663 - Live in Austin 2024
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Hey, this is John. And this is Craig. So today's episode was recorded last night at the Austin Film Festival. And we enjoy doing live shows. It's fun to have a big crowd come out. Yeah, and we did have a big crowd. We did have a big crowd. So whenever we do one of these live shows, Matthew Ciali, our brave editor, has to go through and try to make it make sense for what was in the room versus what you're hearing in your ears. And last night's episode and the episode you're about to listen to is probably a little bit more

more confusing than other things. So that's why we have this sort of explanatory introductory note. Craig, do you want to talk about the lights? We'll try to cut out and mention the lights, but the lights were weird. Yeah, or now that people know, we can just leave that in and they can experience our confusion in real time. So sort of, we're in the Stephen Austin Hotel in Austin, and it's like a ballroom. Mm-hmm.

Lots of big lights, chandelier-y lights that are set for a certain mood. I guess the mood this night was podcast. Yeah. And at some point, they just started changing. They got really bright. And then they went really dark. And then they got back to normal. And then like five minutes later...

they went really yellow and then really orange. And I honestly thought I was losing my mind. Yeah. It was sort of like, if you've been in Caesar's palace where like it has the fake sky and it changes, but if it changed really quickly, it was, it was jarring. Yeah. Like somebody hit the button that says like wedding fun. So you will occasionally hear me say what the F with the lights. And it was funny. Uh,

We all enjoyed it in the room. You at home, I'm sure, will go, why are they all laughing suddenly about nothing? It's the lights. It's the lights. Last night was also the first game in the World Series. And we'll cut out some of the mentions of it, but it is sort of an ongoing runner. Yeah. So while the show is being recorded, the last three innings of game one of the World Series between my beloved Yankees and the accursed Los Angeles Dodgers was occurring yesterday.

And so Matt Selman, who is the showrunner of The Simpsons, is sort of there in the third row. He and I are kind of making eye contact, and I've got my phone occasionally. The thing about baseball is almost nothing happens until something happens. So you can look at it graphically. You're not really watching the game. At one point, the Yankees took the lead, and then...

Uh, they lost. On a Grand Slam home run. The worst possible way to lose. Anyway, so you may hear some ups and downs in there, some confusing baseball updates as you hear this episode. The World Series is ongoing, and my great hope is that the Yankees are winning. So in this episode, we have incredible guests. So we have Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, who did Shogun, which is...

great. It was great to talk with the two of them. We have Megan Amram and Susan Stanton talking about working on their respective shows. We have a game show segment, which has kind of worked. It was a very fun premise, so we might put some part of that in there. Yeah. I mean, I enjoy the hell out of it personally. But in a meta way, you'll see why.

And of course, for our premium members, there's a bonus segment. The bonus segment is the questions that come at the end of the night. Craig, you always do your standard disclaimer about what a question is. And still, sometimes people will come up to the mic with questions that are not questions. Yeah. And this particular one, if you're a premium member, you'll get to enjoy one question that was a question, but one of the weirdest ones we've ever gotten.

So I want to thank again the Austin Film Festival for having us here. We want to thank Matthew Shilley for his brave editing, Drew Marquardt, Chris Saund and Megan Arow who all helped out with the night last night and enjoy this live show from Austin Film Festival. One last thing we do mention at the very end, there is going to be a live show in Los Angeles December 6th and we have some great guests. So when you get this episode, the tickets may already be on sale. If you're a Prima member, you'll get an email about that ahead of time.

And, of course, as one might expect, there is plenty of bad language in this episode. So, earmuffs for the children. Fantastic. Thank you.

Hello! Hi! Hello and welcome! My name is John August. My name is Craig Mazin. And you are listening to a very live episode in Austin of Script Notes. It's a podcast about screenwriting and... So good. So good. John. Yes. Two middle-aged white men on a stage in front of a large crowd. Should we Elon Musk jump together? 100%.

Now, Greg, it wasn't the last time, but it was one of our previous live script notes here in Austin. We got into a little bit of trouble. Do you remember that? Because... Oh. Yeah. So you were roommates with Ted Cruz. Yeah. Who's not... You're not a big fan of Ted Cruz. No. No. And we had a very special person introduce us on that episode. Who was that person? That was Beto O'Rourke. That's right. We had Beto O'Rourke. And, uh...

Well, don't clap that loud. He lost. Yeah. So it turns out that we got a little bit of trouble for that because it was political. I'm going to get in trouble again tonight. Well, we're going to get in a little bit of trouble. So I guess we can say why we're running a little bit late. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Kamala Harris. Now, it didn't work. It didn't work. Now.

She's not like Beetlejuice. You can't just summon her. All right. We have no political guests. We have incredible non-political guests. Yes. Now, before we get into that, I did see somebody in a Dodgers hat out there. Fuck you. The Yankees are currently up 2-1 still. Feel free to... Did you just give me a thumbs down? No.

No. Your friends are disowning you in front of me. Craig, it could have been an accidental thumb down. You know how on Zoom sometimes... No, that was incredibly... It was so vigorous. Feel free to interrupt our show and tell me if the score changes. Thank you. Craig, this afternoon we did an escape room. So I would rate making movies on television...

We have things we like. Playing D&D, also very high. Higher. Higher, yes. Escape rooms, where do they fall? Yeah, no, right up in there. They're right up in there. So it was a good experience. What do we need to teach our audience about escape rooms that might be useful for them tonight? To escape from this room? Not this room, but general life skills you've learned from escape rooms. Oh, because that was menacing. Yeah.

Well, communication, John. Communication. That's really what it comes down to. Organization as well. Yes. And also trying to suppress your frustration with other people. 100%. Yeah. Especially when they're doing things wrong. I think...

I feel like every notes meeting is basically an escape room. You're looking for what do I need to do to get out of this safely without dying. So you're listening, you're taking in all the information, you're trying to process it. Trying to not let your frustration get the best of you. Absolutely, not trying to break everything in the process. Including their faces. Indeed, that is the goal. We have some guests tonight who have a lot of experience going through that development process. Yes, Segway man. I am the Segway man. But we should start with them.

Right away, because we've reached the end of Drew's first card, which says, John and Craig banter. Thanks, Drew. Thank you, Drew. So thorough. So thorough. Like, legitimately, it says that. Yeah. She is a screenwriter, producer, acclaimed short story writer, who received her MFA from right here, the University of Texas, Austin. Woo! He... Christ! Tell us who he is.

Oh, well, I better get my glasses. I don't need those. He is a writer, producer, and showrunner who created television series such as Counterpart, which you have not seen, is fucking awesome. And, oh, sorry, language warning. And he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Top Gun Maverick, which you've seen it. Yes. Now, together, they created Shogun, which won 18 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series. They also created two children and are also married. Please welcome Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks.

All right. Oh, wow. All right, Rowdy. Rowdy, we are so excited to talk to you about your show, about sort of what you're able to achieve here and accomplish.

