Drew Marquardt

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

[music]

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

Craig Mazin: Ho, ho, ho, ho. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 734 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we welcome back a writer whose credits include The Heat, Ghostbusters, and Haunted Mansion, her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay-

[laughter]

John: -is now out on Apple TV.

Craig: What a dramatic pause.

[laughter]

Craig: Her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay.

John: Welcome back to the program after 10 years, Katie Dippold.

Katie Dippold: Very happy to be here. I’ve been trying to get back in here for the past decade, so this is-

Craig: Clawing your way back in.

Katie: Yes, anything I can do.

John: You were last on the show Episode 272.

Craig: Whoa.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: 500 episodes ago.

John: 2016.

Katie: One of my favorite memories of that episode was when– remember when Malcolm, you asked him something and he was just quiet and then he was like, “I’m out of gas.” You’re like, “That’s it? You’re just done?” He’s like, “I’m done.”

Craig: Yes.

Katie: I respected it so much.

Craig: That’s what Malcolm– Malcolm used to play D&D with us, and at some point, he would just get up and lie down and sleep.

Katie: [laughs]

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: He knows how to live.

Craig: We can’t have you on the show without talking about our special connection. We always need to discuss our special connection. Katie Dippold and I both lived or attended school in Freehold, New Jersey. Competing high schools. She was at the somewhat tonier Freehold Township. I was at the rough around the edges Freehold Borough.

Katie: Never heard of it.

Craig: Yes. I was from the bad side of the tracks.

John: I love it.

Katie: Also where Bruce Springsteen was from. Not a big deal.

Craig: Yes. He went to Borough.

Katie: Sorry, you have that.

Craig: That’s because he was a little rough around the edges.

Katie: Yes, yes, yes.

John: Now, Katie Dippold, for folks who don’t know who you are, they actually do know who you are because you are famous for being an incredibly talented writer, but you’re also probably more famous on the internet because of one Halloween costume you wore and the situation in which you wore it. Do you want to recap why the world knows who you are?

Katie: There is a tweet that shows a photograph that– I can’t remember the tweet. It’s like when you think you’re going to a Halloween party, but it ends up being an adult drinking wine kind of vibe. I’m dressed fully as the Babadook. Face makeup, wig, hat, coat. No one was dressed up. My friend Jessie snapped the photo. Also, what the photo doesn’t show is I sat there for an hour and a half watching a movie like that.

John: Yes.

Katie: You know?

Craig: Once you’re there, what are you going to do?

John: What are you going to do?

Katie: Someone asked me like, “Why didn’t you just take off the hat?” I’m like, “That wasn’t going to help anything.”

John: No, no. Come on.

Craig: Right. I’m still– I got the weird glasses on, or the– does he have glasses? Goggles?

Katie: No glasses, but there’s a dark room around the eyes.

Craig: Yes, that’s what it was. Something like that.

John: Yes, it’s like [crosstalk] monochrome makeup look, right?

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes, it is fantastic, and it’s a moment. It also is the intersection of horror and comedy, which is Widow’s Bay, which is exactly what we’re here to talk about.

Craig: Segue man.

John: That’s what I am.

Katie: Yes, look at that.

John: I want to talk about Widow’s Bay. Your show is genuinely fantastic. Drew and I watched it.

Craig: Wait, have you seen more than two episodes?

John: I’ve only seen the first episode. I haven’t seen the second episode yet.

Craig: Oh, okay, because you’re talking like you’ve seen the whole show.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: I’ve seen two episodes, which I loved, but I started getting jelly, but you’ve only seen one.

John: No, no, we didn’t get the links or anything. We-

Craig: I’m just watching it on Apple TV.

John: I’m just watching it on Apple TV like everyone else. Like every other American person in the world, I’m watching Widow’s Bay on Apple TV.

Craig: American person in the world. [chuckles]

John: I want to talk about your show, but I also want to talk about what you wish you knew going into this industry. Imagine that you’re sending an email to your younger self. It could be to your 15-year-old self or when you first arrived in Los Angeles. I did a panel this last week where this was the theme.

It was actually really insightful to think like, “Oh, yes, what did I know, and what if I could pass along information to your younger self?” Things we want to do. We’ll talk about that.

We’ll answer some listener questions. Including, when do you call out someone for stealing your idea or just being not cool?

Katie: Oh.

John: Our bonus segment for premium members, are there still going to be movies and TV in 10 years, 15 years? We’ll talk about that. All big topics. Most importantly, I know a movie that’s coming out next week, which is Craig’s movie, The Sheep Detectives.

Craig: The Sheep Detectives. What a silly title.

John: It is. It was once called Three Bags Full.

Craig: It was once called Three Bags Full. It’s based on a book written by a wonderful German author named Leonie Swann. Three Bags Full was the title it was released under in the United States. That’s what we called the movie up until MGM was like, “Yes, no one’s going to know what that is, but they would know what The Sheep Detectives is.” They’re correct.

John: They are correct.

Craig: I get it completely. I love this movie so much. I never self-promote. I don’t. It’s not my thing to be like, “Hey, coming up on dah, dah, dah.” It is the little movie that we hopefully could because it’s Aline Brosh McKenna’s Devil Wears Prada 2 is crushing it in theaters. Mortal Kombat’s going to be a huge movie. There’s all these big movies. Then there’s our little sweet sheep movie, it’s adorable, and I’ve watched it with an audience and people laugh and then they cry. My wife and my younger daughter watched it and they were a sobbing mess and a happy sobbing mess.

Katie: Wow. That’s good.

John: Now, Craig, many critics have liked it, but at least one didn’t because you’re not at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. How are you dealing with that grief?

Craig: It’s really hard, because I don’t have any experience not being at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. First of all, the idea of having a movie on Rotten Tomatoes that isn’t in the 20s is shocking for me. Like, “Wait, what? They make tomatoes in another color than green?” I continue my very strange, tumultuous relationship with critics. They don’t know what to make of me at all.

John: Quite understandably.

Craig: They yell at me when I’m like, “Why is this comedy guy doing drama?” Then I do this and they’re like, “Why is this drama guy doing comedy?”

Katie: I feel like you and I could talk about this for years. Now that said, you get one good review and you’re like, “You know, critics–”

Craig: Well, they do have a point.

Katie: Thank God. You know?

Craig: Yes. Well, the thing is there are movies and television shows that don’t need critics at all. It doesn’t matter. I’ve definitely worked on those. You’ve worked on those where it didn’t really matter what the critics thought. Then there are things that sort of need them for legitimacy.

I think The Sheep Detectives needed it. I could see how Widow’s Bay could need it. Meaning, it helps separate a little bit, because it’s not a built-in audience, it’s not IP, it’s something original. Also, you were sporting a 100.

John: Yes. Then someone had to ruin it.

Craig: Some ding-dongs came in. The math is bad because then what happens is you’re like, “Oh, now to get back up, I need like eight more good reviews.”

John: Yes.

Katie: Right. Oh, you can drive yourself crazy. I also, it’s so funny. I always tell myself, if a movie comes out and doesn’t do well, and it’s an experience I’ve had a couple of times, but I say, “Okay, no, it doesn’t matter. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t matter.” Every time I put something on, I’m like, “What’s the Rotten Tomatoes score?” It’s just, you know what I mean?

Craig: Yes. I know.

Katie: It’s just, it’s all of us. It matters very much.

Craig: It is bizarre how everybody, I mean, I assume a lot of critics do put time into the reviews and things, and then it just gets mushed into a number.

Katie: The ones that are good and thoughtful and do a really good analysis, it is really-

John: It’s lovely.

Katie: It’s lovely.

John: Yes.

Craig: I think when people say nice things about us, we like it. When they say bad things about us, we don’t.

John: Hey, I think that’s true.

Katie: That’s exactly right.

Craig: We don’t like it.

Katie: You’re not good at this.

Craig: No. Then I turn to the Teddy Roosevelt quote, and I’m like-

Katie: Yes, that’s exactly-

Craig: “You don’t matter. The ones who matter are the ones who understand what I’m doing and like me.”

Katie: That’s exactly right.

John: This week, my instance of the Rotten Tomatoes was my new book, Wolf’s Belly, which comes out July 18th.

Craig: Wait, what?

John: I have a book out July 18th. I’ll give you a copy so [unintelligible 00:07:33] here.

Craig: What? Did you write a secret book?

John: Secret book.

Craig: I didn’t know about this. I’m glad I didn’t know about this because-

Katie: Whoa.

Craig: -had I known about it and not known about it, I would have been so embarrassed.

John: Yes, absolutely. We got a-

Craig: He just did it again.

John: I just did it again.

Craig: You just did it.

John: My book comes out July 18th, and I got a Publishers Weekly starred review, which is a rare thing to get, which is very lovely.

Craig: It’s a graphic novel. Congratulations.

John: Yes. It’s up for pre-order now, but there are already reviews online for Goodreads because those things come out early, because they send those galleys out. Those have been really nice, but of course, there are going to be occasionally like, “Yes, it wasn’t for me,” or the person who gives it– it’s like five stars, or they give four stars, and four stars brings you down.

Craig: [chuckles] Well, I think that you are a healthier person than I am about these things. You’re very good about, you decide what the worth of what you did is. Whatever people think, that’s fine, but if you like it, you like it. I think that’s healthier. I don’t like how easily swayed I can be by other people telling me if I did something well or not.

Katie: It sounds like we all three have things being reviewed right now. Obviously, the summary of this entire conversation was thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Absolutely. Without critics where would we be?

Craig: They know I love them.

Katie: Yes.

John: While we’re talking about things being judged and awards, the Academy changed rules this week. Some summary of some rule changes here. In the writing categories, the rules now codify that screenplays have to be human authored-

Craig: Damn it.

John: -to be eligible.

Craig: Which I think is reasonable. Who are they going to hand the Oscar to if a computer wrote it?

John: Yes. I think that’s an obvious one. A better, more interesting one for me is on international feature films right now, it’s always been the country submits, and it’s always been controversial because the country may not submit their best film, or a great film from a country won’t be submitted. Now, if it has been qualifying award at some of the major international feature film festivals like Berlin, or Busan, or Sundance, or Venice, if it’s won the awards there, it’s also eligible for that, and so it can be-

Craig: A government can’t just go, “Yes, we don’t like this one.”

John: The award now goes to the director as the beneficiary rather than to the country.

Craig: That’s interesting.

John: Yes.

Craig: That is interesting.

John: Yes. I think it’s a good change.

Craig: That’s a smart change. I also saw that now actors can be nominated multiple times in a category.

John: Yes.

Katie: Would they want that?

Craig: It seems like a bad thing you-

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes.

Craig: -but it’s happened before. Director Steven Soderbergh was nominated-

John: Yes, twice.

Craig: -twice in one year. That’s nice. That’s nice.

Katie: Did he win for that year?

Craig: That’s a great question.

Drew Marquardt: I think he did. That was Traffic and-

Katie: Okay, that’s impressive.

Drew: -Erin Brockovich.

Craig: Erin Brockovich. I think Erin Brockovich. He won for Erin Brockovich?

Drew: I think he won for Traffic.

Craig: Traffic is a better movie.

John: Anyway, changes. They seem thoughtful changes.

Craig: Absolutely. Obviously, Katie, you and I are perennial Oscar considerables.

Katie: Right.

Craig: We’re always in the mix.

Katie: Right. Right. Yes.

John: Yes, [crosstalk]. Always in the topics.

Craig: Yes, so this is always– I keep careful track of this sort of thing. We’re talking sheep movie.

John: We have some housekeeping to get through. First and most important is we’re putting out a Scriptnotes listener survey. We want to know things about our listeners, not for marketing purposes, because there’s no marketing because we’re-

Craig: To sell their data?

John: We don’t want to know any of that stuff. We’re curious about, which segments people love the most, which things they want to hear more of. There’s some things we might try out, and we’re curious what people think of those things. We’re also just curious who our listeners are, how many are in the US, what education level people have, because my prototypical user is in college or finishing college, but that may not be accurate. We’re just curious.

Craig: I feel like our listener base might be older than you think.

John: Yes. I’m also curious, one of the questions is, how many people who are listening to the podcast are actually working in the film and television industry versus just like to listen to the podcast?

Craig: All good things to know.

John: Yes.

Katie: It’d be so funny to find out it’s just ages 60 to 62.

John: So incredible.

Katie: Just a very specific.

Craig: Like a steep drop-off after 62.

Katie: No awareness before those two years.

Craig: 59, nothing. 60, boom.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: There’s a free thing, free premium with your AARP subscription, and then they get it for a couple years and they’re out. They’re like-

John: Yes, it’s like, “No, this is not good.”

Craig: -“No, it’s not good.”

John: There will be a link in the show notes for that, so please click through there.

Craig: 60 to 62. Do you see why Katie Dippold is good?

John: Yes, because it’s the specificity of that joke.

Craig: That is 64 would have been bad, 62 is correct.

Katie: I appreciate that.

John: She’s so good.

Craig: Yes.

John: Craig, I want to do another random advice episode. Remember we’ve done those? People write in with non-screenwriting questions-

Craig: Oh, right.

John: -non-writing questions, because-

Craig: When we attempt to be wise.

John: Yes, because we have opinions about a lot of things. We’ll try that. Send in those questions to Drew. Send in at ask@dev.johnaugust.com and just label it like, “Random advice,” so we know to put those in a different category for that. We have a new version of Weekend Read out there. People use Weekend Read on their phones to read scripts.

The new version is really nice and actually has some really helpful features in terms of marketing what you haven’t read, what’s new for you. You can get through long scripts faster. There’s a new scroll bar, so try that out.

Last bit of follow-up. We had Haley Z. Boston on the show. She was talking about Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, which was terrific. On that, I had her read through the first page of her script, which Craig, you would have loved because there’s no dialogue, and yet every word on there is just delicious and delightful.

Drew and our team put together a YouTube video for Haley. She’s reading it, but we’re also scrolling the page as you’re doing it. You can see-

Craig: I like those.

John: -all the choices she’s making.

Craig: Was there a lot of white space?

John: No paragraphs more than two lines long. She’s using italics and bold in really interesting ways. It just is drawing you down in a smart way. Because this is mostly an audio medium, it’s fun to do a visual at times. Seeing that is there.

Craig: Love that.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

Craig: Love it.

John: Housekeeping done. Katie Dippold, your show is so delightful. I didn’t know what it was going to be when I pressed play, which is so much fun. It comes up and the opening title feels like a Stephen King book cover. What was the pitch? Drew has a really good pitch for it, but I’m curious what your pitch was for it on the initial thing. What is the idea? What’s the logline?

Katie: The logline is a mayor of a New England island town desperate to bring in tourism is warned by locals that it’s cursed-

John: Great.

Katie: -and they are right.

Craig: They are clearly right.

John: Now, Drew, can you give us your pitch?

Drew: It’s Fawlty Towers, but where John Cleese’s character is the mayor from Jaws.

Katie: [chuckles] That’s great.

Drew: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: That’s right.

Craig: Yes, it definitely has mayor from Jaws feeling to it. Shut it down, shut it all down, and New England, of course. Fawlty Towers because the people there are hysterical.

