many scenes in my head. I’m sorry. Is the moral do you want to build a snowman? You won’t after seeing Michael Keaton’s turn as a Colorado jazz man who wants to prove he’s literally the world’s coolest dad.

**John:** Or is it B?

**Zoanne:** “Snow dad is better than no dad” is actual dialogue from the movie.

**John:** That is confirmed.

**Pamela:** Oh my god.

**John:** Or, bring us home Cherry.

**Cherry:** Don’t take the people you love for granted because you might die and not be resurrected as an ice gollum.

**John:** Mario, help us out.

**Mario:** I’m going to go with C.

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

**Craig:** Yeah it’s C.

**John:** All right. Craig, we are up to Surviving Christmas.

**Craig:** Have you seen that one?

**John:** From 2004.

**Craig:** They’re all blending together now, aren’t they?

**Pamela:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s all a big mush.

**Mario:** I don’t think so.

**Craig:** All right. Here we go. Focus Mario because this is hard. It’s as hard as all the other ones. A wealthy executive has no close relationships and becomes nostalgic for his childhood home as Christmas approaches. When he visits the house and finds another family living there he offers the residence a large sum of money to pretend they are his parents. Soon, he tests the couple’s patience and things get increasingly complicated with the arrival of their real daughter. Is the moral, A?

**Pamela:** The spirit of Christmas is not about the hollow traditions but about the people you share them with. For instance, Tony Soprano.

**Craig:** Or is it B?

**Zoanne:** If Vince Vaughn is unavailable for your Christmas comedy, Oscar-winner Ben Affleck can and will fill that role.

**Craig:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** Never invite a yuppie into your home.

**Craig:** This one is hard. I actually don’t know this one. What do you think?

**Mario:** Sounds like it’s C, but.

**Craig:** Never invite a yuppie into your home?

**Mario:** We’re going to go with A.

**Craig:** A.

**John:** The spirit of Christmas.

**Craig:** That’s obviously what it was. It wasn’t hard. I was kidding.

**John:** These are gimme questions.

**Craig:** Should we do one more?

**John:** We’ll do one last one.

**Craig:** Let’s do one more.

**John:** So the last one will be The Santa Claus 3. Did you see the three-quel? Did you see Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause?

**Mario:** I was not aware there was a first one.

**Craig:** Oh, this could work.

**John:** This is the 2006 one. So this is the synopsis. Christmas cheer turns into holiday chaos when Santa invites his in-laws for a visit and must simultaneously contend with Jack Frost’s scheme to trick Santa into renouncing his title and creating an alternate timeline devoid of Christmas cheer.

**Craig:** That is a great idea for a movie. No. No. No.

**John:** Is the moral?

**Pamela:** A, when making a sequel to a sequel start with the tag line and work backwards.

**John:** Or is it B?

**Zoanne:** Be true to yourself.

**John:** Or is it C?

**Cherry:** There is no moral. There is no objective reality. We are simply living in a snow globe on the shelf of some alien civilization, or maybe some kind of Matrix-like simulation.

**John:** Mario, what is the moral of Santa Claus 3?

**Mario:** I have to go with B.

**Craig:** I like that Mario would never even go with the wrong answer just for fun.

**John:** Absolutely. Mario, the moral is to be true to yourself. And there you’ve done it. Mario, you have completely aced the game. Thank you very much.

**Craig:** You aced it. Thank you Mario.

**John:** As our winner you get a Writer Emergency Pack. We’ll give it to your afterwards. Come up afterwards.

**Craig:** Outstanding work.

**John:** Outstanding work. That was good. So, I would say if we’re going to bring back the Christmas movie we’ve got a lot of work because I don’t want to necessarily see any of those movies remade.

**Craig:** It’s sort of the problem is that Christmas is about essentially one thing, you know, which is it is better to give than to receive and family stuff.

**Pamela:** And learning the true meaning of blah-blah-blah.

**Craig:** Right. Learning the true meaning of blah-blah-blah.

**Cherry:** And Santa Claus.

**Craig:** And Santa Claus doing something involved – because even when they’re like, oh, let’s do a funny thing where Santa Claus is this, or the elves are that, and it still always comes down to the same. But I guess people like that. It’s Christmas.

**John:** It’s Christmas.

**Craig:** You know there’s a song.

**Pamela:** Oh!

**Craig:** I sometimes do that.

**Pamela:** Oh, I wanted a piano to just slide right in. Animation.

**Craig:** A new song in 1994, wait, let me get this right, was on the Billboard Top 100 list and it has been on the Billboard Top 100 list every year since 1994. What is that song?

**John:** All I Want for Christmas is You.

**Craig:** All I Want for Christmas is You. Mariah Carey. Yeah. Christmas, man. It works.

**John:** That’s the point of this.

**Craig:** Well, you know, Jewish people are always just like ooh.

**John:** Ooh, Christmas.

**Craig:** That shit works on people.

**Pamela:** They’re fun to come up with though. Like at dinner last week my girlfriend and I were like here’s one.

**Craig:** What, oh like a Christmas movie?

**Pamela:** Yeah. We came up with a Christmas movie. It’s really good.

**Craig:** OK, what’s yours?

**John:** You don’t have to pitch the whole thing. Just at least give–

**Craig:** Just give us the basics.

**Pamela:** I don’t have the whole thing. It’s about a girl who is lonely at Christmas so she goes to rescue a cat and she falls in love with the guy at the rescue shelter and like the cat is trying to teach her the true meaning of Christmas because Santa is trapped inside the cat. And it’s called…

**Craig:** What’s it called?

**Pamela:** Mr. Claws.

**John:** That’s the way.

**Craig:** I like it.

**Pamela:** She wanted to call it The Nine Lives of Christmas though.

**John:** No, no.

**Craig:** Well, she sucks and you’re awesome.

**John:** It’s probably a Kevin Spacey movie.

**Craig:** Can you do an animated movie about two snowflakes that are friends except they’re exactly alike and in the snowflake world that’s terrible and so they have to split up. And then they make their way back to each other but then one of them melts or something? Isn’t there like a–?

**Zoanne:** Oh.

**Craig:** Yeah, right.

**Pamela:** Isn’t that Frozen?

**Craig:** That was about ladies.

**Pamela:** Yes, I know, but.

**Craig:** These are snowflakes.

**Zoanne:** Anything in the snow world I think is now Frozen.

**Craig:** You’re a sicko.

**Pamela:** I’m sorry.

**John:** It has come time in our podcast where we invite you guys to ask questions of us. And so we have two microphones. We have people who will hold these microphones. If you have a question you would like to ask me and Craig or our wonderful panelists you may raise your hand and a person will find you and bring you the microphone. So I see some people over here. How about you over here. We’ll start with you.

**Audience Member:** Hi. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about specifically writing for animated movies, about not forgetting what you wrote. Especially when it comes to emotional connectivity with your character from the beginning.

**John:** Pamela what was the emotional connection for you as you started approaching this Ralph movie?

**Pamela:** Well, you know, this is a sequel so you know it’s about Ralph and Vanellope and their friendship and so there’s a feeling that comes with that that you’re aiming toward. So, sometimes it will get far away from that. It will start to get dark or it becomes someone’s movie more than the other movie. And it just doesn’t feel true to them. I think it’s a little harder on something like Moana where there isn’t – you’re like well what will she be? But you definitely know that feeling when she’s working, when she is that navigator with that spirit.

So I think you’re really more emotionally feeling through that movie than anything else. We know that we can make it funny later. And we know that the action is going to be there. So you really are more I think writing towards the emotion most of the time.

**John:** In the Ralph movie, not a huge spoiler here, but actually in kind of both movies but especially the second one I noticed that Ralph is protagonist and villain. It’s his needs are what is creating the story but also destroying the world that he’s built. Was that part of it from the very start? Was there a villain in the story for a while but it got tossed out?

