Drew Marquardt

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hola y buenos días. Soy John August.

Craig Mazin: Soy Craig Mazin.

John: Este es Scriptnotes, un podcast sobre la escritura cinematográfica y las cosas que se interesan los guionistas. ¿Cómo estás, Craig?

Craig: Bien. ¿Y tú?

[Sound effect]

John: Sorry, I had it set to Spanish. We’re good to go now.

Craig: Okay, great.

John: Craig, what does nepotism mean to you?

Craig: Nepotism means that favoritism, undue favoritism is shown to a familial relative.

John: When I think of nepotism I think of the boss who promotes his inept nephew up to a position that he should not be in, and he only has that job because his father is the boss.

Craig: Like Scooter from the Muppets.

John: Like Scooter from the Muppets.

Craig: Well Scooter turned out to be very good at his job, but I think he got it through nepotism.

John: Yeah. That’s fair. So, what nepotism isn’t is being related to somebody famous.

Craig: That’s right.

John: So, the reason I bring this up, and I sort of hesitate to bring this up because we are recording this on a Wednesday and this podcast will air on a Tuesday, so there is a gap of a week here. So by the time we actually bring it up, the zeitgeist may have moved far beyond this one little thing, but it enraged me so much that I am bringing it up.

So, the show Girls on HBO, I saw on Facebook somebody had done up a poster of like the one sheet that looked like Girls but they changed the word Girls to Nepotism. And then they had these little tags for each of the young actresses in the show, saying like their name and sort of which famous person they are related to, with the not-at-all subtle implication that… — Well it’s not even really implication. It’s pointing out that these women are related and saying nepotism, but it didn’t actually make sense to me, and it sort of enraged me because it’s as if these young women are only in the show because they are related to somebody famous, and not because they are talented actresses.

Or that somehow being related to somebody famous is the reason why you are going to be cast in the show.

Craig: Yeah, that was sort of, David Mamet’s daughter and Brian Williams’s daughter. And the strangest one was the daughter of the drummer of Bad Company. [laughs]

John: Because you know that the minute she walked into the room, they said like, “Well, oh my god, she doesn’t need to do an audition. Her dad was the drummer to Bad Company, so of course she has to be the person.”

Craig: I mean, the fact that they don’t know his name sort of undermines their point. [laughs] Doesn’t it? I mean, how famous is he? He doesn’t even get a name to them; he’s just the “drummer from Bad Company,” a band that last recorded I think in the early ’90s.

John: So, really, the actual incident at this point I feel is well passed us, and so that one silly Infographic and whatever — it moves on. But I think the idea of nepotism is sort of poisoning the well. And so I just want to talk a little bit about that, because the idea that this show is on the air, or that these women are cast in the show because of who they are related to I think is a destructive and bad idea. Because it implies that it is not through hard work that someone succeeds; it is through being related to somebody famous that someone succeeds.

And it oversells the importance of being born into the right family, and undersells the importance of hard work.

Craig: It’s kind of like an extension of what we talked about last time with this whole trust fund nonsense.

John: The Jamie Vanderbilt thing. And, of course, your wealth and your history from those illustrious public school teachers who are…

Craig: Right. My trust fund from my public school teacher parents. I mean, it’s the same spirit. All of it comes from a resentment. “I am not making it, and it is only because either my parents weren’t rich, or my parents weren’t famous.”

And I have to say, look, slightly different case. I mean, there is a difference between nepotism and what we were talking about last time, which was this whole trust fund thing. Money isn’t going to make you a good writer. And I don’t think your parent’s money is necessarily going to open any doors for you as a screenwriter.

It is a different story of nepotism — there is nepotism, it does exist. I do believe that if your mom or dad are well placed in the business that you will have opportunities that other people wouldn’t. I mean if my son, who is now ten, grows up and wants to be a screenwriter, I can get him read. And that’s more than the average guy sitting in Indiana can say. So, yeah, that’s real.

John: You look at Anne Rice’s son who has become a novelist. Or you look at Stephen King’s son who has become a writer. Ultimately they are going to be judged on their writing, but they had opportunities and access that they wouldn’t have otherwise had with a different name.

Craig: That’s right. And I always think about baseball, because I’m a big baseball fan. And three of the greatest hitters that I have seen play are Ken Griffey, Jr., Barry Bonds, and Prince Fielder. All of their dads played baseball. It’s obvious, I think, at first blush that those three kids had more opportunities when they were young than the average kid did, and certainly they had more access to scouts and to attention than the average kid did.

However, they were also — and they are also — really, really, really good. And so what’s interesting about nepotism is that it does sometimes create unfair opportunities, but also when we talk about talent, the whole point of talent is that you don’t learn talent. You’re not taught talent. You have it; that means it’s innate. And on some level there is something neurological going on. If it is music, or literature, or writing, or visual arts, these things are controlled somewhat by the brain. The brain is a function of your genetics. Genetics matters.

It’s not determinative, but it does seem — like it’s hard to discount the fact that a great writer just might pass along some useful genes to a child.

John: Yeah. Beyond genes I would also say that a great writer might pass along the chance to see the writer actually doing his or her work.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And so if your mother is a famous novelist, you were going to see your mother working day in and day out at a computer, typing up this novel, and you are going to see what that work is. You are going to see the editing; you are going to see what the whole process is. That is going to be an advantage.

But in many ways I think what was frustrating to me about this image or this idea that it is because of who these people’s parents were, well, I’m a product of my parents at least to the same degree. I had supportive parents. God bless them. And I think having supportive parents is a much bigger asset than having rich, or famous, or well-known, or well-connected parents.

Craig: I agree with you. I think we live in a time of resentment. I think we are in the middle of a time of resentment. And that’s normal. This is a bad economy and people are suffering. And it is good fertile soil for resentment. But anyone who makes a movie or a television show knows, particularly a television show where you are going to be — you are not casting an episode, you are casting all episodes.

The thought that you would poison your show with somebody because their daddy was somebody is insane and inane. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t watched the show. Obviously you do, and you like it. I haven’t seen it yet. But they don’t cast David Mamet’s daughter because they think David Mamet is going to come in and do some polishes on the script to make it great, and they are just suffering her.

They cast her because they really liked her. This happens. It’s not the end of the world. Certainly being the daughter of the drummer of Bad Company affords no benefit to the show. The fact that the creator and star of the show’s parents were artists, is it shocking that artists had a kid that was artistic? I mean, really.

And then Brian Williams, who is not an artist, has a daughter who is on the show, and she is objectively beautiful.

John: She is objectively beautiful.

Craig: And so then, again, it’s like, “Oh my god, a beautiful person is on TV. Stop the presses.” I mean, really?! That’s what? It’s just dumb. And it’s just pointless resentment and I don’t get it. I don’t get it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Look, I’m taking umbrage. Somebody on Twitter said, “Every podcast should be called Craig Mazin takes umbrage at something.” And that is absolutely true.

John: [laughs]

Craig: My natural state is umbrage. And I just took some.

John: Good.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Well let’s get on to some questions.

Craig: Great.

John: Nick in LA writes in with a question. “Some management companies refuse to send out writer’s scripts. One person writes about a particularly notorious case, in this instance…” I think it actually came from DoneDealPro that he was first talking about this.

“A well known management company apparently works this way. The sign tons of writers and get them all specing new ideas or rewriting scripts that they think have promise. If one out of twenty pan out, great, they take it out. The rest, the script never goes out, the manager tries to convince the writer to write a new spec. If the writer puts up too much of a fuss, oh well, there are ten more writers in the stable.”

And this is the idea of almost like a spec farm.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So this is a management company that is signing writers who are probably unproduced and having them work on a bunch of stuff, trying to get the best of that stuff and sending that out. The management company in success gets a percentage of that sale, or becomes attached as a producer to that project.

I’d never heard of this term “spec farms.” It sort of disgusts me.

Craig: Yeah.

John: But since this is new to me, I don’t know have specific advice to not being stuck in that management spec farm. But I think it leads to a better overall discussion of what do you do when you think your script is ready to go out on the town, and the people who are representing you don’t think it is ready to go out on the town, which is a case that happens to ever writer at every stage of his career.

Craig: I mean, I do think that even in this specific case here of the spec farms, there is some advice to give, and that is avoid them, because any management company that behaves like this isn’t a real management company that anyone gives a damn about.

There are only a few management companies that have any credibility whose imprimatur conveys some sort of legitimacy. And it’s none of them. It’s none of these so-called spec farms. I mean, that’s atrocious behavior. Part of the problem with the whole management business is that it is essentially unregulated agenting. Agents are regulated by the state. They have to be licensed by the state. They cannot produce material. There is a barrier, even a mild barrier for entry.

A manager is somebody that prints up a business card and writes the word manager under their name. And it is the most exploitative aspect of our business, I think. That, to me, low rent managers are where writers get hurt the most. And I know that the managers will say, “Incorrect. We’re the only ones willing to take a chance on these people.”

It’s no chance. You are not taking any chance on anybody. What, are you taking a chance on somebody by putting a stamp on an envelope? Get out of here. I’m taking umbrage again. [laughs]. But my point is I would avoid any management company that isn’t a real management company, or whose manager doesn’t represent real clients, and who seems to be in kind of a bulk business. It’s grotesque, to me.

John: Here’s my criteria for whether a manager is a real manager or somebody who is portraying themselves as a manager but isn’t somebody you should be in business with: Has this person produced any movies or TV shows recently? There are managers who have credits that are from ten years ago, but haven’t done anything meaningful in the last five or ten years. Those are not people you really want to be working with.

You need to figure out who their other clients are, and being able to talk to some of their other clients. You don’t sign with one of these companies unless you have talked to another client. And if they are not willing to let you talk to one of their other clients, they are probably not the right place to be doing business with.

Craig: I agree.

John: I know that a lot of times it is like, “Well, beggars can’t be choosers.” It’s like the only person who seems interested in you. It’s a fairly easily annulled marriage, but it is sort of a marriage. This person is going to be speaking on your behalf and you are going to be talking to them on the phone all the time. Don’t say yes to the first guy who proposes. That’s just not…

Craig: Yeah. I’m going to say something that may lead us down a dispiriting path, but it’s really important, I think.