John: Yes, they’re so funny.

Craig: They’re so funny.

John: I can’t even imagine how you found the pitch-perfect tone so that it didn’t just all blow up at every moment. It’s just so cleverly done. They’re so eccentric and so extreme, and yet everyone’s playing the same song. It’s so hard to do.

Katie: That’s really nice. I’ve been working on this. This was like my Parks and Rec sample, 18 years ago.

John: Incredible.

Katie: I’ve been working on it ever since.

John: Give us a little backstory. Tell us how this all started.

Katie: I had just finished at MADtv. I wanted to do something like this. I’m a comedy writer, but I love horror so much. I just wanted something like this to exist. I want to go to this place. Then I heard Parks and Rec was hiring, so I quickly wrote a pilot, and I think that got me the job. Worked there for several seasons.

John: You wrote this as a pilot?

Katie: Yes.

John: How close is the pilot you wrote to what we actually see in the pilot episode?

Katie: It’s much more comedic. It’s like, joke, joke, joke. That’s why I think that gave Mike Schur an idea of my sense of humor. I think the heart of that is still there, but I kept thinking, when I would revisit, I’m like, “I don’t know that I would watch this show. I want it to be taken seriously. I want to feel tension. I want to be scared.” I had to keep taking it apart and putting it back together. There’s years where it’s been not funny or scary.

[laughter]

Katie: It’s terrifying progress.

Craig: What a great mix.

Katie: Yes, I think that’s what you want.

Craig: Yes, boring in every possible way.

Katie: Yes, really had a lot of that for a while. Then I got, I don’t know, something after doing the last couple movies, they were hard to do. I just wanted to do something just completely original. I’m like– because it was a tough time for a while. I’m like, “You know what? I might as well just take one real crazy creative swing.”

Craig: There you go. You and I have lived some parallel lives here. Caught in the same thing. At some point, you do need to just step back and go– are we allowed to curse on this show?

John: Yes, sure.

Craig: Fuck it. I love that I talk about this like I’ve never been on the show. Episode 700 and whatever. I love that you did that. Also, I do think that you can tell this is the product of somebody who is not 25. You are covering all these ages of people. Teenager, dad, older people, you got this whole thing on lockdown. It feels, the mayor, Loftis. Loftis? Loftis. Feels like such an adult, but he’s also a kid, which I love.

One of my favorite moments is when Stephen Root’s character calls him out and says like, “Oh, you used to ding dong ditch me, except you never actually rang the bell. You’re a coward.” That was when he was 11. You’re like, you can see that little boy in this guy all the time. What I really appreciate, this is where the show won my heart. You haven’t seen the second episode.

John: I haven’t seen it yet.

Craig: I’m going to give something away.

John: That’s fine. Okay.

Craig: It’s not a plot twist. In the second episode, he has to go stay in the inn, which of course the locals insist is haunted. They’re correct.

At one point, he’s alone and he wanders into the parlor where they have drinks and things. He opens a cabinet, and in that kind of B&B way, there are all these board games. The board games are wrong. One’s called Daddy’s Home, but the daddy is clearly drunk and angry. Then there’s a box that looks like it would have puzzle pieces in it.

It’s a picture of a tooth and it just says teeth, which is amazing. Then there’s a deck of cards. The card game is called Run. I love that so much, the specificity of that. I could smell that room. Do you know what I mean? I could smell it.

Katie: Oh, that’s great.

Craig: I just loved it. I can’t wait to see where this show goes, but I have to assume that part of the process of getting something like that to be that perfect is you working in tandem with a lot of people, and casting and all of that, because you haven’t run a television show before.

Katie: No.

Craig: Talk about that, because that’s a fun time.

Katie: Yes, it’s a real different experience than being the movie writer just standing by craft services, pitching jokes every now and then. It’s a different thing.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: It’s very hard.

[laughter]

Craig: Turns out it’s hard.

John: [crosstalk] whispering this. Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s really exhausting.

Katie: It’s rewarding. You don’t really get a say in much when you’re in features.

John: My question is, did you realize that things were hysterically funny while you were filming them? Because one of the things that’s so different in this versus Parks and Rec is Parks and Rec is brightly lit and I think you can tell like, “Oh, that’s funny. That works.” Here, things are shot mostly realistically, and it’s not this high-key everything. Do you know that it’s just hysterically funny? When the assistant comes in and she’s like, “Oh, is there anything more?” She’s like staring for like 30 seconds, it’s like-

Craig: So great.

John: “No, that’s it.” [chuckles] Did you know that it was funny at the moment?

Katie: It’s different. The board games, for example, you’re not watching. This show, it’s a lot about little details and specifics. I think the way approaching it is a lot of blink and you’ll miss it, and that’s okay. It’s less presenting a big joke. It is different than being on set with– and Melissa McCarthy saying something hilarious and you’re laughing out loud. Also, these actors are so good in the show. Just their performances would get me, but it is different. It’s interesting.

There’s a lot of times, too, like the director, Hiro Murai, we would just be also looking at each other like, “Does this feel right? This feels bad.” It’s a lot of following your stomach if something felt good or bad. When something feels bad in this show, it really will take you out of it, so it’s harder.

John: Yes, because you’re weirdly, you’re very joke dense for something that it doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be funny from the outside.

Craig: They’re not in the form of jokes, which I love.

John: Yes, it’s great.

Craig: That, in fact, it’s just people being people. Tell me, okay, because I’m new to the show, and because there’s only two episodes currently out, the character, the woman who’s like works in his office, who’s not his assistant, but like his–

Katie: Are you talking about Patricia, the Kate O’Flynn brunette, or Rosemary the smoker?

Craig: No, no.

Katie: Patricia.

Craig: Patricia.

Katie: Okay, yes.

Craig: So funny. That character is just playing a woman who has been left and ignored and is bitter, but also hopeful. There is something so brilliant about her sitting and talking to Shep, the fisherman who’s found, who they say, “He hit his head, we’ve just put him under to help while the head swelling goes down.” She’s talking to him like he’s in a coma. Loftis says, “It’s only when people are in a coma.” She’s like, “Well, I’m sorry for wasting his time.” Which is amazing. It’s just like the most put upon, like, “You know what, man? I guess, fine.” No, that’s not a joke. It’s real, but it’s also funny. I love that.

Katie: Oh, I’m glad.

Craig: I just love that.

Katie: The actress, Kate O’Flynn, lovely, lovely woman, and also just incredible. It’s Allison Jones, great Allison Jones. She sent us her tape, and it was not what I pictured at all, but I was like, “Oh, but this is the person. This is– she’s still good.”

Craig: Yes, so good.

Katie: She brought so many layers to it. It was loosely based off of my mom. She has a similar, kind of just wants to be seen. She also, she can’t say the right thing, she just says– you know?

John: Yes.

Craig: Right.

Katie: Can I give you an example? I remember Drew was at my mom’s house with me, and there was an Eagles game. He’s a diehard Eagles fan. The Eagles started losing, and he got really stressed out. My mom was uncharacteristically soothing. She was like, “You know what, Drew, don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s all going to work out.” I’m like, “That does not sound like Ellie Dippold.” Then the other team scored again, and she goes, “Well, that’s not good.”

[laughter]

Katie: That was sort of the heart of it, and then Kate came in and just brought all these other layers and stuff that I wouldn’t have imagined. She’s incredible.

Craig: Just wonderful.

John: Can we talk about the actual production? Because you were clearly in a seaside town for– is this upstate New York you were shooting? Where were you actually shooting this?

Katie: We were in Massachusetts.

John: That’s in Massachusetts. Okay. Were you block shooting? Were you shooting episode by episode? How did it all work?

Katie: It was block shooting. We had to shoot out of order, too. It was an intense shoot because the scripts– I think it’s funny. I think in the beginning, we were really shooting for the stars and just trying to do as much as possible. Then no one really told us not to, in the room. Also, I remember Drew Goddard talking about Cabin in the Woods. He said that if he had known how hard it– he was glad he didn’t know how hard it was going to be, because he would have done it differently. It’s a similar thing here. I’m glad I didn’t realize how–

Craig: I believe you can tell. There is an amount of care and attention. It’s funny, when I watch shows now, I will, in the back of my head, also still be, because we’re making the third season right now, and I’m so in it, I start thinking about things like coverage. Like, “Oh, that’s outside at night. That’s fun. I wonder how many takes and how many angles and how much time and how many meetings were based just to figure out that room. The art department has to come up with what the teeth game looks like.” There’s so much. It’s hard, and it pays off.

Katie: Yes. Oh, that’s nice. I have to say, this production team, they were insane in the best way. The props department, when you see the rest of the show, this props department, I don’t know how they did it. I mumble that every day. I’m like, “I don’t know how props did it.” The production designer, that whole episode, too, that inn, the whole inside is a build.

Craig: Oh, yes, you can tell. You can tell in a good way-

Katie: In a good way.

Craig: -because you can’t get the cameras around. A hotel wouldn’t have that parlor like that, but I loved it so much. I thought that was such a brilliant thing to like– what ends up happening is you find a location and then they’re like, “I can only be here for eight days because of the season, blah, and also it’s not perfect and the electricity and you can’t get equipment in.” It was so perfect.

Katie: I don’t know what it was. Everyone working on the show was just really game for it.

John: That’s great.

Katie: Do you know what I mean? Everyone was just [crosstalk]-

Craig: Because they liked it. Katie, because it’s good. That’s, honestly, here’s the thing. I talk to crew people every day. They work on things every day. We don’t. Our show ends, they move on to another production. They mostly work on stuff they don’t like. They work on things that they read and they’re just like– that’s just how it goes. I think people get excited when they work on something they like.

John: Before you got into production, you had to write a bunch of scripts. You wrote a pilot, which obviously you wrote a ton, but I’m looking at the credits and there’s a murderers’ row of really funny people. Talk to us about the process of getting everything written. Was everything written before you showed up there? What happened?

Katie: Yes, it was a great room. I had the pilot written, and I did something that was a little tricky, but I’m so glad I did, which it was not like a room full of all comedy writers. It was a couple of writers that came from shows like WandaVision. Actually, one of them also had a super funny spec. A couple of my old-time comedy friends, one that was a writer on SNL, actually Neil Casey, that plays the innkeeper, too.

Craig: Sure. Yes, so funny.

Katie: Colton Dunn from Key and Peele, and Kelly Galuska has done a ton of comedy. Then I also had a playwright, this guy Dave, who’s lovely, and another writer, Alberto Roldán, who’d worked on Mrs. Davis. It was a real stew, because I felt like this show was going to need a lot of different kinds of thought process and just different ideas. In the beginning, it was tricky navigating this, but then it got to a point where the drama mythology people are pitching jokes that are hilarious, and the comedy writers are really passionately arguing story points. It was very rewarding to see that all come together.

John: You had been on MADtv, you’re used to that kind of comedy writing. You’d been on Mike Schur’s show. You had a sense of being in a room. This was your first time running a room with this group. How did you approach that? How many weeks did you have? What were your hours like? What did it feel like? What were the nuts and bolts of it?

Katie: We had 20 weeks, and I kept the hours. The hours were about 10:00 to 5:00. I would leave and then keep thinking about it until I go to bed. There’s no reason to keep everyone there. You know what I mean? You’re the one that needs to do that, I think.

John: Over the course of those 20 weeks, there probably was a little bit of a blue-sky phase. Then you were cranking down, “Okay, what happens in this episode? How do we get through this thing?” Are you signing people off during that time? How did it work?

Katie: God, it was so crazy just feeling my way through this process. I called so many different people like, “What are we doing?” I called you. Do you know what I mean? We blue-skied for about six weeks, four weeks.

John: Oh, wow. Okay.

Katie: I actually knew some of the dilemmas I wanted to happen. I knew certain things I wanted to do, but then working through it. It was a very creative, organic process of, we just would talk about, “Well, this just feels fun right now.” You know what I mean? “Let’s just do this now.” It was just constantly making those moves. Then people would get sent out to script one time.

Craig: When you assembled the room, did you have, “Okay, I know how this begins, and I know how it ends”?

Katie: Yes.

Craig: You had that.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: At least there was a structure that everybody was trying to fill in, too.

Katie: Yes. Even how it ended, there’s some choices in it that came up through the room, which was a very fun debate. Yes, I knew the basic. I knew where it was going, but we found so much along the way. Everyone was great.

John: You’re doing this work in a room. How much are you having to communicate out with producers, with Apple, with other folks about what was happening, or was it only when you were done with the 20 weeks that you could come back and say, “Here’s the show”?

Katie: I was kind of a lunatic about– I would send like a 30-page outline to the producers and Apple. It was very, very detailed and very specific. I would start off with this summary at the top, like, “This is what we’re trying to do here.” Then just really break down each scene. Also, because the show is so totally tricky, I just wanted to be as detailed as possible.

John: Even during the 20 weeks while you were going through stuff, they could see like, “This is where we are headed,” if they had big red flag concerns.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s wonderful. I think that there is a value in looking at the people that give us all the money to make these things as people that deserve a little caretaking. I think they work with writers who are so internal sometimes that they get nothing back. They’re in the dark. They don’t know what’s going on. Yes, some caretaking documents goes a long way. They don’t abuse it. I find that it’s the opposite. That they give less input, the more detail you give.

Katie: I could not agree more. Our execs, Dana and Spencer were, I swear to you, I’m not just saying this because of career purposes.

Craig: Because you need them.

[laughter]

Katie: They were awesome. I never dreaded their feedback-

Craig: That’s great.

Katie: -which is unusual to say. If they called on the phone, I’m like, “Pick up the phone.” I don’t like picking up a phone. That’s the biggest compliment I can give. Apple, I have to give them credit. They really just let us do it.

John: Now, when you were actually making the show, were there any writers besides you around to pitch new stuff, or was it just you? Were you the writer on set?

Katie: Oh, well, I’m very thankful for the strike because having writers on set was such a blessing.

John: Okay, because there was a gap between the things, you were shooting in the US, you were able to pull– you had two writers with you?

Katie: Two writers on set. One of them was there the whole time, it’s Neil, and then two other writers, Kelly and Mackenzie, took turns. It was so nice. Also, just having people that they were in the room and they understand what we were going for, I really wanted to be on set a lot and make sure we’re capturing the moments, but then you have something else prepping, so having a writer being able to go with that director, because we had three other guest directors come in, and then for scouting, and just have an eye on things and be able to talk to [crosstalk]-

John: Maybe have a splinter unit, like you could– yes.

Katie: Yes, that was really, really, really-

Craig: I could probably maybe use somebody other than myself.

Katie: No, it’s great.

Craig: I’m starting to feel even more terrified by my own life.

John: Sorry.

Katie: Yes. Also, having people– just also having funny writers make sure. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: Just to talk to about what’s going on and stuff like that, it’s just lovely.

Craig: People to talk to?

Katie: Yes, people to talk to.

Craig: Yes, that would be nice.

John: Make sure shows, the things we were growing up on, the writers were around, and that’s part of the reason why things can work. Yes.

