719 - When Good Enough Isn't Enough

24:30They will assume that's exactly what you wanted, and you will be judged by it, and it will last until the end of written history. Yeah. So one of the actors who he did, Rivalry Connor's story, there's videos that came, so he sort of became famous. I saw this video. And so he was a kid, and so it was like this young little kid who's like, I'm an actor boy, and I'm going to be famous for all this stuff. And what I appreciated about him is he said like, yeah I could have taken him down but I've learned to sort of love that kid well that's the most healthy thing of all yeah and by the way that video was adorable yeah I mean of all the videos that you could make he seemed like what maybe he was like 14 or something yeah or even younger maybe yeah 12 of all the videos you could make of yourself at 12 or 13 that was the the least objectionable most wholesome kind of cute and correct yeah prediction of of what you might be when you grow up.

25:31Oh my God, I'll tell you, that hockey show, now my wife is obsessed with the hockey show. Of course, yeah. Jessica is obsessed with the hockey show. Yeah, my one cool thing, this is a spoiler, you're going to say there's a woman who goes through and does, there's a cinematographer who does breakdowns of it and it's phenomenal. This hockey show is like... Yeah, it's great. I'm putting it on my list. Yeah. All right, so we talked about audience, public versus private. Next, I would say... I'm just thinking about them listening to this going, hockey show? Hockey show. Hockey show, Craig? There's a name for it?

26:01It's a phenomenon. Yeah. We didn't call your show Mushroom Show. Yeah. Sorry. What's it called again? He did rivalry. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of a hard thing to say. Rivalry is a tough word. It's a hard word. Rivalry. English doesn't do that a lot. L to R is tough. We talk about audience, public versus private. Next, I would say, what stage is it? So, is it a proof of concept versus a final? So, one of the things I admire so much about Mike Birbiglia, and this is true of a lot of stand-up comics, is they will just test and try material all the time. So he's going out, he's doing standup, he's trying new jokes, he's seeing how they work.

26:35He's recording the show and hearing like, what did I do? What was the reaction? And that is so important. He's not afraid to try a joke that's not really formed so he can figure it out. And that's, even today, we have video cameras out here because we are testing a proof of concept to see how we're going to do this show on video, if we decide to do it on a video. No one's ever going to see this. This is just a proof of concept. Great. Great. Great. Because I didn't put my face on this morning. Yeah. I didn't have a hair and makeup this morning. Yeah. My grandmother used to say that. I have to put my face on.

27:06There's a product we're launching next month or two. Cosmetic? Exactly. A cosmetic product. Just for you. It's a concealer. The software thing we're launching. And so in trying to figure out how to do this, we were really clear about what is the scope of the minimum viable product? What is the simplest version of this that is useful that we can see, that we can test? because we know that there's things we're not going to understand until we actually have a thing that people can try. It interacts with the people on the other end of the relationship. So third criteria here is context. Like what is the expectation of the person getting the message or on the other side of this thing?

27:41So I would stack this up from lowest expectation to highest expectation. A text message, your expectations of perfection and a text message are not as high. They're incredibly high. Yeah, for you they are. For an email, Craig, incredibly high. Incredibly high. A tweet or a social blog post. I don't do this anymore. Yeah. A script, much higher. The highest. And I would say for a book, even higher, higher, higher. Because the number of times we had maybe six different proofreaders of the book and different editors going through it, we still missed the Star Trek deck versus bridge. But we got rid of so many typos.

28:16And people who have the galley copies, even after we went through a bunch of those things, we still found typos in those. Those will be worth more. Absolutely. Collector's items. Yeah. And so I think as you go up this chain, unless you're Craig, the expectations of perfection increase. Don't be like me. Don't be like you. Don't be like me. I do think about this sometimes, how it is a waste of time. But also, it makes me feel good. Yeah, I get that. And so this is, I guess it... After we get through the criteria, I want to go through sort of like the pros and cons of sort of like, maybe you should obsess a little.

