Drew Marquardt

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 536 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we look at adaptation, both how screenwriters approach translating existing properties into film and TV, and how writers adapt to changes in their careers. It’s a big mailbag episode, so producer Megana Rao has a lot of reading ahead of her. She’s stretching, she’s warming up, because there’s a lot of listener mail to get through here today.

Craig: Doing those elocution exercises, “red leather, yellow leather,” and so forth.

John: So important. Also in our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, to be or not to be, what’s the logic behind trying to minimize the use of be verbs in your writing.

Craig: That’ll be a short segment.

John: What features of other languages do we wish we had in English.

Craig: That’s a great idea. That’s a great question. Now we’re talking. All right.

John: Craig, MoviePass is back.

Craig: Thank God. Thank God.

John: The co-founder Stacy Spikes took control of the company this week as part of bankruptcy proceedings. It’s coming back in some form. We can make fun of MoviePass a lot, and we have over the years, but the article I’m going to link to is from IndieWire. Chris Lindahl writes it. A thing it points out is that post-MoviePass, a bunch of the movie theater chains did roll out their own versions of all-you-can-eat things, and those are continuing and may be good for people who do want to go to the cinema a lot.

Craig: Yeah, and that’s because they need to right now. The truth with MoviePass was, and why it was never, ever going to work was, the movie business was fine, and they were like, “Give us $20 and you can see all the movies you want.” When the steakhouse business is doing well, that doesn’t make sense to have SteakPass. When there’s been, I don’t know, mad cow disease and no one can go to steakhouses and no one wants to go to steakhouses and there’s steak.com delivering to your home, then yeah, it absolutely makes sense for a steakhouse to be like, “Here’s a crazy plan.” Let’s be clear about it. Regal or AMC, they’re not doing this crap when we get back to, if we get back to regular movie going. No way. No way.

John: Craig, they absolutely are, because AMC’s Stubs program was existing way before the pandemic, and it was profitable by all accounts.

Craig: That was not an all-you-can-eat plan.

John: It was a little bit limited, but it was the same sort of idea as MoviePass. MoviePass was the absurd, extreme example. What they recognized is there were a group of people who go to movies frequently, who would like to go even more frequently, if they can make a discount, and they paved the way for that. Then it opened up for the other theater chains to say, “Oh, we can do something like that.” Alamo Drafthouse had a similar thing.

Craig: A club pass always makes sense, because you get a regular thing. You know they’re coming in. They can’t bankrupt you. They can’t put you out of business, because you’re not saying it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for all three meals of the day for $9.99. They’re going to buy popcorn and drinks and all the rest of that. All the money goes directly to AMC. It’s not through a broker. AMC’s list here, it says three movies per week. That’s reasonable. That’s smart.

John: It’s a lot of movies. That’s great. You can see how that makes sense, both for AMC and it makes sense for the customer. I don’t know that that would’ve existed had MoviePass not broken ground there. I just want some acknowledgement that sometimes the crazy thing that was never going to work, the pets.com of it all, does lead you to something down the road which actually makes more sense.

Craig: You’re an endlessly positive person.

John: I’m trying to be generous with my assumptions here.

Craig: I hear you. I see MoviePass as people who are like, “Hey, here’s an idea. We’re going to do something stupid.” Then other people are like, “That’s stupid. Why don’t we do the smart version of that?” I can’t give MoviePass any credit. It was kind of fraud, right? Didn’t they rip people off? I can’t give them credit.

John: I don’t know that there’s any fraud. We’re certainly not saying that there was any fraud. I’m reading a book that’s actually really interesting about financial crimes and Ponzi schemes and other things like that. An interesting thing that does happen is there’s a tipping point in a lot of companies where you’re just making promises that you’re not sure you can actually keep.

Craig: That’s where they were.

John: You got to keep running. MoviePass was one of those things where they could keep getting investment as long as it felt like they were growing. When it became clear, oh, there’s actually not more growth here, that’s when it all collapses down.

Craig: Am I just imagining it or wasn’t there a thing where they said you can see as many movies as you want in a month, and then they sent an email out saying, by the way, no. You paid that money, but no, you can’t see all the movies you want in a month. Also they made it really hard for people to cancel or … It’s been a while. We’ve done too many podcasts. Of course I’m not accusing any large newly restored company of fraud. That would be crazy.

John: We wish them all success with MoviePass 2.0. We’ll keep an eye there.

Craig: Keep an eye on them.

John: Some follow-up here. In a previous episode, we had a listener who wrote in asking about software that can help read a script aloud. We had some recommendations, but actually a better recommendation came in this past week, which is ScriptSpeaker.com. We tried it out, and it’s basically what our listener was asking for. You can throw it a pdf or a Fountain file, and it’s taking it, it’s ingesting it, and it’s kicking you back out an mp3 that does what Highland does in terms of taking character names and saying “Mary says” rather than just “Mary” so it actually makes more sense. It does a pretty good job. If you are specifically in the need for just this kind of solution, this is one that’s out there right now that you could try and use.

Craig: I like that I see on their website that it was developed with the participation of Creative BC and the British Columbia Arts Council. Since I am essentially Canadian now, it’s good to see. Wouldn’t it be nice, John, if our governments, state and federal in the United States, would help create things like this and help people create art and put things out there in the world that were … Nah, it’s not going to happen. Who am I kidding?

John: Come on. Craig, I’ll push back on this. How about the California Tax Credits? How about the Louisiana Tax Credits? That’s all over the place. We’re calling them tax credits rather than foundations and boards.

Craig: Those tax credits are for these enormous corporations. Those are the only who can take advantage of them really. Warner Bros, they’re fine. I’m not talking about … I assume that the people who made this, they’re not a large corporation.

John: Zach Lipovsky is not a giant corporation. He’s a guy.

Craig: An individual who’s making something like this, that’s … We have things like the National Endowment for the Arts, that of course the Republicans are always trying to take away, because it costs literally .001% of one missile or whatever. We don’t have a good tradition of this. As you know, in Europe, a lot of movies and television are financed in part by extensions of the state, state funding, which-

John: I always love the Irish tax lottery and how that works and the little finger crossed logo on somebody’s-

Craig: I love that. That’s fun. We won.

John: Craig, I just want to make sure that our listeners who have been listening for a long time can track Craig Mazin’s journey into socialism-

Craig: That’s fun.

John: … over the years.

Craig: It’s definitely happening.

John: It’s always good to see.

Craig: I don’t know, am I going in the opposite direction? People generally get more Fox Newsy as they get older, right?

John: Yeah. I think you’ve gotten less Fox Newsy. I think you’ve actually gotten more-

Craig: Listen, man. I got to tell you, that awful orange game show host has driven me into a deep leftist position, where I will probably remain for quite some time. My life goes back and forth, depending on what’s going on. I’ve never been just one sort of, “I’m only in from this point of view.” I’m about as left these days as I’ve ever been.

John: I think that’s absolutely true. Last week we were talking about main character energy, and this was a thing that came out of TikTok. Therefore, we’ve returned it to TikTok. We now have a Scriptnotes Podcast, @ScriptnotesPodcast, TikTok account.

Craig: Great.

John: Which has exactly one post and will maybe never have another post. It is your counter-rant about it. Let’s play it here for folks who are not on TikTok.

Craig: The quote about romanticizing your life, I can’t think of a better way to encapsulate the exact opposite thing that I think about everything than that quote, because here’s the thing, life is not romantic. You’re a big sack of slowly decaying meat that will eventually stop functioning. Everybody that you know and meet and love will eventually die. You are going to be sick. You are going to ache. You are going to have moments that are wonderful and moments that are terrible. You also don’t deserve everyone’s attention. You almost never deserve anyone’s attention. The best thing that you can do with your life, other than fulfilling yourself and feeling like you’ve achieved something you wanted to achieve, is helping someone else. Go ahead and make a life or help a life or nurture someone or something, teach someone something or something. This romanticization is just really superficialization. That’s what it is.

John: That’s Craig’s audio, but this little clip was put together by Drew Rosas.

Craig: Thank you, Drew.

John: Thank you for putting that together for us and using the same background music as the original clip. We had some feedback from listeners about this. Also, a friend texted me to talk about it. Her point was that there’s a gendered component to main character energy memes that I don’t think we really talked about on the show, that it’s really mostly young women who are leading this thing. One of the central points of it is that people who are not generally centered in the conversation, because of gender, race, or identity, it’s telling them to take control of the narrative, which I fully get, that if you’re not pretty enough or if you’re not white, you don’t get to be the main character in stories, and think of yourself as the main character. It’s really trying to redefine who the main character is. Totally get that. I think we were responding to said meme as the aesthetics of a main character, rather than the putting yourself at the center of the story.

