Drew Marquardt

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 417 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to take a look at the issue of idea management. What do you do with all of those half-formed ideas for various things to write? We’ll also discuss screenwriter’s quotes and answer some listener questions. To help us out on all of this, welcome back Aline Brosh McKenna.

Craig: Yay.

Aline Brosh McKenna: Woo! What!

Craig: I almost want to do like when Kermit waggles his hands around and goes, “Nah!” I don’t know why. It seems appropriate.

John: Yeah, Kermit’s hands are sort of like the inflatable car lot things.

Craig: Right.

John: They wave by their own magic.

Aline: Do you guys remember in that original Batman show that sometimes Catwoman would be on?

Craig: Of course.

John: Oh, I love Catwoman.

Aline: But you would watch in the credits to see if she was on that week.

John: I never watched the credits to see if she would be on.

Craig: I would not.

Aline: They changed the credits. If she was going to be in that episode it would be like, “And…” and then they would show a picture of her. And I would be very excited because I knew that it was going to be a Batman episode with Catgirl. Catgirl or Batgirl?

Craig: No, no, Batgirl or Catwoman. Catwoman was Eartha Kitt.

Aline: Catwoman.

Craig: Catwoman was Eartha Kitt. But I don’t remember who Batgirl was. Did they have a Batgirl on that original Adam West show?

John: I bet they did because the commissioner’s daughter was Batgirl. Here’s maybe what you’re suggesting though is we need to change the introductory bloops if it’s going to be an Aline episode so everyone knows, oh my gosh, this is an Aline episode.

Aline: Yes. And I can sing something and just mock something up.

John: Before we get started to our big topics we have some follow up listener questions and I thought maybe Aline would read the question because you’ve never gotten to read a question for us.

Aline: Great. Oh, it’s this question that I tried to shove back at you? OK, I’m going to read a question.

Craig: Great.

Aline: Lochiel writes, “I grew up with D&D basic, then advanced, and played up through Gen 2. I love or loved D&D, but Dungeon World is in my opinion so much better. The game is much less crunchy and can be learned in an hour. The best part of the game is that the players and the DM share narrative control in a much more collaborative way. It would be beyond awesome to witness some people as creative as you guys playing Dungeon World.

Craig: Yeah, it would.

John: Well, Craig, yeah, that’s good. So, maybe we can discuss some Dungeon World here.

Aline: This is obviously a question for me.

Craig: Right.

John: Yes. 100%.

Aline: And my answer to this would be that I would think that Dungeon World would be a store where you could buy stuff for your dungeon.

Craig: Like a sex dungeon?

Aline: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

Aline: That’s what I would think. Where you would be kitting up for your BDSM dungeon. Is that not correct?

Craig: Right. It’s your BDSM superstore.

Aline: That’s what I would think it was.

Craig: Yeah, come on down to Dungeon World. [laughs]

John: So this is follow up on our episode from last week with Alison Luhrs from Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast makes Dungeons & Dragons, the official Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeon World is a separate gaming system that is very free-form, very loose, and Craig you and I actually did play a campaign in Dungeon World. I DM’d one. And I liked it more than you liked it. It is very free-form and loose. And I think we found it a little bit too free-form and loose. Is that accurate?

Craig: Yeah. I think so. I mean, the story part of playing Dungeons & Dragons is definitely a huge part of it. And, look, Lochiel, it’s really just a question of preference, right? I mean, you’re sort of arguing that vanilla tastes better than chocolate and some people will agree and some people won’t. I prefer Dungeons & Dragons or say like Pathfinder which is a similar, because I enjoy some of the rules minutia. I enjoy the constraints of combat. I think that’s fun. I think it’s just the leveling up and all that stuff. I just, I like it. I like it more. It gives me more of what I want.

But I also understand where some people would be like actually that’s the worst part of it all. I just like pretending and talking and such. The one thing I will say about Dungeon World is it feels a bit arbitrary. In other words success and failure feel a bit kind of at the DM’s whim as opposed to kind of influenced by statistical calculation.

John: So I remember Michael Gilvarry being frustrated like when is it my turn to swing a sword. The lack of initiative and the lack of sort of structure within combat was frustrating to him.

Craig: Right.

John: But I do enjoy reading other games’ sort of inherent mechanics and seeing sort of how they do stuff. Like I think the new Paranoia has a really cool system for how it works. There’s a role-playing game called Kids on Bikes which is very much a Stranger Things. And how that all works in success and failure is clever. But you know what? I like Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons. I’m old school.

Craig: Yeah. I’m with you. And Aline obviously we know that you strongly prefer Pathfinder.

Aline: Do you have a question on fall fashion?

John: We do. We have so many.

Craig: We do.

Aline: Something about belted tweed jackets?

Craig: Let me ask you a question, in all seriousness Aline.

Aline: High-waisted leather pants?

Craig: Am I a spring, a fall, a winter? What am I?

Aline: Oh, no, that whole thing is a scam.

Craig: That’s garbage?

John: That color theory?

Aline: I’m saying in terms of your look–

Craig: Oh yeah, yeah, my look.

Aline: Yeah. You’re in the hoodie and J-Crew shirt area. But, you know, Craig, if I took you to a mall I could work with the existing aesthetic but I could tone it up.

Craig: You could plus it. Come on down to Dungeon World. We’ve got– [laughs]

Aline: We could do that. But you might want to do that with Melissa.

Craig: Meh.

John: Let’s transition to a topic that we all sort of know more about. So, a story that was in the news this last week was about the controversy over sequels to Crazy Rich Asians and who was getting paid what for it. Without diving too deep into that situation, I thought it was useful for us to have a conversation about how are screenwriter quotes even figured out or even what quotes are. How does a screenwriter know how much they’re worth and how much they’re being paid for a project? Because over the course of 20 years I’ve seen the amount I’m being paid per project go up and go down for reasons that probably wouldn’t be apparent to somebody outside the system.

So we haven’t really talked about money as a screenwriter for a while, so let’s talk about how much a screenwriter is worth.

Aline: So one of the things that changed and I think it’s about four or five years ago was no quotes. A no-quote thing was issued.

John: Tell me how you perceive that.

Aline: To me it was perceived a little bit like there’s no quotes, tell me your quotes. Because it is a world where you’re sort of making things up. You know, Hollywood is an interesting system in that your pay rises based on certain intangibles. And they are not just how the things you’ve written have performed in the public sphere. They can also be determined by oh you wrote a script that got a director. You wrote a script that attracted actors. You wrote a script that people like. You wrote a script that got a bidding war. Even if those things didn’t get made. And that’s why I think that system seems really byzantine irrational to people because it is based on intangibles. And it’s a marketplace where things are worth what someone will pay for them.

John: Craig, could you start us out, the conversation. Talk to us about the floor of how much somebody gets paid. Because I think we need to talk about scale before we talk about above scale.

Craig: Yeah. And maybe also just quickly before we talk about no-quote system is, we should probably talk about what the yes-quote system is, too. A lot of people see this phrase “quote system” and they don’t know. So, first thing, the floor of what a writer gets paid in Hollywood when you’re working on a Writers Guild project, that’s going to be pretty much everything other than most feature animation. It’s determined by the Writers Guild. It’s determined by our collective bargaining agreement. So every three years the Writers Guild negotiates a new deal with the AMPTP. That’s the organization that essentially represents the companies in those negotiations. And that is the minimum we can be paid.

So, you start from there. And then because our business is an over-scale business, which makes us different. Typically a union will negotiate salary floors for everybody working in the plant. So if you’re a welder you make this much money per hour. And if you’re a welder for this many years you make this much money per hour. In our business, no. It’s all over the place. Most people are making more than scale and how much more than scale is up to you and your representatives and the marketplace, which is where the quote system comes in to play.

And all the quote system means is that you’ve been paid some amount of money by someone that someone else agrees is legitimate. Meaning I go to Sony, they say, OK, we want to hire you for something. And then my representatives say, “Well his quote for that service is blotty-blah because Disney paid him that.” That’s it. That’s the sum total of the quote system.

Now, doing better than your quote or when they say no-quote, that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Aline: Right. They can’t do that, though. They can’t do that anymore. They can’t ask for your quotes and they can’t–

John: Let’s talk about the change. So, traditionally over the last 15 years, ten years ago, that was the starting point of any discussion. So the very initial projects I was hired to write I got paid scale. Probably most of us got paid scale, which is the minimum they could possibly pay us. It’s like getting minimum wage. And then after you’d had a couple projects, things get made, you start creeping above that. And so if I got $200,000 on a project, you know, the next time I was going to make a deal for some place my quote was $200,000. And so we were trying improve upon that.

But as Aline is saying they’re not supposed to be asking for quotes anymore.

Craig: Right.

Aline: Right. So then it becomes a supply and demand question ostensibly. But one of the things that if it sounds like a somewhat amorphous system, it is. And so obviously it leads to and can lead to unfairness because a lot of these things are perceptual. And you can’t control perceptual things. You can’t, you know, when your agent comes back and says, “Well, they perceive that this happened as opposed to this happening on this project and that’s why you’re going to get this and not that.” There’s not a lot you can say back.

And I have a friend who has been trying really hard to make it so that everybody publicizes what they get paid because, you know, especially if you’re in a group setting like a television show and you want to know, OK, what are other supervising producers with six years of staff experience, what are they getting, you’re only getting that anecdotally or through your representatives. So some people are an advocate of everyone should just publish what they’re getting paid so then you can compare. But you are in this world of what in your resume earns what dollars.

And I will say that because the atmosphere has changed a little bit more in terms of like we do discuss bias more, I have now numerous times been told, “Hey, I think if you were, I mean, a man you would get paid differently. And the demand for your services would command a different price.” You can’t obviously prove that and you can’t “accuse” people of that. But, again, whenever you’re in the realm of perceptual things with humans it’s something we’ve talked about before, like people’s idea of what a director looks like is a 30 to 60-year-old man with some facial hair, you know, and cargo shorts or pants, or some kind of a vest. And that’s what they picture. So when they look at a 90-year-old – sorry, 90-year-old.

Craig: No, do it. I like that.

Aline: Yeah, a 90-year-old works. Or a hundred pound fashionably dressed 26-year-old female, just for example, it’s a perceptual thing. And so I have numerous times seen not just in my own career but in other people’s careers where what seems to me that people are doing equally well and then come to find out that the men are being paid more. And that’s not just true with screenwriters, obviously. I think that’s across the board in Hollywood. And I don’t know how you standardize that system without doing kind of what Craig suggests which is publishing people’s salaries so that you can say, “Hey, you know, my movies have earned this much, or my TV shows have gotten this rating, or whatever, and so I see what this person gets paid and I would like to be paid concomitantly with that.

John: Nice use of concomitantly. I’ve never tried that word in real life.

Aline: But, you know, it is a vague – when you get, you guys know, when you get on the phone with your lawyer so often the first thing they offer you is crazy shocking because in the no-quote environment instead of before where it felt like it was building on the pay you’d gotten sometimes they come back and they’ve made a number that sets you back seven years and the question is why. And it’s based in these things which are, you know, size of the budget, scale of the movie. But again these perceptual things. So, it’s an interesting system because it has, you know, it’s a little bit of the court of the Louis XIV. It’s like Tulip Fever. It’s a little bit things command the price that they command and you can’t really get behind.

But I will say that, you know, some of those things are steeped in assumptions that people make about certain – and it also translates into genres. So certain genres the people make extremely more money than in other genres irrespective of the box office performance. If they think well you can write this super hero movie in success that movie is going to make a lot more money than this movie about three girls on a road trip which, you know.

Anyway, it’s why it’s an imperfect system at the best.

John: Well let’s talk about the no quotes in two different ways that it comes up. I think it was California law that changed where you’re not supposed to be asking for quotes on previous things, and so that was a change. The other thing that happened over the last five, seven years is that increasingly projects at studios they really kind of didn’t care what your quote was. They said like we are paying X dollars for this project, are you interested or not interested. And so things that are like this a $500,000, it’s not more than that, and that’s a thing that changed, too. And that was a supply and demand thing as well because there were fewer projects.

Aline: Absolutely.

John: And so some of us had to take a haircut to take some of those projects on. So there’s an objective reality which is the dollars you’re being paid, but the subjective quality is how much are you worth. And value is not an easily calculable thing. It is a matter of opinion and that is a reality.

Aline: And what you’re saying, the landscape of the business is changing and another really interesting factor in this is television and film are fusing and melding and, you know, what does years of experience in television, what does that translate into feature wise? When I started they would disregard your television quotes in features and they would disregard your feature quotes in television as if you had been fixing airplanes an then you show up to paint a Renaissance master.

Craig: They still do that.

Aline: Guys, these things are related. So they are still doing this. And I think Craig you experienced this.

Craig: Oh yeah.

Aline: But that’s going to change as more people are doing both, freely doing both, moving back and forth. And they are going to expect their high quotes in some areas to translate into quotes in other areas because what is the big difference. What is this artificial gulf that we’ve created?

Craig: Well, when we talk about all of this stuff, I mean, the amusing part is the law may say you can’t ask what their quote is, and yet they’ll know because they talk to each other. This is something that maybe people don’t know. The division within each studio that negotiates how much a writer gets paid is called Business Affairs. So it’s different than people who are hiring you. This is another interesting thing. Usually, well I guess it’s sort of like in a big corporation human resources is there to determine salaries, right. So you get hired by somebody and then they send you over to HR and a negotiation occurs. In Hollywood it’s business affairs. And the business affairs executives pick up the phone and call each other. They know exactly what you’ve paid.

And, more to the point, when it’s time for you to make a deal if you like the amount of money you just got paid you’re telling them. So, we can say it’s a no-quote time but it’s not. What you just got paid is known by both sides. Or, it is confirmable by both sides. So that’s the first thing.

And the second thing is when we talk about what you’re worth we’re talking about what the market decides they’re going to pay you at that moment. The hard part is it has absolutely nothing to do with your actual worth as a writer. What you’re being paid now is actually what you were worth. It’s never what you are worth. It’s what you were worth before this moment.

So when you’re a new writer you are worth nothing. [laughs] You were, right? That’s all you have to show is nothing so they pay you like that. When you just had a hit movie they pay you like what you were worth on the hit movie. They’re always behind. They’re always lagging.

