712 - Something Wicked This Way Comes

22:15It was a half-sandy. Anyway, why are you eating if you're sopped up? Yeah, that's the one that's really tripping me up. Well, I got to tell you, John, you found a great product here. If you're a cuckold, now the only issue, as I can see, is that the recommended maximum weight capacity is 200 pounds. And I got to figure a lot of cucks are going to be two plus. But I mean, if you pop the cuck chair, that's extra humiliating, right? That might work for the person who wants to be in the cuck chair. I think the second choice may actually be better because this is the inflatable beanless beanbag chair.

22:44And so that beside the bed, it's like pretty humiliating to be sitting in that. It's loaded around. Honestly, it looks pretty nice to me. I think it would look, I think it looks comfortable now. It's also max weight 200. Again, there's a gap in the market. Yeah, for plus size cuckolds. But built-in possibility for humiliation seems actually in line with the cuckold chair. So it sort of feels like it works. You know what? God bless everyone, by the way. Like if that's what you're into. That's how I feel. And everybody's cool with it. Do your thing, man. Who cares? I don't care. Get your sandwich in your cook chair and the other thing and just eat half the sandwich.

23:16You just have to recognize. I think it's fair to acknowledge. Like, we don't kink shame. No, never. Some kinks are innately amusing. That doesn't mean we're degrading you. No, we're happy for you. We're not even laughing at you. It's just the concept is funny. Yeah. It just is. It's funny. Let's bring it back to a more wholesome moment here. We have some follow-up here from Carrie. Carrie says,

24:08thank them for their pup whisperer skills. Do you know, settles for a mild discomfort is probably what the person with the half a sandwich and the lax is. In the cocktail. That's actually amazing. But also how sweet is that? You guys have nice pup voices. I believe this. You guys are really good dudes. Pups love you. Pups know you. My dogs do not like driving around. Cookie does the same thinks she's like very trembly and I'm talking. Real me is talking and that doesn't seem to do anything at all. Maybe it's John. Not even podcast me. It's just actual me. Actual me does nothing. Aw. Aw. All right.

24:46Enough banter before we get to start the key topic here. Dana, congratulations on Wicked. Wicked won and now Wicked two. This was a long journey. So let's briefly recap sort of what the history of Wicked is. So obviously there was once upon a time The Wizard of Oz. It was a book. Then it was a movie. There was a book by Gregory Maguire called Wicked, which sold to Mark Platt, who wanted to do it as a Broadway show first. So, it is a Broadway show, correct? No. Tell me what it got around there. I believe the idea was to make it into a movie without music. Yes. They started it as that. And I'm pretty sure they maybe even had scripts.

25:26And then Mark left. He was running Universal at the time he went to be a producer. and he said, the one project I want is Wicked. He took Wicked and it was Stephen Schwartz that convinced him that Wicked needed music because inherently the Wizard of Oz was so musical. It was crazy to do this idea without music. So thankfully, Stephen Schwartz convinced him to make it a Broadway musical first. But Universal weirdly always owned it because they had originally bought it to make it into a movie. So they owned the right, you know, part of the rights to the play and then they made it as a musical first.

25:59That's right. So the musical that Stephen Schwartz wrote the music for and Winnie Holtzman did the stage play for was a massive hit. I remember seeing a pre, so it was on Broadway, but pre-opening with Christian Chenoweth and Dina Menzel. And it was great. Like you could tell like this is going to become a thing and it did become a thing. It almost felt like redefining, I think, too, in terms of like what Broadway was doing at the time. It felt almost part movie, part musical in the sense that it had like a big hook. and... Stephen Schwartz is a Broadway legend. You know, you're talking about Pippin.

26:32Greatest. And to have somebody like Stephen Schwartz take something that could be a little bit more in the kind of Disney commercial zone for what Broadway sometimes does to just do this whole other weird thing that was very original in its own way. I mean, the whole thing about Wicked is, it's not The Wizard of Us really at all. And it's such an original show and so weird. It's a weird show with incredible music. Yeah. Geniuses. A lot of them. Talking story, the stage version makes huge changes from the book. And so like the book, the central sort of concepts kind of come through, but it feels really, really different in story and sort of how stuff is structured.

27:15Yeah, and I never read the book. What? Which turned out to be a bit of a mistake because I told my 12-year-old he could read it. Apparently, no bueno. Not a great idea. He was like, mom. Some intense sex stuff happened in this book. I was like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it's about. But I've heard it's amazing. And the extraordinary Winnie Holtzman and Stephen Schwartz got together and sort of took the main idea from it, which they thought was so brilliant, which was like, what if this story that you knew and you absolutely were positive, you knew everything about it. What if the bad guy was not who you thought they were?

27:47And what if the person that was good was maybe not actually as good as you thought they were? And let's see what that story. And what if they were best friends? And what if they were best friends? And interestingly, I actually, Winnie told me the other day, which I'd never heard before, originally Glinda wasn't actually that big of a part. And it was in meeting Kristen Chenoweth and becoming obsessed with Kristen Chenoweth that they decided that it had to be like a true two-hander, which I had never heard before. I thought that was pretty interesting. And so all these things that seem inevitable were not inevitable at the genesis of this.

