Drew Marquardt

The original post for this episode can now be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 500 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’ll revisit what we learned in our first 499 episodes with some of the folks who know it best. We welcome back Scriptnotes producers Stuart Friedel, Godwin Jabangwe, and Megan McDonnell, along with longtime editor Matthew Chilelli, and our current producer, Megana Rao.

We’re going to be enlisting them to help answer listener questions, plus we’ll play a game with two Scriptnotes super fans. Craig, you love games.

Craig: And I love Scriptnotes super fans. Are there are only two Scriptnotes super fans? Or did we select them from a number of Scriptnotes super fans?

John: I put out a call on Twitter asking for like who has listened to every episode of Scriptnotes. And these are people who raised their hands and said like they listened to every episode of Scriptnotes, so we will see if they were listening carefully.

Craig: These are the most damaged of our fans.

John: And in our bonus segment for premium members we’re going to turn the tables and our producers will ask Craig and I if we remember a damn thing about what we said over these 500 episodes.

Craig: I mean, the answer is no. I’m just going to tell you right now. It’s no. I mean, well we’ll see how we do. I’m just so happy to see all of these – so we’re looking at them on Zoom. We can see their fresh faces. It’s nice. I saw a very tiny mini Friedel walk by. That was wonderful to see. And I’m also, obviously I’m happy to see Megan and always happy to see Matthew. But particularly happy to see Megana today because there was a weird Twitter rumor that she was just leaving. And I don’t know if they meant leaving the show, or leaving the world. Did you see that Megana?

Megana Rao: Oh my god.

Craig: Yeah. Like on Twitter. Someone was like, oh, it was like what will happen in the 500th episode? And one of the choices was Megana Rao leaves. And then, you know, it’s Twitter. That’s all they needed. And they were off and running.

Megana: I’m going to be here for 500 more. Sorry Twitter.

Craig: Oh yeah.

John: So Stuart Friedel has our longest history. He has over 200 episodes of produced Scriptnotes. So Megana has been doing it for a good long time, but she’s got a lot of runway ahead of her if she wants to beat that. But I think the reason there could have been speculation on Twitter is because we had promised that there was going to be a big announcement in today’s show, and so we should get to the big announcement, the big news. Because for nearly 10 years Scriptnotes has only been a podcast that Craig doesn’t listen to.

Craig: Correct.

John: And soon Scriptnotes will be a book that Craig won’t read.

Craig: Right. Right. And this is wonderful. Like all of the ideas that we have on the show, I didn’t have this idea. I like to say we had ideas because technically we had them. If I and you together have ideas, and you come up with all the ideas, we had ideas. This book is one of them.

John: There’s been talk of doing a Scriptnotes book for a long time and we ended up doing a Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide a while back just because it was a way to sort of get that out there. We have transcripts going all the way back to the very start of the show, but we looked at sort of like well what if we were to just bind the transcripts and it would be like 100 volumes. There’s like no good way to do this.

Craig: Oh, I think we should have gone that way actually. I think we should have done a full 100.

John: Just take up a whole library. It should just be Scriptnotes.

Craig: Yeah. Scriptnotes Volume 78.

John: You pull that out and flip through it. Little codecs.

Craig: And I want it to look like those books that Gandalf was looking through when he was trying to figure out if the one ring was really the one ring.

John: Mm-hmm. Or the Game of Thrones libraries where the books are all chained up. That’s another way we could do it. You have to go to a place to get to the Scriptnotes information.

Craig: The Citadel, obviously.

John: The Citadel. So instead we are going to have a book that is properly edited. So Chris Sont who does our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting is doing the editing on the book. It’s going to have interviews with many of the fantastic guests we’ve had on the show. Plus sort of the best of on different topics, nicely condensed and compressed. So it will still be me and Craig talking but sort of an optimized version of us talking about all the things we talked about over these 499 episodes.

Craig: This is our 500th episode.

John: And I did not predict we’d get to here.

Craig: No, well first of all there was a while there where I didn’t think anyone was going to get to here. So, things are a little more stable out there in the world. But 500 episodes, it’s not quite 10 years of Scriptnotes, but it’s freaking close.

John: We’re getting close. Yeah. So we made a list of our previous Scriptnotes guests and there were so many here and Megana this afternoon was like, “Oh, what about Ice Cube?” I forgot there’s a bonus episode with Ice Cube that hadn’t made it onto the list. So, Craig, let’s quickly run through who our guests have been, because there were surprises here for me as well.

Craig: Oh, in terms of who we’ve had in the past?

John: Yeah. All right, so just in the Bs we have Jason Bateman, Noah Baumbach, David Benioff, Alec Berg, Rachel Bloom.

Craig: OK, then we have one C. Ice Cube. Which I don’t know if that – I guess Cube is the last name there. But we have Ben Falcone, Kevin Feige of Marvel, and we also have Dana Fox.

John: Greta Gerwig, David Goyer, Mari Heller, Lisa Joy, Mindy Kaling, Lawrence Kasdan.

Craig: I mean, that’s pretty good. Continuing with our final K, David Koepp. Lawrence Kasdan to David Koepp is strong. And then it goes to Jennifer Lee, very strong. We also have Natasha Leggero, Damon Lindelof, Riki Lindhome, Phil Lord.

John: Yeah. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was here in our little recording studio.

Craig: How about that? That was pretty awesome.

John: Kelly Marcel, a frequent guest. Of course she moved to England. Christopher Markus. Melissa McCarthy. Rob McElhenney.

Craig: Stephen McFeely, Aline Brosh McKenna, Chris McQuarrie. Just the MCs alone is impressive. Chris Miller. Chris Nee. Ashley Nicole Black.

John: Jonathan Nolan. BJ Novak. Ryan Reynolds was on the show.

Craig: Ryan Reynolds.

John: Dailyn Rodriguez. Seth Rogan. Dan Savage. Do you remember we did a Dan Savage episode?

Craig: The Dirty Episode. Of course.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And then finishing off we had Justin Simien, Malcolm Spellman, Rawson Marshall Thurber. David Wain. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Dan Weiss. And Rebel Wilson.

John: And that’s not all the guests. That’s just sort of the big names we’ve talked to over these–

Craig: Those are the ones we liked.

John: Those are the ones we liked.

Craig: No, we liked them all.

John: We liked all of them. But we’ve had a lot of other people come through here and share what they knew. So I’m excited to make a book. If you want more information about the book go to Scriptnotes.net. Basically all that you will see there is a little place for a mailing list, because we send you sample chapters/information about it.

We’re not quite sure how we’re doing it. We’d love the book to come out in 2022. We could go through a normal publisher. We could publish it ourselves. We’ll see what makes the most sense. But people have asked for the book for a while now and we’re going to try to do it.

Craig: I’m excited. I think this will be the hottest Christmas item of 2022.

John: Yeah.

Craig: 2022.

John: 2022.

Craig: 2022.

John: A safe bet for 2022.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right. So usually on this program we answer listener questions. And so our producers go through the questions and pull them and put them in the outline and we answer those questions. Today I want to flip those a bit. These are still listener questions, but you and I will ask the questions kind of of our producers. Because these are folks who are out there working in the industry and may actually know things that we don’t know about these things.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: Let’s start with a question from Sarah. Sarah writes in, “I had a question for you all about how you met and started the podcast. You sort of addressed it in a season one episode where you basically explained that you weren’t friends beforehand, but you didn’t say much else. If you covered this in a later episode I will find out soon enough, but if you did not I’d love to hear more about how this partnership came to be and how your friendship has evolved over the years.”

So, Stuart Friedel was the very first Scriptnotes producer. He was working as my assistant. Stuart, what can you tell us about the early days of Scriptnotes?

Stuart Friedel: About how you and Craig met?

John: Or just what Scriptnotes was like. Because Scriptnotes was I think just kind of a “hey I think I’m going to do a podcast” idea. I kind of remember having the notion of doing it. And, here Stuart, do this work. So talk to us about what the early episodes felt like.

Stuart: I mean, you pretty much nailed it. I remember I joined, and within maybe two or three weeks of me starting you had this idea. It may have even been like an inkling of a notion before I joined. But pretty much right away.

If you look at the number of episodes per week you can break that down and that’s almost exactly the amount of time that I worked for you. And so Craig had a blog that was not quite as active as yours.

Craig: Right.

Stuart: By the time you were talking to me about it you already knew that Craig was going to be your partner on it. I remember like drilling a hole in your desk so that we could install this microphone arm. And going to some weird, the sort of electronics shop that doesn’t exist anymore.

Craig: Fry’s.

Stuart: To get windscreens and get microphones and figure all that out.

John: Or Amitron.

Stuart: But if you listen to the early episodes, I mean, I edited them to start and you can really tell the jump in quality when Matthew joined. And also frankly if you look at episode length they started at 20 minutes and I think they pretty quickly got up to about where they are now. I think that you guys really – it became second nature pretty quickly, but there certainly is an early batch of episodes where you’re not quite the well-oiled machine yet.

And then from there, I mean, in some ways the bulk of my job for the next bunch of years was getting Scriptnotes at first edited, but then just everything in place for Matthew to do his work. Getting everything in place to upload it to the blog. And over the years it really evolved about how it went onto the blog and what the blog looked like. And that’s all technical stuff. Yeah, you had a pretty good handle on it.

John: So Matthew, let’s segue over to you. Because you took over the editing reins from originally me and then Stuart and sort of just did a much better job of it. You came to Scriptnotes kind of in a weird way, because you just started writing outros for it. So when did you find out about Scriptnotes and when did you start deciding to become more involved?

Matthew Chilelli: I found out about Scriptnotes through your blog. It was something where I went to school at Ithaca people would talk about you’ve got to check this out. It’s just a really easy way to find a quick answer if you’re trying to write a screenplay or if you have some question about moviemaking. And then I started listening to the show. And when you asked for outros somewhere around Episode 98 or so I was I guess first through the gate. And that I think was our introduction was through music, not through editing.

John: I was trying to figure it out today. I think you took over editing on Episode 152. It’s the first one I see you credited as the editor. And weirdly the job of producer and editor are kind of fungible in podcast land. So when you hear credits on a lot of podcasts you won’t hear as editor as a description because it will say produced by and that person actually was cutting the audio. Really we tried to keep it very separate here. So our producers are sort of organizing the show and getting all the material together, but you are the person who is fixing all of my mistakes and making it sound good.

Matthew: Yeah. And there were fewer and fewer of them as time goes on. I think you’ve both gotten very good at editing yourselves.

Craig: Yeah, you know, try and not stick you with too much trouble when we mess up. But am I allowed – can I answer the question also a little bit?

John: Please, please.

Craig: Just to get a little sappy for a second. Because Sarah is asking how our partnership came to be. Just because John called and said do you want to do this and I was like D’OK. Because I didn’t want to write a blog anymore. But when you ask how our friendship has evolved over the years, you’ve kind of all heard it. This is it.

This is how we became friends. It’s not like we were friends-friends when we started. We were really just like podcast partners. I don’t know how else to put that, you know. And we got to know each other through doing the show. We got to understand each other through doing the show. And we became friends by doing the show. And I really do believe that – if I may use the word “love” if I may – that love is a function of time and commitment.

And John and I are both married people, so we obviously get the value of commitment and time. And that’s I think what you hopefully have heard over almost 10 years is the function of time and commitment to each other. So, in a way John this is like our anniversary.

John: Yeah, it is like our anniversary. We were acquaintances beforehand. And we were friendly beforehand, but we weren’t really friends. And I remember on some episode I said, some early episode, we can find the transcripts, I said like, “Well, it’s not like we’re friends off mic.” I said something like that. I could hear your heart breaking there a little bit.

Craig: Oh, oh, I see.

John: It was a mean thing for me to say.

Craig: Well…

John: But also we’ve become better friends because we play Dungeons & Dragons. We do things that are not the podcast now, too, in ways we didn’t before. We were just two guys who did the podcast before.

Craig: Exactly. And I think we trust each other. When you do a show like this there’s a certain amount of trust that happens. You rely on each other and you trust each other. And that trust over time is rewarded. Sometimes with people you trust them and over time it’s punished. And that’s how you know things are bad. Your trust was punished. And that has not happened. So it’s been just a very, I mean, for me it’s been incredibly easy.

Obviously I don’t get paid. Everyone knows that. That I’m being ripped off on the daily. But, it’s very easy for me to just show up. I don’t have to do anything. You do everything. It’s so nice. It’s so nice. It’s worth the money I lose. Now I’m saying that I’m losing money, by the way.

John: Like it’s costing you. Although, it did cost you in the early days because originally we were actually hosting the files on Amazon.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And it was costing us like $200 or $300 a month, just the storage fees for it.

Craig: Yeah. But it was a nice expense because it meant people were listening. By the way, how many people listen now? Every now and then I’ll ask you. This is how clueless I am. Where are we at?

John: Megana, what’s our weekly listenership right now?

Megana: I would say weekly we have about 30,000 listeners.

Craig: Wow.

John: And our premiums are in the 3000s now.

Craig: Every time I hear a number I just say wow. It doesn’t matter what it is. Honestly, if it were 12 people. You hear like 12 people listen every week I would be like wow.

John: I will say that it’s great to see the total numbers, but when somebody who I really respect in the industry says they listen to the show that’s incredibly gratifying to me as well. When you find out you have some fans out there.

Craig: It certainly is well listened to here in town. And I don’t mean Calgary.

John: All right. Let’s go onto Brett in Los Angeles. He writes, “Your podcast really helped me after Covid destroyed my industry and I had to take a mind-numbing overnight job to pay the mortgage. Now I’m considering moving away from Los Angeles because it is just too difficult to stay afloat here with a house and a pregnant wife, while also chasing the dream of being a working writer. So my question is pre-Covid you guys have discussed the difficulties of living outside Los Angeles. But now with Zoom has that changed? What about writer rooms? Would it be impossible to be staffed if I were in Dallas or Nashville?

“I don’t have a lot of traction now, so maybe it’s a moot point. Still, I believe in my work and I worry there might never be traction if I leave.”

So, Megan and Stuart, you guys have both done a lot of work this last year on Zoom. Stuart, you’ve been in writer’s rooms. Megan, I think your WandaVision experience was mostly pre-lockdown. But what do you think about Brett’s situation and how viable would it be for Brett to be working mostly remotely? Megan, we’ll start with you. What do you think?

Megan McDonnell: I think definitely while writer’s rooms are still over Zoom I don’t see why not. I feel – and like meetings and stuff. I feel like the trick about living in LA is just making friends in LA and that’s such a big part of how you hear about stuff. I want to believe that it’s becoming more inclusive as far as where you can be living and find your way in. But I just don’t know. What do you think, Stuart?

Stuart: Yeah. I mean, we have no idea what the – first of all, how long this tail is going to be, the end of Covid, and second of all what things are going to look like as we get out, come out the other side even. But I am currently in a writer’s room with six people. Two of those people left LA when lockdown started and as far as I know don’t have plans to come back any time soon. I don’t know how right that is.

But I also know that as our show in general moves back into an office the writer’s room is the last and least urgent group to move back into an office. I think we’re probably going to stay on Zoom for the foreseeable future. I don’t see why we wouldn’t. It works really well for us.

I don’t know that it works really well for every writer’s room. I’ve heard friends that really don’t like it and they’re eager to get back into in-person in LA. So I think there’s just so many moving parts. But I think you hit the nail on the head that it’s more about getting the jobs. And it helps to be in those social circles, in those conversations in LA. Also though just being relevant and being seen like in offices. I think you make such a stronger impression when you shake somebody’s hand than you do over Zoom. And I’m kind of eager to get back into that.

I can’t say for a fact that it’s impossible, because it currently is possible. I just don’t know if any of my friends who have moved away would have gotten the jobs that they can do from far away if they weren’t in LA when they got the job in the first place.

John: Now, Megan, I know you’ve been pitching on some projects during Zoom and having to do that. How do you like that versus doing it in person? Congratulations on your Marvel movie which is about to start shooting. When you got that that was an in-person situation. But the stuff since then has been a lot of sort of Zoom stuff. And how are you finding the difference? Are you able to land those jobs doing it on Zoom?