Aline: When you as a creative person become part of a negotiation I’ve always found it really challenging because there’s things that I just want to do them. And so I don’t want to get immersed too much in the pay because I’m desperate to do it. And your representatives in a way are there to buffer that enthusiasm so that you have, you have a stronger hand. Because if you’re saying to your lawyer I’ll just take, just take it, just take it, you’re really cutting them off at the knees. But if it’s something you’re dying to do, you know, we’re not usually driven by money. We’re driven by the love of the material. And so it’s very challenging just to empower your reps to say, “Well, if it’s shitty walk away from it,” when it’s something you want to do. And you have to have some sense of like, no, this one is worth it. Maybe I’ll take a little pay cut on this one because I believe in this and I think in success this will really work for me.

But I have always found that transition from you’re talking to the creative executives and you’re all on the same page and it feels great and you’re going to go do this thing and then the first offer comes in and your lawyer is like, “This is atrocious.” And it’s hard not to take it personally. And sometimes it is personal in the sense that they are lowballing you because they think they can for whatever reason and it hurts.

Craig: They do it every time. They literally do it every time.

Aline: Your lawyer is trained to say, “Hey, don’t feel differently about this project because of this,” but it’s almost impossible not to feel that way. And because business affairs is a different department and you’re dealing with people who only deal with money and only deal with deals, but then they have to translate these intangibles of like we really, you know, the creative person has their heart set on John August. When they first read the book that was the only person they could picture so they desperately want John August. But the business affairs person has to pretend like they don’t care if it’s John August. And sometimes they do.

John: Well let’s talk about leverage because that is the way that a screenwriter ultimately increases the amount they’re paid for that project. And leverage can come from a couple ways. But the biggest one is the freedom to walk away, to say like, “You know what, I’m not taking this deal. So if this is where we’re stopping then I’m stopping and I’m moving on to the next thing.”

Leverage can also come from kind of being perceived as being irreplaceable by other creative elements. So that director desperately wants you. That star desperately wants you. We have a friend who is sort of the only person who can get along with a certain actor and so she’s worth a lot on those projects because she’s the only one who can sort of handle that person. So those are reasons why a person can get paid more.

I would say classically coming off of a hit movie, like you got that bump on your next movie and your next movie after it, I see that happening a little bit less now than five years ago just because the business has changed. Again, the supply and demand of how many projects there are out there is different.

Another way that you can increase your quote or the amount that you’re being paid on this project is by working for one of the new places. And the new places will tend to overpay because they’re desperate to get in business with certain people.

Aline: In certain moments. I mean, you know, if it’s your passion project you’ve got to be prepared to take a haircut. But I think one of the things that’s interesting, you know, the three of us have been in this business a long time and it was kind of the same for a long time. It was a very calcified, for better or for worse, it was understandable. And some of the things of like, Aline, you’re not going to get paid as much as the other people, I mean, those were codified, too.

Technology and the rise of all these other means of distributing have effected everything. And it’s exactly what you said, you know, movie quotes are not what they were, TV quotes are not what they were. You’re in a sort of a more freeform environment and there’s wonderful things about that but there’s also, you know, in some ways they have us over a barrel and they are trying to redefine backend. Redefine all the ways in which screenwriters are being paid. And it’s one of the reasons there’s sort of a lot of tumult and discussion among writers because I’ve never seen a more rapid period of change.

Craig: We’re also in the middle of a rapidly increasing income disparity which echoes what’s going on in the economy at large and the world at large. What used to be a kind of gentle bell curve has been accelerating even more and more, so now the question really isn’t, well, what’s my quote and how much am I being paid and can I get a bump – that’s what they say is a raise is a bump. Can I get a bump? What’s happening is that the writing business is starting to separate between employees, just standard old employees who are more and more just being pushed towards scale, and mega deals.

In my career the thought of a writer earning nine figures – that would be over $100,000,000 – for a deal that went on for two or three years was kind of astonishing. It’s happening all the time now. And so we are moving out of what we’re all familiar with. And the mega deals seemingly don’t care about, well, I guess you get what you get. And what’s concerning to me is that the opportunities for new writers coming in are going to be defined by this new system which is essentially, oh yeah, we don’t really do live over-scale. Do you know what I mean? That’s the fear is that over-scale essentially just goes away and everything is just sort of scale. It’s like, well–

Aline: I also just, I mean, we’ve talked about this before, but I don’t know how I would have broken into the feature business given what I write. I would absolutely now be going in through the TV door.

Craig: Of course. Of course.

Aline: Where minimums are different. But, you know, just to be writing sort of character-based comedies often, most often with female leads, they’re making so few that – there used to be a pipeline and all of that is going now into these television–so the other thing is that the feature business is much more steeped in–

John: In giant IP. Yeah. Absolutely.

Aline: And so it is a different – if you are person who can take one of those pieces of IP and make it make sense, there’s wild rewards in that. And those people’s careers have skyrocketed. And also it’s kind of sucked up a lot of our A-list talent. You know, I always think of like people who would have been doing Three Days of the Condor or All the President’s Men or all those, you know, Sydney Pollack, Alan Pakula, you know, a lot of those movies. They’re doing big genre franchise movies. And I wish that they could do both at the same time because I do mourn a little bit the original character-based movies that we all grew up on. And because a lot of the people grew up loving these genre pieces they’re making these IP movies. And I do mourn a little bit the movies they might have made if we were still making those personal pieces.

Craig: They’re gone.

Aline: They’re on TV.

John: They’re on TV.

Craig: They’re on TV. And when it comes to movies you’re absolutely right. They would not – if you were starting out and you were writing romantic comedies or character studies or smaller let’s say call it a $25 million budget with a female lead, no question. They’re just not making them. And nor are they making the movies that I was writing when I started out. If you want to make sort of a family PG-13 live action or PG live action comedy–

John: That’s me.

Craig: Yeah. It’s television. You know, you’re going to Netflix now. They’re just not doing it.

Aline: But unless you have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

John: Or Aladdin.

Aline: Or Aladdin.

Craig: Exactly. But even then, I have to say even now I got to argue that in 2019 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a harder bet. Because we talk about these big movies and IP and stuff but we’re not saying the word “superhero” which we need to. Because the superhero thing has essentially transformed Hollywood. The theatrical movie business is the superhero movie business. Period. The end.

Aline: And we’re way deep in the bin there. People are like, oh, are you pitching on Oatmeal Boy, and you’re like, what? There was one issue about that character in 1964. We’re deep, deep in the well there. And there are so many kind of big classic pieces of novels that have yet to be adapted. It’s so funny because somebody once said to me they never made a Mata Hari movie. And it’s just something that I think about. But if you had done a Mata Hari comic in 1972, you know, and people collected it and whatever you could shove that through.

But it is funny. We just have gotten – I run into people and they’re working on superhero stuff that – I mean, obviously I’m not an expert. But we’ve gone deep, deep in the well there.

Craig: Well, they don’t even have to go that deep in the well. They just remake.

Aline: Keep making the ones, yeah.

Craig: I mean, I think everybody kind of giggled when the fourth version of Spider Man had come out. But now it’s sort of like, oh, what’s this year’s Spider Man? That’s it. Just every year there will be a new Spider Man. And every year there will be a new Batman.

Aline: That’s like those old Tom Mix westerns, you know, from early Hollywood. You would just go that character, they would just do latest adventures or comic books.

Craig: The only thing is like in the old days they would crank out programmers, like Wallace Beery wrestling pictures, or [Odors] as those of us who do crossword puzzles love to say. But they were low budget. They were cheap stuff to flood the theaters.

John: They’re filler.

Craig: Nobody does that anymore because it’s the opposite now. Everything has to be a massive event. So either you’re doing superhero movies or you’re doing Star Wars movies. And then there’s animation. Or, in the case of Disney, live action animation. But there is no space really for other stuff. There’s the tiniest space which I find myself now when I’m working in movies that’s where I live. In this tiny space. Which is why I’m quite happy to be embarking on a television journey because, you know, I–

Aline: I’m just imagining you trying to pitch Chernobyl as a feature. Like having ten meetings in a week where you go in and pitch Chernobyl and executives sort of come in expecting you – what does Craig have? Like expecting some fun comedy with big comedy stars. And here’s [laughs] Craig saying–

Craig: That’s why I didn’t do it.

Aline: So he’s vomiting. He’s bleeding out from his face. And, you know–

John: There’s male nudity but it’s not funny male nudity.

Craig: Right.

Aline: But there was a world where you would have conceivably pitched and made that movie and that’s why I think there is a giant hole in the marketplace for somebody to start a company which makes a lot of the stuff that’s now going to Netflix. Other kinds of stories, character-based stories, but female leads, non-white leads. To sort of have a woke, for lack of a better term, studio that opens its doors to everybody who wants to be doing stuff like that because if you make them for a price they can work huge. And the upside can be huge. And you can make Girls Trip and you can make Mamma Mia and you can make Get Out. And for someone to really open the doors on a big company like that that is run by executives who are not all named Matt. That would be incredible and I think we would all run to that person.

And I understand that financially now the amount of money that you need to be that person is almost too astronomical to exist. But I am waiting desperately for someone to make the superstore, the big box version of Fox 2000 with big funding that we can all run to for those projects. Because people have an enormous hunger to still make them and to see them on a big screen.

John: Agreed.

Craig: Question for you. Didn’t you just describe Megan Ellison and Annapurna? And didn’t they just go bankrupt?

John: Or A24. Fox Searchlight.

Aline: But are they taking the Girls Trip swings? Are they taking the Mamma Mia swings? Or are they taking more of the art – which again, and love those more arthouse type movies, obviously a thing I love. But I’m talking about more the sort of commercial in-the-box comedy character-based, you know, Bad Moms, Get Out is a good example of, you know–

Craig: Well Jason Blum obviously has a very successful business making genre films.

Aline: But I’m just talking about non-IP driven original content that is run by and includes a wider swath of the community who are desperate to tell those stories. I am sure every writer, we all have something in our drawer that we would love to do that way. And frankly right now people are going to streamers to do that.

Craig: I would. I mean, I’m just being honest with you. I would. I mean, unless I had something – I mean, look, Mamma Mia would be – that’s different because that is IP and all the rest of it. If I had something that was akin to, well, if I had something that I thought was an interesting $25 or $30 million movie I would be going to a streamer without question. Without question.

Aline: So maybe that’s a hole in the theatrical feature environment then. Maybe not.

Craig: They just don’t do it. I mean, the problem is you’re right. There is this massive hole there. But you can’t get a movie in theaters without distribution. And these major studios control it.

Aline: And giant marketing costs.

Craig: Well, exactly.

John: So there’s a project I’m doing which may end up at Netflix. And part of the discussion was it was hard to envision what the Friday night of this movie would be. It’s just like could you get enough butts in seats on Friday night to make this smaller comedy work. But if it were on a streamer that pressure is just not there. And so I think people would find it in their own time and it wouldn’t be that sense of like it has to be this giant weekend.

Aline: Interestingly though, when those movies drop on Netflix they do get humungous, crazy-huge eyeball numbers on the first weekend.

Craig: So they claim. [laughs] So they claim.

Aline: No, well I do believe that. Because–

John: Always Be My Maybe is a good example.

Aline: You guys know you turn on your streamer box and that’s the first thing there. And they have this marketing which is insane. You pay to subscribe to this service and it’s pushing something on you. And you’re not sure what you want to watch and everybody looks at each other and says great. And it’s new and it’s being promoted to you. So, you know, there’s nothing – so I don’t know, maybe this new studio that we’re creating is a subscription service.

John: So let’s bring this around and talk about where we’re at and sort of what we can do to sort of make this better.

Aline: The quotes?

John: The quotes. I do think in a world where quotes become less important the transparency in terms of what you’re getting paid is helpful. And I see more of that happening in TV. And in TV there are clear rungs that you’re going up through. So if people publicize like I’m a story editor on this show, this is what I’m getting, that is truly helpful for people figuring out am I getting paid more or less than sort of the average for this role.

A thing I’m going to probably do and I’ll just commit to actually doing it now is on Aladdin it’s going to be one of the probably last movies that’s going to have traditional residuals. And so I’ll just publicize, as I get each green envelope on Aladdin I will put up on the site how much I’m getting from those envelopes because it’s going to be huge. That’s a big movie and this is classically how writers were able to make a living is the constant residuals that come through.

And those are going to go away, too. And that’s another future topic, but figuring out how we sustain a career without the good residuals we’ve traditionally had is going to be a challenge.

Aline: Data would help the representatives. Because if you had data about what everyone was getting paid your agent could say, you know, this person and this person have a similar track record, or this person has made a special contribution in this way. And here’s another instance where someone did something similar and this is how they were recompensed. So, secrecy always benefits certain groups.

Craig: I agree. I mean, having representatives would also help representatives. Because when I listen to this—

Aline: Well, the lawyers generally do the, right?

Craig: Well lawyers do the negotiating of the hard numbers. Or a lot of the internal numbers. But one thing that agencies can do, particularly the big ones, is say I can tell you exactly what this person got or this person got. They’re really good when you can talk about participation, backend. They know how those things work. Because we’re not the only deals that impact us. Again, because we’re over-scale there are other people like actors and directors and agents who are making certain kinds of deals that we can also make, depending on what the kind of movie is.

So having more information like that is great.

Aline: And also these are intangibles, agents have long relationships with these folks and bring them numerous people. And so they can be saying, “Hey, F-you. Step up. You know what’s right.”

John: And at the same time they can also be saying, you hope that they’re always advocating on your own behalf. But they could also be advocating on other people’s behalves or trying to get this other thing to happen.

Aline: Or trying to protect a relationship.

John: Exactly. So it does work both ways.

Craig: It does. I mean, we’ve all paid 10% to agents our entire careers I guess because we assumed that it was working in our favor.

John: All right. Let’s move on to the marquee topic for today which is idea management. So this came up to me because there’s a couple projects that I’m sort of noodling on, so I’ve not really started writing them yet but they are things that are in my head. They’re like the shiny jewels that I pick up and hold in my virtual hand and stare at them and do a little work on and then set them back down. And we haven’t really talked about this on the show which is that sort of early stage of holding onto and sorting through your ideas before you start writing and some best practices on that.

Because what really occurred to me this past week is I had some insomnia and I realized I was doing that rather than actually letting myself fall asleep. I was like so worried about holding onto this idea and focusing on it that I couldn’t set it down and actually go to sleep. So, Craig let’s say you have a good idea, it’s midnight, you’re headed to bed. You have a good idea. Do you get out of bed and write it down? What do you do with that idea that occurs to you?

Craig: If there’s something that happens right there while I’m in bed, my iPad is on my nightstand so I’ll just send myself a quick email. I have in the past said to myself you’ll remember this and then I don’t. I just remember not remembering it and being very angry. But that’s not really where most of my thinking happens. By the time I’m going to bed I’m just tired and I want to go to bed. Most of my thinking happens, well, most of my freeform thinking happens in the shower. That’s where I like to just think.

