Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome. My name is John August. My name is Craig Mazin. And you're listening to episode 683 of Script Notes. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, what if we just never cut? We'll discuss long takes and wonders and the decisions writers need to make when implementing them.
Plus, we have news and follow-up and listener questions on movie theater lights and outlining for improv. And in our bonus segment for premium members, Craig, how do we manage our phones and how do they manage us? We'll talk about the growing, maybe, movement towards dumber phones. Yeah, yeah. I've just been reading about it. Yeah. So we'll get into that. We'll dig in. All right. Craig.
We'll start off with the news that your show just debuted. Congratulations on season two. Well, thank you. Obviously, we're recording this a little bit ahead of time, so I have no way of knowing if people watched it or if they like it. But I hope they did. The culmination of two years of very hard work and so begins...
A month and a half of The Last of Us, and hopefully people like it. Yeah. So if people want to hear more about The Last of Us, they should listen to you on the other podcast, the official HBO podcast. There's an official HBO podcast, so the first episode should be out now. It comes out right after the show airs on HBO, which I believe is at 9 p.m. Eastern time, 6 p.m. Pacific time.
And wherever it runs, like for instance, Sky in the UK. And so that podcast is hosted once again by Troy Baker, who voiced Joel in the video game. And it's Neil and me and, or I should say it's Neil and I. It is I. And probably a couple of interesting guests along the way. Cool. Great. We'll look forward to listening to that. Yeah.
We have news of other kinds. So Sundance Film Festival, which is my festival that I love. Yeah. Two of my movies debuted there. They're walking. And the Nines, they're moving. They're walking. So we always associate Sundance with...
Park City, Utah, that's where it was born and raised, but is now moving to Boulder, Colorado, my hometown, the place where I was born and raised. Oh, well, that's amazing. And it's moving for a pretty clear reason. Well, a couple of good reasons. There's the political aspect of it. Utah is already conservative, but it's moving in a more conservative direction. Yes. But I think the inciting incident really was that Park City itself was not...
was not a great home for the festival in terms of the people who lived there were tired of being overrun every year by people coming in here and doing it. All this money is making us crazy. Well, listen, people who live in a town like that deserve some peace and quiet. It may be that Sundance was kind of looking to skedaddle
And when the Utah State Legislature decided to ban the flying of the pride flags on state buildings or schools or display of any kind...
At that point, Sundance said, yeah, we've had it. There's also a financial aspect. So $34 million in tax incentives over the course of a few years, which is really helpful. But also as a person who grew up in Boulder, it's just a really good fit for Sundance in terms of like logistics and space and be able to do things. So have you ever been to Sundance Festival? I've never been to Sundance. Yeah. Many, many years ago, I was invited to go do, I think, what you do, which is to be a mentor.
and I couldn't do it because I was in production. And so that was probably my window to go and do that. I've never been to the festival. I've also never been to Boulder, Colorado. Yeah, it's
It's an incredible city. I mean, it feels like maybe I should go. You should go to Boulder, Colorado. Yeah. So the festival and the institute are different things. So the institute runs the labs, which is what I've been an advisor to for 20 years. Then there's the film festival, which is the competition. Which is the competition. So the labs are always taking place at the Sundance Resort, which is this little tiny bubble oasis, like you're literally on the mountain and away from everything else. The festival happens in Park City, Utah, which is overpassed.
over the last 20, 30 years has become an incredibly popular ski destination and expensive for a lot of reasons. One of the real challenges of holding a festival in a place like Park City is that
They're just not set up for all that stuff. And so like getting around is really challenging. For the nines, I ended up like hiring a PA who was just like my driver to get me places because I just needed to be in places there was nowhere to park. And so he was, his job was just to drive you and wait. Yeah. Yeah. Infrastructure is definitely a thing. And it does seem to me like part of the, I don't want to say charm, but character, I would suppose, of these festivals like Cannes seems to feel similar in that
It's not really designed for this insanity. So the insanity kind of is part of the fun of it, I guess. Yeah. And so it will be a different experience in Boulder, which is just bigger and more spread out, but also much easier to get around than Park City is going to be. There's not the mountain right there that you're going to immediately go skiing. You can go skiing out of Boulder, but it's not a choice of like, do I want to go to this movie or ski for two hours? I don't want to ski for two hours. I don't want to ski for two minutes. Yeah.
I really don't. There's like a documentary I saw just like a bit of about the ski industry and how the people that run Vail have basically taken it over. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And how just screwed up it all is. Yeah, the Icon Pass, which is sort of all powerful. Yeah, it's kind of a nightmare. The whole thing is a nightmare to me. I mean, I'm literally like, why? But in the end, you're just going down. That's all you do is go from high to low. Yeah, it's great though. I love it. Well, you know, you're German. Yeah, and I was also born into it. So I was born in Colorado. So I was a little kid without poles. So it all feels very natural. It's in your blood. I feel like anybody from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Germany,
They're supposed to be shushing. So Sundance Film Festival, this next year will be the last year in Utah, and then it will move to Boulder. I'm excited because there's films that I know are going in production that I want to really see. And I just don't go to Sundance because the Park City is such a hassle. I will absolutely be going probably almost every year to Boulder. Even just to get to Park City from the Salt Lake City Airport is a hassle. Yeah. And now you just land at Boulder.
You don't actually land in Boulder. You land in Denver. There is an airport. There's a little airport in Boulder, but like, I think so fancy people will fly directly into Boulder. Why do I feel like Boulder's like a real city that deserves an airport? How many people live in Boulder? A hundred thousand. Oh, you're kidding. Yeah. Oh, in my mind. Oh. Boulder was a big city. Oh, it's not a big city at all. In my brain, it was like a million people. So an interesting thing about Boulder is that it's so close to Denver that there's the danger of it growing into Denver. So it's like a Fort Worth to Dallas? Yeah.
Kind of, yeah. And so what Boulder did is they bought up
this belt called the Green Belt all the way around the city to keep it as open space so that it won't actually grow into Denver. To keep those damn Denverites out. Absolutely. And there's pros and cons to it. Like, it's nice environmentally. It's nice to create the experience of being in Boulder as not being a part of the megalopolis. But it also drives up the prices of real estate in Boulder because we want to live in Boulder. So is Boulder just as elevated as Denver in terms of... It's still as high, yeah, yeah. We're right up against the foothills, yeah. A mile high, so you do have to... You know, the things I don't know... Mm-hmm.
It's a lower altitude than Park City would be. So that's something. Breathe a little easier. That's not the only changes in the world. The Nichols Fellowship has changed as well. It has. So Drew, talk us through what is changing with the Nichols Fellowship. Yeah, so the program will now exclusively partner with global university programs, screenwriting labs, and filmmaker programs to identify potential Nichol Fellows. Each partner will vet and submit scripts for consideration for an Academy Nichol Fellowship, and the blacklist will serve as a portal for public submissions.