But I want to wind us back to sort of how this even began. Because as I understand it, it wasn't like you went in and said, like, I want to do Shogun. They came to you and you had to sort of be convinced? Well, it was a really long book. It's a long book. It's a doorstop they gave you. I love that book. Yeah, I didn't know they sent us, well, they sent me, I guess, the book. Let's be clear. Yeah.

They sent Justin the tome. Well, no, first they told me about it and asked if I had read it. And unlike some friends, I had never read it. But you said yes in the room, right? Absolutely. Yes. Oh, no. Yes, I've read it. Yes, I've read it twice. It's what I said in the room. But just so I can remember, can you send that book to my house this weekend? Quick refresher. Yeah, and it came, it arrived, and it was definitely like a hard pass on Friday afternoon with 1,200 pages in it.

in front of me, but I left it on the coffee table and Rachel picked it up. Yeah, luckily I was...

languishing as a truly highly successful short story writer um nice you know forty dollars a year um paying all the bills um the dream could be yours it could um and that that book was on our coffee table just at that moment when i realized forty dollars might not

pay the bills. Young kids. Neither one of you had read Shogun. No. Had either one of you seen My Beloved and Corny as Fuck 1980? 1980, the year we did. The year of my birth. So then you didn't see it. I was nine. And it... No, it's okay. I know I'm old. And

But it was like, it burned its way into my brain. And so then I got the book out of the library and I read it over and over and over. I was like obsessed with it. And so I'm just fascinated by the fact that you guys were like Shogun initiates, which I think is amazing. Yeah, I mean, it was, I think that there was like a silhouette of Shogun that was in our heads. In your head. In my head, which, you know, was like a guy who looks like me wearing clothes that don't belong to cultures that look like his. Yeah.

And, you know, and it was... And I think I was very quick to judge a book by its cover in this case. And, yeah, and, you know, in truth, it's actually a fantastic book. And it's just, in addition to everything else, an incredible page turner, but also, like, really important for where we are today and had a lot more to say than...

I otherwise thought, which is what happens when you read a book and not, yeah. But that'd be a lesson to all of you. Well, talk to us the process of like, so they've sent you this book, but you didn't have to go in and say like, oh, this is how I would do this. What was that conversation like? Was it a presentation? Was it a pitch? Did you come in with decks? Like, what was the way of describing this is what the story is to me? What did that look like? Why are you looking at me? I gotta jump in. Well, yeah.

They're so married. They're so married. No, I mean, I don't... This is a podcast. I hope so. This is a podcast, for sure. But this is a podcast where people are obsessed about... And it's alive. It's alive. It's alive. It's not dead. It's alive. It's a live podcast that...

to screenwriters, and I don't want to give off the idea that my participation is like a... It's a normal thing. Like, I just... I went into FX saying, hello. My quote is $20. Yes, I... My quote is $20. I demand $45 a year. Whoa. And my memory is just that somehow I...

I laid down on their couch with my head... We were just talking. I wasn't here for this meeting. What happened? No, no, no.

I mean, to go in at the very early stage was just a conversation with them about, you know, what were the feelings on it. And, you know, for us, after some discussion and a lot of reading, it was really just a conversation about, you know, I think this book is great and I don't think we need to change anything about this book. We said one thing, which turned out to be entirely untrue, that, you know, our only approach to it was going to be to take this book and to invert the gaze, to sort of

tell it, you know, from the Japanese side, which in truth, the book does for you. Yes. You know, but I also don't think that that's really something that it turns out we could do with the two of us and a room full of predominantly Asian American, but American writers doing it. What we could do, which we had a lot of fun doing, was to subvert the gaze, was to take what you think this kind of story is going to look like and

and just to turn it on its head every chance we could get. That you think you know what's going to happen when this guy shows up in Japan, and here it is, and then just to play with it and play with it very much at that character's expense, but to, you know, have fun with it. You guys, look, it's a fantastic show. I mean, it was riveting and...

Hats off to Hulu also for putting out basically one episode a week, which I don't know why everyone doesn't do. It seems like a totally obvious thing to do. It's like the medium should be done that way. Kind of weirdly, we should do episodes once a week so as to create a cultural conversation for everyone. And it did. But I'm just kind of curious when, because you mentioned the book is a doorstop. It is. It's huge.

I'm sort of wondering, like a snake with a mouse, how do you break this thing apart just structurally to go, okay, because I suspect you guys didn't start with, right, this is going to be this many episodes. Now, how do we fit this many episodes? You broke it down. How do you break down something that size?

Well, we did know it was 10, right? How did you know it was 10? Because we were told it was 10. So the premise of my question is wrong. Yes. Moving on. But also the premise of the question, the premise was this is a miniseries. This is going to be a limited 10 episodes miniseries that it wasn't going to be. They told you 10. And you guys were like, okay. Sure, sure. And then you read the book. That'll be $20 per episode. Yeah.

Wow. Okay, so new question. This is way more interesting to me is, okay, how do you break something down that size and make sure it fits into 10 buckets? How do you do that? I mean, this is where, in truth, I think your short fiction background came into play.

I'll give you $40 if it'll help you answer. It's okay. We'll tell you what we came to in hindsight, but it's not like any of us were going at this saying, yes, we know how to do this with 10 episodes. No, we didn't know shit about

Can you say that? You can. Okay, Justin brings his sensibility. I bring my sensibility. My sensibility, as we all know, is short fiction. And so I don't know how to do this. Like take a 1,200-page book

and meter it out so that it feels like a story that sweeps you and carries you. Who knows how to do that? I don't know how to do that. I know how to do that. He's done that before. One of you needs to know how to do that. No, all I knew was that I like to, I like...

a story to feel like it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And I like to be brought to a place where

that ends in the exact collision between surprise and inevitability. Oh, I love that. That's what we're all looking for, isn't it? Yes, it is. And that's... Just to define it clearly, you're talking about those moments where people are surprised by what happens and then immediately have to go, but of course that's what happens. But of course. Uh-huh, but of course. Those are the two feelings that you aim for. And because I was like, oh, shit.

shit, I have to write a screenplay. I was thinking, oh, we'll do that with a screenplay. You know, like I was doing that with short stories. Why don't we do that every screenplay? Like try to find the thrust of a narrative that can kind of feel like that feeling at the end of a great short story.

But it starts with the information in the first episode, because I think that we had to make a decision. Like the first episode, it's a 1,200-page book. I would say the first episode covers about 400 of those pages. Yeah, you guys did a very good job there. And my metaphor, I guess, is that it's a pie, right, or a pizza.

And if you pull a slice of pizza, you have to be able to sort of say, like, from this slice of pizza, I can tell you what all the other slices probably look like because there's pepperonis and onions on this slice. And so I assume that they're going to be on every slice. I can't tell you where on the pizza they're going to be, but it's going to be like that. And I think you need to know in the first episode, this is a show with these characters and this is the kind of story that's going to be told where it is close-ended in and of itself. It's going to have, as Rachel says, that first, second, and third act.

but it's also going to bring these people together. And so we knew we had to get like 400 pages in before we could finally bring Mariko, Blackthorn, and Tornauget together. So that became the first flag. And then everything else that followed just became about how do we just sort of cohesively do it. And then...

you know, as we're in the writer's room and building it and building it, I was just, I guess, nervously eyeing episode 10 and being like, yeah, we're going to stick this on exactly episode 10. So there's a pilot written first. And so you guys wrote, together you wrote a pilot.