You are not a beggar if your script is good. You are a chooser. If your script is good it will be noticed and it will be noticed by legitimate people, and you will be afforded some choices. If your script is bad, and yes, some of you have bad scripts, what ends up happening is there are these lint traps out there who just gather the substandard material and attempt to peddle it off for the value of the idea, so that better writers can come and rewrite it, but the manager accrues the benefit when the movie gets made, not the original writer. But it’s all a very cynical arrangement. It’s a meat market.

It is a marriage of the mediocre. Mediocre managers looking for mediocre writers to push mediocre material in the hopes of essentially profiting from the literary equivalent of junk bonds.

And if you believe that your script is good, you have to get out of the mindset that you are a beggar, because you are not.

John: Now let’s talk to the more general case, which is not necessarily working for one of these terrible management companies, but every screenwriter is going to be at a place with a project that says, “I think we are done here for now. I think we are ready to show this to other people.” This could be a spec that you are taking out on the town, or it could be, “I think we are ready to go out and look for a director.” And the other decision maker, or decision makers say, “No, let’s hold back a little bit. Let’s do a little bit more work.” That is a frustrating situation that you will never fully move on from in your career.

And so this will happen, this has happened on several projects I have been involved with over… — Some of which we are still debating do we take it out to people, do we not take it out to people? At some point you have to draw a line and say, “I am not going to be doing anymore work until we have some progress on going out to other people,” because you can rewrite something for forever.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And you just end up in this trap. So, how do you manage this conversation? I will start, but you may have some different perspectives.

Craig: Go for it.

John: First you tell your reps what you feel like. “I cannot rewrite this anymore. We have to go out and we have to get somebody else onboard.” And you get their support on this. And if they don’t support you on this, well then you have rep problems. But you have to get their support on this.

And then you make it clear that whatever the next batch of work is, you listen to them about what the next batch of work is, and you may agree, you may disagree, but you say like, “I don’t think we can do this next thing of work until either we go out to this list of directors,” or like, “let’s make this list of directors.” Or, “We need to take this out on the town because right now we are trying to write this to one imaginary buyer rather than sort of the people who actually may make this movie.

Craig: Yeah. This comes up all the time, and it comes up in every level. The first question I try and ask is, “Whose opinion do I trust more, mine or theirs?” And it is not always mine. There are producers who really do understand what is going to attract certain directors or certain actors. Oftentimes they have worked with those directors or actors before.

I’m thinking of, for instance, like Michael and Carla Shamberg and Stacey Sher. They have been producing for a long time. They know what is going to theoretically attract and what is not going to attract. And if they say, “Okay, you know, we need another pass,” I believe it. And if they say, “No, this is good enough,” I believe that too.

There is a negotiation that has to go on there where you are not just talking about what makes the best screenplay, but also what gets you close enough to the whole.

Now, the important thing to understand is everybody reacts differently to a screenplay. There are producers, and I call them just like — I think of them as just Nervous Nellies — who are trying to basically make the movie on the paper the way they see it. And suddenly you realize they are not actually producing at all. They are kind of shadow directing on paper, which is a fun game for them, and I understand that this is a very high stakes poker thing for them because they are not going to get paid if the movie doesn’t get made, whereas you will get paid if the movie sells.

But the truth is, that kind of picayune stuff gets blown out of the water the second somebody reads it and says, “I really like this. I see a whole bunch of different things I want to do with this.” And you realize, boy, you would have seen that five months ago. You would have seen that a year ago. And more to the point, I wouldn’t have ever stopped, looked at my screen and said, “I’m not really sure what I am doing anymore.”

If you get to that place where you feel lost or you are straying from your goal, or what you believe in, it’s done. Stop.

John: A lot of times what this hold up is is that there is some bigger decision maker they need to actually turn it into, and they don’t feel confident turning it into that decision maker. It could be the studio chief. It could be the head producer at the company. They are nervous to turn it in. And it may have actually nothing to do with your project. It may be their own insecurity about like how they are holding onto their job, or this other project which is going awry, or something that they know about that person’s personal life that makes it a really bad time for them to read it.

To a certain degree, you can give them some latitude there. If they say, “This is going to be a bad weekend to give it to him because of this reason,” trust that. But not every weekend can be a bad weekend. At some point they actually have to do their job. And people have to read the script and say what they are ready to do and what they are not going to do.

I always get nervous if people are unwilling to make a director’s list at all. That means they are not thinking about actually making the movie. They are only thinking about this stuff on the page.

Craig: Well, and this is a conversation that is useful to have at the very beginning of a relationship with a producer. Obviously they are interested in something, and the fact that they were attracted to it means other people will be attracted to it before a single thing has been changed, and a single asterisk is put on the page.

So it is important to say, “Okay, look. You have things that you feel need to be done for this to be ‘ready.’ Let’s have a discussion about what those things are right now. And let us memorialize this discussion, because I don’t want to enter into Vietnam. I really do want to make this script better.”

And if they have ideas and it is so important to listen with an open mind to anyone, if their ideas have great value and will make the script better, and are of the sort that you would think, “Oh god, I would hate to send the script out without addressing that suggestion.” Then do them. But, by laying the table at the start and saying this is what we are going to do, and that is what you feel is necessary, you won’t end up in this wandering mission creep, which is the worst feeling.

And now, I think, it has happened to me at least twice or three times where I can smell it coming from a mile away, and I just don’t go down that path.

John: Yeah, there are producers who I will not work with or for because I know that it is going to be that situation; or that you are going to have spent months on a project, then they will go into the room and they will have broken the whole thing down into cards again.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And there is nothing more dispiriting than that. Like, “No, no, you have a full screenplay; you don’t need to go back down to index cards again.”

Craig: Everybody’s anxiety needs to be respected. And everybody’s anxiety needs to be indulged to a point, but then if the process becomes about this other person’s anxiety, it’s just destructive and counterproductive. And they are supposed to be producers, not counter-producers, so best to avoid.

John: The one person who gets a bit of a pass is the director who has just now come onto a project. Because what I have realized as I have sat down with directors who are coming into something that I have been working on for six months, eight months, and they have been on it for six days, is they are figuring out how to make the movie. And they are figuring out what the movie it is to them. So you have to be patient and let them explore what the movie is. And sometimes they will be trying to change things that they shouldn’t be trying to change, but they are trying to figure out how they are actually going to make the movie. And they don’t really know how the movie works. And so it may be a process where you are like literally just sitting down and flipping a page, and flipping a page, and talking them through how this movie works so that they understand what it is that you did so that if they are going to do something different they understand what the ramifications of that is.

But, at a certain point if they are not going to direct the movie you have to get them off the movie so someone else can direct the movie. And some movies become saddled with a director who is attached to five different things, and that is not helping anybody either.

Craig: No. Then it’s just like having another producer. I mean, I love working with directors when I know we are making the movie. I do that with Todd Phillips. I just did with Seth Gordon. And I feel like, “Okay, now we are really progressing towards a start date.” Everybody has enormous interest on resolution as opposed to kind of a wandering process.

But I do know — you essentially pointed this out — that if I come in and I am asked to rewrite a script, a lot of times I have to absorb it and run it through my own head and spit it back out to do my job. There are going to be times when by the second draft I go, “You know what? The stuff that was before me was better than what I just did. But I needed to do it to get there.” And so I give the director the same latitude, because sometimes they will come around and say, “You know what? I get it now why you had it that way I just needed to arrive there naturally on my own so when the day came I understood what I was doing and I felt married to the material myself internally.”

Because we write a script, and in our minds we see everything. They read a script — it’s just words. And they are trying to build it fresh. So you have to let them build it.

John: You have to remember that as the screenwriter you are the only person who has already seen the movie.

Craig: Right.

John: One thing I will say if you are in a situation where you have had a director on board who has gone through multiple drafts, and you are replacing that director, and suddenly there is an opportunity to get a new director on board: Take a few days and make a “best of” draft, because probably the best version of the script is not the one that he left. It is some new version that incorporates the best of those ideas, and the best of what was there before. And I found often those “best of” drafts are really genuine progress, because it is all the stuff you learned with that director and all the stuff that was better before that director came on board.

Craig: Yeah. I happily haven’t faced that too frequently.

John: I’ve faced it too frequently. [laughs]

Craig: [laughs]

John: Next question. Clint asks, “I got notes back on a screenplay I wrote with a partner. One common criticism beyond ‘we are sick of zombies/zombies suck’ is that we introduce too many characters in the first two pages. The screenplay opens with a parade scene as a number of people march off to fight in the crusade. We were aware that naming so many people at the beginning might be an issue, but our rationale was that seeing it onscreen would be easier to follow, though reading it on page might be a little confusing.

“As the camera lingers for a few seconds on each person, if you were to think, ‘Okay, this person may be important later on.’ How would a more artful writer…” An artful writer.

Craig: Hmm.

John: “…handle such a scene?”

Craig: Hmm. How many characters are we talking about? Five? Ten?

John: He doesn’t say.

Craig: A little tricky. What would you do?

John: I would establish the parade, but I wouldn’t try to name the individual characters. And even if you know sort of who those people are who are going to be in the scene, for the first — just for the read — you cannot break those people out because the reader has limited buffers for holding character’s names, and holding character details. And you can’t shoot too many of us all at once.

You have to be very selective. And you have to be able to give enough meat to who that person is so that we can remember them. If you are introducing a character’s name as part of a parade, we are not going to be able to see them do anything that is going to help us remember who they are, or what their name is, or what was different about them than all of the other people who marching along in uniform.

So I say you have maybe two people you can single out, maybe three, but don’t try to do more than that.

Craig: Yeah. My suggestion is don’t introduce your characters in a parade scene. It seems like a really weird way to introduce characters. Introducing characters is such an important thing to do. The first time we see somebody tells us so much about the intention of the storyteller.

And to just see them walking along seems a little odd. Maybe if you wanted to zero in on one of them, you could do that. Sort of see 100 men marching in unison. All of them are alike, but the camera finds so-and-so. If I were directing I am not sure I would sort of introduce characters in that way. It almost seems sort of like an old TV movie style way of introducing people under credits or something like that. I just think it is a bad idea for introductions.