**Pamela:** We did have a villain in some versions. She was a virus. She was built to eradicate viruses. She was a security guard based off of Phil’s mom. And the problem was, whenever we had another villain, Ralph and Vanellope would sort of arc too early. You know, they’d get along and then they’d save the day and it just felt like the movie kind of ended as soon as they were in love again.

**Craig:** There’s no conflict.

**Pamela:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you need conflict.

**Pamela:** Well, and you mostly want – you’re just rooting for them to fix what’s wrong. You know they can get through anything together once they’re together.

**Craig:** Yeah. It seems like honestly to answer your question that animated movies are pure story and therefore the thing that people would obsess over the most is the emotional integrity of the piece. And then on top of that you layer in the fun.

**Pamela:** Right. Because when the demographic is every single person in the whole wide world you have to make them feel. Not everybody is going to get every joke and not everybody wants every action sequence, but they want to feel the whole time no matter how old or young they are. And so that’s what you’re talking toward, the inner child.

**Audience Member:** Thank you so much.

**John:** Thank you. Another question. I see a hand back over there.

**Audience Member:** Question for all of you. The most useful and least useful note you’ve gotten from executives.

**John:** The single most useful note, and I think I’ve told this on the podcast before, was I was in a meeting on Big Fish with producers Dan Jinx and Bruce Cohen and we had been through a couple of drafts and we were at sort of this place like is this movie getting made or not getting made. And Dan Jinx said to me, he’s like, “You have Will saying this great story about his father at the funeral. What would it be like if he said that story to his father before he died?” And it was such a simple thing but so completely transformative that I stopped him and was like, OK, no, no, we’re done. I’m going to do this. It’s going to be really, really good. That was a fantastic transformative note.

The bad notes I’ve gotten have been the ones where they’re trying to transform a thing I’ve written into something that is just completely not what it wants to be. And either moving out of a place of fear or just like they just had a completely different vision and there’s just no way that this is going to overlap. Craig?

**Craig:** I mean, the best note I ever got I think was just it’s like an overall thing that I think about all the time from Lindsay Doran. Because I used to think about character as the most important thing. Like the character, the character, the character, the character. And she said, “Don’t think about character. Think about the central relationship.” And therefore there’s no more character, there’s characters, and there’s the magic in that stuff that happens between them. That actually is what we think of. That is where the fun and all the dirt and the grit and the relief and joy is. So, I always think about relationship now instead of character.

And the worst note in general is anytime someone says, “This character is not likeable. Can you make them more likeable?” And my instinct is I’m going to make them less likeable now. Like me.

**Pamela:** I once got this note, “Be mindful of the pacing. The scene is too long and too short.” And I wrote it down because that note was given to my face. And then I printed it out and I put it on the wall and I was like – and then a few years later I was telling that story to someone and they went, “That’s actually pretty profound.” And I looked at like the scene I was writing at that point and I was like, “It is too long and too short.” And it went from being the dumbest note to like it’s a really good note. A scene really can–

**Craig:** It can.

**Pamela:** Just do both.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Zoanne?

**Zoanne:** On Grey’s Anatomy we live in this fantasy lovely world where we don’t get notes anymore from executives. We get notes internally. But it’s a lovely world. You should join us there. But I am working on pilots now and one I’m working on now I would say is probably a good and bad note all tied in to one. I mean, I was trying to introduce three characters at the same time in a pilot where you have to like set up everything. And they were like, “Let’s focus on one character,” after I literally like pitched for months these three characters. And so I’m still working through that. But I feel that it was probably a good note, but it feels like a really bad note.

**John:** Cherry, any good note and bad notes you got?

**Cherry:** A good note, this was from my manager, not a network executive. Can’t think of a good one from a – but early on she said that, you know, it’s like comedy writers always joke, joke, joke, joke all the time. And she had a note like towards the end of one of my scripts that you can sort of let the scene be emotional and not have to suddenly turn around at the end and like funny, funny line.

Bad note, I literally think somebody at Family Guy once gave a note to have like Stewie talk to Lois or something, but the whole point was not that Seth doesn’t have – you know what mean? I was just like, wait, what’s happening? It was just very like–

**Craig:** Your brain shut down it was so bad.

**Cherry:** I think it was a weird mistake or just like what? Because usually especially later on in a show’s run you’re like, please, don’t even try. Thanks.

**Craig:** That’s fun.

**John:** All right. We’ve got time for one more question. Who has that question?

**Audience Member:** My question is for the ladies. I know a few of you mentioned – sorry Craig.

**Craig:** No worries.

**Audience Member:** A few of you mentioned the experience of being the only woman in the room and that’s something that I’m really interested in. And as someone kind of coming up now what advice do you have for women, people of color, people with disabilities, anyone who feels like they’re the only one in the room?

**Pamela:** Well, I have always made a point to point it out if I find I’m the only woman in the room, just with a simple gentleman. Like the amount of times I’ll start an email that’s all notes I’ll be like, “Gentleman,” and I’m not even trying to be a dick. I’m just saying like hi, this should not be the case, this is a sitcom about women. I’m the only one. And I’m a staff writer. And so let’s get some ladies.

You know, now I find if there’s another woman and she’s near the room I’m like do you want to – how can you get in the room? Do you want to be in the room? So there’s that. It’s like find your peers. Talk. If we all stay isolated as the only woman in the room we don’t learn that we’re all going through the same thing in all these different rooms. And you just have to get – I think there was a long time of women being grateful to have the one seat. So it’s like we have to be past being grateful and start finding more chairs.

**Zoanne:** Well, again, I live in a fantasy world in which women rule everything.

**Pamela:** It’s like Wonder Woman, right, where you guys are.

**Zoanne:** There was one man/woman partnership at some point, but they have all been women, and usually it’s predominately women. I think right now it’s like 60/40 in the room. But I will say that this is a wonderful time for women and people of color to be breaking in just because people are – it’s very much on their minds. It’s very much a thing. And if you have that good work to back you up people are trying to include us. They’re trying to be inclusive.

There was just a layout in the Hollywood Reporter about the black women writers and there were – it’s just a beautiful spread and it was a lovely time and I find of forgot to turn in the questions so I don’t have any quotes, but I’m in the picture. And it was wonderful to see all of these working black women writers who were lifting each other up and supporting each other. We have like a Facebook page that any time there’s an assistant thing that comes up, or a writer’s thing that comes up we post on that page so that we can have more of us knowing who is out there.

So, it’s really about networking and trying to find those people and lifting each other up.

**John:** Cherry, any thoughts?

**Cherry:** OK, here’s, no.

**Zoanne:** Tell me the secret.

**Cherry:** I mean, I think it would be much rarer for anyone today to go through the same kind of room that I went through when I started just being such a vast difference because they’re trying harder to make rooms more diverse in all ways. So I actually think you have a good shot at not having to deal with it.

But I think today you could stand your ground. Like I would say for sure in rooms 10, 12 years ago, you know, somebody said something you’d just be like, “Ha, ha, ha, it’s cool.” Because you just want to show up, you want to do good work, you want to keep your job. And then one day hopefully you will be in charge and you can like women and all that.

But, today I think actually if you decided to point something out it would – people are more willing to listen. It would go over better today than it would a decade or so ago.

**Pamela:** Yeah. It’s also not necessarily your job to have to point it out, but it’s someone’s job. So you can go find the person who is supposed to be fixing this shit.

**Cherry:** And don’t feel like you have to do it, but if you – I think today if you wanted to and you wanted to be that person it would go over better than for instance my advice to someone like from ten years ago might be like, “You know what, just like let it slide. That’s just how rooms are.” And I think today rooms are not necessarily like that anymore.

**Craig:** I wonder if there used to be an attitude when anybody would complain about any kind of just feeling excluded, or being treated differently, or an other, that someone would basically address the complaint by saying, “No, actually you don’t have that problem. There’s not a problem.” And I think now if you were to say that people would immediately start to sweat. But then once they got past the personal terror phase they would say, “OK, I acknowledge there’s a problem. If you’re saying there’s a problem there’s a problem.” It has to be a different–

**John:** Well, the cost of doing nothing is a lot higher now.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** So that’s a positive change that’s happened.