28:51Maybe you should, I don't know, obsess is a loaded word, but maybe you should focus in on a little more. You can use these words. I'm giving us permission. Focus in on these things. What we're reading off of, the workflow has a very low expectation of polish. There's just typos all over it, which is fine. It's pretty darn good, though. I have to say, like, the workflow generally is really good. Some of those words are missing. Like, no one's going to read it. We're going to look at it. Right. I never look at this and think, oh, John doesn't care. It's sloppy. Drew doesn't know how to spell. It does exactly what it's supposed to do.

29:20It's an outline. It's that one. So it's fine. I think this is a perfectly good way of doing things. You just said, is it worth it? And that, I would say, is the cost-benefit analysis. If you were to refine and optimize this thing, is the value to get out of that time and effort really worth it for doing the work? The flip of that is like, you might satisfy, you might compromise if the expected outcome is lower than what you would put into it. So it's basically like, you know, you're spending mental money to do a thing or time to do a thing. And is it really worth it to do it? So one of the interesting things about our brains is that we apply values to these things that are actually disconnected from reality.

30:00Yeah, we do. I think, okay, I look at an email, it's a mess. It must be correct. To a point that I decide, ah, this is good. Somebody else out there would look at it and say, oh no, there's 12 more layers of good that need to occur. to that person, my value system is broken. And also I just don't care enough. But when I got to the point where I thought it was correct, I believe that I indeed had exhausted everything I'd done, everything I could to make it great. And neither I nor the person who wrote the shabby email nor the person who wrote the hyper perfect email are correct. It is all disconnected from any metaphysical value.

30:45It is just perception. It's just what makes our minds go click happy. There are people whose minds never go click happy when they correct a typo. Ever. Like most people commenting on YouTube videos don't seem to care. Absolutely. Mashing keyboard. They are. Yes. What's the famous one? How is Babby made? It was on. Yeah. Do you You know that one? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, how is Babby made? Well, here's how Babby's are made. So I try to just keep it in the realm of either I feel good or I don't feel good. I don't really understand why my feel good is set where it is. I assume it's some combination of just innate mannerisms and trauma.

31:35I'm just going to upload that. There are times where I realize like I've spent half an hour on this email that a person will spend 10 seconds reading. Oh, yeah. And that is... But I don't care. Yeah. Because that time feels good. Yeah. It feels good. Yeah, there's just something about it. But that's why we're writers. That's why we're writers. Honestly. And so we shouldn't put everything down in the trivial email category. On this show, I think we're constantly talking about how important it is actually to perfect and polish the things, the scripts that you're doing to deliver. And that's why we obsess of three-page challenges.

32:07Yes. And yet, there are still things, even in the course of a 120-page script that are probably not worth obsessing over and perfecting to a degree that, like, there may not be any benefit to, like, that tertiary character who appears in one scene. Is that exactly the right name for them? Is it a name that we're not even actually hear a person say aloud? And we could spend another hour figuring out the better name for it, but is it actually going to improve the final product? Things like that come down to, all right do i this is the tiniest pebble in my shoe do i need to unlace my shoe take my shoe up get it back on well no unless i'm about to walk a long time in which case it's going to make me insane yeah so i sometimes a name is like a pebble and then i'm on page 30 and that person comes back and i'm like oh my god i can't believe i'm typing this stupid name again i can't i can't This name is not right.

33:04That's not who they are. We can only do what we can do because what we do as writers, creative artists who are building stuff out of nothing but words is a mental exercise that is deformed and then beautifully reformed. It's a mess in there. Yeah. It's a mess. if the biggest problem we have is justifying the margins, dwelling a little bit too long, I guess what I'm saying is if it's bothering you that it's not good enough, fix it. And if it's not, don't. Yeah. I think that's really what it comes down to. But I'm going to put an asterisk there because if a trivial thing is bothering you so much that you're not getting work done, that you're actually not able to be a screenwriter, then there's something to change.

33:54Well, then you need therapy. Yeah. But it's not going to happen because you go, I shouldn't be bothered by this. Jones is the wrong name for this character. Yeah, but you are. So what are you going to do? Last criteria I would say, which is closely related to cost-benefit, but stakes. Like, how much does it actually matter? Like, if it's the best version, the worst version, does it matter at all? What is the upside of success? What is the cost of failure? For a lot of things, it's incredibly low. And yet some emails actually are very high stakes. And so you understand why you're putting all your effort into it.