John: If you have like the one soldier who is trying to get his boot on and can’t get his boot on, and is having to race to catch up with the rest of the group, if you have the other soldier who like falls out of step with everybody else, or the… — Honestly, it’s the one who doesn’t fit in with everybody else is the one we are going to remember. And that’s a crucial thing, too.

Craig: Right.

John: If you were the kind of movie that had a voice over, then you might be able to land some specific details on individual people as we are panning across them. But just the camera slowing down and giving us a little bit of a linger on them is not going to help us that much, particularly if the guys, presumably if it is the crusade, the guys are going to kind of look the same anyway. So we are going to have a hard time knowing anything special about those people.

Craig: Yeah. The whole point of a parade is that it is a leveler. And one must presume that you are not going to have your cast of eight characters, or even if it is five characters, that they are going to be Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise. It’s going to be people that we might not now as actors, at which point we will just see guys.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Or girls. So, I think the problem is frankly the way you are introducing your characters is a problem.

John: Introduce your characters with some specific details, both things that are for the reader and things that are going to be for the audience. So, they are doing something, they are saying something, they are establishing themselves as being worthy of specific attention in this whole world.

You know, it’s a grocery store, and you have clerks and you have customers. Well, that’s great, but be specific about who this one person is and why we are seeing them at this particular moment versus any other point during that day.

Craig: Yeah. The whole point is that you are instructing the audience to notice something. Therefore it must be notable, especially when you are introducing a character, and that point of introduction has to be pregnant with specificity and intention. People just marching is not specific or intentional. So you have to really think about that.

John: Really the writer is creating the spotlight. If this were on a stage you would shine a direct spotlight on that person, and that would say that this person is important. This is who we are going to pay attention to right now.

You have to create in writing a spotlight that is going to shine on them for that moment, so you know out of all the people who live in Animal House, this is the one we are going to pay attention to right now.

Craig: Yeah. That’s why in ensemble movies you usually meet people sequentially, not at the same time. You meet somebody here, then you meet somebody here, then you meet somebody here. You see it in comedies all the time. Like the kind of the big institutional comedies that were around a lot in the ’80s, say like Police Academy, for instance.

John: Or Revenge of the Nerds.

Craig: Yeah. You would sort of get little vignettes where you would meet this person, learn something about them. Then you would go to a new place, meet them, learn something about them. And frankly, even though it seems hokey, in big ensemble dramas it usually works that way as well. It is just done somewhat more elegantly and with less goofiness.

But you don’t want to introduce people in a bland way, in a crowd. It’s weird.

John: And if for some reason you did need to establish that there was a crowd and they were in this crowd, you don’t have to single them out the first time they are in this crowd. Like let’s say you are at a concert, and everyone is at this concert; they are in the crowd of this concert. Just give us the crowd and then give us the individuals in a smaller situation, a smaller grouping, so that we can actually pay attention to them. Don’t try to introduce them as part of the giant…

Craig: Right.

John: Don’t introduce important characters in a wide shot.

Craig: This is a good question because it sort of goes to a simple truth. If something is hard to understand or follow on the page, it will likely be hard to understand and follow in the movie. It is not something you fix with formatting or tricks. It is something you actually fix with writing, if that makes sense.

John: It does. Third question. Jim writes, “My writing partner and I just did far better than we could have expected or hoped to at a script contest.” Well, congrats Jim.

Craig: Nice.

John: “We entered our first ever spec on a whim, just hoping for constructive criticism, but managed a place. We were shocked but ecstatic. The prize package included an email query blast that along with our own queries landed us some reads that have also pleasantly surprised us. That’s the good news.

“The less good news is we seem to be getting more interest from production companies than we are from management entities or agents. And when the production companies find out that we don’t have representation, the general response is, ‘We are interested, but we will need you to submit something through the proper channels for legal reason.’ And while I understand that completely, it’s still immeasurably frustrating.

“We are jammed in the middle of a Catch 22.” Eh, and a mixed metaphor. [laughs]

Craig: [laughs]

John: “Until we find reps, we are human risks, and our specs are radioactive from a legal standpoint. I have no idea what we are supposed to do now.”

Craig: I mean, maybe I am just naïve, but if the production companies are interested in the material, and have already looked at some amount of it that makes them interested, wouldn’t the natural response to their objection be, “Great. Do you work with managers or agents that you like, that you are fond of, that you could make an introduction so that we can then submit it to you so you can benefit from the work we have done?”

John: So you are suggesting that Jim write back to the production company…

Craig: Yeah. Great.

John: Great. I hope that would work. I can already hear a lot of listeners saying, “That doesn’t actually work. They won’t actually do that.”

Craig: If it doesn’t work, and they literally won’t take the time to email a manager or producer or agent and say, “Listen, we are interested in this script where we can’t accept it. Would you be interested in hip-pocketing these people or taking a look at it,” then really they are not interested. If you want to read something, if you are interested in material and you are not willing to do that, you are not really interested and this is a polite rejection.

John: It’s very possible that a lot of what we are seeing here is a polite rejection. I would say that even — let’s back up and say the reason why people have the blanket policy, like “we don’t accept submissions from unrepresented writers” is because they are worried about crazy people suing them, or crazy people just becoming a nightmare problem.

Craig: Right.

John: And that is kind of fair and reasonable. But what will sometimes happen is the company itself won’t accept the stuff, but if there is a junior exec at that company who really wants to read something, he will just ask for it on his own and he will read it on his own. And then he will look like a hero if he finds something that’s great.

So, I would say that’s a possibility as well. The other thing I think is sort of new in this new age is if you have a great script that has won this attention, I would put the first 30 pages up online so people can read it. And that is sort of a zero-risk way for someone to just take a look through something. And if they don’t like it, they don’t like it. If they want to read more, they will ask for more, and that’s great, too.

Famously, I think Diablo Cody was found in that kind of way. She was found through her online writing.

Craig: Yeah.

John: There’s other ways more so than ever that you can get that to happen.

Craig: Yes. The famous Robotard 8000 did that as well. And that was in fact…

John: Tell us more about the Robotard, because I don’t even know the full back story on Robotard.

Craig: The Robotard 8000 is either a dangerous psychotic robot that writes some of the most disturbing screenplay material known to man, or is two gentlemen [laughs] who write under the pseudonym the “Robotard 8000,” and who are working screenwriters and work both in features and in television.

They showed me this script they wrote called Balls Out and I thought it was hysterical, and smart, and inspired, and absolutely unproduceable and unpurchaseable for a thousand reasons. And I told them, “Put it online.” And they said, “Why would we put it online? Because then people can steal it, and they will…”

I’m like, “It’s never going to get made. It doesn’t matter. You put it online because it is going to get noticed and you will be hired. No one is going to make this movie anyway.” [laughs]

And I feel, by the way, it’s funny — I feel that way about most specs because of the way Hollywood works right now. They are so disinclined to make original material, particularly the sort of original material that a lot of people do spec. But what they are always looking for are writers who can write the stuff they want to produce. So specs almost become like a sample industry as opposed to what it used to be in the ’80s and ’90s which was a selling industry.

So, you are absolutely right. You put the 30 pages up. And I know everyone is going to say, “What if my idea is stolen?!” which is the… — If you say, “What if my idea is stolen?” just understand you might as well say, “I’m an amateur.” That is the mating cry of the amateur. “What if my idea is stolen?”

Ideas aren’t ownable anyway. They are not property. It doesn’t matter. Forget about it. So, put your 30 pages up. It is the writing that matters. It’s your expression. It’s your voice, it’s not the idea.

If it is a great idea, hopefully they will buy it anyway. But, I love that idea of putting 30 pages up, or the whole damn thing, by the way.

John: Or the whole damn thing, honestly. There’s very little cost to it. And that way… — These people have these rules about not accepting unsolicited material because they just don’t want that stuff showing up in their mailbox, and then all the follow-up calls, and all the other craziness.

If it is something where it is just a link, they can click on it. They can not click on it. Nobody really knows if they clicked on it. They can read ten pages while they are on a boring conference call. And if they like it, well they will read the whole thing. Or if it is only 30 pages that you are putting up online, they will ask for the whole thing, and that’s great.

Craig: Yeah. And just, you know what, register it with the US Copyright Office. When you put it online, you are protected. It’s yours. You still have the copyright. Anyone can steal your “idea” because it is not stealing. It’s not yours. Ideas are not possessable. But no one can steal your unique expression in fixed form.

So, you are protected from everybody. So put it out of your mind and get your career going.

John: Back when Craig and I were starting, scripts were still a physical thing. It was still 120 pages, and it was actually a significant expense to make a copy of a script. Either you were working some place where you could use their Xerox machine, or there was one place that was on San Vicente and Pico that had really cheap script copying.

So you would borrow somebody’s script, and then you would make a copy and then give it back to them.

Craig: I remember that.

John: It was still a very physical kind of thing. And there was that paranoia of like, oh, scripts were kind of a currency, “I will trade you this, I will trade you that,” because actually it had some literal value because you actually had to spend some money to make them.

And there was always that question of: how much do you let other people see your stuff, or not see your stuff? Well, you don’t show stuff that is not ready to be seen by people. If it is really just, you know, if it is something you are still working on, that’s great. But at a certain point you just have to give up and give it to the world and hope it lands on the right desks.

And at the best points of my career I had no idea who was actually reading my stuff. And someone said, “Oh, I read that thing.” And I had no idea that that thing was circulating, but, “Good, I’m glad you enjoyed that thing.”

Craig: Yeah.

John: And now that it is all digital that’s even easier. And if I were in these people’s position, I would have taken those first things I wrote and put them up and let people see them if they wanted to see them.

Craig: Absolutely. That’s great advice. And by the way, what was going on with the Spanish in the beginning. Was there really a problem? Did we really have the Spanish switched on? I was talking in English. I don’t know what you were doing.

John: No, I just found a great intro that happened to be in Spanish for this podcast. And so I figured, oh, that’s going to be in Spanish, so let’s just start the podcast in Spanish.

Craig: I like it. By the way…

John: I may cut this explanation out, so just to not spoil the joke.

Craig: Oh, yes, but the joke has already happened so I’m okay.

John: The joke’s already happened.

Craig: I believe in like the Penn & Teller school of magic. Do a trick, ooh, aah, and then explain it because it’s fun.

John: Yes, this trick is done with wires.