We have a tiny bit of follow up here at the end of our show. This is John’s WGA Corner. But actually Craig is a former WGA and Zoanne Clack has just left the WGA board after several terms there. Zoanne Clack has moved on to be – she’s now on the WGA Health Fund.

**Zoanne:** Pension and Health Trustee.

**John:** Oh, she’s a trustee of pension and health.

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** We have an actual doctor on that. So thank you very much for that. The things I want to remind you about, if you are a WGA member, east or west, you got an email from the guild asking you to take a quick survey about where you’re represented, meaning your agent, your manager, your lawyer. Craig, Aline and I just sent out an email about that.

**Craig:** Apparently.

**John:** Yeah. You signed your name on it.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So this is your second reminder to fill out the damn survey. And Craig, talk to us about our next live show.

**Craig:** Our next live show will be January 27th at the WGA Theater. That’s the one in Beverly Hills. Where we will be screening William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. You know we do our little deep dive every like three years. We’re going deep dive on The Princess Bride.

**John:** So please join us for that.

**Craig:** You’re going to want to be there for that. That is open to everyone. That is not WGA only. That is open to everybody. More details as they become available.

**John:** Great. And that is our show for this evening. We have some people we need to thank. Thank you to our amazing guests.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** This is a benefit for the Writers Guild Foundation. We need to thank Enid Portuguez and Dustin Fleischmann for putting tonight together. Here at the LA Film School I especially want to thank Jared and Tayshaun for getting our audio fixed and figuring it out. Bless you guys for that.

Our show as always is produced by Megan McDonnell. And edited by Matthew Chilelli, who are both here tonight. Thank you guys very, very much. And thank you guys all very much for coming out here. Thank you. Have a good night.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

Links:

* Thank you, [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/) for making this event happen!
* And thank you to our incredible guests: [Pamela Ribon](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0962596/), [Phil Lord](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0520488/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1) and [Chris Miller](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588087/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1), [Zoanne Clack](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1333505/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1) and [Cherry Chevapravatdumrong](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2213739/?ref_=nv_sr_1)!
* Featured movies in the Santa Claus Is Bumming Me Down game are [Four Christmases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Christmases), [Jingle All The Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_All_the_Way), [Deck the Halls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_the_Halls_(2006_film)), [Fred Claus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Claus), [Jack Frost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Frost_(1998_film)), [Surviving Christmas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_Christmas) and [The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Santa_Clause_3:_The_Escape_Clause).
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
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* [Chris Miller](https://twitter.com/chrizmillr) on Twitter
* [Zoanne Clack](https://twitter.com/zoanneclack) on Twitter
* [Cherry Chevapravatdumrong](https://twitter.com/cherrycheva) on Twitter
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Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_379.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/the-second-draft).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 377 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig is out sick today, but luckily we have two remarkable screenwriters to take his place. And today on the show we’re going to be talking about the second draft, and hopefully offering some practical tips for your first big rewrite on a project. Then we’ll be digging into questions from the mail bag.

To help us out we are welcoming back the writers of The Invitation, Ride Along, and the upcoming Destroyer, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.

**Matt Manfredi:** Hello.

**Phil Hay:** Hey John.

**John:** You joined us on Episode 244. My first question for you is what did we talk about in Episode 244?

**Phil:** We talked about our motion picture The Invitation.

**John:** You did.

**Phil:** We talked about reboots and preboots.

**Matt:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Very nice you remember. And do you remember the specific term that we were trying to suss out?

**Phil:** It wasn’t preboot?

**John:** It wasn’t preboot, but preboot is really close to it.

**Phil:** It was pre-imagining?

**John:** Requel.

**Matt:** Requel.

**John:** Was the word of the day.

**Matt:** It didn’t catch on.

**Phil:** Clearly it’s dead.

**Matt:** Preboot really still has a chance.

**John:** Preboot has a good chance. I think we’re all pulling for preboot. I think I’m working on a preboot right now.

**Phil:** Is that right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** You’re keeping it alive. There’s hope.

**John:** Before we get started today, some news on Scriptnotes land. We have our holiday show December 12th in Hollywood and Zoanna Clack of Grey’s Anatomy is a guest. Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. And Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville will be joining us. Plus, Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie, Lego Movie 2, Last Man on Earth, Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a remarkable lineup of guests.

**Phil:** Great lineup, John.

**John:** Great lineup.

**Matt:** Murderer’s Row.

**John:** Murderer’s Row. Come join us in Hollywood December 12th. It’s a benefit for The Writers Guild Foundation. You can find tickets. Just click on the link in the show notes or go to wgafoundation.org.

Phil and Matt, we have some follow up on previous episode stuff. I’m hoping you can help us out here because Craig is gone so we’re going to pretend that you guys are all the way caught up on all your back episodes of Scriptnotes. I asked in a previous episode whether other industries had a way of dealing with endless pitches. And sort of like when you go in to pitch on a thing like 19 times. Have you ever encountered that situation?

**Phil:** We have tried to really limit that recently, but I think everybody has encountered that. You know, where the goal posts sort of keep moving and the existence of the job itself starts to become in question.

**Matt:** And early, I mean, like especially starting out you pitch to the lowest person on the totem pole and you work your way up, and you work your way up. Or sometimes even worse, they pitch it all the way up and it just gets bastardized and bastardized.

**John:** Yeah. It’s bad. So specifically we’re trying to get to the situations where like you’ve gone in like 10 times to pitch on a project and it’s just not clear whether they’re ever going to do anything on this.

So I asked on the podcast whether people had suggestions from other industries about how they deal with these situations. So two people wrote in. Chris wrote in to say that she works as a production manager on commercials and she says, “Whenever we audition actors they need to fill out an initial Exhibit E, an audition time card. Depending on how long they are kept for an audition or how many auditions they are called in for, they are entitled to some payment.”

So we’ll send a link to the SAG form for Exhibit E. So there’s some record of how many times they’re going in on a project and if they are held for longer than a certain period of time they have to be paid for that audition.

Would you want to be paid for a pitch?

**Phil:** I think that regardless of me personally it actually sounds like a pretty feasible idea to – wasn’t there a concept way back in the old day, something called approach money or something like that? I feel like I’ve heard a term where it’s just saying we are officially asking you to come and basically “do a prototype for us,” which is your pitch, and we’ll pay you a very modest amount of money to do it, but we are paying you.

And so, you know, if we call you in for a second time we’re going to pay you again. I mean, I’m sure there’s a million reasons that people don’t want to do that, but the amount of labor that goes in to trying to get a job is so significant that, you know, I’m not writing those checks but I think it would be extremely helpful and useful because it would also make sure – I mean, it would increase the odds that there was something at the end of that process. That they’re going to invest even a small amount of money means that they think it’s headed somewhere.

**Matt:** I wonder if it’s past a certain point. You know what I mean? As a freelancer, essentially, I feel like the initial pitch is part of my job. I want to get the job. I’m essentially auditioning for the job. But once I’ve gone in, we’ve discussed our take, this is what I would do with the project. Once we get past a certain level, I don’t know what that level is, it does seem like some kind of thing would be–

**John:** Yeah. I mean, as we talked about in No Work Left Behind, this idea of making sure you’re not leaving written material behind after a pitch, so often we hear that writers lose the job to no one. Basically they just decided that there’s no – like that idea wasn’t a very good idea and so we’ve wasted everyone’s time trying to do this.

**Phil:** Thank you for proving to us that we shouldn’t ever spend any money hiring anyone to do it.

**John:** And so if there were some cost to actually having done that search process, you know, I think you could rein that in a little bit. We look at these mini rooms where they bring in a bunch of writers to crack an idea. They have like a piece of IP and they’re bringing in five writers to work for a month to try to crack that stuff. Those writers are at least getting paid. There’s a thing there. Intellectual labor is being rewarded. So, it feels like there’s some way to be thinking about that.