28:16And so it's that process of discovery. Well, let's talk, so the stage show is a huge hit, tours the world, a bunch of different languages. We all know it and love it, but eventually we're going to make it into a film. And the decision to make it in from one film to two films, I'd love for you guys to talk about sort of that process. I mean, I think Craig maybe was around when it was more a choice, actually. He can maybe speak to that. Because when I got involved, I was brought in by John Chu and it had sort of, it was already a fait accompli. It was already like, we're making this as two movies and we can't question it and we can't go back.

28:51We have to like just do it. But Craig, you knew more about that stage in development, right? Where it was deciding, they were deciding to make it two movies? No, it was a condition that I, they wanted me to work on Wicked and I said, okay, but it has to be two movies. See, that's amazing because you're a genius. Well, I don't know about that. I just, you know, I'm very familiar with the show and I read the script as it existed. And I just said, there's what I remember saying to Mark was, once she sings Define Gravity, you have to go home. You can't stay in the theater. And by the way, when you're at the play, like sometimes people made mistakes and were like, bye.

29:28That was the most satisfying thing that ever happened. I'll see you guys. We're going to go to dinner now. Right. And so like you can't, you just can't. And also the second act of Wicked totally is quite different. And there's too much to shove into one movie. And the songs are so extraordinary because Steven is such a crazy genius that you try cutting one song. No, you really can't and you shouldn't. And you were like, I kind of miss that song. That song's like a short song that doesn't need to, and I love it and I miss it. I said, I can sort of outline, I can make two treatments for two different movies and I can write a script, you know, from the beginning to the end of Defying Gravity.

30:02And that's sort of how you, ah, boom. And we'll see you next time. And Mark and the executives at Universal So we're like separately. We're like, I'm not sure Mark will go for that. Mark's like, I'm not sure the studio will go for that. And I basically was like, everybody, let's just do it. Then they all said yes. And that's it. And that was the last impactful thing I did on Wicked. Well, it was very impactful, my friend, seriously. Because it's not an obvious choice. I mean, it felt so dangerous at the time. Yeah, but it feels so obvious now. Well, now it does. Everything feels obvious now. But at the time when we were living in it, It's like, you know, they talk about World War II and it's like, they didn't know how it was going to end.

30:44Back then, they didn't know. Like, it might have not worked out. We sort of felt like, oh, my God, this might not work out. Because as Craig was saying, you know, it was never the first movie. You know, so whenever people saw the first movie, thank God they loved it. It was wonderful. And everyone kept saying, well, it was obviously the right choice to break it into two movies. I was like, that's because you haven't seen the second movie yet. I was like, hold that thought. So let's talk about this because if the decision wasn't to make one movie and see how it does and then make the second movie, the decision was to make two movies at the same time that was in distinct movies that are joined.

31:17Yes, which means you can't screw anything up. Yeah. Because the first movie has to be a success because you've already shot the second movie. Were they cross-boarded? Were you shooting scenes? from two. A hundred percent cross-borded, which means, and this is the brilliance of John and the group that he had around him, all the HODs that were so extraordinary and the brilliance of Cynthia and Ari that, you know, they would shoot the end of movie one in the morning and shoot like wonderful from movie two in the afternoon. Wow. So they're in completely different costumes, totally different hair, different characters.

31:48They talk about how they had to use different perfumes depending on which part, which movie they were in because they had to have these like sense things to trigger who they were. They had different playlists for the two movies for themselves to listen to because throughout the day, they had to keep it straight. It wasn't even just like - Because it was based on location, basically. It was all locations, basically. We had 73 sets that, and we were turning over sets constantly. And these sets were enormous. And Nathan Crowley, who's our production designer, is a genius. He's Christopher Nolan's guy.

32:13He's absolutely extraordinary. I'm obsessed with him. Everybody go find an interview with Nathan Crowley. He's the greatest guy ever and totally brilliant. And his wife is also extraordinary, obsessed. So you know that you're making two movies and we'll get into this one in the bonus segment where we talk about. So the promo circuit is like, you have to, last time you had to just talk about the first movie and not acknowledge the second movie. This way they were all sobbing in their interviews and everyone's like, why are these people crying so hard in their interviews? It's like, because we just finished for good.

32:39We're crying about for good. We're not crying about popular. We're fine about the first movie. It's the second movie. So Craig and I have not seen the second movie yet and I'm excited to see it. But one of the real challenges is as Craig was alluding to and that you were also mentioning, we kind of remember what happens in Act 1. And Act 2 kind of races through a bunch of stuff. And if you look at the Wikipedia summary of Act 2, it's like, oh my God, it's like half a line is given to things. And so you have to make much bigger choices about storytelling. That's exactly right. And that was the exciting challenge of it, was that the second act of the play is 45 minutes long.

33:13This movie is two hours and 10 minutes, or 14 minutes. So we obviously created a lot of new material for the second movie. And what I always used to describe the feeling of the second act as its own movie. It's like you walked in, you sat down with your popcorn and you got hit with the two, three act break and then you went crazy from there. That's what the feeling is of the second act. So, because that was appropriate for the play. And then you're looking at, okay, this is a movie going experience. People are used to a one, two, three acts. You got to ramp up. You ramp up. You're like a little slow.