34:25But like, you know, a text from my brother, it's just like the stakes aren't that high. The stakes are not that high. I think sometimes of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone, which is worth re-watching. It's one of the greatest pieces of video that exists as far as I'm concerned because it is a living document of a moment that changed the world. And it's a presentation. Basically, it's just a big PowerPoint is really what it is. It's a fancy PowerPoint. and it's spot on. Yeah. And when he needs something to pop up, it pops up. It has been timed out. He has planned it out. He has his stuff memorized.

35:05It is thought through down to the tiniest bit, and it works great. And then, if you would, after you watch that, watch the video of Elon Musk introducing the Cybertruck, in which he insists that the glass is shatterproof and bulletproof, and has a guy throw a heavy weight at it and it absolutely shatters the glass. That is incredible. Like, did they not try that first? It is so sloppy. It is so sloppy. When the stakes are high, perfect it. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk in that general sense of over-optimization or over-satisficing. Satisficing, I'm using this being sort of like, and it's good enough.

35:54What is satisficing? Satisficing, you never heard that term? Satisficing is basically choosing the first acceptable alternative. And so - Oh, it's a blend of satisfy and suffice. Oh, you haven't heard of satisficing? No. I think satisficing is a really good word and you do it all the time without realizing. It's like, which chips do you want? Like the first one that works do. And I'm often doing that on a menu at a restaurant. You're satisficing. I like, that's good enough. I'm gonna be happy with it. I'm gonna be happier because I didn't spend a bunch of time worrying about the choice. Got it, got it.

36:22Yeah, satisficing, I like that. But I think there's a danger to satisfying when you shouldn't. So let's talk about over-optimization first. So if this thing's, all this is what I'm thinking, but you can add to it. We said you might miss opportunities because you're so busy futzing with something. Like basically, you're not doing other work, you're missing out on other chances. Yeah. If you are in a spot where, think of the time you have, think of the goals, think of the stakes, plan it, you know you need a certain amount of time to do this, and this is really important. eat into that time. Nope.

36:54If you have extra time and you want to sit there and... Love it. Great. Go for it. But you got to know your time. Yeah. You may simply never finish it. Time may just stand out forever. You can also burn out on a project because I feel like you have a certain amount of time in which your brain is willing to sort of commit itself to a project. And if you're just stuck in the middle of it for too long, you can just burn out. It's true. Yeah. There is... I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the show. Alec Berg and I were talking once. He was cleaning out his place when they were moving, and he found this box of these old scripts that were printed out from when he had just started in the business, you know, so 1991.

37:33It was like he didn't remember any of it. It was like reading another hymn. Yeah, that's great. And he read it, and his thought was, this is not anywhere near as good as I am now. There's a freedom to it. Yeah. It is unburdened by the curse of knowledge, self-expectation, perfectionism, the echoes of failure. Until you get burned, you don't know what burned is. There's a kind of self-defense you can sort of write into your things because you sort of know all the things are coming. So you're anticipatory doing stuff. And because you know what it feels like to write something that wasn't good enough, so you can't let yourself do that.

38:15but if you go too far down that road, then you can paralyze. Yeah. And I think one of the real issues with over-optimization is you can sort of get locked in on a bad idea. Like you might've written a scene so beautiful and so perfect that like you kind of can't touch it again when you actually do, like a note comes that you actually do have to address. Like you wrote this thing for a certain, for a location that you no longer have. It can be so tough because you've spent so much time and energy on it. You're so invested in this one version of it. Yeah. I get caught in loops sometimes. I've written recently, I got sort of stuck in a loop on something and wrote and then realized, okay, this doesn't belong here.