Craig: Ah, wires. And surely we have some Spanish speaking podcast listeners among the…how many people listening to this, John?

John: I think it was half a million. No, it wasn’t half a million.

Craig: But it was close.

John: It was a big number.

Craig: Are we allowed to say it?

John: I don’t know that we should say it. I think we are allowed to say it. There’s no rules.

Craig: It’s just weird if we say it?

John: I think it’s just weird if we say it. Because to me, right now, we can go, “Wow, that’s a huge number.”

Craig: Huge.

John: But then someone is going to say, “Well, the Nerdist podcast has five times that, or 50 times the listenership.”

Craig: This doesn’t make me feel bad. I’m amazed that anybody listens to this. [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Craig: So, if the number is bigger than 10 people, I’m just so impressed.

John: Yeah. I’m still pretending that my mom doesn’t listen to it, but I think she probably does.

Craig: Your mom listens to it?

John: Yeah, because it is on the website, so she doesn’t need any special software or anything to listen to it.

Craig: Hey, I have a question then about your mom.

John: Mm-hmm?

Craig: I’ve noticed, because obviously I want your mom to listen to a clean podcast, and I did check finally the iTunes listing of our podcast. Some of them are listed “clean” but a bunch aren’t. But I don’t think we are not clean.

John: So, it turns out the clean or not clean thing is a tick box we set when we are submitting the actual episode. They don’t check themselves. And so sometimes Stuart forgets to check it. So, again, it’s a Stuart problem.

Craig: Oh Stuart!

John: So I feel, and this is a valid thing to discuss: You and I decided that we were going to be a clean podcast, and that we would refrain from using the big words.

Craig: Right.

John: Just because we didn’t need them.

Craig: And because we are both Mormons.

John: Well that secretly, too. That’s a big factor.

Craig: Not a secret anymore.

John: Also, I have noticed that most podcasts, most technology podcasts end up talking about cars at some point. So I just bought a new car, so maybe close on a car topic. We just bought the Nissan Leaf. It’s great.

Craig: I have on pre-order the Tesla Model S.

John: Well this is going to be a great conversation because Tesla Model S people seem to love it as an idea. Here’s the reason why I am concerned about the Tesla.

Craig: Tell me.

John: That the company could go bankrupt in five years and then how are you going to check the car?

Craig: You can’t. That is an acknowledged roll of the dice. But, the one nice thing about Tesla compared to some of the other smaller independent electric companies like Fisker for instance, is that Tesla — and they don’t pay me, I swear — but Tesla sells their battery technology to Toyota, and I think maybe to Mercedes. So they actually have a revenue stream apart from the manufacture of their cars.

You’re right. I don’t even know if I am ever going to get this car. I put a $5,000 deposit down on it, and it is actually technically refundable unless the company goes belly up. But, I don’t know if I’ll ever get the car. I’m hoping I get the car. It seems like I will get the car.

And then, yes, I don’t know if the company will be around to fix it in five years. And it could just be a brick. But, I’m super excited about it anyway. I just feel that it is the only all-electric car I have looked at where I thought, “I like the way that car looks and I like the functionality they built into it.” It’s pretty amazing.

John: That’s great. I test drove the Leaf for a week before I went to New York for a month, and then it made no sense to buy the car right before going to New York. But now that I’m back, it’s good.

And you have to, at this point, plan a family — you have to have a family strategy for which car is going to be electric-only and which car can go a longer distance, which is basically the zombie apocalypse problem. What if you need to drive further than 100 miles from your house? You want a car that can go the distance.

Craig: Well, maybe you should get a Tesla Model S, because the Tesla Model S, the long extension model, goes 300 miles.

John: That’s a very long way.

Craig: 300 miles. Now, that’s probably 300 under optimal conditions, so let’s just knock it down and say it’s 250. I never drive 250 miles in a day. I mean, the only time I have ever done anything like that in years has been to go to Vegas, but I wouldn’t — all right, fine, I don’t take that car to Vegas. Although they actually do have a charging station, I think, in Barstow. So maybe I could do it.

John: Yeah. My range is 70 miles is optimal.

Craig: 70. Pah!

John: Which I very, very, very rarely would go further than. But on trips to LEGOLAND, that would be too far. So you have to have a car that can go to LEGOLAND.

Craig: That’s right.

John: That’s as far as we will ever go.

Craig: Yeah. I think that for the typical LA local driver, the Nissan Leaf makes a lot of sense. I just don’t like the way it looks.

John: I love the way it looks. It’s like a bizarre little bug.

Craig: Yeah, no, not for me. But that Model S…

Dude, put a link on.

John: I will put a link to both cars on so you can see.

Craig: So beautiful. It’s just really a beautiful looking car. I am not a paid promoter.

John: But you are willing to become a paid promoter if they were to offer you a bump up in the line?

Craig: I’m not saying no. [laughs]

John: All right, thank you, Craig.

Craig: Thank you, John.

John: Have a good week. 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: I am Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Scriptnotes. This is a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

Craig: I’m good. How are you doing, John?

John: I’m doing really well. It’s a beautiful spring day in Los Angeles.

Craig: It’s a beautiful spring day here. Wherever Joe Eszterhas is it’s probably not such a great spot to be. [laughs]

John: Oh, okay, so we’ve got to link to this. This is crazy.

Craig: Crazy-balls!

John: So the back story on this, Joe Eszterhas is/was, really kind of put him in the past tense, he was a very prominent screenwriter for a period of time. He wrote things like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. Movies I quite enjoy actually, Fatal Attraction especially. And was known for selling big spec scripts and being like a big oversized personality and a sort of a blowhard. Is that fair to say?

Craig: Yeah. He was, when you and I broke into the business, Joe Eszterhas was the superstar screenwriter. He was kind of the most famous screenwriter I would say.

John: He’s the only screenwriter that a person of popular culture might have heard of who was not famous for being a director, or famous for being an actor as well.

Craig: Right.

John: He also wrote Showgirls, which is just a monumental achievement.

Craig: Heh.

John: Showgirls, which was so great that even as a spec script, a friend of mine got it and we held a staged reading of Showgirls — like before it was even in production, because it was just so amazing.

Craig: It’s pretty spectacular. But at the top, I mean, he did write some…Jagged Edge, I think, was Joe Eszterhas.

John: Oh, Jagged Edge, come on. Jagged Edge is great.

Craig: Yeah. There was a time when Joe Eszterhas was writing really good, interesting thrillers. And then they started sort of diving more towards like Sliver, and then suddenly… — Well, he very famously wrote a movie called, I think it was Burn Hollywood Burn, about a director who takes his name off a movie that then became called An Alan Smithee Film. And then the actual director took his name off the movie, so it was An Alan Smithee Film actually directed by Alan Smithee.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It was kind of a crazy story. And sort of dropped off the face of the planet, and left town, and left the business.

John: I think he moved up north, and then he moved out of the state, and he did other stuff. And that’s fine. People’s careers go through ups and downs and flows, and whatever.

So, the interesting new development was that a year ago, or more than a year ago, he signed on to write a movie for Mel Gibson about a famous historical event, the Maccabees. Am I pronouncing it right?

Craig: You are. The Maccabees. Yes.

John: Which was a famous Jewish event of the — I’m going to completely mess up what it actually was about, because I don’t really know what it’s about.

Craig: The Maccabees were, it is sort of connected to the Hanukkah story which is a fairly minor story in the Jewish tradition, but the reason Jewish people like to talk about the Maccabees is because they were warriors, and we don’t have many of those. So, it’s like famous Jewish sports legends and famous Jewish soldiers, but the Maccabees were tough guys and were Jewish warriors. It was sort of like a Jewish Braveheart king of story. So it would make sense that Mel Gibson would take that on.

And, obviously, Mel has had some issues [laughs] where he had said some anti-Semitic things, and some racist things, and some homophobic things, and, you know, pick ’em.

John: So it was an interesting combination of…

Craig: Yes.

John: …screenwriter and director-actor. And you could sort of anticipate that things would not go well. Either it was going to be brilliant, and it was going to be the coming back of both of these talents, or it was going to end in tears.

And it ended in tears. It ended in like angry accusations…

Craig: Super angry.

John: And long letters. And so we will link to the letters that, I think, The Wrap published yesterday…

Craig: Yeah.

John: …about what actually transpired. And so Joe Eszterhas wrote this long letter to Mel Gibson or his production company saying, “These are all the ways you did me wrong. And these were all the crazy incidents that happened while I was writing this script for you.”

And Mel Gibson replied back in a shorter way, in a calmer way, saying, “Well, you fabricated most of these. And the script was terrible. And we would never make that movie.”

Craig: Here’s my question. I mean, people will read this and see for themselves, but just from a screenwriter point of view, what’s the upside for Joe Eszterhas? I don’t get it. I mean, here are it seems like the facts that both Joe Eszterhas and Mel Gibson agree on: Joe Eszterhas went off, wrote a script, turned it in, and no one liked it at all.

So, what’s the upside? I mean, he writes this letter, and it is fascinating that it includes things that you would expect from a first-time writer, not from somebody of Joe Eszterhas’ stature or former stature. Things like, “Well I should it to my friends and they loved it.” What?! [laughs] Really dude?! I mean, come on.

John: “They all told me it was a movie that had to be made.”

Craig: Right. I mean, are you really that delusional? You have now put yourself in the same category as the weirdo who is rejected on American Idol and insists that their friends and their moms say that they sing beautifully. I mean, come one. Listen, there’s no shame in whiffing.

I mean, and also, in addition to the alleged whiff, and we don’t know; maybe it’s a great script. Who knows? But in addition to the alleged whiff, he apparently turned in the script like two years later, something like that, which is obviously a no-no. I mean, I like at these guys where it says things like, “Well you went away for 15 months,” according to Mel Gibson, “you went away for 15 months, you came back, and you didn’t have a script written.”

And I think, 15 months? For my entire career, it’s always been an argument to get to ten weeks. They want it in six weeks, I end up doing it in eight weeks. Where are these people that get 15 months? Have you ever gotten 15 months to write a script?

John: No. I have taken 15 months, but that was a weird situation, sort of like the same studio put other work in front of it. Like Big Fish took me two years, but they kept putting stuff in front of it, so I couldn’t really get started on it.

Craig: Then Big Fish didn’t take you two years.

