Drew Marquardt

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. And this is the standard explicit language warning for this episode of Scriptnotes. There’s some heavier language than most episodes, so you may want to save this one for later on if you’re driving in the car with your kids. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 238 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today, we have a special guest. We are joined by Dana Fox.

Craig: Ah!

John: She is a writer and producer whose credits include The Wedding Date, Ben & Kate, What Happens in Vegas, and the new How to Be Single.

We are going to try to talk about the transition between being just a writer and being a writer-producer like Dana is. And we’ll also get into other stuff about her life and her career. She’s one of my favorite people. Dana Fox, welcome to Scriptnotes.

Dana Fox: Hi, I’m so happy to be here. You two are my favorite human males besides my husband.

John: Aw. That’s so sweet.

Craig: I don’t really — I know your husband. I don’t think you need that qualifier.

Dana: [laughs] I’m really excited to be in this sandwich. Thank you for having me.

John: Her husband is Quinn Emmett who is a writer and an all-around good guy, who often comes to our live shows. So, it’s nice to have you here, live in person with us.

Dana: I’m so happy to be here.

John: Before we get into your career, your life as a writer and producer, we have some follow-up from previous episodes, so we’d love your opinions on these topics as we just go through them. So, last week we talked about tipping. We talked about tipping in two different ways. Questions about whether you should tip the valets at studios. Because you know how like Paramount has a valet?

Dana: Oh, that’s interesting.

John: Or Sony does, too. Dana, what’s your opinion? Should you tip those guys? Do you tip those guys?

Dana: Wow, that’s bumming me out big time, because I have literally never thought of tipping them, and I’m going to immediately commence tipping them right now. That makes me feel really sad inside my soul place.

Craig: [laughs] Wow.

John: What I was saying last week —

Dana: Thank you for laughing so hard at me, Craig. I really appreciate that. I’m so glad this is such a safe space for me to share.

Craig: It’s not. At all.

Dana: It’s really starting this off nicely.

John: So, one of my points last week was that normally when you’re parking a car, when there’s valet parking, there’s already cash being exchanged, so the tipping feels like it’s just part of that whole cash exchange. Whereas on a studio lot, there’s not a natural transaction happening there, so it feels weird to sort of suddenly pull out money and give.

Dana: That’s exactly right. It does sort of feel like you’re saying something is happening there that isn’t necessarily happening there. I always sort of thought it was like, oh man, now I just hate myself. I don’t even want to talk about anymore.

Here’s my problem. My problem is not about tipping. My problem is about ATMs. I never have cash on me, because I feel like the second I have it in my wallet it just like shoots out of wallet at great, great speeds. And so I don’t keep cash because I spend it instantly when I have it. So, that’s a bummer.

And then also Uber has kind of kept me from needing money for tipping valets. Because valets was sort of the only reason I needed to tip. So here’s what I do at the SoHo House. Spoiler alert: I may be not a good person at the end of this story as well.

I don’t ever have any money on me, so I never tip them. And they’re so nice to me. And I actually love those people who work there like family. Like, I was more excited to tell them about the birth of my third child then like anybody who is my actual friend. And so what I do is I give them like $60 one day and then I don’t tip them for like a month.

John: Okay.

Dana: That’s how I do it. Because I can’t — it’s every day, I can’t have the money in the wallet. I can barely get myself out of bed in the morning. I have 17 children. I can’t pull it together.

Craig: I feel like you’re not the person we should be talking to about this.

Dana: This was not a good follow-up.

Craig: Yeah, with that story, you’ve excluded yourself.

Dana: Can there be like a drinking inappropriately to fall asleep follow-up like right now? Because I could talk about that at length.

Craig: No one needs that follow-up. We all know how to do that. There’s no decisions to be made. We got into this thing last week about this, and I mean, I love what you just said about Uber, because I got in a little bit of trouble. So, I do — I tip those valet guys at studios. I just — I said last week, sometimes I just worry like is this insulting somehow. Do you feel like — ?

Dana: That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, exactly. It’s like sort of saying like, well, I’m assuming you’re getting paid a decent salary by this studio. But I should not assume that, because I am often not paid a decent salary by the studio —

Craig: Well, there you go.

Dana: — so why would I assume they would be?

John: So, we asked our listeners to write in, both on Twitter and on Facebook, with their opinions about tipping, both tipping studio valet people and tipping Uber drivers, which was another thing that came up.

Dana: What did everybody say?

John: So, let’s start with Mike from Huntington Beach. He wrote, “As a former valet during my teens and 20s, I can assure you in almost every circumstance a valet prefers a tip. There are two circumstances I can think of that a valet may reject a tip. Number one: When a valet’s employer issued a wholehearted threat to fire any valet on the spot who will accept a tip. Even then that valet might be coerced into accepting the tip if the amount is sizable enough and gifted with enough finesse.

“Or, number two: When the tip is change that amounts to less than a dollar.”

So, that’s from Mike from Huntington Beach.

Craig: But Mike, I mean, thanks, but this was not an issue. We know to tip regular valets. This wasn’t the question. We all tip valets. I mean, nobody doesn’t tip.

John: I think Mike is saying any valet at any place on earth will take the tip is what I think he was saying.

Craig: Okay, well, and look, that may be true. And I default to that. I do tip those guys. It’s the Uber thing opened the whole can of worms.

Dana: So, are people being expected to tip their Uber drivers? Is that a thing?

John: Yeah.

Dana: Oh my god, you guys, I am an extra triple horrible person.

John: Dana just Ubered to this interview right now.

Dana: I literally just Ubered to this house.

Craig: Well, this is the question. Because we discussed this last week. And my understanding was that, no, the whole deal with Uber is you don’t tip. It’s built in somehow. And the whole point is Uber says don’t tip your driver. And it’s a non-cash transaction deal.

Dana: But maybe it’s built into the way that Uber is boning their Uber drivers. And that’s what we don’t know about. Ah, man.

Craig: Well, here’s the situation. We got a lot — so a lot of people tweeted at us. And part of the thing that’s confusing is Uber is confusing about it. They used to be clear. Now they’re less clear.

The other thing is there’s a lot of different kinds of Uber. So I don’t use Uber a lot, because I love to drive. But, when I do, I use I guess what you would call Uber Standard, which is usually a sedan, you know, like the black car.

Dana: Say sedan again.

Craig: What’s that?

Dana: I just liked the way you said sedan.

Craig: Sedan?

Dana: Sedan. [laughs] I don’t know. Keep going. Keep going.

Craig: I feel like you’re trying to bring out Sexy Craig. [laughs]

Dana: [laughs] I love Sexy Craig.

Craig: Sexy Craig is the best. He loves to — yeah.

John: I’m pushing for our Whole Foods Craig. Whole Foods Craig is not a [crosstalk].

Craig: No, he’ll show up soon enough.

Dana: Wait, who is Whole Foods Craig? I need him so bad. Where is he?

Craig: He’s about to show up.

Dana: Does he work at the checkout at Whole Foods, or is he in like a specialized area giving out samples?

Craig: You know what? It’s like, yeah, I work there, if you want to call it work. Wherever man. If they tell me to go there, I do that. The whole thing is doesn’t really matter, you know.

Dana: Oh my god. I love that Craig.

Craig: It’s a label. It’s not me.

Dana: [laughs] I do love that guy.

Craig: So, there’s Uber X, which is sort of the more affordable Uber. And I guess the deal is some of those drivers aren’t getting paid that much. So, a lot of people are like, “No, you have to tip them.” I mean, when people are lecturing you about tipping, it’s so hectoring. Somebody wrote something at me in all caps and I just wanted to punch my computer in the mouth. So, you know, there’s a lot of confusion about it.

And I said, I mean, to this date I’m like, no, I didn’t think that that was the thing you did. John was like, no, I always tip my Uber driver. So I’m glad that you’re here. Because you’ve been aggressively not tipping.

Dana: Okay. So, for me personally, what I think Uber needs to do, because I think of Uber as the whole entire reason I take Uber is because I have entered my credit card once into a thing and I never have to deal with it again. For me, it’s like on Postmates, I’m tipping like a crazy lady on Postmates. I’m tipping like I’ve got all the money in the world, because all I have to do is click that button baby.

John: Exactly.

Dana: I just click it. And if there was an Uber question at the end of it, where it was like, “Do you want to do 15, 10, whatever,” I would just hit it and I’d crush it. I’d be 20%-ing it.

John: So, Lyft lets you do that. And Uber doesn’t. So, here’s what Carrie T writes, “You should tip. I drive for both Lyft and Uber and sometimes we average like $9 an hour. That sucks. Especially if you’re going to the middle of nowhere. Leave a big tip because your driver will take a big loss driving back to civilization without the possibility of picking up another passenger.”

Dana: Oh my god. Yeah.

John: Bradley Dennis writes, “As a Brit, my view is that if you want more money, raise your prices. Giving a lowball figure and expecting people to just give you more out of some form of expected guilt is just bizarre and sneaky. It’s anything but genuine.”

Dana: Well, and that’s what makes me so uncomfortable if I ever get the luxury of traveling to Europe, is I feel like there’s this emotional transaction that occurs when you’re tipping. For me, obviously tipping is like just about psychology. It’s just about how do I feel. What weird power dynamic did I get into with this waiter? Like how much did I learn about their personal life? How sad do I feel about the job I know that they lost? Whatever it is, I get way too involved in everybody.

And in Europe, it’s just like you just pay the thing. They bring that weird little credit card thing over to your table. Like you don’t even — nobody goes in — they just come over to you and you swipe it and then you’re done. And you’re walking out. But if I can’t have that weird emotional/psychology moment at the end of it, I don’t quite know what tipping is about. That’s what it’s about for me.

Craig: This is weird. The whole tipping — look, I understand the tipping economy for waiters and bartenders. The whole deal there is that their management is allowed to pay them less than minimum wage or something like that, some crazy deal. But like, you know, I was talking about tipping — like here’s the insanity of tipping. You go to a restaurant and you sit down and you’re at one table, Dana, I’m at the other. Okay?

Dana: Interested. Listening.

Craig: Same restaurant. We have two different waiters. My waiter does a fantastic job. Your waiter does an okay job. The only difference is that I happen to order the sandwich, you got the steak. Your waiter gets more money.

Dana: That’s really interesting. I’ve never thought about that.

Craig: It makes no sense. It makes no sense.

John: So, I think people will write in to Craig to let him know that in restaurant situations, tips are generally pooled, so they’ll be shared among the waiters, so there’s some way it averages out.

Dana: So sandwich guy and steak guy have to put their money together.

Craig: Okay, well then let me extend then. You’re at the restaurant next door. Okay? I’m at my restaurant. My restaurant just happens to charge more for food. It’s fancier food. The fancier the food doesn’t mean that the waiter somehow has to work harder, right? In fact, sometimes the lower end restaurants, the waiter is working even harder because there is families in there and kids screaming and dumping their sippy cups. Meanwhile over at Café Swank, everyone is sitting perfectly quietly eating their $20 piece of tomato. Why do those waiters get more?

John: I don’t think it’s fair.

Craig: It’s not fair.

John: It’s not fair. And it’s not reasonable. And yet this is the system that we’re in. And so I think what’s been good about sort of the feedback we got was that a lot of people who are actually doing the job of driving cars for Uber or for Lyft or who are parking cars for valets at studios are telling us like don’t assume that we’re getting paid really well for our job. And so tipping is appreciated and is not an affront to be offering them a tip.

Craig: So the people that make money off of tips —

Dana: I appreciate this new information, honestly. I feel like I’m going to change my ways. Did you guys hear that thing — I feel like it was on something I listen to with my ears. So, it was something that I got to believe it was like This American Life or something. They talked about tipping and they were saying that you assume that waiters who are nicer to you and who are more friendly make more money, and actually it’s the ones who like grumpier and more withholding. And what they think it’s about is because the people who act happy and pleasant, the person having the dinner seems like, “They like their job. They’re having a great time. They’re just doing this for fun. They’re just bringing me that sandwich for fun.”

Whereas the people who are like very clear that it is a job, and they are doing it for a job to give you your food, and because they have to for their job, you tip them higher. I thought that was kind of interesting.

John: That’s why I like what you’re saying about like if there’s an option for like, you know, 10, 15, 20 percent, I would just click the button, and it would always happen.

Dana: I click the button every time.

John: It would always happen.

Craig: Yeah.

Dana: Give me the button.

Craig: Yeah, I would click it, too. I don’t know how accurate it is for people that would benefit from tips saying, “You really should give us more tips.” I’m still — here’s the deal. Uber needs to be really clear about this, and they’re not. And they need to smarten up and just solve this once and for all.

Because, yeah, look, if they were okay with the tipping culture, first of all, there never would have been this whole thing of you don’t have to tip your driver. They used to have a thing that said, “Don’t tip your drivers.” And then instructed their drivers, “If you are offered a tip, decline it.” Right? So that’s how that whole thing started. That’s what —

Dana: And was this an effort to differentiate them from taxis? Was that sort of part of the idea?

Craig: Yeah. The idea —

John: But if you look at how Uber has evolved, I mean, Uber was just the sedans for a while, just the town cars who had availability. And the way it’s become, my perception of Uber is Uber X. it’s the only thing I ever take. And that is a low end and those people aren’t making a lot of money.

Craig: I don’t take Uber X because I’m just concerned that I might get assaulted.

John: So, I will tell you a great Uber X story. I was going to Kelly Marcel’s party a couple weeks ago. And happy birthday, Kelly Marcel. And we took Uber. And I was talking with the driver and he had a fascinating accent. And I said like, I’m so sorry, but what is your accent, because it’s fantastic. And he’s like, “Oh, I am from Czechoslovakia.” Or specifically, “I’m from Czechoslovakia, not Czech Republic, but Slovakia.”

I was like, so the character I wrote in this last script was supposed to be Slovakian. And like I’ve had the hardest time finding an English speaker with a Slovak accent. And so I’m like, would it be really weird if I like got your information and I Skyped with you and like recorded your accent? I really need it as a language reference.

And it was great. And so we had an hour-long conversation with Elan about his history, his backstory, and I have this great footage of his accent for down the road.

Dana: Ah, that’s amazing. And I’ve read that script and I love that script.

John: Yeah. So she knows exactly who that person is.

Dana: I know exactly what you’re talking about and I am into it.

Craig: Honestly, that’s my nightmare. Talking to a driver for an hour?

Dana: Craig, what kind of an assault — is it like your ear’s assault? Like your ears are going to be assaulted with like a story? Or is it like you actually think you’re going to be sexually assaulted?

Craig: I’m always worried about sexual assault, you guys. [laughs]

Dana: [laughs] You think everyone is trying to sexually assault you.

John: Well, when you’re as sexy as Craig Mazin, it’s going to —

Dana: He’s a very, very sexy man. I get it. I totally get it.

Craig: You guys, you can’t be too safe.

Dana: As we all know, sexual assault is a crime of hotness, right?

Craig: [laughs]

John: Let’s open a can of worms. Would you like to open that one?

Dana: Yeah, I just opened that for everybody. God, I hope everyone knows I’m kidding.

Craig: It’s a crime of hotness for me.

Dana: Oh.

John: Craig basically doesn’t want to have any interactions with people that he can’t completely control. And it does — I will grant that starting a starting with your Uber driver does feel like, okay, this could go a lot of different ways. It could go terribly.

And so most times I’ll just stick to the pleasantries and not go any further. But when I heard this guy’s accent I was like, you know what, we’re going to have this conversation.

Dana: You know what I do also is I have a little convo in the beginning, and sometimes I get really involved and I talk to them the whole time. And other times I don’t. But I always ask permission to make work phone calls. That’s how I do it. Because I think it’s a polite factor where it’s like I’m in your car. If you were just a person I was in the car with, I would ask you if it’s okay with you if I make a phone call. So I always do because I like to be polite about it.