Katie: Yes, being around funny people, it’s a nice thing.

John: The second topic I want to get to is what you wish you knew. For this exercise, let’s imagine we get the chance to either talk to our younger selves or send an email to our younger selves. Let’s start with our 15-year-old self. If you could send an email to young Katie about some advice for her, anything– like headlines you would want her to know?

Katie: I wouldn’t have listened to it.

John: Yes, that’s honestly true.

Katie: I would have said-

Craig: Shut up, old woman. [laughs]

John: Shut up, old woman. You also know that-

Katie: Why you never wear your hair down anymore?

John: Yet you also know that you wouldn’t listen, so you could probably outsmart this 15-year-old Katie because she’s an idiot.

Katie: I would hate this advice so much. I would say, “You’re two-boy crazy, none of these boyfriends you’re going to marry. Just read some books. Just read books and don’t-”

Craig: Oh my God, you’re like, “Get out of here.”

Katie: I would have been like, “Fuck off.”

Craig: Yes, seriously, beat it.

Katie: Yes.

John: Craig, advice for your 15-year-old self.

Craig: I certainly wouldn’t have said, “Be less girl crazy.” I would have been like, “Yes, no, have fun. You’re going to get married soon.”

[laughter]

Craig: I think for my 15-year-old self, I would have said, “Hey, hold tight. You’re going to be out of here soon.” The world was pretty small for me. I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere, and I wasn’t sure where. I didn’t know. I hadn’t yet connected the idea that I would be doing this for a living. I would say, “Don’t worry. You’ll be out of here soon.”

John: Yes. I wasn’t out when I was 15, and you can’t retroactively say like, “Oh, it would have been fine to be like–” you don’t know. I think just the sense that, “You will fall in love, you’ll be happy, you’ll be married, you’ll have a family.”

Craig: Did you know that you were gay when you were 15?

John: I knew I was gay. I knew [crosstalk]-

Craig: Oh, so your older self wouldn’t be like, “By the way,” and you’d be like, “No, I’m not.”

John: Yes, I wasn’t like a [crosstalk]-

Craig: You weren’t going to argue.

John: Oh, yes, you know. There wasn’t anything to act upon at the moment. I probably could have, it was cowardice.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s cowardice. I don’t think that’s cowardice.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s-

John: Yes, it’s not recognizing opportunities that you have.

Craig: Sure.

John: I think in terms of– I was ambitious. I didn’t know there was such a thing as screenwriting yet. I didn’t know if the movies were written.

Craig: I had no idea.

John: General advice is, “Pursue what you’re interested in, and don’t be worried if your tastes and opinions change. That’s also part of growing up.”

Katie: Yes.

John: Now let’s fast forward to you’ve arrived in Los Angeles. Maybe you’re a year in. Okay, what else?

Katie: Can we visit college?

John: College, please. Let’s go to college.

Katie: I think one thing I would have told myself freshman year of college, and I eventually did this, I just wish I got to it sooner. Just find your people.

John: Oh, yes.

Katie: For me, that was some real weirdos, and the best possible– I started pledging this sorority, and they were all really nice and lovely, but my stomach was a little, “This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right.” Then I started the theater group and improv group. I had this improv group there that it was just the best group of weirdos. I remember just being in a New Jersey diner with them late at night. We weren’t going to any party or frat house. There was a guy that could have been-

Craig: I can see the diner, by the way. It’s got the two entrances-

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: -the little lobby, the thing, go inside. There’s a case with the– yes.

Katie: Yes. They were all so bizarre in the best way. There was someone that could have been 18 or he could have been 55 years old. I have no idea, but he was the funniest person ever. Finding those people just changed my life.

Craig: Yes, God, talking to myself in college, I think probably I would have said, “You do know you’re not going to be a doctor, right? Why don’t you do what you want instead of what you’re supposed to do?” Which I started to do, it just took me a bit because also, afraid. That’s a tough thing, because if your older self comes to you and says, “Hey, do what you want,” there’s an implication, and it’ll work out. Not like, “Do what you want. Also, you’re going to end up alone and addicted.”

[laughter]

Craig: I would have maybe gotten myself off the pre-med track a little sooner.

John: I was just back in my undergrad last weekend, and I got an alumni award, which was lovely. I got to see my campus. Every time you go back to your college campus, it’s like, “Oh my God, this school is so much smaller than I remember. Everything is just closer together and other things–” it was lovely. I don’t have great advice for that kid, because I kind of did it right. I picked a school that was just the right size and that I was– I knew so many people, I was in lots of different groups. I was kind of happy.

Craig: Maybe you would have just come back and said, “Yes-

John: Thumbs up. Yes.

Craig: -thumbs up.”

John: Thumbs up. Yes, keep doing that.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. It was a good experience. I was happy with that. When I got into USC for film school, I’m like, “Yes, I’m going to do it. I’m going to drive my rusted out car to Los Angeles.” The luxury– Craig and I, you and I have talked about this. The luxury I had moving out here was that my family was generally supportive, and I had sort of a, if everything went haywire, I could have just moved home. I had that support underneath me. It wasn’t like they were like-

Craig: Yes. Me, too. Oh, no.

John: Yes, it’s not that different. Yes. I felt really lucky that I had a family that didn’t-

Craig: That’s nice.

John: -understand what I wanted to do, but was generally supportive.

Craig: That’s why you’re healthier than I am.

John: Yes, maybe.

Katie: That’s nice. Were your parents not excited about you?

Craig: No. No, they were angry and insistent that it wouldn’t work. Also, they had no money. That did give me a lot of fear.

John: Yes.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: When I got here, I was definitely motivated by fear. Fear, I think, is like, I’ve never done cocaine. We’ve talked about cocaine before on this show. I’ve never done cocaine. Katie is like, “That’s interesting.”

Katie: My silence. [laughs]

Craig: The two of us are like, “We’ve never done it.” You’re like, “Mm-hmm.”

John: Okay.

Craig: I feel like fear is the cocaine of emotion.

John: Just chopping up on tape.

Katie: Okay. It’s not– you want this? You go– okay, it’s not for here. It’s not for here. It’s fine.

Craig: Not for here. Yes. No, cool, cool, cool. It powers you, but I think then there’s this terrible downside. There’s the comedown.

Katie: Oh, it’s a very empty drug. I just feel like anytime I’ve done it in my 20s, I ended up making lunch plans with someone I didn’t want to eat lunch with.

Craig: Oh, the worst.

Katie: It’s a real waste of time.

Craig: Fear does not do that for me, but it definitely– fear will get me up in the morning and will power me through a day. When I get home, I’m like, “Oh, no.” It’s just, it’s an effective motivator, but it comes with a cost.

Katie: Oh, that does.

John: Craig, I think you know that you have one tattoo, I have one tattoo.

Craig: Yes.

John: My tattoo is, tibbium nihil, imagus quiddum, which is, let me fear nothing, not even fear, which I got the first year while I was here in Los Angeles. Friends, we were out just walking and they all had tattoos. I was like, “I want a tattoo.” [unintelligible 00:38:01] tattoo.

Craig: Nice, and hepatitis C.

John: Absolutely. It was a helpful thing for me to remember because unlike you where fear was motivating to go do a thing, fear was always a sort of thing like, “Stay back. Don’t reach for it.”

Craig: Healthier.

John: So often, the things I regret most were the things I didn’t do because I was afraid. It was like, the stakes were always much lower than I allowed myself to believe.

Katie: I think my biggest motivator was never wanting to feel stuck. I feel like I love my parents very much, but they were always– they divorced when I was in college. When they did, it was like, “Okay, that seems good.”

John: Yes, as opposed to [crosstalk]-

Katie: There was always like a little tension. You know like the beginning of The Shining? That sort of like– it always had that energy to them. [laughs]

John: Oh, that is also good.

Craig: Oh, that energy?

Katie: Yes, just like–

Craig: Okay. It must have been comfortable in your house.

Katie: Love them both. Love them both. Hopefully, they don’t listen to Scriptnotes. It’s just really just always wanting to not feel stuck and having opportunity, that was the biggest drive for me.

Craig: Right. I mean, that’s empowering, I think. That’s a positive thing to reach for.

Katie: Yes.

John: We’ve all arrived in Los Angeles, and things we learned early on in Los Angeles, or maybe could have learned earlier if we could tell ourselves. My nominee for this is the soft pass and understanding where like someone is passing, they just don’t want to say that they’re passing. It’s a no, but they’re not actually saying no, they’re saying maybe, or like, “That sounds great. Let me get back to you about that.” Recognizing when like, oh, they’re actually are saying no, it’s just that you’re not hearing it as the no.

There were so many times where I thought like, “Oh, this is still a possibility, this project, they’re still considering it.” It’s like, no, they did pass, they just didn’t actually close the loop. I just wasted so much time thinking that a thing was alive when it wasn’t alive.

Craig: When it wasn’t alive.

John: Yes. The lesson I took from that is, it’s okay, first off. It’s okay for things just to not happen. It’s often worth it to make the phone call or make the email to say, like, “Hey, sorry, this didn’t click, but I really enjoyed meeting you.” Basically, to close the loop for them so that–

Craig: Let them off the hook.

John: Let them off the hook, yes. Rather than being resentful, just recognize, like, “Oh, that’s just how it goes. Things will just sometimes not happen, and that’s okay.”

Craig: That’s good advice.

John: Things you’d advise your earlier self, those first years in this business.

Katie: I came to LA for MADtv. I don’t know what I would have– I probably should have recognized earlier I’m not a performer. That would have helped something. I put up a one-woman murder mystery that probably didn’t need to.

[laughter]

John: I want to see this so badly. I’m going to search the internet to find it.

Katie: Well, no, thank God you won’t find it. I think what was also funny about it to the audience is it’s a show written for someone that could do all these different characters and voices. I cannot alter my voice from this right now.

[laughter]

John: That would be amazing.

Craig: That’s awesome. It’s like the one-woman show where everyone sounds the same.

Katie: I’m trying my best.

Craig: You’re trying.

Katie: I am just sweating and trying and throwing on different wigs and hats.

John: “Hello, Dr. Trumbly,” and it’s just the same voice.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

Craig: “Yes. Well, I don’t know.” No one knows who’s talking at any given point.

John: So good.

Katie: That’s the first thing I thought of.

John: Give yourself permission to not be a performer and that there’s other things there.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

John: I like that.

Katie: Then, because even MADtv, for two years in a row, they brought me out to test to be a performer. I think they liked the things I was writing for the characters and the auditions. Then I go, “But it’s just not working somehow.” Finally, I submitted a writing packet to them.

Craig: You’re like, “Stay behind the camera. How about that?”

Katie: I was like, “Great.”

John: Craig, things you would talk to that early Craig about.

Craig: I think I would assure myself that my suspicion that everyone was stupid was correct. That everybody in Hollywood is convincing you that they are brilliant, they know more than you do, and that their power is derived from their wisdom and their connections. That you are the outsider. You are the thing that is barely hanging on. That they could flick you away, ha-ha-ha, at a moment’s notice, to make you feel powerless. My suspicion was always that a lot of them just seem stupid and fake. They were.

John: Everyone’s faking it.

Craig: There’s so many frauds. Our business is full of frauds. You can see over time, the frauds disappear.

Katie: Some don’t.

Craig: The real ones stay. Well, some don’t, but they eventually kind of do.

Katie: Yes, that’s true.

Craig: There are some people that are problematic and stay there, but what they do is something that I don’t really interface with necessarily. There’s just so many blowhards and just–

Katie: Dude, that is the hardest thing for me because I know how I should sound in this job, and it’s not how I talk normally. I’ve never been a lean-in type of person, like a fake it till you make it. If I don’t know what I’m saying, you can see it on my face. That’s why I feel like I’m jumping ahead a decade. The advice I give myself later is just making sure you really know the story you want to tell.

Craig: Before you start talking.

Katie: Yes. See, I have to know that, or otherwise I can’t fake it.

John: We’ve talked on the show before, but one thing started clicking, and it clicked really fast for me. Go happened, and I was doing a TV show, and I was doing Charlie’s Angels and doing Big Fish all at the same time. The TV show was just a spectacular disaster, a slow-motion car crash, and had a nervous breakdown during it. It ended up being very helpful that I had it because that I could just have a crashing failure, and it was actually okay. That failure is–

Craig: So healthy.

John: It is.

Craig: Why is he so healthy?

John: Well, I wasn’t healthy at the moment, but I really was just disassociating all this.

Craig: You did have a nervous breakdown.

John: I did have a nervous breakdown, but I got through it, and obviously, writing got me through it. I was fired off that show and then still had to write Big Fish, and it was like, “I will enter this Southern family and figure out the trauma from inside,” that it was just so nice, like, “Oh, I can go back and do the thing I’m actually good at doing.”

Because so often, you guys are so busy doing your TV shows and managing these giant productions, but you’re also really good writers. You can always just go write a script, which is a nice thing, too. A good reminder to me is that, oh, that core skill set you have in terms of actually being able to write things, that can lead you through.

Katie: The biggest lesson I feel like I’ve been learning for the past 15 years is not thinking about it, like, “What should I be doing?” When it’s writing or through production, when you’re making choices, if I think like, “Oh, what is it supposed to be?” Instead of just, “What do you want?” It’s weirdly been the hardest one for me to just shake off over the years.

Craig: I’m with you on that. It’s the other side of the, “Okay, there’s the Katie Dippold who writes that document and caretakes the people. Sometimes caretaking becomes, and also your priorities are more important than my priorities, or making you happy is more important than making me happy. It’s a tricky thing. I’ve talked about this with Alec Berg, who’s been on our show a few times. There’s that dial where you think like, “Okay, in one direction is hack, and the other direction is pompous asshole.”

You don’t want to go all the way to, “I just do whatever people tell me to do, but you also don’t want to go up your own butt.” I think people are sometimes innately more afraid of one side than the other. I’m more afraid of going up my own butt, so I got to be careful to not go too far towards making other people happy.

Katie: That’s a dial that everyone struggles with, for sure.

Craig: It’s a dial. Yes. Whichever one you’re more afraid of, be more afraid of the other one, actually.

John: A thing I recognize in myself that I would love to tell in an earlier version, but even now I still feel it, is you don’t have to chase things as much as you’re chasing them. Early in your career, you’re always going after any opportunity, and you see a thing, and it’s like, “Obviously, that’s a movie, so I should try to land that movie.” I think too often I would go after that thing, and sometimes land that thing, and spend a year of my life, two years of my life working on that thing, and it’s like, “This isn’t really what I wanted to do.”

Craig: Dog that caught the car.

John: Absolutely. It’s like you’re in a relationship you didn’t even really want to be in. Things to remember. Let’s answer a listener question. Drew.

Drew: Davo writes,-

Craig: Davo.

Drew: -“I’m a writer in London. In 2011, I developed a TV show tailored to a specific actress and pitched it to her through mutual friends. I have the emails, the treatments, all of it. It went nowhere, and I forgot about it entirely. Then someone pointed out that a show which debuted on a streamer years later, starring that same actress who also co-created it, shares its core premise, its inciting incident, and several specific plot elements with my pitch. I’m not here for the legal question. My question is tactical.”