What was it like writing together for the first time? Because you are short story writers who are used to working on your own. You've written screenplays, but you've also written with rooms, so you have some experience with that. But you've never had to write with each other. What was that like? Have either of you written with your spouses? Oh, God, no. Are you kidding me? No, Jesus. First of all, neither of our spouses are writers. So that's a good start.

Like, we very carefully married not-writers. Oh, smart. Yeah, you fucked up. Yeah. Yeah.

Because you know each other really well, but you probably don't have a sense of each other's creative process in terms of how they get to the next word, how they get to... Okay, so if this was 2018... Look at this. I wish you could all see Justin's face. Just a headache. Just a human headache. When he started this process, I had known him for... No, no, no. I had not known him. I'd been with him for... Like...

with him for 12 years. 12 years. Like, that's a long time to know somebody. It's more than that, though. We've been together longer than that. No, no, no. At the time we started this. Not biblically. Let's break this down. Non-biblically for seven. Biblically for 12. Post-biblically now. Yeah.

About 20 seconds, most probably. Continue with this amazing thought. Thank God my parents don't listen to podcasts. You don't know that. So you think you know a person pretty well, and you do, but I was reintroduced to Justin as a high-functioning screenwriter. Sexy, right? It was super annoying. Oh. I was like, look...

As a short fiction writer... Really walked right into that one. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. Super annoying. As a short fiction writer, you get snack breaks every 20 minutes. Oh, yeah. You take naps every 45 minutes. This is why they only pay you $40, you realize that. Yeah. And Justin was a little more, I would say... Rigorous? Rigorous than that, yes. Rigorous, yes. Disciplined. A machine. A machine. Just a machine. Just a machine. That's how I like to think of myself. But, I mean, I...

sort of maybe in a prurient way. I'm just kind of wondering, like, what do you guys do when you disagree about stuff? Okay. Okay, so we only sat in the same room writing together once. For the good of the marriage. And it was the first day of episode one. And I think, I'm a screenwriter now. I'm going to show up, and he shows up, and he says, you do these scenes, and I'll do these scenes, and I say, great, great.

And then, you know, snack time rolls around, he's still working, and I'm like, whoops. I can't do this. This is too much. And we never worked in the same room again. And so now, all these years later, what it looks like is we still divvy out scenes, and I write mine, and he writes his. And as we discussed earlier in the panel today, I actually hadn't thought of it, but somehow they magically, the scenes come together, and

And apparently Justin puts them together. I magically put the seeds together. Who did you think was doing it? I don't know. He just sent it to me. I want to be used so bad. You just did an entire show and you're like, elves are doing this. I don't know how. Truly. I have a lot of mouths to feed, okay? I'm busy. Yeah, I hear you. So he will send me the script and I start to go through it and I'm like, hey, some things have changed.

He tries to sneak it in. I don't sneak anything in. I'm putting it together. You don't put it in the red marks. You don't put it in... You don't asterisk it? Asterisk. Oh, that's your sneaking. That's sneaky. That's super sneaky. Nobody tell her how this works, please. No, but I know. I know. And I go in and I just change it back. And then I send it back to him. Do you asterisk that?

I don't know how to do that. But I would. I would. And then he said, and then he, I just hear from the other room, you can't just change it back to what you want. And I'm like, but that's what I do. So anyway, that's how it works. It sounds really... And then that's it. And next thing you know, you're... 18 Emmys later. Yeah, that's...

It's chaos. Absolute chaos. It is. I want to talk to you about the use of Japanese in the show because you're saying that you want it to be a show that's actually from the point of view of these characters and part of that is they're speaking in their own voices and we're watching subtitles through a lot of it but the subtitles we're seeing are not necessarily what you were originally writing. Walk us through the process of getting to the words we're reading and

what a person who speaks Japanese is hearing and how those match up. As quickly as possible, the steps go as follows. We wrote it in English.

and we sent it to elves to translate it. The elves. And as people who had apparently not read Shogun, we thought that translation is that simple and that there's just one right answer to translation. And it turns out that that's not true. And that, you know, when the actors, when Hiro Sonata, who's our star and also one of our producers, and Eriko Miyagawa, another producer, they started reading it, they said this is...

and a translation approximately of the lines in English, but it's not performable. You know, it's not put into that prose. So we hired a Japanese playwright, speaks no English, to translate that rough Japanese into something that felt like not just performable, but jidaigeki, because she writes in the sort of Shakespearean Japanese that comes from the tradition of jidaigeki. So just to be clear, you write in English, it goes through some sort of fairly wooden translation process, right?

And then a playwright takes the wooden stuff and builds it back into something beautiful. And, you know, she's sort of understanding the gist of it, right? And then that gets, well, Eric O'Hero, they'll look at it and it's always like, you know, sitting at Village, you know, they're looking at the sides for next week that are coming through and just sort of make, no, it's not quite right because they can read the English too. They can read the English and adjust back. And sort of get that back. And I'm, of course, just taking their word for it because that's what we can do. But then what happens

started to happen because all this was discovered like accidentally like we didn't know how to do this and I did laughter

Rachel, do you speak Japanese? Do you speak Japanese? That's a big no. Say something in Japanese, please, for everyone here. No. So you're saying the writer's room was largely Asian American. We're all Asian American female. Except for him. And Matt Lambert. So you're getting this highly polished version of the Japanese. So a Japanese person watching this

can hear the excellence, but we don't speak that. So how are you making a decision about what we're reading? Well, so that's when the real revelation happened was when watching dailies, what we started to do was to say, why don't we play telephone with it? And instead of just putting the subtitles on there or this line that we wrote that's really an approximation, we had one of our Japanese-speaking assistant editors

that what she's watching on screen into words. And so then, and I'm looking at him like,

but that's not exactly what we wrote, but it's almost what we wrote. And it feels, you know, but you're not getting that thing of like where someone's like screaming really loudly. And then on the subtitles, it just says, yes, you know, like you actually feel like there's not that, that dissonance to it. So, but those words are just kind of now someone is just doing us a favor and like translating words to the screen. So then that's when Rachel and I went back into the process and,

And we tried to take everyone off the hook and say, like, we'll just do this on our own. We just need Eriko, who speaks Japanese as well, to sort of verify some things for us. You guys, we don't need 10 people on these Zooms because it's just going to be Rachel and I arguing over syntax and what works best. But we would do this for...

every line of every episode of the show over. And this was that when the strike was coming. And I was like, you know what? This is writing. What we're doing right now, this is writing. This is not localizing. This is not just the sort of post-production thing. So it was like, if we're going to brag about this someday and say we went through this process, we have to get it all done in a matter of weeks before this strike starts. And that is what we did. And for all of you about to get married or thinking about marriage, like,

Just know that punctuation matters. Okay? It really matters. Let me ask you a question. And we discovered things about each other that... Who puts semicolons in dialogue? What sick psychopath? Who doesn't believe in the em dash? Seriously. The em dash is glorious. The em dash is how we speak. You both make great cases. You're both... Yeah, the em dash is great. Do not put semicolons in dialogue. Thank you. You guys just need to agree with each other more.