Craig: Yeah. Maybe I don’t understand then what all this is about, because I don’t understand how any of this has to do with any conversation at all. From what I understood, it was really just about how you present yourself to the world and not about how you are recognized or participating in anything with anyone else. It seems so self-centered, so therefore outside of conversation. This friend says people who feel decentered from the conversation, which makes sense if we were talking about how to put yourself into a conversation when you have been ignored. That is a worthy pursuit. I understand that completely. My view of this was that it wasn’t about conversations at all, it was really about, what did they say, “I’m going to look out over the balcony with my glass of wine, because that’s what the person in the movie does.” I don’t think that has anything to do with any conversation at all.

John: I think that’s what we were both responding to is that a lot of the memes around it really felt like be Emily in Emily in Paris, rather than actually really address the structural things that are keeping you from at the center of it. We had two listeners who wrote in with some really smart thoughts. Megana, do you want to share those?

Megana Rao: Katie from Toronto wrote in, “I thought I’d offer my observations as a Gen Z. What I like about the idea of romanticizing your life is that it demands you take your life as seriously as you’ve taken influencers or celebrities. I think the main character conversation asks, why do I care more about Kim Kardashian’s life than my own? Why am I invested in this person’s reality when I can be the star of my own story? Because I’m a liberal arts nerd, I’ve come to see main character energy as another rendition of Nietzsche’s life-affirming philosophy of nihilism. Nothing matters after this anyway, according to Nietzsche, so I may as well live as the main character while I’m still in the movie.”

Craig: We’ve wandered into an area that I’m very fond of, which is the philosophy and works of Friedrich Nietzsche. While yes, I could see an extension of main character energy into Nietzsche, Nietzsche is make your own values, hammer of the gods, you are not going to follow other people’s description of what values and good is, you are going to create your own. All that makes sense, but I don’t see that as romantic at all, and I would argue that Nietzsche didn’t either, although early on, in his earlier works, maybe when he was in love with Wagner. Then he fell out of love with Wagner pretty quickly.

What’s such a bummer about this, Katie, is you are and were already enough. You don’t need to romanticize your life to care more about yourself than Kim Kardashian. What you need to do is deromanticize Kim Kardashian. You’re fine as you are. You should take your life more seriously. More seriously, not as seriously. Way more seriously than any influencer or any celebrities, because they don’t mean anything. Kim Kardashian means nothing. Her life means nothing, or at least not as presented as an edited, produced, glossy moving magazine. It’s not relevant. What I would say to you, Katie, is what if you already mattered a billion times more in your existence and in your shoes than any influencer or celebrity you could ever see? You don’t need to romanticize your life. You need to deromanticize all these other people.

John: I’m equally unqualified to talk about Nietzsche or Kim Kardashian. What I do hear though is that you can see these lives of these celebrities and imagine what they’re like, but of course you’re comparing your raw footage with their highlight reel. I think what we’re both saying is to really just focus on what you’re actually doing, rather than how it’s being presented to people out there. Don’t let your self-identity be so consumed with the presentation to other people, which is easy for us to say, because we’re not being bombarded with it every day. There’s an aspect of generational drift here that’s also true.

Craig: It’s sad. I feel bad, because I think there’s a lot of poison out there. I think there’s a lot of poison out there that people are soaking up, and it bums me out.

John: Megana, we had another piece here which I thought was really good.

Megana: Rachel wrote in and she said, “I also had a comment on your conversation this week about main character energy. Craig mentioned Fleabag as an example of this. I wanted to note that the trajectory of the second series entirely bares out all that you were saying. The hot priest character starts to comment on Fleabag’s frequent absences, which disconcerts her and which brings home for the audience that every time she’s been winking at us, she’s been checking out of the moment that she’s in. The series concludes with her entering her own life more completely, hopefully to give her experiences and the people she’s with the quality of attention that they deserve, precisely by shutting out the audience and her consciousness of herself as a character.”

Craig: Oh, Rachel. Oh, I love you, Rachel. One of the most amazing moments I’ve ever seen in anything was the moment where the hot priest went, “Who are you talking to? Who are you looking at?” She gets caught looking at us and is like, “Oh my god, he saw that,” which yes, I think, Rachel, you’re right, if we interpret it logically, means he saw her check out and go somewhere else in her mind, where she had metaphorized her life into a character as opposed to who she was with. In the end when she tells us essentially, “You can’t follow me anymore. I’m letting you go,” it was wonderful. That’s a great point. That’s a great point, Rachel. That’s smart.

John: It’s no surprise that Phoebe Waller-Bridge made something very, very smart about that. Megana, it’s reminding me though, you were talking about people you know who are influencers or sort of influencers and it being exhausting to be with them because they’re never really with you, they’re always lining up their next shot or their next story.

Megana: Yeah, and it just blows my mind, because I have this image of them based off of their social media that they’re constantly doing fun things. Then when I’m actually with them, it’s like they’re not eating the food when it comes, because they’re taking pictures of it. They’re not dancing in the club or whatever, because they’re taking videos of everyone else doing it and then immediately posting that. It is a lot of work. I feel like it both takes them out of the moment and … I just don’t like to be filmed like that all the time, so I also don’t find it fun to be around someone who’s doing that.

John: There’s an aspect of performance to everything, which of course all of our life is sort of performance, and we’re always putting ourselves out there in certain ways. Our self-esteem is always going to be a little bit based on what we’re getting reflected back to us, but just it feels so much more extreme and so much more immediate with social media.

Megana: I also told you the story about the friend that I was traveling with who would do a yoga pose in all of these different European cities. It was like, can we just enjoy going on this castle tour instead of doing-

Craig: God.

Megana: … Birds of Paradise here, and I have to take these pictures of you?

Craig: You’re her camera person?

Megana: Yeah.

Craig: We had a really interesting conversation with Dan Savage, as I recall, partly about porn and how it had messed people up. One of the points he was making was porn isn’t inherently bad, but you have to understand that those people aren’t actually having sex the way that human beings normally have sex. That in fact is not the sex that we should be having with each other. That’s athletic performance. It’s like gymnastics or something. It’s watching this extreme version of something we do all the time, because it’s exciting. We shouldn’t think that that is what we’re supposed to be doing, or that if we can’t do that or aren’t doing that or don’t look like that, that we’re doing it poorly or bad, because we’re not. It feels sometimes like these influencers have just pornified everything, food, walking around, vacations, being with friends. Everything gets pornified.

John: It’s not fun unless it’s capital F Fun that could be filmed and packaged and presented out to the world.

Craig: When we’re shooting movies and television and we shoot a scene that’s fun, it’s not fun to shoot it. It’s a long, miserable day, and there are a lot of problems, and no one’s laughing. Everyone’s working really hard to create this thing so that later you get an illusion of an effortless good time. We’re paid for that. It’s our jobs. Then we go home and live our regular lives. We don’t then continue this love affair with production. It’s very strange.

John: On the topic of idealized visions of how our life is supposed to be, we have some more follow-up about supportive partners and to what degree your partner should be supporting your career, supporting your ambitions. Megana, start us off.

Megana: John wrote in and he said, “I think it’s worth remembering that many of us listening aren’t in a secure part of our careers as screenwriters. Many of us are aspiring screenwriters, and you and Craig are our inspiration. Perhaps it’s worth considering the listener I’m speaking about has a fraction of the self-esteem successful writers like you have. I think you may have verged on belittling his relationship problems, something I believe you probably didn’t mean to do. Although your relationship advice was sound, I believe he would be feeling fairly flat right now.”

Craig: It’s possible.

John: It’s possible, yes. I think we try to be respectful of people’s feelings. I think we try to address who they are and what they’re presenting, but also we’re presenting to a bigger audience. Sometimes I think I do forget the actual original questioner in these things. It’s always good to remember that. I hope he’s not feeling that we were belittling his situation, because I do remember what it was like to not be sure of myself that I was going to be able to do this thing, that I needed support around me. It’s important for you to have support people, but I think if you were asking for this romantic partner to be an incredibly important support person, that may not always be the right fit.

Craig: John and I were both aspiring screenwriters once. I think we try and keep that in mind when we answer questions from aspiring screenwriters. I have never had what I think that questioner was feeling he or – I can’t remember, was it he or she, I can’t remember – deserved. I was not coming solely from a place of, “Ah, I’m a secure screenwriter and I don’t need my wife to tell me how great I am, because look at all these other people telling me how great I am.” There was a time when I was not great and I was not earning money, and my wife still wasn’t like, “Oh my god, you’re incredible,” because we just don’t have that relationship. What I said was true to myself at all stages.