Megan: Great question. I have not thought about not getting jobs because of Zoom. [laughs] I think that it’s nice to be in person because it’s easier to communicate excitement in person. I feel like that’s half the battle of pitching is this idea is so exciting, don’t you think? And they’re like, wow, I guess it is. I don’t know. I haven’t minded the Zoom stuff. It feels more casual or something. There’s something nice about it.

But I do think in-person is helpful, too, if you have a complicated idea that requires a lot of like – I pitched something that involved a lot of like John’s artboards. He does these boards when he’s pitching, and so I stole that. And did a lot of acting with the boards and with pieces and stuff. And if it’s like a visual thing I feel like, I don’t know, people do it over Zoom, too. I don’t know.

John: Yeah. I’ve been able to do it on Zoom, too. I think you’re right in the sense of like when you’re in those meetings when you have to get a sense of like are they really getting it, are they responding? Is this the right vibe? Or should I throw everything else out? That’s really hard to gauge on Zoom. But those initial meetings or just like “hey how are you,” happy not to do it. We said this on the podcast a bunch of times. If I never have to drive to Santa Monica in the afternoon I’ll be just delighted.

Craig: Seriously.

John: It’s a beast.

Stuart: Takes away your podcast commute time where you can really listen. I do think like assuming there is a concrete number of jobs, which I don’t think is a fair assumption, but it’s the same advantage and disadvantage as everybody else has. I have found though that anecdotally it seems like people expect a deck.

Decks I think were rising in popularity, like PowerPoint presentations precipitously even before this, but now it seems like everybody seems to want that or be doing that. So, I’ve kind of gone the opposite and for the pitch I’m doing now I have tactile maps and props and I start just looking at you and then throughout my pitch I turn my camera and there’s a map on the wall. I don’t know whether that’s been good for me or not, but at the end of the day it feels a little bit like more and more the job of a screenwriter strains towards you also have to be a PowerPoint maker and you also have to be a song and a dancer. And I think Zoom has made that even more so the case. So I’m eager to get back in a room.

John: Cool. Emily in Los Angeles wrote, “I recently brought a script to a new writer’s group I joined and it got decimated. This was the first time this group had seen any of my writing and we spent about two hours going through each scene and pretty much talking about all the reasons it sucked. I’m always open to criticism and have received constructive feedback on the script from other writing groups I’m in. But at the two-hour mark my feelings were hurt. The notes didn’t feel constructive or actionable. They felt mean-spirited and based on personal preference.

“I took a break from the script and have recently come back to it, but I can’t get their notes out of my head. Now I’m doubting every scene and choice I’ve made. It’s making me want to abandon this script forever. How do I get these notes I disagree with out of my head and get back to writing the movie I want to make?”

So Megan and Megana, you guys have the most experience of anyone on this call in writers groups and sort of like groups of writers who are coming together voluntarily to talk over their work. So first let me start with it sounded like something went wrong with this writers group. What you diagnose what’s happening here? Megana, why don’t we start with you – what’s your reaction to what Emily is experiencing?

Megana: It kind of sounds like maybe there was somebody who had a bad vibe and everybody jumped on. And maybe the negativity was infectious. Something that I’ve learned through writers groups is I think they should be like your midwives of your story, like very supportive and coaching you along the way. And I’m very lucky to have that in my writers groups which have included Megan who is awesome.

I think the other thing is like whenever I get really just harsh, horrible feedback I usually come to the conclusion weeks later that the person is actually just not the right audience for this material. And I’ve also found that it’s usually coming from someplace of insecurity.

For Emily I would advise you like this is not about you, or your script. It sounds like this is a weird group dynamic thing and maybe you should find a new writers group.

Craig: Mmm.

John: Megan, if this were happening in a group that you were leading would you have tried to – is there a way to sort of stop that from happening? Is there a way to head that off with the pass?

Megan: I agree that sometimes it can get negative. And it’s easy to just find good things about it to say, even if it’s just to like recalibrate the tone of the room. You can always find something cool that’s working, or that’s good, or that is interesting. Or ask questions. Like, wow, this choice, this is a choice. What was that about? And then that can be helpful.

I think for being a writers group participant I think part of it is also so much like, OK, what is this writer going for and how do I help them get there instead of how do I make this the script that I would have written.

Craig: I have umbrage. I have so much umbrage over this.

John: Craig, go for it.

Craig: I think that Megan and Megana are showing how lovely they are, and just how instinctively nice and empathetic they are. But I am instinctively not. And I think that regardless of what Emily wrote, maybe what Emily wrote was bad. It happens. Sometimes you write bad things. But two hours of kicking around something like that? Two hours? That’s toxic.

And that point I worry about the writers group dynamic where everybody is just using feedback to puff themselves up. They’re just kicking somebody because they feel important. It makes them feel like they’re in the business or something. I don’t know what it is.

I went to one writers group once, many, many, many, many years ago. And I left and thought I will never, ever, ever go back to that group again because it just felt like somehow this group had organized itself into like, you know, there’s like the alpha personality that is like everyone just agrees that person is the best. Like in acting classes everyone just knows that person is the best. They’re not. They’re not the best. They’re just the most whatever. You know?

So, Emily, I would say if you’re in a writing group and they spent two hours going through every scene and talking about all the reasons it sucks that’s not a good writing group. That’s not a writing group. I don’t really know what the point is.

It’s hard to write things. And the fact that you felt like you’re doubting every scene and choice you made, of course you are. I would. I don’t think I would be able to come back to that script. I would feel so bad. We are emotional creatures and to be damaged like that for two – you say at the two-hour mark my feelings were hurt and I’m almost like at the two-minute mark I’m sure your feelings were hurt.

I mean, for two hours? What’s wrong with those people? How could the notes be constructive or actionable after two hours? I would run. I would run from that group.

John: Now, do you guys have any suggestions for, like ground rules for a writers group. Do you guys talk at the outset like this is how we’re going to do things? I see some nodding there. So Megana what are some ground rules you’d like to have?

Megana: Sure. When we first start meeting with a writers group I feel like we talk about how we’re doing it for fun and to encourage each other. And just constructive feedback. So if there’s something you disagree with, like Megan said, asking questions, bringing it up as this is a choice that you made, where were you going with this, so that you can give them the benefit of the doubt if something is not working for you.

But we try pretty hard to just set some ground rules that negativity or criticism that is not actionable, please do not bring that into the writers group.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

Megana: I really appreciate when people, because you guys said it in the notes meeting with execs that you don’t really like pitches, but I love whenever somebody is giving me a note if they just pitch, so I get a better sense of what they’re talking about. I feel like it helps me get momentum.

Craig: Well it’s certainly better than just kicking something for two hours. Sometimes when I read things I really only have a negative criticism. And the negative criticism is “this is bad.” You know, now I can dress up bad nicely by saying, “It just feels like none of the characters seem real to me. The dialogue isn’t feeling real and it’s not quite sounding like the way people talk.” That takes ten seconds. What is the point of going on and on about it? That’s the part that I don’t understand.

I don’t recognize the value of that at all.

Megana: Two hours seems ludicrous to be spending on one person’s script.

Megan: Yeah. In any case, like that’s so long to be talking about one person in the group’s script.

Craig: It’s long to be talking about anything. You know? It’s so hard to talk about anything for two hours, but much less – and you know the person is sitting there and you’re like everybody – somebody had to get up and pee and come back and continue criticizing her. That’s too long.

John: It is.

Megan: I also can see, sometimes if that’s the case where maybe you don’t like a script and maybe it’s just generally not appreciated in the group, then sometimes you can be like, OK, pitch us the idea and then you can kind of get a sense of like, OK, what is exciting to you about this script? And that can be helpful in reframing what notes you give.

Stuart: Yeah, if you have two hours of micro notes then you should be giving five minutes of macro notes.

Craig: Correct. And you can’t have two hours of micro notes. You can’t. You can’t. It’s outrageous.

John: Yeah. If you’re producing this movie and it’s going into production and you have to sort of do it last thing. I imagine you’ve had two-hour meetings with Lindsay Doran.

Craig: I’ve had two-hour meetings with Lindsay Doran about two pages.

John: Yes.

Craig: But they were these conversations that were predicated on the fact that she was happy. And I was happy. And so the question wasn’t why is this bad. The question was well what if, or OK, here’s a thought. And so it was creative and constructive in the best way. But, OK, now here’s the problem with this scene. Because you know every time they turn the page she was like, “OK, we got over that.” And then they’re like, “OK, now let’s start why we hate this new season. And it’s like, “Oh god.”

And it never stopped. I just want to hug Emily and buy her lunch.

John: Craig, do you want to ask the question here from Austin?

Craig: Here we go. Austin asks, or says, “I had a realization about myself and my writing the other day. I don’t write the people in my life into my work. I realized this the other day after having a disagreement with a friend. I was angry with the person and I began to really analyze why I thought they were acting the way they were. In that moment of analysis I realized that even though I’m an observant person I’m never endeavored to use the people closest to me, even people I dislike, as characters in fiction. I sat with that thought for a little while and asked myself even if I thought I could. And the answer I felt coming back was a resounding no.

“It felt like the betrayal of an intimacy maybe. I’m not totally sure. I come from a background in nonfiction in the social sciences, so observing and presenting the lives of others isn’t new to me. But fictionalizing them for my own work feels odd. I was just curious if this is an issue you,” I guess he meant John, “or Craig ever deal with.” Or you, Godwin. “Or if using individuals in your own life as the bases for characters is something that comes totally natural to both of you? Am I missing a major tool in my writing by not doing this? Do you have any suggestions on how to work on this?”

Godwin, boiling all that down, what’s your feeling about taking the people you know in your real life and using them as inspiration for the characters in the work you write?

Godwin Jabangwe: I think it’s a great thing to do. What I would suggest is to combine three or four different people into one. Pick what you need from that one person and then you build a character. Don’t make a facsimile copy of that person. So if you have like three or four people that you know, or you want one specific thing, then you take that one specific thing and then you build a whole other character that’s not a direct mirror reflection of that person. I think that’s how I would go about that.

John: Megana, I was also thinking about you because having read your scripts you are very specifically portraying a kind of, because of your history, people I feel like you know very specifically. Are any of those people based on specific people in your own life? Do you feel like you’re asking permission? Are you sort of taking them in? What’s your relationship to some of the characters you’re portraying in your scripts?

Megana: That’s a great point. I feel most comfortable taking from my own life and sort of making fun of things that I personally have done. And if anything is inspired by – like I have one script inspired by a bunch of Indian aunties that I grew up with. And that I feel like I am doing with so much love and it’s not exact things that they’re saying.

But I had a friend who actually wrote a script with dialogue that we had had together lifted.

Craig: Ooh.

Megana: And, yeah, I’m curious to hear your guy’s thoughts.

Craig: What about you, John? Do you do this? Is it part of your tool box?

John: I do to some degree. And so I was even just this morning on a Zoom and I was thinking back to an early script I’d done that got made and it was like, oh yeah, I wouldn’t want to say that character is based on this real life person, but it was important that I actually knew that this person could exist. It was sort of an extreme character. And it’s like, oh no, no, no, there’s a real person who is that person who can do those things. And so I think it’s important that you should be able to imagine somebody in real life being those characters. So if you don’t even have the exact – it’s not based on one person that that person could exist.

This comedy that I’m doing right now I’m writing for some very specific actors with very specific voices knowing that we may not get those actors. But I know my sense will be at least one person in that role. And so then if it makes sense in the script with that person it can make sense with other people, too. So that’s the kind of appropriation of not real people, but actors you’re sort of casting in your movie at the start.

Craig: So, Austin, I think what you’re hearing is that everyone is different. And some people do it and some people don’t. And you start with a realization about yourself. I think that’s good enough. You can stop right there. You don’t write those people into your life and are you missing a major tool in your writing? I don’t think so. Because you don’t instinctively feel like you should do it.

I don’t do it. I know that. I never do it. Not out of moral reasons. It’s just not the way my mind works. I tend to daydream and you know like in your dreams there are other people. And those other people say things. And they’re not you. And you don’t know what they’re going to say before they say them, but they all came out of your brain, because you’re dreaming it. So we can do it. So I just try and do that when I’m awake. I do a lot of daydreaming imagining people and what they would do, and think, and feel. And putting myself in their shoes. And that’s how I do it. Everybody is different.

I would – trust your gut on this. If it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, you’re not missing out.

John: So we have one last question on the Workflowy here about open writing assignment and I’m going to actually just skip the question and just ask the folks on this Zoom about their experience with open writing assignments over the last few years. Because you guys have all pursued them. And so I think I might start with Godwin. We also call Etai. So, it’s confusing we’re calling Godwin Etai. We call him both.

Godwin, what’s been your experience pursuing projects that are out there in the world over the last couple of years? How much prep are you doing when you’re going out to try to land one of those jobs? What does it feel like?

Godwin: It’s a lot of work. And most times it’s frustration because it doesn’t go your way. I’ve had one where I prepared a pitch and by the time I went to the meeting to pitch and I got there and they told me that they weren’t doing the thing anymore. Because Disney had bought…

Yeah, like they didn’t bother to tell me all day. And I drove all the way to Burbank. And they’re like, “Oh, you’re here. We should let you know that we’re now longer doing this thing anymore.” So, you know, it’s like that. And then there’s some way you learn to pick the ones that you actually want to do, but in the beginning you’re just going for everything, because you’re like, ooh, I really want to do this.

And so over time I’ve learned that sometimes it’s OK to say I’ll pass on this. There’s nothing in it that I can give to the story. So, but then that takes time and a little getting to know – you will find one that works for you eventually. So, yeah, that’s been my experience. It’s a lot of frustration.

John: Megan, you’ve pitched on these kind of projects, too. How do you decide when something is something you’re really pursuing versus you know what that’s a fishing expedition? I’m not going to try to get that one.

Megan: I think upon reading whatever it is, an adaptation or whatever, I feel like there’s a pretty quick thing of like, ooh, this is something I’m interested in. This is something that excites me. And I feel like you got to have that kind of right away. And maybe not. Because if you do get it, you’re going to be on it for a long time. And if you’re not excited about the beginning, like you’re going to do a better job on something that you are genuinely excited about.

John: Yeah. Stuart? What’s your feeling on OWAs?

Stuart: Yeah, I mean, by the time I am pitching I have to kind of know the whole thing. The difference between prepping for a pitch and writing the project is one more step. So, the work that goes into that pitch is considerable. And I’ve had the same experience as Godwin where like you do weeks of work on something, you love it, and then you find out they killed the project, or somebody else already got the job. Or you go in and you do the pitch, you think you nailed it, you don’t hear anything for three months, and then a Deadline article comes out about some mega celebrity has been signed on and it’s their pet project.

And these days I would say I’m a little bit more protective of my time. But you have to love it. You have to want to do it. You hear about it and immediately it’s like clear my schedule, I’m so jazzed. And otherwise I’m probably not doing it.

John: Yeah. My organizing principle for 2021 has been hell yeah or no. That basically everything has to fall into one category. Either I’m absolutely so excited to do it, or nah. And to say no more often.

Craig: What about Matthew? He’s so quiet and I want to know what he thinks.

Matthew: I haven’t done any open writing assignments, but I’ve done a comparable thing for music a lot. And it is kind of funny, I suppose, how similar those two things really are. Because you’re competing with a lot of other people and there’s so much work that goes into something that you’re probably not going to get. And I’ve had such more rewarding experiences when, you know, you just know that you’re the one. You’re the one they’re going with from the beginning, which is like, of course – of course that would be more rewarding. But it’s tough to go up against a bunch of other people because you don’t know what everyone else is submitting.

And I imagine that’s probably what open writing assignments are like, too. It’s like you’re fighting against this imaginary foe that’s making all the right moves.

Craig: Well, it always struck me about open writing assignments that the only reason they were open writing assignments is because the people who were offering it also didn’t know. I mean, that’s why you do that. Right? They all sit around a room and go, what, who? Who should do this? What kind of person? I don’t know. Well, I guess we’ll just put an ad out in the paper. And everybody at CAA and UTA and WME and all that stuff will just start sending people over.

And so you’re already in a bit of a hole because you’re working hard to try and imagine something, but you’re talking to people who don’t quite know what it is they want either.