John: No.

Craig: It took you the time it took you, and then they made you work on other things. And that’s different. But each of those things took an appropriate amount of time and, listen, people work at different paces. I get that. And I don’t think of myself as fast or slow. I’m probably very average. But, 15 months is kind of astonishing.

And then to show up, and to also.. — If I were on month nine and I didn’t have anything yet, I would probably call someone and say, “I’m going to need a little extra time.” I’m not going to show up after a year and a half or whatever and go, “Uh, sorry, I don’t have it…”

John: And also to look at it, like Joe Eszterhas, he clearly is fairly prolific because he was able to write this, I don’t know, it was a 12-page letter.

Craig: Right.

John: And by the way, the 12 most entertaining pages I have read in a very long time. I want to option the letter and make the movie of the events that supposedly transpired. I don’t necessarily believe these events actually happened, but if they did happen, it’s crazy.

Craig: I’m with you, by the way. Look, you and I are both members of groups, identity groups, that Mel Gibson has publicly besmirched. And yet I read this and I think: There is no, absolutely no way that Mel Gibson called Jews “Oven Dodgers.” I don’t buy it for a second. I just don’t believe it. Why would he do…I mean, I understand why somebody would do that initially, but if you have already been caught and humiliated publicly in this huge horrifying way, would you really keep doing that?

Something doesn’t add up.

John: Yeah. What also doesn’t add up is that basically every paragraph… — The two paragraphs will describe some horrible incident that took place. And then the next paragraph starts with like, “But then I came to visit you in Malibu and we stayed the night there.

Craig: Right! [laughs]

John: And so like, what, you are the abused wife that keeps coming back to the husband?

Craig: And that was Mel Gibson’s point. “If I really were the person that you purport me to be, why were you on this project for two years? Why didn’t you just immediately leave?” I mean, and that is a great point. I wouldn’t sit in a room with somebody who called Jews “Oven Dodgers.” [laughs]

By the way, “Oven Dodger,” I have to say as a collector of racist slurs, that’s a new one on me. It doesn’t even really make sense.

John: It doesn’t make sense.

Craig: Yeah. “Oven Magnets” is what I would call Jews.

John: [laughs]

Craig: I mean, “Oven Dodgers?” Which oven did we dodge? I think we hit them all.

John: Didn’t Eszterhas… — Well he’s not old enough to have gone through the Holocaust. Or maybe his family did.

Craig: Well, he himself is Christian. I think the deal is maybe that his wife is Jewish and he got really into Judaism or something, which is nice, but…

John: Fair and lovely.

Craig: Yeah, but… — And listen, everyone has a right to be offended by hateful speech. You don’t have to be a member of the particular group that is being slurred, but “Oven Dodgers,” I’m just questioning the logic of the slur, [laughs] because as far as I could tell, Jews didn’t miss many ovens from 1941 to 1945.

John: The other thing which I adored about this letter is that it is actually clearly typed in like Word and then just printed on a normal printer. And, like, who prints letters anymore? So he actually had to write this thing, print it, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and send it to somebody. Because what was published wasn’t a fax; it was a scan of an actual real thing.

Craig: I think you have uncovered yet one more piece of evidence that Joe Eszterhas is stuck in the ’90s. But, I mean…

John: I was reading this last night and thinking, “When was the last time I physically wrote a letter, like typed up a letter in word, and printed it and mailed it?” You just don’t do that anymore.

Craig: Only if a governmental agency requires it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It is bizarre. But I guess underneath all of the drama and stupidity of it all, I’m just sort of questioning the screenwriter sense of it. I just don’t get…What were you hoping to achieve with this letter? That he would read it and go, “Oh, your friends love it? Hmm, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Warner Brothers is wrong. Maybe this is a great script and I just didn’t realize. And I’m going to shoot it.”

What’s the strategy? I don’t get it.

John: I don’t get it either.

Craig: No.

John: It does also point out what we frequently talk about on the program, that screenwriting is the craft of pushing words around on the papers, and that is a crucial part of it. But a lot of career screenwriting is the ability to get along with other people. And this seems like a classic example of two people who could not possibly get along with each other. Trying and failing to get along with each other. And that is the doom. That’s where it goes awry; it’s the combination of ingredients.

Craig: Well, they have worked together before, I think, right?

John: Did they? I don’t remember.

Craig: In the back of my head I seem to think that they had worked together on something. In fact, in a weird way I thought, okay, I understand if Mel Gibson feels like, “Alright. I’m kind of a persona non grata right now in Hollywood because of the things I said, and maybe what I should do is find somebody I had a relationship with that preexisted all of this brouhaha, because it is a little weird for me to sit in a room with a new person who brings the baggage of all these events, and doesn’t have any pretext. So maybe I will go find Joe Eszterhas.”

I mean, in theory it’s an interesting idea, but it’s kind of… — The whole thing is ugly.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And makes me sympathetic to Mel Gibson.

John: Yeah. And it is a weird upshot of it all is that by releasing a short statement saying, “That’s crazy, Joe,” he actually seems like the more sane person.

Craig: He is the more sane person. [laughs] There’s no question.

John: So, you should work with people who are visibly more crazy than you are, and therefore you will seem like, “Oh, he’s reasonable at least.” It’s actually very much a Survivor strategy; you keep around the people who are like so off the wall nuts that no one is ever going to vote for them, and therefore you look better by comparison.

Craig: So, it’s sort of the “stand next to the bigger girl to look thin.” It’s the mean girls’ strategy.

John: Absolutely. So, let’s follow up a little bit on Amazon because on our last podcast we spoke about the new Amazon deal which is essentially they have revamped how Amazon Studios is going to be working for their screenwriting — it’s much less of a competition than it used to be before. But basically Amazon Studios is going to try to make movies, and they are now going to be — they cut a deal with the WGA so that WGA writers can be employed by Amazon.

Craig: Yes.

John: And in talking with other screenwriters in follow up after we had our podcast, some people have come back and said, “Well, I think you are overstating what a success this is, or even if it is a success,” because other studios have done similar kinds of things, where like Dimension, for example, which is a division of Miramax, or whoever owns Dimension now.

Craig: Weinstein Company.

John: Yeah, bought and sold many times. They classically have a non-WGA signatory branch.

Craig: All studios do.

John: All studios do. So basically it is a way for them to buy things outside of WGA auspices when they have the opportunity to.

Craig: Well, kind of. The deal is that when studios, when entities sign these agreements they are essentially saying, “We acknowledge that if somebody is going to do the work — if we are going to employ somebody to do the work of a screenwriter, if they are a professional screenwriter then we have to it through the WGA.”

There is this weird thing about being a professional. And how you define professional — it’s in the MBA. There is some actual definition. So, Warner Brothers can hire somebody non-union to write a script if they are not a “professional” screenwriter. Now, in practice, that rarely happens. For instance, when I wrote my first screenplay, I had to join the Guild. It’s actually a fuzzy thing. I should really ask them and figure out how this all works, like what the deal is with that.

John: What I think the Amazon deal, and sort of the blowback about what the deal actually encompasses, and who gets covered and who doesn’t get covered, it comes down to from my point of view the difference between literary material and professional screenwriting. And Amazon Studios, as it was classically set up was really designed to just filter and find literary material. So, it wasn’t so much set up for, like, “We are going to employ these writers to do this work.” It was, “If someone wrote a great screenplay, we could find that great screenplay. And we are going to bypass the whole system by finding these great screenplays that no one else has found.”

That didn’t really work out very well for them. So now they may have some scripts that are kind of good ideas, or kind of interesting, but they actually need to do the work of giving those scripts to a place where they could shoot them. And that is going to involve professional writing. And that professional writing is now going to be largely covered by the WGA.

Craig: It seems like it, yeah. But I think that there is a reasonable question to ask; for people who are new, who are not professional screenwriters, who have written a screenplay in their home in Wichita, if they send it to Amazon, my understanding is that if Amazon buys it, it would be a WGA deal?

John: Yeah. I haven’t seen confirmation on that. So, I think it is going to be interesting to figure out how that is actually going to work in practice. If it is a spec script that somebody wrote who is not WGA covered, Amazon buys it, is that the kind of thing that is going to kick that person into the Guild?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be, because Amazon could theoretically be buying it through their non-signatory arm, but at the moment that they try to employ a WGA writer on it, that script becomes a WGA property. A WGA-covered property.

Craig: Yes.

John: That is not necessarily going to pull that original writer in.

Craig: Right. That is the deal. It’s like, okay, the first screenplay I ever wrote, I wasn’t a professional screenwriter. I was a guy. But the studio that bought it, in that case Disney, understood that at some point they might want a WGA writer writing on it, therefore they had to buy it under the WGA deal. Therefore, I had to join the Guild.

And I suppose that that is sort of the idea at Amazon. It’s like, you can hire a guy to write the script, but if you ever want to hire a WGA writer to rewrite it, you need to do the whole thing under the Guild. I think.

John: We’ll see how it works out.

Craig: We’ll dig into this and report back.

John: So, our first question of the day actually is a follow up on this. “Craig’s comment during the discussion on the new Amazon Studio deal was just utterly stupid.”

Craig: Hm.

John: And this is from Jock. Jock can say you are utterly stupid.

Craig: I agree.

John: Should I cut that part out?

Craig: No.

John: We’ll just leave that there.

Craig: John, I’m so used to it. [laughs] By the way, utterly stupid is one of the most mild things anyone on the Internet has said about me. So, I haven’t even been touched…

John: That’s fair. Stupid? Fine.

Craig: What’s his name?

John: Jock.

Craig: Jock.

John: I think that’s his real name. This really is his first name.

Craig: Not a chance. Jock? His parents didn’t name him Jock.

John: Yeah, but maybe he goes by Jock. I think your name is whatever you choose to call yourself.

Craig: That’s utterly stupid. [laughs]

John: Thank you for pointing that out, my belief in self-naming rights. [laughs] I’m like a stadium and I choose to name myself.

Craig: That’s right.

John: “Of course there is something between being a full-on professional and nothing.” So he is criticizing your point about either you are professional screenwriter or you are not.

Craig: Oh, okay.

