Drew Marquardt

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin. [laughs]

John: And this is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig: And things that are interesting to screenwriters.

John: And inside jokes that no one else will ever know.

Craig: [laughs] You guys…

John: So, Craig…

— You guys, you missed some good comedy there.

Craig: You missed, uh…

John: And Craig cursed a lot, because he doesn’t curse on the actual show, but he cursed a lot in the intro here.

Craig: Yes, much, much cursing.

John: So, Craig, on Twitter after I posted the last podcast I said, hey, if you want to leave a good review — any review for us on iTunes. Not a good review, any good review, I would be reading aloud the ones that were marked most helpful. And, in that sense of like, oh, could be constructive feedback. I kind of was kind of fishing for more good reviews.

And then you and I were looking through this list to try to figure out like oh we were going to read these things. And kind of embarrassingly they’re all five star reviews. And they’re all kind of — it was going to just feel a little braggy to read them aloud.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So, I guess I’m happy that people like the podcast. I would invite constructive feedback. And it was really my goal in sort of putting that out there on Twitter is if people have constructive feedback or things they want to talk more about, or ways we could improve this. But, I was going to read them aloud and now I’m not so sure it’s going to make sense to read them aloud.

Craig: Yeah, probably not. I mean, I will say I’m very, very grateful for the things I read on there. I was pretty shocked and surprised. I mean the Internet is kind of famous for hating. And, [laughs] it was just love. It was nothing but love, which makes me uncomfortable. So, thank you to everybody.

John: Today I thought we could talk about feedback, both why we solicit feedback and sometimes why we don’t really want feedback.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And I should warn listeners that this might be little bit more meta of a podcast. Less nuts and bolts about the craft of screenwriting, and a little bit more about what Craig and I do, my website, Craig’s website that he gave up, which I think is a fascinating part. So we can start right there.

Craig: Yeah. It’s true. I built a…

John: You don’t have that site anymore. Well, that site is still up there technically. It’s called ArtfulWriter.com, and there are still useful articles there, but you are not actively maintaining it. Is that correct?

Craig: That’s right. Yeah. I started that back in 2005, I think. So it was fairly early on in the whole bloggy phenomenon. And the idea in the beginning was just to talk about some of the things that you and I talk about quite a bit on here, some of the non-crafty things. I thought there was nowhere writers could go to actually learn how this whole thing worked in terms of the union, and the companies, and the business end of screenwriting.

And for awhile I just tottered along in anonymity and it was lovely. And then the strike came. [laughs] And suddenly this dinky little blog was getting profiled in the Wall Street Journal and 80,000 people a month were showing up, and it became nightmarish. Nightmarish.

John: You were seen as an opinion leader for an unpopular opinion I would say. Or not necessarily an unpopular opinion; there was a valued opinion and you were seen as one of the leaders of one of those opinions and therefore it attracted a lot of attention and a lot of disagreement on your site.

Craig: Yeah, that’s fair to say. I was essentially the loyal minority. I was in dissent. And many, many people who I suspect drove around in cars that said “Dissent is Patriotic” came home and then told me that I was an idiot, [laughs] because I was ruining their thing. It was pretty remarkable actually.

The level of hypocrisy was astounding at times. People would use analogies… — These were people who were otherwise very stridently against say, for instance, the war in Iraq but would say things to me like, “You’re supposed to be a soldier, and soldiers don’t question their leaders.” It was nuts.

John: So on a typical blog post I remember you would be getting 50, 75, 100 comments back very, very quickly. It was sort of like how Nikki Finke gets a tremendous number of comments. But, you actually required people to register with their own names, so you could actually see who was making these points. That didn’t seem to stop people from making very long, very passionate points on your site.

Craig: No, they could use handles.

John: Okay, but they did have to register. I remember having to log in. Was that not the case?

Craig: They could register but they didn’t’ have to use their real names. They could use a fake name. And occasionally I would notice that certain people just because you can, you know, when you run a blog you have access to some of the information that comes in when people comment, specifically their IP address. And you can see, oh look, these 12 people who are screaming at me are actually one person, and then I would boot them for that, you know.

And I would boot them for being mean to each other, which they would do a lot. There were threads where it would get up to 300, 400 comments. But, you know, that really wasn’t why I stopped. I mean, that stuff all sort of fell off after the strike was over. And, frankly, I think it fell off also because history proved me correct I say with no false humility or false arrogance. It’s just factually correct.

I was right about almost everything. And there wasn’t much to argue about. So, I got bored. I just got bored. I’d been doing it for five, six years, and I always told myself if it ever felt like homework I would stop because I wasn’t like you; your method is to write a lot more smaller pieces. My thing was to sort of do longer essays. And so I would try and do one a week. And then it became one every two weeks. And then just frankly it got hard. And more than anything I ran out of stuff to sort of explicate in essay length.

So I just stopped. And it was a lovely feeling of stopping. And then you came calling and this couldn’t be easier. I just talk now.

John: It’s a half an hour of conversation.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And I will say part of the reason for why I was interested in doing the podcast versus strictly just doing the blog is I got a little bored, too. I certainly got bored with comments. And I went through this whole Sturm und Drang with comments on my site where I took them down for awhile. I put them back on, but I sort of deemphasized them.

I just didn’t care to be the host of that party anymore. And I wanted to have my opinions. I didn’t sort of want to have everybody running around my house and touching my stuff anymore.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So as I’m looking now at sort of the next thing we’re going to do with the site, I have to make some decisions about are those comments going to stay, are the comments going to go. And I really am of two minds about it, because I do enjoy feedback when it’s helpful, constructive feedback. I just don’t know that having that feedback attached to my point is the best place to do that. I feel with Twitter or email or everything else that’s a better way of actually getting my attention of something that’s going on in the world.

And yet there are some situations where someone can add a clarifying point to the end of a post and it’s genuinely helpful. And that’s a thing that I don’t actually have to go in and modify myself because somebody has added that in. So, I’m trying to decide what the right next step is for me, for the site, for what I want to do.

Craig: Well, people who don’t run popular websites with lots of commentary could never fathom this: Comments are exhausting. The writing of the material is the fun part because you are expressing yourself, and frankly, you are the person who had the will to do it. So, you decided that you were going to create a website. You decided you were going to write a long piece. And in the case of you, and to some extent me, we also wrote things people were interested in reading. So, we weren’t anonymous blogs in the corner of the Internet; people noticed us. And so they showed up. And then the comments happen.

And the comments on the comments. And the fights in the comments. And the stupid comments. And the racist, and insulting, and nonsense. Just waves of nonsense. And you can’t help but feel like it’s reflecting on you. I mean, there’s that one school is, well, let’s just be completely libertarian, laissez-faire about it: everybody post whatever you want, and I don’t care, and I don’t touch it. The problem is you get defined by that. The way that, frankly, I think Deadline Hollywood is defined by its atrocious commenting.

And I didn’t want that. And early on I was really encouraged by how good the comments were. But then suddenly it was like you hit that weird tipping point where it goes from a little thing to a cool thing to a fascinating gathering of likeminded people who maybe don’t agree on everything but have the same demeanor, and then all of a sudden it’s yahoo time. And everyone’s there and it’s like a bad house party. It is the end of Sixteen Candles and the house is wrecked.

And that’s what happened to me. I don’t blame you. I mean, I’d boot ’em. Who cares? Look, if people want to say things, like you said, have them tweet you or something.

John: The house party analogy is apt, because you get tired of picking up the plastic cups.

Craig: Right.

John: And just like, you know what, go have a party in your own house and maybe I’ll come by and visit your house. Send me an e-vite that you’re having a party at your house and maybe I’ll come by and visit. But I’m not going to like keep inviting you over to my house for things.

When you first start a blog it’s very lonely. And you don’t really know if anybody is reading. You can sort of look at the Google Analytics, and it’s like, oh there are some numbers. But when you first start getting feedback, someone says something about the post you made, it’s really flattering. And that attention can be flattering. And so then you can also sort of game yourself. So, it’s like, well, I know how I can get more people to leave a comment, more people to see this thing.