John: Yeah.

Craig: That’s the trick of it.

Stuart: And there’s no feedback usually at the end of the tunnel.

Craig: Correct.

Stuart: Was I the worst you’ve ever heard? Or was I like a coin flip away from getting this?

Craig: They have no time for it. And I know that for myself when we go through casting I would love to be able to call every single person and talk through all of that stuff. I just can’t. I can’t do it. And I imagine that if they did nine out of ten writers would receive that information gracefully, and one would throw a tantrum and then go on Twitter. And so it kind of makes sense.

John: All right, so it is time for a game show segment. When we do our live shows we always love doing our game shows. So this is not a normal live show, but we have a small audience. We have a small audience of former Scriptnotes producers. So let’s welcome on two self-identified super fans who have listened to every episode of Scriptnotes to see how much they actually remember about what we said on the show. Probably more than we do.

First let’s welcome Kate Hadley from Los Angeles. Welcome Kate.

Craig: Welcome Kate.

Kate Hadley: Hi.

Craig: Hi.

John: And Dion Bardeau – where are you living right now Dion?

Dion Bardeau: I live in Los Angeles as well.

John: All right. So we are all LA ringers. Sort of like how Jeopardy! this season has all been LA folks.

Craig: Yup.

John: We’re pulling on very local. We could go anywhere, but we are focusing on our LA folks. When did you start listening to the show, Kate Hadley?

Kate: I started listening in October 2011. So Episode 7, but I listened to all the back episodes in an afternoon.

John: Wow.

Craig: Wow. That’s awesome.

John: And Dion when did you start listening to the show?

Dion: So I started, it was in 2012, and it was maybe around Episode 40. It was the episode where you guys talked about how do you get an agent. And then I went back and listened to all the previous ones. But that’s where I started.

Craig: I’m still – I’ve listened to maybe three. [laughs] I’ve heard about three of these. They were good. They were all right.

Dion: You’re missing out, man.

Craig: I know. Believe me, I know. On everything.

John: All right. So we have cameras turned on. We’re going to ask a question. If you know the answer raise your hand and then we’ll call on you. And so we’ll try to be fair judges here, but we also have the other producers here who can be our jury if it comes down to it.

Craig: Do I get to also try and answer? Because I will not win.

John: Well, you can also see the answers though in the Workflowy though. So that’s not fair.

Craig: Oh, tht would be cheating.

John: That would be cheating. Craig, why don’t you ask the first question?

Craig: OK, here we go, guys. Are you ready?

Dion: Let’s do it. Good luck, Kate.

Craig: Good luck to both of you.

Kate: Good luck to you as well.

Craig: So you’re just going to raise your hand and John will call whichever one goes first. Here we go. And it’s not like Jeopardy! You don’t get locked out. But you don’t hear the rest of the question. Over the years we’ve done 15 deep dive episodes where we spend the entire show discussing one movie. What was the first movie to receive this treatment?

John: Kate.

Kate: I believe it was The Little Mermaid.

John: That is not correct. Dion?

Dion: I’m going to go with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Craig: Raiders of the Lost Ark is correct. That is one point for Dion.

Kate. That was my other answer.

Craig: Of course it was. I think I would have gotten that right. .

Kate: That and Ghost.

Craig: I think I would have gotten that right. I think. All right. John, should I just keep–

John: Honestly, keep being the host. This is your Jeopardy! hosting try out.

Craig: This is my audition for Jeopardy! OK. Here we go.

Dion: Well, folks, this has been a good show. I’ll just take the W right there.

Craig: No sir. We are still in the first inning. Here we go. While the show has many amazing guests, the visitor first appeared by name in Episode 136 and was asked by John never to return. Guess if you have to guess. I have a guess. OK, can I do my guess?

John: Yeah.

Craig: My guess is Sexy Craig.

John: Sexy Craig is correct.

Craig: Yes, Sexy Craig. Yes!

John: So Sexy Craig’s first appearance was in Episode 135 by a voice. My name is John August, my name is Craig Mazin. And that was disturbing. But the next episode you labeled that voice Sexy Craig.

Craig: And Sexy Craig – the thing is he really doesn’t show up much.

Dion: I know. I can’t imagine a world without Sexy Craig.

Craig: Neither can I, exactly. Thank you.

John: I can and it’s glorious.

Craig: Yeah, John lives in that world.

John: It gets so uncomfortable. All right.

Craig: So it’s still 1-0. Here we go. Question number three. Scriptnotes Episode 235 was a live show featuring Jason Bateman and creators of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Weiss and Benioff were last minute replacements. Who was supposed to be the guest? That’s a hard one. That’s a hard one.

John: We’re stumping the super fans. I like this.

Craig: Yeah. This is great. Stumping the supers. I think we’re going to go–

John: Actually, no, we’ll go to the producers. Stuart Friedel, tell us the answer.

Stuart: I think I know the answer. I might be wrong. Is it Lawrence Kasdan?

Craig: It was Lawrence Kasdan.

Kate: I would have never gotten that.

Craig: He was not feeling well.

Kate: Like me, right now.

Craig: Scrambled up and got ourselves the GoT guys. All right, here we go. Question number four. Let’s get some redemption guys. In Scriptnotes 187 Live from New York John and Craig both sing songs. Who was their guest for that show? I was told these were super fans. [laughs]

Dion: I think now, right? Kate, what are we doing?

Kate: I’ve listened to every episode exactly once.

Dion: Every episode.

Kate: Once.

Craig: I know. Well there you go. By the way, I’ve got to tell you something. I don’t know who the guest was. I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t. I remember that Andrew Lippa was there, but he wasn’t our guest-guest was he?

John: He was our guest.

Craig: Oh, he was the guest.

John: That’s the correct answer. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, Andrew Lippa. OK, great. I thought he was sort of like, oh that’s right, Andrew Lippa.

John: The bonus would be if you could figure out what songs we actually sang. Craig, do you remember what song you sang?

Craig: Yes I do. I sang What More Can I Say from Falsetto Land.

John: Yeah. And I sang a song from Yank, which was a musical that never transferred to Broadway.

Craig: That was it. That was my big Broadway debut and final performance.

Kate: We’re going to get ourselves cut from this episode.

Dion: Yeah.

Craig: No, this one, one of you is going to get for sure. Here we go. Of course, the most famous Scriptnotes music is the opening jingle. How many notes are in it?

John: Kate.

Kate: Five.

Craig: Yes. I did the same thing you did. We all did the same thing. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five is the answer. So I believe we are tied. We are tied at one a piece, which is exactly the way I like things. Here we go. In Episode 212 writer-director Mari Heller talks about her experience making Diary of a Teenage Girl. Craig said her film was better than this film written by Heller’s husband.

John: Dion.

Craig: Yes.

Dion: The Andy Samberg movie. I can’t think of it. Kate for the steal?

Kate: Hey Siri…I have no idea.

Craig: I’m pretty sure that I said it was better than MacGruber.

Dion: Ah, MacGruber.

Craig: By Jorma Taccone and MacGruber is actually the second best movie ever made. Diary of a Teenage Girl apparently was the best movie. OK, here we go. Speaking of movie power couples in 2020 John hosted separate deep dive episodes with each half of this duo, each of whom had made movies in awards contention. So we’re looking for – Dion.

Dion: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.

Craig: Yes!

John: Correct.

Craig: That’s right. For Little Women and for Marriage Story.

Dion: That’s right.

Craig: So it’s 2-1. Dion with two. Kate with one.

Kate: Oh, it’s 2-1. I thought it was like 3-1.

Craig: No, it’s 2-1.

Kate: Cool, so I can still—

John: You can still win this.

Dion: You’re stealing it, Kate.

Craig: Absolutely. Everyone is in it. Here’s another marriage question. John and Craig have mentioned their spouses many times over the 500 episodes. What are their names?

John: Kate.

Kate: Mike, Melissa.

Craig: Yes! And we are tied at 2-2 and here’s the best part, there’s only one question left.

Dion: Here we go.

Kate: Oh dear god.

Craig: How can you not be romantic about baseball? Here we go. Oh my god, this is so hard. [laughs] Oh my god. I don’t know the answer to this. What are John and Craig’s Myers-Briggs personality types? Bonus points if you can answer with John’s newest personality test result too.

Dion: Oh god.

Craig: This is brutal. I’m with you. I’m with both of you on this.

Kate: I’m going to have to have to just guess.

John: It’s worth a guess. Worth a guess.

Craig: Listen, it’s the final shot. The clock is counting down. Go for it.

Kate: INFP and can I remember, I think it’s the other one.

Craig: Yeah, I think at this point this is just a fishing expedition.

Kate: Oh, it is. It’s completely–

John: It’s like the open writing assignment of personality types.

Craig: The one you mentioned wasn’t one of them. I think we can say it ain’t happening here.

Kate: Oh no. It’s not happening.

Craig: Apparently both of us were the same Myers-Briggs personality type, which I didn’t realize. We are both ENTJ. Otherwise known as the mad lunatic. But however in Episode 437 John revealed that he had evolved. I don’t like evolved because that makes it seem like you got better than me. You devolved into an ENFP. Oh, you actually flipped two of the things there. So, you’ve changed quite a bit.

Here’s the good news, folks. Because it’s a tie you’re both winners.

John: You’re both winners. So thank you for listening to all those episodes and to give you a chance to listen back to all those episodes we are giving you free lifetime memberships to Scriptnotes Premium.

Dion: How about that? That’s awesome.

Craig: It’s real money.

Dion: That’s fantastic.

Craig: And it’s not costing me anything, I know that much. [laughs]

John: So thank you both very much for listening to the show. It really means a tremendous amount. And thank you for coming on the show and playing this dumb game with us.

Craig: We are nothing without you.

Kate: Thank you.

Dion: Thank you for having me.

Kate: It was wonderful.

Dion: Thank you guys so much. You guys were Master Class before Master Class. You have no idea. Well, you probably do have some idea. I’m sure you’ve helped Kate. You’ve definitely helped me and thousands of others. So thank you. Really appreciate it fellas.

Craig: Thank you, Dion. That’s so nice.

John: Thank you, Dion.

Kate: You guys are my One Cool Thing.

Dion: There you go. Always and forever.

Craig: Thank you, Kate.

Dion: Appreciate you guys.

Craig: Thank you. All right. Keep listening guys. Thank you.

Dion: I will. Take care guys.

Kate: Bye.

Craig: See you later. That was exciting.

John: That was nice.

Craig: That went right down to the wire there, you know, because they were tied and we were going to that last question. I don’t know, I felt the tension of championship on the line. Those were hard questions. Who came up with those?

John: So I came up with most of them. Megana threw in the Myers-Briggs things at the end. And I don’t know if I would have gotten that one right.

Megana: I really thought that was going to be super easy. You guys are both ENTJs.

Craig: I don’t even know if I would have remembered my own.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Wow. You know what though? That’s what you want for the last. That’s what you want a tiebreaker to be. It’s got to be a real skull-cracker, you know.

John: I really thought they would have gotten the Lawrence Kasdan. That was a big deal and then he actually came back on in Episode 247 to sort of make good on–

Craig: That one felt like more of a gettable one. But you know the one that I was impressed with was Dion getting Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. That was pretty good.

John: Because those were episodes you didn’t listen to.

Craig: I don’t listen to any of the episodes. You could just say those like all 100, all 499 before this.

Megana: Also, if you guys thought those were hard, just wait for the premium segment because I wrote all of those.

Craig: Oh boy.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Here we go.

John: Before we get to the premium segment Kate did a great job of setting up our One Cool Things. So my One Cool Thing this week – I may have had it on a previous episode, but it’s so good I want to make sure everybody knows about it. If you are not sleeping with a white noise machine you should try sleeping with a white noise machine. It genuinely will help you.

And, yes, you can do it off your phone but then it just loops and it’s not as good. The best white noise machine is this Electro-Fan White Noise Machine. It is a little electronic device you plug in. Wirecutter ranks it the best. It is genuinely terrific. So good that we actually travel with it rather than using the one on our phone.

So you probably need a white noise machine. You should try it. It just shuts out the outside world completely. So the best one is this little $49 white noise machine. You should get it.

Craig: OK, great. I do use – I use an app on the iPad, I admit it. But I also use ear plugs, so I think the fancier white noise machine value would be lost on me. Also, the nice thing about the app is it gives you pink noise, white noise, brown noise, purple noise.

John: This gives you a choice of sort of what kind of sound you want.

Craig: I like the brown noise. That’s my jam. Here’s my One Cool Thing. I don’t know if we have this in the United States, but I’m here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We’re working on The Last of Us. We have a fairly large facility for the production. And we have all sorts of people working on it. And every day there is lunch. And the old way of doing things was somebody would come around, typically a poor, aggrieved PA to say, “Oh, we’re taking lunch orders. What would you like? We’re ordering from these two places. Here’s a menu.” And everyone is like, what, I don’t know, eh. And it takes forever.

And then you go and something went wrong. And everyone has got like a million little changes. So what they do here is they use something called Hunger Hub. And the night before you go on and it shows you there are two restaurant choices and there are a bunch of menu options for each restaurant. And you pick it. Pick it that night. And then it all just happens magically. And I was like what a smart way to streamline a miserable process.

So when we all get back to our writing rooms and real life, once Covid is gone, maybe some enterprising service if there isn’t one already will be doing something like this in the US. Hunger Hub.

John: So like Mythic Quest doesn’t do that for its lunch orders?

Craig: No, I mean, I haven’t been in the room, you know, physically for Mythic Quest since well over a year ago. But, no, it would be the–

John: Old-fashioned way.

Craig: Pass around a sheet and write down what you want from the menu of the thing, and the thing, and the thing.

John: Progress. Canadian progress.

Craig: Progress. Or as we say in Canada, progress.

John: Progress. So if you are a person who has listened to many of the back episodes we would love to have your help. We are coming up with the 500 Episode Listener Guide, so this is an update to our 300 Episode Listener Guide. Megana is actively reading through people’s submissions for what they think are the best episodes, the ones you cannot miss.

She also spearheaded this week this drive to get an index of all the episodes, which has been so helpful, so we can see actually what episodes have Three Page Challenges, or How Would This Be a Movie, who our guests were. So if you are looking at which episodes should I go back and listen to, or I really want the craft episodes, this index will be available to you as well. So we’ll have a link in the show notes to that. But also tell us what you think should be in the Listeners’ Guide. So you go to johnaugust.com/guide and there’s a little form you can fill out to tell us which episodes you think people should really listen to. So do that if you could.

And that is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Special thanks to Dustin Box, Nima Yousefi, Chris Sont, and Amy August for their help this week.

Craig: Oh, Amy August.

John: Amy August helped with the index.

Craig: Oh, are you paying her?

John: I am paying her. I pay people.

Craig: Everybody gets paid.

John: Here’s how this came to be. Mike and I went out to a restaurant for the first time, like an actual restaurant to have our anniversary dinner.

Craig: Nice.

John: And it’s owned by this chef whose son was in preschool with Amy. And when Mike went to the bathroom he’s like oh my god I saw Bruno was working back, he was washing dishes in the kitchen. And I was like, oh, the kitchen of our family business is really tedious data entry. And so Amy did the tedious data entry.

Craig: Nice!

John: Yeah.

Craig: All right. I hope you paid her well.

John: I paid her minimum wage. I paid her $15 an hour.

Craig: OK. I mean, we did have a series of episodes about how we were aiming for $20 an hour, but OK. I guess if it’s your kid.

John: It’s my kid, yes, so it’s the kid discount. I’ve paid for everything for her entire life.

Craig: You did provide her with everything else.

John: Our intro this week was by the amazing Matthew Chilelli. Our outro, Matthew if you could please play us an outro, the very first outro you ever did for Scriptnotes. That feels like a good bookend for us.

Craig: Ooh.

John: If you have an intro or an outro, just an outro actually, you can send us a link to ask@dev.johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send longer questions like the ones we answered today. For short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have t-shirts, and they’re great. So you should show your pride of 500 episodes with a new t-shirt. They’re 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. That’s also where you can hear our producers make fun of me and Craig for not understanding the show that we’ve done 499 episodes of in this segment we’re about to record.