Aline: We’ve established this.

Craig: Yeah.

Aline: We’ve had a lot of mind images of Craig in the shower over the years if you’re a Scriptnotes fan.

John: Aline, you have that late night idea, what do you do with that idea?

Aline: So I do a lot of my thinking in the bathtub.

Craig: Oh, it’s the same thing.

Aline: It is the same thing. A bathtub. But also when I go to sleep I try and think about something that I’m noodling on or have to solve. And I don’t think I wake up instantly with the answer but I do try and noodle on it because I know that that’s a fertile period. I will say like Rachel and I frequently had this conversation – I don’t write things down very often because I feel like if it’s a good idea it will persist and it will return to me. And I know a lot of people who think I’m insane who are real note-takers. And for them they need to see it concretized. If I start writing on an idea too soon I’ll kill it. It’s like I’ve over-watered the plant.

So I have to kind of keep it in a back-burnery place where only my subconscious is working on it until it’s kind of formed before I start putting voice to it, because there’s something about rendering it that sort of makes it less magical and interesting for me. So if I’m going to email myself something it’s a line of dialogue. Sometimes I think of lines of dialogue in the bathroom or in the bed. And then sometimes it’s plot stuff that I cannot fix. So, I would say the bathtub especially is a place where I go, oh, you know what, that’s where I go. And then I will put notes – I usually use the notes app. And kind of get it down.

But again I try and get it down in a skeletal way because somehow if I fully express an idea in print it doesn’t engage me in the same way.

John: I totally get that. You just did an over-watering metaphor which I really do like because it does kind of feel like it’s a garden that you have to tend every once and a while because if you don’t actually pay attention to the thing it can just wither and die on its own. And sometimes it’s best that it wither and die. Like it really did not want to be anything that you pursued. But also things can overgrow and just become too crazy.

And like I’ll try not to put something down in print and fix it in one form because I know it’s growing in different things and it could be combining with a different idea. You know, these really inchoate ideas they’re sort of competing for attention in your mind. They’re trying to get brain cycle. Like, no, no, think about me, think about me. And that’s the only way that they can actually become real projects.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t, you know me, my whole thing is I don’t write the script until I know exactly what the hell it is that I’m writing anyway. So in a weird way what we’re talking about here is this kind of idea gathering process. That is the process for me. I’m gathering ideas and writing things down on notecards and putting snippets of dialogue in little clustery files. But I don’t start writing anything until I see it. It’s like, oh, I always think of this wonderful scene from Searching for Bobby Fischer. Do you love Searching for Bobby Fischer the way I love it?

John: I do not recall it well, so obviously I don’t.

Craig: My god. Aline? Big Searching for–?

Aline: I haven’t seen it recently.

Craig: Oh, Steven Zaillian wrote and directed, brilliant. And there’s a moment where Ben Kinsley as the grandmaster is teaching this little kid. And he’s looking at the board and Ben Kingsley says, “You can get to checkmate in five. Don’t move until you see it.” And the kid is looking at it and he goes, “I don’t see it.” And Ben Kingsley says, “Don’t move until you see it.” And the kid says, “I don’t see it.” And Ben Kingsley says, “Here, I’ll help you. And he takes his arm and he wipes all the pieces off the board and they all clatter to the floor. It’s gorgeous. And he says, “There.” So now the kid can look at the blank board and then imagine the pieces and then he sees it.

And a lot of times for me I’m like don’t write it until you see it. That’s the way I kind of think about it. Don’t write it until you see it.

Aline: There’s also a thing that can happen where if you iterate something before you’re ready it creates a box or a fence in your brain and you can never get over it to where the good idea was. And so I fear that a little bit. Like you don’t want to start putting in those 2x4s and beams until you really know what you’re doing because you can get trapped in your edifice and then you can’t ever – because I was talking to another writer yesterday about sometimes you see something on the page and it’s so not what you want that you’re like I don’t remember writing, I don’t remember being a writer, I don’t remember what stories are. Have I ever seen a movie? It can block you.

So, I’ve written – a lot of the stuff I’ve done have been originals, 27 Dresses, Morning Glory, Crazy Ex, were all ideas that I had for a very long time. And what I tend to do is I store them up and I think about them until I meet the person.

John: Now did you have a list of those ideas?

Aline: No.

John: So just floating in your head somewhere? It’s like I want to do a movie about that.

Aline: They’re floating in my head. And then 27 Dresses I was like, you know what, this is a good idea. I should do this. Because my best friend Kate had been in 12 weddings at that point and it was insane. And I could see that the wedding industry was getting to this point where she was asked to do stuff that was bonkers.

And I pitched it to a lot of people. I think I pitched that to 11 people and the person that I didn’t know who latched on to it right away was John Glickman. So when I find often a collaborator or person I know this is the right person who can help, you know, water this with me and then I’m in a process. And with Morning Glory that was JJ. I pitched it to JJ I think the first time I met him. And then Crazy Ex was an idea, the title and the character – because I think there’s – I really relish and am giggly about all the moments in my life when I’ve been a crazy ex, even if it’s just like I want that sweater and there’s only one left in the small, you know, and I stalked it. And I always loved that idea.

And when I met Rachel I went, boom, that’s how to do it. So, I think it’s nice to carry around a little suitcase of notions in your brain and then when you think, oh, you know what? Now’s the moment to do it. This wedding stuff is getting so over the top that a movie about a perpetual bridesmaid, this is a good time to do it. So either the circumstances or you meet a person or you think of the genre. You know, you have an idea and you think, oh, the way to do this is, you know, this is a movie about terrible in-laws, but it’s Meet the Parents, or it’s Get Out. It takes a certain form.

And to me if the thing isn’t good I’ll forget about it.

John: Craig, do you have an idea suitcase?

Craig: No. I’m not a big idea person like that. In other words I’m not a big “here’s an idea for a movie.” I was like that early in my career because early in my career you were rewarded for that. Over time it seems to me that my skill isn’t so much in coming up with a wonderful idea for a movie. My skill it seems is figuring out how to write a movie. So, and that kind of meshed nicely with the way the business evolved because suddenly—

Aline: Well I would argue that that’s not true of Chernobyl.

Craig: Well, Chernobyl isn’t an idea. In other words, Chernobyl – it’s a topic.

Aline: The way you did it. Well, it’s a topic, but the way you did it and the way you chronicled it.

John: That’s execution rather than idea.

Craig: Correct. I think of that as actually the best example of the fact that I can execute things. But I don’t think of it as like, in other words what you do there – I used to do it. I don’t. I don’t know if I was ever really good at it to be honest with you. I mean—

Aline: So just to bring this back around, one of the reasons I’ve always done that is because that’s how I got hired. And there was not a lot else out for me. I was not being offered the big IP. Even back in the day I wasn’t getting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wasn’t well-known enough in those days. And that’s, you know, that’s why I chased Devil Wears Prada. Talk about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I chased that. Every single time they replaced the writer I said to my agent, “Get me in, get me in, get me in.” Because there’s so few things like that.

So I wasn’t getting – because there weren’t – there were so few pieces like that. Annie is one. Weirdly Cinderella was a thing that I came up with and pitched, strangely. That’s how long ago that was. That was before they were doing that. Annie is an example of like that’s a big piece that got given to me, but one of the reasons I did that is because for whatever reason I just have not been gifted with things that already had momentum. Annie was one, but not often.

Craig: At least in the beginning I certainly wasn’t either. So I was coming up with ideas and things. Some of them were really bad, but then they made them. Right? So they made some movies, some of them did OK. Most of them didn’t do well. What happened was I got stuck on sequels. And I guess at that point I was able to demonstrate some sort of executional ability.

But, yeah, when you start out you do kind of need to go here is my suitcase, here are my samples. Would you like to buy? And I do remember, you know, I mean, look, there’s a movie that I co-wrote with my partner back then called Senseless. It’s just a bad idea for a movie. It’s really just terrible. It’s a terrible idea for a movie.

The reason it got made I think is because it was in the middle of the video era when they would make anything. And, you know what? Penelope Spheeris did her best to direct and Marlon Wayans was really funny. And Matthew Lillard was really funny. But the idea was just dumb. It was just a bad idea for a movie.

Aline: Some ideas don’t work.

Craig: I mean, but that one honestly mystified me – I remember my writing partner and I were taking a walk and we had just pitched this thing. Because we were, again, we were like we need to get the suitcase out. No one is giving us anything. We have to make our own opportunities. And he said, “Do you think they’ll make that?” And I said not a chance. Not a chance. And then they did.

Aline: So one thing I would say for aspiring writers, when you are breaking in and you start to get those round of general meetings they’re going to say to you, “What do you want to write? Is there an article? Is there an idea? What do you have?” Wait a second. Get to know this person. Have a nice general meeting. Just chat in general about their movies. Hope you bump into them. Don’t give your babies, because in the beginning, you know, anybody who wanted to meet with me I’m a more reticent person so I would meet someone and five minutes into it they would say, “What is something you’ve dreamed of writing your whole life?” And I would think I just met you. I don’t know if I want to entrust you with that.

But I’ve seen young writers often, they’re just so excited to be in a meeting with someone that they take one of their idea babies out of their suitcase – not a good place to keep babies.

Craig: Put holes in it.

Aline: And they give it to someone and then that’s where it loses its momentum. So if you have something that’s near and dear to you in the beginning you might want to write it, or wait until you find someone who is truly a champion. Because the other thing I was naïve about is people take these general meetings with you. They actually haven’t read your work.

And one of the funniest – I don’t know if I’ve told this story on this podcast before – but I was in a meeting, my very first round of general meetings. And while I was sitting there an assistant walked in and said to the executive, “I have that coverage on Jersey Angel you wanted.”

John: Your script.

Aline: And I was so dumb that I didn’t know that that was – she hadn’t read it. And was taking the meeting as a favor to my agent. And so that was a person saying, “Gee, what are your hopes and dreams. And give me those things that reside in your soul,” who hadn’t actually read my script.

So, just, you know–

John: So I’m taking a lot of generals right now because there’s just a bunch of folks who over the years I’ve never met, or all the executives moved from one company to another so I’m just taking those generals now. And I’ve found that, granted I’m not at the beginning of my career, but I will generally go into those meetings with some sense of like, OK, these are the kinds of things they might be looking for. And so I may not pitch a specific story, but I’ll pitch like this is a story area that I’m really interested in. Like I just read an article about this thing and I think there’s probably a great movie to be made that’s looking at the reality of this but also pushes it into this fantasy aspect. And so those are helpful things to have as you go into those things.

Just give them a sense of like what your taste is and what’s interesting to you. And a lot of times I really am pulling some stuff out of the old idea suitcase. Like I’ve always wanted to do something with this place. Or like this old idea, I realize now in 2020 is actually more about this and that is a point of discussion. So, a deal I’m making now was out of one of those general meetings where I had an old thing but I realized like, oh, actually the way you make this story now in 2020 has a whole different [valence].

Aline: You said something so brilliant once and I think about it a lot, so I’m going to make you repeat it. Somebody said I have two ideas and I don’t know which one to write. And you said pick the one with the better ending.

John: That was Episode 100.

Aline: Ah, I love that piece of advice. And to go with that is I would say pick an idea that suggests a structure. Because sometimes I’ve had ideas – that’s why I had not done Crazy Ex because I didn’t know what the structure of that could be. And it wasn’t until Rachel and I started talking about it and I realized it was a TV show so you could kind of examine the prism. I was worried that a movie would be too reductive and broad.

Pick an idea that suggests a structure to you. Because if it just seems like a good idea for a movie, and I will tell you something quite counterintuitive. Things that are set on the backdrop of a wedding, rom-coms, a lot of people their first movie is like, “Oh, it’s the destination wedding. Or it’s the wedding where you find out your divorced parents fall back in love or whatever.” Weddings are brutal structurally because they are not escalating. So, your rehearsal dinner to your ceremony to the football game on the lawn, they don’t have a natural escalation in stakes. Actually it seems like that’s a structure. It’s not. And I’ve wandered down that garden path more than once because I’ve written a bunch of things that have weddings in them. They’re actually very difficult.

If you’re starting out and you have an idea, the one that suggests I have to be there by Tuesday to get a thing is probably the easiest the one, the simpler one to write. Something that suggests a journey. Suggests a story.

John: Like your Crazy Ex-Girlfriend example, Arlo Finch I had in my head for a very long time and I just didn’t know what it was. It’s not really a movie. It’s not really a TV show. And then I had a conversation with a middle grade novelist and I realized like, oh, this is a middle grade novel series. That’s what it is. I started writing that night and that became the thing. So, you do hold on to those things not knowing quite what form they want to take, but you know that there’s a thing there that’s interesting and appealing.

Aline: But I still think I would still argue Craig that the idea of doing Chernobyl in the way that you did it is a great idea because, you know, you could make a lot of Chernobyl movies but they would have been the more typical accident of the week kind of thing. So it’s just – it’s a cool idea just to examine that because it’s not something that people know enough about. But also the way in which it was done is a cool idea. I think.

Craig: Well thank you.

John: Take the compliment, Craig. She’s complimenting you.

Craig: I mean, you know, I’m not good – I’m really bad at compliments. Mostly when somebody gives me a compliment my mind immediately starts creating a very good rebuttal.

Aline: Or you think, “What an idiot? What a dummy?”

John: They couldn’t recognize the real me, because if they knew the real me they’d be disappointed.

Craig: I don’t think you understand. See, I’m not really very good. That’s kind of, yeah. Well, you know, Chernobyl couldn’t have been a movie anyway. That’s true.

Aline: Part of your idea was we’re going to really look at this in a very granular beat-by-beat and the millions and millions of bad decisions that go into something like this. And that’s what makes it a great cautionary tale because all these disasters are a collision of a million mistakes, human and technical. And you need time. You needed episodes for that to unfurl. And a movie might have constrained you. Also because movies are going to follow a more traditional escalation crescendo structure which sometimes things don’t want to be. And those make you be phony.

Craig: Yeah.

Aline: Sometimes the form is a terrific idea. I haven’t seen it, but doing Emily Dickinson’s life as sort of like an emo-teen-pop thing which they’re doing on Apple, I have no idea what that’s like. But it’s taking the biopic and making it, from what I’ve seen it looks like a cool Ariana Grande video. That’s a cool idea.

Craig: Have you guys ever heard someone pronounce biopic “bi-opic?”

Aline: Yes.

Craig: It’s amazing. Every time it happens I get so excited.

Aline: I have to stop correcting. We have a thing in our house but with fewer and less. And two of us are quite strict on it and one of us is really annoyed.