And all scripts submitted by partners will be read and reviewed by Academy members. Basically, what happened before when you submitted to the Nichols Fellowship, which we've talked about on the show before, it's...
probably one of the only screenwriting competitions that's worth entering because people actually do really pay attention to who wins the nickels. Yeah, it is kind of the only one. And so basically they're no longer going to just have an open door, just like submit your script and have it be read. Instead, it has to go through a program. So it either goes through a university program or it's going through the blacklist first, but it's not just an open door like everyone sends their stuff. But why? Well,
We have some listeners who write in with their concerns. My suspicion is that it's actually just become impossible to sort through how many people are applying and they've just run out of manpower to do it. But are these university programs and the blacklist serving as a kind of gatekeepers? Yeah. Well, I don't love that at all. In fact, I hate it. We'll get into that. Our listeners have spoken about that. So give us an example. I know
We have Elle here in the workflow. Yeah, Elle writes, this reduces opportunities for screenwriters. Whereas both a nickel placement or a blacklist aid could get writers' reads before, now there's effectively only a single path. This also seemingly weights nickel entries towards college-age students and those who can afford film school. And by the way, about 100 nickel readers just lost their side gigs. How will this affect them? What a fantastic question-slash-statement that summarizes why I hate this. And...
I'm not suggesting that the Academy, which I am a member, although not an administrative member like yourself, um,
Oh, I'm not a sub-initiated member either. I thought you were in like a committee. I was on the writer's committee for a time. We're both in the writer's group, but I don't think I'm actually on any committees at this moment. So we're merely citizens of the Academy. The Academy is a nonprofit organization. It does need to manage finances, but it seems to me like perhaps, I don't know, increasing the price of submission maybe, or just figuring out how to raise money to support it might be a better thing than this, which I think undermines the authenticity, the value of winning a Nichols.
The whole point was anybody who wrote a great script could send it, have it be read by the 100 people who were being paid and have a chance. I don't like the idea that universities are involved at all. Yeah. At all. Nor do I like the idea that the Blacklist, which is not a not-for-profit business, is involved at all. That's a profit business.
I don't think these things... I don't understand. This just feels like they gave it away. I got to be honest with you. Well, I hear all of that and I sort of agree with a lot of it. I want to take the con side is that I suspect that the choice was do something like this or just get rid of it altogether. I suspect they were bumping up against like this is an unsustainable situation. I think I've read...
recently about the places that have open submission policies, like science fiction magazines with open submission policies are just flooded to the degree that they cannot possibly sort through all the things. They basically just had to close their open submissions because everything gets sent in. And it's not just like the writers who are aspiring to do this thing, but it's also just like it's AI slop that they're getting and they're getting stuff sent in. So I can see this as a defensive move. I agree that it limits some opportunities, but I would also question
Maybe the nickel fellowship was not as useful as we might think it was, or it's been increasingly less useful to people breaking in now. If it has been increasingly less useful, I think the less usefulness has dramatically increased to remarkably less useful because now it just feels like they've,
Outsourced it. The whole point was it was the academy doing it. Yeah. Even if the academy was employing people, of course, to read, but the academy had control over that. And there wasn't, for instance, a built-in bias like pro-university students. I don't think that that is fair. It doesn't make sense. Nor does it make sense to require people to go through a profit business in order to be read to... So, and again, this is a mild defense, but like if the Nicoll Fellowship was charging a fee for submission and...
blacklist is charging a fee for submission, yes, they're sort of outsourcing it to it. But if it's the same fee that you're charging, does it really matter who you're writing the check to? Yes, because I don't know how the blacklist manages this. But the point is the blacklist exists to make money, right? Yeah. So if the Nichols Fellowship theoretically charges, let's say $50, and they take all 50 of those dollars and put them into people reading the scripts, people judging the scripts, and they take none for themselves,
And the blacklist says, we'll do the same thing for the same $50, but we're here to make money. Well, let's just say that they are spending all those $50 on me. They're spending $20 on it. Now what happens? Yeah. I just, I don't like it. And I do feel like in our business, which somehow manages to raise money for everything. Yeah.
If the Academy was in that situation where their back was against the wall, it was like, we're killing the nickels or we're outsourcing it. Or can we find some benefactors? There are writers we know personally who could write a check on their own to fund the nickels or to at least subsidize it.
I don't love this. When I say I don't love this, I mean I despise it. All right. We'll follow up as we hear more about this. I expect that the controversy will continue. Yes, yes, yes. Well, I'm on your side, everyone who is out there, except for the people that like this. I'm against you. Let's do some follow-up here. We have more on editors not reading scripty notes. Mm.
Nate writes, I'm a comedy editor. I've worked on things like Somebody Somewhere, Drunk History, and Other Period, and I always read the notes as I'm putting together the first cut of a scene. Here we go. In my comedy sphere, I don't know anyone who doesn't refer to them. They contain useful information about how many setups and takes I should have in my bins. I rarely have directors or producers ask which takes are their circle takes, but I do keep that info handy in case I'm asked.
However, the majority of editor logs are not very useful. They tend to focus on minutiae like prop continuity, which doesn't matter much unless the error is distracting. 99% of the time, we'll choose to take based on performance, not on continuity.
Mostly what I'm looking for in the notes is information that might explain the intended purpose of a particular setup, especially in more complicated scenes. I know it's impossible for a script supervisor to know everything that will and won't be important during the edit, but if they want to ensure that their notes are being read, include as much information as possible in their notes. Yeah, because they don't have enough to do already. Yeah, because they're not already doing 12 jobs. This is so infuriating to me. How many exceptions to the rule we'll be writing in? I love it when it's like, look,
And I was pretty clear about this. I'm not saying no editor looks at these things. And I appreciate you saying everyone in his comedy sphere. I worked in the comedy sphere for 25 years. Never saw it happen once. Saw me saying, can you please go to the notes and see what it said there? Lots of times. Sometimes they didn't even know where the effing book was. Yeah. They had to go find it.
It's so infuriating to me. But no, of course, there are people who do it. My point is nowhere near enough. The vast majority of people I've worked with don't. And I understand why. Again, to reiterate, editors should have a chance to just see things without any spin on it. But...
In defense of the script supervisors, they do put a ton of information in there that I myself am constantly saying, hey, well, what did the notes say? Didn't the notes say something here about something? But the idea that they should be sitting there writing lots of things for the editors, they don't have the time to do any of that.