**Phil:** Well, and there’s a structure in place, right, so that there then can be rules. And there can be – maybe this is what complicates it – the ownership of the material. What are you selling when you take that money? So maybe that’s maybe the rub. But, yeah, I think that increasingly we’ve been talking – we talked about this a lot that just the job of the screenwriter now – the job of your typical screenwriter includes so much unpaid time that is very – it’s intense work.

**Matt:** I think it’s expanded. I think it’s a lot worse than it used to be.

**Phil:** Yeah. I agree.

**John:** I think even the nature of what a screenwriter is supposed to be doing has changed so much even in the 20 years I’ve been doing this is that screenplays have evolved into this thing which is not just a plan for making a movie but is really like a kind of marketing – it’s a vision document for what this is. It’s like a director’s reel but in a printed form.

**Phil:** It’s interesting. Yeah. Because we all came up with an edict that someone taught us, which is saying every draft is a sales piece. You’re selling to someone. You’re selling to first the studio or first a producer, then you’re selling to an actor, you’re selling to a director. But it does seem like you started selling now constantly. The organization, the principles by which this thing is going to be in the public you’re starting to sell within the screenplay itself.

**John:** A way you might get there, so Philip in Hamburg, Germany wrote to say that he works in advertising in Germany where pitches have gotten very competitive and big. Sometimes it’s two to four weeks fulltime to meet the deadline for the pitch, costs up to $100,000 in man hours, all of it for free. “So we managed to improve the situation. Companies are now starting to increasingly pay a pitch fee which often doesn’t cover all the costs but it’s something.” So he says, “The way it changed was for three things.” First, they made the clients aware of the situation and asked for the money. Because sometimes the clients really didn’t know how long it was taking or sort of how much they were spending on it. They got stronger together. So there’s an association for creative agencies. We have the WGA. And they started lobbying on behalf of the topic.

And finally they just started saying no. They would actually decide not to go in on a pitch because they didn’t feel like – if they weren’t going to get paid for pitching they would just politely say no. And so as writers, I mean, sometimes we’re spending 10 hours, 20 hours, more getting a pitch ready or going to talk about a movie, but it’s the directors who actually weirdly have it worse. Sometimes those directors who are trying to land those jobs because they’re the ones who have written in to say like, you know, I’m spending two months developing this reel to sort of promote myself as a director for this and I’m not getting those jobs. So maybe that’s the case where if they really are curious about that director, they need to be sending some money that director’s way to build that reel or to build up that proof of concept.

**Matt:** Yeah. And Phil gets at a point earlier, like if they do pay you for a pitch, a writer for a pitch, where does that come in terms of work for hire, in terms of chain of title? What is then owned? You know what I mean? Like it gets into a–

**John:** Yeah. But if they’re not actually taking a written document then maybe it’s not so bad. Basically if they’re paying for your time and they’re paying you for your time to meet you to talk about stuff, maybe that’s–

Phil Hay: Also there’s such a cultural–

**Matt:** It’s like a roundtable. You know?

**Phil:** There’s a cultural issue at hand which is the – and I think it’s always been weirdly baked in – but it seems increasing where there’s a sort of resentment toward paying people to do something creative. You know that there is a baked in societal kind of like wanting to get away with just kind of taking that work. Or just saying, I mean, in the world of kind of freelancers out there in the world that classic thing of like well what is the payment? “Well exposure.”

**John:** Of course.

**Phil:** For exposure. And so there’s that component, too, where I think in a way it’s not hard to imagine a slightly different society which says, yeah, of course, you should be – if you are attempting to create something or you are using your labor at their request to come in and potentially then be hired to create something complete that would make sense.

But I think we do have this cultural idea that there’s kind of a resentment toward that work.

**Matt:** There’s also something that my wife experiences. She designs book jackets. And if you’re designing a book jacket and it just doesn’t work out for various reasons you get a kill fee, which is like half of your fee. Do you know what I mean? There is something past a certain point where if you don’t get the job there’s essentially a kill fee as opposed to on the front end.

**John:** Obviously as writers we’re paid for our words, but we’re also valued for our time, and so making sure that we get the value out of that time is crucial.

**Phil:** And you also have to really peer through the language to figure it out, because so often we hear like – now we’re fortunate to be in a position where we say, OK, if it’s going to be multiple people then we’ll just back out. You can hire one of those other people, but we’re not going to spend the time to go in and do all this work.

**John:** So you’ll ask?

**Phil:** Yeah. We will ask. And we’ll kind of make sure we ask and then make sure our agents ask and make sure everybody is asking because there’s also all these way around. You hear so many times, I’m sure John you’ve heard it many times, “Well we really want you. Believe me, we really want you for this. We just need the – just give me something. And then I can just force it through. But we just have to as a formality.” There’s always something behind that.

**John:** Yeah. There was a project recently where I assumed I was the only person going in. And it wasn’t until I actually had landed the job where I talked to other folks like, “Oh yeah, I was up for that. I pitched a couple times on that.” I had no idea. So I felt really great that I got it, but also it was like, wow, I just assumed that I was the only person you were talking to.

**Phil:** We once ran into in the lobby of a studio we ran into Craig. And we were like wait a minute. And Craig was like, “Wait a minute.” And then it turned out to be for different things, so it was OK. But for a second we were like hold on.

**John:** Hold on. So, these are jobs that you’re going in to pitch on, things that already exist and you’re trying to land. But increasingly you guys have been making your own stuff. And so you were here last time to talk about The Invitation. Your new movie is Destroyer. And let’s listen to a clip. Phil, can you set up this clip we’re about to listen to?

**Phil:** This is an encounter between Erin Bell, who is the lead character, played by Nicole Kidman, and her teenage daughter Shelby who she has a very fraught relationship with. And this is sort of a scene of honesty between them.

[Clip plays]

**John:** Great. So that is a really quiet moment, because I was trying to find some big shouty moment, and there clearly is a tremendous amount of action, but that action has no words that would actually make sense on a podcast.

**Phil:** We’d like to try.

**John:** So, the reviews are fantastic. Raves. And so most of them talk about how great Nicole Kidman is and Karyn Kusama who directs it. But I had to dig pretty deep to find one review that really emphasized the script. But I did. I found it. So it says, “[John speaks in Spanish.]”

So guys, that’s pretty amazing.

**Phil:** That is amazing.

**John:** So what Maria Fernandez is saying is that beyond Nicole Kidman’s remarkable performance and a very solid cast, the most impressive thing about Destroyer is the sophistication of its scripting and its mise en scène.

**Phil:** Right on.

**Matt:** All right.

**Phil:** Well I think what’s interesting that we’ve encountered, you know, Nicole has made this point many times, and Karyn makes this point many times is to us there definitely is a natural tendency to – what Nicole does is truly astounding to me. I mean, it’s a performance that I am so blown away by just as a person watching it.

**Matt:** And she’s in every scene of the movie.

**Phil:** She really is.

**John:** It’s entirely on her back.

**Phil:** And so I understand and love that that attention is there for her. But if you ask Nicole and you ask Karyn, I think to all of us the character is the story, is the direction, is the performance, is the story, is the direction, is the performance. That they are all completely unified. And this character is, you know, for us the whole movie also for us flows through this one character and she is the focus of everything. And so to me it’s one of the most unified movies that we’ve ever been involved in because of what I just said. It is this story of this person who we tried very hard to give every dimension we could as a human being.

**John:** So, let’s talk about sort of how you conceptualize, pitch, write, set up a movie like this movie. Because this isn’t a thing where you’re going in. There wasn’t a book. There wasn’t an anything. This was an idea. And so where does the idea for this character and for this world become a thing that you guys do? At one point does Karyn become involved? And how do you say like this is the next thing we’re going to do? What is the process of saying, OK, we have this character and this world, this is the movie we’re going to make? What is that process?