So thank you to all of our producers and Matthew for coming back for this special 500th episode. And thank you everyone for listening.

Craig: Thanks guys. 500 episodes. Amazing.

[Bonus segment]

John: Megana Rao, you are in charge of the podcast from here forward. So take it away. What do you want us to do?

Megana: OK. So we have a trivia game for you.

Craig: Oh boy.

Megana: And it is a mix of Scriptnotes trivia, but also as we talked about in that discussion on your friendship there’s a little bit of The Newlywed Game. So it’s a little bit also of how well you two know each other and have been listening to each other. And then we have a sprinkling of Stuart-written, Stuart-centric questions that are also in here.

Craig: Oh. OK.

Stuart: I thought I specifically didn’t want to get too Stuart-centric.

Craig: Well, no one cares, Stuart.

Stuart: Stuart-ed it out. All right.

Megana: I feel like Stuart lure is a big part of Scriptnotes.

Craig: It is.

John: Totally.

Megana: So I felt like it had to be in there.

Craig: It is. OK, well I’m very excited. I hope I lose. I’m going to lose. I don’t have to hope.

John: I’m nervous.

Megana: So there’s certain questions that are just specifically targeted for one of you. But for the other ones you guys can raise your hands.

Craig: I see. We will raise our hands if there is a competitive question.

Megana: Cool. And then the producers and Matthew each have three or four questions that we will ask and I wish you both the best of luck. So, we’re starting with Stuart.

Craig: Oh, god.

Stuart: What location does Craig frequently refer to as his sacred place?

Craig: I’ve raised my hand.

Megana: You can answer that one.

Craig: The shower.

Megana: Correct. I wanted to start off easy.

Craig: Thank you. I have a feeling that that’s a set up. A total set up. I’m going to go down in flames now.

Stuart: Question two. You’ve done 17 episodes where you dissect one movie and nine where it’s just the two of you analyzing a movie. Can you name seven of these deep dives?

John: I’m going to try this first. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Aliens. The Little Mermaid. Unforgiven. Die Hard. If we’re going to count Marriage Story and Ghost.

Craig: Yes. See, we help each other.

John: We help each other. What were the other ones? What did I miss?

Stuart: Raiders, Little Mermaid, Groundhog Day.

John: Oh, Groundhog Day, yeah.

Craig: Of course.

Stuart: Ghost. Whiplash. The Addams Family. Unforgiven. The Princess Bride. Clueless.

Craig: Right.

Stuart: And the Christmas bonus episode on Die Hard.

Megana: Wait. I don’t believe that we’ve done an Aliens deep dive.

John: I think we’ve always meant to do one and we didn’t do it.

Craig: Yeah. I was thinking, man, I really don’t know this show very well because I don’t remember that at all.

John: It was a dream I had. A fugue state.

Craig: It was a dream.

Stuart: Question three in the highlighted Stuart section. In the Scriptnotes Wikipedia article it says that Stuart’s voice was never heard on the show except for Episode 259, The Exit Interview. This is in fact incorrect. When else was Stuart heard on the show?

John: Huh. Well you probably said something during a live show. I feel like there was going to be some moment at which you stood up in the audience where I acknowledged. So I bet we’re going to hear your voice there. But I’m trying to think of another example of – I don’t think you read any questions aloud or anything.

Craig: I would have said at the Christmas show I think we might have made him say something. Like I’m Stuart. But I can’t remember.

John: Or like, no, I’m Stuart, or I’m Stuart.

Craig: Oh that I’m real or something.

Stuart: You’re conflating a few things but you’re definitely on the right track. At one point – there are a few Stuart doppelgängers in Los Angeles and at one point we had the idea to get all of them in a row and to all stand up at the live show and wave. I think only one or maybe two showed up, but still we had the effect of three bearded redheads.

But there was an episode, according to this it was the 124 Q&A from the Holiday Spectacular. And I got on stage and I know that because my parents have a photo from that.

Craig: Of course they do.

Stuart: On their living room table or whatever.

John: You know, really we should have brought on Stuart’s parents as the Scriptnotes super fans because they are–

Craig: I know. Up until the point where Stuart stops producing it. And then we never listened to it again.

Stuart: They’re fans. My dad. My dad certainly listens.

Craig: He’s a dentist.

Stuart: He’s dedicated.

Craig: He’s a dentist.

Stuart: And maybe the rest of you have had the same experience, but my parents know nothing about what I do for a living. And Scriptnotes has been a very nice – they can speak some of the language now.

Craig: My parents have never listened to it either. So it’s genetic.

Stuart: I will point out though that my wife has been a voice on the show many times. More than me.

Craig: Ah, reading questions? Or–?

Stuart: Originally back in the day when you would have an article you were talking about or discussing and you wanted to do the reenactment, she would be the female reenactment voice.

Craig: Right. She was the only woman we knew. Those were different days. All right. Well we kind of bombed out on that one. All right, what’s next?

Megana: Next up we have Matthew asking the questions.

Matthew: Question four. Which two guests have come on to specifically talk about sex on screen?

John: Craig had his hand up.

Craig: I think it was Dan Savage and Rachel Bloom.

Matthew: That’s correct. That’s correct.

Craig: It is correct. See, John doesn’t get it.

John: What about Rachel Bloom? Rachel Bloom came on specifically.

Craig: I said Rachel Bloom. Dan Savage and Rachel Bloom.

Megana: Can you do episode numbers John or Craig?

John: No.

Craig: Oh wow, really?

John: So, yes, Dan Savage. But I was thinking actors. So I was thinking it should be Rebel Wilson and Rachel Bloom. That would be my answer.

Craig: Rebel Wilson was part of the dirty show. So she didn’t really come on to talk about sex.

John: That’s fair.

Craig: She just came on to be a bit bawdy.

John: She was bawdy. She was mostly talking about shitting in a beret.

Craig: Correct. Which is the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life. But Dan and Rachel very specifically we were talking about all the fun bits and parts.

John: All right.

Craig: I feel great.

John: You’re actually beating me. So you should feel great.

Craig: That’s not why I feel great.

Megana: I mean, well John this one is specifically for you.

John: All right. Let’s see if I can get it right.

Matthew: Question five, John. What scene does Craig frequently refer to as the hardest he’s ever laughed?

John: Wow. What’s the hardest that Craig has ever laughed. Maybe it’s MacGruber where he’s offering sex to get out of something?

Craig: That’s a great scene. And happens multiple times in MacGruber. But that is not the answer.

John: What is the answer?

Craig: Well I have two that I refer to. I don’t know which one I refer to more than the other. But one is the naked fight in Borat and the other is the puppet vomiting in South Park Team America.

John: That’s the right one, right?

Matthew: Yeah, it’s Team America, the puke scene.

Craig: Yeah. Just the funniest thing.

Matthew: 286, 481, and 387.

Craig: Nice.

Megana: I just got tired of citing the episode. It’s multiple episodes.

Matthew: Possibly more.

Craig: Possibly more.

John: Great.

Craig: I mean, it’s amazing.

Matthew: And question number six for Craig. What is the first project John pitched on?

Craig: How to Eat Fried Worms.

John: That’s impressive.

Craig: I know my guy. I know my guy.

Stuart: Wow.

John: Bonus if you can answer what did I bring to that pitch meeting?

Craig: I don’t know, so I’m going to guess that you brought – because I believe it was in like a sandwich. Maybe you brought a sandwich with worms on it.

John: I did bring a Styrofoam container of worms that I dumped out on a plate for that.

Craig: Did you eat one?

John: I did not eat one. But they were worried I was going to eat one.

Megana: Did it go over well?

John: It went well. Yeah.

Stuart: Like living worms?

John: Yeah. Living worms. From a bait store. I had to drive to Santa Monica. There’s not a lot of bait stores in Los Angeles. So.

Craig: And when you got there they were like pitching on the open writing assignment for How to Eat Fried Worms?

John: That’s what it is.

Craig: The ninth nerd that came in here this morning. Exactly. We know you’re not a fisherman. We know that.

John: No. You can just look at me. I’m not a fisherman.

Craig: Yeah, you’re in the Writers Guild. OK, feeling good. Feeling good.

Megana: All right. And next up we have Godwin.

Godwin: My first question is what is the name of the sandwich Malcolm Spellman ate after recording Episode 185? And I can give you a hit. It’s from Mendocino Farms.

John: A sandwich study in heat?

Godwin: Yes.

Craig: Wow. I would have never in a million years. Wow.

John: The only reason I was pretty sure about that answer is because the Malcolm Spellman episode is titled A Study in Heat.

Craig: Ah. Do you know I once watched Malcolm eat an entire sleeve of Mint Oreo cookies? And the best part of it was while he was eating them, this was at my house, he was halfway through the sleeve. He said, “I hate these. I hate Mint Oreo cookies. I hate them.” And I’m like but why are you eating them? He goes, “I don’t know.”

And then he gets to the bottom of the sleeve and I’m like, dude, you’re going to be sick. And he goes, “No, it’s not even as much as you think. It’s like 250 calories.” And I’m like no it’s not. And he goes, “Yeah it is.” And I’m like, no, no, that’s per serving, not per sleeve. And he’s like, “What?” You have to imagine deeper, “What?”

And so he had eaten essentially like 2,000 or 3,000 calories worth of Mint Oreo cookies that he did not like. We talk about that a lot in my house. It was a great day.

Godwin: All right. Next question. Who were the first two Scriptnotes guests? John?

John: I think it was Aline and Derek. Derek Haas.

Godwin: No.

Megana: Craig, are you going to steal?

Craig: Give me a moment. Momentito. I’ve got nothing.

Godwin: It’s Franklin Leonard. And Aline.

John: And Aline, OK. That I guessed.

Craig: Franklin. Oh wow. I thought maybe Aline would have been like a trick, like a trap to fall into. But, all right, interesting. We both whiffed.

John: I very much believe that. But I’m also mesmerized by the idea of what if Franklin and Leonard were different people.

Craig: Oh, Franklin and Leonard.

John: Yeah. Wow. The power they would have.

Craig: The world of people with two first names is funny.

Stuart: Were they on one episode together or was it?

Megana: Episode 60. They both came together.

Craig: Wow.

Godwin: The next question is for Craig. What was the marquee feature of the Highland software?

Craig: I believe it was to melt PDFs.

Godwin: Correct.

John: Nicely done.

Godwin: And for my last question. There was a short-lived segment called Change Craig’s Mind. What was the first and only topic discussed? Yes John?

John: Ventriloquism.

Godwin: Correct.

Craig: Oh my god. That’s amazing. So, first of all, I wish we would bring that back.

John: We have to. Megana, please, put that on top of the Workflowy. We’ve got to bring that back.

Craig: That’s amazing because it’s such a challenge to change Craig’s mind. It’s a challenge. And I have – my feelings about ventriloquism have only deepened. My anger about it, my just general resentment that it’s considered–

John: An art form.

Craig: Entertainment. An art form? [laughs] I just get angrier about it by the day. OK, we have to bring that back. That’s a wonderful idea.

John: What’s so good about that segment is that you’re basically an anti-vaxxer when it comes to ventriloquism. Like the more facts we give you the deeper you dig into your bunker there.

Craig: Yeah. Because it’s like if vaccines actually were boring and pointless then I would be an anti-vaxxer. But they’re amazing and they save lives. Unlike ventriloquism, which is boring and stupid.

Stuart: Is it topics that you want your mind changed on?

Craig: I don’t come up with them. That’s the thing. I didn’t come up with that. It just happened.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

Megana: Do we have a score count? So we’re moving on to Megan and–

Craig: Oh god. Was anyone keeping score? I wasn’t keeping score.

John: I wasn’t keeping score.

Stuart: Is there a prize for the winner?

John: I think Craig may be slightly ahead though honestly.

Craig: Do I get a free lifetime, because I pay the $6 a month, I do. I get charged $6 a month, so I’m hoping I get the free one.

Megana: We’ll think about it.

Craig: Fair enough.

Megana: All right. Megan, you’re up.

Megan: Question 11. On September 13, 2014, Stuart Friedel wrote an email based on a discussion in Episode 108. On September 10, 2018 at 3:02am, five years later, that email came through to the ask@dev.johnaugust.com account. What was the discussion that you wanted to check in on?

John: Huh. I think the dates might be meaningful. But I don’t know.

Craig: The first date was what year?

John: 2014?

Megan: 2014.

Craig: And the second date was what year?

Megan: 2018.

John: Wow.

Stuart: Something there, it says five years later.

Megan: It does say five years later.

Craig: OK. That’s why I was asking.

John: So five years happened.

Craig: It was a five year checkup. This feels like something that the initial, my gut tells me that the initial email was something he was angry about. I don’t know why. I just feel like he was indignant and was thinking to himself you guys, five years from now, you’ll see. And he was probably right. But I don’t know what it is.

John: It could have been a situation where we may have asked on the show for – let us know five years from now sort of what happens. But I can’t think what the specific scenario was.

Craig: We don’t know this.

John: Tell us. We don’t know this.

Megan: It said, “Dear John’s current assistant. Please look back on Scriptnotes Episode 108 where John and Craig discussed the future of iPads in movie theaters and remind them that this next episode is to address the five years later of it all. Sincerely yours, John’s current, 2013, assistant.”

Craig: Yes, that’s right. Got it. So this wasn’t about Stuart’s indignant. This was a disagreement that John and I had about whether or not iPads and the use of them would become prominent in theaters with children. And what we didn’t know was that nobody would be in theaters. Not only would there not be iPads, or there wouldn’t be humans.

John: Yeah.

Craig: That’s right. I forgot that one. That was a good one.

John: I’m happy there are not iPads in theaters. I could have envisioned a scenario in which that happened and it would have been worse. But not worse than a pandemic.

Craig: No. No.

John: So if I had to choose iPads in theaters versus a global pandemic that killed millions.

Craig: I don’t know. [laughs] I’m on the fence.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I’m on the fence. OK. Next question.

Megan: Question 12. In Episode 240 who do you decide would win in an all-out brawl to the death, John or Craig? And why?

John: I said that Craig would win just because he would be just savage and he would not stop.

Craig: I think I probably said the same thing about John. That John would win because he would clamp down or do something really like vicious that I wasn’t expecting. Maybe like a neck bite.

Megan: Per Megana the answer is Craig, because he’s angry and heavier, but most importantly because he would not hesitate. There would be no pause.

Craig: That’s true. That’s true. You don’t have any advantage if you don’t use your advantage. That’s the thing. You’re right. So I got to get him on the ground fast is the key. I got to get John down on the ground.

John: If we were in a Zombie apocalypse scenario and needed to say like, OK, if I get bitten you need to kill me, I would tell Craig to be the one to kill me because he would do it.

Megana: Oh.

Craig: Oh yeah.

John: Do it for the good of the group. Yeah. He’s the one you want to pick.

Craig: No, I would do it even before. Even before you got the sentence done.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: I always joke like that with Melissa. Because you know that Michael Haneke movie where he has to kill his wife with the pillow because she has Alzheimer’s? It’s the most beautiful Oscar-y movie ever. And I’m like I’m going to do that to you. And she’s like–

John: That’s how much I love you.

Craig: When she walks in she’s like, “I cannot remember where I put my keys.” And I’m like pillow time. That’s enough. [laughs] That’s all I needed to hear. Let’s go. Come on.

Megan: Question 13. Who is the credited producer on Episode 17 of Scriptnotes?

Craig: Ooh. OK. Well, so the implication is that it’s pre-Stuart, so I’m going to say Nima?

John: I’m going to guess Carlton [Miniacus] who was – it was a pseudonym that was being used.

Craig: Who?

Stuart: Did we fact check this one?

Megana: We did.

Stuart: Because I wrote this question, but I wasn’t certain of the answer.

Craig: I can’t wait to hear what the actual answer theoretically is.

Megan: The answer is there’s no credited producer, because it was before Matthew, and so Stuart was credited as the editor.

Craig: Oh, so it was a trick question.

Stuart: I actually thought you guys would get this because of the spoilers. We discussed this in the opening.

Craig: Well that’s the thing. I thought that maybe there was some random person.