This is why editors should be forced by gunpoint to sit on sets just the way writers should be forced at gunpoint to sit in editing rooms. We all need to see what the other people are doing to have some kind of A, empathy, and B, better connection to the other parts of our job. Agreed. Yeah, gunpoint is the key. Craig, as a showrunner, you have the power of gunpoint to get people to do things. Would you take an editor up to set? I have. I have. There are times where I insist on it.
So we have our editors for season two. It was again, Tim Good and Emily Mendez. And then we also added the great Simon Smith, who I worked with on Chernobyl. And one thing that's important to me is to have them up there in Vancouver with us while we're shooting. They don't need to be there in theory, but I like them there because A, I can come by and we can sit together, but they also have access to all of us. They can ask us questions as they're going. Yeah.
And then it's particularly important to me when we're doing anything that is wildly out of order because of the nature of the schedule, or if we're redoing something because we have to fill a bit in that I don't like, to have the editor there to make sure that it is in fact going to meld in seamlessly. Because there are times where just because of production exigencies, you're shooting the middle of the sequence seamlessly.
seven months after you shot the rest of it. Yeah. It's good to have an editor there. And particularly like when the editor and the script supervisor are together, which is amazing. So I can turn to them and go, I think this is going to blend in. And they're like, yes, it will. Yeah. So yes, I love having the editor sunset. That's great. That is it for follow up. But let's do, we need a new term for like follow ahead, like future planning. Oh, chase up.
Chase up or chase down. We're not following, we're leading. Lead up. Lead up. Yeah, lead up. Lead up. Preview. An upcoming episode, I'd love to talk about those first jobs in the industry and sort of like the things that you do in those entry-level jobs. And so I would love our listeners who have experience in those positions to write in. And specifically, what I'd love first is for them to write in about their experience as the PA runner who is responsible for like
making the lunch run. Actually, I'd like to focus on the lunch run because it's a very classic first job where there's a writer's room, there's production, there's whatever we post, and your responsibility is to take the order for what everybody wants for lunch, go out and get that and bring it back and provide it to everybody and not screw it up. And it seems like the potential for screw-ups is very high. There's also the logistics and how you pick restaurants and how you interface with those restaurants
Stuart Friedel, who was my assistant for a long time, we used to do the lunch run, and it was through him that we first encountered Paul Walter Hauser, a fantastic actor who was working at a restaurant that Stuart was picking up
Was it Mendocino Farms? I think the orders were from Mendocino Farms. I think Paul was working at a coffee shop next to it. Oh, I see. Yeah. There is an entire episode to be done about the Mendocino Farms assistant industrial complex and how the two things feed into it. It's like Mendocino Farms was created for assistance. Yes. It's incredible. Yeah. I hate it. Yeah. I do not like it. Well, also they changed their menu. I will fall in love with something on their menu and then we'll just get rid of it.
A sandwich study in heat is no longer on the Mendocino Farms. It was called a sandwich study in heat? Yeah, it was that chicken sandwich with the spicy sauce. Oh, I never got that probably because I thought it was mayonnaise. No. A lot of times when they say spicy sauce, it's mayonnaise. It wasn't mayonnaise. I always get that salad. For listeners outside of Los Angeles, Craig, can you describe Mendocino Farms? Yeah, Mendocino Farms is a...
a, what you would call like a fast casual kind of restaurant. Does a lot of takeout work. It concentrates on the staples, vaguely healthy versions of things. Sandwiches, salads, soups. And
Because it has like one of those classic things in every possible category, including vegetarian and vegan. And because the menu is not massive. Yeah. Assistants just go, and today for lunch, room full of 20 writers, it's going to be Mendo. Yeah. And everyone's like, ah, fine. Yeah. Because it's the least objectionable choice. Yes. It's at a price point that makes sense for a room to order from. So for all those reasons, it is useful. And they're discreet foods. So again, I'd love for our listeners to write in to talk about like,
What tends to work well and what's like, oh my God, this is an absolute nightmare for us to do. This is great. And in fact, if you are currently working in a position where you are getting lunches, you're ordering lunches for rooms, I'd love recommendations for things other than Mendocino Farms. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's, look, there's Olive and Thyme and Burbank. There's like some that, you know, you always keep going to, but I'd love the, like, give us your secrets, you know, let's spread the wealth around.
Is Fuddruckers still in Burbank? Fuddruckers, the hamburger place? The hamburger place. That was the, I hated that lunch run. That one was the worst. Well, maybe it is. Was that over by like Ikea and all that stuff?
Yeah, nobody wants to go there. Yeah. Try and keep it in Toluca Lake. True. You've done many a lunch run, so any other guidance or things you're looking for out of this segment? Oh, God, no. I'm just, I'm curious to hear all the other options and sort of, I also want to hear horror stories. I'm really interested in the lunch run horror stories. Yeah, and you know what? For horror stories, if you don't want to get sued by a restaurant, you can always say, there is a restaurant and give us a vague neighborhood and then tell us your horror story because it's,
There is something beautiful about early day. Did I ever tell you my assistant horror story? Tell me this. So I was actually an intern. I wasn't even an assistant. I was an intern. Folks, this was in 1991 and pre-LASIK, as you might imagine. And I required glasses or I cannot see. And I am a summer intern through the Television Academy for Dan McDermott, who's the
head of current programming at Fox Network. And I would get a lunch break, but I had stuff to do. I had like zero, a lot of Xeroxing, you know, things to do. And it was my lunch break. And, um,
I went to the bathroom. This is on the third floor of that horrible Fox executive building, which is old. Yeah. And they had like those, you know, those toilets that are like connected to some sort of horrible suction system. Right. So, so I go to pee and there were people in the, using the urinal. So I had to go into a stall and I'm standing there. I pee and I lean over to flush and my glasses fall off my face and
Go into the toilet, the suction just takes them down and they're gone. No. Incredible. And for a moment I was like, my brain couldn't handle that something that permanent had occurred. And then I was like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. I don't have, like, I don't walk around with a eyeglasses prescription. So I'm now struggling with bad vision. I get, I find a Yellow Pages. Yeah.
There's one place that has like an ad that's like, we'll give you glasses in an hour, you know, and it's downtown. I am not familiar with Los Angeles. I know how to get from my bad apartment on Pico in La Cienega to Fox. That's it. Which is on Pico. Which is on Pico. I know one street. I get in my car. I cannot see.
I get on the freeway. This is before Waze, before the internet. I have written down on a piece of paper where I'm supposed to go. I head east on the 10 freeway. I miss the exit because I can't see it. And now I'm on the five south and it seems that I'm on my way to San Diego. I pull over. I am nearly in tears. I don't know what to do. A cop comes up behind me.
And I'm like, hey, yeah, I'm just trying. I got lost. And he looks at my piece of paper. He's like, okay, here's what you do. I do it. I get to this place. It is a bad neighborhood. I wait there. I'm like scrying babies. And then I got these horrible chunky glasses. Yeah. And drove back, finished my day, went back to my apartment where I lived with two other guys. Sat down in front of the TV. The worst day ever.