Craig: Right.

John: And that becomes dangerous, too. One of the posts that sort of sent it over the edge was I did a post called No Trombones which was…

Craig: I remember that one.

John: So I went on my screed about, and I do truly believe that we do people a disservice by putting the band instruments in little kid’s hands. If we’re going to teach them music we should teach them piano, or guitar, or drums, and if they want to move on and study other instruments later on in their life, in junior high/high school, fantastic. We can still have marching bands. But, giving a little kid the clarinet is not providing them a future of music. It’s limiting them to one specific role in a bigger thing.

So, I wrote that post. It went kind of viral. I got 1,000 comments, almost like death threats, like how dare I say anything bad about trombone. And I got tired of it. And it wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it was systematic of what I was feeling about my frustration with comments.

Craig: Yeah. People also don’t understand that when the commenters start going after each other, what will happen sometimes is you’ll go to dinner with your family, and you’ll come back and suddenly there will be an email like, “You have to do something about this. Somebody just libeled me.” And I’m like, wait, what?

So, I’ll click over and see, oh god, 300 comments just happened in the last hour and I have to read them to figure out what’s happening and who’s, because god knows I want to ignore it, but the problem is it’s on my site. I’m hosting it.

And I’m like I already have children, you know? I don’t need this. And then, of course, on top of that there’s a weird thing that happens where you suddenly realize I’m spending money and time to provide a service for people to attack me. [laughs] Why? Why am I doing that? I don’t get it.

There was one woman during the strike, a lovely human being, who commented that she wanted to punch me in the heart, [laughs], which I thought was great. I just thought that was great.

John: [laughs] Yeah. The specificity of that is really what sets it apart.

Craig: And the proportion. I just thought that she kind of got the proper way to respond to a debate over a poorly run union strike. That was the idea was punch people in the heart. That made sense.

But people questioned my credits. I was accused of plagiarism. I was accused of lying. I was accused of nepotism. Obviously I was a company sellout, and a hack, and a loser, and an idiot, and unfunny. And it just went on and on and on. And I have to tell you, I’ve got a pretty thick skin. And it wasn’t like any one comment made me go, “Oh, no, I feel bad.” It was just the sense that I was wallowing in filth all the time. Like I had to take showers. Yuck. I don’t want to read stuff like this. It’s gross. These people are gross.

So, you’re site doesn’t have quite that level of madness, but it’s…

John: I don’t. And largely because I’ve been talking about more things related to the craft and not so much about the industry. I don’t create so many targets for myself.

But just this last week I did post something which was a follow-up on something we talked about on the podcast. We had a reader, a listener — my default is to say reader when I should say listener — a listener named Biff who wrote in…

Craig: Biff.

John: …with his perspective on being an established screenwriter who’s finding it very frustrating and then changes in the industry. And a listener named Cordy wrote in an email with his perspective as a younger, newer writer who is sort of working his way up and finding the same kinds of frustrations. And so I posted Cordy’s thing as a first person, which is my term for when an outside person comes in with a post that’s really from his or her voice.

And so it’s one of the rare posts recently that actually generated 50 comments. And I was like, I dread it. And so I just now today read through the comments because I’d see that they were there, and I’m like I don’t really want to read these. But people were leaving comments and I guess because the ball started rolling and more people started commenting and responding. And some of them were meaningful. And I kind of wish they had come as an email rather than as a comment, but I thought, it’s still feedback, and I thought we would talk through some of it now because it’s an important topic.

Craig: Well let’s do it.

John: Let’s do it. Adam writes: “There’s something I don’t understand about this recurring complaint that script assignments are hard to land. To my ears it sounds like writers are saying either a) ‘I’m ready to write a script if someone else comes up with the idea and hands me a check to write it;’ or b) ‘I want someone to pay me for my own idea before I actually take the time to make a script out of it.’

“Either way, it’s a bizarre complaint. Granted, the industry may have worked that way once, but based on the reports from the front lines, it doesn’t work that way now. Now you need to write the story first and then get someone interested in it. This is not such a strange business model; you only have to look across the desk at the person to whom you’re pitching to find an example: Studios don’t get paid in advance for the movies they make…”

Craig: Ugh, what an idiot this guy is.

John: “…they have to make them first and then try to sell them to the public.”

Craig: So stupid. Yeah, you know, that’s absolutely true. That’s a great point. You know, novelists also don’t get paid to write their novels. They just write their novels and then they sell them and then they get paid. But novelists also hold their copyright. We’re employees, okay? You can’t have it both ways, Biff. Right?

If the studios want to hire us and everything is a “work for hire,” even the stuff you wrote on your own in your house is a work for hire commissioned by them, they own the copyright. They are the legal authors. We don’t get royalties. We get these negotiated residuals which every three years are up for dispute. We don’t get protection so that we can’t get be rewritten. We don’t get moral rights. We get nothing of that. Okay?

So the deal is this: if they want to treat us like work for hire commissioned writers, not commissionable but commissioned writers, employees, then yeah, we kind of do get to complain about the way they employ us, Biff.

John: Well this isn’t Biff, this is Adam.

Craig: Oh!

John: Biff was the good guy that you liked.

Craig: Biff, you’re cool. [laughs] Sorry, Biff. You’re awesome.

Adam, smarten up, dude. Look, I get this vibe all the time from these guys who are like, “What are these writers complaining about? So they want to get paid before they write?” Yeah. You know why? We’re professional writers. My plumbers like to get paid, too. They like to know I can pay them before they do the plumbing. I have to agree to the price. It’s not like they come in, they unclog my toilet and then I go, “Nah, I didn’t like the way you did that. Bye.”

John: Here’s the faulty logic in his own analogy. He says: “This is not such a strange business model. You only have to look across the desk at the person to whom you’re pitching to find an example.”

Well, actually no. If you look across the desk at the person you’re pitching to, that executive, he’s not getting paid based on what movies get made. He’s getting paid a salary.

Craig: Right.

John: He’s an employee of the studio. And so he might not keep his job if he’s not able to make some movies, and hopefully make some movies that make money; although, strangely, many executives are able to keep their jobs for a very long time after making a very terrible movie.

Craig: Yes.

John: But, you’re exactly wrong, Adam. The person you’re pitching to is an employee of the studio and is getting paid a salary not based on which movies actually happen or don’t happen. You’re not going to tell that executive, “Oh, okay, I’m not going to pay you anything for the next three years. But if any movies happen, then I’ll pay you then.” That’s not a viable business model for them, too.

Now I will say, producers are increasingly kind of in that bind, where produces are having a very hard time getting paid anything until movies go into production. So they kind of are working on spec.

Craig: Yup.

John: The same way that writers are frustrated to be on spec.

The other example I’ll bring up is a Broadway musical based on a movie. I’m gonna talk about Newsies. So, Newsies is, the plot of Newsies — to the degree that there’s a plot in Newsies — is the newspaper boys rise up to say, “No, you know what? We’re not going to keep paying for these newspapers on the idea that we have to sell them later. We should be able to buy…” Actually, this is a fault analogy now that I think more about it.

[laughs] Well, they’re basically doing spec work, though. The Newsies, the news boys were required to sort of like, yeah, if you make some money, great. If you don’t make any money it’s not our thing. Well, no. If they are in your employ and you are setting the terms for how they’re going to be working, you do actually have to pay them.

Craig: Yeah. You’re right about producers. Producers are stuck in a weird place where they don’t really get paid and all the work is on spec until the movie gets made. And, in fact, that is increasingly the result of studio antipathy towards producers. The studios, the corporations, in their bean counter ways have sort of looked out and said, “These guys are middle men. We don’t need them anymore.”

Now, as a writer you might be surprised to hear me stand up for producers. I won’t stand up for producers. I won’t stand up for the producing industry. I’ll stand up for good producers of which there are few. But the good producers deserve to be treated better. The bad producers, and there used to be about a billion of them all snorting coke in their little bungalows — yeah, good riddance. See you later.

The point is, while they’re called producers, they aren’t directing the movies or writing them, so you can’t… — I know for sure you can’t make movies without scripts. And I know for sure you can’t make movies without directors. And I know for sure you can’t make movies without actors. So pay them.