When we get questions, and I think this is important for people to understand, at least for me, I take them at good faith, meaning if you ask us a question, you are saying, “Go ahead and give me an answer,” not, “Give me an answer that makes me feel good,” but rather, “Look, I asked you for a question. What do you think?” In that particular thing, I think the question was along the lines of, “Am I right or what?” There’s another person involved in that, an actual person person, and that is that person’s partner, who I was thinking about. I would imagine that if we had erred on the side of making our questioner feel good through validation, that we might’ve made that person’s partner feel a bit flat. There’s a little risk involved in writing in and asking a question and specifically wondering, “Am I doing this right or wrong?” because you might hear from us, we think you’re doing it wrong, point being if you are tenderhearted – which a lot of people are and there’s no crime in that – think twice before you write in to a radio show. I call us a radio show. Can you believe how old I am, Megana? Do you even know what a radio is?

Megana: It’s a thing I accidentally press when I’m looking for Bluetooth.

Craig: I love it. Oh my god, that’s the best answer I’ve ever heard in my life.

Megana: Also, just so you guys know, the original poster wrote in with a very kind email thanking you both.

Craig: Good. I’m glad-

John: That’s nice.

Craig: … that he wasn’t feeling-

John: That’s great.

Craig: … bad. Look, honestly, we’re not the kind of people who are like, “Awesome, someone wrote in, we’re going to destroy them and make them feel crappy.” It’s not that. If you ask us a question like, “Did I do something right or wrong?” and we think maybe you aren’t doing it the way we would, then that’s why you wrote in, right? You don’t have to agree with us. That’s for sure.

Megana: I think more than, I don’t know, belittling him or making him feel badly, I think you were both supportive of the fact that he was looking for support, but just delineating that there’s a difference between support and admiration.

John: Along those lines, there’s another listener who wrote in who had some really good suggestions about how to approach that.

Craig: Let’s hear them.

Megana: Sarah says, “I’m an actor dating a machine learning engineer with a PhD in computer-”

Craig: Wait. Sorry. Hold on. She’s an actor dating a machine?

Megana: “Learning engineer with a PhD in computer science.”

Craig: I got so excited. I was like, “Oh my god, John. Do we have the girl for you.” Go on, Megana.

Megana: She says, “He fully supports my dream to break into the entertainment industry, despite knowing very little about it. He supports me through active listening, making an effort to watch TV and movies together, and by paying much more attention to the industry-related news that pops up on his Apple News app, so great. However, he politely told me when we started dating that he did not wish to watch any of my work until we were further along in our relationship. His reasoning was that he didn’t want his opinions, spoken or unspoken, to influence my future career decisions, and he also didn’t want to open himself up to fantasizing about potential sex-”

Craig: What?

Megana: “Potential successes-”

Craig: What’s that?

Megana: “He didn’t want to open himself up to fantasizing about potential successes I could come upon, or conversely, failures that may be ahead for me. Basically he told me that my professional life is my professional life, and our relationship is our relationship. He also made the interesting point that I will likely never gain insight into how good or not good he is at his job, which is the case for most spouses who don’t meet in the workplace. In my opinion, the greatest gift a partner can give, outside of love obviously, is unconditional support toward their partner’s personal endeavors, especially those which do not directly include them. I’m challenging myself to be an equally supportive partner, but wow, turns out Machine Learning For Dummies wasn’t written for actual dummies.

“Anyways, knowing I’m loved for who I am and not what I accomplish professionally is such a great feeling, and I really encourage other creatives to try to find a partner who offers this comfort. I encourage other creatives struggling with feelings of neglect to make a list of the ways they are actively supporting the professional aspirations of their partner before making a list of the ways their partner is failing to support them.”

Craig: Oh my god, Sarah.

John: Just master class there.

Craig: Talk about somebody that doesn’t seem like they need therapy. Every now and then you meet someone, you’re like, “Oh my god, you don’t need therapy.” It’s rare.

Megana: Like you’ve won therapy.

Craig: Right, like you clearly won therapy. You passed the test. You’re an A-plus in therapy. That’s both.

John: Both Sarah and her partner have won therapy, because what the partner said is just right too, because it’s the best way of saying, “I want you to be fantastic and great, but I’m worried that if I see your work, you’re going to get the wrong feedback out of me, so maybe we just keep that stuff separate.”

Craig: I guess that they push on everybody, and it seems so obvious until you meet people that aren’t doing it, is communication. It seems like Sarah and her partner are communicating fully and openly and quickly. I think it’s also when you feel something, you communicate it. If you let it fester for a while, it’s going to get weird. That’s great. In all honesty, generally speaking, you’re going to want to try and communicate your feelings to your partners before you write in to a radio show about it, which I’m not saying that our last person didn’t, because they did. This is great. Well done, Sarah. Well done, Sarah’s machine … learning engineer.

John: Let’s turn to our main topics here. We’re going to talk about adaptation and transition. There are a lot of questions about adaptations, both how we take existing material and turn them into new film and TV products for the world, but also the struggles and challenges in those. Megana, start us off.

Megana: Alexander in New York writes, “I have a question about adaptations, and I hope this comes across as more curious than negative, but why do writers continue to butcher them?”

Craig: That sounds so curious. I’m just wondering, why are you all terrible?

Megana: “Writers make changes to the source material that often seems completely arbitrary and unnecessary, or worse, actively going against what the original source material does. Why? Is it ego? Do they feel compelled to make changes to the story so that it’s theirs? Is it laziness? Is it the studios? Or am I asking for something I shouldn’t want? Are faithful adaptations less interesting and creators correct for trying to keep things different?”

Craig: There’s some fair questions in there, but the setup was a little…

John: The butcher.

Craig: The butcher.

John: The butcher was hard. I would say let’s talk about adaptations in a very general sense. We’re coming in from a book, from some other preexisting material, a video game. Those things are generally adapted because they worked so well in their original medium. That novel was fantastic. That video game was one of the best things you ever played. Film and TV work differently. They don’t run along the same tracks. You’re going to need to make changes to make it make sense as a movie or as a TV show. Structurally, things just work differently. The audience’s relationship to those characters works differently.

As I’ve done books and I’ve done movies, in a book I can go inside a character’s head and explore everything, and I have all the pages and all the time I want. Movies are about two hours, and the whole story needs to fit into about those two hours. TV shows can be longer, but they have their own rhythms to them. I think part of it’s just the basic nature of moving from one medium to another medium. Things are going to change. That’s at the very start. That’s when Craig or I first get the call about adapting this work from something else. We’re talking about, “Okay, these are the things I need to change in order to make this into a movie.” Then it goes through a whole other process of getting from that first script to the final movie. Just everything does just change along the way, and because of who was cast, because of what director comes on board, because of what the studio wants. There are just a bunch of these problems that crop up. Sometimes movies are just bad. It’s not because they just decided to take this original great piece of material and make a bad movie. It’s just stuff happened.

Craig: Stuff happened. God, that is true. I think John just listed all the really good reasons why things change. Let’s talk about some of the bad reasons why things change, because I want to acknowledge that a lot of times there are adaptations where I will look at it and go, “What happened?” Is it ego? Almost never. Writers don’t really get much ego. A few here and there, but mostly that’s been beaten out of a lot of us. Are we compelled to make changes to the story so that it’s theirs? Not really. If something is working, it’s a great gift. Is it laziness? Never. There is no such thing as laziness. You may not be great. There may be a limit to what you see. We are all limited in one form or another, but rarely are we limited by just truly not caring. Is it the studios interfering? Yes.

John: Sometimes. Let’s talk about why studios interfere, because I think in some cases they got this book and they liked this book a lot and they want to adapt it, but they really want a big commercial movie and that it’s not necessarily in that book. They want to take what the thing is they loved about this book and make it into a movie. Whatever it takes to make that movie, they’ll do it. That will be casting the wrong people in it, making sure it’s set in a completely different place than it originally was set. They’re willing to change a lot in order to get the thing that they ultimately want to spend $100 million on and $40 million to market.

Craig: A lot of times, Alexander, when studios buy properties, what they’re buying is a title and awareness. They don’t look any further past that. They don’t actually care what’s in it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sent a book – some books by not just bestselling authors but household name authors – I get sent a book, “We love the title, and obviously marketing value of the person who wrote it, and the basic concept. The rest we hate. Change it.” Typically I will say no. In fact, always I will say no.

Now there are other cases where in adaptations, drastic changes have occurred and it’s worked wonderfully. The example that a lot of people will often offer is the Shining. Kubrick just went way left turn off the book and ignored huge chunks of it and invented stuff and did things differently, and Stephen King notoriously hates that movie. I don’t blame him, because his book is personal to him. His book’s incredible, by the way. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. I love the Shining, the book.

John: It’s great.