Craig: That would be Will, your husband, I’m assuming.

Aline: No, he’s a bit of a stickler in a way. One of my children finds it very annoying to be policed.

John: And your dogs are like I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Aline: Yeah, we’re idiots.

Craig: We don’t speak at all.

John: Let’s answers some questions here. First question is an audio question from Nathan Morris.

Nathan Morris: Hello, my name is Nathan. I’ll give you a dollar each if you can guess where I’m from by my accident. I’m currently living in New York. I have a question about working with actors. I’m a writer-director. I’m working on a little passion project right now to prove to the world what I can do. It’s all improvised. I wrote large backstory for each of my characters. During casting and workshopping with them was really fun and some ideas come up that the actors thought of about the characters I created.

I used a couple of these in the edit I’m putting together now and I’m wondering should they be credited as writers because they did create the joke? I don’t want to annoy anyone, piss anyone off, or just be a dick. Yeah, so I’d love to know what you guys think about that. I’m especially interested after hearing your Veep episode. Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes.

Craig: I’ve got to tell you all I did was listen to his accent for the first half of that question. I have no idea what the question was.

John: So here was his question. He made a short that involved a lot of actors who were doing improv.

Craig: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

John: He is wondering whether he should credit them as writers for the improv.

Craig: No. So, the, well, listen, it’s entirely up to you, Nathan, how you go about these things if you are not working within our Writers Guild world. In the Writers Guild world writing credit is for literary material. That means specifically material that has been written down on paper. So ad-libs, things that come up on the day that actors are putting out there are not considered literary material so it’s not creditable as writing.

If you are creating something that is highly improvisational you can consider it. But I would point out that even in shows like—

Aline: Curb.

Craig: Curb Your Enthusiasm, right, which there is a very strict outline that’s been written but inside of those scenes the dialogue can be often very improvised, those actors are not getting writing credit either. It’s just sort of understood this is how it works. Also I think he’s from South Africa.

John: All right. Aline, what is your impression both of what Nathan should do with his actors and where he’s from?

Aline: He’s from Australia.

Craig: It’s one or the other.

John: I’m pretty sure Australia.

Craig: Those two are always in my mind competing.

Aline: Interesting. Yeah, there’s a lot of the Christopher Guest movies and Curb are examples of the story is preset. They’re given material and then the dialogue is – what I wouldn’t do is spring it on anyone. Just make sure going into it that they know what examples you’re following and that this is how you’re going to be doing it.

It’s different if they’re sitting in a room with you and you’re typing it together.

John: Yeah. I think our consensus is that these actors sort of knew going into it that this was an improv situation. They probably don’t have an expectation that you are going to be giving them writing credit for this. But, of course, what we really care about is where you’re from and Nathan has an answer. So I actually heard the answer so I know. But I wasn’t convinced – I was thinking South Africa originally, but I was also thinking it could be a British accent, like a specific one that I was just missing. But let’s hear Nathan give us his answer.

Craig: Oh good.

Nathan: My accent is from…New Zealand.

Craig: Ah!

Aline: Ugh.

Nathan: Aotearoa. That’s the Maori name for my country. And we also have tall poppies [in germ]. Some would say greater than the Australians. Maybe that’s tall poppy syndrome right there. OK, I will stop wasting your time.

Aline: I feel bad about that because my sister-in-law is from New Zealand.

Craig: It’s really close. I mean, honestly, I mean Australia certainly is closer to New Zealand than South Africa. But I make that mistake, I mush those two together all the time. All the time. Mush those three together I guess all the time. Shame on me.

John: Shame on us. Monica asks, “Hi John, what was your budget on God and how did you go about funding it?” So God was a short film I made with Melissa McCarthy in 1998. We shot on 35mm film. We shot on short ends. We got the film pretty cheap but processing is expensive. So the full budget on that was $30,000. You can now make that same movie for $3,000.

Aline: John, where can people see The Nines?

John: The Nines, anywhere. It’s actually streaming kind of in all the places. It’s on iTunes but it’s also everywhere else.

Aline: It’s so good.

John: Thank you very much. So Melissa McCarthy’s character in God shows up again in The Nines. And as we all know Melissa McCarthy is a treat and a gem and a wonder of our age.

Aline: And Ryan Reynolds in it. It’s really good.

John: Thank you. Paul asks, “I watch a lot of movies and notice that it usually starts raining at the beginning of the third act or the end of the second act when things get bad in the story. Is this a tradition that should be used? Is it a crutch? Is there a way to stop using rain as a crutch? Should it be written in the script or left to a cinematography decision? I don’t hate it when I see it but I don’t love it either. It’s in many of my most beloved movies of all time. Help.”

Aline: I mean, it’s a huge rom-com trope.

John: It is a trope.

Aline: We made fun of it on the show. It’s a huge rom-com trope. You know, using the environment to reflect the inner feelings of a character, so as things are darkening the weather is reflecting that. That’s why you can call it out in a comedic sense because climaxes of romances in romantic comedies are people speaking to each other in the rain which is a thing I’ve never done. Dude, it’s raining. Let’s have this fight under an awning. People will stand there getting drenched with rain drenching them. Women with like their shirts drenched having a romantic conversation with someone. So, externalizing people’s emotions in the weather can sometimes reinforce the atmosphere, but sometimes can just make it seem like hilariously people’s emotions are being externalized.

Craig: Yeah. It’s a trope. I mean, is it a crutch? I don’t know if it’s a crutch. Although I do agree that there are times when you want to see your characters at a low moment and you decide it’s not enough to just know that they’re feeling terrible. You have to also rain directly on them, like those cartoons where a little cloud follows someone around.

Aline: But have you guys ever just stood there while it was raining?

Craig: Yeah, no.

John: No!

Aline: And spoken to someone?

Craig: No. I mean, unless I was so depressed because I was at the end of my second act. I mean, that’s the point. It’s silly but there’s a lot of silly stuff in movies. Like the fact that usually people don’t have rear view mirrors in their cars. So, I would say, look—

Aline: And they talk to people who are sitting in the middle of the back seat.

Craig: And they don’t say goodbye when they hang up a phone.

Aline: All these things we love.

Craig: All these things we love.

Aline: I think it can be cartoony. I mean, I love a sunlit noir. I love a movie where someone is going through some horrible noir. After Dark, My Sweet is the one I think of. Where it’s a noir but it’s Jason Patric being sort of bathed in horrible, horrible California sunshine instead of dark.

Craig: Yeah. Glaring hangover light.

John: So a thing that people who don’t make movies probably don’t realize is that whenever you write rain in the script, when you actually show up on set it is miserable generally because like the rain towers and the whole process of getting people wet and getting people dry and shooting in the rain is a huge hassle. You’re trying to protect everything. So I learned this firsthand on Go which does have rain in the third act. And it’s a hassle. It’s fully appropriate in Go. It actually serves a character purpose. It’s part of the reason they hit Ronna. But good lord, rain is a brutal thing.

Craig: Rain is hard to do. One thing, Paul, you would not do is leave it up to the cinematographer. The cinematographer does not make that decision. The cinematographer has to figure out how to shoot it. But, yes, it is absolutely within your domain to write that into a script. And then, you know, people can discuss after if they want to do it or not. But, yeah, it’s definitely something you should be deciding.

John: It is time for our One Cool Things. Now, Craig you and David Kwong just finished a massive puzzling expedition. It was like five days of work I believe?

Craig: Six.

John: Six days. So I’m going to break precedent and I’m actually going to recommend a puzzle thing. This is called Reg Ex Crossword. And so it’s the perfect Venn diagram intersection of what’s interesting to me and what’s interesting to you. So Reg Ex or regular expressions are the computer code that helps do pattern matching. So it’s how you find text within text. It is really esoteric and strange. This is a crossword puzzle situation where the clues are actually just regular expressions so you have to figure out what letters could possibly match up with those things. It’s very ingeniously done.

Craig, I hope you will clear out your afternoon schedule so you can try some of this.

Craig: I shouldn’t, but I will.

John: So, weirdly a cross between what we love about crossword puzzles and also what we love about Sudoku and only certain things can fit in certain boxes.

Craig: It actually sounds like a cross between what I love about crosswords and what I love about you.

John: Aw, Craig.

Craig: Aw.

Aline: Aw.

John: Aline knows that I’m blushing right now.

Aline: He’s blushing. Do you guys know what Sooth is?

John: Sooth is the relaxation app.

Aline: Sooth is a massage app.

John: Oh yes. Yes.

Aline: Sooth is an on-demand massage app. And I’ve got to say I’ve used it for a bunch of years now. It’s great.

John: We’ve used it.

Aline: And I’ve had many, many massage therapists. You can request the same one. But the beauty of Sooth is that you’re like, you know what in about an hour I’m in the mood for a massage and I have time. And they’ll come to your house and they bring the table. And I’ve had many, many Sooth massages and they’ve been different people and they’ve all been pretty great.

You know how sometimes you go to a spa and someone starts and you’re like this is – what am I doing?

John: There’s going to be 45 more minutes of this.

Aline: There’s going to be 45 minutes of nothingness. These are really good, strong massage therapists. I’ve only had women because I’ve had too many creepy male massages in my life. So I can only speak for the female massage therapists on Sooth. But they’re really good. They come to your house. And what’s nice about that is when you’re done, you know, and after they go you just get in your shower. You’re not in a spa. That’s a whole – I don’t like things that are a whole thing. Going to get a massage can be a whole thing.

But Sooth makes it into a really easy, pleasurable way to get a massage in your home.

John: Nice. That sounds like an ad for Sooth but it’s actually just a One Cool Thing. Craig, what’s your One Cool Thing?

Craig: Well I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Assassin’s Creed Odyssey yet.

John: No.

Craig: I’ve been playing it. So, hat’s off to Ubisoft. Every Assassin’s Creed game is kind of the same thing. I mean, it’s amazing. And yet it’s sort of like, well, you know, the Big Mac works for a reason. People like it. And in this game you’re running around Ancient Greece which is cool because you get to talk to Socrates. But what my One Cool Thing specifically about the game is sex. There is sex in Assassin’s Creed and it’s hysterical.

You know the old cliché of two people start kissing and then they just sort of pan over to a fireplace? So that’s what it is every single time. But the best part is you can play the game as a man or a woman. It’s kind of ingenious actually. There’s a beginning where there’s a brother and a sister and something terrible happens and they’re split apart. And then they have to kind of find each other over the course of time and they’re rivals. And so if you choose to play as a woman, well, you’re the sister. If you choose to play as a man you’re the brother. And then they just flop the other things. But what doesn’t change are all the people that are interested in having sex with you. And your choice is to have sex with them.

I have had sex with everyone. So I played this character, because you have an option. You can turn down people. I turn down no one.

Aline: Just the pulled quote from this episode is Craig Mazin for Deadline Hollywood. It’s going to be Craig Mazin, “I’ve had sex with everyone.”

John: Everyone.

Craig: My favorite thing happened the other night. For whatever reason I had sex with this woman that I used to have sex with that I hadn’t seen in a while. Then I go rescue this guy and he’s so into me right from the start, right? I’m playing as a guy. So he’s into me from the start. And then he has a brother. And he and the brother are very different. I’m like, OK, I kind of see what’s going on here. This brother is into guys, or if I’m playing as a woman he’ll be into women. It doesn’t matter. The point is he’s into me and the other one is not really. A sad story.

No. They both are. I have sex with brothers, not at the same time, but separately. And then they both find out.

Aline: Next quote. New article. New piece. “I had sex with brothers.”

Craig: I had sex with brothers. And then I dumped both of them. It was great.

Aline: Have you guys seen the Black Mirror with Anthony Mackey in it?

John: I have seen that one.

Craig: No.

Aline: You have?

John: Yeah.

Aline: Yeah!

John: It’s sort of that situation.

Aline: Yeah. Craig have you seen that one?

Craig: I’m living it, man. I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I’m having sex with everyone.

Aline: Well, it can get tricky.

Craig: One of the quests in the game is you have to go get somebody’s like armor from a special blacksmith. And you go to the blacksmith and he’s like, well, and he’s like a big burly dude. He’s like, “I would, but you know, I don’t know. Maybe if you make it worth my while.” I mean, he’s literally saying, “You know, if you have sex with me I’ll do it.” And I’m like, done. In. And he’s like, “The only problem is I need special herbs to actually have an erection.” So I have to go and like kill some mountain lions or something so I can collect herbs to give it to a blacksmith to have sex with him in exchange for armor.

I mean, that’s a day. That’s a freaking day.

Aline: What’s going to happen when we find out this is not actually happening?

Craig: Yeah. There is no game called Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. [laughs]

John: Craig is just sitting there staring at a black screen. [laughs]

Craig: Or I’m doing it. First of all, I have to find a blacksmith. A real blacksmith.

Aline: Brothers.

Craig: Brothers. I have to find brothers. I have to find an old flame. I want to be clear. Every single, and I urge people when they’re playing Assassin’s Creed, whether you’re playing as a man or a woman, have sex with everyone. Because you end up kissing everyone and then like the camera just drifts away. And the best part is the next thing that happens is like time has passed and you’re alone. They’re gone. So you have sex with people and they just leave. It’s perfect. It’s a perfect world.

Aline: It’s perfect for our Tinder age.

Craig: It really is.

Aline: Tinder.

Craig: It’s like, hey, yeah, I’ll have sex with you for armor. And you’re gone.

John: That should be the title of the episode. [laughs]

Aline: I’ll have sex with you for armor and then you’re gone.

Craig: And then you’re gone. It’s fantastic.

John: Oh, that is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Victor Krause. 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 like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Aline, do you want to be Twitter mentioned now?

Aline: Yeah.

John: Great. You are @?

Aline: I’m @alinebmckenna.

Craig: @alinebmckenna. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts. We get them up the week after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. And you need to sign up there if you want to use the app to listen to back episodes. So some people were having a hard time listening to back episodes on the app. It’s because you have to go to Scriptnotes.net to log in there. The app exists for iOS and Android.

You can also download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com. Aline, you use the Scriptnotes app?

Aline: Oh yeah. I do. I do. I’m not a completist, but I’m pretty close to it. I’ve been an early fan and I was an early fan partly because when you’re a screenwriter you’re so lonely and the fact that there was a show where I could listen to two of my friends talking was so nice.

Craig: It was like you weren’t alone.

Aline: Yes. And it was like my buddies are over and we’re talking about screenwriting. But as you know I’m a legit fan and I recommend the show all the time. And so I did recently when I was writing a script I went back and I did kind of a deep dive into the early episodes.