33:44You're like, where are we now? Who are we? What are we doing? And so that was the big fun of trying to figure out movie two is like, how do we remind people where we are? Or how do we get them used to how much has changed in the time lapse between the two movies? And that was actually a big discussion was sort of how much time to have passed during the two movies. So that you'll see when you see the movie, we sort of landed on something I think is interesting. 30 years later? Well, no, you know what it was? Well, what I sort of realized with my brilliant friend, Lorene Scavarria, is that the experience of people watching the first movie was so intense for them that it actually impacted how we were all thinking about the second movie as we were working on finishing it because it raised the bar so much.

34:27I mean, it was like the expectations got higher and higher every time people were like, oh my God, this movie, it's killing me. I saw it 42 times in theaters. And the press tour of the girls became part of the movie itself. Like that was their friendship in a weird way because they are friends and they're so close. And so watching them be in love with each other, you know, platonically and crying all the time about For Good, which nobody knew, you know, created this sort of intense feeling that we knew we had to have come through the second movie. And so part of the decision of how much time passed was like, we were like, oh, it should be how much time passed for the audience.

34:58Exactly. Right. It should be a year because the movies are coming out a year later. So, and then Winnie came up with some brilliant word for what a year was, which was like 12 tide... 12 moons or something. Yeah. She made up some crazy word for it, but we all sort of know it's a year. 12 monthly poos. Yeah. The moon passages of the... Yeah. Talk about the writing process on this because you're writing both movies simultaneously or did you like, okay, we're going to finish the scripts for the first movie and then start the script on the second movie or was it all blurt together? So I was pulled in by John Chu because he's my favorite person on planet Earth and I told him anytime you want me to do something, I'm going to say yes.

35:33Ouch. Oh, no. And you guys, I meant that I met after you. All right. Thank you. He's my favorite person on planet Earth who I met after you too. Weird late clarification. But in the podcast, we could put that before as if I said it right before. Matthew will skip. Matthew, just swoop that right into the front. I love John and Craig. John is it? But working with John is, you know, he's the most extraordinary director, but he's so collaborative also. And he makes me want to be a better man, you know. He's that guy. I'm like, I love you, John. So I told him, I'll do anything with you after he and I work together.

36:10And I want to back up because you worked with him first because he was a director on your TV series. Yes, that's right. So he had shot Crazy Richations, but it hadn't come out yet. And I needed someone to direct the first two episodes of Home Before Dark, which was my Apple TV series. I met with him and he showed me the trailer for Crazy Richations, which had not come out yet. And from the trailer, I was like, you're a genius. This is going to hit. This is so universal. This is incredible. I love you. I want you to do this. So I was like trying to hire him off of like a trailer. I was like, I don't need to see anything else.

36:40I'm obsessed with him. And so he did the most extraordinary job on the TV show. And he brought in Alice Brooks, who is the DP of Wicked, to do my show. He brought in Myron Kirstie and the most brilliant editor you'll ever meet on planet Earth to do my show. And I got to work with all his people. It was extraordinary. I want to stop you for a second because it's just such a good reminder of the relationships you form and the trust you form and sort of being able to see like what a person is like as a collaborator. So you were hiring him, but then he's actually hiring you because he can see like Dana gets it and we have a shared vision and I know that she can deliver this thing.

37:14Correct. And also I think John's very loyal. And once he gets his people around that he likes, that he knows, understands the way he likes to work, you know, he wants to keep them close. And I feel so lucky to be in his orbit, honestly, because he's just extraordinary. And so I said to him, I'll do anything for you. I'll drop whatever I'm doing, whenever I'm doing it. And I'll say yes. So he called me after I finished Lost City. He called me and said, I have another one for you. And he had done In the Heights. while I did Lost City and other stuff. And he said, okay, I have another one for you.

37:40And he said, do you want to know what it is? And I said, no, the answer is yes. And he was like, I'm going to tell you anyway. And I was like, no, no, no, let's do a bit where like I'd make part of the deal without even knowing what it is. I thought that would be funny. And he was like, no, I'm going to tell you, you're an idiot. I was like, okay. And he said, it's wicked. And I was like, oh my God, everybody loves, what is it? And he's like, wicked. I'm like, mm-hmm. I also am one of the people that loves Wicked so much because I hadn't seen it. I'm literally the only American human who had not seen Wicked.

38:12Did you say, when he said Wicked, you're like, Wicked what? Well, I knew of it. You know, I knew it was like popular and famous and stuff, but I'm sort of like not super dialed in. Like I discovered Beyonce like two years ago. I was like, you guys, we need to talk. This woman's incredible. So this is sort of always me like too late on really important things. I started watching Lost in the last season and was like, you guys, The Hatch. And everyone was like, we're so over The Hatch. We don't want to talk about The Hatch. I like, in a weird way, that you weren't a sort of a wicked... I was not a mega fan.