Took my glasses off to rub my eyes. One of my rooms came in, stepped on them. Incredible. And I just, again, I just looked at them like, this cannot be. What a sweaty day. Yeah. You know what? This podcast has never been about telling personal stories. But I think people needed to hear that one. Oh, of course. Because if you've ever been in one of those days, just know.
Just know the guy who does the podcast you listen to. Yeah, been there. All right. So you just told your assistant, your intern, Glass's story. So I may have told this on the podcast before, but I was interning at Universal. This is somewhere between my two years at Stark.
And I was the intern below three assistants. There were three assistants above me for my boss. There was nothing for me to do. You talk about Xeroxing. You didn't even get to Xerox. No, I got to put some stuff in some file folders that would never be looked at again. That's all I did. So we had to go to a screening across the lot. And my boss was going and the assistant was going to drive her in her car. But I was supposed to take the golf cart in case my boss wanted to come back to the building without her car. So great.
So we're waiting. We're on the 10th floor of the Black Tower at Universal, waiting for the elevator. My boss takes off her glasses, reaches over, untucks my shirt, wipes off her glasses, and then puts them back on. Wow. Yeah. You were just a glasses wiper. I was a glasses wiper. And it was just, I was so...
I was so excited because like this is a story like as it's happening. Wow. I get to keep this. I get to keep this. Yeah. It's incredible. It didn't feel to me at the time that I was living a story. What I felt was just a lot of hot fear and confusion. Yeah. But yeah, when all was said and done, I was like, this is one to hang on to. This is life, man. Yep.
Let's get to our marquee topic, which today is long takes and oners. It's the sense where we are in a scene or sometimes over the course of a whole movie and we are not cutting. We're basically getting over the whole editorial department or at least large parts of the editorial department. And instead, we are staging action in front of the camera and the camera's just going to keep rolling as we're going through everything. So we should define our terms a little bit. A long take is just that. It's not necessarily flashy. It could just be holding a two shot for the course of a scene. Yes.
A one-erge me implies there's camera choreography, there's a whole plan for how we're going to move through a space and do this all as one shot for something that would naturally normally be multiple shots. Yeah, the entire scene takes place or multiple scenes take place in one shot.
camera move, and there is no other option. Yeah. And so let's talk about what the other options would normally be, which is coverage. So Craig, talk us through what you mean by coverage. So in very simple terms, a master shot is a wide shot in which you see all of the people who are involved, all the action, all the stuff. You get a full view of it. And you can have master shots from two different sides of things.
coverage is then where you get closer and you change your angle so that you have individual shots of people in the scene. So medium shots, close-up shots, insert shots of like somebody putting a coffee cup on a table, things like that. So you have stuff to cut to. And you have ways to shape a scene so that in visual space,
you understand, okay, here's how the audience might feel looking at this wide. Here's how they might feel with a more intimate view and so on. Coverage allows you to edit and shape a scene
when you're doing a one-er, there is no coverage. The coverage is what you decide to do there on the day with the camera, the end. Yeah. I think we should specify is generally we think about coverage as like, okay, now we're moving into coverage. We're out of the master shots. We're into this. Obviously, you can set up with multiple cameras so you're getting coverage at the same time as the master shots with careful planning. Yes, no question. And this happens all the time. Depending on the nature of the scene, you may be able to avoid coverage almost entirely if you have three cameras going and the people are arranged in a certain way doing certain things.
Or sometimes you do master and then cross cover where you can get both sides of the conversation at the same time. Absolutely. So examples of shows that are doing winners or these very long takes, the
the new Netflix series, Adolescence, Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne. The great Jack Thorne. Great Jack Thorne, a script notes guest. So on that show, it's four episodes long. It looks like their basic plan was for every episode, they would have five shooting days and they would just shoot as many times as they could to get it right. And so episode one, what we see is take two. Episode four, that was take 16 we're seeing to sort of get that finished. And if you watch the show,
you're pretty aware quickly that we're not cutting because the camera is following characters and following another character. It's just, it's fluid. It's just always moving. And there are times where it does extraordinary things to sort of keep it, keep it going. Yeah.
contrast that with the studio, which is the new Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and others show, which has very long takes and isn't cutting very much, but it's not the illusion that it's all one continuous moment. Yeah. And I guess the first question would be why? Yes. Why do people do this? I'll editorialize after I sort of get the non-editorial version. The non-editorial version is that there are
some scenes, moments, or in the case of adolescence, an entire thing where you want to be immersed in such a way that you are forced to watch this one camera. You start to realize that this camera's trapped you. Coverage does keep things fluid and it changes perspectives and moments and it gives you a sense that the show is always, or the movie is privileging you. And one extended moment
a oner, takes that away. You are now a prisoner of this moment. Even when you do long takes, you can start to... And that is, I think, ultimately why a lot of people choose to do it. And that is a good reason to do it. The other reason to do it is because
The sequence is about moving through an interesting space to arrive at a conclusion. The classic example is the tracking shot in Goodfellas. Yes. Where Ray Liotta takes Lorraine Bracco through this nightclub. Through the kitchen and other places. Through the kitchen all around to see how this guy had this backdoor into everything and eventually arriving at a nightclub table, sitting down and then seeing...
Before we get into the cons, let's talk through some more of these pros. So you talked about immersion and that sort of realism and the way that it forces the viewer to sort of pay attention to focus. I think I noticed with adolescence is my husband and I will sometimes like, we'll be on the couch watching a thing and we might like look at our phones, but it's something else. But like, because we were sort of looking for the seams, we were just completely paying attention at all moments, which is really useful. And that sense of playfulness
and sense of geography you get through a continuous tracking shot is really something. You actually understand...
how a space fits together when you're not ever cutting and you're never actually changing one of you. Or if we are looking at a different direction, we see ourselves moving. You just understand something better than you could off of a series of still images to get the sense of the geography. Yeah. It also requires the production generally to create a 360 environment. Yeah. So pretty typical when you're doing a scene traditionally, let's say it's two people talking in a cafe and you don't have a location, you're building the set.
there's going to be a wall, you're going to build three walls. And you're not going to build the whole thing because the camera needs to go somewhere. And also, you're not going to look back that way. You're looking forward and across and across. But when you're shooting a one-er, as people move around, you're going to need to move around, which means a complete set, either on stage or in a location, you need to make sure that everywhere you look is clear. This is harder than you think. Oh my God, yes. Because people who are making things have to go somewhere. Yeah.
There's a lot of technical stuff, including people watching a monitors, cables, lights, all of that. How do you do all that? What oners do is force away a lot of the movie artifice and really embed you in a space. Yeah, for better and for worse. Yes. That it makes it more difficult. Yes. So I would say in the pro column, it's a mixed pro, it's narrative efficiency.