John: Being so specific, because we didn’t start crediting you until what episode?

Stuart: I don’t know. But this was the exact – if you read in the Google Doc this is the exact discussion we’re having. It originally was Episode 5. We decided that it would be more of a red herring if we used a more “random” sounding number.

Craig: I see.

John: Clever.

Craig: So this was just a set up to humiliate us. I understand.

Stuart: Exactly.

Craig: Fine. Done. Achieved.

Megana: OK, final round. John, what recent meme shares a name with Craig’s family member?

Craig: That’s great.

John: I don’t know what the recent meme is. I can’t think of a Jessie or a Jack or a Melissa.

Craig: Can I steal?

Megana: OK, Craig, you can steal.

Craig: My sister’s name is Karen.

John: Ooh, that’s right.

Craig: My sister’s children call her “a Karen” all the time. It infuriates her. It’s wonderful. She’s never asked for the manager, by the way, ever. Not once.

Megana: So in an early episode, Episode 2, you both declare blank as the death of all screenwriters.

Craig: Both declare blank as the death of all screenwriters? Ooh. Go ahead.

John: So like lack of limitations, or freedom in a way?

Megana: Craig, do you want to do a guess?

Craig: Wildly different guess. Focus groups. Movie focus groups.

Megana: The correct answer is children.

Craig: Oh, we said it before.

John: Obviously, yeah.

Craig: That’s correct. Yeah. Stuart gets it now. It’s the death of all screenwriters. They just hollow you out from the inside.

Stuart: I like my kid personally.

Craig: Just wait. [laughs]

John: Just wait till that kid can get out of the crib and actually find you.

Craig: Just wait. Oh, the places you’ll go.

Megana: OK, we are at our last question.

John: Oh.

Craig: Buckle up.

Megana: I want you both to close your eyes, meditate on your lives, your careers, almost a decade, 500 episodes of Scriptnotes. What is your favorite quality in Megana Rao? Just kidding. I’m just kidding. You guys can email me afterwards. OK, the real question is what is your favorite quality in your cohost?

Craig: Ooh.

John: Aw.

Craig: This is, now it’s just going to be about tears.

John: Yeah. I would say that Craig is just remarkably good at winging it and just speaking extemporaneously about whatever topic without any real preparation at all. And so it’s not that he hasn’t thought about these things before, but he can just actually articulate clear, cogent thoughts without any preparation and make it seem so effortless. And with me I feel like I’m Taylor Swift where all I do is try, try, try.

Craig: [laughs] But Taylor Swift is hot. You know? And super successful. So I think that works out great.

John: So it works out well for me, too.

Craig: It works out well for you. I would say that I think the thing that I appreciate the most in John and have for a long time is that he is empathetic in a logical way. Because there’s this mushy, weepy spirituality empathy and I’ve said many times on the show I literally don’t even understand what spirituality is. I don’t know what the word means. Any time people try and explain it to me I’m just like religion right. And they’re like, yeah, but no. And I’m like nah, it is.

But John has a very logical kind of empathy and that has I think – it’s rubbed off on me. I think I’ve learned from it. Because I respect it. And he makes the idea of kindness and acceptance and making your first choice the benefit of the doubt choice in a rational way. I’ve learned from that. And I’ve definitely – he’s been a good model for me because my first choice typically was just to destroy.

It’s my second choice. I don’t want people to think that it’s not there anymore. It’s right there. It’s right behind it. But, yes, I would say that for sure.

John: Aw. Thank you Craig.

Craig: You’re welcome.

Megana: Well thank you both for playing. You’re both winners.

Craig: I feel like a winner. I’m so glad I got anything right. I was terrified.

Megana: I guess Craig is kind of the winner because he had the upset a bit.

John: Yeah, he did. But still.

Craig: Kind of the winner is the best I’ve ever been. Kind of a winner.

John: I think we were the winners to have such amazing producers and editor.

Craig: Segue Man.

John: Here with us today.

Craig: Yes, we are the beneficiaries of all of you. And your hard work. And you make us sound good. You make us look good. Definitely make me sound and look good, because I don’t, you know–

John: And I’m always just so happy and proud to see your smiling faces and to see you guys kicking ass out there.

Craig: Exactly. That’s awesome.

John: So thank you for being so awesome.

Craig: Yeah. And there’s been like marriages and children and all these wonderful life changes that are happening. Look, we do another 500 of these.

John: Another 10 years. Wow.

Craig: At that point I fully plan on being in the hover chair from Wall-E. But you guys will still be vital members of society. [laughs]

John: And I’ll be begging Megan to get me a job working on some Marvel project.

Craig: Yes. And my wife will come to me with the pillow and be like. It’s time. It’s you that gets the pillow, my friend.

John: All right. Thank you all so much.

Craig: Thanks folks.

Stuart: Great seeing you guys.

Megan: So nice to see you.

Craig: Bye.

Links:

• Find out more information about the The Scriptnotes Book
• Review the past 500 episodes at The Scriptnotes Index
• Stuart Friedel on the web
• Godwin Jabangwe on Twitter
• Megan McDonnell on IMDb
• Matthew Chilelli on Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, and the web
• Megana Rao on Twitter
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro (and intro!) by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 501 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we look at what patterns we’ve noticed in successful writers and perhaps more importantly what things tend to derail careers. We will also have follow up on genres and typos, plus a listener question that I suspect will become a storyline in this, our 11th Season of Scriptnotes. 11 Seasons Craig. This is our season premiere.

Craig: I only found out from you yesterday that we have seasons.

John: Yeah. So seasons are 50 episodes a piece, so this is our 11th season we’re starting.

Craig: Oh, OK. I thought that maybe we were just midseason, mid-season one of a thousand episodes. Are we going to get to a thousand episodes?

John: I don’t know, Craig. That’s a long–

Craig: That just seems stupid, right?

John: That’s 10 years.

Craig: How could you possibly say something 1,000 times?

John: Yeah. You could though.

Craig: That said, 500 is a lot, yet here we are.

John: It is a lot. We started working on the book and we talked about the book last week. It’s really exciting, but gosh darn we have just a lot of text there. A lot of stuff to go through.

Craig: Yup. And, you know, I don’t want to pat ourselves on the back or anything, but I think we have a decent signal to noise ratio also. We don’t do a lot of empty patter like the kind that I’m engaging in right now.

John: We cut all the empty patter out of the book which is so much fun. So, this week we’ll be sending through sample chapters, or at least one sample chapter, to people who’ve signed up at Scriptnotes.net. That’s where you can sign up for the back episodes, but you can also sign up for the mailing list for the book. And the sample chapters look just great. So I was just working on one, a sample one with Greta Gerwig’s interview, and we also have a Craig Mazin special chapter that you can proof before we send out.

Craig: Excellent. Oh my.

John: Oh my.

Craig: Oh my.

John: And in our bonus segment for today’s episode we’re going to talk about books, but not the Scriptnotes book, but just what we like in books from physical books, to fonts, to bindings. What we look for in books, not as text but the actual objects themselves. Because I want the Scriptnotes book to be a good book, so let’s talk about what we like in books.

Craig: Oh, OK.

John: Yeah. Because you like a book. You like the Art & Arcana Book, that D&D book. That was great.

Craig: By Kyle Newman. Yes. I enjoy – it’s not the only kind of book I like. [laughs]

John: I know. But you like a well-made book.

Craig: Oh, sure. I mean in terms of just the quality of a book being put together, yes. Absolutely. No question.

John: So we will talk about that. But before we do any of this, Craig we have to start because apparently you have a big thing to apologize for.

Craig: Yeah, apparently. I didn’t realize I blew it. I totally blew it. A couple of episodes ago I was talking about how passionate Europeans are about their football and particularly folks in the UK. And I incorrectly assigned the singing of You’ll Never Walk Alone to Mancunians when in fact it is the folks of Liverpool, the Liverpoolians. I’m probably saying that wrong, too.

But it’s Liverpool. The folks of Liverpool are the ones that sing You’ll Never Walk Alone and so what I basically did was award their bitter rivals with their beloved song. This is just a tragic mistake, born out of utter ignorance. Sometimes you know just enough to be dangerous as my father used to say. And in this case I knew just enough to be dangerous. So I do apologize to all of the fans in Liverpool. I did not mean to besmirch your beloved song or your beloved football club.

And similarly I apologize to the folks of Manchester for suggesting that they were like Liverpool fans, since they all apparently hate each other’s teams. But we’re all friends.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So anyway I do apologize for that. That was just a blunder. It was just a huge blunder.

John: And a thing which we talked about before on the show is that one of the most important parts of an apology is accepting an apology, so the many people who have written into the show to point out this error hopefully will accept the apology and then we can move on and try to make another 500 episodes of the show.

Craig: Yeah. It would be kind of weird if they didn’t.

John: No. We’re going to continue to be angry.

Craig: Yeah, you know, I mean, there are worst things in the world. But it was – if somebody, I don’t know, talked with some sense of authority about how the Yankees play at City Field I would have been incensed. So I get it. And I apologize. I am sorry.

John: Great. That same episode we talked about in How Would This Be a Movie these professional breakup artists. And so these are folks in Japan who do this for a living. I said that is a good idea for a movie and I would not be surprised if this movie exists somewhere out there in the world. And two of our listeners wrote in saying like, yes, those movies do exist.

Paul wrote in to say that there is a French film called Heartbreaker which is about this idea. And then Fred in Chicago said there’s already an Australian feature about professional breaker-uppers called appropriately The Breaker Upperers. He says it’s pretty good. They go the broad comedy route. It’s sort of like Bridesmaids. It’s produced by Taika Waititi. So I want to see this movie. The trailer is actually great.

Craig: I’m not going to do it.

John: You’re not going to watch that movie. You don’t watch movies.

Craig: Not really. [laughs] I don’t watch stuff anymore.

John: But you know the movie now exists out there in the world.

Craig: Totally. Breaker Upperers.

John: Yeah. But the fact that it was a French and an Australian version does not preclude an American version from being made.

Craig: Quite the opposite.

John: It’s going to get made.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Do you want to take Frank’s question here about typos?

Craig: Sure. Frank in London wrote in about typos and our decision to stop using Three Page Challenges with typos.

John: Now do you remember Frank’s situation here? So Frank had a life experience that made it very difficult for him to read and to write.

Craig: Yes. I remember. Frank wrote in and basically said, “Hey, it’s hard for me to write things without typos. You’re being unfair.” And let’s see, it looks like Steve had a comment back. Steve said, “While I also sympathize with Frank’s struggles, I agree that unfortunately in the end those are hurdles he has to overcome. I wanted to add that there are tools to help him that are free or inexpensive, Grammarly for one, that he can Google. There are a ton of them specifically for his particular hurdle, but I like Grammarly because it works with almost every program automatically. You don’t have to open it or copy and paste anything. For the most part it’s just there working.”

John, I want to like Grammarly, but I detest it because of those freaking ads.

John: Yeah. I detest it because of the ads, too. So, there are people who really like Grammarly and I think it’s maybe worth someone like Frank in London to consider a tool like that to help him out. But also there’s real people who can do this job, too. So, other listeners suggest that you could go on Fiver or one of these sort of hire a person for a quick little job thing and proofreading is a thing you can get through there. But even our listeners reached out to say like, “Hey, I’m happy to proofread if Frank needs help.”

Craig: That’s nice.

John: So I would say have faith that there are some humans who are out there to help you do your best writing.

Craig: Writing is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Is that what that lady says?

John: I think that’s what it is.

Craig: Something like that. And then I just immediately – the red mist descends.

John: Now, a few episodes before that in Episode 497 we talked about the hierarchy of genres. So my friend and friend of the show, Matt Byrne, wrote in to say, “I wonder if we’re seeing the relationship between suffering and art/genius here. Van Gough. Sylvia Plath. There’s a trail of examples that goes back to Jesus and the Odyssey, up through De Niro fattening up for Raging Bull. We as a society love and celebrate those bits of suffering. They add value. We see the labor. In comedy the labor is mostly invisible. So while a comedy may delight us more, the artistry seems to come at less of a price. I don’t know if it’s specific to our puritanical roots, or if it’s more global and timeless, but that value on labor and suffering seems to be hardwired into our DNA and certainly ingrained into the awards PR narrative machinery.”

Craig: Well that’s a really interesting notion. I appreciate that, Matt. I think you might be onto something there. It is absolutely true that we associate self-torture, or a tortured personality, with great art. And I don’t think that’s good.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I don’t think we should. I think it encourages a kind of romanticization of what is actually just, you know, unfortunate mental illness. But that’s a really interesting observation. Well done.

John: Do you want to take Spooky from Florida here?

Craig: Well, of course I do. OK, Spooky from Florida writes, “I often find that people look down on horror, or if it’s a good horror film they deny that it’s in the horror genre altogether. William Friedkin famously said that he didn’t consider The Exorcist to be horror, which seems ridiculous to me. Using Craig’s own criteria there is only one film that definitely fits in the horror genre that has won an Academy Award for Best Film, The Silence of the Lambs.

“Parasite and The Shape of Water each also recently received Best Film, but might take a Friedkin-esque stance and argue they aren’t horror.” Well, I have a suspicion were Jonathan Demme with us today he would also argue that Silence of the Lambs was not horror, either. So this is an interesting parallel. What do you think about Spooky’s point here?

John: I think it’s a really good point and it also reminds me of what Tess Morris told us about romantic comedies is that when a rom-com is incredibly successful suddenly it’s not a rom-com anymore. So like Silver Linings Playbook is not considered a rom-com, but of course it is a rom-com. It’s just that they sort of broke out of that bubble and it doesn’t count as that. Or when a man makes a rom-com it’s not considered a rom-com.

Craig: Right. Exactly. So Let the Right One In is considered an arthouse film, an independent arthouse film, but it’s a horror movie.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s a really good horror movie. Yeah, I agree. I think Spooky what happens is people have this feeling that genre is somehow a negative.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But I would say drama is a genre. Weepy Oscar drama, right? Like, you know, Oscar Movie, that’s a thing. We all know what it is, right? If you say, OK, what do you think an Oscar movie is I’m immediately in my mind it’s Sophie’s Choice. That’s what’s happening. It’s a genre.

John: Or you look at a movie like The Artist. The Artist didn’t have all that sort of award season movie kind of stuff around it, like the period film and it’s about Hollywood.

Craig: It’s a comedy.

John: Yeah, it’s a comedy. It’s just a comedy. It’s a very light comedy. But we don’t think about it as just a comedy because it’s an Oscar movie.

Craig: Well perception is a fascinating thing. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately only because it’s a rare thing in one’s own life to notice a dramatic shift in perception. And perception is – just a source of injustice, sometimes against you and sometimes in your favor.

You know, I think about the way people talk about things that I do. I think they used to be way too hard on me, and now I think they’re way too easy on me.

John: [laughs]

Craig: Now they’re like, “This show is going to be great because Craig is doing it.” And I’m like, you know, listen man. I’m going to do my best, but I wouldn’t say that. I’m hoping. I’m putting all I can into it. But there is that strange handicapping that occurs, like odds. They minus five points or plus five points depending on how they see you. It’s a curious thing.

John: Well speaking of awards and perceptions, the big news out of this past week was that NBC has decided it’s not going to be broadcasting the next Golden Globe awards. So that’s a pretty big shift. That’s a big televised – like the second biggest televised awards show that just goes away. And not just for film but for TV as well. And, see ya. I’m not going to miss it.

You know, some good things about the Golden Globes. I think they’re fun to watch because it’s a bunch of celebrities in a room slightly drunk. And the monologues from the hosts were actually kind of funny in general, had a good mocking tone. But it wasn’t important. It wasn’t meaningful. And the folks who were voting on it had no real skin in the game. So, I’m not sad to see it go.

Craig: There are a lot of award shows where the people voting don’t have skin in the game. The critics’ awards and all that. But this is sort of fascinating. The Golden Globes have always had a strange, well, you know, I remember controversy when I was a kid. I didn’t watch award shows when I was a kid, but somehow I heard about Pia Zadora winning the Golden Globe and everybody being like, “The Golden Globes!” But then again the Golden Globes I think were always like you say viewed as a little bit of the kind of chaotic slightly boozy cousin, where things were a bit more fun and casual and I can say from my own experience being there that it is pretty booze and fun and casual.