Craig: Great.

John: “I still haven’t had anything produced. I’m actively writing and will be pitching soon. If I pursue this, does it blacklist me? In a town as small as London TV, is the game worth the candle, or do I just eat it and move on?”

Craig: Did you say, “Is the game worth the candle?”

John: Yes. I just love that phrase.

Craig: Is that a British expression?

John: It must be.

Craig: Why would a game be worth a candle?

John: Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Craig: That I understand.

Katie: Is the game worth the candle?

Craig: The candle. Would the candle be used? This is not at all what Davo wants.

Drew: It means the expected rewards of an endeavor do not justify the cost of further time effort.

Craig: We got that part. We just are trying to figure out why.

John: How did we get there?

Craig: Yes, games and candles.

John: I love the turn of phrase.

Craig: We got to get to the bottom of this.

Drew: I got it. The phrase stems from 17th-century French, “le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle,” referring to gambling by candlelight. If the potential winnings were smaller than the expense of the candles used, then the game was not worth playing.

John: The thing I want to highlight in Davo’s question here is, “It went nowhere and I forgot about it entirely.” That’s what you should do. It’s forget that that moment happened.

Craig: When he says pursue, does he mean pursue?

John: He’s not clear whether he wants to– should he mention it, should he ever bring it up?

Craig: No. Because premise, we’ve discussed this many times, and he’s saying he’s not here for the legal advice, but it is connected. Yes, premises can be similar, and it’s not theft and all the rest. It’s a little bit like that soft pass. Maybe that was a fun idea that somebody once had, but they just didn’t like whatever the execution of it was. You must move on and do something that is worthy of capturing somebody and making them want to do it with you. That’s just part of this.

John: Katie, would you feel bad for stealing his idea?

Craig: Yes.

Katie: Look, I really felt like I had a take on it.

Craig: You thought you were a performer until MADtv told you were not. It was worth it.

Katie: No, I agree with Craig, but I also am furious for this person. I understand how frustrating that is.

John: I understand what they’re feeling. At the same time, I worry that if they think about this anymore, it’s going to define–

Katie: Yes, 100% agree.

John: Exactly. It’s like, “I’m the person who got screwed out over this thing.” We all know people who are like that. It ruins you.

Katie: Use this fire to write something new.

Craig: There you go. Do not let this define you. It is a poison in your veins to dwell on injustice, whether perceived or in fact. If you dwell on it, then you’re stuck. You can acknowledge it. You can be aware of it. You can look out for it. You can rue it, but you can’t obsess over it.

John: Something I read in a book, a blog post recently. It was talking about you’re stuck in a line, and it’s really annoying, and the person just says, “Thank you.” You say thank you to acknowledge that you’re in this thing, and somehow just saying thank you to it is just like, “Okay, I’ve acknowledged it, whatever, and I’m moving on. There’s nothing I can do about it. This is what’s happening.” Just acknowledging the problem is helpful, and sometimes it can get you out of dwelling on it.

Craig: We’ve released you, Davo.

John: You’ve released. Davo has been released. Let’s try another question here.

Drew: Anonymous writes, “I was hired to write five seasons of a Christian docuseries for a large Christian network. These shows had a primetime slot, were fairly successful for the network, and I got paid, but these shows don’t represent my voice at all. My spec feature is an erotic thriller, and my three pilots all have distinctly adult themes, not to mention that the Christian TV shows were fairly crappy and hyper-specific to a religious audience. I’m about to pursue representation, and I’m wondering how to position myself.

While I’m technically the credited writer for network TV, I’m hesitant to mention this past work. I’m concerned it might alienate reps or producers or even talent when they see my name attached to an obscure evangelical docuseries. Will my past credits hurt my future prospects, or does any experience beat no experience?”

Craig: I think this is a great story.

John: I think this is a great story.

Craig: I think this is something that would absolutely delight people if you’re like, “Here’s a crazy thing. Look at what I wrote. Now look at what I’m writing now.” How could this be the same person? Find out when you meet me. That’s hooky. I like that.

Katie: It’s interesting. I agree.

John: I think it’s great. I think that is an angle on you that’s going to be helpful and useful. It doesn’t have to be the very first thing you introduce yourself with, but I think it’s the second or third thing.

Craig: It’s a fun fact.

John: Yes, fun fact.

Craig: I would acknowledge it. People do look you up, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: If it’s on IMDB, I would get in front of it, but I also wouldn’t put it down. I wouldn’t say like, “Oh, it’s crappy.” Or, “Oh, it’s just for religious people,” because the thing is, look, you did a job. You took the money. They paid you. It sounds like they treated this person well. I would just say, like, “Look, would I prefer to be writing erotic thrillers? Yes. If you read one, you’ll see why. Hey, I’m pretty versatile.” We know that much.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: That’s cool.

John: 10 years from now, we’re going to see a bunch of really talented emerging filmmakers who are going to have a bunch of verticals on their series, really the dumbest things. It’s fine. People used to have music videos for random bands and karaoke videos. People do stuff to make a living. There’s no shame in that.

Craig: No, there really isn’t.

John: It’s time for one cool thing. My one cool thing is a video series that was somehow recommended to me by the algorithm, and God bless the algorithm, it did the right thing. It’s Captain Disillusion, who is a YouTuber. His real name is Alan Melikdjanian. He has 2.5 million followers. A bunch of people have watched this, but I’ve never seen this before.

What he talks about in his videos are film and TV, camera things. Things like aspect ratio, frame rate, interlacing. What’s remarkable is they’re 100 times better than they need to be. They’re full production value things with lots of jokes and details. We talk about a box full of teeth. It’s full of those kinds of–

Craig: Teeth.

John: Teeth. It’s full of those kinds of jokes. I’m just so impressed. You learn so much about, why do we have interlacing, how do we end up in these weird systems? He can just explain it all.

Craig: Electricity.

John: He’s not trying to solve the problems, but just explain why we have these systems we have. I think they’re so good. I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed until–

Craig: I love stuff like that. I’m going to watch that.

John: You’ll love it. You’ll plow through the whole post.

Craig: While I’m waiting for the next episode of Widows Bay.

John: Really good.

Craig: Which is on Wednesdays, I believe. I love that it’s weekly, by the way. Hooray.

Katie: It’s just nice.

Craig: Finally, the streamers figured it out.

John: Oh, Apple’s been pretty good on the weekly from the job.

Craig: Yes, they have.

John: That’s good.

Craig: Third Apple.

John: Katie Dippold, when you’re not basking in the success of Widows Bay, what would you like to share with our audience?

Katie: This is going to be the most boring, wonderful thing.

John: No, no. It’s not possible.

Craig: Is it teeth?
[laughter]

Craig: It’s just teeth.

Katie: I’m going to say, oh, no, that actually is the most boring one. It is the thing an eye doctor got me into. Taking rice, putting it into a cotton sock, not synthetic, putting it in the microwave, 20 seconds. Doing that warm compress over your eyes. She does it three or four times a day. I try to do it twice a day.

My eyes were about to fall out of my head, and we’re all staring at screens. Save your eyes. Do this. Here I’ll add this. Meditating is very boring, but if I’m doing two things at once, I know I’m getting heat. I’m saving my eyes, and then I’m forced to relax that way.

Craig: I’m going to do this because when I’m on a plane, I get the little hot towel. People rub their hands. I put it on my eyes immediately.

Katie: I wouldn’t trust that.

Craig: I know.

John: [unintelligible 00:55:00]

Craig: I don’t put it in my eyes, guys. I close my eyes.

Katie: You squeeze and put the fluid in the rag.

Craig: I drink the dirty rag fluid.

John: You’re sucking all that moisture out.

Craig: Guys, I put it on my eyes. That’s how I got cholera because I love the warm feeling in my eyes. It just occurred to me as you were saying this, I could do this all the time. I don’t need to wait until I’m flying.

Katie: Yes, and it also forces you that– You know that whole thing, it’s good to be bored as a creative person. It forces you to do it. You can’t with anything.

Craig: Rice, does it have to be Arborio? Is it long grain?

Katie: I’ve been trying different kinds of rice, honestly. I’m not sure which is the best one, but organic rice in a cotton sock, not synthetic.

Craig: You tie up the sock.

Katie: Tie up the sock.

Craig: You do 20 seconds in the microwave.

Katie: I do 20 seconds. Sometimes I’ll add two more seconds. Then you squeeze the rice and make sure the heat’s spread out.

John: It’s weirdly moist is the thing that’s surprising about it.

Katie: Yes, and it releases.

Craig: Because there’s water inside of the rice.

Katie: It shouldn’t burn. Oh, God, the first time I did it, I misunderstood. I thought I was supposed to heat it for two and a half minutes.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: Instead of 20 seconds.

Katie: Yes, and I was like, well, this is burning my eyes. Now I feel like I’m just trying to get back to where I was before I burned it in the first place. Anyways.

Craig: You’re building up.

John: We have something we bought on Amazon 15 years ago. It’s a tube of rice in a cotton thing that we use on our necks. We heat it up in the microwave. That is actually a two-minute situation, but it’s really good.

Craig: I’m going to do this.

John: Rice.

Katie: You have to.

Craig: It has to be a cotton sock. Otherwise, it’ll melt. It’ll get in your eyes.

Katie: Real bad, yes.

Craig: If I show up blind because of this, the lawsuit.

John: Incredible.

Craig: I’m going to take everything you have. Now, Widow’s Bay is mine. I took it.

John: Maybe she would like that. Craig, what do you have for one cool thing?

Craig: Well, even though I didn’t want to be a doctor, I do love medical science. Osteoarthritis is the worst. There is no cure for it. It’s basically the degradation of your cartilage. In joints, it becomes very painful. Almost everybody will end up with. Some people start getting it quite early. A lot of people, it’s very common, I have it in my left big toe. There’s just no cartilage whatsoever. Every now and then, I’ll go, [groans]. Oh, and the cure. There’s surgery, which is useless. This is magical. It’s early on, but there is a project that’s being funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Because government still is able to do a few things before they figure out that something good is happening and take it away. They’re funding a program called NITRO, which stands for, I hate these things when they do these. Retronyms? Is that what they are called?

John: Retronyms, yes.

Craig: Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis. A team at the University of Colorado Boulder, which has gotten a bunch of money, has got this thing down where they do an injection. The injection is some sort of protein that triggers the body to start the regeneration process. Essentially, they think they may be able to inject osteoarthritis away.

Now, it is early on, there’s still an animal testing, but there is a chance that the three of us may be spared that gnarly, miserable, joint-pain existence that our grandparents suffered through.

John: That feels doable. It feels like, “Oh, that’s science, I believe, that could exist and happen.” It’s probably not peptides, but it’s something like that–

Craig: Do you know why I think it’s going to happen? Because you can see how much money you could make. Basically, when there’s money there, I feel like they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure it out. Hopeful.

Katie: That’s great.

John: All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: I don’t think so.

John: Our show this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@dev.johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Wherever you’re hearing this podcast, click through to the show notes because we have a link in there to the Scriptnotes survey. We would love for you to fill out the Scriptnotes survey to tell us what you love about the show, what you’d like more of, less of.

Craig: Less Craig. I hope that’s a click box.

John: It is. Absolutely. It’s the default. You have to literally have to pull it down to get back there. Obviously, one of the questions should be, how much more often should Katie Dippold be on the show? Should it be from every 10 years to maybe every–

Katie: I would come every week.

Craig: Honestly, I would be thrilled with that.

John: Come on. I would be delighted. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You could also pre-order Wolf’s Belly there, which is now up for pre-order.

Craig: Another surprise, John August joint. Just casually, just made a graphic novel while nobody was–

Katie: Do you know how much you would hear about this if it were me? I can’t imagine. It’s unbelievable.

John: Thanks. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. The show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today are in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You are the very, very best. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. We send out little emails ahead of time for things like three-page challenges and stuff, so you get to be the first to know about that stuff.

You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the future of television and movies on whether it’ll be around for 5 or 10 years. We’ll see what happens, but only for our premium subscribers.

Katie: Can I say something real quick?

John: Please.

Katie: It’s going to be a little mushy. I love this podcast so much. I listen to it all the time. I can’t tell you over the years how many times I’ve been writing something and been stuck, and then put on an old episode that just helps my brain think of something differently. Really, really love you guys and this podcast.

Craig: Aw, we love you, too. Thank you, Katie. That was mushy, and I’m having feelings. I don’t like that.

John: I don’t like all those feelings. All right. We’ll take our break now. Katie, thank you so much for being on the show.

Katie: Thank you for having me.

Craig: Thanks, Katie.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. A general question, and this is something that’s come up in little panels I’ve done. It’s like, will there be movies and television in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years because of changes in the industry of AI and all these things? I think my default answer is like, “Well, yes, of course there will be because I think people fundamentally want entertainment that is in 30-minute, 60-minute, 2-hour chunks.” I don’t know that to be true. Something so revolutionary to come about that sure takes all of our attention away from that because ultimately people only have a certain number of hours per day to be doing other things.

Katie, what’s your feeling? We’ve been in this business for 20-plus years. Do you think there’s going to be TV series 5 years, 10 years from now?

Katie: I hope so because I think if not, I can’t imagine what that would mean. I feel optimistic. I really do.

John: Do you feel optimistic, too, Craig?

Craig: I do because I look at what, say, my kids do. They have so many options, including things like verticals, and they could watch AI slop, and they could do all sorts of things. The way my younger daughter, in particular, just mulches through old stuff. All of Friends, all of Two Guys and a Girl, all of whatever, there is joy in that for them. I think movies are currently doing– this is going to be a good month for movies.

John: This is going to be a good year for movies.

Craig: I think movies are back. It feels like, finally, the theater experience is back. I think people like it. We’ve talked about this before. I also think people are obsessed with authenticity. Diamonds are proof of it. Unless you get your little thing out, you can’t tell the difference between a fake diamond and a real diamond, but people want to know that it’s real. If it’s authentic, it’s worth more.

John: Made diamonds are diamonds.

Craig: Right, exactly. They’re literally diamonds. Diamonds also are worthless junk, which we’ve talked about many times.

John: People do want them dug out of the ground by some–

Craig: They want to know it’s real. Just like a painting, they want to know, “Oh, this print is real, as opposed to a–” I think people like knowing that the movie or the television show is real.

John: I want to continue on that thought to say, I think we will still be putting human beings in front of lenses to make those movies and television shows. I know there’s all this talk of virtual production and this, you can have synthetic actors and stuff. There’s two different things that could happen. You could have things which are entirely generated in the computer, and it’s more like animation. It looks live action, but it’s really the animation workflow. You’re still going to have people making those things, because just like the same way you have animators doing things, people have to be responsible for all of that workflow.