38:42I didn't know anything about it. Sometimes it's better to not be burdened by... Well, and Winnie and Steven now talk about how helpful it was to have me there being kind of irreverent and not being so precious because I just didn't know. And it was the middle of the pandemic, so I couldn't go to Broadway to see it. so I googled everything I could find I watched the entire play in like shaky clips from like France, Germany whatever blah blah put it all together and I was like I get it I read the play and I played Stephen's gorgeous music whenever the song would come up as I was reading I would play the music and I was like God this is so good this is so good the music and I loved it and so I did I was of course like impressed and also I had loved my so-called life so much so I loved when he's worked from that and so he said we're gonna work all of us together me, John John, Winnie, Steven, and you, and we're going to get into Zooms and we're going to break both movies together, which I had never done before with a director.

39:35And I was so excited to be able to do it because it felt like every day we weren't just breaking the story or writing the script. We were making the movie because it was what he wanted to be doing too. And he was telling us about his vision as we were all talking it through. So we spent 150 hours, 153 hours on Zooms before we ever started writing. Then, I know it's a lot, Craig looks so like tired from the 153. So much. I just looked over at him and he was like, girl. By the way, the bullet you dodged. Yeah. So 153. No, no, I did not dodge a bullet. The bullet hit you squarely. Yeah, no, bullet hit me pretty hard.

40:10So you had all these, you know, before you started. Before we even started writing. But that was the sort of ideation period where we broke them into two movies. We sort of carded them, you know, digitally because we were all on Zoom so we couldn't see each other. So we had digital cards that we had made. and then I started outlining from off those cards. So I outlined both movies. And then John basically was like, okay, we're going to split up movie one between you and Winnie and you guys are going to write it together. And so we wrote movie one together and as quickly as we could to get it full because we had stages booked.

40:44Like they were trying to make us feel that pressure. So we wrote the first movie and then I immediately pivoted while Winnie did notes from John and Mark, I immediately pivoted and started writing the second movie. So I wrote the second movie. And then from that point forward, Winnie and I were collaborating, but we were each in a different movie. So when I was in movie two, she was in movie one and vice versa, but we were still working with each other. So it was like, I would send her a scene for movie two and be like, this is hot trash garbage. Can you, how would Glinda say this thing? Cause I'd want her to blah, blah, blah.

41:14You know, so there was a lot of collaboration, but we were in two separate movies and that was kind of how we got the work done. Yeah. But it was super collaborative and with John and with Stephen and then being a fly on the wall to watch Stephen Schwartz do the two new songs. Yeah. For the movie too. It's pretty great. It was like childhood Dana lost her mind. It was amazing. I have to say that this is a really good example of you're a good writer. I think I'm a good writer. Some people should be writing certain movies and some people should not. And the thing is, I love Wicked. I love the show.

41:45But I was not the right person for that project. You were the right person for that project. That project needed somebody that not only was a writer, but also, how would I put it? A clearinghouse, a diplomat, and an ambassador for all of these people. And also somebody that really enjoys the collaboration of writing with another writer. And I'm such a monk. Yeah, you're so private. You just want to be in your little room and do your thing. This is just a great example. And, you know, I underscore this all the time, but just in case anybody's like confused. The credits for this movie are spot on accurate.

42:21And I was happy to support those. I didn't fight you. They're correct. Yeah. And Winnie had done a lot of work before any of us came on. And that's why she has that solo credit. And only writers will understand that credit, which is Winnie solo, because she had been working on trying to make this into a movie for 15 years before any of us were involved in the process. So that's why she has that credit. And then A-N-D, which means she worked also with the team of me and her. Yes. So it's sort of a weird looking sandwich of a credit, but it does represent what happened. And, you know, it was really an amazing experience.

42:59It was very, very, very difficult because of all those personalities and all the different things. And like, we're all, we all cared so much. Honestly, it was really hard, I think, because we cared so much. We wanted it to be so good. And we all felt this profound sense of responsibility to the fans. And then after movie one, it was like ratcheted up to a million. So the post-process of movie two, I would just sit around crying because I wanted so badly to be worthy of people's expectations of the second movie. Because it was so important to them. And then also the world has gotten even harder.

43:32and I think people desperately need a time to sit in a theater quietly with their friends and their loved ones and their family and be able to express their emotions about what's going on in the world or whatever in a safe place to do that. And I know the movie gives you that. As they witnessed the rise of fascism and see it reflected back in the movie, yeah. Yeah. And there's a potential to triumph over it. And of course, we didn't write it that way because it was five years ago that we started writing it and so we didn't know this was gonna be what happened. But I just think, unfortunately, the movie is so timely because this is timeless, because there are always people looking for power and they're going to do it at the expense of the most vulnerable people.

44:09Steven and Winnie, all the way back when they were first conceiving of the show, and this is something that Mark told me, that there was underneath it a pretty clear allegory for Nazi Germany, for fascism, for people getting disappeared, taken away. They were writing it in the shadow of 9-11 and the persecution of the Muslim population in America. So it was like, that was partly why World War II was so fresh on the mind is because, if we all remember right after 9-11, it started to get really awful. Wicked is, it's really interesting how it has so many flavors and layers, you know, because on the top it is pink and green and it's two best friends.

44:53And floopy. Yep, 100%. And it's funny and weird. and then underneath it, there is, there's, well, there's something bad, you know, something bad coming. Well, and I think that's what people are going to love about the second movie is that it still has all the pink and green and floopy and, but it is really about something and it really has a lot of there there. There's a lot of there there for both the consequences within the friendship, the political stuff, of course, is there and it hits harder now because of what's happening, but the friendship is so beautiful beautiful. And it like, you feel like you've been on this crazy emotional journey.