John: Yeah.

Craig: We had a great time.

John: Absolutely. You and Tiffany Haddish up on stage. It was a good time.

Craig: Oh my god. Tiffany Haddish was great and we had our table and we were sitting next to the Succession table and we were cheering each other on while we were all drinking. And so it’s a very different vibe than an auditorium based show like the Emmys or the Oscars where you’re sitting in a seat and you are observing a stage.

So it’s like a big, huge Sweet Sixteen/Bar Mitzvah kind of event. But obviously they ran into real trouble here and I’m curious to see what happens because this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing where someone else is going to pick this football up and resume running with it.

John: Well here’s a suggestion from Twitter. So this is Noah Evslin who tweeted, “I’m going to pitch this again…this is the moment for all the Hollywood guilds to come together and create a new awards show called The Guild Awards and use the money to help stabilize their health and pension funds. In 2019, the Golden Globes brought in over $60 million.”

So, I hear you laughing, so therefore let’s take the pro and con on The Guild Awards.

Craig: Sure. Well, should I do pro?

John: I can do pro because I think you have more cons. Is that fair?

Craig: I really have one con. I only have one. But it’s a massive con. So go for your pros.

John: OK, my pros is I think the guilds should continue to do their own awards for their own stuff and hold back on Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Comedy Series, basically the things that are actually televisable you can hold off on those and let those be sort of the Guild Awards, but do your own local awards for all of the other awards.

But I think there’s an opportunity to create that kind of boozy, smaller, less auditorium-y feel of The Golden Globes but actually have to be voted on by people who do this for a living.

Craig: Well, that would pretty much solve the big con. I mean, the strike against this notion which on its surface seems kind of a no-brainer is that the award show would be endless the Writers Guild Awards took I would say most of my life. I think I spent most of my life at that one Writers Guild award show.

John: You couldn’t do – and you wouldn’t want to do all the awards. So you should just do the big marquee things.

Craig: So then I guess the con junior there is that if you are someone who is not in one of those categories you’re going to – so like for instance the Emmys, there is a craft awards Emmys that occurs–

John: The night before.

Craig: It’s a week before.

John: The week before, yeah.

Craig: And they call it the Shemmy’s because it’s not the real Emmys. I mean, it is, you get a real Emmy, but they don’t want to spend time giving Emmys for editing or costume, which they should. Everybody deserves their moment. But, yeah, so I think people might get a little grouchy, like I’m at the WGA, mumble WGA awards.

But if what you did is essentially approximate the kind of awards that the Golden Globes gave out, because they don’t give out a lot of awards, then I mean–

John: Yeah, so let directors vote on Best Director. Let writers vote on all the writing awards. Let the actors vote on the actors. It would be great. Do I think it’s going to happen? I think it’s unlikely to happen. I think what’s more likely to happen is that the SAG Awards become increasingly visible, just because they’re actors and they’re famous. But I think the Guild Awards would be lovely and I would watch them and support them.

Craig: Yeah. At some point it all comes down to just math and people watch this sort of thing because they like to see the actors. And fewer and fewer people are watching any of these things.

John: Yeah.

Craig: The trend is not encouraging. So NBC, I can’t quite award them with the bravery of the year medal because the ratings for these things have just been plummeting. What was the most recent–?

John: Well the Oscars was not a huge–

Craig: Oh, god, yeah, the Oscars. I mean, I looked at the bar graph of viewers, that’s pretty scary stuff.

John: Also they had all the challenges of doing the broadcast, like no one had seen those movies at all. And so I think it’s a weird year to compare sort of the down drop. We’ll see what it is next year. If it’s that same number next year then televised award shows are just over.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I was looking, I don’t follow along, so I saw here is what the progress was even prior to the pandemic and that is a steep slow downward.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Yeah. Not good.

John: Not good. All right, let’s get to our marquee topic. I want to talk about patterns of success. And by this I mean that over the years you and I have seen many, many writers. And we’ve seen writers who become really successful and writers who haven’t become especially successful. And I wanted to sort of talk about what patterns we’ve noticed in both of those groups of writers.

So this is just sort of an open-ended conversation, but I feel like it’s something we could come back and visit again in future episodes. The things that we see that are markers of like oh yeah that person has got it, that person has not got it. Because you and I have both said that about people, but what are we actually identifying when we say like, ah yeah, I think that’s going to work for that person.

Craig: Well this is a really interesting prompt for a discussion, because longevity in our business is rare. It is rare. There are not many people who are consistently successful. There are people who have moments and then fade away. There are people who feast off of big hits for a while but eventually run out of runway, so to speak. And then there are people who we might put them under the category of their worst enemy.

John: For sure.

Craig: Where they had almost all the tools required. There was just one problem. So this is a good topic of discussion because I think people think that success in Hollywood comes down to writing that great script or directing that great film, but that’s the beginning of your success.

John: Often it is. So let’s talk about what we even mean by success, and this is something we talk about a bit in my other podcast series Launch. We talk about what is success for a novelist. But what do we mean as success for a film or TV writer? Do we mean the ability to make a living at it? Or for people to say like, wow, that’s really good writing? Does it mean winning awards? Does it mean making blockbusters? Is it the ability to make anything you want to make? Is it autonomy? Are you a successful writer if you are a mid-level staffed TV writer?

And for some people, yes, and for some people no.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, everyone can define it in a different way. But given the context we’re discussing here I would probably say the ability to make a good living. A good living. I think if it’s a subsistence living, if it’s just barely keeping my head above water it’s hard to argue that that is success per se. Because the people who are living that probably wouldn’t define it that way.

But the ability to make a good living and earn more than you spend and be able to save money, own a home, and save money to send your kids to schools and all that seems like a decent definition here.

John: It is, but I also wonder about people who see themselves as artists, people who see themselves as like I need to change the cultural conversation. They may not be so focused on just making a living at it. They may actually have another job that pays the bills but they feel like they’re making art that really matters, that they’re writing movies that matter to them.

So I don’t want to be so narrow in having to achieve a certain economic success as being the only thing that we’re looking at here.

Craig: Yeah. I guess if we put the word career in front of success here then it would help narrow that conversation. Because of course if you write a script that you love that means a lot to you and that was your purpose, that’s what you were going for, you win. If your goal is to have a lasting and productive career, then that’s different. So I guess maybe what we should be talking about is, well, I guess we can talk about all of the kinds of successes.

John: Absolutely. Well let’s talk about sort of aspects of the professional life and what we see being especially important or not so important. So we’ll start with work habits, because I think that’s the thing that can often be visible. It’s like this is a person who gets up at 6am every day and at their keyboard and banging away. And in your experience does hard work correlate with success?

Craig: Yes. I don’t necessarily define hard work as getting up at 6am, because you’re not going to catch me doing that. But at some point sooner or later a quantity of work needs to be completed. And obviously there are two axes you’re operating with. There’s quality and speed and people who are able to maintain a high level of quality at a decent clip are far more likely to have longevity than people who can’t.

John: Yeah. I do think of the silent evidence of all the writers who worked much, much harder than me who didn’t make it, and who didn’t break out and sort of weren’t able to have careers. And I can’t know to what degree the problem was quality or some other aspect of their approach that kept them out of what we are trying to define as success. But I think too often there’s this assumption that if you just work harder it’s going to all work out and that’s not been my experience. There’s some correlation of hard work and success, but I don’t think it’s a perfect correlation because there’s people who worked much harder than me who didn’t succeed.

Craig: I agree. I think that you cannot hard work your way to success. But you can un-hard work your way out of success, if that makes sense.

John: Yes. I think you and I both know people who just could never get the work done. They were talented when they could actually finish a script, but they just couldn’t finish enough scripts.

Craig: And that is more tragic to me. If you don’t have the quality then all of the hard work isn’t necessarily going to get you anywhere. But if you do and any variety of reasons sort of is between you and the ability to apply it, that’s a bummer. Because, you know, we are all missing out at that point.

John: Let’s talk about social savvy. Do you have to be good in a room?

Craig: It helps a lot, but I don’t think it is necessary. There are plenty of writers who were notoriously and perhaps are notoriously not good in rooms.

John: Yeah. I think that’s true. I think as things have moved more towards television from features the ability to get along with others and actually sort of have some emotional intelligence in terms of being in a space with others and communicating with others face to face or over Zoom is more important than for the feature writer, but it’s some part of it. It’s different than it would be for a novelist. You have to have some ability to communicate with a human being in front of you.

Craig: Yeah. I think that social savvy is required if you’re going to be at the top of the game. If you want to be – now we’re moving past success into just the people who work at the upper level of this career. Almost all of them have some sort of social savvy.

John: At the upper tier, yes. There were definitely jobs you and I got because we were the only people who could stand being in a room with some of those people, who could actually navigate those really difficult personalities. That’s just being honest. The rooms were it was like there’s five 800-pound gorillas and it’s just like, OK, I’m in gorilla city and I just have to be able to wrestle all of these gorillas at once.

Craig: Somebody has to do an animated version of that.

John: Gorilla City.

Craig: Gorilla City. And you wrestling all of them at once.

John: But let’s remember that an early part of your career is going to be finding a rep, going into those general meetings. The ability to do that stuff is not an unimportant part of how screenwriters get started.

Craig: No. Like they always say a pool doesn’t increase the price of your home when you’re selling it, it just makes the home sell faster. And I think that’s the way social savvy works, too. It’s not going to get you a career that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, but you’ll get where you’re supposed to go faster.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Because early on what happens is these people are meeting all these writers and all of those meetings are boring. They’re boring for everybody and they’re particularly boring when you meet somebody and you just don’t feel anything. But if you do feel a connection with another human being suddenly if that human being was you, you are way closer to getting hired than you would have been otherwise.

John: Absolutely. I’m thinking to one of my very first general meetings was with an executive by the name of Jan Finger. She was over at Imagine. And they’d gotten the rights to How to Eat Fried Worms, but my meeting wasn’t specifically about that. But it was sort of a “hey, she read my script” and it was just a general meeting. And I liked her and we got along and she got me. And that’s kind of all it took for me to get in that next meeting to get that project.

So, yeah, those connections are important.

Craig: They are. And that reality, that human reality, is another reason why it’s really important that on the hiring side of things that there are all sorts of people.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Because, you know.

John: Because it’s not going to be two white people in a room all the time. And, yes, 100 percent.

Craig: It’s kind of the deal. It’s just important. Because there are certain connections that people have because they’re from the same place, or from the same background. I mean, there were so many times where I would sit in a room and say, “Oh, I grew up on Staten Island,” and someone was like, “Oh yeah, I grew up in Queens.” And you’re like, huh, great, we’re off and running. You know? Because there’s some sort of thing.

So it’s just good to have all that variety there. But that said, people with social savvy should and do find connections with just about everyone. That’s one of their skills.

John: True. Now, getting back to general patterns, let’s talk about originality and voice. We talk about voice in the Three Page Challenges a lot. Craig, do you think it’s more important to have a striking singular voice or to be flexible, the ability to sort of write a lot of different kinds of voices?

Craig: I think that you will get more work if you’re flexible and you have an ability to move between genres and also an ability to continue some sort of established voice or expectation. However, that is not necessary. And also I would argue that even if you are the kind of person who can do that sort of thing you then have to be individual and fingerprinted within that. So, I mean I did god knows how many sequels I had to work on. Had to, like somebody had a gun in my mouth.

But I chose to. [laughs]

John: I like the other person has a gun in your mouth. Not a gun to your head.

Craig: No, in my mouth. So much worse. Because in your head you’re like, eh. Mouth? Oh boy.

John: I wouldn’t even see the bullet, but yeah.

Craig: Right. So what happens is you’re like I get the drill here. I know what the tone is. I understand what’s been put out. And I can work within those lines. Also, I can do my own thing inside of that that is particular.

John: I would say that the people I’ve noticed who have broken out, who have really broken out hard and fast have had original voices. They were just like, oh wow, that is really good. I’ve not seen anything like that before. It feels specific and unique and new. Those people have not always been able to sustain careers because they could kind of do that one thing, or they only did that one thing. Ideally you want to have an original voice and the ability to do a lot of other voices as well.

Craig: That’s very helpful.

John: How important is copying? So we talk about visual artists. One of the big debates is how much do you need to perfect doing every tree individually versus understanding when it’s the right time to copy and just fill in that background with things you’ve done before? To what degree do you need to be making brand new original stuff all the time or understand what the genre is and just be able to deliver that genre?

Craig: Well, there are times where you realize you’re being hired to do a thing. I have always tried to add some sort of value regardless. I know there are times where I’m complicating, or in the past at least. Now that I’m pretty much working on things that are mine, so it’s all my fault now. But when I was working on things for other people I was aware at times that I was making it harder on myself than I needed to, but I have to believe that in the long run you are rewarded for that. That they ask you sometimes for counterfeits, but when they get them they don’t like them as much as things that feel original.

John: Yeah. I fully get what you’re saying there. It’s like they’re asking you to make the cheap knockoff and you’re like but it’s actually going to be easier and better if I just make something original here. Like, no, no, we want the cheap knockoff. And I can think of writers who basically all they do is just cheap knockoffs and at a certain point they stopped getting hired because everything that they’ve actually gotten made has been cheap knockoffs and is just clearly cheap knockoffs. It’s not good for your long term career to be doing those.

Craig: It’s not. And the bigger problem is there’s no path ahead. If you are in that lane it’s going to pay you pretty well for a while, but at some point they’re going to wise up and go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. We’re spending too much on the knockoff guy. The whole point of the knockoff guy was that we didn’t want to spend money on the original guy. Now we’re spending too much money on the knockoff guy. Find me a cheaper knockoff guy.” And they will.

John: Yup. How important is it to be able to embrace constraints? The phrasing I’m saying it actually is incredibly important. But I’ve noticed that the ones who succeed can kind of understand what the constraints are and thrive under those constraints. And the ones who tend to struggle, they struggle against the form of the constraints, or the budget, or whatever. They get paralyzed. They can’t do the thing they want to do the way they want to do it.

Craig: Well, this to me connects strangely to a necessary element of empathy. You are hired by people to do something. And what we’re asked to do is hard. It’s hard for us to do it. And we have all sorts of feelings when we’re doing it. And I think a lot of writers have tunnel vision where that’s all they see. And the other people, the people that hired them, aren’t really people or are far too comfortable, and their feelings don’t matter. Well they do. Part of that empathy is putting yourself in everybody else’s shoes and trying to see things from their point of view. So when they put these restraints down, or constraints I should say, and they have certain things they need, a little bit of empathy goes a long way. Even if you’re arguing against it. Because you’re arguing against it while acknowledging that it is a perfectly reasonable thing to want. That is helpful.

Maybe even more than just going along with things is taking the effort to see things from other people’s point of view. Then either accept the constraints as reasonable or talk about why maybe they should go a different way.

John: Yeah. I can think of an example of like, OK, I want to do a gritty crime show and they’re like, “We love your writing. Our mandate is now we want to do blue sky, happy, sunny. We want dark things in beautiful environments. So can you take your gritty crime show and set it in the Florida sunshine?” And you could say absolutely no, that’s not a thing I want to do at all, or you could say like sure, I get what that is, I get what your mandate is. I can make it work. And I can use the tension between those two things to step up to the next level. That is the kind of thing that tends to make people more successful and have longer careers is to say like, oh, yeah, OK, I get that, and this is a thing I can change that will let me make this thing happen.

Craig: And it’s important to have a realistic view of what it is you’re working on. Because if you’re working on a crime procedural for say a basic cable channel then certain things – you got to know where you are, right? You’re in a certain kind of restaurant, and so you’ve kind of got to go along there. I think that this discussion that we’re having will be viewed by some people as a justification for some kind of selling out.

I think if you want to talk about one of the things that separates successful writers from writers who burn out it’s that writers who burn out, or don’t get there at all, are obsessed with this whole selling out business.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: There is no selling out. Everybody is constantly making compromises. You don’t know how to make anything in this business without compromising. Directors know that, right? They know that. Every day is a war to limit the compromises. But they are constant because reality is reality. It intrudes.