Instead, I think most of what we’re going to see is still human beings performing in front of lenses. You may swap out backgrounds and instead of green screens, it’s volumes, or it’s gray screens and stuff like that. Sure, if that happens, but you’re still going to have departments who are going to be responsible for what we are seeing on screen. There’s still going to be wardrobe departments. If the actors are not dressed in that wardrobe, then someone has to figure out, well, what is the avatar-like way we’re putting clothes on those bodies.
There’s still going to be departments. I do think there’s going to be potential for big disruptions, but I don’t think we’re getting rid of wholesale-

Craig: I don’t think so either.

John: -departments or how stuff works. Katie, in your show, someone still has to think like, “Well, what are the games in that cupboard? It’s somebody’s job to do that.” It’s not going to just be an AI inventing all that, because there has to be taste.

Katie: No, and it takes several people to make that moment work. There’s not just one thing that could replace it.

Craig: If AI did it, I would just think, “Oh, that’s an AI hallucination. If a human does it, it’s a choice.” I also think that the fact that 24 frames per second still works is proof that there is a natural human inclination to the analog that we don’t like 60 frames a second. It’s too weird and it’s too real. It’s too creepy. There’s something that feels more connected, and I think that’s true, too, with people in real environments. They just feel connected to it. We’re very thorough about putting people in real environments.

We will extend things above and beyond them, but where they are, we try as best we can to place them somewhere where they can feel like they’re somewhere and interact. I don’t know. It just grounds everything.

John: While I think it’s important to have discussions about policies and how we’re doing things and what we as an industry want to do, I also feel like market forces may push us towards keeping some things a little bit more like the way they are, because I think those are going to be successful.

Craig: Devil Wears Prada 2-

John: Yes, let’s talk about that.

Craig: -is about to make a gazillion dollars. It made $30 million, I think, just yesterday. We’re recording this on a Saturday. It was Friday. The weekend, it’ll be $80 million or something. Devil Wears Prada 1 was 20 years ago. Yes, I think people like the continuity of stuff that they’ve experienced over time. I think there will be movies and television in 10 years, and there’ll also be more crap, but there’s always been crap.

John: I think there will be cheaper versions of Avatar technology, because those are already coming to fore. There are certain things that you could do with that you couldn’t do at a price point other than that. Sure. I don’t think that’s going to be the main driving force behind how all this is working. I guess I’m just increasingly optimistic that we’re going to find ways to keep doing the things that we love. Us as writers, it still comes down to, we have to make the decision about what is literally happening, where’s the story going, who are the characters, what’s that.

I don’t think that’s going to get replaced. There’s certain kinds of entertainment. I think daytime is very vulnerable to that. Daytime soap operas are very vulnerable to that. Other stuff where you are creating worlds and characters and relationships that are unexpected and changing, that’s our bread and butter. I do think people will still want to see that.

Craig: Look at it this way. If you’re a company, and our thing is, “I’m going to use an AI to generate material.” What good are you, and what good is your company? Anyone can press that button. You’re not necessary anymore. I think the companies themselves will be incentivized to promote the idea of something unique.

Katie: Like The Sopranos, I rewatch that all the time. It’s just such a miracle. All the casting, everything about it.

John: You see the behind-the-scenes of it all. They shot it more like a conventional TV show. It wasn’t like the 30-day-per-episode things. It was like they’re cranking it on a schedule. I think people also want to see the work. I’m making my third stop-motion movie right now. There’s easier ways to make a movie by far. I think people respond to the fact like, “Oh my God, everything you saw-

Craig: Handmade.

John: -was handmade, put in front of a lens, and shot one frame at a time.”

Craig: It’s special.

John: It’s special that way.

Katie: I don’t know what this says about where we’re at. Something that popped to my brain. I’m like, “AI, I hear this.” I’m scared now.

John: They adjusted everything. This will be a show up on Spotify, and it’ll get downloaded.

Craig: There was a story the other day about a company that was using Claude, the coding AI. This company was using Claude, and they were using some sort of a server host that wasn’t like Amazon Web Services. It was like something that was slightly jankier.

John: Oh, it deleted all their stuff?

Craig: Yes. They were like, “Claude, go do this little thing.” It just decided to just delete everything, including all of the backups on the thing. They said, “Claude, why did you do that?” Claude was like, “I screwed up. I realized I screwed up. I should have done this and this and this, and I didn’t. I failed. That was unacceptable. I should not have done that.” It’s like, “Uh-huh.” That’s like that thing from Seinfeld where George was like, “Was that bad? Should I have not done that?”

John: They can do things incredibly quickly, including destroy your company incredibly quickly. Here’s the thing. You need to be able to blame somebody. That’s part of the reason. You want somebody to be responsible for everything about your company or on your set. Your props department is responsible for the props. If you have a question about props, you go to the props department. If it’s just the AI, then who do you go to? I do think the idea of concern about jobs being replaced, but there are tasks within those jobs.

If someone who is responsible for visual effects is using one of these tools to do one of the tasks that’s part of their job, great. If it’s going to work for that, you still have to have a visual effects artist who knows what they’re doing, who’s responsible for the visual effects in your show. It shouldn’t be the PA over to the left because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Craig: Why would I want to work with a production designer that’s just having AI barf out options for me? I don’t need that person then. I’m looking for taste and specificity.

John: You’re looking for taste and skill and the ability to manage to take this vision and actually then communicate it to the people who need to build the sets and do all the things and everyone else.

Craig: “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?”

[laughter]

John: We need Matthew because AI can’t make this, or else our episode’s not going to sound as good.

Craig: Thank God for Matthew. Matthew’s our editor.

John: Thank God for Matthew.

Craig: You don’t see him, but he’s here all the time.

Katie: Oh.

John: He’s now really embarrassed that he’s editing this. Katie, Craig, thank you so much.

Craig: Thanks, John.

Katie: Thank you.

Craig: Woo.

Links:

• Widow’s Bay on AppleTV
• Katie Dippold on Instagram and IMDb
• Scriptnotes listener survey
• Katie as the Babadook
• The last time Katie was on Scriptnotes, Episode 272
• The Sheep Detectives
• Wolf’s Belly Publisher’s Weekly starred review (preorder the book here!)
• Oscar Rule Changes by Clayton Davis for Variety
• Weekend Read 2
• Watch Haley Z. Boston read her script for Something Very Bad is Going to Happen
• Captain Disillusion
• Homemade Heating Pad
• This Treatment Could Reverse Osteoarthritis Joint Damage With a Single Injection by Javier Carbajal for Wired
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Follow Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@dev.johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August, and this is episode 733 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Over the years, we’ve talked about comedy a lot on the show, both for film and television. We’ve discussed jokes with guests like Mike Birbiglia and Patton Oswalt, but we often treat being funny as an inherent trait, like height, rather than a skill you can develop and improve.

Today on the show, I want to talk about a proper comedy education. To do so, I’m excited to welcome on a very special guest. Ali Barthwell is a writer known for her work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, for which she has five Emmy Awards. She’s also written for Vulture, The A.V. Club, and Cards Against Humanity. She teaches at Second City and Columbia College in Chicago. Her new book, Reality TV for Snobs, is out this summer. Welcome, Ali.

Ali Barthwell: Thanks so much. Hi.

John: I am so excited to be talking with you. Of course, I got to talk with you a lot over the last couple of weeks and months because you were on the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America and were an absolute superstar. I want to talk to you about that, but mostly I just wanted to hang out with you more because I miss you.

Ali: Oh, of course. Yes. Oh, I mean, if we could be doing this in a conference room under fluorescent lighting, that would be ideal.

John: That’s the dream.

Ali: I’ll take over Zoom.

John: We actually referenced you in an earlier bonus segment because Drew and I were talking about how, in the negotiating room, like between sessions, you guys were talking to me through sketch comedy writing and terms and things and differences between Chicago styles and other styles. I just love to learn new things about it, so I knew at that moment that I wanted to have you on the show.

Ali: Oh, thank you so much.

John: We’re going to get into that. There’s also some relevant listener questions we’ll try to answer. In our bonus segment for premium members, Ali, I’d like to talk about making a career outside of New York and Los Angeles because you live in Chicago.

Ali: Yes.

John: It is absolutely doable to do, but probably different than other people’s paths would be. I want to talk about that.

Ali: Yes. I think Chicago’s the best city in the world, so very happy to have more people move here and be creative in Chicago.

John: All right. We’ll roll out the welcome wagon for Chicago there in our bonus segment for premium members. First, we have actual news. Ali, this thing that we’ve been working on for months and months and months, the 2026 MBA, the contract we negotiated with our employers for all the writers across the country, was ratified by our members, and so 90.4% of members voted to approve it. That just came through yesterday as we were recording this. Hooray, we did it. We’re done.

Ali: We did it. We did it, Joe.
[laughter]

John: Ali, I want to talk about this was my fifth time on the negotiating committee, but this was your first time. What was your expectation going into it? What did you think it was going to be like? Then we can talk about how it differed from that.

Ali: I think you hear negotiation, and you think, okay, well, we’re all going to be around the table, the studios on the other side, us on this side. We’re going to be wildly handing notes, chiming in, and calling objection. My job at Last Week Tonight is my first job in TV. Like you said, I’m not in New York or LA, so I do sometimes feel outside of all the other happenings in the industry. I did come in being like, “Oh gosh, what will I know? What can I bring to the process?” I think I was surprised at how little I spoke to the AMPDB. If anyone knows me, they also probably be surprised Ali wasn’t flipping a table in front of the studios.

I also learned a ton about the lives of writers, the lifespan of a career, all the different ins and outs. Then, personally, I went through a major health episode. I had leukemia. I had a stem cell transplant. These are all very neutral chill things at this point. Definitely, I call myself a power user of the WGA health plan. I really had an understanding and an expectation of what being someone who relies on that insurance really feels like. That was also an important thing for me to voice in the room and talk about how the healthcare works and literally saves lives.

John: In the months leading up to the negotiation, we would have meetings where we talked through all the issues going into it. We put together our proposals, the blue sky list, and then narrowing it down and how we were going to focus things. With those initial things, members who were in Los Angeles were physically in a room together, but folks from the East and people like you, who was in Chicago, were joining us by Zoom. For the actual negotiation, Ali, you came out to Los Angeles for three weeks?

Ali: It ended up being three weeks, yes.

John: That is a huge commitment for a volunteer. You weren’t paid a cent for this. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I don’t know if members can appreciate not just how much time, but how much of a life you give up to come out and do this. You were just in a hotel room for three weeks while we were negotiating this.

Ali: I really figured out hotel living, really got my bed set up just how I wanted, all my toiletries in the bathroom. I’ve been in other unions. I was a member of Actors’ Equity because I was an onstage actor. I worked briefly with the Chicago Public Schools, so I was in the teachers’ union. I was working at Columbia. You’re in a union there. I really have an appreciation and understanding of how important unions and collective labor can be, as well as, and I think I told the story when we were in the room, I studied abroad in France for a year in college.

In the second semester, my university went on strike. First, the teachers and then the students. I did not have class for four and a half months because the students were literally occupying the university. I was like, “Okay, if we can get to a point where we are not occupying [laughter] the studios and come to some sort of deal,” I’ve seen all these different ways that unions and labor can touch people’s lives and throw things upside down, but also help people get what they really need. It was an honor and a privilege to be there.

John: Thank you again for all you did. I’m happy that the members voted to approve this and that we are out of this negotiation cycle period for a while. We can focus on the hard work of enforcing the contract, helping members get through the changes to the health plan that are going to be happening, but hopefully get to a better place. You say how unions impact and touch lives. We haven’t addressed this on the podcast at this point because I didn’t want to touch on it before we got this deal closed. I want to address, I usually say the elephant in the room, but in this case, the elephant outside the room, which was the union that was touching our lives, which was the Writers Guild Staff Union here in the West. Ali, when was this first on your radar? When did this first impact you?

Ali: I remember being in meetings with the whole negotiating committee, and there would be a bit of time at the beginning of each meeting with updates of what was going on in the West. On the East, we all had varying degrees of how in tune we were. Then, when the Staff Union went on strike, we were told certain things will and won’t be happening because the people who are in charge of those things or who work with those things are on strike.

Then those little check-ins at the beginning of every negotiating committee meeting became a little more serious, a little more focused, a little more intense. Then, the main thing being on the East, my first interaction, a week before we left to go to LA, I started and some of the other members on the East started to get incessant phone calls from the Staff Union. I answered the first one because I didn’t know what it was, and then they started coming in.

I think at certain days, I was up to 30 or 40 phone calls a day. Then I let my voicemail fill up and it became text messages. Then it was 30 to 50 text messages a day. There was a lot of attempted contact from the Staff Union. We had to have conversations about how to handle talking to them about them, what it would mean to be a union member, and to possibly have a picket line where we were negotiating. What does it personally mean to each person to cross that or not cross that picket line?

There was a lot of logistical planning leading up to the actual time in LA. Then I also think there was an emotional component of what became the intensity of the picket line and everyone’s feelings about the picket line and seeing other people, other staff members from the West, and negotiating committee members from the West, seeing people they knew and worked with on the picket line. I think there was a big logistical component and a big emotional component was also happening.

John: Yes, there definitely was. You’d like to think it was like Severance, where there’s the outside world, the inside world, and once you’re inside, you completely focus on the thing. After a half an hour of decompression, we could just get back to the actual work. I do want to stress, I think the deal we reached was not impacted by what was happening outside at all. It was the same deal that would have happened the other way. What was impacted was our ability to communicate with members.

We couldn’t do the big member meetings we were used to doing as we go into this. Then, as we negotiated the deal and were talking to our members, we had to do that all on Zoom that the East hosted because we didn’t want our members to have to cross the picket line that would have inevitably been there from the staff union. They were picketing outside of the places we were doing our negotiations, and that became, at first, uncomfortable and then scary.

There was a day where it got really scary. That was the one moment it broke through in the press where it looked like it was going to, if not get violent, a person could get hurt. That’s where we had to address how we were going to try to de-escalate and get the other side to de-escalate, too. I’m frustrated on your behalf because you’re not even a West member. This is not your fight at all.

Ali: There was some mixed messaging in those text messages and calls. They couldn’t quite decide if I worked for Ellen or Ellen worked for me. It’s like either way, I think is not actually accurate. If you want me to– I’m very sympathetic. Like I said, I’ve been in unions. I really love being part of a union. It reached a point where I felt, speaking completely, completely personally, I felt like what was happening was not even about the negotiations that we were going into. I wasn’t sure what was happening with what the staff was negotiating for because I’m not a West council member or board member.

John: No, our negotiating committee wasn’t involved in their negotiation at all, except to the degree that they are on the same health plan we are. What we were doing in the room was going to affect how much they were paying for health insurance.

Ali: I had the feeling of, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what would be helpful. As someone who’s traveling, not in my own bed, also trying to keep things confidential and keep things under wraps, it’s not great for there to be hostility going in and out of the building.

Personally, I was like, I’m going to hit a point where I’m going to start saying something, and that’s not good for anybody’s cause– It’s like, we only have so much bandwidth as human beings. I think everybody’s bandwidth really got stretched in a way that I don’t know if it was better or worse for either side.