38:57I'm moving it to a different place. For an episode, in fact. But I was lost in that loop for a while. And there is a slight panic that kicks in of, uh-oh, it's like driving across country. You have plenty of time. let's say I'm going to give you a week to drive across the country but any given day you can either drive all day or you can kind of not and so along the way you kind of have to sometimes experience those days where you pull over and you don't drive much and then you just know on some other days here we go, wake up, don't stop and that's part of the sweet misery of what we do. This last point with over-optimization, I'd say it's really perfectionism in general.

39:48So you may be trying to control things that are out of your control. Yeah. And I definitely see that with screenwriters. It's like they make something so flawless and perfect because they actually want this movie that's in their head to exist in the world. And you have to recognize that that's not kind of within the scope of your power. So you're doing everything you can to communicate what this vision is you have for the movie, but you cannot, not will it into existence just through the words you're typing and through all the refining you're doing there. It's absolutely true. There's two me's.

40:17There's the me that writes the script, who is a studious and a perfectionist. And then when I'm directing, at some point I'll go, all right, and why don't we do this? And then the script supervisor will say, just in the script, and then I'll say, oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's actually, that would be better because I'd already, but the me there, it's like I didn't write it. Like I didn't disconnect it. Well, so Director Craig is constantly compromising. There's always shots that are on your shot list you're never going to get to. So true. And so I would just give writer Craig a little of that grace.

40:49No, writer Craig is better than director Craig because writer Craig thought it all through. Director Craig needs to pay more attention, just like all directors do, to the script. That's really what happens is that I end up thinking to myself, I'm doing the thing that would make me angry that directors would do, where they would focus on everything in front of them and forget about the bigger picture or all the details on the page. Except that Director Craig is dealing with not just what writer Craig delivered, but also the realities of what's in front of the camera and behind the camera. That is all true.

41:18Yeah. That is all true. You know what? Maybe Craig should just give himself a break. I think that's what we're coming down to. All right. Well, let's talk about the dangers of oversatisficing because in the initial example, I was talking about how... Oversatisficing. Sometimes it's like, eh, it's good enough. I was talking about how, like, you know, an essay you're writing for a class that you don't care about, that you're never going to read again, maybe it's actually not worth perfecting. But if you were to do that too much, like that's just laziness, basically. And you might lose your sense of taste.

41:46Yes. You're not used to seeing your best writing, so you might not always be able to hit your best writing. You might forget what your best writing even looks like. You may also find yourself getting passed by people that are not faster than you. It's just that you're not running as fast as you can. And this will become an uncomfortable feeling. And when I say passed, I don't necessarily mean, oh, they're going to make more money or something, but they're suddenly achieving things that you wanted to achieve that you're not because there is value in pursuing the best you can do. You won't get there, but pursuing it as a value is a positive thing.

42:24So if you have the time to make the essay better, even if it doesn't matter, take the time to make it better. It will make you better. I think that was one of the good things about blogging when I was doing it more often is that I was basically refining and perfecting those arguments. And it's learning how to think and how to express those ideas. Writing is exercise and you're building mental muscle strength to do that. We've also talked about how you might say like, oh, it's private or no one's ever going to read this, but you don't really know that. It's still, things will be out there in the world and it's still going to be potentially seen by somebody.

42:54I think you've stressed this in terms of your collaborations is you are setting an example for everyone else you're working with. And so if they see that you're delivering 75%, why should they give you 100 %? Oh boy, is that a thing? Because, and I talk to people on the crew about this because they are always working on something. Yeah. I work on a show, they work on shows. Yeah. And some of them do say, like, there is a thing where you are on a show and you can just tell that the people who made it sort of care that it's a 70 % kind of vibe. that they're like, eh, it's a job. Gotta do it. I'm supposed to do it.

43:29Nobody really cares about this show, but, you know, we're working. And then you don't necessarily... Why beat yourself up? Why lay it all out there? It's part of the culture of anything. Yeah. Is how serious are we taking this? Now, let's wrap this up with a conversation about vomit drafts because neither you or I are vomit draft people, but many of our listeners and also friends or colleagues really believe in sort of just like, you got to get something on the page first and then we'll have whatever you do to get something out and then you can edit and refine it. And so I want to talk through the pros and cons arguments for that and why people may want to consider it, but also what our concerns were that the pro arguments for the vomit drop where you just get the thing out as quickly as you possibly can and you don't censor yourself, you don't edit yourself, is that by suspending that internal critic, you're actually just able to explore, to find out about stuff.