Writers, because we have total control over what goes on the page, we have this delusion that there’s some pristine relationship between that and what comes out the other end. And any kind of compromise or negotiation is a failure of will and conviction, it is an indication of artistic failure, and it’s selling out. And that attitude gets your ass booted out of town faster than any other one.

John: Yeah. I feel like sometimes these writers they want to be both Charlie Kaufman and Greg Berlanti. They want the huge giant career, making thousands of shows, and to sort of be completely unyielding and singular in a vision at all times. And those aren’t compatible goals really.

Craig: I mean, I would argue, and maybe Charlie will come on our show. Because I suspect that Charlie as he’s making his films runs into moments most days when he’s shooting where he does have to kind of just adjust, or in the editing room he realizes he’s got to move a thing this way or that. Everybody is doing it.

John: Everyone is doing it. If you watched – you didn’t watch – I’m Thinking of Ending Things, we could watch that and like I don’t feel he compromised that much. I felt like he had a very singular vision and made that singular vision.

Craig: So here’s the thing. That’s because what he makes is unique.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It will always seem like it is the product of zero compromise, but it’s not.

John: That’s true.

Craig: When you read stories about what Francis Ford Coppola was going through and dealing with when he was making Godfather, it’s like well surely he didn’t compromise ever. Oh my god, yes he did. Yes he did. Quite a bit. You know, it’s what you do.

John: Let’s talk about taste. I think an important thing is to be able to understand what is good writing and what is not good writing, especially when it applies to what transfers to the screen. The ability to have good taste on the page and seeing how that taste applies to the screen. And that match between your taste and what an audience’s taste is is crucial.

Craig: Yeah. And that’s kind of magic. I mean, there’s no way to quantify that. It is an essential part of what we call talent, I think. There’s talent in creating something. There’s also talent in predicting with some level of accuracy how it will be felt by other people. Because that is the job. Anybody who is creating any art with no concern or prediction or thought about the audience’s reaction is, well I just don’t believe it.

Because that means there’s no intention. And there’s always intention.

John: I want to play this clip from Ira Glass where he’s talking about taste and how he finds that there’s often this gap between you have taste, but you don’t have the craft yet. Let’s listen to what Ira Glass says.

Ira Glass: Somebody had told this to me, is that all of us who do creative work, you know, we get into it. And we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good. It has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. Do you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as what they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have. And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, you got to know it’s totally normal. And the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

John: So I think back to when I was at USC for film school and one of the great resources that we had was a film library, so I could check out all of these screenplays and just go through and read these great scripts. And my writing was not as good as these scripts. And I recognized that it wasn’t as good as these scripts, but for whatever reason I wasn’t afraid of that. I aspired to hit that level and I kept working to get to that level.

People sometimes get crushed with self-doubt where they just don’t – they recognize that they’re not at that level and they don’t think they can actually get there. And so I like that Glass is pointing out that it’s often just to work to get yourself up to that level of polish.

Craig: If you had told me that that was an interview with Chris Keyser I would have believed you. They sound so similar.

John: They really do. That’s a good point.

Craig: So weird. So, yeah, this is a terrific observation and it’s something that somebody else had sent me a while ago, because it’s one of those things when you read it you’re like, or you listen to it and you go, oh of course, I mean, it’s so obvious and yet it had been kind of floating right there right under my consciousness.

I think that the reality of what he’s describing is one of the reasons I’m so angry all the time at critics. Because everyone who eventually gets to do something good is working through the gap. And while they’re working through the gap there are people who are brutalizing them in print and suggesting you’re never going to get there. Stop. Quit. You stink.

And I wish that would not happen. Because I do think there are probably people who left too soon who were one or two things away from kind of putting it all together. Scott Frank said something to me many years ago that seemed a bit dramatic at the time, but in hindsight was absolutely correct. And that was, he was reading something I’d written and he said, “The thing is you have yet to be really born as a writer.” And I was like well that’s very dramatic. [laughs] That’s a very, very dramatic statement. I’ve been working at this for 15 years Scott. I make a pretty good living.

But his point was that I hadn’t sort of become myself yet. And that maybe you could argue that that’s part of being in the gap. Not only is there a mismatch between your taste and your work, but also there is perhaps not enough of your own self in the work. Because the work that is available almost always has zero interest in who you are.

John: Absolutely. I hadn’t really thought about your career in terms of taste, but I would say that you’ve always had much better taste than the movies that we saw your name on.

Craig: Well, I mean, some of those movies I love. So my taste actually isn’t that great.

John: The breadth of your taste extended well beyond the movies, the kinds of movies that you were making.

Craig: Yeah. If you looked at the movies I was making it was easy enough and reasonable enough to conclude that I was a goof.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Some of those movies I really do hold close to my heart and some I definitely do not. And you know some were just work. But I at least for better or worse suffered through quite a lot of public humiliation, even as I was successful. And I really wish I could sit down one on one with each one of those people and explain to them why what they did was harm. And unnecessary, by the way. It’s totally unnecessary. You can absolutely not like a movie but the personal part of it is so anti-art is I guess how I would put it.

You don’t realize it, but you say you love film, you don’t if that’s what you’re doing.

John: Yeah. Let’s get back to the choices of what kinds of projects you’re working on and how many projects you’re sort of pursuing. Because a choice I’ve seen writers make is they have some success and they just take anything that comes their way. And there’s the temptation to never say no because you don’t know where your next job is, but I’ve also seen the opposite where people just say no to everything and then people stop asking them to the dance.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And so it’s that balance between saying yes enough that you’re still engaged as a writer, but not pursuing too much, or pursuing junk, or just becoming overcommitted and then just failing because we both know writers who just collapsed under that.

Craig: I was talking with Todd Philips about this. It was after he did The Hangover and it was a massive success. And maybe he was talking to Martin Scorsese. And Martin Scorsese, I’m just going to say he was, because that makes the story way cooler, but I think it was him. And he was telling Martin Scorsese that his world had changed because he had made The Hangover and suddenly he was getting sent everything, all sorts of things. And people were offering him the biggest possible things and he was sort of paralyzed and thinking that maybe he was just going to take time.

And then Martin Scorsese said, “The best advice I can give you is after you have a huge hit of any kind, a big success, jump right back on the horse, as fast as you can. Because if you don’t then the weight of that success grows and becomes almost an unbearable load. Because you’re never going to be able to beat that.” You can’t do that again. And so sometimes you actually have to just do something.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And maybe it’s the wrong choice, but doing nothing for too long becomes its own kind of dangerous addiction. And you’re absolutely right. Sooner or later people are going to be like, huh, wait, we forgot about you. And no one wants that.

John: Yeah. We should revisit this topic in a few episodes and I want to look at what we’ve noticed never works and sort of what are the pattern of like please don’t do this thing. Because even what you’re describing in terms of like the writer who has a big hit and then just like becomes paralyzed or fearful of doing anything else, or over-celebrates that one thing, I think we’re going to find quite a few of those things that could actually be useful for our listeners.

Craig: All right. I agree.

John: All right. Let’s get to listener questions and now over the last few weeks we’ve all enjoyed hearing from Oops and the romantic adventures of Oops. And Megana has another question for us today that is not an Oops situation. I’ve got to preface this by saying this is about as opposite of Oops as we could imagine.

Craig: Anti-Oops.

John: It’s anti-Oops, but I also feel like it’s a good season opener because I feel like we’re going to revisit this topic down the road. Megana, come on and tell us the story of Shocked.

Craig: Oh boy.

Megana Rao: All right. Shocked in LA wrote in about his friend. “Like many aspiring writers a close and talented friend of mine, a lady in her late 20s started her career at an agency. She quickly left and found work in production while pursuing her ambition of writing. She has a few great scripts under her belt and a couple we even wrote together. One of her friends from the agency was promoted this past year and agreed to represent her.

“A few months ago she gets a call from her boss from that agency, a 70-year-old man. He’s upset that she hid her writing ambitions from him. He asks her out to dinner to discuss her career. She was thrilled. He has a ton of industry pull and can really help her. But, he was a very difficult boss who put her through all sorts of inappropriate behavior, from commenting on her looks, to sharing sexual imagery in the office.

“Surprise, surprise, the dinner turned out to not be about her writing. He wants to explore their sexual connection. It was a stereotypical #MeToo moment. He told her that she shouldn’t have a boyfriend if she’s serious about writing and should have a casual sexual relationship with him instead. It was extremely demoralizing and degrading for her. He continued harassing her, basically chasing her out of the parking lot, but she was able to safely make it home.

“But here’s the thing. She’s still a baby writer, no credits or awards, repped at the same agency this guy works at. He’s her agent’s boss and seems pretty powerful. She’s afraid to even tell her agent what happened because of all the implications. However, I’m scared that he will have access to her if she stays at that agency. What if he terrorizes and sexually harasses her this way? Or destroys her career?

“My friend knows how hard it is to get represented in Hollywood. Although she has a manager, she doesn’t want to let go of her rep. But I think this baby agent has very little power anyways. He’s never even sent her on a general. My friend is also afraid to take on her powerful ex-boss/sexual harasser and certainly doesn’t want to be branded by this before anyone has even seen her work.

“What can I do to help her and what can she do to help herself?”

John: Ugh. All right. So much here. First off, we’re going to talk about Shocked. We think Shocked is a man. We’re guessing Shocked is a man, so we’re going to refer to this friend – the person who is writing this letter as Shocked. And the woman as the person who is going through this horrible situation.

This sucks. And so my first instinct was I don’t know what to do this, and so what I do in this case is I ask really smart friends. So I reached out to six of my smart female writer friends to get their take on what the right steps were. But before we get into that, Craig, what’s your first read on the situation?

Craig: Oh man. Well, so this is an interesting situation where I think while I want to tell Shocked’s friend to draw her flaming sword and slay the dragon, it’s so easy for me to say that. And it’s not so easy to do it. I do believe that in today’s day and age everybody has quite a bit more power than they used to. I mean, they used to have zero and now they have quite a bit in the sense that all she has to do is pick up the phone and call Deadline and this guy is in massive trouble.

But, she’s right to understand that that comes at some sort of cost. Given that the agent she has at this agency is not a bigshot. So Shocked describes this agent as a baby agent who has very little power and has never set this woman up on a general meeting, I don’t think there would too much lost if she walked from that agency and went maybe to try at a different agency, clean break, and see if she could find somebody else. That is I would call it the path of least resistance, because it doesn’t seem like you’d be losing much.

The path of greater resistance is to bring this incident to the attention of the board of directors at that agency.

John: So in talking with the six women yesterday one of the points that came up again and again is that the big moves are great in theory, but they don’t necessarily help the woman. So going out with a flaming sword or going to Deadline or one of those things, that’s not necessarily going to help her.

Craig: Right.

John: And so what we really want to do is help her. What is the thing that helps her in this moment? The thing that was universal across this was to write it down. And both Shocked needs to write down everything that he remembers about this conversation he had with her. He needs to encourage her to write this all down, so she has it on paper. So if she decides to do something she has it down on paper that this is what happened. And that she has evidence if she decides to use it at some point about what happened.

Almost everybody I spoke with said she should leave this agency, and that included an agent I spoke with saying that this agent is not getting you work, this agent is not powerful, this junior agent you’re dealing with. You should leave because if you don’t trust going to this agent necessarily with this issue, like how can you trust this rep? How can this person actually represent you if you can’t even tell them that their boss is doing this?

You have to leave that agency. And you already have a manager. Just leave. There’s no reason to stick around.

Craig: Yeah. I think so. And if there is a desire in a very pro-social way to prevent this man from doing this to other people by calling him out, that is something that Shocked’s friend should only do through a lawyer. This is also a moment where I think you want to lawyer up.

John: We have some resources on that as well. So you may want to lawyer up, but people I spoke with recommended Time’s Up is not the right place to go to. Women in Film may be the right hotline for your call. Because this is actually kind of what they do is people who had these situations to talk through, OK, let’s deal with the trauma that you’re actually encountering right now and let’s see if there’s other women who have had similar reports. Let’s see if there’s some grouping of action that could make sense here, so it’s not just you against this 60-year-old man.

You are at the start of your career, he’s at the end of his career, and just remember that through all of this is that he’s almost out the door and you’re just coming in.

Craig: Right. I think that even if Shocked’s friend doesn’t have an intention to launch missiles, it’s still good to talk to a lawyer, even if all you get out of that is an understanding of what you’re supposed to write down. What are the details that matter? What are you supposed to write down? What are you supposed to save? And what do you do if you turn a corner and here’s there? What do you do if he leaves a message or he texts you?

Having a lawyer advise you at least on some best principles there would be a good thing. But that is a good point. As a 60-plus-year-old man not only is he going to be out of the business while you’re still in the business, assuming that your career flourishes, you’ll be working and he’ll be dead.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So if you want revenge there is that one revenge which is you dance on their grave. But this really sad and infuriating. And it’s sad and infuriating that this guy still feels protected enough by the world that he’s pulling this crap.

John: That – I want to spend a moment here. Because this is a man, a 60-year-old man in 2021 who somehow has been able to – this person obviously opens Deadline. This person can see in the world like what has happened to a person like him again, and again, and again, and still thinks like, oh, I’m special, I’m different, this is not going to happen to me. The hubris. The arrogance of this guy.

I mean, in addition to the shitty behavior he’s doing to this woman, just that he believes the rules that have taken down all these other people do not apply to him drives me mad.

Craig: Not only that, but he believes that the rule that 20-year-old women generally aren’t attracted to 60-year-old men also doesn’t apply.

John: Yes.

Craig: So like he’s in a deep deluded state. I’m 50. I can’t believe that my 51-year-old wife still finds me attractive. [laughs] So I don’t know what this dude is smoking. I guess he’s just smoking his own ego, and his own arrogance. And, also, let’s face it. This business has entitled him. He doesn’t pull this crap if it hasn’t worked before.

John: Yeah. And so obviously it’s important to acknowledge that you are not the first person he has done this to, obviously. And so it’s not your responsibility to take up the sword for all the other people, but remember that you are not the only person. So there’s nothing special about you. This is his pattern of doing this that has gotten us into this situation.

Some other advice I got from the women I spoke to is for Shocked make sure you don’t infantilize this woman. She is a grown woman who can make her own decisions. And she actually has more agency in this situation than she may realize. So you can encourage her, but don’t box her into a situation. Don’t tell her she has to do something, because she doesn’t have to do anything. She can choose what is the appropriate step for her to take.

This person also said useful advice might be you don’t want to be a side character in someone else’s story. And so if she thinks of herself as the protagonist in this story, like screw this guy. This guy did a bad thing. And it’s up to her to decide what she wants to do about this next step. But the important part is it’s up to her and she doesn’t have to let him drive the narrative from this point forward.

Craig: Yeah. I think Shocked is being a good friend. I think good friends want to help and they want to find out what they can do to help. And maybe this is help. I don’t know. Maybe this is hurt. You know? Because the other issue is if this woman is like, wait, you put my shit on Scriptnotes? That would be bad. So hopefully this was something that they discussed. Obviously we’ve anonymized everything quite extensively here.

John: Yes.

Craig: I think at a minimum let’s get to super practical stuff. Super practical stuff makes absolute sense that she would leave the agency. And that when you leave the agency also, Shocked’s friend, lawyer. Don’t leave the agency by you calling and going through a weird, awkward conversation with your agent.

John: No. The manager can do this as well.

Craig: Yes.

John: Many of the women said your manager just tells the agency, “You know what? She doesn’t want to be repped there anymore.” And that’s it. It’s done.

Craig: I would actually still advise lawyer. And here’s why.

John: OK.

Craig: Managers cannot be trusted completely in this regard. They have a deep conflict of interest.

John: All right.

Craig: Lawyers are governed by a higher authority. The State Bar. And their attorney/client privilege. And ethics. And all that stuff. And a lawyer, you can tell your lawyer anything. Anything. And it’s confidential.

You can’t say that about a manager. They can blab your crap anywhere they want. So, I would say lawyer. Clean break. Have the lawyer communicate that. Make it nice and simple and final. And then, yeah, moving on.

John: So, the Women in Film hotline 855-WIF-LINE. Or it’s womeninfilm.org is the organization. So we’ll have a link to that in the show notes.