45:28And that was another real challenge of writing the screenplay of the second movie was, you know, in the play, there's all these reprises that you're hearing that you just heard the A side of the reprise 20 minutes ago in the play. But in the movie, you're hearing the reprise a year later. So how do you get the audience to feel the feeling of that reprise the same way they would have if they had heard the A side of it 20 minutes ago? We were constantly thinking about how do we remind them of the things that happened in the first film so that that's fresh in their minds. And a lot of it had to do with planned flashbacks, but also unplanned flashbacks that came out in editing that I think were really strategic and really smart.

46:05Dana. My love. What do you think my favorite song from movie two is going to be? I mean, I know what it is. I'm just saying, what do you think of this? Well, I'm just going to say, I don't know what I'm allowed to say or not say, but I think that No Good Deed, your brain. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's the Craig one. Nailed it. And your brain will exit the back of your head and then come back into it at the end. I cannot wait. It's like the craziest. I lost my mind. It's such a good song. And look, I love for good. I love it. It's sweet. It's adorable. It's a nice wrap it up. But No Good Deed is awesome.

46:42And having seen Cynthia in Jesus Christ Superstar and watching her like turn it to 11. You told me about how beautiful that was. Yeah. I mean, I can't wait to see what she does about it. And I would reference the song you talked about, but there's a 100 % chance I mispronounce it. Gethsemane? Gethsemane. Yeah. Gethsemane. Yeah, so No Good Deed's going to kill you. Can't wait. Buckle your fucking seatbelt for good, though. Buckle your fucking seatbelt? Buckle your fucking seatbelt for that one, because that's like a goodbye, everybody. I can't wait. And I don't know why. I hope this makes you two also feel really emotional when you're watching it, But part of my emotional experience with the movie is that there is a feeling a little bit that Hollywood is dying.

47:26And this is a big, beautiful Hollywood movie from the old days. Like you can't believe this movie got made. They built the giant sets. And this giant sets that were real and everything was real. So if it's out of focus, it's because a person was doing it. And like there's no AI. It feels so much like the movies that got us all to be in this business in the first place. It's going to be massive. Oh, I hope so. It's just so beautiful. And Hollywood is not dying. It's just that it's been, you know, the months after summer, the months between summer and Thanksgiving. The New York Times once again wrote an article about how Hollywood is dying.

48:03Like, yeah, it's always dying in September and October and November. Right. That's what it does. You forget the article you just wrote about what a big summer it was. Right, exactly. Right, right. Thanksgiving and Christmas comes and kaboom. And so it's going to be huge. Well, and I hope that Wicked puts the paddles back onto the business too and like, you know, clear. And it's like, but the problem is they never seem to learn the lessons from the movies. They go, they'll go like, but that's just Wicked. So it doesn't count. Like you can't learn anything from it because it's Wicked. Nothing's ever been like this.

48:31So you'll be like, okay. Nobody knows. But you know what? You guys did a spectacular job and I can't wait to see the second movie. And John really is a remarkably talented director. I do. I do need you to FaceTime me when both of you. After you see it. because I had a hard time talking about it. I was just wandering around the after party just like a zombie and crying in front of famous people was basically what it was. It was just so weird. I was just like, I couldn't stop crying. It was wild. It was the experience of the movie, but also the trauma of making the movie. Yeah, and I had some health issues during it that were really difficult.

49:04And the narrative I had in my head was that Wicked was what killed me. Wicked is why I got sick. And then I realized while I was watching the movie that, oh no. Oh, no. Here we go. I just realized that Wicked actually saved me. It gave me stuff to do while I was feeling so sick. And every day it gave me a reason to get up in the morning and try and care and feel something again. And so it is what ultimately made me feel better. It's what got me better from the sickness. It's not what killed me. That's fantastic. So that was part of why I was weeping around like a stupid after party like an animal.

49:36When you were working on it, so before it was in production, you and your husband were in Calgary for some reason. Oh boy. That was a, yeah. I was there and the two of us were just. That was my breaking point. That's where I was like, I might have to quit because I think I'm going to die. Yeah, same. And I was like, I have to. And you were working on The Last of Us. On the first season, The Last of Us, which was chaos. And you were like, I'm, this is crazy. Yeah. And I was like, our health might be in danger. Yeah. We were standing in a park going, we're dying, right? We're dying. Yeah. And you were so nice to me.

50:11I was like, I think I'm dying. And you're like, it's okay. Okay. Because I'm also dying. So we could die together. And then I ran and I encountered a bear and there was a moment where I was like, maybe it should eat me. Wow. It would be a way to go. I was like, this would be a killer story. First of all. God, I identify with that. And then I would get out of doing the rest of this work, which is so intense. is what, like writing is so hard that a lot of times - That you want a bear to eat you. I have told my assistant a number of times, listen, at some point today, don't approach from the front, but from behind, hit me with a hammer as hard as you can on my head and just end this.