Craig: You’re paying them to drive you somewhere, and you’re asking them permission?

Dana: I’m a human being, Craig. I have a heart.

Craig: I don’t understand this.

John: But I think the social contract with Uber is just a little bit different than it is with sort of a normal taxi. Because like, yes, you’re paying them to do it, but also you’re getting into their space, and you’re sharing it in a weird way.

Dana: It’s also like everybody you talked to that drives for Uber honestly has another job or is trying to be something or has an interesting story for you. And so I always get the sense that like I assume that anyone who is driving a car is like a doctor in the country that they came from and like can’t do that here. And that’s like my baseline for who I think is driving me. [laughs] So I usually have like just a lot of respect for those people.

John: So, most of the Uber drivers, I would say at least half are screenwriters. And so I’ll talk to them, “So what else are you doing?” It’s like, “Oh, I really like this because it gives me time to write,” and blah, blah, blah. And I’ll just shut up.

Dana: You shut down. And I’m out.

John: It’s like I’m not volunteering any more information.

Craig: It’s an absolute nightmare. It’s a nightmare. So I’ve never used this version of Uber. Ever. I’ve only used like the kind where, you know —

John: Fancy.

Dana: The fancy guy.

Craig: But it’s not Uber limousine. It’s just like, you know.

Dana: I’m just not comfortable unless the car is a little bit like my car, where there’s like so much stuff in the backseat that shouldn’t be in there. Like then I feel right at home.

Although I have to say, I got into a car the other day on my way home from — I went to London for the premiere of How to Be Single. And the guy that drove me home, god bless him, I loved him so much. That was one of the guys I got very involved in — P.S. emails were exchanged. I like emailed him honestly like the second I got home, because that’s how much I loved him.

Craig: Oh my god.

Dana: I know. I’m you’re worst nightmare, Craig. This is why we’re not married and you’re married to Melissa.

Craig: Ah, thank god.

Dana: But he had like a little tray on the floor. And there was like Kleenex and like lotion. And then like hand sanitizer. And I’m like does he just assume like everyone is jerking off in the back of his car?

Craig: Yeah, man.

Dana: Because it was just like a jerk off tray. It was really interesting. And then there were like mints for afterwards for yourself.

Craig: So you could kiss yourself.

Dana: So you could just like freshen yourself up. I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on.

Craig: Listen, do you mind? I’m asking you permission. I’m going to be making business calls and jerking off back here.

John: [laughs]

Dana: Yes. I’m just asking your permission to jerk off while making a business call.

Craig: Yeah. Is that cool? [laughs]

Dana: Oh, lord.

John: Now we have to put the explicit —

Dana: You guys, this is amazing. You got to put the explicit thing at the beginning.

John: — warning on this podcast.

Craig: We knew that was coming.

Dana: There was a zero percent chance we were not going to need that with me.

John: All right. So you’re on your back from your premiere of your movie, How to Be Single, which you produced. I was so happy to see the little PGA after your name when the credits rolled by, so you’re officially the Producers Guild producer on this movie. But when I first knew you, back when you were my assistant, you were just a writer. And so how did this transition happen? Like what was the process that took you from, oh, I’m going to write movies that other people can make to I’m now making these movies.

Dana: Back when I was your assistant, you forgot to say I was just a really bad assistant. You were the world’s most amazing boss. And every day I would be like, “I just don’t know exactly when to take my nap.” I was like, “John, could you help me figure out when to put a pillow on my head and have your dog sleep on me, because I’m going to need to do that at some point today?”

You were literally the world’s greatest boss. So, how did I do that? I think what happened was the transition for me really crystallized around the TV experience. I was working as a screenwriter in movies, and getting treated the way that screenwriters in movies get treated, which is like you’re very disposable. They will fire you without thinking twice about it. And they will hire — I always think of it as like there’s a Crayola box and you’re like you’re the writer that’s like the nude color. And then they pull you out and they do what they need to with the drawing. And then they want a different color, so they grab the different writer out of the Crayola box.

And there’s some writers who are great at doing lots of things, and so they get to stay on longer. But I just felt like after —

John: Let’s talk about you being that Crayola. So were you brought in to do the work on like these characters aren’t working, please add a voice to these characters?

Dana: I got put into that a lot. I also got put into the “we need the girl voice.” Like we need the woman to sound like an actual human being was a call I got a lot. You know, it’s like there’s these big boy movies and the girls don’t sound like real humans. So I got that call a lot.

And I chose not to be offended by that. I chose to just be like, great, this is work. I need work. This is great.

John: And so through that experience you’re building up your quote and you’re building up your experience. You’re building up relationships, so you’re getting employed to do more and more of these things, but they’re not necessarily the jobs that you would dream about. And a lot of times your name is not on them because you were just doing a couple weeks of work?

Dana: Right. And what would happen is, you know, the movie would go to get made and then you would be completely blocked out of the process. And that was the part where I always felt really frustrated, because as a writer, you think about absolutely every choice you’re making on the page. And you’re very careful about like why the comma is where the comma is.

And, of course, you have ideas about what clothing the people would be wearing. You’ve thought about absolutely everything else about the character. Of course you know what kind of outfits they would wear. But no one asks you that because you’re just the writer.

So it was always really frustrating to me to just kind of hand it off, and once the process got really good all of a sudden I wasn’t invited to the party. Well, actually, you know, Couples Retreat was the first one where I was on set every day. That was sort of the thing where I was like, “Oh…”

John: So Couples Retreat is the movie with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau and other folks. And you were on an island in Tahiti, right?

Dana: I was in Bora Bora for a month and a half staying. And Craig knows because he has stayed there.

Craig: It’s great.

Dana: In like the world’s nicest over-water bungalow, with like a hole in the floor where you can see the fish. And it’s this whole thing. And it would normally have been like the most amazing experience. But every day I woke up feeling like I was like fighting for my life, because it was just a really tough shoot.

And we were changing things on the fly all day long. And there’s a lot of pictures of me just like standing in knee-high water, like holding a laptop. Just like in a flop sweat.

Craig: So you’re movie plays 24/7 on one dedicated channel at the St. Regis Resort in Bora Bora. It’s just, that’s it. It’s just a channel that does —

Dana: Oh my god.

Craig: Well, there’s two channels actually. One in English. And one in French. And when I was there with Melissa, we used to come back from our day of whatever, you know, petting sharks and —

Dana: Snorkeling or like, yeah, rubbing your body up against a sea creature of sorts.

Craig: A thing? Or a person.

Dana: Or your wife.

Craig: And we’d come back. And so like Melissa is in the shower, and I’m just sitting there, and there’s not anything to watch except Couples Retreat. So the two of us watch Couples Retreat like 100 times in bits and pieces.

And I remember I wrote you and I was like, “We’re here and we’re in St. Regis and we’re watching your movie. This is the best place ever.” And you were like, “Oh, that’s nice. All I remember about it is typing and crying.” [laughs]

Dana: That’s all I did the entire time I was there. I remember one night I was in the fetal position sobbing saying, “Vince Vaughn is my father.” And Quinn, who was my lovely husband at the time, who was I swear to god 25 years old, was like, “I think I’m in a little bit over my head here.” I was like, “I can’t do it anymore.”

No, but Vince was actually really, really a great sort of graduate program on having tough skin, because he is a very, very hard worker and he just demands that everyone around him is working as hard as he is. And he taught me that work ethic, which is I guess great.

But, yeah, a lot of crying. And then a lot of very, very small croissants. And like eating so many chocolate croissants that were miniature size that I could make like a giant croissant inside my stomach with them. I did that a lot.

Yeah, Bora Bora was kind of hard core. It was amazing. And I look back on it and I think how did I not enjoy that.

John: So was that your biggest onset experience?

Dana: That was my biggest onset experience. Yeah. And I was there pretty much every day of that whole shoot. And it was a really long shoot. So, I got a lot of experience with that. And I started to just sort of discover that for me the writing almost begins onset as opposed — you know, most people feel like that’s the destination and once you’ve gotten there you’re done. But for me, that was like the start of the real writing. And I felt like so much changes when you’re there with the actual actors and they’re saying the actual words. And you see stuff. And you go, “Oh my god, well this could be better.”

And I loved sort of challenging myself to imagine what the editing problems were going to be later, and then fixing them in the moment so that we wouldn’t have those problems later. And then that experience kind of made me really sort of hungry for the onset experience.

And so then I decided to do a television show. My friend, Liz Meriwether, was doing New Girl. And she was just like, “It’s amazing. They actually think writers know what they’re talking about.” And she sort of encouraged to meet this woman, Katherine Pope, who is this incredible executive/perfect human being. And Katherine just kind of slow played me and talked me into being in television.

And then that was when I really understood like, oh, this is what I want to do. I want to be the person that gets to answer the question what is the person wearing, and what color should the wall be. And all that stuff, because I had the answer for all of that. I knew what the answer was and no one was asking me that.

And so then I just decided, okay, I think I have to start producing things in movies to stay close to the process while it goes all the way through to the end.

John: So Ben and Kate was a really quick rise. I remember meeting up with you in New York, because Quinn was running the marathon, and we were racing around the city. And I think you had shot the pilot, or you were about to shoot the pilot. And it was like sort of last minute. And like, “Well, we’re doing this thing. We’ll see what happens,” and suddenly you’re on the fall schedule. And you have this giant spotlight on you. Were you ready for it? Is anyone ever ready for it?

Dana: You know, it’s so funny. I don’t think anyone is ever ready for network television. It is so bonkers insane how many hours of TV you have to reduce in such a short amount of time. It’s like making a movie over, and over, and over again without stopping. And you’re making like three movies at once.

And so I would have a to-do list board up on my wall, because I had to be able to visualize it, otherwise it just felt infinite. And it would be like pitch, you know, writer’s room on this episode, pitch document on that episode, outline on this episode. There’s a script on this episode. There’s a cut on this episode. I mean, it was like there literally were like ten episodes going on at any given time. And so it was really hard to kind of keep all that stuff straight. I had some really great writers on the show who were just amazing, helping me and Katie Silberman I met on that show. And she was just like a killer. She was so awesome and so great at helping me kind of keep stuff straight.

But, yeah, I was as it turns out completely ready. And I felt like finally I felt like a fish in water. And it was weird. I think it was partly because Katherine Pope and also Liz Meriwether were just kind of like, “Of course you can do this. You’re awesome. Go.” That was really helpful.

And I just — I guess I just had spent so much time kind of as a woman, and I hate to get kind of feministy about it, but doing the tap-dancey, like I am a scared little girl and I don’t know the answer, but maybe the answer is this. But it’s your idea, and you just thought of it. And I had done so much of that. And I realized I always had the answer, I just was giving it to other people and pretending that they had thought of it. So then I was like, oh look, I can just take credit for the answer and I don’t have to be ashamed of it.

And then that was an amazing moment where I feel like I came into my power and I felt like, oh, I don’t have to ask for permission anymore. And when you know that you don’t need permission, that’s when you really don’t need permission anymore.

Craig: I mean, I love that. I love that you’re taking that additional capacity on. And we’ve talked a lot about this idea of the writer plus. You know, even if you don’t necessarily have the title of producer, a lot of times in features you can work yourself into a position where you’re the writer plus. I mean, for instance, like you were on Couples Retreat, you were more than just a writer, even if you weren’t producing that movie.

And then you kind of take on this additional thing where, okay, now I am in fact the official producer of this movie. And my question for you is, so, there’s one thing that producers that I — because I’ve thought about this a lot, but generally I shy away from doing any producing whatsoever. And part of it is because there is this thing I think really good producers that aren’t you, and that aren’t writing, can sometimes service this wonderful buffer between you and the outside world.

Some of them are bad and all they do is take what’s in the outside world, amplify it, and then shove it in your face. Those are the worst ones. Frankly, those are the more common ones. But occasionally you find ones that shield you. Did you feel more exposed as the producer because there wasn’t any kind of buffer between you, and the studio, and all the politics, and all the baloney?

Dana: Yeah. Well, that was what my question to you was going to be. Is the outside world like the studio and all the actors being crazy? What do you think of as the like stuff that it’s all that stuff?

Craig: It’s everything that’s not in my head in the screenplay, or sitting with the director and blocking a scene. Anything that’s not making movie, but all the other stuff around it, which is a lot.

Dana: Yeah. That was tricky on this one. I mean, to compare it to the TV experience, I had a whole crew of people who were there to support me in the creative endeavor on the TV show. And then on this one, on How to Be Single, like I was the person supporting everybody else, but I was also sort of expected to be able to do all the scene work that you’re expected to do as the writer onset. And that was really a huge challenge. And I have to say, like, thank god for Katie Silberman, because she was with me onset every day. And she kind of would have the script. And she would come up with all these great alts. And I had some good alts in the moment, but a lot of times, you know, I spent a lot more time dealing with the political stuff and just all the stuff that you’re talking about than I normally would as a writer on set. And so, yeah, it was really, really difficult to juggle and to manage.

But, I think when you sort of have that super power, which is the like I can talk to the studio. I can talk to the actors. I can talk to the director. I can talk to everybody. It’s hard to sort of put the super power away. You know what I mean? It’s like —

John: Let’s talk about the relationship with the director, because that seems like that would be an interesting and challenging shift in dynamics. Because in television, of course, the showrunner is ultimately responsible for the show. It’s this ongoing process, so the director is there for an episode. And so whatever that director does, well, you’re going to sort of decide what makes it through the edit.

You’re ultimately going to be picking that director and picking what’s going to be shot. It’s your show. But with a movie, that’s not traditionally how it works. And so as we look at the people who are like you, the writer-producer, so I think you, Chris Morgan, Simon Kinberg, there’s a growing number of these people who are doing that job of I’ve written the screenplay and I’m going to shepherd the screenplay through production. It changes your relationship with the director, doesn’t it?

Dana: Yeah. And I think I get away with it a little bit more because I’m like brutally honest. I’m not afraid of conflict. I’m not afraid — I’m super nice, but I get to the point. And I’m not afraid of stuff. So, I think I have like a personality that’s kind of built for it. But you’re right, it’s a really complicated — you do sort of have to walk on egg shells a little bit at certain moments, because the director is absolutely the boss in the movie business.

And so I was very lucky on How to Be Single in that I had a director who liked me and thought I knew what I was talking about. And so he and I were good at working together. The actors and I all got along great. And so we were all good at working together. It just — I don’t think I’ll ever do a movie again and not direct, honestly.

John: Oh, that’s the question.

Dana: And that’s the sort of weird twist of I guess this podcast which is that I think I will either just write it, and I will hand it to someone and be like, “Good luck. Have fun at 3am on the streets of NYC without me. I’m going to be in bed,” or I’m going to be directing it. Because it is very hard to feel like you kind of have the answer and feel like you could be the person the way that you are in television and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh no, wait, I’m not the boss-boss.

John: I described it, when I Jordan Mechner was writing the script for Prince of Persia, I was just a producer on the film. And I would see these things happening in the script and say like, “I know how — just let me fly the plane.” It’s like you’re in the cockpit of a plane, and you know how to operate the controls, but you’re not allowed to touch the controls. And it was so bad to not be able to use the controls.

Dana: You actually used that analogy with me. A long time ago you told me that. And I have quoted it a million times, because that’s exactly what it feels like. It feels like you’re in a 747 and you’re going through turbulence and everything is kind of crazy. And you’re like, “Press the red, oh god, can you just press the red button — no you’re not pressing the red button. You’re putting the, oh, god, you’re pressing the green one. Okay.” It drives you nuts.