John: “In the same way that lots of people have one novel in them and no more, either because they are out of ideas, or because the process no longer interests them after all that, lots of people have one screenplay in them. The number one should not be taken literally. Maybe it’s two, maybe it’s four. Regardless, it is a smallish number. Maybe they have exactly no interest in dealing with the insane Byzantine world of the Hollywood system? You two live…” “you two” being you and me.

Craig: Oh.

John: “…live inside a world in which the studio system makes sense, where people are either screenwriters, or they aren’t. But the simple truth is, that isn’t how the world really works. It’s just how your world works.”

Craig: Oh! It’s not? [laughs] Oh my god. My mind is blown. Keep going.

John: That’s the end of the edited question.

Craig: Oh, that’s it? That’s not how the world works. Dot. Dot. Dot. It’s like a Flash Gordon episode. Will he survive?

John: [laughs] Craig just made a TV reference, so I think people have to finish their drink.

Craig: Well, but it’s a TV reference from 1952.

John: I thought you were referring to the new TV Flash Gordon.

Craig: No. No, no, no. God no. I didn’t even know there was one. [laughs]. Is there really one?

John: Yeah, Flash Gordon. David Goyer.

Craig: No, not Flash Forward. Flash Gordon.

John: Oh, Flash Gordon. Yeah.

Craig: See, Flash Gordon, my dad would go to the movies in the ’50s, and in front of movies — we will get to Jock’s moronic comment in a second. I promise. But he would go to movies, and before the movie they would show a serial, and it was usually a Flash Gordon. And it always ended in a cliffhanger. So it was like a 10-minute short and he was kid, and he believed everything he saw, of course, he was really into it. And he said they would always do this thing where like two guards would lead Flash Gordon down this cave/tunnel/hallway into this big room with a lava pit. And they would take him and throw him. And he would be mid-air, falling into the lava, and then they would freeze.

And then the announcer would say, “How will Flash get out of this? Come back to the movie theater next week to find out.” Such a great cliffhanger. And then he would go back the next week excited to see how could Flash Gordon possibly escape from this. He is literally falling into lava.

And they would start up, except in starting up with him hovering over the lava, he would be walking down the hallway again, and this time they wouldn’t throw him in; he would beat them up and escape. [laughs] It was such a rip-off!

John: Such wonderful cheating. It’s sort of also like comic book covers where they show some scene that is supposedly from the story but has nothing really to do with the story.

Craig: Exactly. It’s just a total lie. But it’s a false cliffhanger. And in this case, I think Jock has provided us with a false cliffhanger.

“That’s not the way the world works.” But he is not going to tell us how the world works, presumably because he doesn’t know either. I don’t know what he is talking about. Look, you can have one script and you can have 1,000 scripts in you. I’m not talking about how many scripts you have. I’m talking about this simple question. Are you a professional screenwriter or not?

The word professional means it is your job, it’s your profession. It’s what you do to make a living. Either you is or you isn’t. It’s not that hard. I mean, I don’t get it. It’s like, if you write a screenplay, one screenplay, and you sell it, then yes, you are a professional screenwriter. If you never write a screenplay again, you have ceased to be a professional screenwriter.

It’s not like there is this magical thing that happens. It’s a little bit like Schrodinger’s cat. I mean, at some point you are kind of both, I guess, in a weird way. But there is no such thing as a half a screenwriter, or a hobbyist screenwriter. You are or you are not. That’s that.

John: I would say Jock is arguing that there is such a thing as a hobbyist screenwriter, as a person who loves to write screenplays, and wants to sell screenplays but doesn’t want to become a professional screenwriter.

Craig: That’s nonsense. [laughs]. That’s crazy.

John: That can be nonsense, but it doesn’t mean that Jock isn’t that person who is doing that.

Craig: But Jock is wasting his time, because why would you write screenplays to not sell or be employed as a screenwriter? I mean, if you are literally writing… — Screenplays are designed to be turned into movies. We are not talking about novels. You can write novels as a “hobbyist” because the point is that a novel should be read. And novels aren’t defined by any other process. You read them.

Same thing with short stories. I’m a short story hobbyist. I get that. I don’t sell my short stories. I would never try to sell my short stories. But I put one on the Internet because I thought it would be interesting for people to read. And then some of them did.

But screenplays are not to be read. They are to be turned into movies. They can’t be turned into movies if they are not bought and sold. [laughs] It’s a simple thing. I mean, is this guy for real?

John: I wonder if there is such a thing as like a hobbyist architect who like…

Craig: Right?! Exactly.

John: You draw…you build these amazing blueprints for things that you will never actually build. I’m sure there are those people.

Craig: But they are not architects. They are not.

John: They are not. They are pretend designers.

Craig: The building is the evidence of architecture. The plans are not the evidence of architecture. It’s…I am beside myself. And I’m not beside myself because he said I was “utterly stupid,” or my comment was “utterly stupid,” because I have been utterly stupid at times. I’m upset because when people say things like this, I think we are wasting our time. [laughs] That’s what I think.

How do we…that is an impossibly thick amount of granite to push through. I don’t know what to do.

John: And see I have been the nice guy who has agreed to speak sometimes to like a small town screenwriting society, and so you go in and you visit these people. And they are so nice. And they just love movies and they are working on their scripts. But it’s clear that many of them have no intention of every actually trying to sell the things, or how they would sell the things. They just love to write screenplays.

And I guess it’s fine. I guess if you are enjoying it, it’s like, if it is their form of poetry I don’t want to judge them in a negative way. But, it’s not…I don’t know. It’s not really screenwriting.

Craig: Well, we can say this for sure. If you truly want to just write screenplays for yourself for personal fulfillment for a sense of expression or achievement, I have no problem with that whatsoever. And I don’t judge you. However, you are not a professional screenwriter.

So, the whole point of his premise is that there is something in between professional and non-professional. And he is wrong. He is just a non-professional screenwriter. [laughs]

I think that there is this other thing of like, “Well you guys are from the studio system and we’re not; we have these other things that we are doing, like I’m writing screenplays for YouTube or something like that.” And then my feeling is, okay, well then if you are writing screenplays and making them into movies on YouTube, I guess in a sense you are a professional screenwriter. You are kind of, I guess. I mean, you are…are you? I don’t know. What the hell? Yeah.

John: Here’s what I…I think professional versus non-professional, that’s a fairly clear binary thing. Are you getting paid for it or not getting paid for it?

Craig: John, that’s utterly stupid. [laughs]

John: That’s one of the delimiting factors. And I have a whole other rant about professionalism and I feel like professionalism kind of really isn’t about being paid for it. Professionalism is about doing your best work as if you were getting paid for it; as if people are — people are going to judge you on your professionalism regardless of whether you are getting paid for it. So, professional is sort of a weird, loaded term that way.

And, yes, there are all sorts of new kinds of writing-based filmed entertainment things you could be doing. But if what we are talking about is you write 120-page screenplays and you do not attempt to sell them, or that is not your goal or aim at writing a 120-page screenplay, that’s just kind of weird, and that’s not really what we are talking about.

And so, the longer parts of what I edited out of Jock’s questions was he had been defending the original Amazon Studios deal saying it was a way in for us people who are outside of the system. And it’s like, well, I think it was a really horrible way for people outside of the system, and this is a slightly better way for people outside of the system. But, you shouldn’t be submitting it to this thing if you have no desire to ever be in the system, because it is meant to be another way into the process of making actual feature films.

Craig: It’s basically, and I don’t mean to get personal here, but it is a loser attitude to say, “I can’t get into the system, therefore I am going to celebrate this other thing that is a way in that has nothing to do with the system.” I wasn’t in the system. You weren’t in the system. Neither of us were born in Hollywood. Our parents didn’t do this. We wrote and then we got in the “system.”

More to the point, I don’t even like that terminology because it implies that there is some building we walked into that is bigger than us. We are the system. You and I are the screenwriting system. They go to us and say, “We need screenplays.” You know what I mean?

I feel like this guy has this kind of… — It’s this prevalent, “I can’t make it. I’m never going to make it. So how dare you people who have made it assail something that affords me a chance to make it.” It’s not making it. What they have afforded you isn’t making it. It’s a rip. Or it was a rip. And that is so important. There’s that great moment…

There’s this movie, The Late Shift, that was about the late night wars between Letterman and Leno. And there was this point where they had decided that Jay Leno would get The Tonight Show after Johnny Carson retired, and Letterman was just beside himself because he felt like it should have gone to him. And Leno is on the air, and it is not going well, and NBC comes back to Letterman quietly and says, “Hey, we screwed up. You want it?”

And he calls, I think it is Tom Lassally who was Johnny Carson’s guy.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And he says, “Should I do it?” And Tom Lassally says, “Don’t you get it? They are not offering you The Late Show? They are offering you The Late Show with Jay Leno. It’s not the same. It’s damaged goods.”

And that’s the point. They are not offering you a way in. A way into what?

John: This is a great segue to what I what to main topic for today which is that idea of breaking in. There is this idea out there that, and we use the term, like, “How did you break into Hollywood?” And the break-in, I think that is just completely the wrong term for what it really is.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Because it implies that there is some sort of like great heist movie that is going to be carried out. Like we have to break into the studio, and once you are on the inside then everything is different. And it’s not that way at all. And I wonder if the breaking in idea came from the fact that the actual studios sort of look like, they are little fortresses in the sense that they have walls all around them. And you are either inside of the studio or you are outside the studio.

But, in actual practice it is not like that at all. And as I have had other screenwriters write about on the blog about their first experiences, everyone is different, but the commonalities are no one ever talks about having made it. There is never that sense of like, “Now I’m inside. Now I’m really working.”

It’s like suddenly you are getting paid to write some stuff, but it is all blurry and nebulous. And there is not one moment that you are in and one moment that you are out. Joe Eszterhas didn’t realize he had fallen out of the system.

Craig: Right.

John: Just, he did. People stopped calling him.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So I think we may have already sort of talked about our first how we got started, but it may be worth recapping here just as a sense of how you get your first job, what your first job is like.