50:45So I don't have to do this. I'm so glad you and John say those kinds of things because, well, John less so, because John is just like - John's healthy. He's just too healthy. I can't talk to you, John. I'll talk directly to Craig. But I'm so glad to hear you say this, Craig, because you're so brilliant and so talented. And I always think of myself as just like a really hard worker. That's why my work is good. Not because I like have any innate talent. But I'm just like, I just work harder than everybody else. Nope. That's an eldest daughter thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm the youngest daughter, but I - You're the only daughter, right?

51:13I'm the only daughter, yeah. I guess you're right. I'm still the eldest daughter. So, yeah. So, just hearing you say that, Craig, I think that helps me and also all your listeners who are like trying to be writers that you also feel that way is amazing. because it's, I want to die every day. I'm like, I cannot believe how hard this still feels to me. And yet, every time I have a chance to stop, and I could stop, I do not stop. And I don't stop. I never stop. I'm crazy. No, you've set up like nine more shows and movies. I have 67 movies. While you've been sitting here. While I've been sitting here, I set up 42 new things.

51:48It's like, I have a problem. I literally have a post-it note on my desk that says, say no. Yeah, yeah. And then I just said yes. You said yes. To all the things. All the things. All right, let's answer some listener questions here. Yes, please. James in Vancouver wants to ask about torture. We just talked all about torture. Exactly. We don't need to talk about torture. James, that was your answer to your question. You guys always talk about needing to make your characters suffer in order to see them go through the maximum amount of growth possible. However, how much suffering is too much? At what point does it veer into emotional torture porn as opposed to genuine trials and tribulations?

52:24That's a good question. I think it's a fair good question. So torture your hero is fantastic. But if there's a moment where it's like, I don't want to watch this anymore, where it feels just gratuitous, I'm going to stop. And so you have to make sure that you're giving your character some victories, some hope along the way. Because if it's just despair, if it's 1984, people are going to stop. And then you fail as a storyteller, I think. I also feel like you ask yourself, what do you want to go through? You know, like I have to close my eyes when torture is happening, actual torture is happening in things.

52:55and I feel almost the same way about emotional torture, which is like, I want to stop just shy of that because I just think that's gratuitous and weird and I don't need to see it. Also, we're in a world and a time where everything feels like torture. I tend to go with what I feel and what I think the rest of the world is feeling because I am also feeling it. But Craig, what were you going to say? Yeah, I definitely like to sort of echo the feelings that we have, but give people a way to go through these things somewhat safely. torturing your characters has to be purposeful. Remember, you're not just torturing them like you are choosing what to do to them.

53:35Therefore, you have a plan. And the plan is such that the torture must be matched to their ability to withstand it and then surpass it. And so the real question, James, isn't how much should I torture them? The real question is what would make this person's victory feel really earned and satisfying? That's great. That's all. That's great. And also, for each individual character, the definition of torture is totally different. For my husband, the definition of torture is me chewing food that he can hear. And literally, that could be an entire scene where he's tortured. Like, he literally, he says it makes him want to actually murder me in cold blood.

54:14That's, yeah. Misothonia. Yeah, yeah. Misothonia. Yeah, he has that thing. But so, you can calibrate it based on who the person is because torture is something different for each person. But that's so smart. You calibrate it depending on the person, and you also calibrate it depending on the tone. So in comedies, torture could be as quote-unquote torturous as the girl that dumped me is with the guy that beat me up yesterday, and I have to sit here and watch them dance. That's torture. It's not, you know, zero dark 30 torture. Yeah, nobody's strapped to a chair in that story. Right, but sometimes you do strap someone to a chair, and that's— To a cook chair.

54:48To a cook chair. Bringing it back. If they're under 200 pounds. We're going to make it a runner. It's a runner. Don't worry about it. To recap, when you're thinking about torturing your characters, you're thinking about what is it that you want? What does make you feel uncomfortable or comfortable? What do you as the writer want? You're thinking about the audience. Where is the audience in this? And also, crucially, you're thinking about the character. What is it about this character and their journey that this torture is allowing them to grow and progress and do the things you're trying to do?

55:13Well, and I particularly like what Craig says because that almost reframes it for me in a way that I understand that question even more, which is what will make their victory feel more earned, which is such a smarter way of saying what specific torture is right for this person and what level. Because if you think about it, in Wicked movie one, we realized since it was ending at Defying Gravity, she can't be defeating the wizard. That was what her I Want song was about, but she can't defeat the wizard because she can't do that till the second movie. So what she had to defeat was the part of herself that didn't believe that she could do it.

55:47And so that led to all these discoveries of she was going to see herself as a child and all these different things. And it led to different forms of torture for her in movie one than are the ones that she experiences in movie two. And it was all about making those victories feel earned and or the bittersweet ending feel as sad as possible. That's a good question, though. You know what? Vancouver representing. I love Vancouver. One other quick question here from Zach. Was the 1990s a great decade for action movies, or am I just experiencing whatever generation thinks that the decade they grew up in has the best media?

56:19So some of the films that he's listing here are The Fugitive, Bad Boys, Mission Impossible, Independence Day, Speed, Armageddon, Twister, Men in Black, and many others. They're all perfect. Amusingly, none of those movies are even in the top 50 of the best movies of the 1990s. The answer is yes, the 1990s were incredible. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I'm here to tell you the 90s were the best 10 years of movies that I've experienced in my life. And when I look back at what they did there, it's astonishing. So the danger is that we are all roughly in the same age cohort and that we were in our young 20s there.