44:24Some people really cannot see the movie until they can sort of have a thing on the page that they can see. They make discoveries along the way. You can't edit what doesn't exist. And editing is a natural part of editing process. Sometimes that's writing the whole thing. Kevin Williamson famously sort of vomit-drafted Scream and just wrote it all in a fugue state. It's awesome. It's awesome. It's great. The con I would say is that I watch these videos where, like, you've seen like bricklayer videos or sort of when you're building something up from the base. If that first foundation isn't strong and you're trying to build something up, it just, it gets wonky and crazy and it's going to collapse and fall over.

45:04It can compound the fundamental flaws of something. It's that if you start writing without a plan, without sort of trying to make sure every scene actually really works, it could just go 19 different ways haywire. It's hard for me to criticize people who do this because they must do it for a reason. It's not how my mind works. I can certainly see the pluses and minuses of the not vomit draft. We've talked about a lot of the minuses. It is meticulous. It takes longer. You can find yourself mentally strangulated as you go. You can feel trapped and sometimes you don't finish. No. On the plus side, though, there is an enormous amount of intention.

45:49and thought and cohesion. The thing about the vomit draft that scares me is what I would imagine to be just a general lack of cohesion. I'm not sure how you can vomit page 70 in a way that is reflected and made somehow inevitable and yet surprising based on what happened on page 20. It's all, it feels like it would be very much and then and then and then and then and very dialogue-y or very action-y. So there are dangers there that I can imagine, but I'm only imagining them because I've never done it and I don't know how to do it and I'm never going to do it. And I will say, over the course of the podcast, we've talked with alternative strategies that I think are trying to do some of the things that a vomit drop does.

46:31When I don't want to write a scene, I will write a different scene in the movie. But I'll write a really good version of that, of a different scene in the movie because I know what the scenes are in the movie. Katie Silverman will, she'll do basically vomit drop for things that are not in the movie. Well, she'll just have the characters start talking so she can fully understand the characters and what the world feels like. That's great. Yeah. And maybe a thing people want to try independent of a Vama draft. It's a good exercise. Just, you know, getting stuff, words down on paper. Yeah. I would say the other thing I noticed about Vama drafts is it's so easy to fall in love with that first draft.

47:04The emotional attachment to the thing you did and you have a sort of sunk cost fallacy, but also you can kind of fall in love with the temp music. We've all run into this, which is just like, it's working and it's feeling good and so you don't want to change anything up. Yes. What you do is you attach the feeling of success that you had as you were barfing to the barf. But other people just see barf. They don't see or experience your feeling of purging and relief. That is important. And that's one positive thing that comes out of the meticulous plan draft is you don't have that. You don't get overattached to things.

47:41Everything is interrogated, examined questions, acid tested, and so on. So I guess my final advice here is with vomit drafts and sort of the good enough, not good enough is if you're struggling to get started, if you're struggling with blank page anxiety, getting words on the page is probably a good first step for you. Whether that becomes a full vomit draft or just like the roughest sketches of a scene, Alina often describes this as sort of like walking into the ocean and letting the water sort of get up to your ankles. It's like, oh, suddenly you're swimming. Maybe vomit draft if you are often abandoning projects before you complete them.

48:16Yep. Because I think sometimes we talk about burnout and that perfectionism burnout, like you just, the joy of completing a thing may be useful for you. And so the vomit draft may be the way to get there. And it's worth trying, right? Like if one method isn't working, try it. What's the worst that can happen? You stop. It doesn't work. You don't get past page three. I don't know. But try things. And if you've tried vomit drafts and you're not happy with them, I think the reason may be because you're done with the bomb draft. You can feel like, well, I'm done. I want to go on to the next thing.