John: Well, Aline, thank you for being a super fan and also for coming back again on the show.

Craig: Thank you, Aline.

John: To be our buddy and talk through these issues with us.

Aline: I just looked it up and Batgirl and Catwoman, they were both on Adam West, but I can’t remember – and fans will tell us which one used to appear in the credits.

Craig: And Eartha Kitt was Catwoman right?

Aline: Julie Newmar did the first two years, and then Eartha Kitt.

Craig: See, I’m an Eartha Kitt fan because she would [purrs]. She was great. She really leaned into the purr.

Aline: She was the greatest.

John: Yeah. And she would have sex for armor.

Craig: I mean, honestly I think you would, too.

Aline: I’m getting Craig a t-shirt that says Will Have Sex for Armor.

Craig: Yeah. Don’t say it like it’s bad. It’s good.

John: Craig, thanks so much. Have a great week.

Craig: Thanks guys, bye.

Aline: Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

Craig Mazin: Hi friends. Today’s podcast contains some salty language, so if you are in the car with the young ones put their earmuffs on or wait to listen to it later.

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

Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 418 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we are joined by legendary screenwriter David Koepp whose credits include Jurassic Park, Death Becomes Her, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, and Panic Room. His seventh movie as director, You Should Have Left, comes out next year. But his first novel, the bio-thriller Cold Storage, has just come out to rave reviews.

Welcome to the program David Koepp.

David Koepp: Thank you. Nice to be here, guys.

Craig: I have not heard of any of those movies. I’ve got to be honest. Can you say them again? Because I don’t recognize any of them.

David: I should mention I also wrote Guns of Navarone.

Craig: No. [laughs] Also drawing a blank.

David: That was 1958. No, but you know.

Craig: When you were a mere 30.

David: I was negative five.

Craig: I don’t know about you John, but of the many David Koepp films that you just mentioned that I love, it was Death Becomes Her that made me an early Koepp fan. What a surprising movie. I just had no idea what I was in for. And then it was just this wonderfully wicked dark thing. No one would ever make it today.

David: No.

Craig: In a million years. But it was so literate and smart.

David: Universal was kind of regretful while they were making it.

Craig: Oh wow.

David: I remember, OK, are anecdotes allowed–

John: Absolutely. This is an anecdotes show.

Craig: Mother’s milk on this show.

David: I wrote it with Martin Donovan who I did my first movie, Apartment Zero, with. And we wrote this script which we assumed would be another weird dark indie sort of comedy-ish.

Craig: Ish.

David: You know. But I sold this to Universal and Casey Silver who was very supportive at the time, he sent it around. And he called me one day and he said, “Bob Zemeckis wants to direct Death Becomes Her.” And he said it with such resignation.

Craig: Like we have to make this movie now? [laughs] Yeah, by the way, nothing has changed at Universal. That’s kind of their, “Ah, darn it, we have to make a movie.”

David: You know, he was just off like all three Back to the Futures and they wanted something big and great and hugely profitable.

Craig: You said I’ll show you.

David: And he said, no, I’m going to do this weird one. And I’m still going to throw her down the stairs.

John: Totally challenging.

Craig: But what a cast. I mean, you still got this great cast.

David: It came together beautifully and it was big and weird and stuck around. There’s a drag show of it that pops up in different cities from time to time and I tried to go in London and I couldn’t make it. Anyway, I would love to see it sometime.

Craig: We should go together.

John: We should.

David: Absolutely.

John: Well today while we have you on the show I would love to talk about adaptations, embargoes, books, the modern blockbuster, which I think you had an outsized role in helping to shape. But we also have some listener questions which are just for you because I tweeted out that you were going to be on the show. And so people wrote in with specific questions for you to answer on this podcast.

David: Great. Can I set that I always like – when I listen to a podcast I like to have a visual of what’s going on. So just in terms of what we’re wearing.

John: Absolutely.

David: I’m in a lightweight, dark blue, worsted, you know, suitable to the environment, but mindful of the calendar.

Craig: Sure.

David: John is in a t-shirt. Looks like it says, “It’s wine o’clock somewhere.” Craig is shirtless, which is cool.

Craig: And also worsted.

John: Craig is wearing an ascot. I think it’s important that people get the full visual.

David: Obviously that was a bit of material I worked on. Now everything else will be spontaneous.

Craig: No, this is nice. And we’re on the beach. Let’s go.

John: So I would love to start with the thing that I mentioned your name most in relation to is when people talk about adaptations and they talk about how difficult it is to take all the information that is in a book and put it in a visual form so that that author who could just directly tell you a bunch of a stuff as a screenwriter you have to find a way to show a bunch of stuff. And I always single out a moment in the first Jurassic Park where the audience and the people who just arrived on the island have to understand what it is that’s being done on the island and sort of how DNA processing works.

So I imagine in Michael Crichton’s book, which I read a zillion years ago, it’s probably 20 pages worth of material, going back all through this. In the film that you wrote it is an animated sequence which they are watching in a little exploratory–

Craig: In a theme park style goofy tone.

John: And so we’re watching the actors watch this little thing. Can I play a clip of what – this scene?

David: Please.

Craig: Think he’ll get money for this.

[Clip plays]

David: Kind of sounded like they’re taking a dump there in that last part. That’s a long time that it can directly download exposition into the audience’s head.

Craig: Today they would say to you, “OK that’s great. Now do it in one-third as much time, or maybe a quarter of as much time.” I feel like they wouldn’t let you go on that long today.

David: No. It would be problematic. It was a real gift that it was a theme park. And so we were wrestling all this exposition stuff to the ground and how do you have five or six scientists standing around talking to each other for so long and make it interesting. And we had two great advantages. One was Jeff Goldblum who is so charming and has such offbeat line readings that, you know, he can read stereo instructions and they sound witty and unusual. And the other was that it was a theme park. So I would love to say Mr. DNA was entirely my idea but it wasn’t. Steven said, “They’re in a theme park. Can’t there be a little movie?”

And one of us said, well, what’s there supposed to be like an animated guy, like Mr. DNA?

Craig: Yes!

John: Exactly that.

David: Mr. DNA.

Craig: Yes!

David: So it was kind of lifted from, I don’t know if you saw this in your seventh grade health class in middle school, but Hemo the Magnificent was about your blood. And it was a live action movie but it had an animated character in it, Hemo, and he would tell you all about blood. And I remember he had an accent for some reason.

Craig: They always would.

David: Because you have to throw in a little fun. It’s animation.

Craig: I’m in your body.

David: So they were there and they were getting the tour, well then you can have the little movie on the tour. And the idea of going into full frame animation in the middle of this great big summer movie kind of tickled us and was really fun. So we had these built in advantages in a great performer in a flexible premise that let us get away with a lot of that.

John: Well what was so clever about it is that usually the problem you run into is that there’s information that you need the audience to understand but some of the characters in that scene would already know the information. So the Sam Neil character would already have that information, so it does not make any sense to tell it to him. But the fact that it’s already a pre-filmed piece of animation.

David: And the scientists are beyond it. They want to go – they keep saying, OK, OK, they’re trying to get out of the little ride thing so they can go to where it’s more interesting. Because we know this and this is for nine year olds. But we’re like, yeah, but we want to sell tickets to nine year olds.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I would argue that the real gift you had may have been more that there were kids there. Because somebody needs to explain this to kids. And when it comes to science the audience is probably not that far off from kids in the sense of well a lot of people don’t know what DNA is or how it functions. And they certainly don’t understand how you brought dinosaurs back to life. But if you have two kids, whether it’s a theme park movie or just somebody sitting down and going, OK, let me just draw in the sand with a stick.

Characters that don’t know things are the most beneficial for writers who need the audience to know things. Otherwise you end up with the terrible, “As you know…”

David: Exactly. How long have we been brothers? It’s why journalists and detectives are so great. Because they fundamentally have to find something out. So, asking questions doesn’t seem like it’s morally safer. You know, it seems like they’re working toward a discernible goal.

John: What happens at the end of this clip is that we do see Sam Neil and Goldblum and everyone are trying to push to get beyond just the information that was in this little thing. And that’s the other crucial thing about an information dump is like if there’s no conflict, if there’s no drive, if the characters don’t want anything in it it’s going to feel flat. So, we get to see the characters respond to that information by trying to push past. You’re still keeping the scene alive even as this information is coming at us.

David: Yes. Also the animation format let us jump to the really apropos visuals. We didn’t see it, we just heard the audio, but when they’re explaining how the mosquito is trapped in amber there’s one really great visual of a mosquito on a branch and amber oozing over it and the mosquito getting trapped. And you really understand in that image, because images always express it so much better than words.

John: So talk us through the process of adapting Jurassic Park into the screenplay. At what point did it come to you and at what point did you have to figure out these are the beats of the movie. This is how the movie wants to tell itself. What was the process for you in getting the book and then being able to report back like this is how I can make the movie version of this?

David: So I was at Universal and they still used to do overall deals then. So they had been through a couple writers on Jurassic Park and it wasn’t – it was really hard to work out so it wasn’t quite coming together. And they were a little bit running out of time which is always the best time to enter a project if you can.

Craig: Right.

David: If you can work it that way.

Craig: There’s only so much disagreement they can do.

David: Yeah. And so Casey Silver actually suggested me to Steven and said, “Try this guy, he’s on the payroll so he’s super cheap and seems like he’s relatively fast. Why don’t you see what you can get?” So I read it and I thought, wow, this is really difficult. But I had an approach, so I went and met Steven and told him this is what I think. And he said, “Great. Do that.” And so with really very little guidance up front. I mean, a few general – and to this day he’ll give you some general stuff, but he really wants to see what you do. And you go try. I know what I think. Avoid this, avoid that. I’d love to see this. And in that case he had a couple sequences where he said – the T-rex attack on the road basically was already storyboarded and he said, “I don’t know who the people are, but this is what happens in the sequence. See if you can figure it out.”

And so there was, again, built in advantages. But it was winnowing the characters and who needed to be combined. How does the tone of the book, which is pretty dark and not necessarily going to sustain in – it’s not that it was, well, we want a wider audience than that. It was Steven’s viewpoint is more uplifting than that. So if you give him something that’s, you know, this is the guy who found the uplifting tale about the Holocaust. It’s just his world view. So to try to find a lighter tone, preserve a few characters who used to die, and find a different approach for Hammond and stuff like that.

So I just kind of came in and told them what I thought. And then I went and did an outline. And it just kind of went well.

Craig: This is something that you probably thought had a good chance of going well. It’s Steven Spielberg. It’s a bestselling novel.

David: Well you didn’t. That was the thing. Because it was ’92 when we made the movie. So it was the dawn of CG.

Craig: Right.

David: So really the last reference of dinosaurs was still Ray Harryhausen, which is referred to in the movie with the “when dinosaurs ruled the earth” banner that floats down. So everything – stop motion was the last time we’d seen dinosaurs on film I think.

Craig: Or Guys in Suits.

David: The remake of King Kong didn’t do them. Yeah. So the notion that they were going to be realistic was just a leap of faith. And they could have been laughable. And I remember the test – there was going to be a lot more robotic dinosaurs initially. Stan Winston, you know, there’s a ton of robotic stuff in it. Stan Winston did great work but basically if you see them from the head up it’s robotry and if you see their legs it’s CG.

But I remember the day it all changed was this test came back from ILM that was a velociraptor running in place. And it was just the skeleton. There was no musculature, no skin or anything. And we were in the Amblin screening room and watched this test and it was so cool. And the movement was so smooth and not herky-jerky at all that everybody thought, “Oh, this might work. This actually might work.”

Craig: That’s so interesting. So your frame of reference was stop motion which is characterized by its herky-jerkiness because there’s only so many, I mean, you are moving it physically so you can’t make a thousand movements a second. You can make 24 movements a second, which turns out to be pretty herky-jerky, or even fewer.

So it was simply the smoothness of the motion. Before you see textures. Before you see anything. That’s what got you?

David: Yeah. It was.

Craig: Fascinating.

David: And also the only other big CG movie there had been, I may be wrong, but it seems was Terminator 2. But that used really fluid and inhuman stuff.

Craig: Right. It was shiny liquid metal.

David: Right. Which is totally cool, but it wasn’t like trying to create an animal. And dinosaurs were supposed to be real animals, not monsters. There was always a thing, you’d get fined on the set if you’d call them a monster. They’re animals. They’re not monsters.

Yeah, so it was very much a gamble.

Craig: And then on the other side of it coming out, now you’ve got this enormous blockbuster under your belt, a true blockbuster. When it’s time for you to write your next one do you now – I’m just always curious about how success impacts us as writers. Do things change? Do you now feel like, OK, I’m aiming for something now? Or do you just ignore all of it and do your job?

David: It’s really hard to – I feel like I stayed a very decent human being.

Craig: Oh, you are. I don’t mean according to me. I’m not a great judge of character.

David: And I think I’ve done good writing on and off. But it’s very hard. I was 29 when it came out, or just turning 30. And it became the biggest movie of all time. There’s no way that doesn’t just fuck you up. If only in that – can you ever be satisfied again? You know? And I really feel like it took me till my early 50s – I’m 56 now – to where I felt like I’m going to stop feeling like, gosh, you know, sure would be great to have another one of those someday. And I’m going to feel like, well, there will never be another one of those but I’m grateful that I had it. What an extraordinary experience. How lucky am I?

Craig: Right.

David: I feel like it took a very long time. And I did have, you know, I wrote a lot of bigger movies, but a lot of that – a lot of it is because I love those movies. And I had a great time writing them. Usually. Sometimes had a horrific time writing them. But those are the movies that I wanted to go see. And that was always my litmus test was would I want to pay, you know, whatever a ticket costs at the time to sit down and see this movie. Would it make me happy to sneak in a burrito at lunch time and watch this movie?

And I feel like I obeyed that all the time. And with varying degrees of success. Sometimes even if you say that you’re kind of doing it because it feels like well that would be a hit and wouldn’t it be fun to have a hit. But I don’t know, your sincerity gets sniffed out pretty quickly I think by the gods.

John: Well going from a giant blockbuster adaptation to this next movie you’re going to – the movie you directed, I Think You Should Leave, is based on an incredibly slender German novel.

David: It’s actually You Should Have Left.

John: You Should Have Left.

David: It’s much more conclusive. It’s not an expression of opinion.

Craig: That sounds even shorter. That’s so German. You should have left.

David: Really.

John: I’m confusing it with there’s a Netflix show I Think You Should Leave. And You Should Have Left.

David: This is after. And I’ve seen that show. It should leave.