**Matt:** We had just finished up The Invitation. And we were thinking of what the next thing we were going to do is. And we had this idea that had been kind of marinating for like 10 years. And it was this structure for a cop movie. We had all these scenes that kind of supported the structure and we were just kind of like – it’s kind of a complicated structure so we would pick it up and put it down.

**John:** Now you said you had these scenes and these ideas, so how much had been written versus just like kind of note carded or sketched?

**Matt:** Notes, like little notes documents.

**Phil:** And really like conversations more than anything else.

**Matt:** Conversations. We had spent so much time discussing it. And then finally, so we kind of knew the general direction of it, but we kept running into a wall until we discovered – and maybe it seems obvious – but until we discovered the character of Erin Bell who was going to populate this world and her relationship with her daughter. And when we actually outlined it and put all the cards up on the wall, I mean we knew it was going to be for Karyn, and so we brought her in, took her through the outline. Kind of like half-pitched it to her. And she gave some ideas. And then we were just off to write it. And that was kind of – from there Karyn started making her look book and stuff and she was kind of off to the races. And so on a kind of parallel track while we wrote the script.

**Phil:** There’s a lot of simultaneity to how we do these movies, you know, the ones that we do together where while we’re writing the script Karyn is doing all that, and our composer Teddy Shapiro is already writing music based on the script. And Plummy Tucker, the editor, is one of the first people to read the script, so she already kind of has it in her head.

And it’s kind of a unique and kind of amazing way to work because then we also get to the point – and another wonderful thing about Nicole is that, and Karyn, is that the script is the script when we get to shooting the movie. And they both are real believers in the screenplay. And that the answers are in the screenplay for whatever questions come up. And then we’re there as writer-producers. We’re there to provide context, to write new things if necessary, but it’s kind of a very organic and simultaneous process with these movies which have been so gratifying for us to be able to do that.

**John:** Stepping back, you said the idea, the Erin Bell character was what made these collections of things really pop. And so the 10 years where this was just bits and pieces, was it the character that wasn’t holding the thing together? What was it that changed? What was it that putting that character into the situation? Because was it always written for a woman that was kind of like Erin Bell but not specifically Erin Bell? Or was it a story that was missing a central character? What was different about it 10 years ago?

**Matt:** I think it was a story that was missing a central character. And we knew the beats of the story and the structure is kind of tricky. And so we would kind of puzzle over that without having the central character.

**Phil:** So it was really more like we had–

**Matt:** A puzzle.

**Phil:** Yeah. We had pieces of a puzzle and we had things and feelings and certain interactions that we could kind of see from one side in a way. And then we had a feel, this kind of feeling that was driving it, the kind of restlessness of a ‘70s noir in a way. And then it was like – when it kind of occurred to us it was kind of in conversation. Then we brought it to Karyn and we started talking and realizing who Erin was and how specifically she couldn’t be to us a woman “filling a man’s role or wearing a man’s clothes” basically. The story had to be about this woman who had this relationship with her daughter, had a very specific relationship with the world that was a relationship as a woman. And that’s kind of what made it necessary for us or essential for us. You know that thing when you’re writing where you know there’s something you like about it but it’s not ready yet. And something has to make you just light up. And that character and the opportunity to write someone and knowing that – the other thing that’s so great about getting to work with Karyn is we know where it’s headed. So we know that we can write this character and that Karyn is going to receive that in its fullness and so we can try and go for it and take swings and do all of that.

**John:** You didn’t feel like you had to make any safe choices.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** Or round any corners or over-explain something just to make sure, to protect yourself and to protect the script. You didn’t have to have those extra lines that were in there just so in case–

**Phil:** Exactly. And that becomes so crucial because for Nicole she said a few times that she really responded to the mystery of this character and that there’s one line that basically tells you everything you need to know about what she suffered as a kid, a line about that she was burned with cigarettes by her mom and that she had these brothers who were just this kind of feral pack living by themselves basically. And to Nicole, she said like that was everything I needed and that’s what inspired me and more detail, more exhaustive archeology of her psyche would have not – that doesn’t inspire me. So it’s interesting. And that’s always – everything you write you’re looking for that balance. And it’s so great to not have to do anything because you’re worried someone is not going to get it, or you’re worried that they’re going to kind of – it’s going to go off the rails because some critical thing is not obvious enough. You know?

**John:** Right now, I’ll ask the question separately, how many projects are in your head that are sort of where this was over the last 10 years which are sort of like bits and pieces? How many different movies or other things do you think you have? Phil, I’ll ask you first.

**Phil:** OK. I can think of three off the top of my head that are in the sort of like, yeah, an idea. Sometimes there’s just a title on a notecard in the far corner of our corkboard that I don’t even know if Matt explores over there. He’s probably got his other corner with his stuff.

**John:** Matt, how many are on your list?

**Matt:** I think I have three as well. I mean, three that really like–

**Phil:** Maybe they’re the same. Or maybe we have six. We have to consult afterwards.

**Matt:** There are three that are kind of nagging at me in the same way. And, you know, like with both The Invitation, but more so because I guess we took longer with Destroyer. I was like we’re going to write this, we need to write this, I just don’t know when it’s going to be, but we’ll get there.

**John:** I always found that I’ll have a whole bunch of ideas that are sort of swirling around and every once and a while you think of the idea or basically the idea makes you think of it so that you don’t forget it. So like, oh that’s right, I do have that thing. And then eventually they’ll sometimes conspire and sort of gang up in ways. If we combine our efforts, John will have to think about us more.

**Phil:** That’s right. Exactly.

**John:** I didn’t intend for them to be the same project but they became the same project. It was like, oh, this is a way to get his attention.

**Phil:** They’re like we’re fighting for our lives here. We have to do something.

**Matt:** They wormed their way into other projects. You’re like well this could just be overlaid right on that.

**John:** 100%. And people often ask are there things that get cut out of one movie that you put into another movie, and like usually you can’t do that.

**Phil:** No.

**John:** There’s been little bits of an action sequence where they didn’t shoot that–

**Matt:** Yeah, we’ve done that.

**John:** In general like everything is so clear and specific once it’s been written down in some form. But these little ideas that are kind of floating around, they’ll try to get themselves into whatever I’m writing at the moment because they want to exist. And the only way they can exist, the only way they can be out there in the world is if they get me to pay attention to them and somehow get down on the paper.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think that happens a lot with little like – I mean, there’s something in Destroyer that’s a very specific story from when I was a kid and it just had been rattling around for a long time. And it’s just like one of those stories that I’ve told many people many times. And it sort of found a home in this movie, very unexpectedly. It was just sort of like, oh wow, that weird incident actually is a version of what we need in this movie right now. So, sometimes it’s something from life. And sometimes I think like, at least for me, I just needed to grow up more to understand what the thing was or to – or I needed to have a kid to be able to write that movie.

But I think it’s interesting what you say about you’re trying to keep – they’re trying to keep themselves alive out there in hopes that you’re going to find them again.

**John:** Writing a movie by myself, I’m sort of all the characters and I’m fully inside. I’m the camera into this world and I feel myself in all the different characters. Are each of you individually feeling that? Are you guys dividing up a sense of who is more what person in a movie? Is there any split that way or are you both fully inhabiting all the characters in scenes?

**Matt:** Usually both inhabit them. But every once and a while we’ll be working on something and there will be a character who is in maybe three scenes or something. And we don’t write in order. We just choose a scene that appeals to us and gets us motivated.

**John:** You’re the only other writers I talk to who do this.

**Phil:** Really? I can’t believe this. It’s like the greatest revelation that ever happened to me.

**John:** Okay, so let’s sell this to the world so people know that there’s more than one way to do this. I will write whatever scene appeals to me and I will skip over a thing I don’t want to do. Whatever scene appeals to me I will totally write.