Craig: It’s worse in a way because sometimes if you’re going to make the analogy really accurate, the person flying the plane is doing a poor job. You are a much better pilot than they are. Not only are you not allowed to touch the controls, somehow it’s considered rude to suggest that maybe they do something else.

Dana: By the way, you’ll get kicked out of the plane sometimes.

John: Yeah.

Dana: If you suggest that you should, yeah. 100%.

Craig: That is so nuts. And I’ve found that the better directors aren’t like that. You know? Just looking at all the directors I’ve worked with, it’s the ones that are insecure and frightened who turn you away and get super weird about that old school auteur baloney nonsense. And the new ones aren’t like that as much. And the good ones aren’t like that as much.

Dana: I’m so happy to hear you say that, because I guess I can amend what I was saying before, which is that if I found the right directors who really wanted a collaboration, I would 100% do it again, because I absolutely love it and I know I’m good at it. It’s so funny that you should say that, because when I was on my television show I had a really moment with some people that worked on the show and they sort of suggested that I was losing my power because I was deferring to other people who I thought were smart. And instead of sort of taking that bait and being a dude and saying, “You’re right, I have an ego. And I’m not going to listen to you. And I know the answer,” I actually said, “I think it’s what makes me powerful is that I pick the right people to listen to, and that I know that there are creative people here who can give me better ideas than even I can think of.”

And to me those are the really exciting sets to be on are the ones where everybody sort of feels like if you have the right group, you know, the contributions are welcome. And to me it’s like if the idea can’t withstand a little bit of criticism, then it’s not the right idea.

So, how could you get panicky about somebody else telling you they think they might know the answer? I take it all in. And I don’t take it — if I don’t agree with it, I just don’t take it. I filter it out and I go on to the next thing.

But, you can take it in. You know, that’s not an ego jab. I don’t know.

Craig: I agree.

Dana: It’s interesting.

Craig: I agree. I mean, the people that said that to you, this was the show you were running, correct?

Dana: Yes, it is. And I’m happy to know that, Craig, you’re experiencing it, too. Because sometimes I feel like I’ve gotten into slightly more feministy/sexism-y place lately because I’ve experienced some more examples of that that are kind of shocking. And I hadn’t really experienced it before.

But it’s like I wish I was almost at like an all-girls school in Hollywood so that I could just say like, “Oh yeah, there are still the bossy women who want to talk all the time and — ”

John: All right. Because Craig and I could never talk knowledgeably about this, because we don’t experience it, can you give us some examples of the things you encounter — and so obviously you can change the details around it, but what are some things — because no one is doing more better movies than you are for this kind of space. Like you have big movies that open with big movie stars, but what are you encountering?

Dana: You know, I think it’s like there’s a sense that any time you get emotional about something, you’re being an emotional, hysterical woman, as opposed to I’m being passionate. That’s how I get when I really believe in something. And it’s not like I cry at work. Like, of course I’ve never cried at work. I’m like basically a dude, but I just — I think that if you say something that’s emotional, and a lot of times actors are very emotional people. That’s why they’re actors is because they’re super empathetic — or not all of them, but many of them are very emotional. And so I’m interested in psychology. I mean, my mom is a psychology professor. I’ve talked about psychology. I used to read the DSM-3R, you know, mental health case book when I was like 10 years old as like a bed time story.

John: Oh, Craig is so excited to hear that. Because he loves his psychology.

Craig: You said DSM-3?

Dana: It was the DSM-3R, I believe, is the edition that was out when I was growing up. What was your edition?

Craig: Well, you know, I prefer 4 or 5 is really interesting. Five is good. Five is good.

Dana: I love that you’ve read all of them. That makes me so happy. But, Craig, you can back me up on this. Those books were like my first access to — they would have a little example of a person who was whatever mental illness they were talking about. And they would tell a little story about them. They’d be like, “Sally, name changed, age 35, has blah, blah, blah.” And you’d read these little stories and I think it was like my first access to sort of character types and people who behaved in certain ways.

And I was really interested in that stuff. But for me, when that — that is a part of what we do. You know, this is a business, but it’s also emotional and it’s kind of a little bit art. And it’s kind of a little bit all these things. It’s very organic. It’s very living and breathing.

And I found sometimes that when I would talk about like an emotional thing, like I’d say, “Hey, this is actress is having trouble because she feels blah, blah, blah,” there was definitely a lot of male executives around me who were like rolling their eyes at me. And it’s like, you know, and that was a little bit frustrating because I kept trying to explain to them like this is a business conversation. Because this emotional thing is affecting our business. And so we need to address this emotional thing.

John: Yeah. It’s a bunch of trying to make art, which is by its nature an emotional experience. And trying to make it in a very difficult way. But to expect that everyone is going to behave rationally and sort of clinically cleanly at all times is unrealistic.

Dana: Yeah. Absolutely unrealistic. And, you’re getting together a group of people who all are probably slightly different pages in the DSM-3R case book, including myself. And I’m sure I’m like page 68, you know, OCD and this, that, and the other.

But, you’re getting together all of these different sort of personality types, and then you’re kind of putting them into a war zone type situation where there’s so much money at stake and everyone is kind of in their most heightened behavioral state. And that’s why you sort of need a person like me that kind of dives — I take my body and I just like dive on grenades left, right, and center every day. That’s sort of what I would do.

Craig: I’ve been watching these discussions online. A lot of times there will be these Twitter battles between screenwriters. And a lot of times the fights are about these issues — issues of sexism, perceived sexism, and how it’s working in the workplace in Hollywood.

And it strikes me that part of the disconnect that’s going on is women will say, “Look, this is how I’m treated and this is no good.” And then guys will say, “Well, hold on. I’ve been treated that way.” Because, you know, all writers are treated poorly to some extent.

And so there’s this interesting disconnect, like, “Oh, you think that’s just because you’re a woman.” The problem is that it is worse for women. We know that there’s just facts. Right? So there are these facts.

Dana: Yeah, there’s just numbers. There’s like actual data. Yeah.

Craig: There’s actual data. And so, you know, on your DSM thing it’s true. We’re all worried about our own emotional well-being. Our emotional well-being is the most stark and salient to us. So, we come home — so you’ve got some guy who comes home, he’s just been beaten up by his producers, belittled, made to feel like he doesn’t belong. Told that he was being difficult, and emotional. And then he gets online and someone is like, “This is how they treat us because we’re women.” He goes, “No! It’s because we’re screenwriters!”

And that doesn’t help. [laughs] It doesn’t help at all.

Dana: Yeah. It’s so funny, because I’m sort of bummed that I even have to engage in these conversations about sexism, because up until now I feel like I kind of ignored it, just because I’m bored with it. I don’t want it to be a thing. And I feel like, you know, the film business is so hard. It’s so hard to be successful, whether you’re a woman, or a man, or any of it.

But the place where I feel like it does actually come into play, again, going back to like weird psychology stuff, is I think that women are afraid of failure in a way that men kind of grow up not being as scared of screwing up. We’re told that like you’ve got to be a good girl, and you’ve got to get the A-plusses. And you have to be a good girl, do it right.

And so we aren’t taught by society that it’s okay to screw up at stuff and be bad at stuff. And this is a business where you have to mess up over and over again and you have to get your — like you were describing, Craig, you have to get the shit peed out of you over, and over, and over again, every single day. And then you have to get up and dust yourself off and just start over again. Day in and day out. And day in and day out.

And I don’t know that that’s the way that girls are socialized in our culture at least.

John: Well, talk about the failure. The first cut of every movie is going to be terrible. It’s going to be just awful. It’s going to be unwatchable.

Dana: Yeah. Your skin is going to crawl.

John: But I could definitely imagine if you are delivering that first cut to the studio, there’s a different reaction because it’s like, “Oh, she really screwed up that cut. That cut sucked.”

Dana: Right. Yeah.

John: Versus like if it’s a guy who delivered it, it’s like, well, every first cut sucks.

Dana: First cuts always suck. Yeah. 100%. And I think that is the place where it’s actually real and actually damaging. Which is I think that women don’t get as many chances as guys do in this business. And I think Diablo Cody said it really well at one point. She was talking about how like if you fail once as a woman, it’s like you’ve failed for all women kind. Whereas guys fail all the time and they get second, and third, and fourth, and fifth chances.

Women fail once and they never get another chance. So that’s a little tricky. And, you know, I do think that — again, Lorene Scafaria had a good point to me the other day about like financiers. It’s like, all of this is all about — it’s all about money. It’s always about money. Which is why I always urge people, like if you want to see more movies like this, you have to go to the movie theaters on that opening weekend and use your money to vote.

Because if you don’t go see them, Hollywood is going to stop making them. They’re just going to follow the money. So, Lorene mentioned like all the financiers are male. You’re looking to try to make a movie and then you also have to get involved in a conversation with a guy who is looking at you as either his wife, he ex-wife, or his daughter.

And that’s tough. Again, like critics also are tough. Because critics can make or break a movie, and I would say the majority of critics are males, probably age 50. Would that be sort of a fairish thing of saying?

John: That sounds about right.

Dana: And those people don’t like our kinds of movies.

John: Yeah.

Dana: So, you’re going to get bad reviews if you make a movie about a female journey. The same movie with a male protagonist that’s dealing with relationships, like they would never have called 40-Year-Old Virgin a romantic comedy. They just called it a comedy. But it was about a guy and romance and relationships. That literally all that movie was about. But that’s a comedy.

John: Yeah. So any of the Apatow movies are just comedies, but any movies that have more than three women in them are romantic comedies.

Dana: Exactly.

John: And so your movie, How to Be Single, got lumped into the, oh, it’s a romantic comedy, even though the romance of it is not a big factor. It’s like an Apatow kind of movie, but with girls.

Dana: Yeah. Exactly. And that’s frustrating because, you know, again, it’s not an ego thing. I don’t’ read reviews because I think it’s really self-flagellating and weird. It’s like don’t go to that place. Because if a tree falls in the forest and you didn’t hear it, it’s like I don’t have that in body. I don’t have that horrible thing that that person just about me in my body, because I didn’t read it.

But, you know, I occasionally dip in because I sort of have to know what are people who are trying to go to the movies this weekend reading, so I dip in a little bit. And, yeah, it’s frustrating because you get marginalized by being called a rom-com. And the truth is nobody goes to theaters to see romantic-comedies because they want to see them on their TVs at their houses.

So, that’s messing with my business, dude. It does actually affect the business, which is a bummer.

John: I hear you. So, you mentioned their names before, so we should talk about Diablo, and Lorene, and Liz, and the four of you, the Fempire. What was the genesis behind that? So, these are four young writers who have sort of set out and were going to kind of work together to make projects?

Dana: It wasn’t really that we were ever working together. It was just there was a New York Times article written by the great Deb Schoeneman, who is now a writer in her right and doing awesome. And it was back in the time when the four of us had just kind of become friends. And we were all doing our own stuff, but somehow we got called the Fempire and it kind of seemed like it was the group.

We would more sort of casually help each other with our stuff, so like I would read Lorene’s script. She would read my script. We would give each other notes. And I would read Liz’s stuff. And she would read mine. So it was a little bit more casual like that. But what I liked about it is I liked that it kind of said, you know, this is a group of women who are all trying to do the same thing, and we’re not being catty to each other. We’re being good to each other. We want to help each other. We want to watch each other succeed. And that’s the thing — like I have absolutely no patience for women who don’t like other women. Like I think there’s a very special, delicious place in hell for women who are mean to other women.

So, I just liked that it was like these chicks are all trying to do the same thing, and we’re all really proud of each other. And it could have been like this story about these four people who kind of never ended up being friends, or staying together, but we all are still really good friends. And we still love each other and we still support each other and come out for each other. So, it’s just like kind of a cool thing to have.

John: But seeing you guys work, you guys would help each other out on things in ways I’ve never seen guys help each other out on things, which I thought was really laudable and great.

Dana: That’s cool. Like what? I love that.

John: There would be times where it’s like, “Oh, I got to help Lorene with this thing that she’s writing.” Or, I just feel like reading other people’s stuff is one thing, I feel like you guys were kind of in the room helping each other out in ways —

Dana: Yeah. And —

John: And ultimately you went through New Girl, which I know actually you got paid to work on New Girl, but like I felt you were a very important part of the early years of New Girl.

Dana: Yeah. And Lorene actually directed a bunch of New Girls. Because, you know, we would just convince Lorene. And she directed a Ben & Kate. Like, we would just convince — Lorene is mostly just a feature director, and she only really directs her own stuff, but we would just kind of convince her like, hey, come be with us on TV for a second because we thought she’s so talented. And we tried to convince her to get over there.

But, yeah, there was some formalizing of it. Like I would watch cuts of New Girl and kind of like help Liz out. But, I mean, I think it was — now that I’ve been in television and I understand that sometimes, for some people writing is a very solitary thing. I imagine for you, you like to get into a hermetically sealed train and get sent to space on your space train and do it there or something.

And, Craig, I don’t know if you’re the same way. But, for me, I think by talking and so I needed other people around me to kind of like figure out what my ideas where. Because I sort of — by pitching stuff out loud over and over again, that’s how I kind of land on it. And so, yeah, like Lorene and I would tag in to help each other just sort of stand there — a lot of times it was literally just an emotional support animal. Like, you know, like Lorene would just stand there and be like, “You can do it. You’re okay. Breathe. Have another coffee. You can do this.”

And a lot of times it was emotional support. And other times it was tagging in with actual, you know, she would come up with a great line for me, or I would come up with a thing for her. And now that I’ve been in television and I see how fun that can be, and how collaborative that can be, that’s what I’m trying to bring into features in a weird way as well, is just a little bit more of like a TV sort of collaborative environment in features.

I think in television, I can name off the top of my head a lot more female boss ladies. So, I think that means it’s better in television. But I think it’s getting hard across the board because the business is contracting so much.

I feel like when I started out, they made 30 movies a year that were the kinds of movies I could have written. And now I see maybe eight of those every year that get released. And you sort of look at it and you say I wonder where I would fit into this new marketplace. I’m so impressed with what Deadpool dead, even though they kicked me in the dick and stole probably $5 to $10 million from me last weekend. God bless you, Deadpool. I’m so happy for you.

I am happy because it’s an original movie that people were excited by because it was original. So that makes me happy. And then I go, ooh, like should I be trying to get into the Deadpool tent pole business? And, you know, I talk to people about it and I start floating that idea, because it’s like I’ve got ideas that are big like that. I’ve got huge super hero ideas all the time. It’s just not my genre, so I haven’t really pursued it. And the response I tend to get is like, “Oh yeah. We’ll look and see if there’s a Cruella de Vil, or like a female super hero thing.”

And I’m like, but, oh, so I get it. You would never in a million years consider me for the male job.

Craig: Out of curiosity, who is giving you that response? Your agents? Or — ?

Dana: I mean, just anybody I talk to about it.

Craig: But who are these dummies? Honestly, like —

Dana: How many women do you know though, Craig, seriously, like I love you. You’re my favorite, because you’re a total feminist. You guys both are. But like how many women do you know that have written on those big movies? The Marvel movies?

Craig: No, no, I’m not questioning that it’s happening. What I’m questioning is who are these people saying this? Like I want to know who they are. I want to know —

Dana: Do you want to key their cars for me? [laughs]

Craig: Well, I just feel like it’s just so profoundly dumb.

Dana: It’s a little backwards looking.

Craig: And you know my whole thing is I decry all of the isms, but those are all underneath the thing I hate the most which is dumb.

Dana: Dumbism?

Craig: It’s dumb. It’s just dumb. I don’t understand it.

Dana: Yeah, it’s dumb.

Craig: Why would you — what?

Dana: It’s because they don’t want to do the hard thing. And what I’ve learned —

Craig: Well, let me ask you this question.