John: Yes. So it’s a tiny paranoid, it’s almost more like a Panic Room situation where it’s a metaphysical kind of haunted house, you know, Borgesian sort of stuck in a place. What draws you to that kind of adaptation after doing these giant, you know, Da Vinci Code kind of adaptations?

David: Well, I’ve always tried – I like all different kinds of movies, so I’ve really tried to mix it up. And I also, you know how it is. If you’re lucky enough to have a success in any area that’s what Hollywood would like you very much to replicate.

Craig: Is that so? [laughs]

David: There’s a lot of unanswered questions from Chernobyl. I really think you could go back to them. I do. There’s at least 10 more episodes in that. What happened between the episodes? There’s 10 more shows in there, easy.

Craig: Oh, between. Everybody just sleeps. Of course. They just sleep. They don’t move. They just sleep.

David: But I, you know, try to throw them off the scent a little bit. Try to keep it fresh for yourself and do things that are interesting and different. I’ve always felt like in my original stuff, and I’ve tried to split my time about 50/50. And I have. It’s just the originals get made less often.

In my original stuff I’m drawn to slightly darker, certainly paranoid kind of things. And it also helped as a writer when it’s not an adaptation by having a very well defined bottle. You know, in Panic Room it was I never wanted to leave the house. And I almost succeeded. There’s a few minutes at the beginning and a scene at the end where they’re outside the house. The Paper is a movie I wrote about journalism with my brother and it was 24 hours. It was exactly what was then the news cycle, from 7am to 7am. And within that structure, once I have the box I feel like now I can decide what goes in it. And I feel actually freed by the constraint. Because when you can just pick from anything—

Craig: It’s overwhelming.

David: Exactly. It’s too difficult. Even Lawrence of Arabia had containment. It was a period of this guy’s life.

So, I feel like I forgot the question.

John: Well going back to You Should Have Left, it has a tremendous amount of constraint because essentially you get to a house and you’re at that house. It’s almost a Blumhouse kind of model where it’s a very–

David: It is a Blumhouse.

John: Oh, it’s literally the Blumhouse model.

David: As a matter of fact, yeah.

Craig: It is the Blumhouse model. Because it’s Blumhouse.

David: It’s a model for Blumhouse.

Craig: Well that’s new for them.

David: But even before they were involved I thought these are going to be the guys for this. That one I really wanted to do, heavily mixed feelings about directing, because it can be great fun and incredibly satisfying when you get something the way you want it. And whether it’s successful or not, it’s the way you want it. But it takes over your life and ruins it.

Craig: Yeah.

David: Just physically, emotionally, socially, domestically awful.

John: It’s been 10 years between my last directing thing largely because of that thing. I just couldn’t, you know, I had a young kid. I just couldn’t go off and do it.

Craig: I’m not. I don’t see any reason to direct. There’s all these wonderful directors out there.

David: It’s dog’s work. It really is.

Craig: That’s what John Lee Hancock calls it. Dog’s work.

David: I think I got it from him via Scott Frank.

Craig: Yeah, that’s probably right. It’s dog’s work. But you keep doing the dog’s work.

David: Yeah, isn’t that weird? I know.

Craig: You’re into it.

David: You should talk to my wife about that.

Craig: I will.

David: No, she’s articulate on the subject. But also resigned. She’s like, “No, I don’t think you should do it. I think it makes you unhappy. We’re fine. We’ll cope. We’ll miss you. But you’re miserable. But good luck, sweetie. I hope it goes well.”

But yeah, You Should Have Left, there were a couple things. Kevin Bacon is a great actor and I saw a potential for something really special for him to do. And he’s done a spectacular job with it. I wanted to do – I like a bottle. And I wanted to do this little family in this weird place and strange things happen to them. He’s not a writer. In the book he was a writer, but I don’t think the world needs anymore movies about writers.

John: He’s literally a screenwriter in the book.

Craig: Oh, that’s terrible.

David: That was the first thing we changed.

Craig: That’s awful.

David: Nobody wants to see a movie about us.

Craig: Nobody.

David: Unless you guys are writing one, in which case.

Craig: If we are we should stop.

David: I implore you to stop. And the last movie I directed before that was this kind of catastrophe in every way, shape, and form.

Craig: Which I liked.

David: And I couldn’t leave it like that. There are many likeable things in it and I thank you for that.

Craig: No problem. It’s really funny.

David: There are bits that are funny. But it’s inarguable that critically, commercially, and personally—

Craig: Oh yeah. Absolute disaster.

David: It was horrible. [laughs]

John: This was Mortdecai.

David: But I didn’t want to leave it at that. I felt like well I don’t want to ever direct again, but I certainly don’t want to leave it at that.

Craig: I can’t go out that way.

David: Yeah, right.

Craig: So you’re literally making a movie just to say—

David: No, because I liked the subject matter a lot and I love Kevin and I felt like he could do something special.

Craig: Good. And?

David: And I could cleanse the palate in what’s worse the hard way. Just one more man. Just one more. Just one more.

Craig: I have, well you know what I like about you?

David: Hmm?

Craig: So much. And, you know, full disclosure we’ve been friends for a while, so this is genuine. But aside from being a terrific writer who has this remarkable track record and really does deserve what John said at the beginning. You are one of our legends. You take huge swings. It’s not like you’ve sat on your laurels. You’re not one of those guys who said, “OK, well you know what? I’m going to make these two huge movies and now I’ll just show up every six years to sprinkle my magic fairy dust on something that was already going to be beloved anyway.” You take big swings. You’re always risking things to get out there. And whether it works or it doesn’t work commercially or critically or any of that stuff, I think that’s wonderful.

I think there are so many people who are so petrified of violating whatever it is, their own brand. I mean, when people say the word brand I lose my shit. Because it’s essentially the antithesis of what we’re supposed to be doing as writers or artists which is being genuine. And that should mean taking swings. So I just think that’s wonderful that you do it and that you’re still doing it.

David: I’m trying. You know, I admire Steven Soderbergh’s career a lot. And he’s a great guy. You know, he really takes a cut at stuff. Sometimes, you know, he hits that one. And other times you’re like, whoa.

Craig: That’s what a big swing is.

David: Exactly.

Craig: I mean, when you swing hard and you fall down everyone laughs.

David: I was a bit surprised as long as we brought up the M word, this movie I directed recently, I was a bit surprised not that it got bad reviews, because certainly by the time it comes to reviews you’ve shown it to enough audiences and enough people and you’re getting a sense that the reaction is less than enthusiastic.

Craig: You’ve caught trouble in the air.

David: But the anger does surprise you. Because I felt we didn’t hurt anyone. And it was by no means a safe choice. We were trying to make like a 1966 comedy like Terry Thomas would have made.

Craig: I’m so with you.

David: That’s gutsy.

Craig: I thought people just – at least, look, people, I can’t blame people for liking or not liking things. But I thought at least critically this pile on and this kind of orgy of delightful hatred completely missed the point of what you’re just saying, which is, you know, they will say, “Oh, well here comes another super hero movie, blah, blah, blah.” Well, OK, here’s someone taking a shot. If you think it doesn’t work, explain it. But you’re right. When was the last time a movie studio released a Terry Thomas style comedy which is sort of in and of its time, but out of its own time. And there’s slapstick. And the most bizarre stuff. And an entire plot line about a mustache. It’s just wonderful. I thought, I don’t know, listen, a lot of people think that my taste in movies is terrible because of so many of them that I’ve written.

I don’t care.

David: It’s also a thing about comedy, though. If a horror movie doesn’t work out they’ll say, well, that wasn’t that scary. If a drama doesn’t work out they’ll say, well—

John: They didn’t care.

David: Yeah, I didn’t like the guy.

Craig: “Didn’t love it,” is what they say.

David: Yeah, I didn’t love it.

Craig: I didn’t love it.

John: I won’t say that anymore.

David: Comedy comes out they say, “That was horrible. That was a terrible set.”

Craig: How dare they?

David: Exactly. Those assholes. You’ve really angered people.

Craig: Yeah, no, comedy is the hardest. It’s the most punishing. And even in great success people are like, oh, yeah, that was funny. You know what I mean? They don’t give you the Oscar. It’s, yeah. Yeah. Well, see. I’m grouching.

John: Talking about swings and doing different stuff, this is your first book.

David: This is really fun. I can write about stuff that will never see the screen. I can write what someone is thinking or feeling, which as you know there’s no way to access it other than their faces or their dialogue. And I just started having a lot of fun. So within about three pages I thought, OK, it’s a – then I began the lying the process. I said – because I didn’t want to face how much work it would be to write a book. And so I said, well, it’s probably a short story. And so by page 25 I was like it’s not a short story. It’s a novella. Yeah.

So I got to page 100 and my friend John Kamps said, “You must admit it’s a book.” Because I could digress. I could go into three – when I was in high school I worked at a McDonald’s for a couple of years. So there’s a character in the book, he’s not even one of the main characters, and he’s the manager of this storage place. And he’s a jerk. And I got to go three pages into where he used to work before he came to the storage place and talk about life working at McDonald’s, which I thought was fascinating. And it was to me anyway.

And, no, the book is not 600 pages. I mean, 30 years of screenwriting impulses came to bear. Exactly. But especially because the book was going to have a lot of science I had this incredible freedom to explore and expound and I like to learn stuff that I didn’t know before. And I like science that is somewhat accessible and compellingly told. When you come across somebody like Brian Greene or somebody like that who is just a really good science explainer. They’re fascinating. They’re like the teachers whose classes you loved the most. You know, there’s a reason like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson and the really good explainers are popular.

Craig: Yes.

David: So I wanted to be able to – also I think science can be very funny because the natural world is really brutal. It’s just mean and nasty.

John: It doesn’t care about you.

Craig: No, no, good lord no.

David: No.

John: So, as you’re writing this as a novel, you’ve accepted that you’re writing this as a novel, some part of your brain must also be thinking like, Ok, well this could also be a movie. I mean, it’s a movie style premise. And so how are you balancing the David Koepp novelist versus David Koepp screenwriter who is going to have to adapt this? Did you try to balance that all in your head?

David: It’s hard. You and I talked about it a little bit from your books and your experiences with it. And you really have to actively squelch that part. Because the screenwriter part of you, the first thing I do when I’m adapting a book is I do scene cards for the whole book and I lay the structure out and look at it on a table and figure out how that happened. And then I start just – obviously we’re not going to have the scene where they go visit her daughter. That’s useless. And chuck out a bunch of stuff.

But the scene where they go visit her daughter may be the whole reason somebody wrote that book. It just doesn’t fit in a movie. So, I really tried to tell the screenwriter part of myself to shut up because they wouldn’t let me do the three pages on McDonald’s. And it’s not in the screenplay, which it’s a first draft of.

Craig: Oh, so you are doing the screenplay of this?

David: I did, yes.

Craig: Oh, you already did?

David: Or I am. It depends who you ask. I feel I’m nearly done.

Craig: Oh, and they do not?

David: We’ll see. Opinions vary.

John: So it’s a fascinating that a person with 30 credits and a giant career still gets that sense from a studio of like, oh no, this isn’t really the draft.

Craig: Not just 30 credits.

John: 30 giant.

Craig: Let’s just list some of them again. By the way, that’s the studio that is being held aloft by Mission: Impossible which was started by David Koepp. And they’re sort of like, “Uh, we don’t know if you’re done yet.” I kind of love that.

David: Everybody’s got thoughts, you know.

Craig: Everybody’s got thoughts.

David: That’s the thing, though. In a book–

Craig: No one has thoughts.

David: They don’t have their thoughts.

John: No, absolutely.

David: And your editor, Zach Wagman who is the editor of this, I was just stunned – it was the first time in 30 years someone had spoken to me about the writing as if they viewed it as essentially mine instead of essentially theirs.

Craig: It’s a lovely thing. That is a lovely thing.

John: So let’s talk about that. So we physically have a copy here sitting on the table, and what is so different about writing a book versus writing a screenplay is that this book is finished. Like you cannot go back and change stuff in it. It is actually done and the Cold Storage that you intended to write is that book. And it is just done and finished. In a way is it liberating now that you’re going to the screenplay knowing that you can make different choices and it doesn’t go back and change the original document?

Because so often when I’m approached to do an adaptation I’ll talk with the author and I’ll sit down with them and say like, “Listen, you wrote a fantastic book. I will not change anything in your book. But I will change some things in the movie because it’s a movie and just works under different things.” In some ways—

David: Some of them will appreciate that, and some of them—

John: And I’ve had both situations. And some really rough situations.

David: Have you ever forged a working relationship with the author of a book?

John: Yes. Daniel Wallace who wrote Big Fish. I sat down with him and he had never read a screenplay before until I showed him the screenplay for Big Fish. We talked about sort of all the stuff that’s sort of off stage in the book that he wrote. And he loved it. He became a screenwriter. And he’s still an active part of every version of Big Fish. And he’s in the movie Big Fish. So he’s deeply involved in it.

But something like Jurassic Park, were you talking with Crichton about stuff?

David: No. Almost always everything goes through the director and it’s better that way. The only time I ever really needed the author of the book and he was great was Edwin Torres who wrote the books that Carlito’s Way was based on. And I needed him because I could adapt the books but it was Spanish Harlem in the mid ‘70s. Not my background. It was his life story. Everybody in that book is somebody he knew. And I just – I needed to be able to talk to him. And he was great and loquacious. It helped that he wasn’t only a novelist. He was a New York State Supreme Court judge. So he viewed novel writing as novel. And he viewed a movie from one of his books as just like the greatest party of all time. So he was excited about it.

Craig: He had a day job so—

David: Yeah. He’d go to court. I ran into him in New York the other day. And he was colorful when I – this was 25 years ago and he was probably in his mid-50s. So now he’s probably closer to 80 and he’s just let his colorful flag fly.

Craig: I love it.

David: I said, “Judge Torres is that you?” He said, “You bet it is.”

Craig: What a cool guy.

John: Now, David, you brought up Carlito’s Way and I think that was the first screenplay of yours I ever read. So I was working as an intern at Universal when you guys were making Carlito’s Way. So I got to read the script for Carlito’s Way.

David: On paper probably.

John: On paper. With brads in it. The whole thing.

Craig: And the words Carlito’s Way written in Sharpie on the outside.

John: Yes. That whole process that young people will never understand. How you had to slam the script on the edge, and hold it down. You brought in the Sharpie so you could stack them or put them on the shelf.

Craig: Stack them in the shelf.

John: I remember reading that and as opposed to the James Cameron scripts I was reading at the same time, you wrote a really dense page. There was a lot happening. Those were dense pages. Over your long career have you seen the form of screenwriting change at all or at least the form of screenplays change at all? I feel like we are much lighter and airier now than when I started. I’m wondering if you’ve noticed any differences over the years.