I think you guys can make it. What about creative tension? Yeah. Oh, well. Rachel and Justin, I think we had a great session today. I think our time is up right now. But I think after this comeback next week, we can pick up where we left off there. Great. That was really, really good progress. I'll apply it to my daily life during the week. Thank you. That'll be really nice. And fortunately, listeners around the world get to hear this session and grow from it.

Rachel and Justin, thank you so much. You're going to come back for our Q&A at the end. Rachel and Justin. Thank you, guys. Stick around. Stick around for the rest of the show.

All right, Craig, probably two weeks ago, you and I were having a, you were over live, we were doing a podcast, and we were talking about something. You brought up, oh, it's that movie where the hockey player has to learn how to become a figure skater. Yes. And you said, oh, it's that Matthew Modine movie. Yes. What was it called? I'm like, it's not Matthew Modine. It wasn't Matthew Modine. Thank you. It was The Cutting Edge. It was The Cutting Edge, exactly. And it does not star Matthew Modine. It does not star Matthew Modine. So we had to basically stop and Google and ask Jack JBT and figure out what it is.

But because Matthew Cholet, our editor, is so talented, you cannot hear all the fuck-ups that happen along the way because we snip all that out. But this is a live show, so you're going to hear all these mistakes. That's why we needed to have some people here help us out here. So, Meghana, I think you've recruited two folks who are really good at answering these movie things. So if we make a mistake, they can help us out. Who do we have to help us out? Well, and also, first of all, Meghana. It's Meghana Rao, everybody. It's a legend. All right.

So first we have Paul Horn. Paul Horn and Haley Nash. Paul Horn and Haley Nash, come on up here. Come on up. Can I just apologize again for how hard this game is?

How hard? Yeah. Hello, I'm John. Hi. Hi, John, nice to meet you. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Craig. Hi. Hi. I'm Craig. We do a podcast. This is about screenwriting and things that are interesting to me. We are going to... Just pretend we're doing a normal podcast and we're going to mess up at a certain point and we're going to come to you for advice. And Craig, I thought we might make this interesting by each of us pick one person who we think is going to be better at this. So we need to interview you guys a little bit. Okay.

I literally don't know the basis of the game. I need some more detail before I make my choice. So let's talk through this. So, Paul, talk to us about your... What's your favorite movie of all time? Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan. That's an incredible movie. Okay. Now, how about your movie trivia knowledge? Do you play on any trivia teams? Have you won any trivia competitions? I did do trivia with just some buddies in a bar trivia for a while. But it wasn't a movie. It was just...

Just regular generic trivia? Okay. But I like the way you said buddies. It sounded smart. His buddies are probably smart. I've lost your name. I'm so sorry. They were? What happened to them? Haley. Haley or Haley with an H. Haley. Haley. Talk to us about your experience with movie trivia. Do people come to you and say, Haley will know the answer to this?

I do a lot of movie trivia, yeah. At Bronxton Brewery in Westwood, I used to go a lot. I know a wee bit. She was underselling. Could you hear that? I could hear that. So Craig, I'm going to give you the pick. Who do you want to be your... Imagine this is Hollywood Squares and you have to partner up with somebody or like password. Who is going to be your person? Which of these two do you want as your ringer?

Recency bias. The last answer was from Haley. I'll pick Haley. You're with Haley. I got you, Paul. We're going to figure this out. So let's talk through some movies here. The game we're going to play tonight is...

was the movie that we couldn't think of. It was on Matthew Modine. Do you remember who it was? Well, I can read it off of this. It was D.B. Sweeney. It was D.B. Sweeney. So as we did some more research, D.B. Sweeney is still a very active actor to this day. He's in a bunch of different movies. And so I thought we might play a little game, and you guys can help us out, called I Am D.B. Sweeney Todd. I am.

All right. So here's how it's going to work. We are going to describe a movie. We're going to describe a role in that movie. And we need your help to tell us what... Wait, was that D.B. Sweeney? Or was it some other actor named Todd? And you're going to need to help us out here. And you get bonus points if it is a Todd, if you can tell us which Todd was the actor we're thinking of. And who's going to keep track of the points? Drew. Drew's keeping track of points. Get that pad ready.

He's got a pen. Just to be clear, this is not what we were told to be prepared for. I was told 80s trivia, not Todd trivia. Have you been studying furiously for weeks? No, no, I was back there trying to think of 80s movies. Please say Ice Pirates. I want Ice Pirates movies. Listen, I don't know what's going on with this show either. It never works out the way I think. Wait, you're not a Todd expert?

No, not at all. Dang, there are a lot of experts here. Wow, okay. Steve, I'm on Steve. Oh, you're a Steve expert, cool. Here we go. Okay, so we'll start off. So Craig, you remember that movie? It was, so, Scent of a Woman, and it wasn't like the main guy, it was the guy who played Trent Potter. And you remember what Scent of a Woman was like? Of course. It was good. But who was in that movie? Who was in that movie?

Can you tell us who that was in that movie? Todd. Todd. Which Todd? The Todd that was in the movie. You are correct. One point for us. That was a coin flip. That was a full coin flip. He was like, 50% of the time it's going to be Todd. I don't need to say who the answer is. Hayley, you see what's happening here, right? I see what's occurring, yeah. All right, here's another one. This was a movie called Fire in the Sky. Okay.

Do you remember what this movie's about? What with the lights? That was a UFO movie. It was, yeah, a logger mysteriously disappears for five days in an alleged encounter with a flying saucer in 1975. There was this character, Travis Walton. Yeah. I think that's the main person in it. He was not, he was? I think he was, actually. Oh, so I wonder who that was. Was it D.B. Sweeney or was it Todd? I saw the movie. Oh, no, no, it's her answer. Oh, sorry.

I unfortunately have not seen this one. All right, so you're going to have to guess. Do you feel it's a D.B. Sweeney energy or do you feel it's a random Todd energy? D.B. Sweeney? That's right. That's correct. Nicely done. That's right. Tie it up. Okay.

They're fucking with me now, right? They're just doing this for me. This is literally gaslighting. This is gaslighting. No, Craig, it's all fine. The lights aren't changing at all, Craig. So I was watching this movie last night on cable, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, and the pastor, Alan Richardson. Great role. Pastor Alan Richardson. And so it's about a wild-struck former child star, but who was in that movie? Was it D.B. Sweeney or Todd? I'll go with D.B. Sweeney.