**Matt:** Absolutely. I mean, in Destroyer it helped me get to know the character of Erin better because she is quiet and picks her spots and is watchful. And so one of the first scenes that I took a crack at was a scene where someone is really talking at her over and over and over again. She doesn’t have much to say, and so you’re thinking like OK well how does she have power, how does she have agency in the scene when she’s just kind of listening. And so I got the voice because I was writing out of order, you know what I mean?

**Phil:** And I think that it really changed everything for us I think because if you outline meticulously enough and you know where things are beginning and ending, it’s such a difficult thing to write at all, at least for most of us.

**Matt:** However you find your motivation.

**Phil:** Exactly. If you can get actually excited about a scene, go for it.

**John:** Totally.

**Phil:** And trust that you’ll find a way. And sometimes those scenes, like we learn so much just by the process of us splitting up the scenes. So Matt will say I really want to write this scene. And sometimes I’m like, oh, I really want to write that scene. So, wow, that’s a scene – obviously there’s something going on there. Or there’s a scene where Matt says I want to write and I say, thank god, I don’t actually think I know what to do with that scene, or vice versa. And you kind of go through and the scenes you gravitate toward tend to be the islands that really are the movie, so you’re kind of teaching yourself what the movie is. Those scenes tend to be the ones that change the least through the process, like those first maybe four or five sequences, because they are just like – that’s the tone, that’s the character, that’s the style. And you can use those then as touchstones.

You know, you’re writing, you refer back and then you also learn – you get to those lonely, sad little scenes at the end where no one wants to writes them and maybe they don’t need to be written.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Phil:** They haven’t earned a place in the story. And maybe you just can skip them.

**Matt:** And maybe the scene that introduces your character is much better informed by a scene that you’ve written earlier.

**Phil:** Yes.

**Matt:** But to get back to your question, sometimes because we’re jumping all around there will be one more scene left with the character who is in maybe three scenes. And I realize, oh, I’ve read Phil’s stuff and he’s done the other two and I’ll be like, OK, well you seem to have a handle on her voice or his voice, so why don’t you do that, and I’ll work on–

**Phil:** There’s sometimes, yeah, where in something like Destroyer, too, which is kind of an odyssey in its structure so she encounters all these people and some of them come back and some of them don’t. You know, there’s sometimes where I look, we talk through the character and I just know, OK, Matt just has a feel for this person’s voice, this one character. And like he’s saying, so great. You take the first shot at all that stuff. I’ll take the first shot at this stuff. And then once we get to that it’s usually pretty congruent. We’re so molded together at this point and we have the same instincts, so it’s rare that we see one another’s scenes and say, hmm, the voice sounds wrong. The voice almost never sounds wrong to either of us. There may be other questions. But that’s also the product of working together for 25 years or something.

**Matt:** And if we’re each writing a scene with the same character we’ll trade. Whoever is finished first will look at it and be like, OK, well I see what you’re doing here. I think we are on the same track.

**Phil:** Put this tremendous line that I just thought of in and we’re good to go.

**John:** I’m never going to write a screenwriting book, but if I do a chapter I’ve just come up with right now is how to be your writing partner.

**Phil:** I love that.

**John:** Because it’s that sense of – there are scenes you want to write and scenes you want the other guy to write. So write the scenes you want to write and leave your writing partner, which is your other self, to write the other scenes. And that’s why you write things out of order because write the scenes that are most meaningful for you to write and don’t worry about the other ones until you get to them.

**Phil:** Exactly. Because – and also often – we always know the ending before we start writing a script. Always. In great detail.

**John:** It’s one of the first things I write is the ending.

**Phil:** Yeah. And in some cases – I think I knew that about you actually – and in some cases in really extreme detail. I’d say with both Destroyer and The Invitation that was true. We absolutely knew what the end had to be for both of those movies. So we tend I think a lot of times to write the beginning of the movie much later in the process. We have the ending, we have these islands, you know, it’s different for everybody.

But, you know, you come up and it’s perfectly logical to think, well, I start on page one and I just keep going. And if I’m having a bad day I just fight through it. And I really don’t believe in that. The liberation that you feel when you realize I want to write a scene. That’s incredible. How did this happen?

**Matt:** I think it helps with the outline, too, because then you’ve got this scene and once you get to the place where you like it, you know, oh, well we’re actually going to need a different kind of scene to support this, or something else is going to have to follow this because of what we discovered here. And so it almost – I’m not going to say it – like everyone talks about second act problems, but we’ve outlined it like that, but we don’t really think of it that way. And so it doesn’t really occur to us in the same way.

**John:** Yeah. Also, by writing those scenes out of sequence those big marquee scenes you’ve figured out like you know what your in and your out is on those things. And so the scenes that are supporting those you might figure out like, OK, well I’m going to need to slope into that scene in a different way or get out of that.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** You know what your in and your outs are.

**Phil:** And they can have a gravitational pull under those scenes. And so the other scenes I can picture how they orbit around that scene as opposed to a linear way.

**John:** So you’re not going to have nine talkie scenes back to back.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** There will be a quiet thing before we get to this big long dialogue thing.

**Matt:** I think there was one movie, I don’t remember which project it was recently where Phil and I were both like I think we need to write the first act. I don’t know if it was Proof of Concept or something, just so we can – maybe it was the tone was different. I forget what it was. But we did it and then once we saw what it was we’re like, OK, now let’s try to bounce around.

**John:** We got a tweet question which was from Keith Hodder. He said, “Tips for approaching a second draft? Even with index cards I’m finding it tough to navigate the skeleton of the first draft. Feeling stumped. I revisited the transcript for Episode 199 but it mostly focused on the emotional toll of the second draft and being uneasy with seeing the original vision change. I have notes and I’m cool with them, but I’m unsure how to structure the second draft in terms of a game plan.”

Guys, do you have some suggestions on tactics and strategies for approaching a second draft, a successful second draft?

**Phil:** This is where I look at Matt, and I hope Matt does.

**Matt:** I would say, I mean, we tackle like what we want to tackle first. I mean, usually with a second draft if there’s big scenes that have to be changed or added we do those and then we go through and do all the little things. If it’s a character issue that needs to – the character needs to fundamentally change or we need to learn more, we map that out. The bigger scenes to tackle first is what we usually do.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think that’s true.

**Matt:** Is that helpful at all?

**John:** It’s helpful. For me, like I always make sure like you’re saying that I have a real game plan. This is what I’m going to try to do with this. And so I may have gotten other people’s notes, but that’s not really like how I’m going to do it. I’m looking at sort of like this is what’s going to need to change for me to do this. This is my checklist of things I want to make sure happens. And I’ll almost always start with a new document, and I’ll copy and paste in the stuff that I need from the old script but I won’t try to just work through the old script.

If it’s a significant amount of changes I’ll copy and paste the scenes in and sort of bullet point the stuff that’s brand new to write in there, but I find if I’m working on an existing script I end up just polishing stuff and I won’t do some of the big machete work that I sometimes need to do if I’m still working in that same file.

**Phil:** That’s interesting. Yeah, I think that we tend to keep the document, but then we’re very freely – you guys have talked about this before – we create the depot and just very freely grab scenes so that you don’t have to worry about it and throw them in that so that they exist, but they’re not in the script.

But what you were saying, I realize is so helpful not only internally for us, but sometimes we actually share this with our partners, is a written plan. A document that says here’s the plan. We’re going to cut these three scenes. We’re going to go through the entire script through the lens of this character and we’re going to make sure she is here by this point of the script and we’re going to fix this relationship and we have a new idea for a scene that’s going to go between this scene and this. And just kind of the process of just doing that is helpful.

And it also has been helpful when we’re – especially in movies where we’re like trying to head toward production the people kind of can envision what we’re doing and so we’re not “shocking” them when they get the draft back. But we are–

**Matt:** Sometimes as you know the note isn’t the note.

**John:** Yes.

**Matt:** What it really means is we don’t like this. This character isn’t working as opposed to like this scene. And so by kind of giving them something back it kind of creates a new notes document in a way that everyone agrees on. So now everyone feels included and heard and we’re all going forward toward now this new thing that is the new notes document.