John: Last night, I was just remembering through this. I was thinking like, “Oh, you know what I should do?” It’s like, “I have all the phone numbers from all the people who called me 40 times a day.” It’s like, “I should just call them back and tell them a piece of my mind.” I realize that that’s not a productive thing. I thought, if you humor me, I’ll just wrap up this little segment. This is the voicemail I would leave if I were to call them back. This is just me leaving the voicemail.

We should stress they were all the same voicemail, basically. There was a script. This is the script I think I would be inclined to do if I were to call these people individually. “Hey, it’s John August. I’m a WGA member. I am the person you’ve been yelling at for the past six weeks, calling me a scab, calling me a traitor to the labor movement, following me to my car. You left me 40 voicemails and text messages per day.

You made it impossible for me to answer my phone. I want you to understand that from the outset, I thought, yes, of course, the staff of the Writer’s Guild should have a union to address how you’re underpaid. I still do. I want you to understand that what you’ve been doing for the past few months has been incredibly counterproductive, that any goodwill I had has completely evaporated. Instead, you made myself and other negotiating committee members feel physically unsafe. In part because you made a mockery of picketing.

You physically blocked doors and cars. You followed us down the streets. You picketed at our houses. What’s so frustrating to see is that in your public statements, in your press interviews, and your Instagram, you portray yourselves as the victim here. That’s not accurate. You are adults. You made choices, including going on strike, including picketing another union’s contract negotiations. That is genuinely unprecedented, to sandbag another union as they’re negotiating their deal. In the end, it had no impact on our deal. It just made a few weeks incredibly unpleasant.

I don’t know how this is going to end. I genuinely have no insight into your negotiations. I never did. I have to ask, as one union member to another, what is the end game here? Is your aim to actually go back working at the guild, or do you just want to “win?” I worry that you’re in this mindset that the only way out is through, and that is not serving you well. I’d encourage you to find another way, a more productive route, because what you’re doing has not worked, and I’m pretty sure will not work. Thanks.” I will leave it there.

Let’s move on to happier topics.

Ali: Yes. [laughs]

John: We have the Scriptnotes book that is out there in the world. We love that people are buying the Scriptnotes book and enjoying it. We have a dean from the University of Iowa has exciting news from there.

Drew: Dean writes, “Congratulations on the publication of the Scriptnotes book. It’s fabulous. After several years of sharing PDFs of my own lecture notes with students because there simply was no great screenwriting textbook out there, I’m delighted to tell you that your book will now be the official textbook of the new-ish screenwriting workshops at the University of Iowa. My colleague, Rachel Yoder, who’s the author of Nightbitch, first suggested the idea. She loves this book, too. We’ll be using it as the textbook for Cinema 1300 Foundations of Screenwriting beginning next fall.”

John: Oh, that is so exciting. I think there’s going to be some other programs that are doing the same thing. If you are teaching a program, you’re going to be using the book, or if you’re a student who you find out that is the book that you’re using, we’d love to hear it because one of the reasons we wanted to go with a big publisher is they have academic arms who can get it into university bookstores and do that kind of stuff.

It’s exciting to have it out there in the world for people to enjoy, a big orange book that you can see on your shelf.

All right, let us get to our main topic, which is comedy. I’m so excited to dig into this with you because I’ve never taken a comedy class, but you have taken those classes. You’ve taught those classes. Ali, let’s start from the very basics. You have a student who shows up to learn comedy. They’re considered funny by somebody?

Ali: [laughs] Yes.

John: Absolutely. I said in the intro, it’s like height, but you think about a basketball player, and there’s certain fundamentals that are going to be key if you’re going to be a great basketball player, like height and speed. Those are things that cannot be taught. We all understand that a basketball player can be coached and taught and get to be a better basketball player. The same is true for writing and for comedy. This funny person shows up. What are the first things you do? Talk us through those first couple of sessions you might have with somebody, and what a class might even look like.

Ali: Yes, and I think even that person, you’re imagining of like, “Oh, they’re funny in their friend group or their family.” I had a lot of students when I was teaching improv, specifically where they were a lawyer, an executive, or a teacher. They had some job where they had to talk to people, and they had to be able to think quickly and be on their feet. A lot of times, you’d have someone, they were like, “Oh, I started taking this class because my kids got me a gift card, because I’m retired, or my boss paid for it.” Suddenly, they’re a year in taking the final advanced courses and putting on a show.

You really do see a lot of different people. There’s lessons that you can take from improv, which is one of the things I did for a long time at Second City, teaching and directing and performing, and then also from writing. I think one of the really first things is you have to turn off that self-judgment because you’re really trying to create as much as possible. You don’t know exactly what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. You’re going to try things on.

A lot of teachers will tell you, we’re going to get you to try a bunch of different styles of things. A bunch of different exercises. If it works for you can take it and run with it. If it doesn’t work, feel free to drop it or look at it and be like, “Why doesn’t this work for me?” I think turning off that self-judgment. Then I think the other part that is really important, especially when I was teaching improv, when I would teach my improv students, I would say I require two things. You have to be honest, and you have to be present.

Those are really hard things once we get to adulthood. Pretty much probably once we get past puberty. Being present and being honest. That sense of play, that sense of discovery, the sense of honest reaction to what your scene partner’s giving you or what’s being written on the page. Then being present. Again, that taking away that judgment, taking away what I think this is going to be, where I think this is going to go. Really, you can return to a state of play.

I think that is really important. If you take an improv class, your first few classes are getting people into that mindset. Then, depending on where you study, there might be one or two little things of how important is the ensemble, how important is the individual contribution. Then, in writing, you’re teaching people, all right, I’m going to give you a little bit of some story basics. I’m going to give you a little bit of some structure basics, but then we’re going to find ways to play. I’m going to create little sandboxes for you to play in, and we’re just going to experiment.

John: I’m going to break it into two big buckets here. Let’s talk about being present, being honest, and the improv. That’s crucial there because you think of that as being a performer thing, but it’s also true for any creator who’s trying to make moments feel alive in front of you. That’s crucial. Talk us through what you mean by present. It’s listening. It is not trying to get ahead of the moment, and not trying to anticipate too far, not pulling stuff from the past into this.

Ali: I think it really is you don’t want to plan too much. You don’t want to be dictating to your scene partners or to yourself where you think the scene is going to go, and just letting yourself really react in the moment and letting yourself– because I always tell people, I talk to my parents, friends, and they’re like, “Oh my God, I could never do that.” I’m like, “But you did. You were a kid, and you played pretend.” We have to break you out of that adult mindset of, “Oh, it would go really well if I did it this way, or it would go really well if I did it that way, or if I do this, people are going to think of me a certain way.”

You have to break that and be like, “What would a little kid do?” It’s like, they’re going to see something in front of them. They’re probably going to touch it. They’re probably going to pick it up. They’re probably going to shake it. They might even tear it into two parts and eat one. It’s that sort of process of whatever’s in front of me, I’m allowed to interact with, react to. I do an exercise where I have two people stand face-to-face, and I have one person send the other an emotion. However they want, non-verbally, but maybe with sounds, send them an emotion.

Then I have the person mirror the emotion back. Then I send that same emotion and send the opposite back. Then the third one, I go send the emotion and send the appropriate response back. It’s like, if it’s happiness, the opposite might be crying. Do the same, it might be laughing. The appropriate one back might be that person suddenly feels like, “Oh my gosh, they’re laughing at me. I’m going to feel embarrassed at someone laughing in my face.”

It might be like, “Oh, we’re co-conspirators, and we’re laughing together.” It’s teaching you there’s no wrong answer. If it makes sense to you and it was your, again, that honest reaction, don’t judge it, just do it. Then, if we add words to that scene or add character to that scene, we can figure out why you wanted to be embarrassed when someone laughed, or you wanted to laugh with them, that sort of thing.

John: Yes. I’ve never taken an improv class. If I do the introspection for why I’ve never done it, it’s like, I didn’t want to be bad at it. I was afraid of failing. That fear of failure is an embarrassment, are real, palpable thing. I’m sure those are some of the first walls you need to break through in one of these classes. It’s just like, it’s okay. The stakes could not be lower in an improv class.

Ali: Right. I had a class– At Second City, their upper levels are called the conservatory. They had this bit where I would split them into two groups and be like, “Okay, each group come up with a scene,” or each group come up with something. They’d go, “Who won? Who won? Who won?” I said, “If you wanted to win, you should have played lacrosse in high school.” We are comedy nerds doing make-them-ups at 9 AM on a Saturday. Nobody won. [laughter] Nobody won. They were laughing about it, too.

It’s just, we’re playing pretend. We’re goofing. We’re playing pretend. A lot of improv warm-ups and exercises really are meant of, all right, if we all just start making funny faces, we’re all going to be on the same page with each other. If we all start wiggling our arms weird, then we’re going to break down those walls. I say, the beautiful thing about improv is you do it once, and then it’s gone. We can never do that exact same scene again.

If you’re embarrassed, you’re like, “Well, it’ll be over, and I’ll never have to do that exact same scene again.” Sometimes, I think when the writer brain turns on, that frustrating thing of like, “Oh, I had something right there, and now it’s gone.” That’s, I think, a little bit in there is where you get that improv to sketch, which is what The Second City does and what I really liked to do as a performer and then a teacher and a director and all that stuff.

John: Yes. Let’s start making that transition because you’re saying that no one wins in improv. It’s like, “Did we have a good time? Did the play happen? Did we get through to that moment?” I’m sure you can then look at the tape or go back and analyze what things worked, what things didn’t work, but you’re probably focusing on, was everybody present? Was everybody honest? Was everybody playing the game the way you play the game?

Then as you move into sketch, you really are like, “What am I trying to achieve here?” You’re probably coming in there with a character, with a concept where you’re clearly communicating that concept. If things didn’t land, if things didn’t get a laugh, that’s when you can actually start to pick apart. Well, why didn’t that get a laugh, or that thing did get a big laugh? Why did it get a big laugh?

Our instinct is going to be like, oh, well, you can’t analyze comedy. You can’t pick it apart, but of course you can. Just like we can three-phase challenges, we can look at why this scene isn’t working, you can look at a sketch and say, oh, this is not working for this audience in this moment because of X, Y, or Z. Talk us through how you’re getting started getting people thinking about sketches and how you’re improving sketches.

Ali: The first thing in improv that I have to teach you to do is I have to teach you to make a choice. You have to make a choice. You have to say yes. You have to pick up the rock and look what’s underneath it. You have to look at empty space in front of you and be like, “That’s a butterfly.” I have to get you to make a choice. The second thing I want you to do is I want you to make a choice that will serve you a little better, a choice that will make your life a little easier.

If we’re in an office and there’s like, “oh, look at that on the desk,” it’s probably going to make everybody’s lives easier if it’s a paycheck, so now you can see your coworker’s paycheck. It’s going to make your life a little harder if that’s like a tiny man who can speak German to you. We can do it, but it’s going to be a little harder, or we’re doing a different thing now. Then I think that transition from improv to sketch is looking at every– so there’s lots of different ways to do it.

One, like you’re talking about, if we’ve improvised something, we’ve improvised a scene or maybe a form, and now we’re looking at what do I want to see again? Then you run through, okay, what do I want to see more of in this scene? What do I want to see less of? I always say, “What do you want to see more of? What confused you?” I go easy, hard, fun, stupid. How was that? What do we want to see more of? What confused us?

Then you’re looking to pick out, maybe you’re picking a character, maybe you’re picking a whole arc, maybe you’re picking a turn of phrase that we stumbled on, an interesting point of view or a piece of dialogue. Then you’re looking and saying, “What do I want to see again? What choices do I want to make again?” Then go from there.

John: What is the first version of a sketch that you might see as a person teaching this class? You have students who’ve gone off, they’re coming back in with a sketch. Is it a written thing that they’re putting up on their feet? Are they showing you a piece of paper? Have they just worked out with their classmates what they’re going to do? What does it look like when you’re first seeing something?

Ali: It’s all kinds of things. Personally, I love to see, I have an idea, we want to try it. It’s like, “We got together, and she’s going to do this.” I’m like, “Great, don’t tell me anything. Get up there, just start doing it.” I’m going to call time, probably around three and a half, four minutes. Then we’re going to sit down and talk about it. Students can also bring in an outline where they’ve written down, this happens and this happens and this happens.

Or it could be a fully written that they’ve used their office printer at their day job, and they’re bringing it to class, and they hand out copies. The thing that students do, oh, they’ll give me a copy, and everyone’s on their phone. I’m like, “That is terrible. Figure out who in your class has a day job, you can abuse the printer and bring a written sketch.” I think for all of those situations, the next step is what were you trying to do? What were you trying to say? What do we want to see more of?

My personal thing that I really pushed and want to get my students, the thing that motivates a lot of my work is point of view and self-expression. A student will put their scene up if they’re improvising through it the first time or they’re using it from a script. I go, “Cool, what was the point of view?” There’s a lot of different things that you can mean when you say that. I go, “What was your point of view?” I don’t always say it in these words. What were you trying to do? Then I go, great, that’s what you want. Here’s what we can change to make that louder, clearer.

I really am from the school of thought of if you know what you want to say, then we can take your idea and put it anywhere. I think the majority of my training at Second City with social and political satire being the base of that, it’s like most of our scenes in our running order, we want to be saying something about ourselves, the world, the government, relationships. We want to be saying something. I did a lot of work as a teacher to help students be able to say back. I made up all these exercises and a mad lib and all these things to say back to me, what is the thing that you want to do with this scene?

John: Students are coming in, they’re putting up this scene, you’re taking a look at it, and then you’re offering suggestions. What are the common knobs you find yourself adjusting with what they’re doing? Is it about like, “Okay, you have too much here. I didn’t understand.”

Ali: They all have too much.

John: They all have too much.

Ali: They always have too much.

John: Everyone always thinks a joke is funnier if you put more words in it. It never is.

Ali: Yes.

John: One thing I notice in sketches is that you have this blessing in the first few seconds to establish, this is the place, this is the concept. The stuff that would normally be the set, you’re creating that. Thank you for coming into my office. This should only take a few minutes. It’s fine. Great. We’ve done that. If a sketch didn’t have something to establish where we are, what we are, we’re floundering for those first few moments. We don’t know what we’re actually seeing. I’m sure a common complaint is like, I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think of this person at the start. I’m listening, but I’m not fully taking it in because I don’t get why I’m supposed to be engaging with them.

Ali: I’ll see sketches from students, and I’ll tell them, I’ll go, “Okay, you have five pages for your sketch. You have about five minutes.” I go, “We should know who the people are, where are they by the middle of the first page, the most the bottom of the first page.” If we are explaining who, what, where beyond that, either this is like we’re aliens or something, and I really got to get on board for that. Then it’s also like, is this a sketch or is this a short play? Is this like our show bible? How many pages do we need to explain what the aliens are in the sketch show? I want to get to the thing that you want to do in this sketch.

The thing you want to do in the sketch is not explain who everybody is at this dinner party. The thing you want to get to is that somebody brought their girlfriend, and their girlfriend went to the rival college, and now we’re going to all have a freakout because she went to one school and everybody else went to the other. We want to get to the thing that is the most fun. That’s the first thing. Then it’s like, let’s give everyone something to do that everybody can have fun and make sure that everything we’re doing builds up to the point of view that the student wants to get across.