If you're writing something that is going to be shot in a long take or as a one-er, you're going to have to think about how do I get all this information in here without the ability to cut to something else? That can be good. It's a challenge for sure. Production efficiency. There are situations in which you can get through a lot of material in a one-er that you could take longer to do if you were to do in traditional coverage. And because you're forcing yourself to do certain things a certain way, that 16-page scene could be shot in 16 minutes rather than three days, right?
But it's much riskier to do it that way. Yeah, no question. Emotional continuity. And so if we are with our actors and the cameras on them the whole time through, we're going to see all those micro things happen. And the changes there, if it works well, I think can be more immersive because we're really, we saw them sort of get to that place and there was no cutting away as we saw those things happen. And that can be nice too.
There's a lot of cons, and so we should really talk through the cons here. And now, a little editorializing. I hate these. Now, it's not that I haven't done them before. I mean, we did one in Chernobyl, and it was there for a reason, and it made sense for that moment, we thought. But there is the whiff of directorial wankery about Wunners. There's something in the water at the DGA where people get very excited about Wunners, and I don't know why.
There have been some incredible oners that I didn't realize were oners. Those are my favorites. Spielberg does a few that are amazing. It's this thing of like, and we're going to shoot it in one where the director gets a chance to be like, hey, everybody, this is about me.
And it is about freezing my directorial choices so that no one can screw with them. The problem is that, A, a lot of scenes will play better with editing because they have a tempo. They have a pace.
There are things inevitably inside moments that you wish you didn't. Maybe we don't need. Maybe I don't like that line. Maybe I need to add something in. You can't. It's a one-er. You cannot edit. There's no escape. And you talked about catching things on actors' faces. There's a whole lot you miss. In fact, you miss moments.
most things because you can't show people listening or if you are showing them listening, you can't show the other person talking. Absolutely. And if you want to, the camera has to move around which I find takes me, it's like I'm in the room with the director. Yeah. And that's why I generally loathe these things. I think they just lock people into weird spaces and
if you shoot something and edit it properly, it will feel like a one-er anyway because it'll be so smooth. That's my editorializing. Absolutely. So you talked about
The sense that you feel the heavy hand of the director. You can feel the heavy hand of the director. If you're noticing that it's a one-er, you're probably feeling that. And it also means that the scene has to serve the camera versus the camera capturing the scene that's happening in front of them. Yes. If it's not done artfully. Yes. Also, lighting is really tough. Yeah, it's really tough. This is really tough. You can't optimize for everything. No. Yeah. A thing I notice about one-ers and long takes is...
you end up with some unnotivated character movement. So you see actors repositioning themselves in a scene because they need to then actually motivate the camera to move around because they need to change stuff around. And it's like, well, why did you just stand up and move there? The scene didn't tell you to do that. We needed you to do that. No, and you start to feel a little bit like you're watching a play, except it's not a play because I'm not there. So again, the parts of this that are, I understand why artists like it,
primarily is we're protecting our work. No one can mess with it because there's no way to cut anything. The downside is there's no way to cut anything. No one can mess with your work. And it becomes a play, except I'm not there. So I don't have the excitement of the live performance. I'm still watching it on TV. If it is done really, really well, it can be amazing. This is why people are really, you know, I think...
gotten excited about Adolescence in Part is because it actually does it well. Yeah. And because I think there is something about it that does compel it. Look, I'll be honest, like, and I would say this to Jack, if you were here, I'll say to him the next time I see him, and I know what he'll say, he'll stammer and go, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But I disagree, but I'm sorry. And that is, I think it would be better if it weren't like that. I would prefer to see that show edited and shot traditionally because I feel like I'm missing things.
So let's think about adolescence. We'll have Jack on the show at some point to talk about that. But if we hadn't done the continuous take approach, but had kept with the idea of continuous time, so basically it's all taking place within this same limited period of time, would it feel...
the same. It would feel similar. It wouldn't feel... Look, here's the funny thing about time. Yeah. If you play something in real time, you can get away with it for a little bit. But after a while, it starts to feel like, oh my God, this is like real time. And the most suspenseful things, the things where I've always felt time squeezing down on me were manipulated by editing. Because film, cinema, television, whatever you want to call this medium...
on trickery. The entire thing is trickery. Yeah. Down to intermittent motion and the fact that we're watching 24 still frames every second. So the rooftop scene at Chernobyl, it was important for us to say, these guys had 90 seconds. That's,
that's a reasonable amount of time to do this because it was purposeful. Yeah. So let's talk about the purposeful things because I have a thing in something I'm writing which it's scripted as a continuous take or the illusion of a continuous take. It's specifically because we have characters who are moving from a ordinary conversation. They notice one thing is a little bit amiss. They react to that one thing. They start to backtrack. They realize they can't backtrack and things go worse and worse and worse and worse and worse for them. That is a good to me argument for a continuous take because, oh crap,
We have that sense of adrenaline of being in the space and not knowing how to get out of it. Crapped.
The camera has trapped you. And that similarly, the camera has trapped you in those 90 seconds. But I will tell you that in the first episode of Chernobyl, where we follow some of the people from the control room as they move through the now exploded facility trying to figure out what's going on. I originally wrote that in a wanky way to be like this one-er where we would follow somebody and then we would fall like the camera would go down through a hole in the floor and find somebody else.
And, you know, credit to Johan Rink. He was like, yeah, it's going to be wanky. And he was right because we could do so much more. And we can also emphasize moments. They can slow down.
And then other moments can speed up. And so you look at adolescence and there's moments where it does slow down and we do focus on this, but those are all really baked in and you're counting on, okay, this is going to be, the camera's going to land on the right moment and the actor's going to find this right space and it's all going to make sense and then we can sort of do on the next thing. I think adolescence does. It's like there is still music, which also has to be choices that kind of have to bake in from the top. Yeah, you do. And if you have Jack Thorne, you know,
Let's also give Jack credit, as I often do, for being a fantastic playwright. Absolutely. This feels like a melding of Jack Thorne, the playwright, and Jack Thorne, the screenwriter. And this can work. Now,
Now, it also works for four episodes. Yeah. Right? I mean, would you watch 12 episodes like that? At some point, it would become impossible. So as we talk about the melding of film and plays, you brought up Doubt. And so we'll put a link in the show notes to the scene between Viola Davis and Meryl Streep in Doubt, which in the play is set in an office, in the movie version is set outdoors. Yeah. It's not pretending to be a continuous take, but it's seven minutes. It's a seven-minute scene. Yes. And so let's talk about long scenes versus long takes. Right.