And, Adam, all I can say is good luck at your desk job at, uh, wherever you are. You sound like such a little tool. You work for like a guy in business affairs and you’ve absorbed that whole rhetoric and I’m here to tell you, bro, ain’t that way.

And by the way, beyond that, the people who really do pull the levers at these companies on the business end don’t agree with you either. They also know how important we are, and how important it is to take care of us. That’s not where the issue is. The issue is above their heads in the board rooms.

John: An anonymous socialist writes…

Craig: Cool.

John: Yeah. “When people respond to this kind of thing with ‘You gotta make your own opportunities! (as the internet is sometimes wont to do) I wish they would be more specific. I am willing to do webisodes if someone knows the secret to monetizing it, etc. But this is my job, it’s how I pay my rent, and I can’t do it long-term for free anymore than someone who manages a cheese shop or something.”

Which I think is largely the point we’re making. I kind of provocatively titled this post Is Screenwriting Dead, which, again, I felt a little bad doing because I know it’s going to draw a lot of eyeballs.

Craig: Eh, do it. Do it.

John: Do it. But it’s also going to draw a lot of comments. But I wanted to differentiate between… I’m not saying that the craft of screenwriting is dead, or asking the question, because clearly we’re still going to have screenwriting. We’re still going to have, people will still write scripts. The question is whether the career of screenwriting can continue to last if we’re getting rid of the actual people being paid and employed to do it.

The problem with writing specs is that you have no idea if that spec is going to sell. And spec is really another word for gamble, like I’m going to gamble, I’m going to gamble on this idea that this idea will sell to somebody. That someone will read this and say, “Well this is fantastic. I need to buy this. I need to make this into a movie.”

And so the argument is going to be that corporations are gambling too by taking a chance on writers and stuff like that. Not really. Corporations are investing. This is investment. Corporations are buying up, ideally, a range of properties. They’re deciding which ones they’re going to make into movies, and the ones they make into movies, some of them are going to be hits. That’s investment. That’s picking a range of stocks.

Whereas you as the screenwriter, if all you’re doing is specking you are sort of buying only one stock and you’re putting all of your money into that one stock because that’s the only script you’re going to be able to write for quite a long time. To say, like, oh, well your business model should be, a screenwriter’s business model should be “I’m just going to write a spec, and I’ll sell a spec, and then I’ll sell another spec, and then I’ll sell another spec,” well, some of those are not going to sell. Some of those are not going to become movies.

Craig: Sure.

John: And you are not going to be able to do this long-term unless you have a trust fund. And we’re back to trust funds.

Craig: [laughs]

John: [laughs] If it really is going to be that kind of model you’re going to have to have people who have some other source of income that they don’t actually need to be doing this which isn’t a model.

Craig: It’s not going to be that model. It’s just not going to be. Look, that model kind of almost sort of existed for a little while in the ’80s and ’90s. The truth is, when someone says, “Writers should just spec stuff,” they’re being ignorant of the business. The business doesn’t want your specs. It’s not like it used to be. They don’t want your spec.

The reason to write a spec now is to turn them onto your writing so that they can come hire you to write what they want. They don’t want your spec. They want what they want. Even while movies with silly underlying properties that aren’t story based crash and burn around us, they’ll keep making properties based on books, and they’ll keep making properties based on video games, and they’ll keep making properties based on old TV shows. And it’s never going to stop; that keeps going. A lot of the original material you see in Hollywood frankly comes from people that sort of negate the risk of the originality. And when I say risk of — I mean from the corporate side it’s risky.

So, when Todd Phillips comes in with an original idea, or Judd Apatow comes in with an original idea, it’s like, “Okay, well that’s not…” The point is we know that that is going to be done and it’s okay. Those guys have a track record. When Chris Nolan does it, it’s like, it’s okay. Inception? No problem. That’s okay.

John: If anyone other than Christopher Nolan tries to do Inception, no way.

Craig: Forget it. Forget it. They don’t want it. [laughs] They don’t want it. They don’t want it because they don’t even know how to make it. That’s the point. Their big panic is, how do we make something if we don’t have a great director and we don’t have a vision. So, when they just get a script they’re like, “Okay, cool…” — I mean, yes, it happens. I know now people are going to go, “What happened three weeks when we got…” Yes, correct.

But, the point is it’s the exception now, it’s not the rule. You can’t build a career around specs.

John: If someone else had written the Inception script, some Joe Smodcast wrote the Inception script, people would read it, and people would like it I bet. I bet it could place on the Black List. People would say, “Wow, that’s a really interesting script but it’s far too expensive and no one will ever make it.”

Craig: Yeah.

John: And the truth is, no one would ever make it.

Craig: They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t make it. But what they would say is, “We want to make a movie with this actor based on this property.”

John: The guy who wrote that would be called in to have many meetings over town. Will Smith would fly him out to wherever the set is and he would sit in a long meeting with Will Smith. And Will Smith would pitch him this idea and he would spend six months developing this idea with Will Smith that might end up being a movie. It probably wouldn’t end up being a movie but he’d get paid for it maybe.

Craig: That’s right.

John: Yeah. So, I mean, good things could happen. But that script would not get made.

Craig: Right. Look at Chris McQuarrie. This is one of the best writers I know. And Chris McQuarrie broke into the business with this amazing original script…

John: Absolutely.

Craig: …for The Usual Suspects. But, you know, even a guy like Chris McQuarrie, like right now for instance he is the writer and director of One Shot, which looks spectacular by the way. I think it’s going to be really cool. But it’s an adaptation of a novel, you know? Because that’s what the studios are making and Chris is smart enough to go, “Okay, I mean I could keep bashing my head against the wall to try and get more Usual Suspects out there, or I could apply my craft and skill to adapt a novel that’s actually difficult to adapt and adapt it beautifully and direct it.”

So, that’s where the business is. I mean, look, you don’t have to like it, but you can’t sit there like that one guy that refused to leave his hut on Mount St. Helens. [laughs] You’ve got to react. You have to adapt. And I think sort of planting your stick in the group and going, “Specs are nothing,” is so old man; it’s so like 40-year-old man in 1983 to me.

John: I want to go back to one point that Anonymous Socialist made. “When people say make your own opportunities — I’ll do webisodes if someone knows the secret to monetizing it.” I have full sympathy for that. And I get frustrated by the, well Kickstarter, we’ll do a Kickstarter and we’ll make it all happen with that.

Craig: [laughs]

John: And here’s the thing: like somebody will be successful and do that. And things will get made. And god bless Ed Burns who has been able to make his movies on his terms for his budget and his price. That’s great. And I think it’s wonderful that new models are succeeding, but they’re not going to succeed for enough people for everyone to be able to make actual movies that people see in theaters.

So, I’m saying, like, yes, please write for any screen you want to write for. Don’t be precious. Experiment with new things. But the idea that, oh, that the future will take care of all that for you, technology will take care of that, the internet — the internet will do it! — is naïve and doesn’t speak to any understanding of not just the way the business is now but sort of how business overall is, or how economics works.

You say like, “Oh, well we’re going to make these. It’s going to cost us $10,000 each to make these little webisodes and we’ll put them on YouTube and then, money!”

Craig: Right. No.

John: And in the end, who knows what that is.

Craig: Right.

John: And some very smart people have not been able to make this work. And so certainly it’s possible that you will be the person to make this work, but please allow for the fact that it very well could not happen, too.

Craig: And let’s also remember, anything that makes it easier for you to break in makes it easier for everyone to break in. It’s not just you that can do this. It’s a thousand other guys with a thousand other ideas. The Internet makes it harder. I really do believe that. It makes it harder. There’s so much noise, so everything just becomes cheaper and more fleeting. The Internet is great for right now, today, this week, an awesome video that everybody’s talking about, and no one will be talking about it tomorrow. Nobody.

John: Yup.

Craig: It’s danger. Danger.