David: Yeah. I try not to be as dense as that. Sometimes, I don’t often have a reason to go back and look at my old stuff, but like if I’m moving boxes around or something I’ll say, oh yeah, look at that. And I open it and then I think, wow, I used way fewer double dashes and spaces and I wrote whole sentences. This is pretty good. I had a decent attention span back then.

I don’t know if maybe it’s fatuous that all of our attention spans have changed and we want to assimilate information faster. But also that particular story was – it was ruminative. Because it was a guy’s memory in the last minute or two before he dies. I’ve ruined the ending.

Craig: He dies.

David: Yeah. So, it kind of seemed to suit it. And I had a wealth of literary material to draw on. But, yeah, I think things are a little more spare than they used to be. I think there’s no excuse though for not having good sentences. You know, even if they’re terse and Hemingway-esque sentences. Ideally they would be that. But you can’t write a semi-literate screenplay. You can’t use sentence fragments. You can’t – I feel – you can’t say, “He comes in the room. Sits. Looks around. Something’s not right.” Something’s not right is not bad because it has a noun and a verb.

Craig: Something’s not right has a, yeah, there is a certain kind of – you can trip over into a sort of laziness. But also a kind of lack of intention. I mean, John and I talk about this all the time. If you’re going to write things in sort of a short staccato then maybe it’s because the character is a short and staccato kind of person, or the situation is one that it requires fast thinking.

David: Or ideally you could vary your rhythms.

John: Of course.

Craig: That would be nice.

David: There are fuller paragraphs when the movie slows down a little bit.

Craig: Sounds like you’re thinking about things is what you’re doing and you’re being a writer. And I don’t know. If I were teaching a class on screenwriting at Stark for instance I would want to teach a class just on the stuff that isn’t dialogue. Because I actually think so much can happen there. So much more than people understand. And for fucking fear of “don’t direct on the page” everyone it seems like there is a generation of screenwriters that have abdicated responsibility.

David: Yeah. I hate that. The thing that drives me the craziest is when someone comes out and says, “There’s a spirited chase,” or a big set piece to go here. I’m like who is going to design it? This is your shot.

Craig: It’s also your job.

David: And you know what? Even if they throw the whole thing out and do their own, it’s still your job.

Craig: It’s still your job.

David: If it’s a four-minute chase you better cover about four pages to give us simulation of the rhythm of the thing.

Craig: Correct. And something surely is happening in this chase that’s relevant to character or–

John: And if there’s not then there really is a fundamental problem.

Craig: Then it’s just a fucking chase.

David: These fucking people.

Craig: I mean, you know what, let’s be as old as cranky as we can possibly be. Let’s go maximum crank.

David: But you also – you can direct on the page. You just can’t use the word “camera.”

Craig: You don’t have to. [laughs]

David: Or anything like that. I hate to keep referring to the early ‘90s, but I don’t know, it was a nice period. One of the early lessons I learned about writing for a director was Zemeckis in Death Becomes Her said, there’s a moment Meryl Streep’s character is teetering at the top of the stars. And then he pushes her down with like a finger. And when we wrote the script I put, “For a moment she just hangs there like Wile E. Coyote off the edge of the cliff.” And he said that told me more about the style of the movie than anything. Because it was sort of heightened Chuck Jones reality.

Craig: Exactly. Exactly. Tone.

David: It’s only a few words. It doesn’t take forever. And it doesn’t refer to any specific shot. It refers to a feeling.

Craig: Direction. Ugh.

John: The sense of what’s supposed to be there. We’ve got some questions that are specific to you, so can we ask you some questions?

David: Please.

John: All right.

Craig: Why are you such a legend? [laughs]

John: I would love to know how David’s approach to action sequences has changed across films like Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, and Indy.

David: I don’t think it really has changed that much. I think you have to fully imagine the sequence. I mean, all those are different situations. So, it depends on the director. Like Mission: Impossible I worked out those set pieces De Palma specifically beforehand. The last Indiana Jones movie it depends. Sometimes Steven would tell me something or we’d work it out together. Other times he’d say, “Well take a crack at it.” And I’d take a crack at it first.
I think that – as we were just saying – it’s always a writer’s responsibility to do it first.
I would beware of dense paragraphs in an action sequence because you’re supposed to have a sense that the movie is moving faster. Because it has to be a reading experience first let the eye move quickly across the page. But I think I’ve preserved the same approach to action sequences, or suspense, which is that you have to take them really seriously and allow yourself – there’s a big set piece in the middle of the movie, say, OK, well that’s three day’s work. Take it seriously and don’t just dash it off. And certainly don’t abdicate. You know, make it as exciting as you would want it to be in the movie.

John: I always describe action sequences as being the musical numbers in an action. So it’s like you may have stopped the characters talking but you’ve moved into a higher register. And you’re communicating this thing, but it’s still just as important as all the dialogue that happened before it. So it has to feel like there’s a reason why we’re doing this big production number here. And we’re going to come out of it with a new place, with characters having gotten someplace new. And otherwise it’s just a bunch of–

Craig: It’s just stuff.

John: It’s just stuff.

Craig: Which is probably why some writers abdicate because if you think about your analogy, when people sing in a movie musical perhaps the writer is concerned that they don’t know what’s supposed to happen other than the singing. And similarly if there’s a chase, like what’s supposed to happen other than [makes car noises].

But environment becomes an enormous thing. How you’re interacting with the environment. What choices can you be making on screen that are not specifically about turning the wheel to the left or the right? What’s changing so that you’re not just driving or just singing?

It’s hard work. Those are the hardest things to write. I mean, well, they’re really arduous to write I find. You know, because there’s so many more decisions that are happening per page in those sequences then a conversation which maybe there are a lot of decisions but they come a bit – I’m a bit more – I find those more accessible.

David: I actually find in – because my outline will be 3×5 cards on the coffee table. And there may only be one card for the sequence. But then when I get to the sequence I get out a legal pad and I just put down all my ideas for the sequence with dashes. And that’ll be three or four pages. Then I go back through and number them because the order may be very different from – you know, you have moments in your mind that you think belong there.

And you know generally at the beginning they’re breaking into the bank and at the end they’re driving away in the car. But in between that are all your action-y moments.

The other thing to consider is consider carefully can you cut that sequence and the story still tells? Because you have a big problem if so.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Totally.

David: And it’s the same with a song I would imagine. If you can cut it completely – I was watching them film a little West Side Story the other day and they were doing America, which is so beautiful and cool and fantastic. But what I hadn’t noticed but saw this time is it plays like an argument or fight scene. They have very different–

Craig: It’s a debate.

David: Yeah, it’s a debate.

Craig: This place sucks. No, this place is great.

David: The story can’t be told without it. And those characters can’t be fully understand without it.

Craig: It’s illuminating who they are, what their point of view is, where they come from. All that is necessary.

John: One of the reasons why action sequences can be so exhausting to write, and so challenging to write for screenwriters, is that there’s a tremendous amount of crosscutting. You’re generally going between multiple points of view. And so making that look efficient on the page is really tough. So, things that could be like 60 cuts in the actual cut film, you can’t be jumping back and forth so much. So you need to get the sense that you are seeing all these different points of view without–

Craig: That’s a great point.

David: And you also have to have those great little bridging phrases like, “Back with Craig. Things haven’t gotten any better.”

Craig: “Runs into a…” I find that every time I write INT or EXT I feel like I need a break. Honestly. I feel like I need a break. So, in sequences where you are shifting back and forth, I feel like I need a lot of breaks. There’s something about writing a good old scene where two people are chatting in a café–

John: I love it.

Craig: Where you get to write INT and then just live in there in that place and have them do their thing. But my god, every time you EXT, INT, blah, EXT. I’m exhausted.

John: Tim asks, “My question for Mr. Koepp is when working with directors who are not necessarily writers like David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, or Sam Rami, what is the process of writing and revising based on the notes they provide?”

So, I guess you’ve probably worked with more directors than nearly any screenwriter out there. What are the different ways you see in interacting with a director? So even if you’re not talking about a specific director, what is the range of sort of how you work with them? Because I’ve had every different interaction with a director.

David: A director who does write is usually harder to work with than a director who doesn’t. A director who doesn’t usually has a healthy amount of respect for it and is grateful that you’re doing that. A director who writes themselves – and they try hard. Even when they’re good people, like Curtis Hanson was great. And who else did I work with that writes? I can’t remember. But they do it. And they kind of wish you’d shove over and just let them do it. And sometimes that is the reality and they do shove you over and do it themselves. So they’re a little tougher.

But my relationship with the directors have been 90% really good. The ones that are bad, or, you know, unpleasant tend to end fairly quickly, either by me or by them. But I do after about the third draft of a script I do say a little goodbye to my script.

Craig: Sure.

David: Because that’s the way it is. And sometimes in the very – the way New York crews do, or actually New York deli guys also – I call the director “boss” in part to remind myself, because they are. And they want a collaborator and they deserve a collaborator, but they are the boss. And you better not try – you’re better served – your material is better served if you don’t try to talk them into something, because if they do it they’ll do it poorly because they don’t see it.

Craig: Right.

David: And if they don’t see it it’s just much better for them not to do it. And you’re also – you can talk them out of some stuff, but if it keeps coming back, and back, and back you better do your best with it, because it’s going to be in the movie. Either you wrote it, or somebody else did, or they just made it up on the day.

Craig: Have you thought about television, David Koepp?

David: I’m told it’s different.

Craig: Wow.

David: Yeah, but you got to keep doing it.

John: No.

Craig: No, you actually don’t.

John: You can just do five and walk away.

Craig: You can do five hours and that’s it. It’s amazing. You can do two hours from what I understand. It’s quite remarkable.

David: Yeah, I hear it’s better.

Craig: It’s something else man. Yeah. Everyone calls you boss. [laughs] It’s pretty nice. I know. You see? He just got a faraway look in his eyes.

David: But I do like working with directors and when it goes well there’s nothing like it, because you come up with something neither of you could have done on your own. And when the conflicts are too great it usually does end quickly.

And getting fired, you know, it’s kind of the greatest thing that can happen to you. It’s awful. And you get very upset. But you get to be righteous.

John: Absolutely.

David: You get to be totally self-righteous. You’re suddenly free. They usually pay you anyway. And sometimes they come back. And you say, “Well, let’s just see about that.”

Craig: [Crosstalk]. You two guys are not Jewish, because there’s no like – when you’re Jewish and you get fired you’re not righteous. You’re like, “Yeah…” [laughs]

David: I had it coming.

Craig: Pretty much.

David: I get it. I got fired from something once. And I heard it from my agent, because they had hired someone else. I was waiting for notes and they’d hired someone else.

Craig: God, that’s a terrible way to find out.

David: It’s awful. So I called the studio executive who I was close with. And I said, “You know, what are you guys doing? You hired so and so.” And he sighs heavily and says, “Dave, this is a really tough phone call for me to make.” And I said–

Craig: You didn’t make it!

David: Exactly. I called you! I heard it in the gutter.

Craig: This is a really tough phone call for me to get.

David: That’s beside the point. All right. But see, self-righteous. I get to be self-righteous.

Craig: Self-righteous. Where I would have apologize and said, “I know. I’m sorry.”

David: I’m sorry I made you hire that guy.

Craig: I’m so sorry. I’ve made you uncomfortable by dying in front of you. [laughs]

John: Not just self-righteous, there is a quality to like I know the movie that I wrote and the movie that I saw in my head and you’re never going to make that movie. And so I know that the movie that I was going to make is going to be better than the movie that you made. There’s that comparison, too.

Craig: God, I wish I were you guys. How do I get this? Is there a food I eat? Is there a drink?

David: But there’s other times, though, where you really are the horse staggering through the desert. Just waiting to be shot. Thank god, what took you guys so long?

Craig: Yes. I will say that’s – my new jam is I’m desperate to be fired and it doesn’t happen anymore. It’s sort of really bad. It’s been a while. And I’m not saying that to humblebrag. I’m saying it like it kind of sucks because there are times when I’ve been on things and I just think well some – I feel like the guy – it’s the only thing I truly love from Waterworld. I don’t know if you remember this. On the boat, so there’s that big oil tanker that Dennis Hopper, he’s the villain, he’s in charge of. And there’s this old wretched man in the darkness inside who is like, I don’t know, shoveling oil or something. And in the climax someone throws a cigarette down there which is going to ignite everything and blow him up. And he looks up and goes, “Oh thank god.” And it’s exactly – like he waited for somebody to do this. Please let me go and it won’t happen. That’s actually worse than being fired.

David: It’s the great moment in Kingpin when Woody Harrelson comes out of his trailer park and there’s this guy sitting in a folding chair, smoking a cigarette with an oxygen tank, and he says like, “Hey Bob, how’s it going?” And Bob says – or he says, “Hey Bob, how’s life?” And Bob says, “Taking forever.”

Craig: That’s basically it. I mean, why won’t you kill me? Please kill me. And they never do.

John: This past week a couple people tweeted at me a story, an article by Alex Billington. He is a reviewer. He’s writing how at the Venice Film Festival, we also just got through the Toronto Film Festival, audiences are seeing movies and the critics are sometimes being held to embargoes so they cannot write about the movie, they cannot review the movie at the time. So we are not film festival goers. We are not reviewers. But I want to talk a little bit about embargoes because it’s a thing I think people outside of the industry may not be aware of is that sometimes reviewers are seeing movies way in advance and they are sort of prohibited from writing about the movie until the embargo drops and they can suddenly write about the movie.

We’ve all had movies that have probably been under embargo and then the embargo is lifted. How are we feeling about embargoes, or that sense of like when it’s OK to talk about a movie and when it’s not OK to talk about a movie that has not come out yet?

David: I think once it’s done if you show it in a public forum you can get reviewed. I think, remember when [unintelligible] showed up and it was horribly destructive. You know, you’re trying to work out your filthy business in private.

John: And they’d review test screenings.

David: And it’s really destructive because sometimes you’re having a test screening to confirm that the ending doesn’t work.

Craig: Yes. Correct.

David: Before you go make a new one.

Craig: Sometimes you’re having a test screening because the studio insists on this terrible version of your ending.

David: And you’re like well I’ll show you this doesn’t work. I’ll put it in front of an audience.

Craig: It’s the same thing with these people who review scripts. I mean, I agree with David. Once you show it to an audience – I mean, the point of an embargo is we’re going to make a deal with you. We’ll give you exclusive access. In return you agree to not talk about until the day we want you to. And now it’s your choice as a reviewer or an outlet to agree or not agree to those terms. But once they’ve shown it to people it does seem bizarre.