Craig: Well everybody’s story is different. I have never met any two screenwriters that had the same “how I got my first job story.” So, anytime people ask, “Well how did you break in?” I always say, “It’s kind of irrelevant to you. I will tell you if you are interested.” But the truth is everybody has a different way in. And, by the way, I totally agree with you that the language is a trap, because I will say this: You get your first job, and you start writing, if you aren’t immediately worrying about the next one, you’re nuts.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Because all that is really happening, there is no on/off switch for in or out, right? There is you are being paid to write for now, and hopefully you will be paid to write quickly again. And it is essentially like anything else; it is a business of relationships, and success and failure in intervals. And so there is no in or out. People have sold scripts for huge amounts of money and then disappear. There are people who have been nominated for Academy Awards and disappear.

There are people who kind of churn away under the radar for 30 years, making a check every month. Everybody is different. It’s a very diverse business, with a lot of different ways to do this, and frankly what shocks me so much about this kind of strange resentment that has occurred, almost like a weird 99%/1% sort of resentment thing going on lately… — There was an interesting thread on Deadline where there were allegations of trust fund screenwriters or something.

John: Oh, yeah, I forgot. You came from a very wealthy family and that is why you are so successful.

Craig: Yeah. I was lumped in. It was the strangest thing. They were like, “Look at all these writers who have trust funds whose parents were rich.” And then they listed me, and I’m like, “My parents were public school teachers!” I grew up in… — My hometown in New Jersey is where Bruce Springsteen grew up. That song, My Hometown, that’s my hometown. It’s Main Street, white-washed windows, and vacant stores. That’s where I grew up.

It’s very strange. So, no, I wasn’t a trust fund baby. But, what was I saying? I can’t even remember.

John: A couple points, I think, were all relevant, and I think we should get back to trust fund babies.

Craig: Trust fund babies. Yeah.

John: Everyone’s story about how they got started — I like to say get started rather than breaking in — everyone’s story about how they got started as a working screenwriter is different, but the commonality I found in every story is that they wrote something that someone read and said, “This is amazing. This is great. This is better than anything I have read this week, this year. I want to make this movie, or I want to see this happen.”

So, it all started with you wrote something amazing. It wasn’t that you had a good idea for a movie. No, you wrote something that people loved. And that thing that people loved often never got made, but it was so good that people said, “Hey,” not only did they pay attention but they said, “I want to work with you on this.”

And so in my case it was the script that should never see the light of day called Here and Now. And one of my professors read it, and classmates read it, and it got me to a producer. And the producer got me to an agent, and we got it sent out. And it never sold but it got me started. And everyone has some story of something that they wrote that someone said, “This is great. I want to see this happen.”

And it wasn’t that they wrote something that was like, “That’s pretty good. That’s about like an average screenplay I’ve read.” No. Someone said, “This is better than the other stuff.”

Craig: Yes.

John: And so it all started with like, “You wrote something that was better than everything else there and ideally something that feels like we could make this into a movie, like I can see a way to make this into a movie.”

Craig: That’s key. I mean, I remember the phrase somebody used when I first started was “You can do this,” which is a big thing for them because they are constantly reading scripts where they think, “Well, there’s some interesting things here and there, but in the end I know what it’s like to write a screenplay from the outside, you know, as an employer, or producer, or studio executive. I know what my side of this is. I know the journey that the screenwriter is going to have to go through to some extent. And I don’t think they can do it. I don’t think this person can do this.”

Then you read a script and you meet the person and you think, “I do think the person can do this, and that is a big deal.” And it’s this weird kind of blink style judgment that they make that is based on the person, on the material itself. There is just kind of a vibe, like this guy gets it and this person doesn’t.

But what I was going to say before is, and it goes to your point about the material. Really, we don’t break in; we get noticed. And contrary to the current griping climate, there are more ways to get noticed now than ever before. That is why I am so astonished. It’s like, Amazon?!

The notion that you need Amazon to get you noticed is absurd. You can put a screenplay right now on the Internet. If somebody picks up… — Look at the guy who is on Reddit. The guy on Reddit who just started writing a story about marines who fell through time and landed in the Roman era — he was noticed in a way that would have never happened 20 years ago. Ever. And he is a screenwriter, and he is a professional screenwriter right now.

So, the notion that the walls are… — They are lower than they have ever been. So I don’t know what all the complaining is about.

John: Some people just need to complain.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And let’s talk about the trust fund baby or the nepotism, because I was aware of this when we were doing rehearsals. I brought my daughter to see rehearsals for just like a half an hour two different days. And in the back of my head I’m thinking, “Oh, wait, is this some sort of like weird, special advantage for her? Does this make her more likely to be able to have a career in the arts because she saw it?”

And, like, well yeah, kind of.

Craig: Sure.

John: Because she got to see not the finished product, but she got to see the hard work. And I feel like a lot of times when you see people who are successful, and they come from either parents who are wealthy or parents or parents who were artists… — Like Lena Dunham whose show Girls I have to plug every podcast, her parents are both artists. And so I look at her, who at 25 is writing, directing, and starting in her own TV show, and working her butt off, I’ve got to think that is partly because she saw her parents working their butts off every day and achieving success by having worked really, really hard.

Craig: Yeah.

John: I remember when I first met Steven Spielberg and I was really intimidated by him, and he was considering directing Big Fish. And so I guess I visited him on set. And I thought, “Well, he must just be magic, because he makes these amazing movies, and so he must have some sort of magic power.” And then I saw him and realized, “Oh, no, he is actually just working really hard.” Well, I can work really hard. Oh, it’s not magic.

And, I don’t know, that’s…

Craig: Well, I think that for kids of… — If your parents are in the business, and I know some people who are in the business whose parents were in the business, then I can see, well, you did have the benefit of a great private tutor. My parents don’t know anything about screenwriting and certainly could not have encouraged me or helped me as I was beginning.

John: The Gyllenhaals, their mother is an award-winning screenwriter. Their father is a director.

Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. Sure. But in the end, of course, they also, they’re Gyllenhaals, they have to be really good-looking to be onscreen, and they have to actually deliver the goods, which they have.

And so the point is, it’s not enough to… — I mean, sure, you could maybe get one or two, but the notion that, and now let’s turn to screenwriters and this absurd nonsense that there is this rash of trust fund screenwriters who have the luxury of writing all day the way that no one else does, because they are sitting on mounds of family money, is insane.

I came out here, I came to Los Angeles with my Toyota Corolla SR5 Red, you can link to that. It’s a gorgeous little car, [laughs] and $1,400 that I had saved up from working. That’s it. By the time I had rented my apartment and put first, last, and security down, I was basically down to about three or four weeks of money to sort of eat and live or whatever. And I immediately started calling up temp agencies and got work as a temp employee. And then got work — my first actual salary was $20,000. And there was no cushion. There was no anything. But I was writing.

Writing is free. It’s the freest thing in the world, assuming you have… — You know what? Forget the assumption. You don’t have a computer. You don’t even have electricity. You have a pad and a pen. [laughs]

John: I write a first draft by hand, with a pad and a pen.

Craig: It’s the freest thing in the world. It’s the last thing you need luxury for. This absurd notion that writing is so tragically difficult for the fragile human state that you must spend all day, you know, I don’t know, like Byron, languishing in your tuberculosis and scrawling on a pad for minutes at a time, and then taking breaks. It’s like, what?! No! No. It’s the last job you need a trust fund for.

John: You know, things you need trust funds for. I think we could probably make a list. Polo. I think Polo is a kind of sport that requires some trust funds.

Craig: Yes.

John: It’s hard to become a professional polo player if you have no access to horses.

Craig: Yeah. That’s right.

John: Or like somebody to clean your little white chaps.

Craig: I think yachting probably.

John: Yachting. Yeah. That’s pretty much that. There are very few other things.

Craig: I mean, no, I don’t want to come off like a guy that doesn’t acknowledge that some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple. Because, that’s true; some people are like that. They are out there. But, there is a tendency for those who are on the bench to take swipes at everyone who is at the plate. Everyone is there for the wrong reason because, obviously, if there is no unjust reason for people’s success, then there is no unjust reason for their failure.

And they need an unjust reason for their failure.

John: To you point about being born on third base. I would argue that every American is born on third base.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: And so the difference between like me being born in middle class Boulder, Colorado versus someone being born in Alabama is pretty much meaningless in terms of a screenwriting career.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Yeah. High class problems.

Craig: High class problems. Look, we can look at the various inequalities that exist in the screenwriting community and debate why they are there.

John: And there are inequalities.

Craig: There are. There are inequalities.

John: Under-representation of women. Minority representation isn’t where it needs to be. TV has made inroads, but features — hasn’t made the same kind of inroads. Those are all meaningful things that should be looked at and should be addressed.

But to say that it is because of what people’s families were before this I don’t think is accurate.

Craig: Well, and then it is also unfair to start listing off writers who are white men and succeeding and accuse them of being the beneficiaries of some trust fund. That’s bizarre to me. It’s not fair. I mean, I personally don’t — if you want to take a shot at me, it’s just patently absurd because obviously I’m not from a trust fund. Everybody knows what public school teachers make.

But then there are people, like poor Jamie Vanderbilt whose name is — he’s a Vanderbilt. He’s from the Vanderbilt family. And so it is easy to go, “Oh, well that guy…”

But here’s a couple of things to point out. One, Jamie is an excellent screenwriter. Excellent, regardless of what his last name is. And, two, there are like 1,000 Vanderbilts. I mean, I know Jamie. We have talked about this Vanderbilt thing. He is like, “Yeah, I was like to the big mansion in North Carolina once, but there are a lot of Vanderbilts. I don’t really have the Vanderbilt fortune. I’m not that kind of…”

It’s just not fair. It’s not fair to diminish what he’s accomplished. It is so hard to be a screenwriter. And it disgusts me, frankly, to see people tear down screenwriters on the basis of anything other than their work. And even then I wish they would stop tearing them down on the basis of work and just be nice.

It’s a hard job. Just be nice.

John: Just be nice.

Craig: Come on!

John: Three quick questions that we can wrap up with.

Craig: Good.

John: First question is from Tucker. “Could you talk about the quote system for getting paid for assignments? Is it negotiable? Is it written in stone? Is it different for pitches you have sold? I’m up for a job but my quote is low. I don’t know how much wiggle room I have.”

Craig: Hmm. That’s a good question.

John: So, a quote is something that gets asked, like, “Oh, so what’s his quote?” And it is generally like what is the last you got paid for a similar job.