Dana: Yeah, please.

Craig: Is the dumbness, because I’ve gotten this kind of dumbness before, too. Is the dumbness, they look and they say, “Well, here are the movies that you have done, which of course we’ve been allowing you to do. So we look at what our filter has allowed you to do and we’ve decided that must be the only thing you can do.” Is that — are they giving you any rationale for this, dumb, dumb thing?

Dana: I think it’s exactly that. But, to bring it back to I think the point that you guys were making before about maybe it’s just because we’re writers, I think that either of you guys if you wanted to do something that was so far outside of your genre, you would have to do the same thing that I would have to do, which is you have to write your way into it.

So, you have to either take a really deep pay cut to do something outside of your genre. Like if I wanted to do a period piece on television, like some of the weird British stuff that I like, you know, I would have to just write it, and prove to someone that I could do it, so that I just took the question mark out of the equation.

And I’m assuming you guys would have to do that, too, right? Or would they give you the benefit of the doubt?

Craig: No, no.

Dana: I don’t think they would.

John: I think they give us more benefit of the doubt than they might necessarily give you.

Craig: I don’t feel like I get any of it. I mean, I did — I’m working on something that is definitely — like characterized I think the way you just said, something that’s really outside. And, yeah, I just said, let’s not even bother. Money doesn’t — we’ll just do it. I’ll do it for scale. I don’t care.

Dana: Right. So you have to do that, too.

Craig: Just let me this. Let me do this. There are times I think where —

Dana: And that’s how you had to win that job.

Craig: Yeah. But, I think that where there’s this pernicious thing is that people may say, hmm, well this guy is saying that he’s willing to do all that. Wow, he’s really passionate and he’s really aggressive about it. I admire that. And I wonder if when a woman does it they’re like, “Desperate.”

Dana: Oh, 100%. Because, again, the dating stuff, and the psychology plays into all of it. It’s like no guy ever wants a woman who is coming after him, because they’re biologically programmed to want to chase after the cheetahs because the cheetah is the meat and they’re going to survive if they catch it. So, like if I’m a woman, and I stand there right in front of you and go, “I’m available,” it’s like, ew, gross. I don’t want her. They need to actually see the other cavemen trying to fuck me.

Craig: I’m okay with that actually.

John: It’s such a weird metaphor. I’m trying to visualize it.

Dana: It got a little confusing there.

John: Are you eating the cheetah? I don’t know.

Dana: I think we’re eating — yes.

Craig: Does anyone eat cheetah?

Dana: We’re both fucking and eating cheetah.

John: I mean, I hear cheetah is delicious. So, I mean, I don’t want to — it’s a specialty.

Dana: But it was like a sexual eating of the cheetah.

John: Oh yeah.

Dana: So there was some of that in there, too.

John: [laughs] Sexual —

Dana: It was like a really weird picture.

John: Dana Fox and Sexual Cheetahs.

Dana: This is why they hire me for the writing.

Craig: [sings] Sexual Cheetah. Sexual Cheetah.

John: So, Elizabeth Banks directs Pitch Perfect 2 —

Dana: The greatest.

John: She’s the best.

Dana: Love her.

John: And that movie is a giant hit. And I think her really valid frustration is why are you not offering me this Marvel movie or this other giant tent pole thing when she did a kick ass job directing that movie.

Dana: I’m not speaking for Liz. I love Liz to bits. And I think she’s amazing. And I’m not speaking for her here, but I do think that a lot of the time when women direct stuff, they think it’s like a fluke or something if it’s successful. It’s like look at that accident that lady tripped on and fell into.

John: How great was that, yeah.

Dana: How did she fall into all that money by accident? Like if you think about it, I had never heard that the person who directed Mamma Mia, which made like a bazillion dollars worldwide, I did not know that was a woman. I don’t know her name. I don’t think she’s been allowed to direct anything until she’s about to direct Bridget Jones 2.

I mean, like why? That’s super weird, you know.

John: It is super weird. Because I would say that, my personal opinion, I didn’t think Mamma Mia was especially well directed —

Dana: Didn’t see it. Making lots of comments about it, but never saw it.

John: Made lots of money. But I do agree with you that like any man who made a movie that made a gazillion dollars, their next movie is easy to make.

Dana: Gets another chance. Yeah. They get another chance. The next one is immediately green lit. Or whatever they want to do is immediately green lit. I do think that’s interesting. And I think, you know, with Liz, there’s probably a little bit of a sense of like, “Well, she had that property before, and she was part of that property all the way along, so maybe she… blah, blah, blah.”

And it’s like this is the thing that happens to women is that they’ve got to prove themselves over and over and over and over again.

John: Well, they explain away the success, rather than sort of celebrating saying how do I get a piece of that.

Dana: Yeah. Exactly. And I personally kind of thrive on the energy of needing to prove myself over and over again. I, much like Hamilton, am young, scrappy, and hungry. And I think if I remain young, scrappy, and hungry, like my country, I’ll be okay. So, in a way I sort of get excited —

Craig: It worked out for Hamilton just perfectly. [laughs]

Dana: It worked out for Hamilton you guys. Oh, that makes me sad. It didn’t work out.

Craig: I’ve imagined my death so many times. Just like a memory.

John: I get to see Hamilton next week, and I’m going to be so excited.

Dana: Wait, have you not seen it?

John: I haven’t seen it yet.

Dana: Oh, god, John. I can’t even —

John: No spoilers.

Dana: The spoiler is zero. Zero spoilers.

Craig: He dies at the end. He dies, he dies.

John: I can’t believe it. History is the worst.

Dana: I mean, he does.

Craig: History has its eyes on you.

Dana: The magical thing is I have — I’m so proud of my education. You know, went to Stanford. Went to USC Film School. Like super educated. Sort of a blank spot where all of American history is concerned for me.

John: It’s really not that important.

Dana: Like just didn’t really, I don’t know, either go to that class, or pay attention in that class. So, Hamilton to me, the whole time I was like, “Oh my god, what? America?”

Craig: Slavery? We had slaves?

Dana: Wait, what was Britain doing in this whole thing? I mean, the whole thing to me was like a shocker. The plot of that thing. It’s the first time in forever that my own ignorance has created like an incredibly magical viewing experience.

John: You managed to avoid all spoilers.

Dana: It was amazing.

Craig: You were kind of in suspense to see if we won the Revolutionary War.

Dana: Oh yeah, 100%. I was like, did he play golf?

Craig: That’s spectacular. John, you’re going to love it. It’s the greatest.

Dana: John is literally going to have to take like a Hamilton vacation for a week and a half afterwards to like reevaluate who he is as a person. I felt like a different human being. I felt like I was born during that show, and I came out of it and I didn’t know who the new me was.

John: I’m really glad you’re not trying to set expectations too high for it.

Craig: Yeah, that’s a little absurd. That’s just crazy. That’s your DSM acting up.

Dana: I don’t, man, I had a really emotional reaction to it. I really DSM’d it. I DSM’d it hard.

Craig: Yeah, you DSM’d it. I mean, it’s an amazing show. The one thing that I actually had to do was take a break because I couldn’t sleep. Like I would keep cycling Hamilton songs in my head. It was bad.

Dana: I know. I have been doing a thing where I just had a baby three months ago, and I’m trying to lose the last of my baby weight. And I’m tricking myself into running by only allowing myself to start at the beginning of the Hamilton soundtrack, so I only get as deep into the Hamilton soundtrack as I can run, as far as. So I keep getting to like My Shot or like the Skylar Sisters. And it’s like, that’s like a 20-minute chunk. And I’m like, I can’t go further.

Craig: You should start a little bit later, because I would imagine Wait For It would be a great running song.

Dana: Oh, god, it would be so good. But I got to earn it, dude. I got to run that far so I can hear that song.

Craig: I get it. I get it.

John: Bringing up your baby is actually a perfect last bit on this topic of, oh, why are women not more successful in Hollywood. Oh, they have to stop and have babies. You have three kids under three.

Dana: I have so many babies. They’re all babies. I just have babies. Three of them.

John: You have nothing with babies. And you were pregnant with your first child while you were creating Ben & Kate.

Dana: That’s absolutely right. I mean, I actually had sort of a dark — this is dark. I don’t know if your audience can handle this.

John: We love dark. We love dark.

Dana: But I actually had like a ton of trouble getting pregnant. I had to do seven IVF cycles and I had two miscarriages. And the first miscarriage I had, or the one that was really tough for me, which was like about 11 weeks or so, I found out that it was not going to work out. I found out the baby was dead the morning of my Ben & Kate pitch.

So, I had to go into the network and be like the funniest person in the entire world with like a dead baby inside me. And as much as that’s like just sort of a horrible story —

Craig: [laughs] Yeah, it’s the best story ever.

Dana: Everybody said, “We have to cancel the pitch. We have to cancel the pitch.” And I was sort of like, why do you think I have a sense of humor? Because comedy to me has been what has saved my life throughout my whole life. I mean, comedy for I think so many people who are in comedy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way to survive. It’s a way to kind of like make the world okay if you feel like the world isn’t going to be okay.

I had a pretty great childhood. I love my parents. It’s all cool. But, you know, it’s hard. And so I made people laugh as the way to kind of make everything okay. And so everyone kept saying, “We got to cancel this pitch. This is so creepy. This is so dark.”

And I said, no, I need this pitch. Like I’ll kill myself if I don’t go to this pitch.

Craig: Good for you.

Dana: So I went and I just like crushed it.

Craig: Love that. I love that.

Dana: And I was really glad I did it.

Craig: Yeah, you know what? Cry later.

Dana: Cry later, man.

Craig: Go do your job. Cry at home. I think that’s amazing.

Dana: But that sort of set the tone for my —

John: Definitely. You’re going to have three beautiful kids and a kick ass career simultaneously, and you’re going to make it work.

Dana: And for me personally, I never stopped while I was pregnant or having babies. I went back to work three weeks after the first baby. I went back to work two weeks after the second baby. And I think I was like working while cranking the third baby out of my body.

Craig: Unbelievable. I mean, not to — listen, I don’t judge any woman and how she behaves after a pregnancy, and particularly I don’t judge my own wife because, you know, I don’t think like —

Dana: Your wife is the most awesome creature.

Craig: She’s the best.

Dana: That’s the thing.

Craig: She was like, after those babies were born, she was like, “Okay. I’m going to sit here as still as I can sit and you’re going to help me.”

Dana: I think her stillness was my work.

Craig: Got it.

Dana: Like I think people are just different, people are just built differently. And the way I was built was, you know, for me, working is my passion. I love it so much. It keeps me going and also the more I keep moving, the less I have to deal with things that are scary, or sad, or I don’t want to deal with.

So, and the first one, I was having weird post-partum depression, but I don’t think I realized it was that at the time, because I’m such a chipper motherfucker most of the time. So, I was like, wow, this is kind of weird. I can’t seem to stop crying. Wow. Boy am I crying a lot. Is anyone noticing how much I’m sobbing? This is pretty weird.

So, I was like sort of positive about my depression. And then I went back to work and I was around people and I was doing what I loved and it made me feel like everything was going to be okay. So, you know, I think all women should do exactly what their body and their brains are telling them to do to make them feel like their happiest, best selves.

Craig: You only have three kids is the way I say.

Dana: Craig, stop tweeting babies into my body. Stop getting me pregnant, Craig.

Craig: I’m going to tweet another baby at you.

Dana: Don’t tweet that baby at me. I can’t have four babies.

Craig: Done. It’s done.

John: One more plug for How to Be Single. It has the best baby I’ve ever seen in a movie probably.

Dana: Oh my god, that baby was incredible.

John: It’s a scene with Leslie Mann and this baby, who is just the most angelic perfect baby. And their conversation, which is a good like — it felt like two minutes of conversation, a one-sided conversation with a beautiful baby, is just delightful.

Dana: I cry every time during that scene. I cannot pull it together. I almost have a fourth baby every time I watch that scene. It’s so bad. I’m like, where is Craig when I need him while I’m watching the scene. It’s such a beautiful scene.

Craig: I’m here.

Dana: And I hope everybody goes to see How to Be Single because I’m really proud of this one. And I really love it. I think it’s different. I think it’s interesting. I think we sort of casually do some kind of interesting stuff that I don’t know if we’re getting credit for. But like there’s an interracial relationship that we like 100% don’t comment on. It’s like not a big deal. It’s just like people get together sometimes and they aren’t the same race.

John: There’s an ex-boyfriend who is actually very sympathetic. And you can completely understand the movie from his point of view and sort of why he is doing what he’s doing. And in any other movie he would be a villain.

Dana: He would be vilified. Yeah. He would be vilified. And we have an incredible amount of respect for the men in our movie. We don’t sort of make them into the typical arm candy characters that women are sort of relegated to in movies where the main story is about a guy. We really tried to give those people respect. And like most of the dudes in the movie, I mean, they’re flawed just like the girls are, but they’re good guys. Because I didn’t want to —

John: I feel like Jake Lacy is a really good guy.

Dana: Jake Lacy is like the greatest guy of all time. He’s my favorite. My favorite line that Katie Silberman came up with on the day was, “My Halloween costume when I was in sixth grade was the stay-at-home dad.” Like how much do you love that guy? He’s like of course I want to be the daddy of your baby. What are you talking about?

But, yes, please see the movie, because I’m really proud of it, and I love it.

John: Hooray. It’s time for our One Cool Things. So, every week on the show we talk about One Cool Thing. So, Dana, you can go third so you can figure out exactly what your One Cool Thing should be.

Dana: Okay. I’m going to think about it. I think, for me, my One Cool Thing —

Craig: She doesn’t understand what third means.

John: She doesn’t understand the idea of you go third if you want to.

Dana: I can go third. I can go after you guys? Wait, but I’ve got to really think about it, you guys. I don’t have a cool thing.

Craig: That’s why he said you could go third. And then you were like, “Okay, so my One Cool Thing — ”

Dana: Okay, I’m going to say my One Cool Thing and I’m going to alienate every single one of your listeners. It’s going to be amazing.

Craig: Do it.

Dana: Okay, you do your stuff first.

John: Okay. So I’ll go first. My One Cool Thing is this great article I read about cow tipping. So, going back to our tipping discussion, here’s a great article about cow tipping. I’m going to poll both of you. Is cow tipping a real thing or a made up thing?

Craig: That is a made up thing.

John: Dana, what do you think?

Dana: I am going to go, because I’ve seen the movie Heathers, it has to be a real thing. And I think it’s offensive and creepy.

John: Okay. Cow tipping is not a real thing.

Dana: Oh, thank god.

John: So, this article by Jake Swearingen for Modern Farmer gets into the realities of cow tipping, which never was a thing and is actually almost impossible to do. So, for many reasons, like cows don’t actually sleep standing up necessarily. It would take so much force to push over a cow. You couldn’t do it. Cows would run away before you could get anywhere close to them.

So, it’s the movie Heathers, which I love the movie Heathers, that sort of kind of first put it in popular culture as a thing, like, oh, that’s a thing —

Dana: Did they make that up? But it sort of popularized it?

John: They popularized it.

Dana: Oh, that’s interesting.

John: It was already sort of a meme that was out there, but they sort of like grounded that meme. And so you see it in all of these movies and it’s like a thing that never actually happened.

Dana: That gives me great relief. I really worried for those cows.

John: You don’t need to worry for those cows.

Dana: I’m like upset about the cow tipping. Do you think the guy that wrote that article plays huge on that all-farmer dating website? Have you seen the commercials for that?

John: He’s the star of the all-farmer dating website. I think he’s going to be great. My question is, if you tip a cow, do you have to tip them afterwards? Do you have to give them like 20% if there’s —

Dana: If there was a button I would do it, but not if I had to do with cash. Zero percent on cash.