John: This project that we have coming out… — There’s a project we haven’t announced that we have coming out in the fall, and we shot a promo video for it. And so the question is, how close to launch should we release the promo video for it? And we really came down to we should release the promo video at launch. Like, at the minute you can actually do the thing, the minute the thing is actually available to purchase, that’s when you release the promo video. Because otherwise there’s no sense that you’re going to be able to hold onto any of that enthusiasm you’ve built up.

That idea of like, “Oh, it’s a long lead kind of this, and we’re just going to carefully sneak in and do stuff –” No. You have your one shot and it needs to be immediately purchasable/downloadable right then and there because otherwise the next face-eating man zombie is going to be running down the street in Florida and you’ve lost any attention that you had.

Craig: That guy’s cool. I mean, he’s dead now, but he’s cool.

John: Yeah, I have not clicked any links. And by the time this podcast airs it will be old news. Thank goodness.

Craig: But, by the way, there’s an even cooler guy. So, the man goes and eats another dude’s face which is obviously the result of some kind of PCP or Bath Salts psychosis. — I’m fascinated by this Bath Salts thing. — But then the next day a dude in New Jersey, I think, literally woke up and said, “What could I do to get face-eating guy out of the news cycle?”

So, police are called to his apartment where he has stabbed himself repeatedly in the abdomen. He pulls his own intestines out and throws them at the police officers. He threw his own intestines at them. And, lived.

John: Yeah. It’s not fair.

Craig: Which makes me think that we’re actually a lot more sturdy than we think. I mean, if you can take a handful of colon and just whip it at a dude, and the worst that we could say is, “You know, it was a rough week there in ICU, but you’ll be all right, buddy. You’ll poop again.” Smart. Remarkable.

John: [laughs] It is remarkable.

On that, let us wrap this little podcast up. My One Cool Thing is actually something that’s very sturdy, sort of like the human body when you remove its intestines. So, my One Cool Thing is US Verde Buffalo Grass. I don’t know if you’ve heard of what this stuff is?

So our front of our house, we took out the front lawn because we’re sort of on this hill and there was really no good reason to have grass because you couldn’t enjoy the grass, and it was taking a tremendous amount of water to water that grass. So we put in native plants in the front. It looks nice. It’s wonderful. But in the back we actually have some lawn area where a kid can play soccer or kickball or some elaborate sport she just invented that involves kicking the ball and then doing math, because she’s that kind of kid.

But normal grass is sort of a huge water drain. So, we ended up putting in this new stuff called UC Verde Buffalo Grass. And it’s actually kind of amazing. So what they did is they took Buffalo Grass and sort of refined it, and refined it, and refined it, and sort of cross-bred it with this different thing. So they came up with a Buffalo Grass that takes very, very little water but really resembles normal grass. And so you can buy it, and if you’re putting in a new lawn someplace, or you’re working on your old lawn and thinking about something new, I’d really recommend it. It’s worked out very well.

The caveats for it: it’s not the kind of lawn that you can roll out, nor can you seed it. You actually have to buy these little plugs. And you just buy these little sort of one-square-inch plugs and you have to plant them. And you plant them six inches apart, and so that’s tedious and it takes a long time. But once it grows in it has been really, really good. And we basically don’t have to water for like months during the year, which is great.

Craig: Does it feel like normal grass?

John: It really feels like normal grass. It looks like normal grass and it feels like normal grass. As it is first growing in it’s a little too soft, like you could sort of push through to the ground a little too easily. But now that it’s grown in denser it’s really, really strong. And the roots are much deeper than normal grass which is why you don’t have to water it so much. So, it’s been a good investment.

Craig: I like that. David Zucker is very environmentally conscious. And a few years ago he did that ridiculous — I mean, I can’t stop making fun of this — that ridiculous thing where he got the fake grass, you know, the synthetic grass that’s basically like fancier Astro Turf.

John: Recycled plastic.

Craig: Yeah. It’s basically plasticy Astro Turf. So they got Astro Turf to leave that sort of terrible highway motel carpeting and to look like real grass, but the problem is, you don’t water it at all, but the problem is it heats up and just burns everybody that steps on it. [laughs] And it’s the dumbest thing ever. It kills me. I just think it’s so ridiculous.

John: But where I will… — We don’t have any of the plastic grass. Where I will say friends who’ve put in the plastic grass is where you have a place where grass just can’t grow because it’s too shaded by a tree. That’s actually kind of a great place for plastic grass.

Craig: Sure. That’s fine. I buy that. Although, you know, there’s other options there.

John: Yeah. There’s shade-living things.

Craig: Yeah, there are. There are shade-living things. There are wee people that appreciate the shade. If you give them toadstools they will come. They will come. And they will grant wishes.

John: The other good thing about this grass is it seems to be very dog pee sturdy, so your dog can pee all over it and it won’t do weird things. It won’t die.

Craig: Nice.

John: That’s a nice thing. Any cool things on your side?

Craig: Ah, man, you know, I’m just full of hatred, bro. I’ve got nothing but bile for the world. I felt, this was good though. I like this… — This podcast helped me expel some of it. That Adam. Not Biff, but Adam.

John: [laughs] Hey, do you think you’re going to keep your site up and running for perpetuity or would you take it down at some point? Would you restart it?

Craig: You know, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t even know what to do with it because on the one hand I think, oh look, it’s like a weird mausoleum of stuff that happened. And I certainly wrote a lot on it. And there are things on it that weren’t sort of topical. I remember, for instance, I did a piece on just dealing with pressure which was sort of a useful thing.

But I don’t know. What do you think I should do with it?

John: That’s a good question. And let’s put that out for the listenership. If you have suggestions for what Craig should do you can do a couple different things. You could leave a comment on this post on the site, but that’s really the worst thing to do.

Craig: We don’t like comments.

John: My suggestion would be to tweet Craig. He’s @clmazin.

Craig: Yeah, @clmazin.

John: So tweet Craig and tell him whether he should keep his site up or down or do something different. I’m on Twitter, @johnaugust. Just @johnaugust.

And a few sort of housekeeping notes for the show. A lot of people aren’t aware that we are one of the few podcasts you’re going to find that actually has a full written transcript. A couple days after the podcast airs we post a transcript of the show. So if you go to the actual post at johnaugust.com, there will always be a link to it so you can see it there.

I had lunch with another writer who said, “Oh, I love your podcast. I never listen to it but I read the transcripts.”

Craig: Oh, cool.

John: So bless him.

Craig: Well done.

John: And, I should also say that anything that we mention in the podcast, or almost anything we mention on the podcast that seems at all interesting or relevant, there will be a link for it in the show notes. And so the show notes are always at johnaugust.com. You can see things about UC Verde Buffalo Grass and stuff that Craig mentioned. What did you mention this week? What would your show notes be?

Craig: A lot of hatred mostly.

John: And there will be a link to Craig’s site which may be taken down soon.

Craig: Hey, have we mentioned, you know, the thing that we’re gonna do?

John: Oh, that thing in Austin?

Craig: Yeah. Have we talked about it?

John: Yeah, we totally should do that. So, tell them.

Craig: Well, yeah, so John and I are both attending the Austin Film Festival or at least the screenwriting conference portion of the Austin Film Festival. You’ve been there many times I assume?

John: Four or five at least.

Craig: So we’re both longtime participants. Great, great thing. I feel like there are so few things you should ever spend money on, but Austin is great because they really do get an amazing breadth of screenwriters. I mean, last year I was there with Larry Kasden, and Scott Frank, and John Lee Hancock, and Haas and Brandt, and Alec Berg. It was just amazing.

And this year among the other things we’re doing there, John and I are going to be doing a live podcast, live. I mean, not live in the sense that you can listen while we’re doing it, but we will be in a big room full of people doing it. And it should be fun, and raucous, and maybe a little drunk.

John: We will have a special guest who I don’t think is quite confirmed yet. But, if we have this special guest I think that would be quite amazing. And it’s been a goal of ours for awhile to try to do a live podcast. And we’ve talked about venues in Los Angeles that we could do it, and we haven’t quite figured that out. So Austin is a good trial run because there’s already a bunch of people who want to hear. People talk about screenwriting.