Craig: Yeah. That’s right. I mean, the quote system is sort of pegged to what you are or would be paid for an original screenplay. That’s kind of how they back everything out. So you have a number. Like let’s say you sold an original screenplay for $300,000. Your agent will argue that that is your quote. Therefore your rewrite quote will be, I think, $200,000.

And it is a way of sort of benchmarking what your market value is for business affairs, because business affairs essentially goes by formulas. And their job… — These studios all understand that it is tragic when one of them increase someone’s salary, because that ripples across to all of them. And just as if I increase your salary at Fox, then Sony is going to have to pay that new number. If Sony does, it’s back to me, then I have to pay an even bigger number. They don’t like to do it.

John: We should say, though, it is not that Sony has to pay that big number. It is that Sony is going to feel pressure to pay that bigger number. They can choose not to pay that bigger number, and then they are just not going to hire you, or you can stand your ground. Your quote could drop because no one is willing to pay what you say you need to pay.

Craig: Yes. That’s true. Although when they start — when they get as far as, okay, let’s negotiate the deal, they understand already what your quote is. They don’t get into that, they don’t get to the “let’s negotiate a deal” phase in ignorance of your quote.

So, they are already aware of what they are going to roughly kind of pay. And they are dealing with fairly powerful agencies usually — CAA, UTA, WME — who leverage not only your quote and your worth as a client, but just the agency in general. So, that is roughly the quote system.

And then the deal is you get bumps, that’s the industry parlance for increases, when you get a movie green lit, if you get a movie mad, if the movie’s a hit. Stuff like that moves you up. Whiffing, not delivering the goods, that will move you down.

John: But we should say it is not like a D&D bonus where it is like, “Oh, your movie got this much, so your quote automatically bumps to a certain amount.”

Craig: Right.

John: It’s that since the last time you were paid something, the agency can say all of these things happened, so we think he is at this level now. And we think that is the bump? You can do it as a bump for this.

Craig: That’s right. And that’s the art of negotiating as an agent. You kind of are playing this sort of vaporous game about what these things are worth. And there are other factors that come into play. How in demand are you? Who wants you there? Does everybody want you, including the very important director and actor? Are you a studio that tends to pay what they call Full Freight?

Some studios are sort of notorious for being discount, where they say, “Look, we are not a big studio. We make smaller budgets, but then we try and compensate you additionally when the movie comes out and succeeds.” Other studios are full freight studios; they have tons of money and they are not catching a break.

So, it’s all… — This is why agents, theoretically, get 10%. [laughs]

John: A question from Mario. Mario says, “I am a Canadian currently working and living in California as a game developer.” But he’s also a screenwriter. “If a studio likes your work and wants to work with you, will they sponsor a work visa to allow you to live in the US? Otherwise it seems the only solution for me if I want to work in Hollywood would be to go back to Canada which seems a bit ridiculous considering I live so close to where the action is right now.”

So I actually know something about work visas. I know some international screenwriters. You can sometimes get sponsored by a work visa. More likely what is going to happen is once they start paying you enough money, like if you sell a spec script for a certain amount of money, or you are getting paid a certain amount of money for a job, you are going to find the Hollywood immigration attorney, like the guy in Los Angeles who does this. And he is going to figure it out for you.

Craig: Yeah.

John: It’s one of those things that money actually does sort of solve. And it will be some weird thing where as you form a loan out corporation, that loan out corporation is going to hire you. There is going to be some magic way to do it, because it is not uncommon at all.

Craig: It’s not. Although it has become a little more difficult since 9/11. Immigration got a little weirder. And bizarrely it is difficult for Canadians. I remember going through this with someone that we wanted to bring in from Vancouver to LA to work on a production for us. It’s difficult. And it’s annoying actually.

But, yeah, when there’s a will there’s a way.

John: Yeah. And money makes it easier.

Craig: Money seems to make things easier.

John: So, if you do sell that spec script, and you want to work here, then you get started on it, and it is going to take awhile, but you will make it all work out. And it has worked out for many people, many times before.

And the fact that you are a screenwriter, it’s different than if you are a costume designer. That feels like one of those jobs where you can fairly argue that there are many costume designers here; screenwriting is a specialty career.

Craig: That’s right. That’s a good point. I mean, the concept behind the immigration blocking is “There are fifty unemployed costumers that are here that are citizens; we would rather that they be up for this job and not an import.” And you have to sort of justify that the imported employee is special and unique. And that is much easier to do when you are talking about art.

John: Yeah. And so I would say if your agent or whoever is getting you this deal, someone who works at that agency will know how to do this. And will know who the first person is that you need to call.

Craig: Yup.

John: Last question is about animation. “Since you are both working on animated projects right now…” I forgot, are you working on something right now?

Craig: Yeah, I’m involved — I wrote a bit on this movie called Turkeys. And now I am involved sort of as a consulting producer.

John: Okay. And I’m working on Frankenweenie. So, this person is writing to ask, “I’m curious about how your deals for these projects were structured. Does the WGA have jurisdiction or is I.A.T.S.E. involved? When a WGA takes on an animation project, by whose rules are they playing? If a new writer breaks in with an animation project, can he negotiate a WGA deal?”

So, what was the deal on Turkeys? Is it I.A.T.S.E.?

Craig: Oh yeah. It’s I.A.T.S.E. Animation Guild 839. I don’t believe there has ever been a feature animated film that has been WGA, in part because I.A.T.S.E. Animation 839 has jurisdiction. The only WGA deals I’m aware of for animation are primetime Fox. That’s it. [laughs] I don’t know of any other ones.

John: The mocap, the Zemeckis mocap things are WGA-covered, and it is up in that weird gray area, are those animation or are those live action? And so far they have been counted as live action which s great.

Craig: Yes. And so that is the kind of gray area where the WGA has prevailed, and SAG and AFTRA and everybody has kind of tried to say, “Look, this is really, let’s call this live action, even if you are…”

It’s sort of like, “Okay, if I shoot you truly in live action, and then rotoscope you, it’s not like that is animation guild all of a sudden.” Animation is traditional. All images are drawn. Or, all images are entirely computer generated. So, if you are rolling film, or you are rolling video…

John: On Frankenweenie, they are shooting frames, but it’s one frame at a time.

Craig: Oh, they are doing stop motion?

John: Stop motion.

Craig: And is stop motion WGA or animation guild?

John: It ends up being moot because they have all been British productions. So I think, maybe I am covered by I.A.T.S.E., but I am pretty sure that it is just some bizarre British thing and I get a check every once and awhile.

Craig: I suspect that stop motion would be considered animation out here and not WGA.

John: I’m sure it’s considered animation.

Craig: Yeah. So, I mean, the real question when you sign a deal for animated work, let’s talk about feature animation because that is what I am most familiar with, it’s not a question of WGA or not. It’s a question of union or not. Because they have every option of saying, “We are doing this non-union.” And your great interest is in making sure that at the very least it is covered by Animation 839 because, and 839 is the – I.A.T.S.E. is this really big union, and then they have all of these locals which are divisions. And Animation Guild is Division 839.

Because, you will get at least pension and healthcare at a certain level. And you may not ever vest in the pension system; I doubt I will because I don’t work that frequently in animation, but there is healthcare for those of you who don’t have healthcare. And that alone — that and some minimum protections. There’s not much else, frankly, that that contract provides. There are no residuals. There’s no credit protection. Certainly no separated rights. But it’s better than nothing.

John: Better than a kick in the butt. So, the lack of residuals you definitely feel when you write an animated movie. Because, like Corpse Bride, that sold a lot of video copies and I don’t get a penny for video copies on that.

Craig: Yeah,

John: And that does really hurt.

Craig: Oh, yeah. The guys I always think of are Elliott and Rossio because Ted and Terry wrote Aladdin. Ted and Terry wrote Shrek. Not a penny in residuals from those movies. And we are talking about, god, billions in revenue.

John: Yeah. And it’s too bad about Pirates of the Caribbean being such a disaster and not making a cent for them. So…

Craig: [laughs] Oh, I can still feel a little bad.

John: You can feel a little bad for them.

Craig: Sure. You know me. Well, as a fellow trust fund baby, I feel bad for the ultra rich.

John: So this writer who’s writing in saying like, “If I broke in with an animation project, will I be able to join the WGA?” No.

Craig: No.

John: Nope. So, on your next project, which is written for live action, yes, maybe so. And I don’t know of any examples, but I’m sure there are. Oh, wait, no, no, no. One of my first movies…this got complicated.

Titan A.E., at some point in its genesis, I think they talked about doing it live action, so there was one… — There was a window at which it became a WGA-covered project, and it wasn’t. That does happen sometimes where it is like it is not clear whether you are going to do this animation or live action.

Craig: Yes.

John: So that can happen. I don’t know of other examples like that.

Craig: The one I can think of is Curious George which I think started as an animated project and then moved towards a hybrid. And they had to move it out of.. — They tried, I think they fought, as I recall; I think there was a fight to try and keep it non-union. But the Guild successfully argued no. No, the second you put somebody in there…

Interestingly, they put in, there is a little bit of live action in WALL-E. It’s the only incident of that in any Pixar movie. And it is Fred Willard as the president. He actually filmed. And I’m kind of curious…I guess if it is just for that small amount they just got around it.

John: Yeah. Happy Feet has a few moments that I’m pretty sure are real people as well.

Craig: Hmm. I didn’t see those films.

John: You are not missing much. If you like penguins dancing? If that’s your thing, penguins dancing…

Craig: I love penguins dancing!

John: Well then I don’t know why you have missed it so far.

Craig: What’s wrong with me?!

John: Well, there are a lot of things that are wrong with you, but unfortunately we are out of time and we can’t talk anymore.

Craig: I think it’s fortunate. [laughs]

John: [laughs] So thank you, Craig. So, this was a podcast about, let’s see, luck.

Craig: Yup.

John: Trust funds.

Craig: Yup. The Holocaust.

John: The Holocaust. Joe Eszterhas. And that really…

Craig: It’s a classic. And being utterly stupid.

John: Yeah. All these things, and more in this episode.

Craig: And more. [laughs] This was a good one. I like this one.

John: Great.

Craig: Anytime I get angry I think it’s a good one.

John: Okay. We will call you stupid. I like it like…

Craig: Oh, it’s the best.

John: All right, thanks Craig.

Craig: Thank you.