John: If there was an app for it, that made it really simple?

Craig: Wait, I’m sorry, there is a dating app just for farmers?

Dana: You’ve never seen this commercial? There’s a commercial on weird television programs. I don’t know. I watch a lot of like weird stuff. Just sometimes I’ll end up on like a weird — I’m in like a weird Steve Harvey place right now. I’m just really into Steve Harvey. And then you’ll get there, and you’ll be like what’s the demographic. Who is watching these shows?

And then you see the commercials and you’re like people who want to date farmers, apparently. There’s an all-farmer dating website. You should look it up, Craig. You could play huge on that, too, because you’ve got that beard going that’s pretty sexy.

Craig: I’ve got the beard. I know, I feel like a pair of overalls, I could kill it.

Dana: Oh my god, you would crush it. Also in the gay community. Careful.

Craig: What? Why? At this point, who cares? Do you know what I mean? It’s enough already. You know what, man, it’s like gay/straight — those are words from like my grandpa’s time.

Dana: Oh my god, I love that know that we’ve circled all the way back Whole Foods guy, and Whole Foods guy is not going to be labeled gay or straight.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Why should I be? Why should I be?

Dana: I love that guy.

Craig: Like Hector is like, okay, you either work in produce or not. And I’m like, wrong Hector. Wrong. I don’t care what it says on my sheet.

Dana: I work in the chocolate bar. You know, don’t you feel like that’s going to be the next thing? It’s just going to be like what percent cocoa there is.

Craig: I mean, the word cocoa gives me dick shivers.

Dana: It upsets me so much.

John: Dana, I see the look in your face. I think you have a great One Cool Thing figured out.

Dana: Okay, so my One Cool Thing is the Spectra S1 breast pump. It is a new breast pump that has literally changed the face of my earth. And nobody is talking about it, and so I’m going to alienate every single person in your entire audience, except for the one pregnant/potentially nursing lady in your audience.

Craig: Oh, no, I think we’ve got quite a few I would imagine.

John: So tell us what makes this breast pump better than other breast pumps?

Dana: It’s special. It comes out of Australia.

John: We like everything that comes out of Australia.

Craig: I’m not impressed by the way.

Dana: I like all Australians.

John: Do you watch The Katering Show? The Katering Show is great.

Dana: Oh, no.

John: We’ll send you the link.

Dana: Wait, what? Oh, John, you know that’s right up my alley. That’s going to work.

John: You’re going to be so excited. It’s Australian. But tell us about this breast pump.

Dana: I have like a really deep hole where The Great British Bake Off is. Like I need new Great British Bake Off. Oh wait, can I change my One Cool Thing, or do you want me to do the breast pump?

John: Stick with the breast pump. Everyone knows about The Great British Bake Off.

Dana: It’s an Australian breast pump. And they created, you know the Dyson guy who talks about vacuums in this really creepy way? I feel like maybe that guy created this because they’re basically like, “The sucking mechanism of the breast pump,” is much more like an actual baby. And so you get — the long and short of it is you get like twice as much in half the time, and it has literally changed everything. And it doesn’t hurt. And it’s kind of incredible.

John: That’s great.

Dana: So, I’m just going to urge all women to throw their creepy Medela things out the window, because they hurt and it’s a bummer. And go to this weird Australian one.

Craig: My wife had that. She had the Medela one. And, honestly, the thought of more coming out, you know, my job was to save it all and put it in those bags and stick it in the freezer.

Dana: Yeah. Every good man.

Craig: My wife, it’s not like — you know, you know her, she’s not like super chesty or anything, but oh my god. I mean —

Dana: Really? That’s awesome.

Craig: It was crazy. I was like we need to open a store or do something. Because it was like our freezer was just overflowing. Yeah, it was crazy.

Dana: Black market Mazin milk.

John: So when Stuart does the show notes, will he be able to find this breast pump online?

Dana: Spectra S1. You got to get the S1, because that one has a battery involved inside it. So you just plug it in. The battery is all charged up. You can cruise around town with it. All good. On my way over here in the Uber — I really should have tipped that guy — because I was pumping in the car on the way here.

John: [laughs] Absolutely. So you got your lotion. You got the breast pump thing.

Dana: I can jerk off, and pump, and sanitize myself afterwards. It’s perfect.

John: It’s good stuff. Craig Mazin, try to top that.

Craig: Can you use the breast pump to jerk off with? I mean, describe the sucking action on this thing?

Dana: There’s probably like an online hack that would allow you to do that.

Craig: Someone has hacked it.

Dana: You should look on YouTube. I imagine it exists.

John: Or a board that you sort of solder and you put together.

Dana: Definitely.

Craig: Well, you know, that’s what we do. When it comes to jerking off —

Dana: John August will have like a brain trust on this and it will be solved by next week for sure.

Craig: I have no doubt. Well, my One Cool Thing is nothing at all to do with nipples. Weird. It’s called Sky Guide. And there are a lot of apps for your phone where you can hold it up to the sky and it tells you what you’re looking at. You know, oh, that’s Venus, or that’s a constellation.

What I love about this one is they track the schedules of passing satellites, of the space stations that go by. And the deal is at times when things are going by, they will reflect the sun from the other side. So like at night, like for six seconds, literally six seconds, they’re reflecting sunlight from the other side just because of the angle that they’re at. And then it’s gone.

And so you’ll get like a little ping. Go outside. It’s a minute away. And you stand out there and it tells you like look over here. And you look there and it counts down and then you see it.
Dana: Like a little flair?

Craig: You see like a shooting star because you’re catching a piece of satellite or something. And I don’t know, it just reminds me of the big, big beyond.

Dana: That’s really romantic. I like that technology can be romantic and can bring you back to something that’s so sort of primal and outdoorsy, even though it’s very computer-y.

Craig: And then I also have that breast pump on my dick while I’m doing it.

Dana: [laughs] Oh my god. Can you edit out the fact that I just spit water all over when you said that?

Craig: No. Are you kidding me?

John: All spit takes have to stay.

Dana: All spit takes.

John: You have a recurring spit take in your movie.

Dana: I do. I have a spit take call back, no less.

John: Well done.

Craig: The best.

John: We have a tiny bit of news here at the end of our show. So, listeners will know that we were supposed to have Lawrence Kasdan on our show, on our live show, and he couldn’t do it for that night. And we were very lucky to have the Game of Thrones guys fill in for him.

But, we’re going to do our Lawrence Kasdan interview live with an audience on Saturday April 16 at the Writers Guild Theater. It’s a joint program with the Writers Guild Foundation and Academy’s Nicholls Fellowship.

So, this is not a normal Scriptnotes live. This is actually their event, but we’re going to crash it and do the interview with Lawrence Kasdan there with an audience. So, if you’d like to come to see us talk to him live, there will be a link in the show notes. So, you can join us for that.

And that’s our program. So, most of the things we talked about, including the breast pumps, and the international space station tracking app, will be compiled by Stuart Friedel and put in our show notes. You can find them at johnaugust.com.

You can find me on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Dana, you are?

Dana: @inthehenhouse.

John: Very nice. Oh, because you’re a fox.

Dana: Uh-uh. Fox in the hen house. Everything with the word Fox was taken by like some porny weird stuff. So, I had to get creative with it.

John: That’s nice. We like it.

If you have comments for us, you can join us on Twitter, but you can also leave comments on our Facebook page, which we actually checked this week, so that was kind of cool.

Craig: Wait, we have one of those? [laughs]

John: We have one of those.

Craig: Oh. Wow.

John: And so the things we talked about today, those were from the Facebook page, Craig.

Craig: Uh…yes. Of course.

John: Of course.

Craig: I knew that.

John: You can write in with questions to ask@dev.johnaugust.com. That is a good place for the longer things we sometimes address on the show.

If you would like to subscribe to Scriptnotes podcast, join us on iTunes. Just click subscribe. And while you’re there, please leave us a comment. That helps other people find the show.

We also have the Scriptnotes app there. That lets you get access to all the back episodes of the show.

We also have a few of the 200 episode USB drives that have all the back catalog of Scriptnotes which you can get. So, if you’d like one of those, just go to the store. It’s at johnaugust.com. There’s a link in the show notes.

Our outro this week is by the same guy who did our outro last week. His name is Adam Lastname. I don’t know what his last name actually is. It just shows up as Lastname.

If you have an outro for us, you can write it to the same address, ask@dev.johnaugust.com.

Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. It is produced by Stuart Friedel. And thank you for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Craig: Thanks Dana.

John: Thank you, Dana. Bye.

Dana: I love you guys.

Craig: Love you, too.

Links:

• Dana Fox on Wikipedia, IMDb and Twitter
• DSM-III-R and DSM-5 on Wikipedia
• The New York Times on The Fempire
• How to Be Single is in theaters now
• Modern Farmer on Cow Tipping: Fake or Really Fake?
• farmersonly.com, and their YouTube page
• Spectra S1 breast pump, and on Amazon
• The Katering Show is fantastic
• The Great British Bake Off
• Sky Guide
• Get tickets now to see John and Craig interview Lawrence Kasdan as part of WGFestival 2016
• USB drives with the first 200 Scriptnotes are available now at the John August Store
• Outro by Adam Lastname (send us yours!)

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this Episode 237 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program, we are going to look at how you introduce characters in a screenplay and how to avoid being mocked on a Twitter feed for it.

Craig: [laughs]

John: We’ll also discuss writing two projects at once and answer a bunch of follow-up questions.

So Craig, we are a little bit late starting because you were just writing on a script and asked for five more minutes. So in those five more minutes, did you finish the scene you were working on?

Craig: I did. It’s such a weird feeling when you — it’s so hard to start writing.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So then when you’re writing and then you’re like, “I know what to do. I’m getting there. I’m just,” you know, you’re inside of a line or whatever, and you know you’ve got three more lines and you know how it ends, and you just — you can’t stop.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s all about inertia.

John: Yeah. It is mostly about inertia. Writing is inertia.

Yesterday, I was doing some kind of non-writing work. I was like pasting some stuff from different things, getting some documents ready, and sort of accidentally ended up writing a scene. It was just delightful. It’s like, “Oh, well, I’m kind of in this. That seems like the dialogue. I’ll just write the dialogue.” And boom, a scene is done.

Craig: Isn’t it amazing how much easier it is when you’re not trying?

John: Yeah.

Craig: God, our life.

John: Some follow-up from previous episodes. First, the most exciting piece of follow-up this week. Last week on the show, my One Cool Thing was The Katering Show.

Craig: Yeah.

John: A great web series by Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney. And you put a challenge out to our listeners.

Craig: And the challenge was, “Go get us Kate and Kate.” [laughs] Let them know that we want them to be on our show and that we want to make them famous.

John: Yes. And so through Twitter and through other means, you guys reached out to them. They reached back out to us. And so we were going to try to do them on — have them on Skype and talk via Skype to Australia. But they said, “You know, it could be even easier if we did this in person.” And they are coming to the United States in April to promote the second season of their show. And so we will try to have them on while they’re in the United States.

Craig: Oh, we are going to have them on the show while they’re in the United States. And also make them famous. We’re going to make them famous.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I mean, famouser.

John: Famouser. I do definitely detect that situation of like, well, they could be famous for Australia. But like, when we say famous, we mean famous in the United States and therefore famous in the world. And we think they should be more famous.

Craig: Yeah. We mean United States famous.

John: We want them Rebel Wilson famous.

Craig: We want them R-Dub famous.

John: Indeed.

Craig: By the way, isn’t it — I mean, these are their real names, right? Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney?

John: They are.

Craig: It’s just so bizarre.

John: Isn’t it so weird, the Lennan, McCartney?

Craig: It’s so close to Lennon and McCartney.

John: And they’re both Kates. It is really strange.

Craig: Yeah. Well —

John: Wouldn’t it be weird if they deliberately changed their names planning for this?

Craig: It’d be kind of cool.

John: It would be kind of cool. They both also have young babies, so it’s an exciting time in life.

Craig: Oh, well they should bring their babies.

John: They should bring their babies. I would hope they would. I suspect they’ll bring their babies to Los Angeles.

Craig: You know what? If they bring their babies, then maybe I’ll bring my daughter, and your daughter and my daughter can babysit their babies.

John: Completely a plan.

Craig: Hey Kate and Kate, our daughters mistakenly killed your babies. [laughs] But —

John: The good news is — I don’t know if there’s any good news.

Craig: Yeah. And also, we can’t make you famouser. But thanks for being on the show.

John: Yeah. I mean, it’ll definitely shine a spotlight on something. [laughs]

Craig: That, by the way, that should be the sequel to Spotlight, this next movie. [laughs]

John: How our daughters killed some Australian babies. [laughs]

Craig: And that’s — the tagline is, “This time we’re shining a spotlight on something.”

John: Yeah.

Craig: I love it.

John: Did you see Spotlight? Craig didn’t see Spotlight. You didn’t see any movies.

Craig: What? What? No, I did. I have. That’s not true. I have seen a bunch. I’m just still making my way through my stack.

John: All right.

Also in last week’s episode, we talked about the Top 100 movies and how many of them were franchises, basically — it’s basically either the start of a franchise or a member of the franchise.

George from Plymouth, UK, wrote in to say, “Given that a sequel can’t happen without the first movie, and given that the first movie has to be pretty damn good to spawn a sequel, and given that pretty damn good is a necessary characteristic of the Top 100 Movies, shouldn’t your list exclude the first movies to properly reflect the franchise phenomenon?”

So George is basically asking for a list that is just the sequels and not any origin films. And so if we do that, the answer still is 72 or 73 of the top movies in the box office worldwide in all history are sequels.

Craig: Wow. That’s remarkable.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, it’s still up — and you know, George from Plymouth makes a good point.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So you have to — I think we talked a bit about that in the episode where, you know, you can’t — some of our frustrations as screenwriters is you’ll pitch something that is an original idea and it’s like, “Yes, but we also want to make the sequel to this thing.” It’s like, well, you don’t get to make sequels unless you make the first movie.

Craig: Exactly. Exactly.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So — yeah. Now, some of those non-sequels may have been based on books.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So I don’t count those.

John: Many of them are.

Craig: Yeah. So then to me they’re not really the first of a thing, like it wasn’t a big risk to make Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

John: It was not.

Craig: No.

John: No.

And actually, Maleficent is the reason why I’m saying 72 or 73. Do you consider that a sequel to Sleeping Beauty? Well, kind of. It’s based on Sleeping Beauty’s story, but like it’s not necessarily a sequel to Walt Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty.

Craig: Yeah. I would say no, because that movie could have been made at another studio.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know, so it’s not — I don’t see it as continuous of that chain.

John: Yeah, right.

Craig: Like for instance, whatever the latest Wolfman movie was, I don’t think of that as a sequel to The Wolf Man movies with Lon Chaney Jr.

John: Yeah. I agree with you there.

Also, last week, we talked about Final Draft and the state of screenwriting software. And there were a bunch of listeners writing in with some follow-up emails about that. So we’ll try to chug through a few of them.

Craig: All right. Well —

John: So you start.

Craig: So we did hear a lot from people who said, “Au contraire, Write Brothers, the company that makes Movie Magic Screenwriter, they have been updating their software.” And in fact, that very day our episode came out, a lot of people said, “Hey, there’s a new update to that software. It’s now 6.2.1. It’s fixed a bunch of bugs and has a bunch of new features.”

Here’s the issue with that. That’s an incremental update. That’s not really a new version. So you know, Movie Magic 6 has been stuck on 6 for years now. And the fact that they’ve gone up to 6.2.1 is nice. So for instance, now you can import Final Draft files. But that’s kind of crazy that you couldn’t prior to that because everybody else is able — has been able to do that for a long time.