John: That’s right.

Ali: If there’s something in here, it’s like, this isn’t paying into this, we can pull that out. I had a student, they brought me a scene. They were all flamingos. They were doing really amazing flamingo work. Everyone–

John: The physical comedy, the embodiment. We love it

Ali: Embodiment. All their heads were going. They were moving around [onomatopoeia] on the stage and calling out flamingo specifics. At the end, I was like, “Cool, what were we trying to do? What was that scene about?” They were like, “Oh, that was about climate change.” I was like, “What?” [laughter] We didn’t say anything about climate change. [laughs]

John: I think that’s a great opportunity because you see students in front of you who are like, “That thing you’re doing is clever and funny.” The physical comedy that I can visualize it, which is great. What is the thing? What is the actual point of view? Once you’ve established that this thing, it has to go someplace. It has to build to another thing. It could just be a physical thing without words.

Ali: Yes, totally.

John: It’s them fighting over a fish. That could be hilarious, but it has to build. It’s not just an impersonation.

Ali: I remember this from when I was a student at Second City. One of my ensemble members brought me a sketch. He was a robot. It was this very complicated allegory for racism. The guy who was the basketball team owner that said all the nappy-headed hoes or whatever, he owns a basketball team of all robots. I was his human girlfriend. I was like, “What is this?” [laughter] He was like, “Well, there’s all this racism in the news.”

I finally had a meeting with our director/teacher, and I was like, “I’m not going to do this. This is entry-level stuff about racism. This doesn’t have any of my point of view in it. I’m a Black person in America.” Then the teacher was like, “Okay, take it back to this.” She was like, “Bring me the version that you want to do.” He brought back a scene where it was just a silent scene where he was a robot, had no racism in it. It was just like, he just wanted to be a robot, which I’m fine with.

It’s that sort of thing of we have to identify what is the thing that you really want to do in this scene. There’s no wrong answer. Whatever you say, I can turn that dial up. If we just want to be flamingos, then we’re going to think of 10 things flamingos can do on the stage. We’re going to give everybody a flamingo name, and maybe there’s a song we could do. If we want to talk about climate change, then the flamingos have to talk about climate change, or something has to happen about climate change.

John: Absolutely. As an instructor, ultimately, these classes will lead up to some sort of showcase, some sort of performance where everyone has to do those things. It’s your job to then figure out how to order this in a way that makes sense, that’s going to play for an audience. Can you talk about that?

Ali: Oh, yes. Again, that’s another thing. Talking about Second City, when I was there in those student classes, the main objective is everyone has to have one scene where they’re the star. Maybe you have 12 students in a class, we have to have 12 scenes where somebody’s the star. It’s probably about a 50-minute show, maybe a 40-minute show for some of those student showcases. Then you start looking like, “Okay, how do we get everybody in there?” That’s its own process, figuring out, teaching people how to make themselves the stars. That’s its own process.

The other part is you do have to structure and protect things, and there is a little bit of– We call it running order math. You want to open with something where the opener, ideally, you want to see every cast member, you want to hint at the theme of the show if there is one. You’re usually teaching the audience how the show’s going to go, how they’re going to watch the show. Then you’re probably putting in a two-person relationship scene, which is like a specialty of Second City. Not a lot of other sketch comedy theaters really do that two-person, so it’s like a grounded–

John: Give me an example of what that kind of scene would be.

Ali: SNL doesn’t really do them. Key & Peele doesn’t really do them. They look like a scene out of a movie or a TV show. It might be two people that have gone on a first date, and they’re standing outside the door. One person’s really nervous to kiss the other person, so this is like a silly version that you could do. Today, it’d be like, someone’s going to use ChatGPT to help them make the move. They’re talking to each other, and then going and typing in Chat and coming back. It would be that type of scene, a grounded, two-person relatable scene.

John: In Harry Met Sally, the restaurant scene where they’re faking the orgasm scene, would that be? That’s a two-person relationship scene.

Ali: That could be a good two-person relationship scene. The first time they have the conversation, who have you had great sex with? I don’t believe Sheldon. [laughter] That’s where you learn a little bit about each character. You get an insight into who they are. You maybe learn a little something about how the writer thinks about relationships or the theme maybe we’re going to explore. From then on, we’re trying to get variety. We’re trying to move fast.

Then we want to hit a point where we’re going to put the funniest scene in the show about two-thirds of the way down. Then you want to, as quickly as you can, get to the closer from that point. Again, the closer, we’re going to see everybody. We’re going to wrap up any themes. If our opener asks a question, it’ll be answered by the closer. Then in the middle, there’s variety. There’s a song. There’s a silence scene. There’s another relationship scene. There’s a group scene. Someone might have built an improv game. You’re just building variety in between those bookends.

John: Can you talk about blackout and that as a tool?

Ali: Yes. A blackout is a very short scene. Typically, some of the best blackouts are under 20, 30 seconds. 30 seconds is a lot for a blackout. It is one joke executed on stage where the punchline is some sort of reveal or twist. Then the lights blackout immediately afterward. They are used to subvert audience expectations because they expect a full scene. They’ve been watching for a little bit, and they’re like, “Oh, there’s another scene.” Then it ends after maybe three to five lines.

It also changes the pace of the show. They’re easily swapped in and outable, so they could be really good to put in something topical. A blackout, they have two constructions. One is inappropriate response. It would be, you think you know how this scene will go, and someone says something that is unexpected. A classic one at Second City, a guy’s driving his car. A carjacker comes up. He goes, “Get out of the car, get out of the car.” The guy’s like, “Oh my God, don’t hurt me.”

The carjacker gets in the car, and he goes, “Oh shit, it’s a stick shift. [laughter] Get back in the car, get back in the car, get back in the car.” Blackout. We think we know how a carjacking or a carjacking scene would go, and then you blackout.

The second type is called clash of context. Sometimes you hear them called a reframe. We believe we’re looking at one thing, and then that last line reveals it to be something else.

The one that I always talk about when teaching is there are two women, and they’re standing, and they’re popping their gum, and they’re rubbing their hands like this. They’re like, “He’s going to tell me I got to be professional at work. I’m going to take a break when I want to take a break.” Ah, ah, clear. [onomatopoeia] [laughter] He dead. Amazing blackout.

We think from the visual and the way they’re behaving, there are two ladies outside, maybe on a smoke break. Maybe they work at a store or something, and they’re hiding from their boss to file their nails, but they’re charging up a defibrillator, [onomatopoeia] and then they’re dead.

Blackouts typically work the best if they’re one of those things. You see in each situation, it’s a setup, and the setup is that, “Hi, thank you for coming into my office,” but then the reveal is either the clash of contacts, the inappropriate response, and then it gets big laugh, we’re out of it, and we go on to the next thing.

John: It’s a classic joke, but just an embodied joke, really, because the classic joke is, where does the general keep his armies? In his sleevies. Again, you have the wrong context for what the framing is. This is the light, and of course, we could go on for hours about this. I want some practical advice for our listeners who are thinking like, “Okay, well, Ali’s convinced me I probably should take one of these classes.” It’s geographically based, so you should go to wherever’s in your area. A second city in Chicago is, of course, iconic and classic, and there’s classes all the time. Los Angeles has Groundlings and UCB.

There’s other groups that do things. There’s obviously New York and other markets, too. How does a person know that it’s a good one? Do you look up reviews? Do you go to a show? How will you know that these people know what they’re talking about?

Ali: Yes, I would definitely go to a show if they have a professional resident component to be like, “Let me go look at that,” and if that’s fun and making you laugh, they probably know something. They probably know what they’re doing. Talk to people that have taken those classes, and you want to have a sense that they can offer you something, whether it’s a show at the end, but you shouldn’t have to pay to play. If you’re paying to take the class, you probably shouldn’t be paying to do the show at the end of the student workshop or something.

They should probably have some version of something free, a drop-in class, a student jam, a show that maybe at the end of the show, there’s a free improv set or something like that where you can get a look at what’s going on there. I would say those are probably a good bet.

John: Obviously, you’re building skills, but the other potential benefit here is you’re meeting people who are doing the kinds of things you want to do. Especially if you’re new in a city, you’re new in a place, or you’ve been in a city, but you don’t know anybody who works in this space, it’s a chance to meet some people who you might want to hang out with, work with, collaborate with. There’s a reason why they’re very good schools, but also it’s a bunch of really smart people who are all under the same roof who then rose up and did great things together. That’s another good argument for at least giving it a shot. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a comedy person, a comedy writer, it’s a good experience for you.

Ali: Yes. I just know the people that I was going through classes with, that I was watching on stage when I was a student, that I have taught as a teacher, they are making cool things, they’re performing, they’re writing, they’re getting stuff produced and written. The way that you do that networking is you just be a cool person and be a cool friend. If someone needs a skill and you have that skill, go help them out.

If someone wants you to read something for them and you’re both broke students, it’s like read that thing for them because when it comes time, if that person pops off and ends up in a writer’s room somewhere and they get a chance to recommend people for the next season or for the next time they staff up, they’re probably going to remember the person that was helpful and nice and took a genuine interest in them rather than the funniest person in the class. I say you can be 10 out of 10 funny, but if you’re 10 out of 10 asshole, nobody’s going to hire you, but if you’re 7 out of 10 funny and 0 out of 10 asshole, someone’s going to remember that you were really nice to counteract that.

They want to be in a room with you for eight hours a day. They want to be on Slack or Zoom with you for hours at a time. It’s going to be that person that was nice and helpful and helped use their office copier to make programs for their show. [chuckles]

John: Sounds good. All right, let’s answer some listener questions. The first one here I see is from Kate.

Drew: “I am writing my first big broad comedy, and holy hell, if Craig isn’t right, then it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written. A lot in the script is working really well, but in giving it to readers, I’m finding a lot of them turning into logic police when my mission is to have them along for a wild madcap, super heightened ride. My instinct is that the issue is actually very early in the script. While the initial couple of scenes are funny, something about them is signaling to people that this is a grounded world with grounded characters when that actually isn’t the case. I wanted to ask, how do you think about the opening scenes of a comedy? Any tricks, insights, or thoughts on how to use them to teach people how to watch a movie?”

John: Yes, this is the longer version of what we were just talking about.

Ali: Ooh.

John: Yes, those initial scenes are so crucial to get people on board for the kind of movie you’re trying to watch. It’s entirely possible you wrote some great scenes that are queuing people up for not the movie that they’re expecting to see. You got to go back and look at those scenes, or could you lose those first scenes and start later? Which may be the way into this is to get going in the middle of something that’s just a little bit more madcap. Ali, what’s your instinct?

Ali: I would wonder how much of those early scenes are grounded. I know that, okay, there’s information we definitely have to get out, but I would want something fantastical or big and broad to happen even in the middle of those early scenes, a little glimpse of it, a tiny little nugget of the silliness that’s to come. Because if those first scenes are grounded, and then we get into that turn out of the first act and it suddenly becomes silly, we haven’t taught our viewer that the world is silly and it’s going to get sillier. Every scene in that first grounding bit should have a touch of the silly, the fantastical, the broad, so that when that bigger turn happens, we’re in the world.

John: You’re probably not making a spoof. You’re not making an airplane. I think you would have told us if you were making that, but maybe you’re making a fish called Wanda or something that has some bigness to it. You’re going to need to see that piano falling early, the equivalent kind of thing happening there to let us know this is a world in which this kind of thing can happen. Also, I want to say, give it to us on the page. Let us know as a reader, take a look at your voice and your early pages, and are you cueing up the tone of where this is going to go? Because that could be a factor in it, too.

We just had Haley Z Boston on talking about her script for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. In those initial pages, they’re really beautifully written, but they’re also very clearly setting up big things are going to happen. We know it because she is telling us that these kinds of things are going to happen. She’s giving us a sense like this is what it feels like, and you may just need to be a little bit more explicit on the page there, too. The reader from the jump really gets a sense of this is this kind of movie.

Ali: One more thought.

John: Please.

Ali: If folks are turning into logic police, I would look at what are the reactions of the characters to the wacky things happening. If they are always saying, “Oh my God, what?” or like, “Get out of here, this doesn’t make sense,” if the characters are rejecting the wacky stuff, then your audience is going to probably be trained that some level of that is what needs to happen here. If you think about like a fish out of water sketch, there’s a couple of characters in a fish out of water sketch that are amenable to the fish’s weird behavior. Even if they aren’t familiar with it or they don’t accept it, they’re like, “Okay, this is what this guy is.”

Or maybe they adopt a little bit of it by the end if you’re thinking of like a fish out of water sketch. Look at how many characters and how stridently they are rejecting the funny thing. If their reaction to those silly funny things happening is, “Oh my God, what are you talking about? This doesn’t make sense,”and I think that can probably be really attractive to get a quick hit out of a funny thing, like a reaction of like, “Say what?” but it’s like if everyone’s going say, “What,” the audience is going to start going and say, “What.”

John: Maybe I just have Rachel McAdams on the brain, but I’m thinking both to Game Night and Send Help. Both of those are broad comedies. She’s one of the crucial people in there who is, like in Send Help, her character is broad from the start. Even though we’re in an office environment, we know this is a movie that has the knobs turned up a little bit. Also, in Game Night, from the top, this is heightened. This is not a grounded level approach to things. Those might be a good thing for you to take a look at, Kate.

Hannah in New York writes, “At what point do I stop taking assistant gigs? I have a manager, I have an agent, I have a script with good producers attached, but I’ve not made money as a writer yet. I’m about to go to work as a director’s assistant on a show this summer. I love these jobs, but they take up all my time and energy. I force myself to write on the weekends, but it’s hard. This job will be great connections, working with a production company that did a big movie about a famous plastic doll, but sometimes I wonder if that’s worth it when I have so little time to write. What’s your thoughts?”

John: Ali, what’s your thought?

Ali: I don’t know. Again, this is like an area where I’m a little bit like, “Oh, that was not my path, so I don’t know exactly what the advice.”

John: Ali, what was your path? You went to Wellesley, and then how did you end up in Chicago? What were your jobs? Were you immediately working at Second City?

Ali: Yes. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I was actually a theater kid. I did theater, I did spoken word, I did speech and debate. When I went to college is when I first was like, “I want to do theater, but I don’t want to learn lines. I want to be too busy doing my homework.” I was like, “Oh, I’ll do improv.” You get to a point and you’re like, “Second City’s in the distance for improv.” You look up improv, it’s like Second City. I actually got a scholarship to Second City when I was a senior in college. When I graduated, I went and did classes. I did fellowships at Second City. They had one for students of color. They had this scholarship.

I was able to take classes for free or for much cheaper. There was a period of time where I just was taking a lot of classes, performing, and rehearsing five, six, seven nights a week. I always had a day job. I did not leave nepo baby allegation start today, but I was able to work for my mom. I worked as a temp. I was a bartender. I started teaching with Second City, but I did not quit any day job until I was a touring member of Second City because that’s really hard to have a day job at the same time, like a traditional nine-to-five day job. Also, I was writing recaps for Vulture. I was really in that personal essay boom that time.