So, that will be our first trial run. But, I will say if people, listeners, have suggestions for a place here in town that we could do a live show, we’d still definitely be into that. We talked about the Writers Guild Theater. The challenge with the Writers Guild Theater is it’s kind of huge and kind of expensive. So if you have a place that’s not so huge and not so expensive, that could be great. If you have a place that could serve alcohol, that might not be a bad idea either.

So, we’ll still keep that in mind. But I think the Austin Film Festival will be the first live Scriptnotes. So, there will be people in the room. We’ll record it. We’ll put it up just like a normal episode. But there will be people —

Craig: And if you are thinking about spending a few hundred bucks to learn from actual screenwriters… — Oh, and I should also add some great producers, too, like Lindsay Doran… — They just get great people there. It’s really worth your while. And it’s in October.

John: If you’re going to attend one film festival as a screenwriter, I’d probably go to Austin.

Craig: Sounds right to me.

John: Sundance is lovely. And you’ll see a lot of movies at Sundance. But the sessions you’ll go to in Austin are probably the most useful for an aspiring screenwriter.

Craig: And they do have movies there, too. The Duplass brothers I think premiered a movie there last time. It’s pretty cool. Awesome.

John: Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

Craig: John, thank you right back. And I’ll see you next time.

John: See you next time. Bye.

Craig: Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

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

Craig, this weekend I encountered something new for the first time; something kind of amazing and transformative.

Craig: Oh, I want to guess, but I’m not gonna.

John: Okay. First of all, there were actually two transformative things that happened in the same location.

A TV writer was throwing a Memorial Day party at his house, and he had one of those pools that had like the current in it.

Craig: Oh yeah.

John: Have you seen these yet?

Craig: Yeah.

John: It’s pretty amazing.

Craig: Kind of like wave pools.

John: It made a normal pool seem impossibly lame.

Craig: So the idea is that you swim for exercise and it just keeps pushing you back.

John: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. Or, if you have a bunch of kids there, they will basically get into the current and get thrown all the way back to the back of the pool, which they love. Who would not love that? It’s like sky diving but in a pool.

Craig: Yeah. That’s pretty awesome.

John: But the more relevant thing for our podcast, which is not about swimming-related technology…

So I was talking to a mom and she had a fifth grader, and so I was making sort of the standard parent chit chat that you do, like, “Oh, so what is your fifth grade daughter into?” And she said, “Oh, she’s really into filmmaking.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting. So what kind of stuff does she do? Does she have a camera?”

“Oh, she’s mostly into LPS.” I’m like I have no idea what LPS is. So I ask, I’m a curious person, so I ask what LPS is. LPS stands for Littlest Pet Shop.

Craig: Okay?

John: Littlest Pet Shop is a serious of collectible figurines, sort of like tiny little bobble-head figurines, little animals, adorable little animals. And so the culture has formed, so you take these little animals and you stage scenes with them, and you film them and you post them on YouTube.

And so I’m thinking okay, but no-no, they are elaborate staging things of like ongoing series or often sort of like verbatim reenactments of TV shows which I was like, “Well this is really fascinating for you to tell me this. I’m going to leave now so I can Google this immediately and discover what this whole phenomenon is.”

So I’ve been looking them up and they are actually kind of amazing and fascinating because it’s this whole subculture of you take these little figurines and you’re making these movies, and it’s not like the Lego — you’ve seen like the stop-motion Lego stuff which is impressive —

Craig: Yeah. My son makes those.

John: Which is impressive in its own right. But here the culture is not just that… — You’re not doing frame-by-frame; you’re moving the little pieces, the little guys, at the time and your painting your fingernails so they’re really beautiful while you’re manipulating the little bobble-heads for these characters.

Craig: What the hell? [laughs]

John: Yeah. You’re doing very girlie things like, you know, Popular. So, anyway, I was enraptured and amazed that this was happening. And it’s stuff that’s being done mostly on iPhone cameras. What a good time that we live in.

Craig: And is it mostly kids doing these things or are there —

John: Hopefully it’s mostly kids doing these things.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

John: But I remember taking a class in college about post-modernism. And we spent the whole semester talking about what is post-modernism. And there in 30 seconds is a definition of this is what post-modernism is. This is taking two culturally not related things and squishing them together in a way that is creating something new in an impossibly weird but kind of fascinating way.

Craig: Yeah. It’s like the whole Brony phenomenon.

John: Totally. Bronies.

Craig: Right. Which just puzzles me to no end.

John: Yeah. Well someone thought of a cool word and it became a meme that expanded beyond that.

Craig: It’s so, so weird. It’s so weird.

John: Anyway, so I’ll post to the show notes links to some LPS videos. But just YouTube “LPS.” Anyone who’s listening to this not in driving time has probably stopped the podcast to go Google and YouTube some of these videos.

Craig: Eh, or they’ve just crashed. Not because they’re distracted, because they just want to die. [laughs] ‘Cause they don’t want to live in a world with this. I will not YouTube these things.

John: No. So, I was watching a Littlest Pet Shop CSI episode. [laughs]

Craig: Oh man! [laughs]

John: And I’m reading the little synopsis for what happens in the episode, and so I thought this would actually be a good topic for our podcast today is plot. Because I was reading the little plot synopsis, and the plot synopsis was like what you read in a TV Guide for like a normal thing. But just reading the plot synopsis you really have no sense that this is being acted out with little tiny bobble-headed animals.

So I wanted to talk about the difference between plot and story, because a lot of times I think they’re used kind of interchangeably and the idea of like — the sense that I have an idea for a story, and here’s the plot of what would happen, well that’s really about maybe 5% of what the actual work of writing and creating an episode of a story is.

And so so much of what we assume is like that’s what happens in the story, well that’s the three-sentence description. That’s the synopsis of what happened in the story, but it’s not the actual work of what writers did.

And what occurred to me is there’s a person who wrote into the site who’s from some foreign country but had terrific English and was pitching this thing that he’d worked on. And it’s a website that’s called PlotWizard.com. And it’s inspired by this book called Plotto by William Wallace Cook. And I didn’t know anything about it until he sort of talked me through it. So, I Googled it more; God bless Google.

Plotto was this book that this guy put together, and there had been other things before it, which were sort of like universal plot bibles. And so it’s one of those ideas where you start a thread and then you can choose any number of options and then you go to Option 46 and then that could feed into these other options, and these other options; and so just by flipping through pages in this book you can create these really elaborate plots for things.

So like the hero discovers that his long-lost brother is still alive and takes a long journey to go find him and there’s these kind of complications. It’s a formula.

Craig: Yuck.

John: Yes. And so a mathematical reduction of sort of what story is. So this guy who wrote into the site had done sort of a digital version of it. And so I want to read you one of the plots that this computerized version came up with. You ready?

Craig: Yeah.

John: Okay. “While writing a con game, Gilbert meets Corrina, who astutely sees through his scheme. Corrina is also involved in a scam, and Gilbert becomes suspicious. Corrina learns that Gilbert is in serious trouble. In order to help Gilbert escape the law, Corrina seduces the arresting officer, Ronnie. Ronnie pretends to be in love with Corrina, but it’s actually part of his plan to capture both Gilbert and Corrina red-handed. Thinking he’s proposed to Corrina, Gilbert finds that he’s accidentally proposed to Corrina’s twin sister, Carly…”

Craig: Oh god!

John: “…who accepts. Now the twins both love Gilbert. Gilbert is about to marry Carly who has tricked him into believing that Corrina is unfaithful. Ronnie stops the wedding to arrest the bride and groom. Corrina pretends to be Carly and runs away with Gilbert, now a fugitive from the law.” [laughs]

Craig: [laughs]

John: Now what I should stress is that for some reason this little generator has a lot of twins and mistaken identities. And sort of like people pretending to be people that they’re not. But you read through that and it’s like, well, that could be a plot to something.

Craig: [laughs] No it can’t. No, I mean, that really is the definition of a dead thing. You know? I mean, it could be the plot of a soap opera, I guess.