So, look, I loved Movie Magic Screenwriter. I used to be, you know, a big supporter of theirs. And I was an endorser of their product. But it just stagnated. They don’t —

John: Yeah.

Craig: They’re not really still in the game. I mean, if Movie Magic Screenwriter 7 comes out and blows us all away, great. But —

John: Yeah.

Craig: It seems like they’ve withered.

John: Yeah. So this new update also fixes iPartner, which I guess is their simultaneous screenwriting thing, so like, you know, two different people can be working on a script over the internet.

Craig: Yeah. That never worked.

John: And that had not been working for like two whole system software versions.

Craig: Right.

John: So that it isn’t — it’s not great that it sat fallow for so long, but I guess I am happy that they are still updating their product and there still seems to be like someone in the office fixing bugs.

Craig: Yeah, that’s the — I guess that’s how I’d put it because when you see that they have a new update to software that hasn’t had a major revision in years, and one of the new features is new spellchecker and thesaurus, I think, “Oh, boy. There may only be one person over there.”

And I feel bad because they — you know, for a long time, I thought their software was superior to Final Draft’s. I mean, you know me. [laughs] I feel like — I feel like a bucket of rocks roughly arranged in the shape of a keyboard is better than Final Draft. But they — yeah, I don’t think 6.2.1 quite is what we meant by updated.

John: Yeah.

Steve wrote in to ask, “To shorten page counts, I like to format my scripts in Final Draft’s tight mode rather than normal. I don’t use very tight because it’s very hard to read. I never use loose because I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to lengthen a script. So tight it is.

“My writers’ group teases me about this saying it’s cheating. Is it cheating? Is tight format acceptable by the industry? If not, then why is it an option? I haven’t used any other screenwriting software, so I don’t know if this feature is specific to Final Draft or not.”

Craig: You know, this comes up a lot. It’s not specific to Final Draft. I know that Fade In has a similar thing where it’s not kerning. And I think actually both Final Draft and Fade In have kerning, which is the amount of space in between letters —

John: Yeah.

Craig: Horizontally.

John: Which you would never want to —

Craig: No.

John: Never change that.

Craig: No, because that really does affect readability. This thing is about tightening up the vertical space in between successive lines. And —

John: So cramming more lines on the page.

Craig: Correct, cramming more line in the page. So your writers’ group teases you about this saying it’s cheating. Is it cheating? Yeah, it’s cheating for sure. In fact, I think a lot of — I think in Fade In they might even call it cheat. [laughs] Because that’s what it is. Of course it’s cheating.

Is it acceptable by the industry? Yeah. If you write a brilliant script with tight formatting, they’re going to make your movie and you’re going to be a millionaire. [laughs]

They’ll reformat it before they put it through the budget process. And they may come back to you and say, “Hey, per the AD and the physical production department, your 119-page script is actually 138 pages. And we need to discuss because we may have to make some cuts.”

John: Yup.

Craig: But at that point you’ve won and you can deal with it. I know lots and lots of writers who do this. Scott Frank, I think, has not not done this, ever, you know. It’s like — because he’s always over, you know. Always.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So —

John: I think what we should do is we should have to weigh the blank pieces of paper and then weigh the pages, the piece of paper with toner on them. And therefore, we can see how many actual — how much the weight of the script. That’s how we’re going to start budgeting now. It’s on — based on the weight of the toner on the page.

Craig: That’s the most John August solution to a problem ever.

John: So let’s talk about acceptable cheating.

So I don’t think you should use tight and — because I can always see tight and I can always tell that you’re cheating and therefore I say like, “Well, this script is actually long.” I just — you could — it’s very easy to see when someone is using tight.

Here is acceptable cheating in my book. As you go through your script, if there is a word, especially in dialogue that is breaking to the next line, you can sometimes cheat the little margin on that dialogue block to pull that word up. You do that enough and do it cleverly enough, you can sometimes pull a page or even two pages out of a 120-page script.

Craig: Yup.

John: That to me is acceptable cheating. You may even find yourself carefully rewriting a line of scene description so that it doesn’t break across a page. That is a thing that is acceptable cheating.

Craig: I agree. That’s not even — to me, that’s not even cheating at that point because —

John: Yes.

Craig: You know, the idea is you don’t want to get penalized for a word, you know.

John: Yeah.

Craig: The only thing about tight, I will say, is that I’ve used it once. I’m not a fan, in general. I did use it once and I used it because my producer, Lindsay Doran, said, “You know, it would be great if this script seemed a little shorter, but I don’t want you to make it shorter. And the thing about your pages is there’s more white space on your pages than any other writer I’ve ever read. It’s just like seas of milk.”

Because I like — I hit that return key all the time. I like spreading my stuff out, you know. And so she’s like, “Given that, go for tight.”

John: All right.

Craig: So that was like, okay. You know, if you — if you really are writing a very kind of expanded style, then probably it’s okay. Tight in bricks of text is going to be brutal.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And tight in Fade In didn’t even seem — it was hard to actually notice. I did a real careful comparison. Tight in Final Draft I think may be nastier.

John: Andrew wrote in to ask, “I have set Microsoft Word up with all the styles and formatting so I can choose slug line, dialogue, or parentheticals, and automatically format them as required. I have headings throughout so I can click a button and number the slugs. Or pages, I have code built in to sort out the continueds in pages. I can do any format I want and it’s free.”

It’s not really free because you already own it.

Craig: Yeah.

John: “I have tried various formats out there, including Final Draft, and really can’t see any advantage over my system.”

Well —

Craig: So, good. [laughs]

John: So, good.

Craig: Cool.

John: So let me — let’s talk about that. So my very first script, Go, was written in Microsoft Word. And I think people used to use Word a lot more often to do screenwriting.

Craig: Yeah.

John: The reason why they moved to Final Draft or other screenwriting applications is there are some things that a dedicated screenwriting app can actually just do better.

And here’s an example of something that’s coded into Highland, but also because it’s coded into Final Draft and all the other ones, too. Let’s say you’re approaching the bottom of a page and you have some scene description that’s going to have to break between — from one page to the next page. A screenwriting app is smart enough to detect, okay, this is what’s going to happen. Can I cheat this line up onto the previous page or can I add an extra line to the bottom of this page? Or if I can’t do that, can I break this paragraph at the period —

Craig: Right.

John: So that it can flow better across the page? And it’s one of those things that screenwriting apps just do behind the scenes to make your pages look better, so you are never starting page three in the middle of a sentence. You’re always starting page three at the start of a sentence.

With a lot of macros, you could probably get Microsoft Word to do that. But it’s not its natural way of handling things. And when it comes time for revisions, starred revisions, or the more complicated things, you’re going to very quickly run into some obstacles in Word where it’s just not built to do that kind of thing.

Craig: Yeah. I’m not sure why Andrew wrote in. He seems to be incredibly confident and satisfied with his system. So, cool. I mean —

John: Cool.

Craig: If you’re happy doing it the way you do it, just keep on doing it, you know. I don’t have any problem with that. I mean, I wouldn’t do it that way. I remember, like you, in the old, old days before I drove down to Santa Monica to buy Final Draft that I had to use Microsoft Word, and it sucked. And yeah, you can totally customize it and trick it out, but why? I mean, I don’t know. He’s happy. What am I going to do?

What am I going to do with you, Andrew? You’re happy. What do you want?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Here’s one from — ooh, Arieto and Rowie from Wellington, New Zealand.

Wellington, New Zealand. Arieto and Rowie. “My writing partner and I use WriterDuet. The feature we like most is that it allows us to both edit the same document simultaneously.”

Yup, that is in fact what they do over there.

“We really love this way of working together. Could you talk about some other work flows for writing teams to write collaboratively?”

John: All right.

So I know that David Wain and his whole group on Children’s Hospital, they tend to write in Google Docs. And so they will have a Google Doc which will be the script or the ideas for the script, and they’ll start working on it. And each of them will write in a different color, I think, so they can see and they can leave notes for each other in different colors. They’re using Fountain for that, so they’re just writing it Fountain and then they bring it into Highland or another app to make it into a screenplay when it’s all finished up.

So Google docs is at least, it’s free, and everyone sort of has it, so that’s a way you can work. But I know a lot of writing teams who are even in the same room, and they will be, like they will just have two monitors hooked up to the same computer, and they’ll literally be working on the same screen so they don’t have to look at each other, but they can both be looking at what’s on the screen, which seems crazy, but people do.

Craig: But is one person driving on the keyboard or are they both looking at the same Google doc?

John: Sometimes they’re actually not even using Google docs. Sometimes they’re actually just using, it’s like, it’s literally up in Highland or Final Draft, and they are both looking on their own monitors at the exact same document at the same time.

Craig: I see.

John: Or they’re doing screen sharing so they’re looking at the same. So, either one could control it at a time.

Craig: Yes, there’s lots of ways to do this, I mean we have now, we live in a time now where document sharing and multiple editing, multiple simultaneous editing is doable. That is relatively new, so most of the modalities go back to the times before that. Very typically, the old school way of doing things, so for you, Arieto and Rowie, one way was Arieto would write some pages, and he would email it over to Rowie, Rowie would revise those and send them back to Arieto along with some new pages that Rowie had written. Obviously, they have an outline so they know what they’re doing, and they’re just editing back and forth and asterisking, and coloring, so they know, okay, this is the change, or that’s the change, and then kind of like the way two chambers of legislature get together in conference, then everything gets molded together and decided together.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s a very common way for writers to have worked in the past. I personally, I find the idea of working simultaneously with somebody where both people are on a keyboard controlling something like WriterDuet or like Google docs, I find it anxiety-ridden for me, the idea that I’m typing something and someone is changing what I’m typing while I’m typing it. Oh my god, I need a moment, you know, like I need a moment or at least a chance to get a line out so we can both look at it.

So like when Todd Phillips and I write together, we do both, we do what I just described, the write and swap, and then we also sometimes will sit together. Once we — when we’re rewriting, we’ll sit together and I’ll usually drive because I type faster, via Apple, what do they call it, AirPlay to a TV in the office over there, and we just do it like that line by line. But at least there’s like, there’s something that’s already been written. Don’t you immediately start to feel nervous about somebody writing over you while you’re writing?

John: Yeah, it does seem strange and difficult. So what I was describing with Children’s Hospital like that seems to make sense where you’re just like you’re spit-balling out ideas and everyone is just sort of like throwing stuff around in it and that would make more sense, but when you actually know what you’re writing, I feel like the classic technique of like you do this, and I’ll do that and then we’ll page it together is probably going to be a better solution for you.

The few times I’ve written with somebody, like I wrote a script with Jordan Mechner, we had our outline and we just like broke up the scenes and he wrote those, I wrote these, we put them all together. He did a pass through, I did a pass through, and that was the script. And when you talk to people who are in TV writing rooms, I hear a combination of systems that they’re using.

So sometimes they all have to work together and we’re not going to use that word that we used to use for working on a script together, but if they’re all working together, sometimes they’re all staring at a screen, but more often, they’re breaking off and different people are doing different things and they’re pasting it all together.

Craig: Absolutely true.

John: And your point about writing on the same document at the same time, my limited experience with it is actually how we do the show, and so we’re both looking at the same outline which is in Workflowy, and there are situations where like you’ll be adding something while I’m adding something, and it is really confusing. While it’s remarkable that we have the technology to do it, I find it really disorienting.

Craig: Yes, especially when you have two people that are very good at typing or actually even worse if one person is really good at typing and the other one isn’t, like if Rowie is awesome at typing and Arieto is not, and then Arieto is like, come one, let me just get my sentence out. [laughs] Rowie’s like, “Sorry, sorry I’m on the next page. Your sentence is no longer applicable.” Oh, it makes me nervous.

John: Yeah, it makes me nervous, too.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right, Patrick, our final question about screenwriting software, he writes, “My first question is for John. Are there any plans to port Highland or any of the Quote-Unquote Apps project to Windows or PC? I work out off a PC simply because that’s all I’ve been able to afford and would like to support the Scriptnotes/Quote-Unquote brand.” The answer is no, we’re not porting anything over to PC mostly because we don’t know how, we don’t have the expertise to do it, but also all the apps we make are using kind of very specific only Apple stuff and so it would be very hard for us to do it. So the simple answer is no, they are going to be Macintosh or iOS for the time-being because everything is sort of built on technology that only exists in the Apple universe.

Craig: I use Mac like you do, and I have Parallels installed because occasionally I run into a program that is Windows-only and it works gorgeously because when Apple switched over to Intel, it became sort of academic to do that. Is there something that goes in the other direction for people that are on PC where they could use an emulator?

John: That is a great question that I do not have the answer for. So if you are a listener who knows the answer to that question, let us know. My hunch, my guess is going to be no, because if you look at sort of how Windows works, Windows is software that you install on a computer versus Macintosh is the computer and it’s a software altogether and Apple doesn’t really sell that stuff separately, you don’t just go and buy it off the shelf and put it in whatever computer you want.

Craig: Well, we’ll see what happens.

John: Someone will tell us.

Craig: Yeah, someone will tell us. I’m just wondering like maybe even — I bet like I’m sure it’s easy enough for things like terminal apps, you know, I mean, Unix stuff. I’m sure there’s some kind of emulator.

John: Yeah. The second question is for both of us. What writing software would you recommend for playwriting, would it be Fade In or something else? You’re doing some broadway kind of things. What are you using for that?

Craig: Well, the screenplay I’m writing now is a musical, so I actually had to think about how am I going to do this, because I’m writing these songs, but I’m describing songs and putting in sample lyrics but there is no music yet that comes, you know, I’m sort of providing this as grist for the music mill, and then we’ll go back and forth.

And so I just thought like, you know what, I think I’m just going to stick within my regular — because so much of it is regular screenplay, and then when I get to those moments, I’ll call it out, and I’m just going to put everything in italics, and that’s the song.

John: That’s a song.

Craig: And it’s just sort of in its own kind of formatted existence. If I were writing a play, particularly a non-musical play, yeah, I think I would probably just use Fade In or you know, why not?

John: Yeah, there’s really no reason not to and especially because you’re familiar with it. I’ve written a lot of movie musicals and before I even built Highland, I would just stick those lyrics in italics and that’s just sort of how you do it. And so, dialogue blocks but with everything in italics, you can tell it’s being sung. For Highland, we actually have a built in lyrics format, so you start a line with a tilde and it becomes lyrics. And so if you’re using a template that is designed for a screenplay, it does exactly what I described, so it looks like a dialogue, but it’s in italics. If you’re doing something that looks like a stage play, it puts the lyrics over on the left hand margin in all uppercase, just the way you would do it in a real stage play.

Craig: Well, there you go.

John: There you go.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right, some non-screen writing software questions. Matthew Cain writes in, “Given that Hollywood is notorious for its flexibility in the definition of producer, what exactly does Stuart Friedel do?”

Craig: What does he do?

John: Can you tell us what Stuart does?

Craig: Yes, I can.

John: Okay.

Craig: Matthew Chilelli, our editor, our fine editor, edits the show, and then Stuart listens for errors like audio proofreading, prooflistening, he prooflistens, he builds the list of links in the show notes, he actually uploads the show to the Internet, and Interweb tubes so that you can all get them, he edits the transcripts. That’s a big one, actually.

John: It is a big one. It takes so much more time. I don’t — because he’s doing that down stairs I’m not sort of watching him do it, but that’s hours each week he’s going through the transcripts.

Craig: Because the transcripts are being done overseas, I assume.

John: They’re being done somewhere. We’re deliberately not asking who’s doing them.

Craig: It’s children, isn’t it?

John: It’s probably children in Nigeria.