**Phil:** Yeah. And I think for the listener that would, you know, just as an internal process I think that is really helpful to just write out your plan and maybe even write out your feelings about it. Write out how you feel about what’s going on in the second act that’s really bothering you.

Or the other thing I find useful is to go back to – and it goes back to this sort of islands concept – go back to listing, for yourself, what are the scenes that absolutely this movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** What is this movie? Period. And then anything else can be – has to arrange itself around that. And I think that’s helpful to just keep your kind of self together when you’re approaching the second draft.

**John:** What Matt pitches about the document, what’s good about sending through that document to your collaborators is it reminds everybody what the actual plan was. Because they may have forgotten what their notes were, what they talked about in the room. But if you say like this is what I’m going to do, they can respond to that. But even if they don’t respond to that when you turn in that draft they may still not love it. There may still be new issues. But at least to see this is what he said he was going to do. This is what he did. They can see the work that you actually put into it.

**Phil:** Yeah. And they also might be able to tell you like, oh, wait a second, I see that you’re planning on changing this part. I really love that. I think that’s so important. Can we find a way to modify that so it still fits? And so it’s wonderful when you have people fighting for things that they like in the script. And that’s what I always find just in any notes process. When I am asked to give notes to someone or to come up with a plan for someone, like that’s what’s helpful. There’s this sort of idea that you’re supposed to, it’s just this cage match of awful brutality, where I think it’s like hearing what is really the thing and what’s really great that just orients you.

**Matt:** When we’re talking about a script with somebody and giving them notes and ideas, sometimes you find it through the discussion. So like if you think of a studio notes document which is a list of questions, they’re kind of looking for something. And it might not be there yet and so you have to work through it as opposed to like take that in silence, go off and do it. You know what I mean? It takes a lot of discussion sometimes.

**John:** Yeah. So the response document is sort of continuing that discussion and so it may be a way of getting that down on paper. Some questions from listeners. “I just read your blog answering a question about sending a script to an actor. I have written a script in which the actor’s name is in the title and he would have a role. What is the best way to get it to him? Do I send a synopsis to his agent? The script to his agent? Do I send it to his agency care of the actor? How do I get this actor to read my script?”

Good lord.

**Phil:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah. So Being John Malkovich or something.

**Phil:** Yeah. I don’t know if it’s any different than any other script I guess would be the main thing because I think who knows. There might be actors out there who would be so curious to see that they’re being portrayed in a script that if they just caught wind of it they would want to check it out. I wonder if it would be harder to get an agent to give that to their client depending.

**John:** The right actor I could see being sort of curious enough about it, like if you’re writing a Michael Ironside feature, totally.

**Phil:** Oh yeah. Get it to Ironside. Now.

**John:** Get it to Ironside. Nothing better than Ironside. If it’s a megastar that you’re going after it’s going to be a challenge regardless. And I think there’s always the worry do you look like a stalker.

**Phil:** Yeah. It’s a rare – and that’s the thing. You’re taking such a big swing. And I’m usually also – I’m very fond of the idea of taking a big swing. Like you might as well. So in a way that’s really bold. And if you have the goods to back it up then you have the goods to back it up. But you have to be aware that you are definitely – you’re also making it impossible to make a movie without getting that one person. And in any movie if there was ever a script that we wrote that was like if this one person isn’t going to do it it will not exist, that’s pretty rough.

**John:** I will say that most times when you see an actor’s name listed in the title of the script it wasn’t because they really thought that one actor was going to do it. It’s because it’s a way of signaling what’s unique about the script. It’s a way of getting attention for the script. It gets on a list. It gets passed around the Black List because everyone says it’s really funny. This wild sex comedy with Wilford Brimley. There’s something about it that makes people want to pass it around.

**Phil:** Yeah. That’s interesting. And that may be in fact – that may be the point. It’s hard to know where this person is headed. But that idea of if it’s the right name it’s going to make somebody more likely just to pick it up.

**Matt:** I think sadly though if you’re not going through traditional channels, like if you’re not doing this through your lawyer or manager or agent the cold approach just is so rarely successful I think.

**John:** I think you’re right. Chris writes, “I’ve introduced a doctor into my script who has a fairly important role and I’m wondering what is the best way to write her action and dialogue? Wendy versus Dr. Patterson. Her first name seems more economical and she asks one of the main characters to call her by her first name, so it would be consistent. But is it confusing to go with her first name, or does it lose respect?”

So, you guys, what is your basic guideline for a character name for a doctor character. It says it’s an important character, so probably not the principal character.

**Phil:** Yeah, I would say if it’s not the principal character you use Doctor because I feel that just is doing a lot of work for you. And whether you call that character Dr. Johnson or Dr. Wendy, you know what I mean, you can actually say some things about the character.

**Matt:** Also it seems important to the writer that we continually know that this person is a doctor. So even if Dr. Wendy comes over to your house late at night it’s like, oh, it’s interesting because it’s Dr. Wendy.

**John:** Yeah. I would say in terms of the character cue, like the character name above dialogue, it’s weird to put the Doctor there unless it’s actually sort of part of the joke or part of just reminding like, oh, that person really is a doctor. There are characters in scripts where I’ll have like, you know, Mrs. Van Owen and I’ll keep that Mrs. there because Van Owen by itself you might lose her gender. You might sort of forget who it is if that person hasn’t shown up for a long time.

**Phil:** Sounds like a police sergeant.

**John:** So that’s reasons why you might want to keep the Mrs. And every script is going to be different, but the decision to go with the character’s first name versus their last name really tells us a lot about sort of how personal they are with the main character and sort of where they fit into the world. It can be confusing to have a lot of first names. It can be confusing to have a lot of last names. So finding a balance is important.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think it’s actually a really great question because it is another opportunity to teach people about those people and the tone of the thing. And I think for example in Destroyer the character–

**John:** Is it Bell or Erin in the character cue?

**Phil:** Erin Bell. She’s written as Bell always.

**John:** I was going to guess it was Bell.

**Phil:** It is Bell. And she’s never written as Detective Bell. Whereas other detectives that appear in the movie are Detective Kudra. That’s how they’re referred to. And also there are some honorifics. It’s funny, it’s easier to write Det. Kudra than it is to write Officer Kudra. Like you have a scene with Officer Kudra, Officer Kudra. You wouldn’t do that. I think you would just call them Kudra. And Doctor is a similar thing. You can write Dr. and that actually just to your eye – you’re used to seeing that. And if you’re spelling it out you think it’s like maybe it’s a drug dealer or something like that.

**Matt:** If they’re always functioning in the capacity of their job, Doctor, but if the main character is a doctor.

**Phil:** It’s actually sort of funny. Can you imagine a romantic comedy the person that’s their job is a doctor, but they’re just referred to as–?

**Matt:** Because they have a Ph.D.

**Phil:** Dr. Rehoboth. And they’re just falling in love. It’s the story of Steve and Dr. Rehoboth falling in love.

**John:** I guess an important thing to remember is that we’re talking about the words that you’re seeing on paper, but that’s not the same experience as what an audience is going to have in a theater. And so always be thinking about like, OK, I’m writing this on this page but what’s going to be seen on the screen is going to be very, very different. So, if we’re not going to be thinking of that character as a doctor with that line that they’re saying, don’t put the Dr. there. If it’s really all about them being the doctor we’re going to be seeing them in a lab coat. Putting that Dr. in front of their dialogue will help us remember sort of the context for all this stuff.

**Matt:** Yeah.

**John:** Last question is probably a simple one. Gary from Orlando writes, “Is there a preference for using the term montage or series of shots? From what I understand they both convey a similar visual but I would like to know from some pros which they use and how they use it.” Do you guys use the word montage? Do you use series of shots? How are you indicating a series of bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum?