56:53You always think about that period of your life as being like, well, that was fantastic. Yeah. The way we would test that is we should get younger people to watch movies of the different decades and have them... Can that be a follow-up question? Can you task your audience to younger people watch those movies and see if they're bangers like we think they are. I have been showing like great hits of the 90s to my assistants and, you know, the office PAs and like basically all the kids that are... What do they think? It's been just one home run after another. I mean... That's great. That's great. That's great.

57:27Will you share that list though? Like share that list. Put that list out for me. Like give me your top 10 because I want to watch them. This list right here is that, I mean, all these movies are fun, but he's not even listening to Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs. I mean, I could just go on. Fargo. I mean, there's so many incredible movies. He was specifically talking about action in his dance. But yes, they're incredible movies. In 1999, was it a banner year? It's like you look at the movies that came out that year, it was absurd. Yes, you're right. You know what, fair Zach, you were talking about action movies.

57:56I'll give you a pass on that. And all those were great action movies. The Fugitive is like - The Fugitive is a perfect movie. Have I ever talked to you about the movie? Okay, I'm gonna tell super quick though. We may have learned this because we went to the Stark program, so we may have learned this the same, but I always learned structure was character, and it was all about how the character is going through a specific journey. And we learned there's the character's need, and there's the character's want. And the movie is all about where they start off the movie where they want something, and they're making a journey towards needing something.

58:24And wherever they are along the way, those key plot points are always about whether they're getting what they need or whether they're getting what they want, that kind of thing. And the other thing that I learned was that the The protagonist is the character who changes, not the lead of the movie. It's the character who changes. And the antagonist is the character who causes that person to change. The protagonist of The Fugitive is Tommy Lee Jones. Bingo. Yeah. The antagonist is Richard Kimball because Harrison Ford, of course, is the lead of the movie. He doesn't change. He doesn't change at all.

58:53He's like, I didn't kill my wife in the beginning of the movie. In the middle of the movie, he's like, I swear to fucking God, I didn't kill my wife. At the end of the movie, he's like, I fucking told you I didn't kill my wife. and Tommy Lee Jones, the whole structure is keyed to Tommy Lee Jones' arc in understanding that Richard Kimball is telling the truth. Yes. This is all correct. That helps me with structure more than anything else. Nice. All right. It's time for one cool things. My one cool thing is sitting between me and Dana. It's this thing called the owl and it's this little camera device.

59:19So it looks like a speaker. It looks like a tall speaker, but it has a camera at the top that is a panoramic camera. And so we're on a Zoom like we are right now with Craig and Drew and Graham. It is showing individuals slices, individual shots of me and Dana so that we actually look well-framed in it. And it is just a piece of magic. So it's the owl. If you're doing any sort of situation where you have some people in a place and other people are on Zoom, it is a game changer. Because when we've done other things like this, for ScriptNotes, we have to move the laptop back up far enough so that everyone can see each other or there's a camera up on the wall.

59:53And I've done so many things like this. I've never seen it work as well as it's working right now. Like we're all seeing each other's faces. Everybody's in the frame. It's amazing. It's really effective. And so what's so smart about it is like, so it has the panoramic view and it shows you at the top, but it's smart enough to individually slice out when someone is speaking to give them framed as a single, so. I urge every studio to get one of these because all of those Zoom calls I have with you guys were 27 of you are in one frame. I can't do it anymore. I was on Netflix call and like literally, it was like a satellite shot of two executives.

1:00:23Literally, like a Google Earth shot of the Netflix building. It's kind of hard for me to read an intention. I was like, do they like it? Do they want it? I can't tell. I'm going to get one of these for the production office. You got to get it. Oh, for the production office. It would kill for that. For production meetings? Yeah. Everybody. So, Craig, for D &D, when we're a hybrid, like, well, in Europe and Canada, game changer. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I mean, John and I. Did you just slip in that Craig is doing D &D? No, we played D &D together. Playing D &D every single time. Oh, I thought you were making a movie.

1:00:55Oh, no. It was cute. But we did. You guys are cute. We are. We're adorable. We talk about torture. John and I were playing in a game on Thursday evening where we were subjected to a three-hour pointless combat. Where we ended up like captured and then like shoved into a mine. Oh, God. Are you with other people in this story? Who else is in there? Oh, my God. Who's who? So it's me and Craig and Chris Morgan. And we'll talk about it. We'll tell you after. Okay. We'll sidebar. Sidebar. Yeah. Sidebar. Chris Morgan made it in though. We all know he was there. Dana Fox, do you have a one cool thing to share with us?

1:01:32I would love my one cool thing to be my husband's podcast, which is called The Most Important Question. And it's mostly about climate change and science and all sorts of interesting stuff. But because it's not a thing, I am going to say my one cool thing is heating pads. Sure. Because what it allows you to do is lower the temperature in your bedroom to like 55. Absolutely. to like if you can't see your breath, you're not doing it right. And then you get the heating pad so that you don't die. Yeah. And it allows you to keep the room as cold as you need to keep it. Amazing sleep. Love it. Please enjoy.