Craig: Well, you know, of all the things that children are pressed into, work-wise across the world, you know, transcripts is probably one of the safer gigs. So we get these raw transcripts and then obviously there are a ton of mistakes and so Stuart goes through and edits those very carefully. And I love the fact that we have transcripts. To me it’s terrific. And Stuart also, big thing is, he reads all the emails that we get and we do get a lot of them. Obviously he goes through our Three Page Challenges and picks those, and Stuart coordinates with the outside world. For instance, oh, I didn’t even know that this happened. Craig’s audio from Adam McKay and Charles Randolph’s Big Short discussion.

John: Absolutely. So a few weeks ago on the podcast, you had mentioned that you had done this session for Writers Guild Foundation, and we said, “Oh, we should get the audio,” and neither of us did that, and so I just told Stuart, “Please get that audio,” and he got that audio, so we’re going to be putting that up in the premium feed.

Craig: Fantastic, that’s great, that was a fun night. So Stuart actually does quite a bit. It’s distressing, actually, how much he does.

John: Yes. So even though Stuart is actually away while we’re recording the show, he is in Toronto, I think seeing a basketball tournament, he’s somewhere else, but he will be listening to this audio probably on Monday, and generating the list of links and so therefore the show will go up Tuesday morning as always. So we record the show usually on a Friday, sometimes a Thursday, sometimes a Saturday, but it’s Stuart who does the work on Mondays so that it could actually go up on a Tuesday.

Craig: I like that. I like that Stuart’s week begins with our nonsense.

John: Yes, indeed. A guy in your Twitter feed asked, “I went for a general meeting on one of the studio lots last week. They had valet parking. Should I tip these valets?”

Craig: Yeah. So Paramount has valet, you’re right, Warner Bros, usually I’m there to see Todd so I park like in one of his spots, but if you’re there for a general meeting with a Warner Bros executive, they do have that little area in front of their fancy building where they have valets, and then Sony has a valet, if you’re parking on the lot as opposed to — because every lot has like a structure or like — so Paramount doesn’t have a structure, they have this just massive huge parking lot in front of this crazy big wall that serves as a giant blue screen. But most of the other places have a parking structure, and then if you get fancy enough, you go like to the cool place and there might be a valet.

Here’s the thing, like somebody said, well, why wouldn’t you — why not tip? Why would you even pause? I do tip, but the reason I pause is because I think, am I insulting them? Like do they think like, dude, this isn’t a restaurant, we’re paid well by the studio. But they’ve never been upset about the tip, so I think it’s okay.

John: I think it’s okay. The reason why I think I pause about it is because Sony used to have a sign saying like, gratuity is already included, basically saying like don’t tip. It was actually right by the stand. So I was like, oh, okay. So these are Sony employees, they’re not working for somebody else, like you wouldn’t tip the receptionist, but it does feel like in a general sense in Los Angeles, anyone who touches your car, you kind of give them a tip.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So I guess I’m pro tip on this, but I don’t soft of, I don’t know. And if somebody from one of the studios wants to reach out and tell us like, no, no, no, you should never tip these people because they are actually paid in a way that’s not supposed to be a tipping —

Craig: But even then like, okay, so how much are you paying them, really? What are you paying them, $90,000 a year? I mean, they’re not — my whole thing is, I don’t care what Paramount thinks. If the valet guys aren’t like, dude, you know, then yes, I’m tipping them.

John: What has become more challenging is I find I don’t carry as much cash as I used to.

Craig: Right.

John: And I often will not have small bills and so then I’ll be in situations where like, I don’t have any small bills, so I’m not going to tip the guy a $20.

Craig: But my move is always to say, “Hey, do you have blank back?” And then they give you, you know what I mean?

John: Yeah. So then you’re actually — it’s a weird negotiation.

Craig: I never had a problem with that. The thing that freaks me out is, because I’m like you, like most people, cash economy is dwindling, so I pull in, I get out, and then blah, blah, blah, I come back to get my car, and it’s like, oh how much is the valet? It’s $6. And I look at my wallet and I have exactly $6.

John: Oh no.

Craig: And then I’m like, this guy is looking at this jerk in his Tesla, who’s not tipping him. And I am always like, I’m so sorry, I only have $6. And they’re like, it’s okay. But it’s not okay, it’s not.

John: Okay, I think I may have hit on why it feels so different on a studio lot. All the other situations where you’re valet parking, basically, you are paying for that service already, so the tip is on top of whatever the fee was for valet, and so you’re breaking whatever that unit of money is, and money was already exchanged and so you’re giving a tip on the money exchange. Here, there wasn’t any money exchanged. And so it feels a little bit strange to suddenly be bringing money into this relationship.

Craig: Maybe that’s what it is, is that that’s why I feel like sometimes they might turn to me and go, “What am I, a hooker to you?”

John: And that’s also a sort of situation I run into with tipping in Uber because you can tip Uber. And I think actually considering how low they’ve been pushing their drivers for their rates, it’s actually a nice idea to tip Uber. But it feels weird to tip Uber because there was no cash being exchanged before that moment. So unlike a taxi where you’re paying the person cash, or like swiping your card and putting a tip on it, there wasn’t an automatic way to do that.

Craig: But wait, I thought the whole thing with Uber was the tip’s built in?

John: The tip’s not really built it, but the fare is negotiated, but the tip isn’t built in. There’s not an automatic 20%.

Craig: That’s not what I was told. I was told that the tip is built in, and you don’t tip them.

John: Well, I will tell you that over the last three months, we’ve consistently been tipping our Uber drivers and they’ve been very appreciative.

Craig: Of course they’ve been appreciative. What I’m saying is —

John: Of course the valet people at the studios have been appreciative.

Craig: I know, but come on, the Uber guy, when you’re like suddenly you’re getting jammed for $110 because of their whatever, hold on, I’m looking this up. I feel like, yeah, there’s no need to tip.

John: Okay. Should you tip Uber?

Craig: I’m looking at the Uber website.

John: Well, at the Uber website, they don’t want you to tip.

Craig: They don’t want you to tip because it’s priced in.

John: Right. Let’s see what else.

Craig: Should you tip your Uber driver? This is great. People are now — this podcast is a great podcast.

John: By the way, we’re going to pause the podcast for a little while, while we do some reading on screen, so we would welcome your thoughts on whether you should tip at studio valets, and more importantly, whether you should tip Uber and Lyft drivers. I think Lyft actually has an easy automatic way to build in that tip.

Craig: That’s different.

John: Let us know what you think. You can write to us on Twitter, or actually, this would be a great use for our Facebook feed. So just go to Facebook.com/Scriptnotes, just search for Scriptnotes there. And on this episode, let us know what you think about tipping in these situations.

Craig: That sounds fine, but I think I’m right.

John: Yeah. All right, let us go down to our next big topic which is this Twitter feed that sort of blew up this week. And when I said it blew up this week, it’s like it didn’t exist before this week. This thing is only like only like three days old, and it almost has more followers than Craig Mazin on Twitter.

Craig: Well you know, it’s a credit to a good idea. I mean, what this — I assume that this is a — is this a real name? Ross Putnam?

John: It’s a real person who Stuart knows.

Craig: Okay, so Ross had this idea to just start posting, tweeting the character descriptions in screenplays he was reading, and specifically character descriptions of female characters. And all he did was just replace every character’s name with the generic name, Jane. And what became clear after about seven or eight of these was just how bad these character introductions were. And, obviously — well, I don’t know how obvious — I think the point was, look, there is a kind of just a rampant clumsy sexism in the way that these, I assume, mostly male screenwriters are calling out their female characters. And that is true. Although beyond it, what was of even greater concern to me was just how crappy the writing was.

And these two things are not unrelated. The isms, and the bad writing, are not unrelated. So, I thought it might be a good idea for the two of us to take this topic on and talk about how to write a good character intro.

John: Let’s do it. So we’ll start with a little teaser sampler of some of the tweets that he put out. Basically, these are the character descriptions, and then we’ll look at some other things, both from our Three Page Challenges and from some of the award nominated scripts from this year, and see if we can tell one from the other.

So I’m going to start at the bottom of his feed, his very first tweet. “Jane, 28, athletic but sexy, a natural beauty. Most days, she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.”

Craig: [laugh] That’s just terrible. Here’s this one. “A gorgeous woman, Jane, 23, is a little tipsy dancing naked on her big bed, as adorable as she is sexy.” And then he writes, “Bonus points for being the first line.” That’s the first line of the script. I love it.

John: “This is Jane, she’s live, leggy, spirited, outgoing, not afraid to speak her mind, with a sense of humor as dry as the Sonoran desert.”

Craig: “His wife, Jane, is making dinner and watching CNN on a small TV. She was model-pretty once, but living an actual life has taken its toll.”

John: Yeah. Let’s do one last one. “Though drop-dead beautiful, Jane, 40, has the appearance of someone whose confidence has been shaken. She’s a raw sexual force impeded.”

Craig: Yeah, well.

John: I don’t know what that is.

Craig: You know what, listen, how many times have you sat through an acting class and done the exercise of exhibiting raw sexual force impeded? It’s a classic. It’s right up there with the you be a mirror of me. That’s crazy. There is a real problem. So it’s a problem, it’s a sexism problem, and it’s also a bad writing problem. So we should talk about — we have our own examples by the way.

John: Yeah, let’s go through some of our own examples because I wanted to look at some of the Three Page Challenges that we’ve actually already done on the show, and in some cases we did single out the descriptions, in other cases, we didn’t. But I went through and did the same thing with some of our Three Page Challenge samples. So should we just do a sampling of these?

Craig: Yeah, we’ll do a smattering, yeah. So from our Three Page Challenges, we have — and you know what, I’ll do a guy so you can hear what guys sound like and girls sound like. “Jack, 33, skinny and ferret-faced, and Joe, 21, chubby and baby-faced, sit atop two ragged-looking horses staring down a stretch of two-lane black top baking in the relentless Texas sun.”

John: All right. “Jane, mid 20s, sits at her desk, meticulously sketching in a notebook. Her doe eyes and cardigans would suggest she’s probably drawing a unicorn.”

Craig: [laughs] I kind of like that one actually. I like both of those so far. So far we’re doing pretty well. “Jane, early 20s, darts around her mildly cluttered bedroom, half-dressed in khakis and a white tank top as voice mail messages play on speaker.”

John: Hmm, okay. “In the last row of the plane sits Jane, 20s, redhead. Breathless and frantic, she keeps her eyes on the front of a shadowy cabin as she shoves a small digital camera into a Ziploc bag.”

Craig: The redhead is maybe —

John: Yeah, the redhead is the question.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right, let’s take a look at some of the Oscar-nominated scripts from this year.

Craig: Okay.

John: And so I won’t tell you who they’re from and I’ve replaced everything with Jane so you won’t know.

Craig: Right. “Jane, an intensely smart 15-year-old, curious and strong, but not jaded, walks through the seedy sprawling park.”

John: “One of the front doors opens and out slips Jane, early 20s, open faced and pretty without knowing it.”

Craig: There’s pretty without knowing it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: “Jane, the same age as Jenny, but large and simple-minded. Her mouth is usually open indicating her lack of comprehension at more or less any given moment.” That is so good. I love that. [laughs]

John: All right, do you know which — those last two are from the same movie. Do you know which movie that was?

Craig: No.

John: Brooklyn.

Craig: Oh.

John: Yeah. All right, let’s take a look at some men.

Craig: Okay.

John: So these are also from nominated films. “Jack, late 30s, good looks, so-so haircut, sits at his unholy mess of a desk.”

Craig: “Jack, 40s, good looks, quick with a story and a smile, walks into the posh room, finds Sasha and Robbie.”

John: “This is Jack, dark, attractive, white teeth, muscular.”

Craig: “Jack, a young-looking intern, puts a green tea down in front of Diana.”

John: “Jack, 34, a guy with the attitude and libido of a 15-year-old, sits on the end of the couch and stares blankly at the Carol Burnett Show on the TV drinking a Schlitz beer.”

Craig: You know, this is perhaps evidence that the problem here may be more of just the way that people approach this task of writing these things than it is a question of isms because the males ones, and these are from nominated screenplays, the male ones are seemingly falling — I mean, how many attractives and good-lookings and, yeah, so it’s quite a bit of attractives and good-lookings there.

John: So as I was putting together these things from the nominated scripts, one of the patterns I did notice is like, a lot of times, the characters were not actually described, like they were not physically described at all. And so I didn’t have anything to put in here because the characters just started speaking.

Craig: Right.

John: And that can be a lovely choice. It doesn’t create the image for your reader, but in some cases you don’t need that because you’re going to give them a strong action to begin with. So I was struck by how many of the scripts basically did none of the standard line of sort of setting a person up.

Craig: Well, the standard lines are hard to do well because there are 14 billion screenplays in the world, 99.9 of which are terrible, and they all are chunked with these things, all of this detritus of character descriptions that have become so cliché and so tropey.

John: Let’s look at what makes a bad intro.

Craig: Yeah, okay. So I’ll start with a couple of the obvious ones, cliché, and what I call a cliché with a twist. So what are clichés for these things? Hot chicks, gorgeous guys, stunning, handsome, beautiful. These things show up all the time. We are aware that generally speaking the men and women in movies are better looking than the rest of us. We know. If their physical beauty is not mission critical to the story itself, then I’m not sure we need to even say it anymore. I don’t think it’s necessary.

John: Yeah. There could be situations where the beauty actually is important. And if you didn’t understand that this character was beautiful, you might not understand what was going on in the scene or sort of how — why characters were acting to that character in that way. So it’s not a blanket statement that you should never describe a person as being attractive, but there has to be a really good reason for why you’re saying that.

Craig: Precisely. And always remember, you have the option of revealing something about that character through another character’s actions and reactions and responses. So you don’t have to — any time you’re pelting somebody in the face with this fourth wall breaking comment, which we don’t do anywhere else in the screenplay, really, you’re robbing yourself of a chance for the reader to discover this on their own through the behaviors of other characters, which is a more interesting way of getting it across, I think.

The cliché with a twist which we’ve seen even in the nominated thing is hot but doesn’t know it, handsome without trying, beautiful if only she’d smile, menacing but with gentle eyes. You see this more than anything. The fake pretense of the false contradiction. I don’t know how else to put it.

John: Yeah, men are always ruggedly handsome.

Craig: Ruggedly handsome, but —

John: Yes, yes.

Craig: [laughs] That’s the thing. Women are always, yeah, just gorgeous and sexy, but…

John: Or, so many times, I have seen the “was once was hot, but now is a mom.”

Craig: Like first of all, what the F? Like, because moms are so gross?

John: Moms are gross.

Craig: Like I’m married to one, okay? I mean, what is that? And I know part of it we’re going to go, well, it’s 24 year old dudes writing about what they know and what they like, and moms are gross to them and everything, but then, don’t write mom characters if you think moms are gross. You haven’t grown up enough. You’re not allowed to write screenplays. Beat it.

I mean, there are some things you can’t — like this is one of those areas where I’m not going to say check your privilege. Check your biases, just check them. Like really think about what you’re doing here because these characters, you’re supposed to be caring for them, you’re supposed to know them, they’re supposed to be real to you.

You don’t walk up to your mom’s friend and go, “You know, you’re not hot anymore, but you once were, I bet.” You would never do. It’s a horrible thing to say, and it’s crazy, and it’s reductive, and it’s probably not even accurate.

John: Yeah.

Craig: She’s either still hot, or never was.

John: So if you’re describing the character in that situation, there could be a very good reason for like, you know, if she’s crying her mascara off, well, that’s telling you about the scene that she’s in, that’s great, but as a general blanket statement about who a person is as she likes walks into an office, that’s not going to be your good friend there.