John: It could be the plot of soap opera. But here’s what it is: that could be the formulaic reduction of sort of what happened in it, but it doesn’t tell you sort of how it happens. And so I want to talk about the difference here because I think a lot of times people say, “Well I have a good idea for a story; like this happens, and this happens, and this happens, and this happens, and this happens.”

But the actual work of screenwriting, of telling a story in fiction or in screenwriting, is figuring out how it happens. Not the what, but the how. And so all of those how questions are what you end up staring at the giant whiteboard and figuring out, well, who knows this piece of information and what would be the scene or the moment were they learn this thing, and how is this thing going to happen?

So, looking at this description, like: Corrina learns that Gilbert is in serious trouble. In order to escape the law, Corrina seduces the arresting officer Ronnie. Well, what does that mean? What is seducing the arresting officer Ronnie mean? Is that a scene? Is that an entire episode of an ongoing series? Is that the whole movie? That’s the difference in the work of what is plot, which to me is the distillation down of this is what happens in the story, and the actual work we’re doing.

Craig: Well, when you go through a plot like that you get a lot of “what” questions, like — what happens? This woman seduces a man to save a guy to do a thing. So, what happens next is what bad writers are constantly asking: what happens next? And I think good writers are always asking: why should this happen next? [laughs]

Because, when we tell stories, we are always telling them about human beings. Always. Even when we’re telling them about animated rabbits and fish. And what we care about, the whole point of plots existing in the first place, is to enthrall us in the lives of people who are interesting to us. Their problems are interesting to us. Therefore the things that happen to them must be interesting to us. So, the question that I think good writers should always be asking about plot is “why.” Otherwise you end up with what Aristotle astutely called, thousands of years ago, an episodic story which is, in his words, the worst story. [laughs] And it is.

There’s no purpose. There’s no unity. There’s no theme. There’s no character. So I always urge people to just think “why.” If you want her to seduce this guy — why? Why not just come up with an easier way that doesn’t involve that?

John: Well you need to ask why not from the perspective of the author, of what you need, but why from the perspective of the character who’s making the choice. And why is that the right choice for her to be making.

Now, ideally, the right choice for her to be making is also the most interesting choice for your audience to see. That become the weird balancing act of telling fiction is figuring out how to let your fictional characters make choices that are going to be the most rewarding for your audience to see.

Bad writing, it’s true, oftentimes you’ll have the episodic things where you also feel like you have plot robots who are just people who are being dragged through a plot. The other extreme, which can also be a very bad extreme, is you have characters who have so much control of the story that they’re just going to wander off and do whatever they’re going to do and it may not be very interesting.

Craig: Right.

John: The challenge is corralling those two competing forces into finding what is the most interesting thing this character could do that is also very consistent with what the character would want to do in this moment.

Craig: That’s a great way of saying it.

John: Your struggle as a writer is to find, to create the situations that both of those things are going to be the same.

Craig: Yeah. The way of thinking about that dichotomy is you need to know what must happen. The characters can’t know what must happen. That’s where the fun happens, right? You know that these two people must go from where they are now in this particular circumstantial state to this next circumstantial state, but they can’t know.

You have to actually make it — you have to make them blind. It has to be surprising to them. You know, sometimes you’ll hear these terms, like “reversals.” They’re not really reversals because everything is on a straight line in its own way. The straight line is the one you’ve drawn. It’s just that the characters can’t see it. So send them off perpendicular to that straight line. Make it hard for them to get to A to B. Make B meaningful so that when they get there it suddenly changes or recontextualizes things for them which makes the next milestone even trickier to get to.

You need to know your plot, but your characters should never know it. And I think that’s what you’re touching on when you say that these characters are in control of the story.

John: When I was in journalism school we were taught pyramid structure and the journalistic questions, which are who, when, why, what, how. So, you’re trying to answer those questions in a news story. And so the what questions are really these plot questions, like, well what happens? Where it happens is setting. When it happens is also setting and weirdly it is sort of structure; structure is an answer to the question of when are characters going to find out this information and when are they going to choose to do these things. When in the course of this movie are you going to place things.

But it really comes down to the “who” questions and the “why” questions. Who are these characters and why are they doing what they’re doing. And ultimately this will hopefully answer why we as an audience should care about them.

When you see stories that tend to fall apart in their second act, which is basically after all the exciting stuff in the beginning has happened, it’s because you didn’t really know who those characters were and you really weren’t invested in whatever the specific journey of the story is that they were trying to set up.

Craig: That’s right. You don’t know where you’re going. It’s funny, I had a discussion with my 10-year-old son tonight because he has to write these little Cinderella stories for class. So, you can write any kind of story you want as long as it vaguely fits into a Cinderella paradigm. And he had written sort of two-thirds of a story. And then in the first part — it’s very my-son — in the first part a little girl lives with her dad in the woods and his robot wife, but he has grown tired of his robot wife and wants a real wife.

Okay. Act one is concluded upon his journey to town to find a real wife. Act two begins when he comes home with the real wife. He’s found a real wife, and she has two sons, and they’re terribly mean to our heroine and they beat her up and they give her abrasions, which is a word he learned yesterday so of course it must be employed in the story today. [laughs] “And they give her abrasions.”

And so he had gotten that far and I said, okay great, what happens next? And he said, “Uh…I don’t know yet. I haven’t written that part yet.” And I said, “You know, the thing is you kind of need to know where you’re going or just the ending is not going to relate to the beginning.” And he asked me to sort of give him an example which I think was partly his sneaky way of having me do it for him.

But, in the hopes that this would have some instructional value I said, okay, well, you have this interesting element of the robot wife that has seemingly been forgotten. So, you know, it’s a Cinderella story and in Cinderella stories there are fairy godmothers. Maybe the castoff robot wife is actually a fairy godmother or fairy god-robot. And she can help your hero girl somehow get one over on these terrible boys. And then maybe she can turn them into robots and maybe then the little girl, they ask for forgiveness, for mercy, and the little girl asks the fairy god-robot to turn them back into humans and then they show her mercy by being nice to her and they all live happily ever after.

And you see how in the stuff that you put there in the beginning, that’s there on purpose because that’s what the ending is all about. And he went, “Ah! Oh, that’s interesting.” And the funny thing is I read scripts from not-10-year-olds that make the same mistake.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Where you’ve got this wonderful little concoction you’ve built for yourself because you really love your idea. And your idea is good enough to start writing. The problem is your idea has no relation to anything of value at the end. Beginnings are wonderful things. I love beginnings. I spend more time writing the first 20 pages than I do the rest of the movie. But they only exist because they are there — they are the ball being thrown up in the air and you have to know where you want it to land. And it has to land somewhere that matters, that has some kind of import for the audience.

So, to me, plot is a function of where you want to end. And I think so many people start with where they want to begin.

John: A few weeks ago I linked to Old Jews Telling Jokes, and part of the reason why I wanted to bring that up is what is so crucial about a joke, and if you hear a kid try to tell a joke you will realize why this skill is so important to master, is a joke is about where you’re going to end up. A joke is about that punch line. And if you haven’t carefully walked everyone through the process of the joke to get to that punch line, the punch line is not going to be funny.

And when you see a young kid try to tell a joke, they will say a bunch of stuff and then they’ll say like “poopy” at the end.

Craig: [laughs]

John: And every once and awhile it’s hilarious.

Craig: That’s a really good joke actually. [laughs]

John: But most of the time that’s going to be — or they’ll say, “On your eyeball,” or just something gross — and it’s like, well, that’s actually not what a joke is. And working on various movies that are weepy, I would say that the same thing happens with emotional things. You have to have an emotional journey that gets you to that point where you’re ready to feel that emotion. And being aware of the fact that each moment along that journey needs to be rewarding in its own right, but needs to be able to take you to that place.

Now that sounds very much like here’s the author forcing these moments to exist to be that way so he can get to that last payoff, but no, you actually have to be able to somehow do both. And that’s the judo of it is that you have to have your characters feel like they’re driving those moments so that they’re naturally arriving at those moments all the way along the way. And it’s going to take you to that final place that you want to get to. And that can be a huge challenge.