So, when you have a scene between two people and they talk for seven minutes in a screenplay, almost everyone is going to say, cut this down. This is way too long. And in almost every case, they're correct. But there are times and in certain kinds of movies where...
A scene can be so powerful and the two actors are so good. And the battling intentions are so interesting. And the revelations that occur are so powerful.
impactful that it earns its weight. And that's really what it comes down to. Well, it's a short film within the larger film. There's a beginning and a middle and an end. And we don't know at the start of the scene that it's going to be a super long scene. But we established early on kind of what the stakes are and what the two characters' goals are in the scene. And we're incredibly curious to see where it goes. And that's why it's successful. If it was just...
It was just giving us information. Horrible. It could not possibly sustain. Correct. And this is a good example of how length requires editing. You might think that's counterintuitive. If they had shot that all in one, which they could have. They could have, yeah. Because it's basically Meryl Streep and Viola Davis walking slowly and talking intimately.
through a kind of a city park. Yes. They could have absolutely just led them on a two shot, moved to the right, moved to the left, gone back to the leading two shot. No problem. It would have been longer. Yeah. Because there are just sometimes unnecessary pauses or the sense of being captured where you get restless and itchy. But seven minutes where you can cut to angles purposefully to make, I don't know, to make the impact come across the way you want.
Those seven minutes seem shorter. You have two of the best actors alive, so they have incredible skills. Yeah. But let's also think about how they have to divide their focus between the two different approaches. So if this was what continuous take, they have to be in their performance, but also be aware of where the camera is and exactly what mark they need to hit at every moment. So all that is clicking in their heads in the way that it actually was shot. Yeah.
They have to be aware of the performance and they do need to be aware of the camera. They do need to be aware of all this other stuff. There is choreography they have to be thinking of, but they don't have to be paranoid about stitching everything together or like the stakes are lower. And here's another thing that drives me crazy about Wonders. Yeah.
And I know sometimes actors like them because they do get stunty and because they also know no matter what I do, it's in, right? So like if I do this, it's on TV, it's in the movie. But actors, great actors, particularly ones who are used to working in film television, understand how to change their performances subtly or not so subtly depending on where the camera is. As the camera's back and wider, you can get away with some larger things. When it's right up against your face, you want those what we call, you know, the micro expressions. Yep.
Also, they understand that in a situation where you do have a walk and talk, where there is going to be coverage, they can kind of save themselves a little bit. When the camera is over my shoulder on you, I don't need to give you the full firepower. I need to be there in the scene. I need to give you what you need. But I don't need to be full cry. I don't need to be full shock. I can save it. And when the camera comes around, that's when you are there to kind of help me and I'm delivering full impact. Yeah.
On a one-er, that's it. It's just everybody give everything. And if one of you is great and one of you is not so good, oh, well. Yeah, that's what you're making. That's that. Yeah, and it's not ideal. Yeah. So our takeaways here is that I think one-ers and long-takes can be really useful when they are deliberate narrative choices. They're choices that are serving the story, serving the scene, serving the moment. But we bristle against them as instincts for like, oh, it's more realistic. It's more honest. It's more true. I mean, the bottom line is...
I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But unlike other choices that we make, that one must be interrogated. And you have to ask, you must ask, is this about the story or is this about ego? Because ego loves a winner. Yeah. All right. Let's answer some listener questions. I see one here from VP.
Well, first a little context. VPs went to a place called Cinebistro, which is a theater where they serve food the whole time, the kind of Almodraff house style place. So VP writes, Cinebistro seems to have a national policy of keeping the house lights up at the trailer level for the first 15 minutes of all features. What? Which in my experience left the chatting audience seemingly unaware the trailers had ended and the feature had begun. What? Ostensibly to allow for guests to finish their meals and so the servers don't trip over said guests' feet as they deliver and bust plates. What?
Here's my question. Are studios really aware of this? Are the filmmakers? Is there any sign-off? Or do exhibitors get a pass for keeping their doors and kitchens open? Do the guilds have anything to say about the conditions in the theaters? The guilds? No. That screen their films, including lighting, sound level, temperature, or even smells? I actually love...
how some people, and it's sweet. People think the guilds can do something about this. Hey, I think DJ might like have a strong opinion about it. They'll write a sternly worded letter. No, the guilds can't do anything about this. The studios, if they're aware, are just probably grouchy about it. But hey, if those places are sending their rental fees to the studios to run those things and they're selling tickets, which the studio gets a chunk,
I don't think they're going to care. Just like studios don't seem to care or did not care when projection bulbs were crappy all the time and sound systems weren't great. I mean, they encourage exhibitors to do things, but the studios and the exhibitors are not on the same side. There's somewhat of an adversarial relationship there. We can't even get television manufacturers to turn the effing motion smoothing off. The idea that we could get these guys to turn their lights down, forget it.
So my husband, Mike, ran movie theaters in Burbank for many, many years. He had 30 screens. And there was a filmmaker, a very well-known three-named filmmaker, who came out like yelling that the sound wasn't turned loud enough in the theater. So Mike had to interact with him. And then like, I think the filmmaker had...
bullied the projectionist to actually turn up the sound. And then like an audience member came out and found Mike and said like, it's too loud. My ears are hurting. And a shouting match happened between the filmmaker and the audience member. Great. That's what you want as a filmmaker is to yell at your audience. And so, yes, there is...
I understand why filmmakers want to see the best possible conditions for their films. But there are things out of their control. And so you, VP, have the choice of going to Cinebistro or not going to Cinebistro. And if they do this and this is distracting, which I would hate, then don't go there. Don't go there. It's as simple as that. So I understand why the three-name director did this and how that person felt because... Mm-hmm.
I pour so much time and effort into sound, into that, down to the tiniest thing. And everything is just thought through carefully because I believe that sound is as integral to storytelling as sight, maybe even more so at times. And I try and write
towards sound. Yeah. And then you do show up somewhere and they're like, what are you guys playing this through a fricking tin can? Like what is happening here? And of course it's upsetting, but I then realize there's nothing I can do about it. Nor can I do anything about the motion smoothing, which horrifies me so deeply. And I can't, I just can't believe that we, we let this go on, that we can't. Sony, which owns an entire movie studio, uh,
We'll send you a television with motion smoothing turned on. It's ridiculous. But we can't do anything about it, which is why in a weird way when people complain about everybody watching stuff on their iPad, I go, do not complain. The iPad doesn't have motion smoothing. The iPad probably has decent sound actually if you got your earbuds in. It's okay. It's better than a bad theater and it's certainly better than the motion smoothing on your TV. Let's talk about the lights being up in a theater. So my closest experience with this has probably been
when my daughter was a little, little baby, we used to go to the mommy and me movies over at the Grove. And so on Monday mornings, the first screenings, they would show like the normal movies, like, you know, R-rated movies, but specifically for like parents with little kids. And so you could actually like change a diaper. Oh, because they figured the kid wouldn't remember watching this, you know? Yeah. And so I remember seeing like the constant gardener as like a mommy and me movie. Hold on. Babies love movies about the creation of the CIA. Yeah. And, uh, I,
I can respect that. So I feel like... Yeah, that's different. Everybody knows the deal. Look, if there's a baby crying, if you smell some poop, that's what this was about. Absolutely. And I think there were screenings of Wicked where they encouraged singing and other times don't. Listen, that's just good old ground rules. It just comes down. But if you go to a theater, your expectation, unless told ahead of time...