It was D.B. Sweeney. That's correct. All right. Meghana was concerned that this game would be too hard. They can't get anything wrong. We'll see. There's still a chance. But no one has gotten an extra Todd point. No. Because D.B. Sweeney's been eating up a lot of these. Well, let's see how this one goes. Everyone knows Twister. Everyone knows Twister. Everybody knows Twister. Two storm chasers on the brink of divorce doing stuff with storms. Yeah.

And everyone remembers the character of Tim Belzer-Lewis. I'm not sure I remember who that was in the movie, though. Me neither. Who played Tim Belzer-Lewis? Was it D.B. Sweeney or a random Todd? Todd Phillips? Did you say Todd Phillips? Yeah. The director? Yeah, wasn't he? Oh, no, no, no, wait. No, no, Todd, it's Todd, oh, my God. You're on the right track. Who did Tar? I'm trying to remember. Yes, yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, not Todd Phillips. And it's an F, Todd? It's Todd Fields. Yes, all right. Yes, that's it, thank you. Yes, yes, yes.

All right. Once she said tar, I think that was legal. Yeah, 100%. That was really good. All right. This one, this was a, I don't know, it felt, it was heartwarming. It was Hope for the Holidays. It was literally titled Hope for the Holidays. And the guy who played Dr. Ward, I thought he was charming. He didn't have a big role, but he was good in it. But was that D.B. Sweeney or was it a Todd? Can you help us out? Todd? Todd?

No one could get anything wrong. Which was Todd, though? Todd III. No, it was Todd Bridges from Different Strokes. Oh, okay. What were the odds that Todd III was going to be correct? Low, but yeah. All right, let's try this one. Haley, you're on a roll. I think you got this. The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre.

Everyone remembers this one about two fighting brothers signing up for a new game, but then apparently there are zombies involved. Yeah, and Vic Quarterback. The role was Vic Quarterback. Quick buck. You shut your goddamn mouth, Matt Selman, showrunner of The Simpsons. What inning? Oh, for... Wait, top of the ninth? Oh, so they scored in the bottom of the eighth. Well, you just derailed this podcast, mister. All right, so...

I'm very depressed. Vic... Someone named a character Vic Quickbuck. Wonder what he's about. Was that D.B. Sweeney or was it a random Todd? D.B. Sweeney? No one can get anything wrong, Megan. They are 100% correct. All right. We'll do two more just so we're balancing out here. It's amazing. It's amazing. Okay.

I thought the first version, the first movie of Atlas Shrugged was eh, but Atlas Shrugged 2, that's where it really hit me. You mean Atlas Shrugged 2, The Strike? The Strike. It was incredible. Crushed it. And so the Railroaders, the Danny Taggart, all that action and excitement, that Ayn Rand goodness. All that hot sex. It was so, so good. But wait, was the guy in that D.B. Sweeney or some Todd? D.B. Sweeney. No one can get anything wrong. Somebody has to get something wrong.

I'm up next. This is madness. All right. Our last and final one. Last and final one. Oh, my God. Marmaduke. So good. So good. Who does not like a big dog? Not like a Clifford, like too big of a dog. Just a big dog. Just a solidly big dog with a tendency to wreak havoc in his own oblivious way. Yeah. I mean, the role of Shasta. Come on. Incredible. I mean, that was a game changer, really. Was this D.B. Sweeney or a random Todd? A random Todd? Yeah.

Okay, for an extra point, which random Todd? I would say Todd III, but he already said that. I don't know. Sorry. No guess? No guess. It was Todd Glass. Todd Glass. So here's the thing. Matthew cuts out the stuff when we mess up, but he may cut out this whole segment. We want to thank the two of you for being incredibly good sports. Thank you so much. Great job. Great job. Great job.

Craig, I'm not sure who won. I'm sure that we won. We won. I won. I won. All right. And Haley won because of that. The Todd Fields, you know. The Todd Fields. The Todd Fields. But really what I think we all won was a view of two psychics because...

You can guess a flipped coin right once, twice, three times. That was like 12 times in a row. Something's going on with those two. Possibly connected to the lights. Let's continue. Yeah, I was going to say.

Let's bring it back to sort of more familiar territory where we talk to smart writers about the things that they do. The smart test. Do you want to introduce our guests? Yes, we have two guests. And the first one is Susan Suni Stanton, not related to John Carlos Stanton, who had a home run tonight, but oh well, she's not perfect. She is a writer and producer known for her work on Modern Love, Dead Ringers, and some piece of shit called Succession that kept beating me all the time. And she won two Emmys that I didn't win for Outstanding Drama Series. Yes.

And Megan Amram is a writer and producer on all your favorite funny shows, including Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, The Simpsons. She's co-creator of Pitch Perfect Bumper in Berlin. She has zero Emmys. No Emmys. But she's the writer and director of and star of An Emmy for Megan. Welcome Megan and Susan. Yay!

Folks who listen to the show know that Megan is my cousin. We're cousins. They're actually cousins. She's my nepo baby. Yeah, this is my nepo uncle. Yeah. I got him where he is right now. It is fantastic to be here and have you guys here. I

As we were backstage chatting through stuff, we were talking a little bit about the difference between writing and sort of being on set, dealing with something that was in production. And you guys had such different experiences. I was wondering if we could compare and contrast the two of them. Megan, can you tell us about sort of like going off and doing Bumper in Berlin and sort of like your role as a writer on set and how much support you had? This is a great question.

How do I tactfully answer this question? So I co-created a show that was on Peacock that was a spinoff of the Pitch Perfect movies. It was called Bumper in Berlin, starred Adam Devine, and it shot in Berlin, Germany.

And, I mean, for those of you who listen to this show, you've heard a lot of different stories of how shows get made. And I feel like there's two camps of them. Either they are developed for, like, years and years and people really, you know, dig so deep into the text, like we were hearing about Shogun. Or they are told they have to happen in a matter of, like, six weeks. And you're...

You're going to fly to Berlin by yourself. So that was mine. Just due to Adam Devine is on a very funny show called The Righteous Gemstones. And due to filming windows, which I'm sure is the most riveting thing we can talk about, we had this period of time. We could get him. We knew it was going to be in Germany due to some creative things, but mostly tax breaks.

And we, and I, as the showrunner, was given those, I would say, mad libs of dates, filming, and characters, and location. And we very, very quickly, my amazing writer's room that I didn't have for enough time, which is partially why we went on strike,

put together a show and I went to Germany and sort of by myself was the writer producer there good lord now let's compare and contrast that with Susan well talk to us about Susan your life's been great it's been great yeah I don't mean to not this horror show

But I want to show the range of what it takes to make a series. So you, on your show, your writers' room for succession was in London, and then you guys actually, writers went to set to talk to us about what the process was of going from, okay, we're writing a show to making the show.