The thing I’m working on right now I had sort of that thing where you lie in bed and I was trying to loop the scene, and trying to figure out how I was going to get this… — It’s a really simple kind of transition. I need to get this character from one sort of fantastical world to another fantastical world and make it a natural sort of seeming thing. And I was really struggling to figure out what is the mechanism, how is it going to work, and it wasn’t until I really sat down with the script and sort of went through some other scenes and really figured out what was going to lead up to, it was like, oh, I was trying to write that moment as if it was a first act moment, but this is a very late second act moment.

I don’t want to spend the shoe leather to make this big magical journey between these two places. As an audience I don’t want to learn something great and new about this world. I just want to get to the next thing. And that’s another crucial part of storytelling that it’s going to be lost in sort of this plot bot, like it’s not telling you where the real heart and time and work of the movie is. Is one of the sentences a scene, or is one of these sentences just an off-hand comment that somebody makes to somebody? That’s the real work of writing.

Craig: You know, we can talk about all sorts of little rules and tricks and things, but ultimately 98% of this is your instinct for things. Some stories deserve to be told microscopically, others deserve to be told macroscopically. Just like when you’re on Google Maps you can see a street or you can see a country. And there are movies that will take people over the course of ten years. There are movies that take place over one night.

The movies that take place over one night contain these micro-moments. I mean, Go contains micro-moments that expand and are hugely important, and then the night is over and dawn happens. The Hangover movies, the same way; you’re compressing a lot of stuff into small things, small temporal things, so you make bigger deals out of little moves.

But then there are other movies, you could tell a road trip movie over the course of six months. You could tell an epic over the course of five years, people are aging. You need to have some sense of your scale before you start writing because your script will either be 12-pages or 1,000 if you don’t have that internal metronome.

John: You look at either of the two Hangover movies. If the storytelling purpose of those characters was “we’ve had a very long and difficult marriage but we’ve had a great marriage,” all of the events of The Hangover could basically be summarized in a jump cut, like you know, “we lost him and then we found him again.” All of that stuff would be sort of eclipsed if you’re telling the person’s larger life.

Like Big Fish is a story of huge ellipses being put in a person’s life. Impossible things happen, but you just past them. You look at a moment but you don’t look at the whole thing. Even Spectre, which is a larger section of Big Fish, where he goes to the fantastical town, there’s clearly a lot left out of there. It’s clearly here-are-the-highlights-of-what-happens. His growing up in Ashton is just the highlights, versus Go and Hangover which is like zooming in on a very tight focus on things.

And that’s what I was really facing in the script that I’m writing right now is that I was doing some of the really close-up detail work, and I was trying to do the close-up detail work, and I was like, oh, this is not a close-up detail moment; this is a cut-to-the-next-thing. This is in Indiana Jones, like the-plane-flies-over-the-map kind of moment. And I was trying to build out the whole scene. Well, the movie doesn’t want that scene right there. The movie wants to get to the next thing.

Craig: Yeah. You have to know your scale. You have to know your scale. And by the way, scale in and of itself is a dramatic tool, because sweeping movies tend to play well into our sense of mortality because they cover ground — people age, they grow old, they die, there’s a sense of loss, there’s that kind of weird existential whatever it is that is transmitted to you by a movie in which time passes and lives change.

Because we all feel that in movies that sort of take that point of view, whether they work or not, are designed to make us confront our own mortality and our relationship with time as it slips past us. These movies when you do a small scale movie it’s about tension and panic and anxiety, and maybe more important than that, those moments where you make the wrong or right choice that will change everything afterwards.

And the funny thing is those movies, movies like Go and Hangover are movies in which you get the sense that at the end your life is fine after that. You had a night where you could have gone to hell, or you could have set it straight and liberated yourself, and you managed to liberate yourself, and everything’s going to be fine afterwards, until the sequel. [laughs]

But, the grand scale movies are more ethereal. There’s a wistful sense to those. You have to understand what you’re trying to achieve with the audience and let that feed back into the tone you’re selecting and the scale you’re selecting, because plot will impart tone.

John: So, let us take a bit of a digression, but let’s talk scale and tone and sort of pacing and timing. Are you caught up on Game of Thrones?

Craig: Yeah. What a great episode.

John: That was a great episode.

Craig: Awesome.

John: Small spoiler warning, but not really a huge spoiler warning. I think we can talk about this without ruining anything great about Game of Thrones. This last night’s episode was a very epic battle that took place at an important city. And unlike most episodes, most episodes of the show are following many plot lines, and especially in the second season they are following many, many plot lines. And this episode chose not to do that and was just focusing on this one battle, and so it really changed the scale of what you expect from Game of Thrones, because Game of Thrones things seem like they could be taking place over months and months and months, and this took place over one 12-hour period.

Craig: Right.

John: And it was terrific for that. And I just have no idea how they did it on the budget they did it; it was just remarkably well done.

Craig: Yeah.

John: It addressed or sort of brought up a question I had about this season. Again, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything hugely for this, but if you really don’t want to know anything about Game of Thrones stick your fingers in your ears and go yeah-yeah-yeah for about 10 seconds.

The plot line in Qarth with the missing dragons was a weird thing that happened this season in that it was one of the few times in the show where I felt them sort of tap dancing and stalling for a bit, because the dragons are missing and we see they’re in this tower. We see the shot of the towers. Well, we know we need to get to that tower, but we can’t get to the tower right now because there’s clearly other stuff that has to happen.

Craig: Right.

John: And so when you go back to revisit that plot line — I think in two different episodes they may have revisited she wants to find her dragons, she wants to find her dragons. Well, we want to find her dragons, too; like, don’t show us the scene of two people talking about wanting to find the dragons. Find the dragons.

Craig: It’s funny. I don’t even know why we want to find the dragons. [laughs] I have a whole big issue with the dragon plot line because I’m still waiting for sort of, like — okay, I understand the dragons will one day grow up and then they’ll lay waste to anything, or not. I mean, you’re in the middle of a desert.

That, you know it’s a funny thing…

John: Okay, so I need to preface this by saying I think the show is brilliant.

Craig: It’s awesome.

John: What David and D. B. have done is remarkable. And so of the few things that sort of blipped for me is — and Lost had similar problems, too — sometimes where things would get out of sync with each other — and True Blood has had it too, where the plot lines just aren’t syncing quite right. And this felt like one of those situations.

Craig: Well, I will say that I think that the material that they were drawing from for this season, it seemed to bottom out a little bit in the middle. And, look, they’re drawing off of… — The George Martin books are so intricately plotted; you can’t exactly just go, “Well you know, let’s vamp and do some other stuff now.” And it’s not like Lost where you’re writing a show and you can just sort of, “Okay, well what are we writing? It’s us.”

So, I think they did a very good job with what they had there. It seemed like this story had some circular motion to it. But boy did it pay off in spades. I mean, Sunday’s episode was one of those episodes where you go, “Okay, I’m glad I ate my broccoli, I got to here. It’s awesome. I wouldn’t have gotten here if I hadn’t eaten the broccoli.” It had so many great lines. It was one of those, you get to a line and you go, “Oh, that’s the line of the show.” And then five minutes later you go, “Oh, no, that’s the line of the show.” And they did it like four more times.

Can I also say something about, I mean not to derail us from plot, but Dan and David did something with the show that people don’t appreciate enough because it’s invisible, and that’s casting. And I know we’re talking about plot, but forgive me. Casting is something that the audience never notices because it’s inevitable to them. There’s only one cast. They never look at auditions. They never will nor should they.

And it’s not like drafts of a script, because drafts of a script are related and they are progressive, and it might be interesting to sort of dig through them like Troy and see how levels led to levels led to the final product. But casting is either it was going to be this guy or this guy. Great casting here.

John: And sometimes it was one guy and they recast.

Craig: Occasionally. And they did on the show. They recast a couple of key parts on the show after the pilot. But, there are… — I mean, how many characters are on the show that you keep track of? 40? I’m just guessing off-hand.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Not only would I say are they all cast well. I would say the vast majority are cast great, where they just nailed the casting. And think about, if you blow casting on a successful TV show on one little character like that, you’re stuck with that person for the run. You can’t change Theon in the middle of the show. It ain’t gonna work.