Craig: I also love the Shining, the movie, because I didn’t write the book, so I have a little bit more mental freedom there. Sometimes wild adaptations work wonderfully. Wicked has been running on Broadway for 14 billion years and made $14 billion. Have you read the novel by Gregory Maguire? Because it ain’t like that. It’s a good book. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the book. It’s just they went way off base when they put that musical together. It’s just not like the book.

A, oftentimes studios are rewarded for going away from the material. B, oftentimes they are punished for being too close to the material, because it’s really hard sometimes to be super close and not feel like you’re just checking off boxes. You also left out directors, Alexander. Directors, especially in movies. Directors are the ones who are basically creatively in charge. They are as prone to error as writers.

You did not come across more curious than negative, by the way. It came across equally curious and negative. I understand your frustration. What I would suggest to you, Alexander, is just so that maybe, and maybe this will give you insight into it, try it. Try it. Try adapting something from one medium into another. You will, at the very least, I think be a little humbled and be at least a little more aware of how perilous those minefields can be.

John: A thing I’d ask Alexander to do is to make a list of great adaptations and terrible adaptations. I think right now top of mind is all about he just saw a terrible adaptation of something and that’s what he’s remembering, but he’s forgetting, oh, there are actually really good adaptations or adaptations that are better than the originals, and that also happens too. It’s not always that an adaptation’s going to fall apart or that they’re so often butchered. I don’t think that’s usually the case.

Craig: There are adaptations of little things all the time that are just wonderful, and much better than what they came from. It does go both ways. I will just say this. If your suspicion is that it’s writerly ego, it is not.

John: It’s not. I guarantee it. Megana, what else do we have?

Megana: Sara from Berlin asks, “I’ve been wondering about the phenomena of similar content being released around the same time. I know from my advertising background that sometimes this is indeed just cultural zeitgeist, like the influx of vampire content in the 2010s. However, sometimes the similarities are too similar. For example, I attended Sundance in 2016 and there were two documentaries about Christine Chubbuck, the Florida reporter who committed suicide on air in 1974. The question’s coming up for me again with the Amy Poehler Lucy and Desi documentary and Being the Ricardos coming out at the same time. Any theories or wisdom on this? Is there a secret stash of upcoming content material only certain people have access to?”

Craig: Wouldn’t it be amazing if Hollywood were that organized?

John: The secret list, oh my gosh.

Craig: Wonderful.

John: That would be so awesome. I don’t think it’s actually all that different than the vampire situation in the 2010s, because there was suddenly a bunch of vampire stuff. I think it’s just these invisible cycles of things, where the same reason why it was appealing to one person to write that vampire story, it was appealing to other people. They weren’t communicating with each other, but the same cultural forces were pushing them to do that thing, and it fed upon itself. Vampires are a more general case than Lucy and Desi, but I think Lucy and Desi are an interesting couple to be thinking about in terms of power in television and how relationships develop and change. It was a really good idea to do a documentary about it. It was a really good idea to do a fictionalized story about it. They just had the same idea at the same time. That happens a lot.

Craig: It does happen a lot. Also, just practically speaking, there are times where people are in development on something, and because there’s no competition, they just spin their wheels for a long time because there’s no pressure to do otherwise. Then they hear that somebody else is starting to prepare something that would scoop them, and they suddenly go into high gear, and voila, there are two projects. Just sometimes the hearing of the existence of one will inspire the other one into being, and now you have two.

John: We often do How Would This Be A Movie segments on the show. One thing that Craig always likes to stress is that in many cases you don’t need the rights to anything, because it’s just a true event that happened. The same people are opening the newspaper and seeing that same thing happen. It’s like, oh, we’re both going to write this story about it. I don’t know the backstory on the two Christine Chubbuck documentaries, but my hunch is that there were some articles somewhere that came out about it that inspired both filmmakers to push through it or it just percolated up in some way that it inspired both of them, but they weren’t communicating with each other.

Craig: There’s no conspiracies, sadly. It would explain a lot.

John: This could be umbrage bait, Craig.

Craig: Here we go.

John: Megana.

Craig: Here we go.

Megana: Juliana asks, “What’s up with MTV using a contest to get three work-for-hire feature scripts for a total of $20,000?”

Craig: What?

Megana: “I notice their FAQ on their contest website says they don’t want WGA members applying. It all seems a bit bizarre. How are they able to use public domain IP – for example they’re using A Christmas Carol – as the basis of the contest, yet retain all rights to writers’ own ideas about how to adapt that IP? Could they really enforce this, if a writer who wasn’t selected went off and used the treatment they submitted to write a script and sold it elsewhere?”

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to, it’s firsttimescreenwriters.com. It’s an MTV contest.

Craig: Don’t do it. We’re putting a link there for you to not click it.

John: You could click the link and read through the stuff. I don’t think most of our listeners should be doing this thing. I’m going to be generous with my assumptions here, because I genuinely believe this was done with the best of intentions, that it’s a chance to find new filmmakers who are doing interesting things and see new stuff. I don’t think this is a good idea for people to be writing in and doing this thing. The basic gist of this is you say, “Okay, I have an idea for … I’m going to write up one page with … This is how I would do A Christmas Carol related to my life or my experience.” You send that in, and they pick some people out of this to have them do a slightly longer treatment and a slightly longer treatment, and some people are going to be writing full scripts.

Craig: No.

John: If you’re inspired to write A Christmas Carol story, great, do it, but I don’t think you should send it as part of this thing, because I just don’t see anything listed here to make me believe that you’re going to get feedback or support or anything out of this other than a meat grinder process.

Craig: I’m going to be way harsher than you were.

John: I knew you would be. I wanted to be the generous version.

Craig: First of all, to answer your specific question, I don’t know if it’s Julina or Yelana, how are they able to use public domain IP and yet retain all rights to writers’ own ideas about how to adapt IP? They won’t retain your ideas. Your ideas aren’t anything. They’re not copyright. What they can do with their contest terms is say it’s a work-for-hire and if we pay you, we retain all rights to anything you’ve written down. The specific way you choose to adapt a book, like A Christmas Carol, into another work, like a movie, is absolutely copyrightable. That’s why, for instance, while John and I, I’m sure, and Megana all love Muppets Christmas Carol, we cannot just copy it down and make our own Muppets Christmas Carol, because adaptations are in and of themselves new bits of IP.

Let’s talk about why this is horrendous. Here’s their frequently asked questions. It says, “MTV Entertainment Studios First Time Screenwriters Contest was designed to find fresh voices who tell diverse stories.” Ah, okay, they’ve certainly hit the buzzwords to make us think that this is a progressive, pro-social activity to find writers who aren’t of the usual overly represented ilk in Hollywood, and bring them to prominence. That’s wonderful. That sounds amazing.

It says, “We believe our community is enriched,” remember that word, “when the stories told on film reflect a distinct vision of independent artists from every facet of our multicultural community.” Oh my god, who could have a problem with that? Me. Here we go. “MTV Entertainment Studios will select one project to be the original Christmas Carol movie for production in 2022. Data subject to change at MTV’s sole discretion. The selected winning script’s writer will be awarded,” are you ready for your enrichment, “$10,000 for the purchase of the script.”

$10,000. We have Writers Guild minimums, and that’s not even close. That’s not on the green. That’s not on the fairway. That’s still on the TBox. That is nowhere near what a screenplay for a movie that is being produced by MT-fricking-V deserves monetarily. How dare these people – and I love saying how dare – how dare these people give us this claptrap about how, oh, the community is going to be enriched and multicultural, diverse, blah blah blah, and then go, “Oh, but by the way, if we decide you’re good enough, we’re screwing you. We’re going to pay you so much less than all the other writers that we’re not going for, the WGA writers, all the white guys that we’re trying to say, oh, we want to help people so it’s not just all white guys in the world, but the white guys are getting paid. You, not white guy, are getting screwed by us, MTV.”

Screw you back, MTV. That’s outrageous. They should, at a minimum, pay Writers Guild minimum for a screenplay that is an adaptation work that is being produced. This is exploitative. In my opinion, this is exploitative. It is immoral. They should not be doing this, especially if they’re doing it “designed to find fresh voices who tell diverse stories” and “independent artists reflecting distinct visions of multicultural communities.” As far as I’m concerned, they should be paying more than minimum. Help these people by giving them an actual career, money that they can use to pay rent and write more. $10,000? I’m speechless. I’m speechless. This is embarrassing. Viacom is worth billions of dollars, and this is what they do? That’s gross.

John: Let’s say their goal is to find diverse voices of people who have not had produced films and get them writing for MTV and come up with a new Christmas Carol. Could you find those people out there in the world? Yes. It is not hard to find diverse writers of different backgrounds who have written scripts that are not produced, that you could come in and have pitched their version of A Christmas Carol story, and you could pay them to write the movie. You could do that. That’s a thing that MTV could do.

Craig: They’re not doing that.