Yeah, so our writers' room was in London. It was kind of a combination of Brits and Americans. And it almost felt like baseball, like home court advantage. And so then when we were shooting, then all the Americans sort of were like, okay, now you're on our turf again. That was really fun. But yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I've been a part of a bunch of other shows that I've never seen so many writers on set. And it was something that I felt like was just part of the ethos that Jesse Armstrong had. And so there were just, we had a lot of coverage and it was such a luxury. I've just never seen anything like it. So there would be the writer of the episode or writers that would be, you know, watching the show. You'd have maybe somebody, you know, like one person would be in pre-production and

doing location scouts and talking to different designers and, you know, then there'd be the writers while we were shooting. Maybe a couple of writers would be just re-breaking some story later. But, you know, so there would always be almost like two to four, sometimes more people just kind of like keeping their eye on things. We'd be writing alts

every single day, like alternative lines, which is more of a comedy structure, but there were a lot of roots in the show in comedy, and we would have different exchanges, and just keep an eye on things. We would read each other's scripts, and I just think everyone was trying to make the whole as good as possible. The brilliant Frank Reich would also be on set and would be lending his eye and his resources, so it just kind of felt like...

we just had so many people working and if something wasn't feeling right in the moment or the timing... I'm going to start crying. I'm sorry. No, this is beautiful. I've never had that since. I love it. Well, I mean, at least more people watch my show than Succession, so that's good. But like everything else is going to be worse, which is the, you know, the torture of it, so...

It does sound pretty great. I mean, it is Jesse Armstrong, who's the showrunner of Succession, is a lovely man. Well, unless you tell us otherwise. He seems lovely to me. I mean, this would be a weird place to suddenly destroy him. No, I'm not going to just be like, I'm going to just tell you. No, he's wonderful. He's changed my life. Yeah, no, he's just a lovely, sweet, humble guy. But I'm sort of interested in how, in particular, because you were a playwright, sitting in a room, like the room is just you when you're a playwright, and...

I think, because I've never written a play. And then actors look at the play as the text and they do the text. And television doesn't generally work like that. I'm curious how you, from a writerly point of view, went from alone, mine, all mine, to room sharing with somebody that in theory could sort of say, I've decided no, or I want it to change. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably more similar than maybe if you were coming at it as a, well, obviously a novelist or as a screenwriter, because I mean, obviously there's a point where we all write alone. We're all alone for a bit. And then there's the collaborative fun bit. And I think for playwrights, we sit in rehearsal for a long time. Maybe we're the only writer in the room, but we're there with

actors and a director. And that was actually a big bonus on set was I realized, oh, I'm comfortable talking with the director. Because when you're a screenwriter, maybe it's like, it's all just, you know, at this really heightened level. But, you know, when you're in rehearsal, you just have that time where you're used to having all these, even design conversations, like the stakes, the size of it is much smaller to talk to a set designer for a play than, you know, on set. But I'm like, oh, I'm used to, you know, I was just a terrified person

right? It was my first show. It was being on Succession. So it was crazy and I was just constantly terrified. And then it was this nice surprise where I'm like, oh, actually, these skills are transferable, which I didn't think they would be. And then, you know, I was in a lot of different playwriting writers groups and that also felt like a writer's room where instead of supporting each other, giving feedback, it's like, oh, we're all working on the same kind of project. I've done some devised things. So I

I thought it was going to feel incredibly different and I came in absolutely terrified and I called up some friends and asked for advice and I didn't know. I was like, when can we go to the bathroom? Like, should I raise my hand? Like, how much do I have to talk? Yes, always raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Like, when can I eat the snacks? Like, I just honestly was like, is it okay to order this much lunch? Like, I just felt like,

constantly scared. So it was a learning process, but it was less sort of foreign than I thought just getting into it. Well, the thing I'm hearing is there's a sense of an imposter syndrome. I don't belong in this space. I'm going to mess up. They're going to recognize that I was in the wrong place. And I think we've all felt that. I definitely remember going into that. Mine's real, though.

Literally, you killed the real Megan Ambran. We're going to figure that out some way. But I remember showing up to the first day of shooting on go and I parked my car, I'm driving up and like, man, there's a lot of trucks around here. What are all these trucks here for? Like, oh shit, they're here for my movie. And I'm like, oh, am I allowed to eat this crap service? And like suddenly you're on set and you're worried you're going to spill your coke, you're going to do something and be found out. And then three days later you're directing the second unit because you're three days behind and

it's a very quick learning curve. I'm sure it was for both of you the first times you're on set seeing the thing and like realizing, oh, I actually have the answer here. I know how to sort of get this thing worked out. Megan, I see you nodding and like, obviously, Bumper and Berlin was an extreme case, but you had more positive experiences working on shows. Very much so. So, something like The Good Place, like,

that is a collaborative place and we're watching things in front of you. Absolutely, yeah. Well, I have to share one more story from Bumper in Berlin about...

Because now this is a great place to work through therapy. There was a day on set, as I said, I was the only writer and producer, and then our script supervisor got COVID, and we didn't have a backup script supervisor. So people kept asking me about eye line. This is the person on set, very important job, about continuity and getting lines right, but getting angles of the shots right and everything. I was like...

I just look where I want. But it was a very funny out-of-body experience. But to answer the more positive, supported experience, which sounds a lot more like Succession, I got to work on Parks and Rec and The Good Place for showrunner Mike Schur, who is also an incredible both writer and producer and then person and writer.

I think, mentor to people who have never done this before. And I am so truly grateful that I had like a decade of experience of being on set where I

Not only are you learning from other writers who have more experience, but the cast has a ton of experience. The crew all has experience. But it's really intimidating. I mean, there's like two types of people, I guess. There's people who are extremely intimidated and have imposter syndrome. And then there's people who like waltz on to set thinking they know everything. And I'm like, but that's not good. Those are sociopaths. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's tough to find the middle ground. You guys, in a way, both work in comedy. I mean, Succession was an hour long, but this 30 minutes versus one hour thing is sort of...

It doesn't really make sense, right? I mean, in some shows are, I mean, The Good Place is a 30 minute quote unquote sitcom. It's also one of the most dramatic shows depending on the episode of the moment and vice versa for Succession. I'm kind of curious how in those rooms and as you go forward, how you both think about comedy in today's day and age where we do have to figure out how to balance success

being transgressive and pushing stuff with also just not being tone deaf or falling somewhere into not funny town because you went too far. How do you guys approach that as you go through your comedy aspects of what you write? Speaking for the rooms that I've run, part of it is...

having rooms that are representative of like a lot of different types of people. And that is under all metrics of, you know, identity, where they're from, what they think is funny. I think like that does...