would be that when the movie starts, the lights go down. Serve the freaking chicken fingers 10 minutes earlier, for God's sake. So speaking in defense of serving food in theaters, Alamo Draft House is a good experience, and they also really take the movie-going experience seriously. You can do both. I have no problem with it. I mean, look, we've always given people food in movie theaters. It's a strange thing, but we've always done it. I guess it's because theaters gotta make money. Yeah.
I vastly prefer people having their chicken fingers and then watching the movie to people just munching in my ear throughout. But, you know, you and I also, we remember how bad theaters used to be. I mean, we're complaining now. The thing is, theaters were a nightmare. Yeah. There'd be stands on the screen. Everything was disgusting. The floor was flat. If somebody in front of you was over five foot seven, you were missing a chunk of the movie.
The seats were small. There were no cup holders, John. No. They didn't have cup holders. The concept had to come. It hadn't existed. And so, also, when the movie ended, everyone dropped everything on the floor. Yeah. People would come in and for 10 minutes, a cleaning crew would come in and just sweep everyone's garbage away. I mean, listen, we lived like animals. Katie has a question for us.
When voting for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, I don't dare assume I know what people do in reality, but I believe the intended ideology is that it is judged on the draft of the script submitted and not the finished product. I spoke with someone who believed the finished product is what is to be judged, which they clarified by claiming to vote for the WGA Awards and stated that they never read the scripts and only watch the screeners.
Since this process is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, I was wondering if you could shed some light on what goes into voting, what your process is, and perhaps your knowledge of others as well. Fair question. So you would assume that best screenplay, we'd be referring back to the screenplay to see which is the best written screenplay.
We don't. And so over the last 10 years, it's become common for them to send out links to all of the screenplays so we can read them. We can read, Drew every year goes through and pulls all those up so we can actually read those things on our phones, which is fantastic. Thank you, Drew, for that. But that's not an expectation or requirement. No, and even when you look at what the Writers Guild credits mean,
If you get written by John August, what that means is you get credit for the screenplay as shown on film, as shown on the screen. So you're not really getting credit for a document. You're getting credit for the writing of the movie. And we presume, and I think reasonably so, that if you are a member of the Academy, you're good enough at this point to be able to watch a movie and discern what the story and the writing and screenplay elements are.
And that is what we generally do. Yeah. Because if you go back to the screenplay, you might notice some serious differences because things do change. Yeah. So, listen, all of the categories we're judging for these awards based on what we see on screen. So, like, that actor could have turned in a fantastic performance that does not actually really reflect it in the final thing because of editorial choices or because other stuff happened. That is 100% the case. Same with visual effects and stuff. We have these little, like,
sizzle reels that sort of show us it was a sense of what the visual effects or special effects actually were which is helpful but we were just basing it on what we're guessing happened behind the scenes based on the final results you also make a good point that there are times where we write things and
And if you look at it on paper, you may not as a reader get why this line is good. Yeah. But when you watch it on screen, you understand, oh, the screenwriter's intention was this. It made it through the director and the actor. And it is good. I always think about like one of my favorite one word lines in movie history is in John Wick.
You're a John Wick fan by any chance? I've never seen John Wick. I've never seen any of the movies. I think for you, I would suggest watching the first John Wick. It's terrific. And by the way, don't expect like, it's not Shakespeare, but in its own way, it owns what it is so beautifully. I don't think you need to get into the sequels. You probably, well, who knows? But watch the first one. And there's this wonderful moment
where Keanu Reeves plays this guy John Wick. We don't know who he is. All we know is that his wife just died. He has this new puppy that she kind of got for him to sort of say, hey, love this instead of me because I'm gone. He's wrecked. And this young Russian gangster steals his car, beats him up, and kills the dog. And the gangster goes to sell the car to this guy in a chop shop, John Leguizamo, and punches him in the face. Yeah.
And then the gangster's father calls John like it was something. And he goes, I understand you struck my son. Oh, yeah, I did, sir. May I ask why? Well, yeah, sir, because he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog. The gangster goes, it is so good. And if you just saw O on paper, you'd be like, O? He goes, O like...
We are so screwed. Yeah. And it's pretty, it's a pretty great line read. I'm trying to remember the actor's name. He's a Swedish actor who unfortunately died way too young, who plays the, anyway. He was in the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish version, I believe. I think he played the Daniel Craig role. Michael Nyquist. Michael Nyquist. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
For that alone. Anyway. Absolutely. So that's the reason why John Wick didn't get its best screenplay nomination, which it... It should have, by the way. Honestly, I do believe, like, I think it's a great screenplay. You know what? That might be a deep dive, actually. John Wick might be a deep dive. It's got one of the most Stewart special Stewart specials that you will ever see on screen. And that's actually the one flaw, I think. But I would love to dive into that because it is...
A fantastic example of sparse, just fully reduced screenwriting with these moments of beauty in them. Right. One last question here. Eli has a question about improv movies. Movies like Spinal Tap, Best in Show, and Waiting for Guffman always amazed me because they were so funny and so natural, which is something that you can only get from their improv style of comedy.
How would one go about, quote unquote, writing or creating an outline for a movie like that? I want enough structure so that it's not complete chaos, but also enough left open so there's room for improv. We should get Alec Berg on to talk about that because that was so much of their process on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yeah. Curb Your Enthusiasm, I know they had sort of detailed outlines and sort of talked through, like, this is what the scene is, like, this is what happens in the scene. Right. But then, like, created a structure for the performers to do things. Yeah.
When we had Greta Gerwig on the show, she was talking about the mumblecore movement and how frustrated she got is that without a plan for sort of what was happening in the scene, things just stalled out dramatically. It was hard to sort of get things moving. And it's like, oh, but it's comedy. It's funny. It's like, yeah, but is it? Is it actually serving the story or moving the ball down the field? Yeah, I'm paying to watch this. Yeah.