John: They’re not doing that. I think the summary is people should not enter this and we think it’s a bad idea.

Craig: It’s terrible. I actually think that if enough people, and hopefully people talk about this, that they change this, that MTV Entertainment Studios First Time Screenwriters Contest should change this. There should be more money given. At a minimum, it should be WGA minimum. Note that they say, “If I’m in the WGA, can I apply?” Answer, “The intention of the contest is to find new voices, so at this time we are looking for non-WGA writers.” Also, they don’t have to pay you. They don’t have to pay you WGA. That’s what that’s about, FYI, so you know.

John: Everyone should understand that MTV is a WGA signatory, but a signatory can also have a nonsignatory production entity, and so they’re going to hire these people under their non-WGA production entity. They could not hire a WGA writer on this non-WGA production entity. That’s the real reason why they’re not going to have WGA writers on this.

Craig: I’m looking at our list of minimums here. If you exclude a treatment, you’re just being paid minimum for a non-original screenplay. I’m going to assume that this is not a low-budget film. I think our low budget is $5 million or less. I want to point out, even if it were a low-budget film, the minimum for a non-original screenplay, so based on an existing work, not including a treatment, which I’m sure they’re going to make you write anyway, $42,000. If it is a normal budget, that is to say more than – and I’ll find out what the, I can’t remember what the actual number is – $5 million or $10 million… It’s $5 million. This movie’s going to cost more than $5 million. The actual minimum, therefore, is $90,000.

They are screwing you to the tune of $80,000 at a minimum, and on top of that, they are denying you the health care that you would get if this were a WGA job and you were paid a normal amount, because both of those amounts would qualify you for health care for a year. That’s what they’re doing to you diverse writers who they are asking to work for them. This is gross. Boy, I really have become a leftist.

John: It is entirely possible that this would be done under a movie-of-the-week contract, which is a special TV contract, which could be lower than some of those minimums, but it’s going to be so much higher than $10,000. That’s I think the important point. Whether it’s $40,000 or slightly less than that because they’re doing it under a MOW contract, still, it’s going to be more than this. It’s ridiculous for them not to be paying at least that. There’s a reason why we have minimums.

Craig: I don’t think there’s any minimum that we have that gets you a script for $10,000. We know that because they’re telling us, “We don’t want WGA writers.” It’s gross.

John: Gross.

Craig: Boo, MTV. Come on. Seriously. What are you guys saving? What was the point? That’s what blows my mind is they wouldn’t even miss the difference. It’s a rounding error. It’s nothing to them. They still can’t do it. They just pay lip service but then they don’t actually want to step up and give people who are not inside of this industry and who have traditionally been excluded what everybody on the inside and has been traditionally included gets, which is money. I’m so angry. I’m so angry.

John: That went kind of dark there. Megana, can you find us a little bit happier-

Craig: Please.

John: … question to try to answer?

Megana: Bernard wrote, “After being blindsided and fired off an adaptation of one of my favorite IPs, I’m now in the healing process, but looking for tips for moving on. Is the source material dead to you? Do you unfollow creators? Do you burn your physical copies? So much of selling ourselves to adapt projects is showing/embracing our love for the original material, which becomes a double-edged sword if things go poorly. In a world that’s so IP-focused, how do we navigate this, just work on things we don’t love?”

Craig: Just enter the MTV contest and you’ll be fine. You’ll get enough money for groceries for three months. It’ll be great. John, this is a good question, actually.

John: Oh Bernard, I feel you there. I’ve been there. I’ve been fired off of things that I loved. It kills me. Your instincts are kind of right. You don’t have to physically burn things, but that playlist you were listening to, stop listening to that playlist. Stop thinking about the project. You do yourself no good to obsess over this thing that has sailed on. It’s like you’ve been dumped, and you have to unfollow them on Instagram. You have to not put yourself in that space, because it’ll only make you sad when you think about it. I think the best thing to do is recognize that this sucks and that you’re going to move on.

When you need to talk about it in meetings and stuff like that, it’s like, “Yeah, I really loved working on the thing. I was frustrated that I didn’t get to carry it to the finish line.” There’s ways to talk about it to make it sound like it was a more positive experience than it maybe was, but you have to move on yourself. Don’t try to score any points or wish the project ill, because it’s not going to help you. Down the road, hopefully the movie will get made and you’re going to be invited to the premier, and you can fake a smile and be happy. Maybe your name’s going to be on this. That’s another thing to look forward to.

Craig: You know that story about the guy who was the first director on the Island of Dr. Moreau, the Marlon Brando film? He got fired and couldn’t stay away, and essentially got himself hired anonymously as one of the animal people, so he was extra.

John: Oh my gosh.

Craig: Because he was in costume and a mask, they didn’t know it was him. He was just there watching them screw his thing up. It’s the most amazing thing. I can’t believe that that guy wanted to do that.

Bernard, I feel for you. I think what I loved is that you said you were in the healing process. That’s exactly right. These things are hurtful, and you have to mourn them. Time will be your friend here. Is the source material dead to you? I hope not, but for a while, yeah, leave it be. The source material is unchanged. You didn’t write the source material. What you got fired off of wasn’t the source material. It was an adaptation of the source material. You’ve been soaking in it. You’ve had your own vision of it. It’s been yanked away from you. You just need time.

Above all, don’t turn away from this … When you say, “In a world that’s so IP-focused, how do we navigate this, just work on things we don’t love?” No, unfortunately, you have to keep working on things you love. This one is very much like you get dumped, your heart is broken, should you just never love again? Wonderful poetic quotes about why you should. You should. Just give yourself a little time. It’ll be better. Allow yourself to feel and hurt, and then you’ll be all right.

John: I have many of these in my past, but the one I’m thinking of right now involved a director, and whenever his name comes up now in the future, I’m just like, “No.” I won’t work with that director. It makes me happy, that I don’t need to see his movies. I keep getting sent stuff that he’s attached to, they want me to work on. Like, nope, not going to do it. I’m not going to say why. No, you screwed me, and I don’t feel like doing it. That thing that I loved, I recognize now I will never be able to get my version of it made, but I’m on to the next thing.

Craig: You got to protect yourself as you go. It’s easier to protect yourself, tying back into the earlier question about established and non-established, when you have made a lot of money and you’re doing fine. Then it’s a lot easier to protect yourself that way. It’s harder when you’re starting out, because sometimes you actually have to … Just to pay the bills, sometimes you have to work with people you really wish you weren’t working with. It’s hurtful, but it’s certainly character-building. You obviously never want to be in a situation where you are in danger or people are actually hurting, but if it’s somebody that you don’t love working with, early on it’s harder to say no. Later on, will become much, much easier.

John: Craig, you and I can both think of writers who early in their career they get fired off of a project and they just won’t let it go. You’ll talk to them a year later and they’re still talking about that. I’m like, “No, you need to move on,” because that’s this business. You’re going to get fired off of stuff.

Craig: You can’t let it define you. Everybody is going to lose. Everyone’s going to love and lose. Everyone. I don’t know anybody that fell in love once and that was the person they were in love with for their whole life and then they died peacefully. Then they died first. You’ll lose, and it hurts, and then, just as our moms and dads taught us, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, you get back on the horse. No one likes to hear that. No one wants to do it until they’re ready. Sometimes you have to push yourself a little bit to do it. I wish I could tell you that being successful makes it easier or makes it hurt less. No, not in my opinion. It still hurts.

John: The thing that does happen is that you recognize, oh, I should’ve seen that pattern coming. I’m surprised that I’m blindsided now, because I feel like I have the good pattern recognition to see bad things coming, but it still hurts. It’s frustrating.

Craig: If you spend your time vigilant, then you are not giving yourself over. If you don’t give yourself over, there’s no chance it’s going to work. You have to give yourself over. You have to be weirdly un-vigilant and trusting and faithful, which means you might get hurt. Every time I go into something, I just think to myself, give myself completely, and if they stomp on my heart, alas.

John: I’m sure I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but Dick Zanuck, who’s now passed away, is a legendary producer, and there was a project that I was writing for him that I got a phone call from him, 8 o’clock at night, and it’s like, “John, it’s Dick. I got to let you know that they’re going to bring another writer, and I’m sorry, and it’s terrible, but I wanted you to hear it from me,” and basically spent the next 10 minutes talking me through the process. I was still really upset, but I continued to have a good relationship with Dick Zanuck because he was so forthright and honest about what the situation was and why it was happening. It’s still frustrating to me now that so many producers and other folks who were in higher positions don’t take the time to actually close off the loops like that and actually understand what it would feel like to be fired.

Craig: There are situations where you don’t have a relationship with the people in charge. If something has gone in an impersonal manner, then it’s okay that that’s the way it ends. When you have a relationship with somebody, then it is essential that they continue that, that they can’t just send you a Dear John letter. Did you ever get a Dear John letter, by the way? I shouldn’t ask everybody named John that.