And then if those people feel free to both be transgressive in a safe space and then also respectfully push back on other people, I think like that is an amazing, super fun mix of people. And any comedian who's like, you can't say anything anymore. I'm like, I don't know, you're not hanging out with the right people. Because like if you're hanging out with good hearted people,

empathetic people, like they are transgressive in a respectful, safe way. And then how it comes out in television, because like I was obsessed with Succession. I think that was a show that did it in a really amazing way where it would like, you know, it was edgy, but it also was like extremely based in character, which is to me like you forget that something is

edgy or transgressive if you can like see exactly why that character is saying that thing. Did you ever feel on Succession like, ooh, are we going a little too far here? I mean, I remember pretty early on Kieran Culkin jerking off against the window of his office and I was like,

Okay, HBO, here we go. Sometimes I think we've got a little broke in our sensibilities, you know, we're like, where is the line? Have we really crossed it? You know, and I think we're also playing with different, you know, I mean, satire and humor. I think to the earlier debate, I mean, it's like, The Bear was a big debate. Like, is it,

length or in terms of what's comedy or what's drama um i think that you know there's a kind of creepy metaphor of like how do you get people to sort of follow you down the path into like darker themes and you know like giving somebody a piece of candy and luring them further into the woods i don't know um giving them a treat yeah like we're terrible metaphor but you know this how do you get someone to join you on a dark journey is um you know is to have have the comedy and so

It was interesting because a lot of the writers in the room just were incredible comics and had just very funny bones. And so we were playing with that. And I've never thought of myself... I mean, I think I sort of write comedy and drama sort of sandwiched together, but I've never submitted for comedy. And I remember even with writing, hearing, oh, you know, if you submit a script, you know, like early emerging days, like they count how many jokes are per page or people just learning, you know, writing these joke packets. And so I was like, oh, no, that's like...

a different kind of writer. Like, I couldn't, that's not me, I have to do the drama, but then dramas that are just so, everyone's so tense and serious, like, that's not what life is. I feel like it has to have the, both kind of the white and the black keys in terms of what makes something really enjoyable, so. Do they, like, count how many frowns per page in a drama spec? Yeah.

Megan, you're actually in a place now where you get to read other writers and put together a room and you're figuring out how many jokes per page are in a script that you like. There's a magic number, but I don't tell anyone until they submit it. But talk to us about what it's like to be on the other side now. Not to be staffing, but to be putting together a staff.

what are you looking for on a page that says like, oh, this, I get this, I get what they're doing, or at least I want to meet this person. When I staffed my room, I took it like very, very seriously. I wanted to...

I ended up hiring some people I'd worked with on these amazing shows. I'd ended up hiring people I hadn't worked with, but who I had admired for a long time. But I also wanted to make sure that I really did my due diligence for those new spots. And I was saying this this morning, like I actually hired people with a few different types of samples. Like I didn't want to just...

you know, go a super traditional route, like have agents send me scripts, though that was one of the ways that I looked at people. I also had been submitted like a one-act play as a sample. I hired a staff writer who was a comic who I thought was very funny and specifically that she was very funny at joke writing. But the show that I was making...

It was very silly. Like, I already had a tone in my head, even though the pilot didn't exist because we only had six weeks to write the show. But I knew, like, what type of show it was going to be. It was going to be, like, sweet and full of heart, but, like, extremely joke-heavy and quick in that rhythm. So when I read things, there's, like, different types of comedy. There's...

more situational or romantic or whatever. But I was like, I just want the people who are writing like insane jokes. And if they're lower level writers, but they're amazing joke writers, like they'll figure out the story stuff as we work through it. Susan, have you had a chance to put together a writing staff yourself yet?

No. No. So let's work back to sort of like, what were the samples that got you in those rooms though? So what were they reading? So you're going in for these things and then what are they reading and what's getting them excited? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I feel like, Megan, as you were saying, I think it's really important to have a

I've been a part of a bunch of different rooms and understand the thinking behind it from different showrunners. And yeah, I think you want to have people that have outside of your own experience. Like you want to sort of broaden the perspective of what the room is. You don't only want to have your friends. You don't only want to have people that have the same lived experience. You need to have a sort of

shared understanding and passion for what it is, right? But maybe you have somebody who's really great at plot, someone who's very character focused. And I think to the imposter syndrome, I came in really terrified because I'm not as just like hilarious as some of the writers. And then it's like, okay, well, we can all come in with our strength. Like we're kind of like an orchestra and we can all be good at our own thing and just trust, you know, trust the showrunner who brings us all together and we can all really like work together and make the whole just stronger for it.

A metaphor you're reaching for there, it feels like a conductor almost. Basically, you've assembled all these instruments and how do you get them to play together and work? And if it's working great, you have succession. And if it's bad, we've seen the stories of those terrible rooms that go terribly awry. And I think it's scary because you do want to take a chance on new voices, right? People you don't see. You don't only want to bring in the knowns, but...

I don't know, I feel like there are some really terrifying horror stories that we've all heard about where somebody's creating the page or who knows what, right? So it's amazing when you sort of have that alchemy. I think that happens most of the time, I feel like, in terms of the rooms I've been in. It feels like the experiment works and it's really exciting. Let us do our one cool thing. Let's bring back Rachel and Justin. Come on back up here. All right.

Matt Selman, showrunner of The Simpsons. What is the score currently of the Yankees? I was going to ask. Still 2-2. Oh, my God. Still 2-2 in the... Oh. That's... I don't like extra innings away. All right. Well, Matt Selman, you've disappointed me once again.

All right, so traditionally at the end of an episode, we do one cool thing. It's something we want to recommend to our audience. My one cool thing this week is an episode of a podcast called Decoder Ring. And this week's episode of Decoder Ring, they talk through the movie Charlie's Angels, specifically a giant glaring mistake in the movie Charlie's Angels, which I wrote. And...

And so here's basically what happens. In the third act, Bosley is kidnapped and the angels figure out where he is because this bird lands on the window and they recognize the song of the bird there. And it's a really clever idea that I apparently came up with. But the bird you see in the movie is not the bird, the name that they say. So they say it's the Pigmy and that Hatch, but that's not a Pigmy and that Hatch. And the song is wrong. And so for 15 years, birders across America and around the world are like,

How could fuck this up so badly? And I'm one of the answers. But the podcast actually goes through and actually figures out how it happened and sort of why it happened. Do you like this? I like this. It was just a podcast dedicated to how wrong you were and you're like, this is awesome. This is awesome. I want more of this. But it's also, it ends up being a good exploration of sort of like why movies are not reality and why the choices we made

and why it's not a pygmy nut hatch are for good reasons. Why do you think it's a pygmy nut hatch? Why do you think we picked the word pygmy nut hatch as you said? Because it's funny. Because it's funny. That's one of the answers, but the answers also go back to... It's got nut in it and hatch.

The Migratory Bird Act of the U.S. Migratory Bird Act is why it could not have been a pygmy net hatch in the movie. Less funny. Less funny. Less funny. Yeah. Craig, one cool thing for you? I have a one not cool thing. Oh, no, I'm sorry. You're bringing down the mood. Yep. My one not cool thing is Ted Cruz. All right. Now... You're a former roommate. We are in Texas, and I know a lot of you are from out of town, but I assume a bunch of you are from Texas. Yes.