They did such an amazing job of casting this show. My hats off to those guys. It’s just unreal.

John: So circle back around to plot, talking about casting. The actress who plays Daenerys, who is looking for her dragons, she wasn’t my favorite right out of the gate. I’ll be honest, she wasn’t. And then she ended up stepping up and she was terrific once they sort of found her second life in that.

I fell like this second season these last couple episodes might have been stronger if they just took her scenes out rather that sort of like reminding us 40 minutes into the show we’re going to have one scene with her looking for her dragons. Let’s just not see her this week, because I feel like the episodes where they don’t go to see any other castle at all, those could be fine, too. It’s really the struggle, and I feel like we’re in a new art form right now, and it’s not really clear what the best practices are sometimes because these elaborately multi-plot-lined epic dramas, there’s maybe 10 years worth of history on these, and it’s still not clear what the best way to do these are.

Craig: Right. And they are, I think, very respectable… — Sorry. They’re very respectful of the source material. And I think they want to do right by… — I mean, there’s a huge fan base for the books themselves. And, look, they’ve had success smartly not doing the Hollywood thing of kicking the book out the door and saying, “We know better.”

Sometimes, you know, you might end up with a few episodes where she’s wandering around Qarth and we at home are sort of thinking, “Oh no, more Qarth.” But I have a feeling something sick and awesome is coming there too.

John: Absolutely. I’m just saying whatever sick and awesome is coming in Qarth, I would have been just as delighted to see it if I hadn’t seen the other Qarth first. Or in just like the Previously On could have taken care of it. And I didn’t need a placeholder scene.

Craig: Well, you know, and it’s funny because the show has, again, because of the casting. Hold on, sorry. [sirens blaring] And I thought it was going to be okay because we’re doing this kind of late at night, and then I realized, oh no, it will probably be worse with the sirens.

There are certain characters in the show that are so good. [more sirens]. Are you kidding? [laughs]

John: Wow.

Craig: And they’re so good. And they’re so much fun. Like I would watch — obviously I would watch Tyrion just eat lunch.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I would watch him and Bronn. Bronn, right? That’s his sellsword.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I could just watch them talk about anything. I don’t care. I would take that over a Qarth scene. But I get it. It’s like, okay, you know. And then there were scenes where I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, is this that interesting with John Snow and that lady?” And then it got awesome, you know?

John: Yeah.

Craig: So I feel like…and you know what it is? I feel like Dan and Dave have done such a good job of taking care of me that even when I go, “Eh, another Qarth scene?” I think, they’re doing this for a reason. I gotta believe it’s going to be worth it, you know? I gotta believe it.

John: I have faith.

Craig: Yeah. They’ve taken really good care of the viewer. So, good for them.

John: And let us take good care of viewers and leave them with a shorter episode tonight, because it’s actually quite late as we’re recording this.

I do have a Cool Thing, and you have a Cool Thing, too. Do you want to do yours first? Or should I do mine first?

Craig: It’s entirely up to you. What do you think?

John: Do yours first.

Craig: Okay. Well my Cool Thing, boy, okay. So look. Listen up, people. If you are a listener who has been bemoaning the fact that you can’t get your script read, I’m about to give you the opportunity of a lifetime.

So, there’s this cool writer out there, and now I don’t have his name in front of me. [laughs] His name is Joe. You will have the appropriate link, won’t you John?

John: Of course I will, yes. Stuart will put it up.

Craig: He was the 2008, I think, Nicholl finalist. And he does this thing with a guy named Daniel Vang who works at Benderspink which is a pretty big management firm here in Hollywood, California, where they run a charity thing. This is the second time they’ve done it to raise money for the American Heart Association. And last year they raised over $8,000 to fight heart disease and stroke, and that’s great, but obviously now that we’re promoting this it’s going to be much, much, much, much more. And here’s why:

If you donate $25 through, and we’ll give you a link to their Kintera money-raising site. Daniel Vang of Benderspink will read the first ten pages of your feature film script or television pilot. If you donate $50, he guarantees he will read the first 50 pages of your work. And I’ve got to say, Daniel, you are awesome for that. Because 50 pages of bad screenplay is pretty rough to read.

If you donate $100 he guarantees he read the entire thing.

John: Wow.

Craig: Guarantees he will read the entire thing. Now here’s what’s interesting about this: last year, and this wasn’t that big of a deal because last year, like I said, they raised $8,000, two writers who donated wound up gaining representation. That’s pretty impressive.

John: That is impressive.

Craig: So, the deal is if you donate between $25 and $100, you have a guy at a real management company that really represents real writers reading your script, either 10, 50, or all of it. If it were me, I’d go for the $100 personally.

So, we’re going to give you a link and basically you go, you make the donation, you get in contact with Joe. He will coordinate the submissions to Daniel, and your stuff will get read. Come on, people. And it’s just…save hearts.

John: Yeah. That’s the thing I’d come back to. The worst that’s going to happen is you’re going to donate some money to stop heart disease and stroke.

Craig: Yeah!

John: That’s not such a bad thing.

Craig: Oh, no, this is to actually increase heart disease and stroke.

John: Oh, g’oh! I knew there was a catch.

Craig: I should have read this carefully. Well, you should still do it.

John: [laughs] Still do it. It might be good for your career, so you should still do it.

Craig: Now it’s incredibly selfish. No, I mean, it’s an awesome thing they’re doing and if you don’t take advantage of it, honestly you’re dumb. You’re just a dummy. What’s your Cool Thing this week?

John: My Cool Thing is much less for the good of the people, but more for the good of the individual. So, you know you have these club cards at grocery stores, or like Sam’s Club, or like Barnes & Noble — you have little card you’re supposed to carry around?

Craig: Right. The brand loyalty cards.

John: Brand loyalty cards. And so you can also give them your phone number, you can punch in your phone number or your email address, and it’s just such a hassle. And so I would have some of them in my wallet, but like you have an individual card for each. So my really incredibly smart husband figured out there’s place, a site called KeyRingThing.com.

What you do is you type in all of your code numbers for those things and it sends you a card with all of those barcodes on it. So you have one card that has all of your barcodes on it, and it’s labeled.

Craig: No way? Cool.

John: Yeah. So it’s actually kind of magic. So I use it all the time. I used it at Ralphs today. And every time I hand it to a cashier they’re like, “This actually works?” I’m like, yeah, it totally works. Scan it. And it totally works.

Craig: Wait, I just type in my phone number.

John: You can type in your phone number but your punching your phone number every time on those machines. This, you’re just handing them the card and it zips and the barcode scans.

Craig: You’re right. And you know what kills me? I go to CVS a lot to just buy sundries, and I don’t have a CVS card. And they say, “Do you want a CVS card?” And I think, no! And I honestly believe…

John: Yeah. It’s cost you hundreds of dollars.

Craig: Because when you go to Ralphs sometimes you punch in your number and it’s like, whatever, the $80 bill is now $0.14.

John: Yeah. If you’re at a grocery store you absolutely have to do it. When I was in New York for those four weeks I would walk by this grocery store every day and that became the place where I’d get my groceries every day. And so the first couple times I was like, “Oh, no, I don’t have a club card.” And I was like, “Yeah, I basically live in New York right now. Give me a club card.”

And so I took the two minutes to do it and everything was much, much cheaper.

Craig: Much cheaper.

John: So this is a good solution for just not having to carry those 8 cards in your wallet, or not having to punch in your phone number every time. You just have this one thing. It takes you five minutes, you get it done. There’s no kickbacks or anything; I just think it’s a good idea.

Craig: It’s the 1Password of brand loyalty bar scan.

John: It’s the 1Password of brand loyalty.

Craig: I love it.

John: See, I may be the person who brings information but you’re the one who codifies it in a way that people can carry it home with them.

Craig: I like to organize and categorize.

John: I like it. You are the librarian. The curator of this.

Craig: Hey.

John: Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

Craig: John, this was a good one, and blissfully short.

John: I like short. Enjoy. I’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: You got it. Bye.

John: Bye.