John: No. No one’s ever broken up with me by an email or by letter, an actual letter, no.

Craig: (singing)

John: I’ve gotten letters that are just Dear John, but they were never about any relationship.

Craig: That’s how I’m going to end this one.

John: Let’s take a transition question here. Megana, start us off.

Megana: A listener wrote in and said, “Diversity inclusion efforts are by their very nature going to be most focused on those at the bottom rung, the entry-level staff writer jobs. Where does this leave those who had the misfortune of trying to break into the business with the wrong skin tone in the wrong year? The white men in power at the top get to continue to champion diversity efforts with zero personal sacrifice, while those of us just desperate for an opportunity continue to be tossed aside and told to toughen up.”

John: This was part of a longer email, but that’s the distilled essence of it. I think my first instinct is to attack the argument, like oh, it’s not actually harder for you or it’s still harder for other people, but I wanted to try maybe instead to do the classic thing where we first acknowledge what you’re actually saying, so validate not that you’re right, but that you have this feeling – it’s the feeling you’re experiencing, just to validate that you’re having this feeling – and then maybe try to restate what you’re saying, which to me you’re saying you feel like your opportunities to get these lower-level writing jobs are reduced because you’re a white man and that feels unfair. Craig, is that a fair restatement of what you think he’s trying to say?

Craig: It almost seems like he’s gone a bit further, that there are no entry-level staff writer jobs for white men.

John: Yes. He doesn’t say that there are none, but he is saying it’s the misfortune of trying to break into the business. He’s certainly saying it’s more difficult than it would’ve been five years ago, 10 years ago. Here’s where I think the next stage is to investigate, is to really check the facts. If you look at the numbers for TV staffing, the percentage of BIPOC writers at those lower levels has increased a lot, and so that’s true. It’s not a zero-sum game, so there’s been more writers hired overall, but the percentage of white male writers at those lower levels is down from where it would’ve been five years, 10 years ago. That sound right?

Craig: I take your word for it that those are the statistics.

John: I’ve also heard anecdotes and excuses from agency managers about why it’s harder to get white men staffed at those lower levels now, that they can use this, like, “Oh, they’re only looking for people of color for those lower-level positions,” as an excuse for why you’re not getting staffed, and yet there are still white guys making it. You still see people who are getting. It’s not the fact that this listener couldn’t be hired. It’s just the fact that he’s not been hired and that he feels like this is the obstacle.

Craig: Let’s just take it like you cited the statistic. Let’s say there are fewer white men being hired at entry-level staff writer positions. Therefore we can say, yes, it’s harder for white men right now to get entry-level staff writer jobs than it used to be. What we’re not saying is that it’s harder than it ought to be or easier than it ought to be. I note that none of us, and when I say us I mean white people, white guys, were going on particularly about “the misfortune of trying to break in the business with the wrong skin tone in the wrong year” for all of the years preceding the last two or three, if you are not white.

Yes, I can see how it is annoying to hear from white men in power at the top, who already have jobs, who already broke in, and who have the luxury, like you and I do, of saying fair is fair, other people deserve a turn. It’s been over-represented for so long that we have to make a change and we have to turn the wheel a bit. Easy for us to say, because we’re not trying to get those break-in jobs.

On the other hand, there’s almost no jobs anyway. What’s a little tricky is, almost no one ever got those jobs. Maybe .01% of all the people who want to have an entry-level staff writer job got one, in the world, or in our industry. It’s certainly not impossible to get one of these jobs if you are a white man. You just have to be better than you used to be. I think anyone who’s not white is going to be very familiar with that, which is you have to be better than the other people in order to get a job.

We can’t go down the road of trying to figure out what the perfect solution to fairness is when it has been so unfair for so long. It’s going to be what it’s going to be until it is basically fair. That causes problems. I am empathetic. I get it. It doesn’t feel good, like it didn’t feel good to everybody who wasn’t white for so long. It is easy for us to say.

John: I can understand why listener feels like it’s unfair. I understand why it feels that way. That doesn’t mean that it is unfair or that it is fair or that we’re going to get to a perfect solution here, but I understand why you feel that way. I think the challenge I’d present is what do you actually want to see change? If this were fixed, what would the end result be? What change do you want to see happening right now so that it could be this way? When I see complaints come up about this, I don’t see proposed solutions. If you, the listener, got staffed, would the problem be solved? Is it a structural problem or is it an individual problem? You’re describing both at the same time. I get why it feels unfair. Talk to me about what the system is that would actually be fair and how we’d get there. I think it’s difficult.

Craig: If you’re feeling angry or you’re feeling aggrieved, just make sure you direct that anger toward the right cause, which is the institutions and the studios that perpetuated unfairness for so long against people who weren’t white men, because that’s what’s happening now. There is a reaction to that. I haven’t heard anybody suggest that what we really ought to be doing is punishing the people who caused this problem, which were entry-level staff writers who are white men. Entry-level staff writers who are white men don’t hire anyone. Be angry at the studios. Certainly don’t be angry at the people who are getting jobs right now.

Above all else, understand and internalize the following statement. It is absolutely possible for a white man to get an entry-level staff writer job in Hollywood. You’re going to have to go for it. If you need to get better, you get better. If you need to work harder, you work harder. Do what you need to do to break through. That is what anyone has ever had to do. If it’s a little harder this time. It’s a little harder this time.

Some people have the misfortune of graduating college in the middle of a terrible recession. Some people have the misfortune of having a disability that writing rooms have traditionally just went like, “Oh yeah, no, we don’t want that person in here. We don’t want a deaf person in here. It’s too hard.” Everyone has a misfortune. You acknowledge it, you feel what you feel, blame the right people, and then get to work. There’s nothing else you can do.

John: Another thing I’d say about writers rooms is think about what are you able to bring to a writers room, and what is it that is unique, that would make you an incredibly valuable asset into that writers room. It’s not going to be that you’re a white guy. It’s going to be some sort of special experience you have, an insight you have, an ability you have, something about your personal experience that you can bring in that writers room, that can improve the show because you are part of that show. Instead of focusing on your skin color, really think about what is it that’s unique about you that is going to help you get staffed and be the perfect person for them to hire. That’s going to be more likely to lead to success. Let’s wrap up with one more question. Megana, can you talk us through Tony in LA?

Megana: Tony in LA asks, “I never expected the first time I wrote in to the show to be about this, but life can sure throw some curve balls. My best friend and writing partner died unexpectedly during the holidays.”

Craig: Oh no.

Megana: “I’m processing and slowly making my way through the grief. Eventually, I will be able to get back to writing. I’m pretty sure I already know what that first script will be, a sci-fi feature dealing with death and what comes after death. I pitched the idea to him about a year ago, and he loved it. It’s been on my mind a lot recently, and I’m hopeful the subject matter will be cathartic for me.

“That said, the idea of diving into a project by myself feels incredibly daunting. Writing with him was always fun and often easy. We kept each other accountable, and no suggestion was ever frowned upon by the other, no matter how crazy it seemed. We were the perfect balance for each other. It’s been over six years since I’ve written anything solo, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t irrationally concerned about trying to write by myself again. I’m not sure I even know how anymore. Do you have any advice on how to make that transition?”

John: Tony, first off, we’re just so sorry. It’s a horrible loss. You can’t rush grief. It doesn’t sound like you’re trying to rush grief. You’re trying to think about what happens after you move through this period of grief, but acknowledging that this period of grief is necessary and it’s just going to happen there.

Two things. We can talk about this first thing you’re going to try to write, which I think might be a mistake, because it’s going to be too closely tied in to your memory of your former writing partner. Then I think we should also talk about learning to write in a new way, because you’re going to learn to write without this person who was always there writing with you. Those are both challenging things to tackle.

Craig, let’s start with learning. You have written with a partner before. Then you were writing solo. What would be your instinct for Tony in terms of how to find out what his new writing routine is going to be or how he can start writing solo, if solo is the best way for him to write?

Craig: Again, Tony, certainly you’ve gone through it here. It’s awful news to hear. You’ll be okay. Like you said, you’re slowly making your way through the grief. It’s important for you to not try and feel accountable to the writer that the two of you were together. That writer doesn’t exist anymore. You’re a different person now. You’re a different writer. You may not be as good of a writer without him. That’s okay. You may find that you grow into a better writer without him, which will cause its own weird feelings. You don’t know. What you can’t do is be any better than you are right now. In a sense, you’re learning to walk again. You’re learning to run and to talk again, because you’re doing it differently, wildly different.