Obviously, Shocked, if you want to keep us apprised to sort of what this person decides to do in the future we’d love to hear about it, and of course I’m sure we’ll get plenty of emails in from folks with their opinions what to do.

Megana, I’m curious to hear your opinion on this as a writer in her 20s. What was your first instinct on this and where do you see this shaking out?

Megana: Yeah, I mean, it was really upsetting to read. And I think last month when things started opening up after the pandemic we saw all of those horrible mass shootings. And this past week, or past couple of weeks I think as LA has opened up and people are returning to their offices I’ve just been reading so many horrible, and hearing these stories about women and assistants who are continuing to have these #MeToo type stories.

You know, it’s just like a very sad sobering reminder that these issues were not solved and they have not gone away. But we’re all just forced to be away from each other for a year. But now that the world is opening back up we have to figure out a way to fix them. The problems haven’t gone away and it’s just really disheartening to be reminded of these things that we were dealing with pre-pandemic and where we are now.

Craig: Yeah.

John: That’s such a good point. It pushed them aside because we were literally not in offices for them to happen. But now they’re back.

Craig: You kind of want to hope that it’s also not a case where there’s this weird pent up aggression that’s going to emerge and that we’re going to go through a period where it’s even worse. I hope that’s not the case. But one thing that we always have to keep in mind is we cannot applaud ourselves constantly for the progress that’s been made because the progress will never be perfection. And there is always going to be this stuff going on. Because we can’t pre-crime these things. We can’t get ahead of them.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They’re going to happen. And dealing with all of that and how we handle those situations, it is going to continue to put young women in particular in very difficult positions, put women of all ages in very difficult positions. That’s going to keep happening. We hope less and less. But no one should be surprised that this is continuing.

John: Yeah.

Megana: Yeah.

John: One last point I want to make, and someone brought up as I spoke to them yesterday, is that I think we still have this vision of agencies being super powerful and sort of like the Mike Ovitz model. And I think agents can help you. I really don’t think they can hurt you that much. And so I think her rejecting this guy is not going to hurt her. I don’t think agents actually have that power in 2021 the way we might have mythologized them before.

I don’t think her leaving the agency is going to hurt her career because it hasn’t helped her career.

Craig: Right. Yeah, from a practical point of view the agent that just got promoted from off a desk, yeah, that’s not necessarily the best person in the world. I mean—

John: Megana, I cut you off. What were you going to say?

Megana: Oh, I think I was just going to say to answer your earlier question, the thing that also makes me so sad about this is like this woman has had something really horrible and discouraging happen to her, and following up on our conversation about patterns of success, like she now has all this self-doubt and anxiety about the value of her actual work. And then she has to be the one to advocate for herself. Oh my god. It’s such a difficult standard for us to keep and for us to expect people who have been abused to be able to do that. It just breaks my heart.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It is one of the more insidious aspects of this that we don’t talk about enough. And that is that people start to question whether or not they’re good at all.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s something that Megan Ganz spoke about, well, with her typical clarity and intelligence when she had her experience being harassed and abused by Dan Harmon. One of the things that hurt that most was being unsure of whether or not her position on that writing staff was because of her skill. And that is crushing. That is a stomach-churning thing to think. The face I have? I’ve never had to wonder. If somebody was going to give me something it was because of the work. It certainly wasn’t because of my appearance, or how they felt about me romantically.

And I’ve never had to ask myself that question. I’ve never had to contemplate whether or not I was being hoodwinked and gas lit.

John: Yeah. Two of the women I spoke with yesterday they related so strongly to this story because they had had very similar things happen and their response from 20 years ago was just like, OK, well I’ll just move on and I’ll just suppress it and I’ll move on. And I do think there’s an opportunity now to – if this woman chooses to – to address this and stop it if she wants to rather than just having to say like suppress it and pretend it didn’t happen.

Craig: Well, we are certainly hoping the best. And if you can, therapy, and talking to a professional about these things now I think is always advisable.

John: Agreed. All right. It is time for One Cool Things. I have two One Cool Things this week. The first is an HGTV series called Home Town Takeover which sends a big HGTV crew to Wetumpka, Alabama to do a bunch of makeovers around the town. Wetumpka, Alabama is where we shot Big Fish. It’s where the house in Big Fish is. And one of the houses they remodel is the Big Fish house. And so it was so surreal and wonderful to see – our first day of shooting was at the Big Fish house. And to see them refurbishing and remodeling this house.

What they kind of say on the show, but they don’t make entirely clear, is that house is really kind of just one story and we stuck a fake second story on the top of it. But it was never really meant to stay. And we were supposed to take it all down and the owner said, “No, no, just leave it up.” But it was never meant to be livable.

And so the crew had to go through and jerry rig to sort of make it actually livable space. But it was so cool to see both that house but also that town and to realize if I hadn’t written the movie Big Fish that wouldn’t have happened. It was just a weird connection to like, oh, this series exists because I decided to adapt this book into this movie. So it was a really weird thing to see. But actually a really well done HGTV series. So I recommend you check that out if you like those kind of shows, or if you like Big Fish and you can see that.

My second One Cool Thing is Standard Ebooks. And so Project Gutenberg has the text of a zillion books that you can download for free which is great, but it’s not lovely formatted text. It’s not as good to read as a Kindle book might be or a printed book might be. What Standard Ebooks does is they produce a collection of these high quality really well-formatted, accessible, open source, free public domain ebooks. And they’re really good.

So, just go to their site, standardbooks.org/ebooks and you can download basically all the great classics, but really good versions of them. So if you’re looking for those try Standard Ebooks.

Craig: You know what? I don’t need a One Cool Thing. You had two.

John: I gave you two.

Craig: We’re good.

John: But, here’s a One Cool Thing you can do is on Episode 500 we said that we desperately need to go back to a segment called Change Craig’s Mind. But we need to figure out how we’re going to change – what’s a topic we can change Craig’s mind about? So if you have suggestions of things you’ve heard him say that you think, no, that’s wrong and we can get him to change his mind, we’ll see. And we can try over the course of this next season to change his mind about anything.

Craig: It’s possible. It’s possible.

John: Well, Craig, I know you hate mayonnaise. Could we change your mind about mayonnaise?

Craig: Oh my god, no. That would be just an utter waste of time. It would be a waste of a segment. That is disgusting.

John: Aversion therapy. But we need to find another mayonnaise, something Craig doesn’t really like–

Craig: It’s the word.

John: Maybe the sense that you don’t like it because you don’t kind of like get it. And then you get it and you’re like, oh yeah, it turns out I do like that.

Craig: I mean, it’s possible. Lately I have been watching more ventriloquism.

John: Yeah. Absolutely. Late at night he fires up the iPad by the side of the bed.

Craig: I make myself a mayonnaise sandwich and sit down and enjoy a fun evening of ventriloquism. Absolutely not.

John: My brother grew up on mayonnaise sandwiches. That was his go-to sandwich.

Craig: Oh god. Geez.

John: Wonder Bread and mayonnaise.

Craig: Ugh. Man, that is white.

John: Nothing else.

Craig: Good lord, that’s white.

John: So white.

Craig: White.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: White. That’s so white it’s white.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Brian Ramos. 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 I’m @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for the weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lot of links to things about writing.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. That’s also where you can sign up to get updates on the Scriptnotes book. And we’ll be sending out an update this week about where we’re at with the book. Craig, Megana, thank you so much for a fun show.

Craig: Thanks guys.

Megana: Thank you guys.

[Bonus segment]

John: All right, Craig, so the Scriptnotes book, we think it’s going to be actually a pretty hefty book because there’s just a lot of material in there. And I’m curious what you look for in a physical printed book. What are things that excite you about books? What are printed books that you’ve especially liked over the course of your career?

Craig: Well, for most fiction I don’t care because I’m just reading. I just want to turn pages. So the quality of a paperback, or even a hard cover book is not particularly important to me. But when it’s a book about a topic, something real, or a book that’s meant to be educational, a few things stick out.

I like size. I like the book to be larger. Because I think it gives you more detail. I really like mixed media. I like the idea of images. There was a book I had as a kid that was more than just images of course. I think it might have been published by World Book. And it was about the universe. And there were plastic overlays and there were sort of grown up versions of popup book style stuff, where you’re moving tabs and turning wheels and things to actually accentuate whatever the value of the imagery was. And then photographs of real things.

I like to engage, feel like I’m kind of involved with the book. You know, play with it a little bit.

John: Yeah. I also really love books that I can sort of pick up and flip to any page. Like for nonfiction books, that I can just flip to any page and find something interesting. I think the reason why I loved my D&D books so much growing up is you could just flip to any page in there and it was interesting. And you didn’t have to read them from the start to the end at all. It’s just join at any point.

I also really loved – Peanuts had these great sort of encyclopedia things. They were these colorful things about space and the world. And I loved those too growing up because you just flipped to anything and you’d just find interesting articles. So you could join them at any point in the middle of the story.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, there’s a kind of a book fetishization where people are really into the binding and the edges. You know, there’s like the ruffled edges.

John: Oh yeah. I hate them.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t like the ruffled edges. It looks like your book got stuck in something.

John: I hate gilded edges as well. Because they were sharp on my fingers.

Craig: Ah, yeah, nothing says luxury like gold-tipped pages. Uh-huh. I just want the book to not fall apart. That’s really all I’ve ever asked for. I don’t really care about that other stuff. I’m not a book fetishist.

A similar problem with NFTs where I’m really struggling just to understand why people are doing it. And like similarly when people – I have a first edition of this thing and I’m like, yeah, but the value of that thing is not the object.

John: No.

Craig: It’s like saying I have first edition CD of this – who cares? It’s plastic. It doesn’t matter.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s the content that matters. So I don’t get too wrapped up in the whole booked-y thing.

John: Do you like book jackets or the ones where it is printed directly on the cover?

Craig: Interesting. Ever since I was a kid, first thing that I do is take that off.

John: Yeah, I don’t like book jackets either. I don’t take the jacket off, because I don’t want to lose it, but I also don’t like it. I like them for being able to use them as a bookmark. I will use those to sort of mark what page I’m at.

Craig: I was a dog-earer. Still am a dog-earer. I know I’m not supposed to. It’s like wrong.

John: It’s a crime.

Craig: Crime, whatever, against this inanimate object. But ever since I was a kid I would – my fingers would be the color of whatever the cover was because the cover was often some sort of red or blue.

John: Yeah, cloth.

Craig: Right. And so when you take the dust jacket off your fingers – Megana, cover on/cover off?

Megana: No, no, no. I always do cover off. Because I always tear it.

Craig: Oh that’s interesting. So you’re reading violently.

John: She’s a violent reader.

Craig: Wow.

John: There’s an increasing trend towards the jacketless books where the artwork is printed directly on the book itself. And I just like that. Sometimes it doesn’t look as neat on the shelf, but who cares what’s on the shelf? What actually looks good in your hands and sitting on a table is more useful to me. And it’s one less thing to lose. I don’t want to lose a thing. I don’t want to rip it. I don’t Megana ripping my book covers.

Craig: Right.

John: Megana housesits for me. I don’t want to come back and all the book covers are ripped.

Megana: I also borrow a lot of your books, with your permission.

Craig: Oh. I thought you were just admitting grand theft bookery.

John: So Craig two recent books – and the Scriptnotes book will not be anywhere near this size, or epicness, but the Art & Arcana book, we talked about it in the opening, was really sort of a remarkable feat of history and all the artwork throughout the ages. That was a book that you want to keep and you want to sort of, you know, again, you can flip through it. I think I did read it straight through, but you could also just go to any point in the middle of the story.

Craig: Those are wonderful books, especially for people who are already into a thing. And there are areas like that where, you know, sports in particular. And I should have mentioned Michael Witwer who also worked on – it wasn’t just Kyle. But if you are into something then – and you know that other people are into it you have an opportunity to do something different.

I’m a baseball fan and every Christmas – I say Christmas even though it was boring Chanukah – I would get oh we got you a book about the Yankees. And there’s like 4,000 books about the Yankees. And most of them are just bad. Because they’re just the same old crap. And they’re literally made for stupid Christmas presents. They weren’t actually made to be loved.

So, try and make something that – if you’re a bookmaker–

John: Yeah. We’re bookmakers now. So we’re going to try to make something that people will love. Hey, what is your opinion of the ribbon inside books? The bookmark ribbon?

Craig: [laughs]

John: You don’t like it?

Craig: I hate it.

John: You do? All right. Because I’m a big fan. In our sample artwork we have the ribbon, so I guess you’ll have to rip that out.

Craig: Megana, if you say that your problem with the ribbon is that it tears then we know you are reading these books in far too aggressive fashion. Are you a ribboner or a non-ribboner?

Megana: I like the ribbon, but I’ve been reading books on my Kindle through the pandemic and I recently got a book in paper, or like a physical book, and I have so many papercuts on my hands. I’m like what is wrong with me?

Craig: Yeah. What is wrong with you? [laughs]

John: She’s both too strong and too fragile.

Craig: Normally I’m really supportive of your position, but I’m concerned that you’re reading books incorrectly.

Megana: Yeah, I don’t know.

Craig: What’s happening?

John: What is happening? I will say that I love a big book, but sometimes the book is just so big it’s uncomfortable to read. And so I just got the Ultimate Sandman, because I’d never read Sandman. And I was like I’ve got to read Sandman. So I read Ultimate Sandman which collects the first run of Sandman. And it’s great and it’s oversized so it’s actually much easier to read and you can see the artwork better. It’s just terrifically well done. But man it is heavy. So it’s a thing you cannot read – you can kind of read it on your lap, but you certainly could not read it laying down. It’s awkward–

Craig: That’s the thing. I don’t know if you’ve seen these, as we get older I see more–

John: Large print books.

Craig: –ads targeted to me that I’m like, oh boy. And they have these contraptions where it’s like suspend the book over your face in bed. And you’re like oh boy. But it’s true. If I have a heavier book that I’m reading after about 15 or 20 minutes if I’m in bed my elbows start to ache.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Because, god, can you believe that, Megana? I mean, how old are we? Do any of your friends ever say, “Ow, my elbows ache?”

Megana: Wait, because you’re holding the book up?

Craig: See, she literally doesn’t understand. She’s trying to comprehend how that could happen. Just you wait.

John: Just you wait. A thing I won’t put up with anymore that I used to not have a problem with is cheap paperbacks. I find it just really hard to read cheap paperbacks at this point.

Craig: The print is too small. I can’t read it.

John: The print is too small and you can sort of read through the next line. So I’m going to read my Kindle. I’ll buy a hardcover, but if I can’t get the hardcover I’ll probably read the Kindle.

Craig: I mean, I must admit that if there is a Kindle version to purchase I’m purchasing it. It’s just – or an Apple iBook version. The one thing that I miss and I wish they could solve is page numbers. If they could solve that.

John: It’s nice to be able to refer to a page number.

Craig: Yeah, if they could just solve page numbers.

John: They get better at it.

Craig: That would be nice.

John: So, Craig, now that you’re moving to my neighborhood you will have Chevaliers as your neighborhood bookstore. It is terrific, so hopefully you’ll get back in the habit of buying some books.

Craig: Yes.

John: In print.

Craig: Yes. I do love a bookstore. I love to browse a bookstore. And inevitably if I browse a bookstore I’m going to buy a book. And the place that we have near you per square foot I think has more bookshelf space than any place I’ve ever been other than a library. There’s bookshelves – so many opportunities for books.

John: Excellent. We love it.

Craig: So we will purchase those.

John: And one of those books will be the Scriptnotes book that you won’t read.

Craig: Complete with ribbon.

John: Love it. Thanks Craig.

Craig: Thanks guys.

John: Thanks Megana.

Craig: Thanks Megana.

Megana: Bye.

Links:

• Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana Book
• Heartbreaker and The Breaker Upperers
• Noah Evslin’s pitch for Guild Awards
• Ira Glass on Taste
• Women in Film helpline for sexual harassment and misconduct in the entertainment industry:(855)WIF-LINE (855-943-5463) or reach out online here
• Hometown Takeover
• Standard Ebooks
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Brian Ramos (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.