Although I will say Walter Chaw who is a very smart guy and a film critic had this really great idea that he tweeted about which will never happen but I loved it. He said, “The real embargo should be that no critics are allowed to post their reviews of movies until one week after it has come out in theaters.” Because at that point they’re no longer trying to review or influence or crap on or anything. They’re actually – they can do the job of film criticism which is to analyze and think about and thoughtfully talk about. And I thought oh my god what a wonderful utopic notion that is that will never, ever, ever happen.

David: We’re endosymbiont.

John: I don’t know what that means.

Craig: Oh nice.

David: One creature that lives inside or with another to their mutual benefit.

Craig: Like Quato.

John: That also feels like that could be part of Cold Storage.

David: Well it actually is. My novel Cold Storage, available now.

John: I love it that you’re bringing it back to plugging your book.

David: Well I learned all this science.

Craig: Yeah, use it.

David: I’m not going to just throw it away.

Craig: Pepper it into every discussion.

David: But, you know, we need critics. We need people to know about our movie. Ideally they’ll say nice things about it. And they need our stuff so they’ve got something to write about. But I think reviewing anything you’ve got by, you know, unscrupulous means or unauthorized means, of course that’s off the table. Anything that’s not done. I think if you show a work in progress at Cannes you can announce this is a work in progress and it should not be reviewed. And that’s fine. That’s a decent set of rules.

But if you have a finished film and you take it to Venice or Toronto and you’re showing it to people with the purpose of exposing it, but you’re showing it to the world, it’s too late.

Craig: It’s out. It’s done.

David: Yeah. You can’t control that anymore.

Craig: I agree. It’s not like in Broadway they’ll have runs, but then there’s the official opening.

David: And everybody understands.

Craig: And everybody understands. And Ben Brantley doesn’t show up until official opening night, or I guess the night before, or a week before so he has time to write his review that either destroys you or lifts you up.

John: Been there.

Craig: But the whole point is that the show is and can be changing throughout that time period. So it makes sense that you’re showing it to the public. But you’re saying, “But we’re still moving pieces around.” A movie is a movie. It’s done. I mean, by the time you’re showing it at – you’re not going to recut something after Venice, right?

David: Well…

John: Sometimes it happens, but yeah.

Craig: Oh really? OK. Well. I don’t know anything about film festivals. That’s obvious.

John: So here’s a modest proposal. So let’s say you see a film early and it is embargoed or for whatever reason you cannot talk about it. But of course you’ve seen this thing and you want to say like, “I saw this and this is my opinion on it,” if you wait until everyone can say that, you’re just like one extra opinion on that. But you want to say like, “No, no, I saw this first. This was my opinion when I saw it.” What you could do is write that up, encrypt it, and publicly post it and then on the day the embargo lifts like post the password to see what you wrote back then.

It’s a way of deep-freezing your reviews so that–

Craig: You could. That’s presuming that I care—

David: That you value that.

Craig: That those people had that opinion first.

John: Yeah. But people always want to be first.

Craig: They want to be first. Yes. They want to be first. I don’t care who is first.

John: I don’t know. See if other people think that is a good idea. It’s probably not a good idea, but it’s something that occurs to me.

Craig: I mean, you can do these things where you can – well, I guess you can password protect it and then on the day you can just say here’s the password to my review.

John: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.

Craig: You could do that. Which I guess that makes sense.

John: Because you can definitively say like, no, this really was my opinion. I’m not changing my opinion based on–

Craig: Because suddenly other people like it, or, right. OK, then I’m on board. I’m on board with your idea.

John: So we’ll build an app for that.

Craig: Yep.

John: It has come time for our One Cool Things. Craig Mazin, do you want to start us off with a One Cool Thing?

Craig: Yeah. So you know I’m old school. I like email. The kids don’t like email.

John: No, I don’t like email.

Craig: You know, my children don’t use it at all. When I look at their email it’s just spam. It’s all spam. Because they go to stupid sites and they do sign up for things and then it’s just spam. It’s useless. But I’m still an emailer. And I’m always looking for the best email client. The mail.app that comes with Mac, I don’t really love it at all. I’ve been using Airmail for a long time. But I’ve switched over again, this time to Spark. Which has been around for a while. It wasn’t quite like ready for prime time for a while. But now it’s pretty great. They’ve got it down to a really nice science. It looks good.

It organizes your inbox in an interesting way. So, there’s new stuff and then if you read it it goes to Seen Stuff. So your inbox has new and seen, it doesn’t just like leave it in its spot, which is kind of cool. It also has little icons to indicate if it’s like a regular email from somebody you know, or a notification email, or a spammy kind of thing.

So, Spark, I don’t know how much it costs. How much does it cost, John August?

John: I’m looking it up right now. So free for 5GB for a team. Then it goes up to $6 a month, $7 a month.

Craig: So if you’re just a single person I think it’s free. Yeah, so there you go. For the exciting cost of free you too can have Spark. And obviously it’s cross platform. It works on Mac OS and iOS. That’s what I call cross platform. I don’t care about other ones.

John: So, Craig, is this one of those services that is downloading your email to their servers and then sending it back to you?

Craig: Great question, John. I don’t know. I don’t think so?

John: Because that’s one of the concerns with some of these things is that they are potentially privacy nightmares because they’re able to do a bunch of stuff, that processing, because they’re actually intercepting the mail before it gets to your service.

Craig: Well why don’t you look on their thing and tell me, because if it’s doing that then maybe I should stop using it.

David: I can take back what I just said.

John: And a private team, comments, shared drafts. It feels like it’s one of those things, but–

Craig: Really.

John: We’ll look into it. Next week we’ll get back to you.

Craig: Yeah, look into it. Yeah, I don’t want to do something wrong. I mean, I do. [laughs] I’ve got to be honest. I do. But I don’t want this—

David: The horse is out of the barn. Everybody has got everything.

Craig: Everyone has got everything.

David: Cover your camera. That’s about it.

Craig: By the way, do you do that? You don’t do that. I always feel that’s dumb to put the little Post-it over your camera?

David: I don’t know. Sometimes I feel paranoid and I do.

John: Yeah. I mean, I feel like the Macintosh has pretty good lockouts, like hardware lockouts. But they can – people can override stuff.

Craig: If they can override it they can probably shoot a laser right through that Post-it.

John: That’s what they’re going to do.

Craig: Yeah, or just assassinate.

David: Do you remember Chat Roulette?

Craig: Oh my god.

John: I do remember Chat Roulette. Chat Roulette is still in existence I think.

David: It was for about 48 hours Chat Roulette seemed like, oh this is terrific. This is the dawn of the Internet stuff. And then, you know, my sons who were like 12 and 10 at the time, within 48 hours it was all dicks all the time. There was no…

Craig: Dicks really have taken over the Internet. All new technology, it used to be porn. Now it’s just dicks. Terrible.

David: My Cool Thing, you guys I would imagine know about it already. Many people may know about it already. But it bears repeating because it changes my writing life. Which is the Freedom App. I love to use it.

Craig: Yes. I believe it’s been one of our One Cool Things at some point.

David: Oh, darn it.

John: No, no.

Craig: No, no, it’s great that you. Tell them, because it’s been a while.

David: Let me explain.

Craig: We’ve been doing this for a long time, so years have gone by. People have been born while we’ve been doing this.

David: All right. Let me explain. As we all know the Internet has ruined everything. Well, the political process and human interaction.

Craig: Other than that.

David: Exactly.

Craig: But it’s much easier to buy a book.

David: Oh yeah.

Craig: Way easier.

David: So, you know, like anyone I’m tempted by it. There’s tons to see and tons to do. Like, you know, so you can be writing and things are going OK for about four minutes. And then you realize, holy shit, I’ve got to click on the Guardian to check on Brexit, which is my – I’m crushed by the way because Brexit has been this fantastic TV show that has built to a climax.

Last night as we record this, Parliament was prorogued.

Craig: Yes.

David: And John Bercow resigned. John Bercow is like the greatest supporting character of any show ever. And now I’m bereft. Like what do I follow?

Craig: But they’ve also said that they’re not going to be a no-deal because they won’t support that.

David: Yeah. Well they passed a law that will get the royal ascent today I think. That they cannot leave without a deal.

Craig: So he’s prorogued for nothing.

David: Oh yeah, no, he’s screwed.

Craig: He’s done.

David: But what’s fascinating if you look at it as a TV show is this season was so great and they brought in a new character because the old Prime Minister character was a little boring so they got rid of her. They brought in this new crazy guy and he’s more interesting. It’s a terrible, terrible situation, but as a soap opera it’s been riveting. So, you know, reading Brexit news destroys my writing, as it does whatever your interest is of the moment.

And you know how it is. You’ll be writing along and you forgot to turn off alerts and a text pops up and suddenly you’re out of it and you’re in something else. Or an email comes in. Oh, I got to deal with that right now. Of course you don’t.

And Freedom is an app you can download and you enter in a certain amount of time for how long it will shut down your Internet and a degree of severity. You can shut down everything on all your devices. You can shut down just the computer you’re working on. Put your phone across the room. But whatever you choose.

I pick 60 minutes at a time. And within – that shuts down everything – and if there’s like a research question I have to just jot it down for when my 60 minutes is up. But really within about a minute and a half of turning on Freedom I start working. There’s no – it’s unbelievable. And your concentration is unimpeded. And I just think it has saved a lot of bad situations for me.

Craig: When I’m on a plane that doesn’t have Wi-Fi—

David: That’s outrageous first of all. That’s bullshit.

Craig: Which is outrageous. It’s a bunch of bullshit. How dare they? But my choice is write or clean up a bunch of files on the computer. In other words, or watch TV on that stupid little screen which I refuse to do.

So, yeah, you start working when you don’t have the Internet. It’s amazing. It’s actually disturbing.

John: Yeah. How [unintelligible] it is.

Craig: Yeah.

David: So I thought Freedom deserves another plug. Because every writer should have it. There’s no reason to not have it.

John: Yeah. I’m a big fan of working in sprints. And so I’ll start a 60-minute sprint. And I don’t use Freedom anymore, because I don’t need to shut down my Internet.

Craig: He doesn’t need it, dude.

David: You have mental discipline?

Craig: He’s beyond that.

John: No, because I start a 60-minute sprint and there’s a little timer that goes. And so as long as that timer is going I’m not switching to another window.

David: Great.

John: Especially if I go full-screen that also distracts me from–

Craig: So when I keep texting, like John, John I’m dying, I’m bleeding. John, this guy keeps stabbing me. Help.

David: He’s sprinting.

John: Sprinting.

Craig: Sorry, sprinting.

John: Can’t help. My One Cool Thing is a book I’m reading called The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, by David Robson. I am liking it. It’s about how IQ tests don’t have the correlation to wise decision making you’d expect. So there’s some correlation but not really a very strong correlation. And sometimes the smartest people you know on IQ tests do really dumb things, or believe conspiracy theories. And he makes a pretty compelling case that being so smart on an IQ sense just lets you reinforce your mistaken beliefs again and again and again.

And it strikes me in a very D&D sense the difference between intelligence and wisdom. And those are two ideas that are related, but they’re not really the same thing. And some people who are not especially smart can be very wise. And so The Intelligence Trap, a book I’m enjoying.

David: If we’re doing books as well, can I throw in a Second Cool Thing?

John: Go for it.

Craig: Cold Storage? Out right now. By David Koepp.

David: Sure. But this came out about a year ago. It’s called Essentialism. And the title tells you pretty much what it’s about. But it’s a self-helpy thing. It’s actually more of a management book. It’s written for businesses. But it applied to your personal life.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve taken joy in what I get rid of, as opposed to what I accumulate. And asking yourself what is essential, not just among my possessions but in my interactions with other people. What’s really essential lets you focus on that and making them really be of quality, as opposed to a lot of incredibly superficial ones a few meaningful ones. And, you know, that book meant a lot to me.

John: Absolutely. It fits in with that sort of Marie Kondo, winnowing down to the things that are actually crucial, the things that you actually enjoy. We’ve talked about that in terms of screenwriting as well. It’s like getting rid of some of the frills and really focusing on what is fundamental to the story that you’re trying to tell.

David: Or in a scene. When you find that moment where you cut away like a page and a half at the beginning and a half a page at the end and you’re down to three lines but they’re great.

Craig: There we go. The one that Melissa is really into is Swedish Death Cleaning. Have you heard of that one?

John: No, tell us.

Craig: I guess the Swedes as they are so comfortable with death, their whole thing is you make sure that you’ve really gotten rid of a lot of stuff before you die. Because otherwise your family is going to have to get rid of it, which is a huge hassle.

John: My mom to her credit has totally done that.

Craig: Yeah. So just clean up as if you’re going to die next week.

David: You know that Billy Wilder story about – some movie that must never have been made. But he asked some poor writer to write a scene of marital discord. And so the guy wrote this couple, this middle-aged couple, they’re not getting along. And it starts out they come out of their apartment, they get in an elevator. They argue down the hall. Argue all the way down the elevator. Argue out on the street. It’s four pages long.

He says, “I don’t want to shoot this. We’ve got to do the hallway. I’ve got to do the elevator. I’ve got to do the street.” He says, how about this. They don’t say anything. They come out, they’re not talking. They get in the elevator. They get in the elevator and the guy is wearing a hat, of course. The elevator stops a few floors down and an attractive young woman gets on. The guy takes off his hat and his wife looks at him.

That’s great.

Craig: That works.

John: Yes.

Craig: That works. Yeah.

John: Fantastic.

Craig: Nice.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did our outro this week. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@dev.johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. David Koepp, I believe you are not on Twitter. Is that correct?

David: I am not. I’m on Instagram. Dgkoepp.

John: Fantastic. Find him on Instagram.

Craig: You can see all of his pics.

John: You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. We get them up the week after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. And you need to sign up there to use the Scriptnotes app for iOS or for Android. You can also download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

You can find David Koepp’s book anywhere books are sold I believe.

David: You can.

John: And overseas as well? It’s in all markets?

David: Yes. It’s all over the place overseas. I’m going to London next week to shit on the government and sell it a little bit.

Craig: Look out Boris Johnson. Here he comes.

John: Fantastic. David Koepp, thank you so much for joining us.

Craig: Thanks David.

David: Thanks for having me guys.

John: Cool.

Links:

• David Koepp
• Alex Billington on embargoes.
• Cold Storage by David Koepp
• Spark Email App
• Freedom App
• The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes
• Essentialism
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• David Koepp on Instagram
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.