Of course everything comes back to musicals. Everything. There is a great musical called Curtains, a very funny musical, but also a very beautiful musical. The music was by John Kander. Music and lyrics by John Kander. He wrote a song called I Miss the Music. Partly it’s about a lyricist and a musician, and they break up, and he misses the music that they made when they were together. This was very much an overt love letter to John Kander’s former partner, Fred Ebb, who had died. Kander and Ebb were amazing. Kander and Ebb did Cabaret, they did Chicago. They wrote the song New York, New York. What else do you need to know? They’re incredible. They are all-time greats. Did Kander’s career go as well as it did without Fred than it did with? No. Would John Kander have ever thought it would? No, and that’s okay too. I will say that John Kander wrote one hell of a song with that one.

I like that you’re talking about writing something that has to do with what happened here. I think that could be very beautiful. It wouldn’t surprise me if as you were writing, you heard his voice in your head every now and again. If you do, listen to it. If he’s like, “Eh,” you go, “Mm-hmm, got it. He’s still there in my head and he’s telling me not good enough.” Listen to that. You can’t be better than you are on your own. Give yourself time to be a new writer, because you are now a new writer.

John: Whatever you decide to do next as your first full thing, I would just push that back a little bit and give yourself some time to not have the responsibility of trying to tackle a 120-page script. That just feels like a long slog, and I could see you getting really stuck in it and stuck in your head. Maybe pick some shorter projects. Write a short. Just experiment with how you’re going to write, where you’re going to write, what time of day you’re going to write, what is going to be the new things you want to try. Experiment and figure out what that could be, work on something shorter that you can actually finish, and then write something else that you can finish before you get up to that full-speed thing, because it’s going to be new.

You might also be thinking about, am I a person who really should be writing with somebody else? Maybe. That could be a situation where go to a writers group, find some other people who you can try to write with. I guess I would advise you to figure out whether you can write alone first before finding a replacement partner.

Tony, if you could write back in to us maybe a year from now and just give us an update on how you’re doing, I’m just really curious what the next steps are for you and how this next year goes for you.

It’s now time for our One Cool Things. I have two little short ones here. My first one is this comic by the Oatmeal. The Oatmeal’s such a great internet comic. This one I really liked was about creativity. He’s describing when you’re blocked in a project, it’s sort of like how your ears get stuck, like at altitude, and then suddenly your ears pop, you’re like, “Oh,” you have just have this inspiration, and how creative inspiration is like your ears popping. If you think about it that way, you know how to get your ears to pop. You actually have to go up or go down to get your ears to pop and just to let yourself go on that journey to do the thing that lets your ears pop. That’s a good reminder there. I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Second thing is Australian Survivor. Craig, did you ever watch Survivor?

Craig: I watched the first season of Survivor back in 1839.

John: Way back when. Jeff Probst is a friend of the show and has read stuff for us before. We still watch Survivor. My daughter watches all of Survivor. She had us watch Australian Survivor Season Six, which is Brains Versus Brawn. It’s set in the Outback. I got to say, it was a really good season. Incredibly high production values, the right amount of twists and things, really good game-play throughout the whole thing. Craig, the Australian Outback is actually really pretty. I don’t know why-

Craig: It’s gorgeous.

John: Often I see it is as this desert wasteland. It looks amazing in this. There’s water and there’s stuff to do.

Craig: Yeah, and then venomous animals everywhere.

John: There are. No spoilers, no one dies of a venomous insect or snake in this situation.

Craig: I’m not watching it.

John: The episodes are too long. They feel a little bit padded, and yet you still love it all. I would say if you’re looking for a Survivor – obviously Jeff Probst, if you’re listening to the show, we still love you, you’re still number one – but Australian Survivor, quite good.

Craig: Wait, was he not on Australian Survivor?

John: No. Jonathan LaPaglia is the host of Australian Survivor.

Craig: You mean it’s the Australian … I thought it was Survivor in Australia.

John: No, it’s all Australians. It’s all Australians.

Craig: It’s just Australians. To me, Australian Survivor feels redundant. You walk out of your house, and there’s a tarantula. It’s right there. Tarantula.

John: Right there. You get a variety of Australian accents. You start to recognize, oh, the guy with the cowboy hat actually has a more Australian accent than the beach-loving people. You start to get some sense of geography of Australia in the course of it. I will say that it’s a bunch of white people.

Craig: In Australia?

John: There’s not as many people of color in the show, I think even as representative of the-

Craig: Of the actual Australian population.

John: Yeah. If we’re watching American television, we’re used to seeing people of various races. It’s so helpful when you have 24 people. That helps you remember who’s who. There’s just so many blonde ladies, it’s tough at the start.

Craig: Whitey number one, whitey number two. Who’s your favorite? Whitey five.

John: The best one.

Craig: My One Cool Thing is a game, as it often is. Now this is a game on Apple Arcade. I wasn’t subscribing to Apple Arcade, but now it’s come with this new, what is it called, Apple One subscription.

John: Apple One, yeah.

Craig: Now I have it. Cool. It’s called the Last Campfire. I just started it. I think it’s fairly new. You play this funny little character who’s going on this little journey. I guess the puzzle format is how do you get from here to here kind of thing, move some stuff around, turn a thing. Interesting puzzles, but it’s rather beautiful looking, and it’s also incredibly sweet and a bit mournful. There’s a narrator. I’m trying to figure out what her accent is. It almost sounds Icelandic or something. She has a very specific accent. I got to look it up and see what it is. I don’t know, I feel sad while I’m playing it, but I also feel hopeful. It’s really weird. It’s just got a lovely tone.

John: I’m watching the video as you’re talking about it. I can totally see that. It does look really beautiful.

Craig: There’s a word that they use. Oh, I found out what the accent is. The word is “forlorn.” It comes up quite a bit. The narrator in the Last Campfire, according to Reddit, is … Somebody said, “It makes me think I’m listening to Bjork,” because she’s … It did sound Icelandic. In fact, it is a British Norwegian Icelandic actor. I think I identified the Icelandicness-

John: You hit it.

Craig: … because of Hildur Guðnadóttir, who was our composer on Chernobyl. Icelandic is a really specific accent. There you go. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful accent.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. Thank you for all your reading today. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro by Owen Danoff. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@dev.johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin and I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at Scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments. Craig and Megana, thank you so much.

Megana: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig, so this, as many of our bonus topics, came out of a Twitter discussion where somebody had tweeted at you, or you and me, and said, “I try to avoid using forms of to be in my writing, because it’s weak,” or something. Remind me what the setup was.

Craig: They had a teacher who told them that the best practice would be, when writing a screenplay, to just simply never use any form of the verb to be, it would make your writing better. They had internalized this as something that was really worthy. I thought it sounded absolutely bananas.

John: It is bananas as a blanket rule to try to do this. I’ve seen people experiment with this, where they’ll write an entire blog post without using any form of to be, and it takes twice as long, because you realize that be is not just the sense of existing, it is a fundamental helper verb for constructing our English language. It feels like one of those over-applied rules, because there’s definitely sentences you read where a form of to be is in there and if you actually just use the real verb, it’s a stronger sentence. It’s always worth looking at a sentence to say, oh, is there a way I could make the sentence better? Great. Sometimes that is removing the verb to be, but as a blanket rule, gosh, no, you should never try to get rid of all forms of to be.

Craig: I’m trying to figure out how to sing And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going without using a to be. (singing)

John: Oh yeah, because you can’t do the present progressive without it.

Craig: (singing) I don’t know how to … It’s just stupid. If you overuse something, it’ll be dumb. The example I use was “I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” I don’t know, what could you turn that into? “An offer exists in such a manner that … ” Any of those rules, any of them should just be ignored. Any of them, honestly.

John: Another language thing that came up this week, a colleague wrote in to me to say, “Listen, there’s a thing I’m noticing,” which I’m wondering if it’s really coming from social media or where it’s from. His example was people talking about the insurrection on January 6th, and the quote will be something like, “I went outside and it was crazy. All around you could see these protesters and police cars.” The colleague was asking, “What is this about? A person is narrating a story, so it’s in the first-person I, and then it shifts into second-person, where you could see these things.” His theory was like, is it because of our writing on social media or how we talk with people? Craig, what’s your perspective on the shift from I to you?

Craig: It’s actually an interesting shift. I think it is meaningful. The first sentence is “I went outside,” which can only happen with him. Let’s say it’s a him. He’s inside, and he chooses to go outside. Once he goes outside, there are other people out there. At that point he’s part of a group experience, all around you, meaning you, me, us, we, everyone could see these protesters and police cars. I wouldn’t have written it myself that way, but I understand the shift.

John: Yeah, but I suspect if we were to record you or I talking, at a certain point we would do that.

Craig: I wouldn’t do it in written writing, but yeah, in talking, sure.