Craig: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, and again, that’s the difference between this news bulletin of this character’s blah, blah, blah, and the screenplay unfolding through action. So then we touched on this a little bit, the ism crimes. So sexism, racism, ageism. Even if you take the moral component out entirely, the problem with those kinds of introductions, and we see quite a bit of them in Ross’ feed, is that they’re boring. They’re super-duper boring. The first rule of screenwriting is don’t be boring. If you write something like she’s sicko-hot with like a smoking bod and blah, blah, blah, I’m bored to tears. Yeah, you’re a sexist, that’s bad. But worse, you’re boring.

John: Don’t be boring.

Craig: Don’t be boring.

John: Alright, let’s take that, what makes a good intro. What are the things you look for in a character introduction that says, ah-ha, this is going to be a character that I’m eager to follow, or I get this person. What helps?

Craig: Well, interestingly, you brought up an important point. Sometimes, almost nothing. Sometimes, you want to let people discover this person on their own, which is a wonderful way of doing it. I look back through a lot of my scripts, and look back and I found an interesting pattern emerge. And I think I do an okay job of these things or at least I think better than some of the things I read on Ross’ feed.

So here’s what I’ve noticed, there are physical essentials that I will sometimes include if they are important for context for the reader. And those include gender, age, race, height, and body type. Body type very rarely, usually and height very rarely. It’s usually gender, age, and then I try and imply race through choice of names, but occasionally, I will call it out. Sometimes I don’t want to specify, sometimes I want it to be open.

But the thing that I have found and I did not realize this until I went back and did this. Over and over and over, and I see it in a lot of the scripts that we cite here from the nominations as well, are wardrobe, hair, and makeup. They talk about wardrobe, hair, and makeup in these character introductions, constantly. And these are three things that I think a lot of screenwriters never think about at all. So wardrobe, hair, and makeup, seems maybe superficial, but they are three key production departments. Some of your best professionals on your movie, and certainly some of your most important professionals on your movie, are going to be the people in charge of wardrobe, hair, and makeup. Costuming is critical. It tells you so much about somebody, what they’re wearing.

Not every character wears definitive clothing, but a lot of them do. It’s a great tool for you to visually get across something about somebody right away.

John: So what I think you’re calling out for is not to be specific about every hairstyle and every wardrobe choice, but to give a sense of who that person is so you can tee off those other departments so they can do their best possible job. And when there is a need to be very specific about something, be specific about it. If you’re going to make a joke about a guy’s mustache, give him a mustache when we first see him so we’re not visualizing the person without a mustache and suddenly we have to like re-contextualize him so that this mustache joke works.

Craig: Exactly. And I think the idea is to call out things that are noticeable, right? If I turn on a movie and I see somebody walking down the street and they’re wearing khakis and an Oxford, and a blazer, there’s really nothing about it. I may say, you know, “Oh, they’re preppy,” but I don’t really know. But if there’s something specific, and specifics are good things, call them out. Hair, I’m not necessarily all about saying what color the hair is, or how long the hair is, but hair is, and unfortunately for you and me, hair is one of the things on the human body that indicates current physical status better than anything else.

Bedraggled, tussled, muscled, sweaty, coifed, gelled, hair is such a quick imparter of information. And so I’m always thinking about hair. And I should mention that, and a lot of people don’t know this if they haven’t gone through production. When you make a movie, the very first thing that is shot on every major motion picture is a wardrobe, hair, and makeup test. And there’s good reason for that.

Everybody else, everybody else involved in the making of the movie, is obsessed with that these people are going to look like because that is going to be in the audience’s faces for the entire run of the movie.

John: And in the trailers. So, people are going to make up their mind about whether to see this movie based on the trailer and based on the hairstyle that you have put that actor in.

Craig: And the wardrobe, right?

John: Yeah.

Craig: So sometimes I’m always looking for these areas where screenwriters begin to segregate themselves through lack of choice, and this is one of those areas. We should be completely on top of this and thinking about this all the time. Wardrobe, hair, and makeup. Makeup is not, “Okay, well, she has eye shadow and mascara.” No, makeup is are they tan, are they dirty, do they have a scar, are they aged, weathered, is there a bruise, all that stuff, that great, great stuff.

These things are as important to movies as sound. And so if you’re thinking about how to approach introducing a character without falling down the pit of clichéd or clichéd with a twist, just stop and think about wardrobe, hair, and makeup for men and women.

John: So right now, I fear that a lot of aspiring screenwriter are going, “Oh, no, I have to go back through my script and describe all their hair and makeup and wardrobe.”

Craig: No. [laughs]

John: And that’s not at all what we’re saying.

Craig: It is not.

John: But I think what Craig is calling for is, in your head, you need to be thinking about those things and visualizing those things. And if there are specific details that are going to help inform that character, be specific about those details so that they can be there so they can actually help ground this character in the reality of your situation.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And it may also give you ideas for scenes or for business within scenes that are really appropriate. So two people having a conversation can sort of happen anywhere, but two people having a conversation while they’re trying to fix their hair might be appropriate for your movie. There might be a reason why you’re going to be able to use some of the physical aspects of your character to really help sell a scene and therefore help sell your movie.

Craig: Yeah, I’m going to read you a few of these character intros from the nominated screenplays and now process it through what I’ve just talked about with wardrobe, hair, and makeup.

“Angela’s mother, Jane, 47, sits in the second row of the packed sanctuary, her petite yet chunky frame loaded with enough costume jewelry to furnish a mall kiosk.” Wardrobe. Wardrobe.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Then let’s do some guys. “Here is Jack, 50 but looks 70, unwashed, hair stringy, granular thickness everywhere, forehead barnacled with scars, fingers mangled in a permanent curl as if gripping a ball.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Hair and makeup.

John: Indeed.

Craig: Love it.

John: Can you tell me which movie that last description was from?

Craig: Why do you going to do this to me? [laughs] No.

John: That’s Concussion by Peter Landesman.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t see that one.

John: All right.

Craig: Yeah, that’s why.

John: All right.

Craig: That makes sense.

John: You missed it.

Craig: Yeah.

John: But it’s specific. And that was actually an important specificity for the nature of that movie because what that guy looks like is incredibly important for your ability to understand what is happening to these football players and what’s up next.

Craig: Yeah. And so John’s admonition here is well taken to heart. You don’t want to now go bananas about this, right? But when you’re talking, I’m just telling you what I care about as a reader. And particularly, what I think people that direct movies and produce movies care about as readers. I don’t care how super sexy hot she is. If that comes out of a relationship or the actions of the movie, then that is sexuality expressing itself the way it does in the world. And that’s interesting to me.

But when you’re giving me the news bulletin, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to ask yourself, “Do I need to say anything? And if I do, what’s the hair like? What’s the clothes like? What’s the makeup like?”

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: It tells more than you think.

John: I think you’re right.

All right, let’s wrap that up and quickly get to our final question of the day which came from Samuel Davis who writes, “I’m currently halfway through my first screenplay. I’ve been marching along just fine until this other idea for a completely different script started creeping in. So I gave it a quick outline. I’m very excited about that new one. So should I write both at the same time? I’ve heard it is good to write two projects at once. I guess my question is, is this normal to have multiple ideas flying and stowing away for later? I feel like I’m cheating on my serious girlfriend script with this hot new idea script.”

Craig: Because you are. [laughs]

John: You are. You totally are, you bad boy.

Craig: That’s what you’re doing, yeah. You’re like, “Oh, who’s this?”

John: All right, so first off, let us say that every writer I’ve ever met has had this situation where the thing you’re writing is fine, but this new idea is so much better. And mostly that new idea you’ll find is better because you’re not stuck in the middle of it. And it’s tempting because you see all the problems with the current script you’re writing and the new idea has no problems because you haven’t started writing it yet.

Craig: [laughs]

John: That is almost always the case.

Craig: This is basically why marriages end, too. [laughs] I think you’re basically describing infidelity of all kinds.

John: Yeah.

Craig: That’s absolutely true. The other thing that happens to me, I don’t know if this happens with you John, but right now I’m on page 94, so I’m steaming towards the conclusion here. And inevitably a certain kind of depression starts to seep in. And I don’t know if it’s the result of just the end of the long journey, but sometimes I think it’s because all of the world of open possibilities is narrowing down until it disappears. Because when you type ‘The End,’ that is the thing.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And when you consider this new sexy idea, Sam, well, there’s the world of possibilities there. Anything can happen instead of all the things that are supposed to happen in this one.

John: Yeah.

Craig: But you got to go through and finish, man.

John: So let’s address this whole writing two things at once. Should you write two things at once? No. You should not write two things at once. Whoever told you that is telling you something wrong.

Craig: [laughs]

John: You cannot put two things first. It’s actually impossible to put two things first. So right now, I’m writing something. I am in first position on this thing. It is most of my brain and time because that is the main thing I’m writing. But there are some things I have to go back and do some quick fixes on. And that is inevitably the life of a working writer is like there’s times where like I’m going to spend two hours so I can fix this thing that is about to shoot or there’s something else coming up that I’m going to need to deal with. But I’m not trying to write two first drafts at the same time because if you try to do that, you will make yourself miserable. And both drafts will be worse for it.

Craig: I can’t even describe what that would be like because I haven’t even considered trying to do it.

John: No.

Craig: It just sounds like madness. Like you, there are times when I have to put what I’m working on aside to go do something else. Like last week, I had to go and tweak a little bit of voiceover for The Huntsman. So, you know, I thought, “All right, this is no big deal. I’ll do this little voiceover tweak. It’ll take me an hour. Then I’ll go to the office and go back to my script.” Nope, that day was done because that was it. [laughs]

John: Yeah.

Craig: It was like gears had shifted, they weren’t shifting back and that’s that. And so I try my best to really just work on one thing at a time.

John: Yeah. And it’s a lovely luxury when you can just work on one thing at a time. And so if you’re at the beginning of your career and you can really just focus in on that one thing, enjoy that. Like it be all consuming while you’re writing it. And then you can get to this other idea afterwards.

Now, there are times when that new idea is genuinely a better idea, so if you’re not very far into that first project, I would say if you’re a person who feels comfortable describing the things you’re working on, tell both ideas to a few friends, try not to color them and make them think one is better and just like ask your friends which one was more appealing to you.

Also, back on Episode 100, I gave my sort of standard advice. If you’re deciding between two projects, write the one that has the better ending because that’s going to be just the better movie overall. It’s so easy to think of good ideas for how things start, it’s very difficult to think of great ideas for how things end. So write the one with the good ending because you will actually finish that one and it’s more likely to be a good script.

Craig: Agreed.

John: Cool. Let’s do some One Cool Things. Craig, oh, I’m so excited. I see this on the document here. I don’t know what it is. But it sounds miraculous.

Craig: [laughs] It is. It is. So this actually comes via my son who came home from school and his science teacher had run this little experiment with the kids in his class and it involved this thing called the miracle berry. So the miracle berry is an actual berry. I don’t know its real name. It’s native to West Africa. And they’ve known about it for decades now. It contains a compound that when they isolated it, they called it miraculin because they can do stupid things like that.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Here’s what miraculin does. So they take miraculin out and they mix it with little potato starch, turn it into a little tablet. You stick the tablet on your tongue, you let it dissolve, it takes about a minute. It doesn’t in and of itself taste like anything.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Here’s what it does. It appears to bind to the taste receptors in your tongue for about an hour and it essentially converts sour and bitter flavors to sweet.

John: All right.

Craig: So what happens is anything that you eat is now suddenly sweet. Sweet things are unbearably sweet. So my daughter and I just did an experiment the other day. It’s amazing. So for instance, tomatoes taste like grapes, but they also taste like tomatoes, but they taste like grapes. It’s freaking amazing. The other thing that it worked great on were berries. Because, you know, sometimes berries can be like tart, you know.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And so people do frequently sugar them. It’s like, you know, like when you get that one magical strawberry that’s perfectly sweet, that’s the way they all taste. All of them, every last one of them, even like the weird hard green one when you use this miracle berry thing, it’s kind of amazing. And then you just go around your kitchen trying different things. Like okay, let me try an onion. Oh my god, it tastes like an apple. Let me try — like we have an orange tree in our yard that makes the sourest oranges on the planet.

John: Yeah, I know what that is. Yeah.

Craig: Oh my god, they were the best tasting oranges ever. In fact, they even warn you. They’re like, look, if you take lemon juice and drink it, it will taste like lemonade but don’t do that because you’ll burn your insides. I loved it. I just thought it was the most fun. You can buy it on Amazon. It’s expensive. Like a pack of these things is like $15 or $20 and maybe get like eight of them. But, you know, it’s worth it just for funsies once. I wouldn’t use it every day, but I thought it was great.

John: It does sort of feel like an Instagram filter for food. It’s just like, you know.

Craig: Yeah. Basically, yeah.

John: Like I want my flavors to be just like a little bit more idealized.

Craig: Yeah, it’s like airbrushing.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It’s flavor brushing.

John: Yeah, indeed. My One Cool Thing is Christians Against Dinosaurs. And so it is a website. Click through, Craig, now. Because I’ll be fascinated to hear what you think about it. It is a site that is describing a Christian point of view against the belief and study in dinosaurs. And I find it fascinating, but I also genuinely don’t know.

Craig: It is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. [laughs]

John: So here’s the thing. It’s like it could be completely real or could be a really brilliant satire parody. And what I find so fascinating is the tension between those two things, it could be both sort of simultaneously. I just found it wonderful and maddening at the same time.

Craig: It’s got to be a parody because they’re linking to a video called “Heavy Metal and Dinosaurs – what’s the connection?”

John: Yeah. But look through the other stuff. It’s done so remarkably deadpan that I just found it —

Craig: Yeah, no, it’s definitely a parody. I’m looking at their sign, “Stegosaurus, not in my name.” Yeah, no, that’s a parody. But it’s really funny. This is the problem, what are they called, Poe’s Law, when you can’t tell the difference between extreme position and its own parody? Teaching others to deny the dinosaur lie and accept the Lord. That is great. [laughs]

John: So it’s really well done. It’s fascinating, if you click through on YouTube and to any of the videos and stuff, you’ll see all of these downloads saying like you’re stupid, you’re an idiot, like this is real. And people believe it and I sort of half believe it. Here’s the thing is: I think that there are people who are liking this who generally do believe it’s real. My suspicion is that the Christians Against Dinosaur site is a parody. And yet, it’s done so perfectly that a person who believes in sort of the biblical story of creation and that dinosaurs don’t fit into that might genuinely ascribe to a lot of these beliefs so I just found it great. And so I invite people to click through and weigh in with your own opinions on the site.

All right. And that’s our show for this week. So as always, our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. It is produced by Stuart Friedel who does all the things that Craig described in the podcast above about his difficult job, so thank you Stuart. If you have a question for us like the ones we answered, you can write into ask@dev.johnaugust.com. If you have short things for me or for Craig, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin on Twitter. The longer things would also be great on the Facebook page. We promise we’ll actually check the Facebook page. So if you have opinions on tipping, let us know. Just leave us your opinions on the Facebook page for that.

Our outro this week comes from Adam Lastname. That’s how it shows up in the feed. But Adam wrote three brilliant things, so we’re going to be hearing three brilliant things from Adam Lastname over the weeks to come. If you have an outro you’d like to have us play on the show, write to ask@dev.johnaugust.com and provide us a link and we will gladly listen to it. So that is our show. Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

Craig: Thanks, John. Bye.

John: Bye.

Links:

• The Katering Show is fantastic
• Notes for last week’s release of Movie Magic Screenwriter 6.2.1
• Ross Putman’s @femscriptintros Twitter feed
• mberry Miracle Fruit Tablets on Amazon
• Christians Against Dinosaurs
• Poe’s Law on Wikipedia
• Outro by Adam Lastname (send us yours!)