I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat. I really don't. Republicans all hate Ted Cruz, too. Everyone hates Ted Cruz. Donald Trump hates Ted Cruz. Mitch McConnell hates Ted Cruz. We all can hate Ted Cruz together because he's awful. Do you know, he wrote about me in his book. That's amazing. Congratulations. Yeah, he said his freshman year roommate was an angry man, an angry young man. Yeah. And I'm like, do you know why I was angry? Where's the lie? Yeah.

Stuck in a fucking room with Ted Cruz. So do us all a favor, Texans. You can vote for the guy that isn't Ted Cruz. I'm trying to be nonpolitical. Or you could just skip that one. You got a chance. You actually have a chance to get rid of Ted Cruz. And when you have a chance to get rid of Ted Cruz, always take it. Always. Always.

Justin Marks, do you have a one cool thing to share? One cool thing. I hope this hasn't been shared before. So my confession, which should come as no surprise, because I think a lot of us have this problem, is I am an addict. I am a cell phone addict. And I have for many, many years tried to find different ways to cut down on cell phone use while also recognizing this is the thing that drives me crazy, is all these like light phones and different things like...

You can't function in society with most of these smaller, simpler phones. You need certain things like a map in the smartphone or the ability to...

get the Amber Alerts or different things. Oh, yes. Yeah, very, very important. So we all spring into action. You know, and so there is this device that I came across on a Kickstarter called The Brick, which is this brick. It's a little plastic brick and it has a magnet and you can stick it on your fridge or in a desk drawer or whatever. And when you tap your phone to it,

based on settings that you decide. Like, you can turn off any app that you want to, and it'll just sort of shut them down and give you, you can't get email, you can't do, get whatever. And then you can walk around with your phone, so I can always have it on. I can always receive texts if something goes wrong. And then you, if I leave the house, you leave the brick at home, which means there's no way to unlock that phone unless you can, it's actually pretty clever. They give you unlocks where you can pay them like $10. Oh my God. Yeah.

So like, if it's an emergency... This company is going to be the biggest company on Earth in a month. Wow. But it's been... So it's a nice... I don't know. It sort of works, I guess. You're doing a little bit better is what I'm hearing. I'm doing a little better. What else can we ask? That's therapy. That's why it's working. Thank you. Megan, do you have one cool thing to share? I have one and a half. The first one is that, as of right now, the Dodgers have hopefully not lost the game, which is great for the Dodgers. Matt Selman, showrunner of the...

Yes! Yes! Why did I say it? Yes! Matt Selman, yes. You know what? It's his podcast. I'll let him have it. Yep. Go on, Dodger fan Megan Amram. Okay, great. This is...

I don't know if this will give you all as much joy as it's given me. It's given me a lot of joy. I discovered a new subreddit recently, which is called TV Too High. It goes along with another one called TV Too Low. But I am like, like every comedy writer have like a black heart where it's so hard for me to laugh at anything. I'm so dark all the time. And this is just a subreddit of people posting mostly their parents' stories

where their TVs are mounted too high. And it's just... It's like... I'm also, like, obsessed with movies and, like, TV setups and watching them correctly at, like, eye level. And it's just, like, they'll be up here and it'll just be the caption will be like, is that too high? And...

And also it's like, there's TV too. Well, it was pretty funny too, but for some reason, a TV like in the corner of the room just really gets me. And I recently, my mom is like redoing our living room and my childhood home. And she was like, here's where I think it's all going to go. And I,

narrowly averted a TV too high in my own life. And I so excitedly texted my friends being like, we almost had a TV too high in my real life. So I highly recommend it. Go Dodgers. TV too high. Susan, do you have a wonderful thing for us? Oh yeah, well, so I just discovered right before that Rachel and I are both

a woman from Hawaii, which is from Maui, and I'm from Oahu, which is like a... You know, it's a pretty rare and special thing. So I wanted to do one more shout-out for a Hawaii woman, Bliss Lau. She's an incredible jewelry designer. Yeah, and she does, like, sustainable pieces. She does...

I just really love her designs. She does stuff inspired by her Popo and like with Jade and she also just designs inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge. And so, um, I don't know. I just really wanted to just throw, throw that out there. She has a mention in, um, in Kevin Kwan's latest book. So anyway, small, sustainable designers and just Hawaii excellence. So that's better than my eyes. Nice.

Rachel, bring us home with a one cool thing. I thought we had to do one cool thing about things we read. Oh, whatever you love. If you read something you love, share it. Oh, okay. So it's a one cool challenge in the sense where I'm sure a lot of people do this, but I really hadn't done this before. Recently, we went to a part of Maui that's very, very remote. And the place we were staying at had a library. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to go. I'm just going to go choose a book.

off the shelf. And they only had, I don't know, Nicholas Sparks and a bunch of other stuff. Nothing wrong with Nicholas Sparks, but I chose a non-Nicholas Sparks book. And that book happened to be, it was called A Dream of Islands. And I just chose it off a shelf. And I thought, ah, this is going to be like, it was like a dime store type novel. And it ended up being riveting.

I just drank it in like a vodka tonic, you know, or margarita. I was like, oh, give it to me. It's a book all about 18th century travelers who are in search of these strange islands in the South Pacific. And it would be as if one of us said, you know, I think I want to go into space and

And I think I want to just like float there somehow. And I don't know how I'll breathe. I'll just figure it out, right? And I'll meet some aliens and we'll maybe love each other or we'll kill each other. We don't know. And that's what they did in the 18th century. And they're so psycho. Like these are five men. Of course, they're all... Sorry. Can I say it? White men. You can say white men. They're all white men. Yeah. Who are like...

I shall be intrepid. That does sound like white men. Yes. And they're psycho, what they ended up trying to do. Yeah, those white men. Anyway. So this is going to be on TV when?

That's what I mean. Nobody steal it. All right. So, A Dream of Islands. A Dream of Islands by an Australian writer named Gavin Dawes. And the challenge is to just pick something random up. Yeah. Yeah, love that. Pick a random book. I love going to see a movie. I have no idea what it is. Like at the film festivals, you're just like, I don't know what this movie is. Yeah, enjoy it. I don't know who these people are. Yeah. But most fun. That is our show for this week. Woo! Woo!

We have, as we get into some thank yous, Craig, we have an announcement. Oh, we have an announcement. We have a live show in Los Angeles on December 6th. You're the first to hear of this. With some incredible guests, M-Dash, tickets will be on sale soon.

If you are a premium member, you'll get advance notice when they go on sale. That's right. Script Notes is produced by Drew Marquardt with special help this week from Megan Aroub and Chris Saunds. Thank you. Thank you.

It is cut and composed by Matthew Cialelli. You'll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. This episode will go up on Tuesday. If you look at the show notes, you'll find the transcripts for this. We put up transcripts for every single of our 600 episodes. So folks can read through those. We have t-shirts, hoodies and stuff. You'll find them at Cotton Bureau. You get all the back episodes at scriptnotes.net.

And thank you to our incredible guests, Rachel Kondo. Thank you, guys. Justin Marks. Amazing. And thank you to Austin Film Festival and all of you. Thank you. Thank you.