1:02:08I also am a big fan of the heated seats in your car because it can be like... Stunning. It can be the middle of summer, but like you just want a little... Summer, a little back warmer? Yeah. Heat up that lumbar? Absolutely. Loosen up your back. No, not getting back pain. Loosen it up. Fantastic. Love it. Great story. And the new car also has seat coolers and so it blows air like through the seat. Game changer so you don't have like a sweaty back when you go into a meeting. Not to steal another one cool thing because I totally want to hear one. We also got the ID Buzz. And let me tell you, this is the electric VW bus that looks like the hippie thing.

1:02:38You have 19 children. We have 19 children. And so we put them in this hippie bus and we drive around and it brings so much joy. It's a beautiful car. It's a beautiful car. We got the teal. People are like, all right, all right. Everybody becomes Matthew McConaughey when you drive by. You get peace signs. You get smoking like weed signs. And we're in like Virginia. We're in like Southern places where nobody does shit like that. And everybody is so happy around this car. It's the cutest thing. And my husband got me a little bumper sticker on it. Surprised me one day. It says, we can't all come and go by bubble.

1:03:07Oh. On the back of the car. Oh my gosh. It's really precious. He's a great guy. Craig, what's your one cool thing? Yes, please. My one cool thing this week is a set of puzzles, a nice puzzle suite from Eric Berlin, who's a pretty prolific puzzle constructor. and he's a big participant on one of the big teams in the MIT puzzle hunt that happens every year. And this one is actually a great one if you're kind of like thinking about getting into this sort of thing. It's not far off, I think, difficulty level-wise from the one that David Kwong and I ran back in the day at the Magic Castle. And this one is called Have Fun Storming the Castle.

1:03:49and we'll include a link for you. Oh, I went to the David Guang at the Magic Castle with you guys. That was great. And so this one is like difficulty wise, it's right about there. You should be able to get through it. Maybe you might need a hint or two, but probably not. I've never felt dumber than when I was, I was like, I'm so smart. I came in, I'm like, I'm so smart. I went to Stanford, I'm so smart. I've never felt dumber than that night. You use different skills. This one's got eight puzzles and then one meta puzzle. How do I engage in it? Is it like online? Is it on my internet phone? Yeah, you can grab, you pick up your internet, get your internet out of your pocket.

1:04:26Okay, touch my internet and whatever. Turn your internet on. Then switch your internet on. Unlock your internet with your face. Unlock my internet with my face. And then, exactly. Copy that. I know how to do that. And then follow the link and it will cost you a whole eight American dollars. Love. That's great. That's a great one. Cool thing. That is our show for this week. You guys, I just, wait, hold on. Don't do a thing. No, no, go. I love you guys. You're amazing people and I really love you and I miss you and you're great. Dana, you are just a permanent ray of sunshine. I can't explain how happy I was to see Dana in her slanket on that plane.

1:05:01Like I was so happy. Comfort, one of the vowels is gone. I don't know which one. I got to be honest with you. I can't help you get the sweatshirt because I don't know which vowel disappeared. Like 70 % of people that I know, if I had seen them on a plane in their slanket. You would pretend to have not seen that. 100%. No, I know. I get that about you. I felt so touched. I was like, Craig usually ignores people. I'm playing. It was the best. This is special. And then Jack McBrayer just chimed in, and we had the best time. We had the best time. I really do love you guys, and you've been amazing friends and mentors to me forever, and I appreciate you.

1:05:34It's like, truly, I'm so grateful for you guys. And it's hitting me because, you know, I'm here in town for Wicked, and that took five years of my life. There are certain people in your life who just don't leave and don't stop being amazing, and it's you guys. I will say, Dana, I don't know if I've been changed for the better, but I know that I've been changed for good. I'm going to get you something. I'm going to get you a present. I'm going to get you some merch. Don't worry about it. I want pink and I want green. I'm going to get you like a mirror that has lights on them. By the way, that's how you know that I, no one's ever sent me.

1:06:07You were not the right person. They haven't sent me a mug. I'm going to do it. I'm going to send you the mug. I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you the Adwala water bottle. Everybody loves these water bottles. They did a wicked collection. I got like 72 of them for Christmas presents. Good, because Melissa doesn't have enough water bottles in her house. No, she's short at check. We have a room that's called water bottle room. By the way, I have 757 ,000 water bottles, and I somehow don't have enough water bottles. Like, there's never the cap. It's never the right thing. This water bottle thing, anyway.

1:06:38They've got us by the balls. By the way, if anybody wants to have fun, look up Hugh Grant talking about water bottles. It's a delay. I have a whole side career where I just watch you, Grant, do interviews. It's so fun. Second one cool thing. I like that. Script Notes is produced by Drew Marquardt. Edited by Matthew Chilinley. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnoggs.com. That's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnoggs.com, along with sign up for our weekly news that are called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

1:07:06You'll find clips and helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You'll also find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drink wear, but no crotchairs. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. You'll 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, thank you, thank you to our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to becomeone at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on the promo circuit.

1:07:35Dana Fox, thank you again for joining us on Script Notes. Thank you for having me. I love you guys. Thank you, Dana.

1:07:44Thank you.