John: It’s natural for a character to do it, for example. These sentences here are natural things that we do in dialog. I was looking up a little bit more about this, and it turns out that in English we use you as an indefinite pronoun. When we need to describe so that anybody in that situation could see, we’re using “you” as that. Different languages have different ways of plugging this in. In French we have “on,” which is a “we,” but it’s also just “one.” In the example of the sentence I just said, like, “All around, one could see these protesters and police cars,” “one” is a little formal there. That’s really what it was saying, a person who was in that situation could see this thing, and we’ve just swapped it for you.

Craig: There’s nothing wrong with that. We all know what it means. If we know what it means, then it’s good.

John: On the topic of pronouns, case usage. I ran into a LA Times article that used a “whom” in a way that was technically correct but absolutely boggling to me. Where are you right now with your whos and your hims and your hes? Do you think you’re using them grammatically correctly almost all the time or are you just using what sounds right to your ear?

Craig: I use them grammatically correctly more than most people do, but I do not use them grammatically correctly in all circumstances. For instance, I do not say, when I knock on someone’s door and they’re like, “Who’s there?” I don’t say, “It is I.”

John: It is I.

Craig: That just sounds ridiculous. Now I sound like a vampire or an earl of something. It is I.

John: This sentence is technically correct, “Is that we in the photograph?” You’d sound insane if you were to say that.

Craig: Or like you’re in a Merchant Ivory film. “Is that we in the photograph?”

John: With a sturdy enough accent, you can get any of those things to pass off.

Craig: Certainly.

John: It’s such a good thing. It got me thinking too, I said before “on,” which is the French version of … It’s “we,” but it’s also anybody there in that situation.

Craig: Like “one.”

John: A version of “one.”

Craig: It’s like “one.”

John: Are there any features of other languages that we want to incorporate into English, if we could just grab them and drag them in, because English is really good at-

Craig: Absorbing.

John: … using stuff from other languages, absorbing.

Craig: I’m hesitant to say this, because I think it might cause more problems than it’s worth, but the way that Germans manufacture single words out of multiple words could be useful to us. We do it sometimes, but we tend to do it more in a portmanteau fashion than in a five words smashed into one word fashion.

John: As I look at Spanish and French, sometimes their pronouns are a little bit easier to use in terms of trying to have neutral language, because you’re only worried about the object and the gender of the object, rather than the gender of the subject, which can be useful. His and hers isn’t relating to the subject. It’s relating to what the gender is of the object at the other side, which is not necessarily tied into a person’s identity.

Craig: Wait, is that true?

John: Let’s see.

Craig: There’s definitely in Italian, or in French I think, if there are three boys and it’s our thing, I think it is related to them and not the object.

John: [French language]. Those are his sons or her sons. The “ses garçons” is not telling you the gender of the speaker of the sentence, the subject of the sentence.

Craig: I see. I see.

John: Our his and her are always tying back to whoever the subject is. In other Romance languages, that his or her is only related to the object.

Craig: I like that we’ve basically gotten rid of all gender in English. I don’t think that the gender stuff helps. We do have his or her relating back, but it’s so simple.

John: It is really simple.

Craig: It’s pretty simple, because nouns really shouldn’t have gender. That just seems really stupid and arbitrary.

John: It is, even though of course with this podcast, the ability of just using “their” and “them” to take the place of, that has been really helpful. I think if you listen to early episodes, we’re saying “his” or “her” a lot, and now we’re just saying “their,” and it’s easier.

Craig: We can absolutely do that. There’s one nice thing about Italian that we can’t do in English. I wish we could. Technically, I think they could get away with it in French, but they don’t, and Spanish. The Italians have conjugations of verbs, just like the French or the Spanish or any other Romance language. What they do generally is they just leave the subject off.

John: Spanish does that.

Craig: Rather than saying “I” or “a,” they just leave that off, because the verb itself gives you that information. It’s baked in. The French don’t seem to do that though.

John: There’s Spanish “hablo español.” You would say, “Yo hablo español” if you had to really emphasize that it was I, but you just say, “Hablo español.”

Craig: Yeah, and then “e yo.” French they will say “je.”

John: French has to say “je” because all the verbs-

Craig: Why?

John: All the conjugations sound the same.

Craig: They sound the same. “Parle” and “parles” with an S sound the same. Got it. That’s interesting.

John: There’s English where we basically don’t even bother conjugating our verbs.

Craig: English is kind of smart that way. It’s why, I don’t know, learning other languages is hard for me. It’s not hard for Melissa. It’s not hard for you. The simplicity of English, even the spelling is ridiculous, and we have no good consistency of pronunciation, but boy, the grammar is super simple I think.

John: We have weird edge cases. The whole way we use “do” and “did” is just strange, to create past-tense and to create questions and things.

Craig: Yeah, but the way that the French use “fair” is weird, I think. “It’s raining” is so much easier to say in English than … [French language] like “he is making the rain.” It’s like, what, God?

John: Megana, jump in here. Is there anything that you would like to see imported from another language into English or that you find is fascinatingly different that would be cool to do in English?

Megana: Oh my gosh, you’re really putting my AP Spanish on the spot here.

John: You speak some Spanish. You speak some Telugu. What else do you speak?

Megana: I speak Spanish and Telugu. We don’t really have a formal you in English. You have them in Telugu, but it always results in me making decorum mistakes. I think it’s nicer that we don’t have that and it’s all a little less formal.

John: I wish we had a plural you. We have “you all,” which is pretty common, but a plural you is nice, and a formal you is nice too. In the case of Spanish they use “usted.” In the case of French they use “vous.”

Megana: I wish there was something better than “y’all” or the “you all” in English.

Craig: We used to have formal words. We just don’t use them anymore because we’re not very formal people. We had “thou.”

John: “Thou” was the informal version though.

Craig: Really?

John: “You” was the formal version, and “thou” was the informal version.

Craig: Interesting.

Megana: That’s actually really nice. I’d like to bring more Old English back, if anything.

John: 100%. That’s our goal for the next 10 years of Scriptnotes is to bring back the old complicated things. The last thing, a Twitter question I asked. This is related to Australian Survivor. One of the contestants on Australian Survivor said that he “striked while the iron was hot.” He said the word “striked.” I’m like, “Wait, striked?”

Craig: That’s not right.

John: I turned to Mike and Amy, like, “Striked?” They’re just like, “Yeah, that’s fine. It always feels weird when you say struck.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” I asked a Twitter poll, and 95% of people agreed with me that “striked” is a weird word.

Craig: There’s no “striked.”

John: “Striked.”

Craig: Is that a word?

John: Yes, like “the WGA striked.”

Craig: I’m looking in Merriam-Webster.

John: It’s a word. Here’s the thing. I looked it up on Google Ngram. “Striked” has a very low prevalence.

Craig: It’s not.

John: Overall in English, the general trend is that our past tenses where we’re changing a letter from “striked” to “struck,” they’re all going away. “Sneaked” I think is passed over “snuck.”

Craig: Yes, okay, but “striked” is not a word. It’s not. It’s just not a word. “You striked out.” You sound like an idiot. I’m looking at “strike” in Merriam-Webster, and “striked” is not there. “Struck” and “stricken” is there, and “striking” of course, but not “striked.” Not a word. “Hanged” and “dived” are interesting cases, because it’s those specific definitions. Scuba diving is “dived.”

John: What does “dived” do?

Craig: “Dived into the water.”

John: “Dived,” yeah.

Craig: Or “he dived,” I guess from scuba diving. Then I don’t know why “hanged” for putting a noose around your neck is that and not “hung.” Who cares? What’s the difference? We hung this from a tree. “We hanged it from a tree,” nobody would ever say that. Why are you “hanged” a person? I don’t know why.

John: Arlo Finch, the copyeditor and I got into a disagreement about “kneeled” and “knelt” and which one we were going to choose. I think I used two different versions of it. That’s a word that sits right on the cusp, because “knelt” is a little bit strange, and “kneeled” is just taking its place.

Craig: Interesting. I would’ve probably said “knelt.”

John: I think I did say “knelt” most of the time.

Craig: Really?

John: Apparently that’s a word that’s on the cusp of changing. Really. Craig and Megana, thank you so much for a fun podcast.

Craig: Thank you guys.

Megana: Thank you.

Links:

• Movie Pass is Back!
• Script Speaker
• Check out our first (and only) Scriptnotes TikTok — thank you to Drew Rosas for editing the audio!
• Fleabag Season 2, check out our episode with Phoebe Waller Bridge here!
• First Time Screenwriters Contest
• Your Ears are Plugged by the Oatmeal
• Australian Survivor Season 6
• The Last Campfire
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
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• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
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• Outro by Owen Danoff (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com

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UPDATE 3-1-22 The transcript for this episode can be found here.