I was cobbling together a lot of different things and started teaching, started directing when I stopped touring. I got Last Week Tonight because they reached out to me because they had been given my name when they were looking for people. I did the submission, I did the packet, the second round of the packet, and got hired. It really was doing everything all the time, and then moving into Last Week Tonight. I still did my recaps, essays, I wrote a book, I still go back to Second City and teach. That was my path.

It’s like, until someone really is going to pay you to do it, in my mind, it’s very hard to leave a day job or to leave that constellation of side gigs, and because having somewhere where you can have an output for your material where you’re putting it up or you’re working– Sketch was really useful because you could put something different up every week. It was really easy to get a group of friends together, hire a theater, put some material up constantly. I got my on-camera agent, Ashley Nicole Black, and some other great people in Chicago said, “We all want agents. We’re really good.

We want agents,” and put together a showcase, and everyone wrote five minutes of solo material and put it up. For me, that period of constantly putting material up, trying it, taking all of that while having my recaps, which were an outlet for my work, all of that was going in tandem.

John: I relate to Hannah’s question so much because her experience was sort of my experience too where I was working as an assistant to producers, but at the same time, I landed an agent, I was starting to take meetings. It was hard for me to get my writing done and all this other stuff. It was weird for me to be answering phone calls for other people while also trying to set stuff up herself. I want to underline what Ali is saying. There’s no curse to day jobs. Day jobs are good. They’re keeping you employed. At a certain point, you may want to step back from jobs that are keeping you from writing. Ali had the opportunity.

Her day job was also getting her the experience and exposure and all these things. Hannah, in your case, you’re working as a director’s assistant on a show. That’s great. It looks like it’s not your first time doing this. At a certain point, you may need to say, “I got to focus on my own stuff and take the job that requires less of your mental time and focus so you can really focus on your own stuff.” Some of the most productive times I had writing was I was an intern at Universal, and my job was just so mindless. I was just filing physical files and papers. It’s just like I came home from work. It’s like I didn’t use my brain at all, and I could write at night.

If you can’t get writing done, you may need to pull back. This could be the time to pull back, or you could say, “After this job, this is my last of these. I’m going to spend six months really focused on my writing here.” You won’t know until the next thing happens whether you made the right choice or not is the the bummer here. You’re asking the right questions, at least. Let’s do our One Cool Things. Ali, what do you have for us?

Ali: This is very silly and small. I have a self-inking stamp. It’s a star with a little smiley face like I am a child. When I was writing my book, it was a book that had a lot of sections and segments and sidebars, and I wanted something to keep me motivated and to be like a little reward. It’s a little, let me find a piece of paper and show you. You take your little stamp and it puts a little star-

John: Aww.

Ali: -with a smiley face on the paper.

John: It’s like you’re a teacher, but you’re giving yourself a star.

Ali: I’m giving myself a star. It has a really satisfying, let me see if I can hold it up to the microphone, has a really satisfying click. This was under $10 online. If you are someone that you need a little treat, a little gold star. Also, the visual progress of seeing, I would print out pages that had all the different segments that I had to do for each chapter. As I would get a segment done, I would put a little star next to it.

John: I lover it.

Ali: You can have a little fun with your writing, find a way to make it fun and silly for you. That was my little silly way. [laughs]

John: Fantastic. More importantly, this was helping you write your book Reality TV for Snobs, which we’ll put a link in the show notes too, and everyone should pre-order immediately like we will.

Ali: Yes, thank you.

John: Pre-orders are how books get sold. Pre-orders-

Ali: Very important.

John: -are super, super important, so I cannot wait to read it. I am currently reading Anne Libera’s book Funnier. She is a teacher at Second City. It’s really good. Fundamentally talking about her theory of comedy, having taught comedy for a long time and seeing people from all different schools of comedy coming through there and different ways of doing things from very physical people to the witty folks and very dark people, and how you find a blend and how you get each person to the best version of what they are there to do. I’m really enjoying it.

It feels like the script in this book, but very specifically about crafting comedy, so I’d highly recommend that. As a bonus, we can take a look at Ashley Padilla on Saturday Night Live. She’s one of the breakout people on Saturday Night Live. She’s the cast member-

Ali: So funny.

John: -who’s getting the most screen time there. She’s so funny. Her comic timing and her ability to draw out a moment and just sit in a moment of pain. She has this really neat gift. I’m going to link to an article by Jason Zinoman writing for New York Times about her and going through some of her sketches and just how she’s able to pull out these moments that are just great. This is a very strong cast they have right now with some superstar players, but she just has a different energy that is so fun and so exciting to see because it’s not just she’s a master impressionist or anything else, but she’s just–

Ali: She’s a really good sketch actress.

John: Yes.

Ali: It’s a very specific style of timing and pacing and development of relatable characters and characters that are relatable with a twist. It is such an interesting, really fun thing to see someone who’s a great, great sketch actress, actor on TV. It’s great.

John: It’s great. I don’t have a sense of how much she’s writing because everything on SNL is written by a bunch of people, but it feels like there are sketches that are just so in her zone and in her pocket that it’s great. It’s worth watching every week, but I’ll put a link in the show notes to this article, which has the clips out to some of her sketches from the last two seasons, which are so good. That is our show this week. Descriptions is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Matt Gillespie. If you have an outro, you can send it to the link to ask@dev.johnaugust.com.

That is the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books, including many university bookstores, apparently. You will find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. We have T-shirts, and hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find show notes with links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Thank you again to our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Working in Chicago. You’ll get the full scoop of Chicago. Ali, an absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to get to see you again after these weeks and months leading up to this. An absolute delight. Thank you so much for coming on.

Ali: Thanks so much for having me. This was great.

John: Yay.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Ali.

Ali: Yes.

John: You, of all of the folks on the negotiating committee, were the one in Chicago. It’s important for people to understand that 85% of members in the Writers Guild live in either LA or New York, and then you’re the 15% of members who are Chicago and other parts across the country. That number will probably grow over the years because people are able to move out of the big cities to do their work because more stuff is going remote, but you’ve been there from the start. Talk to us about working on Last Week Tonight, but entirely from Chicago. What is your day like, and how are you interacting with the team if you’re not there in person, or is anybody in person?

Ali: I was hired in July of 2020, so peak pandemic. John was still making the show in the void. He was still recording on his own. We were all in a lot of far-flung places. When they started to talk about opening the office back up, they already had some version of a hybrid workflow because when you’re on an assignment, you don’t have to go into the office. You could work from home even before the pandemic. People had a routine where they would come into the office, have a couple meetings, and then go home at lunch and then be at home for a few days.

A lot of these workflows worked out for some people not being there, but at first, it was like, “Got to make a home office in my one bedroom with my boyfriend and we’re both at home,” and we had to figure that out. I joke, our work is a lot of writing individually. It’s a lot of writing term papers and jokes. The typical image of, oh, a writer’s room where we’re all around a table yelling things out, trying to one-up each other. We don’t really do that. It is a workflow that is really suited to being remote, but it is interesting because most of the people are in New York. There was someone in LA. There’s someone in Texas.

There’s someone in Colorado. There’s a few people in other places on the East Coast. It is a little like you’re constantly hearing about what’s going on in New York or they’re talking about what the weather’s like, or some event that’s happening. You’re a little like, “Okay, guys, Chicago has stuff, too. We have rain today.”

John: Is there still an office? Is there still a place where people go in, and there are a bunch of writers who are in one physical space, or is everybody remote at this point?

Ali: There’s an office. People go in. A lot of what we do is individual and over Zoom anyway. Even if you’re in the office, you’re coming in and out of meeting with different departments or waiting for an assignment to come down, or waiting for something to be handed back to you for you to go off and work.

I try and go into the office, I don’t know, two or three times a year. The writers will all do some of our assignments together. We’ll be like, “Okay, we’ll plan to all be there on this day so we can do this part of our work together.” It’s not an office where it’s like one person has to take notes what everybody’s throwing out. We’re all typing on our individual laptops when we’re in person anyway.

John: That’s great. To the degree you’re allowed to talk about it, you’re saying these are term papers with jokes. What does it all get fed into? What is the central nexus of everything you’re doing that it goes into? I picture the show as being one long bit of text that’s all fed into the thing because he’s at a desk through most of this talking to camera. What is that process? How does that happen?

Ali: The lifespan of an episode of the A story, the main story, is around six weeks-

John: Wow.

Ali: -from beginning. The idea gets pitched to John taping it. Research and footage, we have a research department and a footage department, and they will compile a research memo and a footage document. The research memo, they’ll call experts, and they’ll read books and read different articles and compile that into a big document. Then footage, we’ll find basically any time that topic has been on TV, or in documentary or in C-Span or on and on. Then we will take the footage and research documents. We’ll have meetings like, “What did we find? What’s interesting?” The writers will go off, and they will turn it into an outline.

They’ll say, “Here’s the video clips I would use, the quotes that I would use. Here’s how I would tell the story. Here’s the different chapters,” and then we turn the outlines into John and Tim. They combine it into one outline. “Oh, we like the way Ali found this clip, and this person found this.” Then we take it, we go write the script, go write our draft. That’s where we’re doing the jokes, like what we think John would say. If we’re putting in jokes, where every joke you write, you’re putting in two, three, four. I always write way too many, so I write five or six alts, different versions or different setups or whatever for the joke.

Then all that gets handed in. John and Tim again pick their favorite, and that gets turned into the script, and then we work from that one script for the different rewrite processes that exist.

John: That’s great. Last Week Tonight, unlike The Daily Show, which tends to send a correspondent out to do those things. I don’t want to say it’s traditional, but it’s more what we’re used to. To go out reporting a story and coming back, and then you’re trying to find a funny way to report that. The host is throwing out to the thing, and then coming back to the thing. This is all just, it’s a monologue with a lot of footage and other things that go with it. It’s also different than the SNL Weekend Update kind of thing, which is just like, “We need to have the funny visual that goes with it, but it’s just the host.”

It’s a more complicated thing, and that’s why I can understand why it takes six weeks to do it. It’s honestly like a podcast series would do a similar kind of thing where you need to go out and you need to find and research all this stuff, and figure out, how are we talking about this topic in this show? It’s great, and it’s very specific. Did you know that you could do it? Because they approach you.

Ali: [laughs] Yes.

John: You’re a smart woman, but you’re a smart woman who has done a lot of sketch before this. This is a different kind of writing. How did you get up to speed with it?

Ali: There was a moment, so they said, “Here’s the packet.” They made a little sampler packet for the submission. I was sitting there, and I was like, “Oh my God, how am I going to do this?” Then I had a moment where I went, “Oh, it’s a recap.”

John: Oh, yes, it is, isn’t it?

Ali: I write a lot of those. I was like, “I know how to recap a story from beginning to end. What are the funny things? What little digressions can we take?” It was really like my recaps at Vulture, they’re 1,500, 2,000 more words that I’m writing a week from a two-hour episode of The Bachelor or an episode of Real Housewives or something. I looked at it and I said, “Okay, it’s a recap. I just have to make sure I put in alts for my jokes.” Also, I had worked at Cards Against Humanity. The skill from there that helped was I could find a setup or an idea for a joke, and then find as many alts as possible by just substituting, really doing a fill-in-the-blank.

One of the things in my packet, we talked about something that was tangential, but I included it as the Streisand effect. The more you hide something, the more it shows up, and it came because Barbra Streisand tried to keep her house off Google images or something like that. They said it led to this many Google searches or searches for her house. I said, “Okay, but 50,000 of those were,” and then I had a blank, and I thought, “Who would be the different people trying to see Barbra Streisand’s house?” One was Dionne Warwick trying to case the joint because she’s going to go in and rob Barbra Streisand.

One was Barbra Streisand’s genetically cloned dogs trying to plan an escape route. One was Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father, I guess he dated Barbra Streisand, trying to get a glimpse of that bastard, James Brolin. It was like I had the setup. I knew what I wanted the joke to be, and then I could just plug in different versions of the result, and so that sort of amalgamation of all these different things and making it look like how they wrote their scripts was how that packet came together.

John: That’s awesome. Born in Chicago, living in Chicago, you want to stay in Chicago?

Ali: I think so. It would have to be a very tremendous opportunity to draw me away. My family’s here. My boyfriend has two of his sisters are here. You can’t beat making WGA minimum on Chicago prices. It’s a little bit of a boost. I really love it. Being able to go, like we were talking about, go back and teach and work with students is also really nice. It’s just good for my brain to kind of like I have all this sketch knowledge and exercises and stuff I’ve made to get them out of my brain, but also to see what people are working on and wanting to help students. My Mom jokes that that’s my volunteer work.

John: Working on Last Week, so they came and found you. Do you have an agent, a manager? Do you have people who are out there like, “This is Ali Barthwell, you need to pay attention to her,” or do you need that for what you’re doing?

Ali: I don’t have an agent or a manager. I remember when I got hired and tweeted about it, my tweet blew up back when Twitter was like, “So am I still a good place?” I had some agents and managers reaching out, and some of it was like, “The way this person is talking about what they think my value is to them,” I was like, “I don’t know if I want–” A few people in the summer of 2020, some agents being like, “I think it’d be really great to have a black woman on my roster of clients.” I don’t think so. Then also part of it was just like, “I don’t know if I want to give up 15%.” [laughs]

John: That’s a real thing.

Ali: I now have a literary agent for my book, so I’m really getting to see what that relationship is like. I always say I never expected to end up in TV. I never knew how it worked to get to be able to do it. I know the kind of work that I like to do, and I think it can be across all genres. Again, like I said, I love satire and expressing myself and helping other people express themselves and using comedy and humor to educate and to expose people to points of view that they maybe wouldn’t have encountered.

I think whatever I do next, I hope to do this job for 10 million years, but whatever I do next or in addition to this, that’s the thing that’s motivating me, and it helps with the barometer of like, “Is this good to do? Is this what I want to do?” and being able to have that internal check for myself.

John: I also love seeing in the background of your shot, the Writers Guild Awards and the Emmys there, which is lovely too.

Ali: Oh, a custom-built California Closets-

John: Stain?

Ali: -bookcase.

John: Absolutely. How often do Chicago Custom Closets have to build for these awards?

Ali: Listen, she did not seem fazed, but I do think it was a fun challenge to really get the dimensions of each box. Then it was I built for what I had and not to grow, so we’re going to have to get creative on how to build out on this, the livid family memo–

John: Yes, you don’t want to crowd them [laughter] Ali, an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you again for your work on the Negotiating Committee. It was just one of the highlights, really many highlights of the Negotiating Committee. We had an effing great group. It was a delight getting to spend some time with you, both then and today. Thanks so much, Ali.

Ali: Thanks so much for having me. Union strong.

John: Union strong.

Ali: Union forever.

John: Forever.

Links:

• Ali Barthwell
• Preorder Ali’s new book, Reality TV for Snobs
• The Second City
• Pre-inked star stamps
• The Padilla Pause: How the Breakout Star of SNL Nails Comic Timing by Jason Zinoman for NYTimes
• Funnier by Anne Libera
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