**Matt:** I think more often than not we write “series of shots” only because – and this is just idiosyncratic – like montage to me in my mind is Love Story, you know what I mean, or like a romantic.

**Phil:** Someone is dancing and singing into their hairbrush when you use the montage going on. Which is delightful.

**Matt:** It’s obviously not just that. But series of shots, for some reason it just feels–

**Phil:** It’s tonal actually. There’s times when we’ve used, we’ve definitely used both, but I think Matt is right that it’s like series of shots. And then usually we do series of shots. Or often for us it’s more something like “Images – Colon – Dash – this image – Dash – this image – Dash – this image.”

**Matt:** Also, montage to me sometimes feels like we’re cueing music.

**Phil:** And it feels meta to me. It actually feels like removed when I see “Montage.” I feel like I’m now just watching a movie and I’m not inside the thing. And the immediacy seems less to me. I mean, this is all idiosyncratic. Other people might feel differently. But I think that’s probably why we lean away from calling something a montage and just like if we can not even labeling it, or just getting the little–

**John:** Yeah. A lot of times I will drop out either term. It will just be clearly a series of shots and there will just be slug lines of what it is you are seeing and it gets the same effect.

**Matt:** Yeah. Or just bullet points.

**Phil:** And then later we have to put the slug lines back in because the line producer is yelling at us.

**John:** “I need the slug lines.” I think the other thing that ruined montage for me was to American World Police you need a montage. And so then you hear that word enough and you’re like, OK, I’m [crosstalk] that kind of development.

**Phil:** It changed history in so many ways.

**John:** I forgot to warn you because Craig wasn’t here about One Cool Things. Did you guys come prepared with One Cool Things?

**Phil:** I know this show.

**John:** He knows the show well.

**Phil:** Front and backwards. I know it.

**John:** Phil Hay, will you start us off with a One Cool Thing?

**Phil:** I have One Cool Thing that I’m so sad that Craig is not here for this because it’s baseball oriented.

**John:** Oh my.

**Phil:** And Craig and I really share a love of baseball.

**John:** How do you have time for baseball? Baseball just feels like it’s just time to follow a thing that I just can’t care about.

**Phil:** John, that’s OK for you. Well, I coach baseball now. I coach my son’s baseball team, so it has kind of become the thing that I’ve arranged my life around. And so it’s reawakened my love for baseball, which I’ve always had. So there’s this Twitter, what do you call it, Twitter handle, a Twitter person, a Tweeter.

**Matt:** What’s up, old man?

**Phil:** Oh, god, I know. Called Pitching Ninja. It’s @PitchingNinja. And it’s a guy named Rob Friedman who is a pitching coach. And he has collected these incredible little gifs. It is a gif, is it jiff? I’m still getting older and older.

**John:** I say gif. There’s controversy, but gif makes much more sense.

**Phil:** So he’s collected these. He’s overlaid different pitches from the same pitcher. So if you are at all interested in baseball, if you play baseball for sure, but if you just love baseball and the kind of weird – there’s definitely parts, some of these images that crossover into kind of beautiful art. These incredible almost like mechanical drawings of the human body doing something incredible. So @PitchingNinja is my One Cool Thing.

**John:** Very nice.

**Matt:** Very nice.

**John:** Matt, what you got?

**Matt:** I was thinking about it because I knew this was coming and first it was going to be my six-foot iPhone charging cord which is really–

**John:** So it’s a long charging cord so you can sit on the coach.

**Matt:** Yeah, or at a hotel, or anything. I mean, that is One Cool Thing.

**Phil:** We’re not going to say it’s not cool.

**Matt:** No, but my daughter had a bake sale today.

**John:** Oh nice.

**Matt:** And she has this girls group and they are raising money – they were raising money to support the bees. And the organization it went to is called Backwards Beekeepers which is a Los Angeles group of treatment free bee keepers and they support feral bee colonies. So I’m giving them a shout out. People out there trying to make the world better.

**John:** Yeah. Bees. Bees are good.

**Matt:** So we saved them.

**John:** Yeah. You saved all the bees. One bake sale is all it took.

**Matt:** No one needs to do anything.

**John:** No colonies are collapsing.

**Matt:** Last year they saved the rhinos, so we’re good with those.

**Phil:** What’s next?

**Matt:** I don’t know.

**John:** The universe. My One Cool Thing is a show called Great News. Did you guys watch Great News?

**Matt:** No.

**John:** Not enough people watched Great News. So it was an NBC show that lasted two seasons. It was canceled after last season. But it showed up on Netflix. And so I knew of it in a general sense. And so it’s executive produced by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey who did 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Same music by Jeff Richmond. So it feels like it’s in that universe.

It is a workplace comedy that takes place at a television station. It’s 30 Rock-ish. It’s Mindy Project-ish. But it’s created by Tracey Wigfield who also plays a character on the show and it is delightful. And so it’s a show that I wish was still on and was making much more episodes. But they’re all there on Netflix. And so I think in a weird way it’s probably more successful seeing it all together as a block because it does build on itself in a really nice way. So it was a good little half hour comedy if you want an extra Tina Fey/Mindy Kaling style comedy. It’s there. It’s on Netflix. It’s called Great News.

**Matt:** Sounds good.

**Phil:** So nice when you discover something like that. Just thriving in the wild.

**John:** Tracey Wigfield, you made a good show. So I’m hoping she’s going to make other cool, good shows.

**Phil:** Right on.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Luke Davis. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com.

That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. For short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there leave us a comment.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

If they want to see your movie they should go to see it in theaters on which day?

**Phil:** If you live in Los Angeles or New York City you can see it on Christmas Day.

**John:** So December 25th in New York/Los Angeles.

**Phil:** And then in the following weeks more and more cities. It will be everywhere on January 25th.

**John:** Great. But what if they are in Australia or what if they’re in London?

**Phil:** I don’t have – London will be January 25th. And it is actually being released all around the world. So if you tweet at me and you want to know where it is in your country I promise I will look it up.

**John:** How can they tweet at you? What is your handle?

**Phil:** It’s @Phillycarly.

**John:** Yes. There will be a link in the show notes. Matt, do you have a Twitter handle?

**Matt:** I’m @mattrmanfredi.

**John:** I also recommend that you follow Matt on Instagram because he takes photos of trees and bushes and pipes that he finds that are beautiful.

**Matt:** Yes. Manfredeus, like a Roman emperor.

**Phil:** Or an international conglomerate that is a front for political conspiracy.

**Matt:** Yes.

**John:** You can find all the back episodes of Scriptnotes at Scripnotes.net. That’s where you can listen to Episode 199 or whatever episode you were on before where you talked about The Invitation which is also still great and available where you find movies.

**Phil:** Right on.

**John:** And people should see that movie because it’s really, really good. I really–

**Phil:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And I think I’m going to be hosting some sort of Q and A with you guys at some point for Destroyer.

**Phil:** We have many of those coming up.

**John:** I’m excited to watch it with you guys and talk to you about it. Guys, thank you so much for coming in.

**Matt:** Thank you.

**Phil:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Tickets](https://go.wgfoundation.org/campaigns/8810-the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show) are on sale for the Holiday Live Show!
* Thanks for joining us, [Phil Hay](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006534/?ref_=tt_ov_wr) and [Matt Manfredi](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542062/)!
* [Episode 244: The Invitation, and Requels](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-invitation-and-requels)
* [Commercial actors can get paid for excessive auditioning](https://johnaugust.com/Assets/2016_commercials_ex_e_audition_form_0.pdf)
* [Destroyer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqHaLUoiWZU) is in US theaters December 25, 2018
* [@PitchingNinja](https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja)
* [Backwards Beekeepers](http://www.backwardsbeekeepers.com/), and having a 6 foot charging cable
* [Great News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_News), created by Tracey Wigfield
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [Phil Hay](https://twitter.com/Phillycarly) on Twitter
* [Matt Manfredi](https://twitter.com/MattrManfredi) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Luke Davis ([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_377.mp3).