So, can you stop? Yeah. Just... Yeah, I'm not paying to see, figure out what the scene should be and then getting there. I'm paying to watch something that feels complete and intentional. Eli, until we get sort of like more thorough information and you're looking into doing this kind of thing, I would say approach this as you're writing a movie and approach this as these are the scenes, this is the sequence, this is the build. So, you know,
You don't have maybe dialogue for what's happening in those scenes, but I think you still have the scenes. I think you have the log lines of what's happening to these moments and what the beats are, what you think the in is and what you think the out is. Probably some individual lines that you know you need. Yes. So you create lots of pulls and in between people are streaming their own lights. But I wonder if we can get Berg Schaefer Mandel to share with us
one of the outlines from an episode of Curb just so we could like compare and go, oh, look, here's where the gaps were. Here's how they filled things. Or actually, here's how complete the scene was. Just feel like it was more improv than it was. Absolutely. And I think the thing we'll learn is that
you have very talented performers, but you also have people behind the camera who can react, respond, and reshape to get the next thing happening. So when we have people on here who've talked about multicam sitcoms, like, the reason why those writers are on set is because they can react to things and actually find new ways to connect dots there. And so it's an ongoing process. And,
Editing. Editing. Editing, yes. Can you imagine doing one of those things in a water? Oh, my God. Ooh. Ooh. All right, let's do our one cool things. My one cool thing is the Alien role-playing game source book by Free League. I'm checking this out right now. I'm just handing it over to you. Oh, yeah, you were talking about this at D&D. Yeah, so it's a hefty black book that is the source book for playing an alien-based role-playing game. So Alien, like the movie Alien, the whole Alien franchise. So it is officially licensed 20...
20th Century Fox project. And so I bought it mostly because I wanted to do a one-shot with some friends to play sort of a cinematic version in the Alien universe. What I like about it, even if I think I'd
never played the game is that it paints out the world of the Alien franchise, the whale in Yutani, the governmental structures behind this, and makes it feel, I don't know, tangible and real. It's just a really well executed version of this. You know who would love this? Phil Hay. Well, so I'm playing with Phil Hay. So unfortunately, Craig, you'll be traveling, but next weekend we're going to be doing this one shot. I'm sorry to miss it because Phil, you know, has been talking about Twilight 2000 Forever, which is this very, it's an old school 1980s
tabletop RPG system. But what I like, I'm just looking at this page here of potential injuries. They have a D66, John. Well, so it's two D6s. So one is the six. Yeah, it's crazy. I love it. And you roll these to see what injury you just received? Talk us through some. Well, let's say you roll, actually, give me a roll. You rolled a 32. Yeah.
Crotch hit. Crotch hit. Crotch hit. Fatal? No. But one point of damage at every roll for mobility and close combat. And it takes 1d6 days to heal, which if you've been hitting the crotch. Yeah. Give me one more. We'll do a 45. 45. Bleeding gut. Yeah. Could be fatal. Time limit, one shift. Yeah. That's a rough shift. Yeah.
So what I'll say I appreciate about it is it's nice to see the newer mechanics being folded into new role-playing mechanics being folded into here. So the 2D6s, but also you're rolling multiple dice to do things. Each time you have a level of stress, you have to roll an extra stress die, and so it increases the odds of things going very, very wrong. What's interesting about the Alien universe is, of course,
You're not expected to live that long. Your survivability is not high in these scenarios, so you have to go in playing it with the expectation like you may not make it through. In Alien, everybody except Sigourney Weaver tends to die. Unless you're new. So, yeah, you should expect to die. Dying, by the way, is a big part of these games. I became a fan of dying when I was playing as a player in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Yeah. There was something so kind of fun and awesome about it, like...
saying goodbye to a character feeling like hey you truly don't know on any given night if you're gonna make it through I kind of love that yeah and there's another player I play with um a guy named George Finn who's like the king of dying he loves dying it's to the point where eventually I became like a pretty high level cleric and I was like you're not dying he's like oh come on I'm like no I'm not letting you die he's like please no no not on my watch
So anyway, great, great recommendation. I'm sorry to miss this one. Yeah, we'll let you know how it goes. So I'm going to be, the reason I'm missing it is because I'm going to be in Europe on a little promotional tour for The Last of Us. I'm going to be speaking in Madrid. We're just doing a talk on screenwriting to all the writers there. I've spoken to that same group, I think. They are fantastic. You will love it. Amazing. So looking forward to that. And then a premiere in London that Sky puts on because they run all the HBO shows there in the UK. Yeah.
Hoping to see some of our British friends there. I will report back, including Jack Thorne, who's probably going to punch me in the face for like questioning whether or not maybe an edited version of Rattlesnake. He does look like a violent person. So violent. The gentlest man in the world.
Tall and gentle. And a genius. He did it again. Yeah, I feel like Stephen Graham, actually. He feels like a pugilist. Stephen Graham will knock you out, no question. And let's give Stephen Graham credit here, too. I can already hear Jack yelling at me to stop saying that only he did it because Stephen Graham is amazing. And Jack and Stephen have done incredible work together. My one cool thing and my one not-so-cool thing this week are related to video games that have come out recently. Cool. Believe it or not, Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Look, is Assassin's Creed Shadows exactly the same as every Assassin's Creed before it? Yes. But anything in feudal Japan is already better. And it is beautiful. Like the fact that they're now doing this on these newer generation things, it looks really beautiful. Are you playing on PS5 or are you playing on PS5? PS5. It looks gorgeous. It plays beautifully.
And what can I say? I'm a sucker for Assassin's Creed. In the end, I like killing people silently from the shadows and ninjas are the best at it. Yeah. Shinobi. Not so cool. And I love it still. So this, I'm saying this out of love. MLB The Show 2025. Guys. Like...
I like the small, small, small little improvements that happen from year to year. But this has been the same game for years now. And they keep making you buy a new game. And the thing that kind of makes me the craziest is the play-by-play announcing just doesn't change. I mean, a little bit. But, you know, I'm playing a guy who plays for the Yankees. Road to the show. It's my character. He came up through the minors.
I cannot tell you how many times I've heard the same damn stories from the announcers. Like if I hear the story about hitting two wrong runs and a guy giving him a free suit one more time, I'm going to lose my mind. So like, come on, it'll be the show. You're the only one. It's the only game that has the MLB license. Please, like, you can do more. Yeah. You can. You have a whole year. Do more. Or just like, just take a year off.
And then come back and blow our minds. Anyway, I still love you. I love you every year. It's part of the problem. So one cool thing. One thing. So Assassin's Creed Shadows and the show 25. Yeah. Assassin's Creed Shadows, thumb up. The show 25, thumb sideways. All right.
That is our show for this week. Scribner's is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Ciolelli. Outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you want an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnox.com. That is also the place where we can send questions like the ones we answered today. You will find the transcripts at johnox.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll find all those at Cotton Bureau.
You can find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on phone essentialism. Craig, thanks for a fun show. Thank you, John.