48:48You may have green pasture envy where it's like, oh, I want to do this other thing instead. You never actually go back and edit and finish that thing. That may be a reason why you actually need to, scene by scene, really do the best version of each of these scenes and really perfect a thing. Because then you'll actually have the experience of what it feels like to have a really good script that you're proud of. Maybe people need to try both. Yeah. Maybe the, you know. I'm surprised we got you there, Craig. Yeah. I mean, give yourself a chance to see if the kind of, I mean, the whole concept of vomit draft is vomit.

49:19Yeah. Like, you're not being held. It is vomit. So, everybody knows this isn't what we're shooting. But if you are maybe somebody that tends toward that too much, try the other method. Try meticulous planning. And I want to acknowledge that this is exactly counter to the advice that Scott Frank gave. It's like, don't move until you see it. Well, that's for me. That's for you. I mean, that's how I think. Don't move until you see it. But I know that that's what works for me. No, Scott, God bless him. Scott's way is the way that everybody must do it. And I love that about Scott. But I am more interested, I suppose, in results because I know that great writers write differently.

50:01And I'm pretty sure that, I don't know. I don't think Scott, I know Scott and I don't write the same way Because he writes these very, very long drafts. Yeah. That he expects will be cut down. There's really not vomit drafts, but they're more expansive than the form will actually allow. They are unfettered by the restraints of the medium. Yes, they are. Kind of awesome because it means that everybody can go through and say, okay, story, characters, this moment, this moment, this moment. Now, this is too big. we asked you to build a 12-seat plane. This is an incredible jumbo jet. How can we get all the best parts of the jumbo jet into the 12-seater?

50:45And then he does. Point being, we all have our ways there. Find your way there. If your way there currently is not working, try a different way there. Let's answer some listener questions. We have one here from Alan. Back in 2019, there was a huge fight between the WGA and the talent agencies over packaging. After everyone fired their agents, The agencies eventually signed an agreement that went into effect in June of 2022. Now, two and a half years later, has there been any real on-the-ground change? Or have agencies found ways to work around the agreement and still offer packages to studios?

51:17I'm curious what you think about what has happened in two and a half years. I don't think that the agencies have found significant ways to work around the agreement. Here's what happened. it definitely accelerated the shrinking of the number of agencies available to us. So conglomeration occurred. You think that would have been different without the agency deal? Do you think there would be more small agencies? Well, I think ICM would still be there. And because what happens once you took away a big part of what their income was, they were now exposed and vulnerable. So we lost some diversity of agencies.

51:56CAA and WME arguably got more powerful. It's almost like we were in a fight over what a beach should look like, and then a tsunami came. So it's hard to tell. Well, there's no counterfactual. We can't know what the world would have been like if the agency campaign had happened. If agencies could still package the way they were packaging before, which we should, for newer listeners, who don't understand, packaging is when you put together a writer with a script and a director and maybe some stars and sell that to a TV production company, sometimes a movie studio, but really it's a TV thing. And agencies would do that and then they would take a fee and rather than charging their clients commission, they would take a percentage of the budget on every episode of a thing.

52:41Which meant that they were essentially incentivized by the companies, not their own clients. And that was part of the problem. And so packaging still happens, but now they only get the commissions on their clients rather than a fee. But what we were hoping would happen might have happened. But shortly after that, the streaming wars accelerated dramatically. The massive television bubble began to burst. And huge tectonic changes occurred in our industry to the extent that I don't know what this did because like I said, it's sort of been tsunamied over by... It wasn't the biggest change in the industry by far.

53:23are much bigger things affected stuff. And so we can't know quite what's there. And also the agencies themselves, we talk about CIA and WME, they entered into a lot of different spaces and they were already starting to move into different things representing sports and music and other things, but just stuff that seems to have nothing to do with us. And so I think one of our concerns going into the campaign was that like, they weren't prioritizing the actual needs of their clients. And the way they make their money isn't off of us. And that's a big agency that is still kind of true. The money they're making in the entertainment industry is off of us.

53:55Yes. Yes. That's good. And that's why they fight over clients tooth and nail. I mean, they would certainly argue that we are valuable to them. But I would say that as we started in the industry, the fighting over clients was a much bigger part of the story and drama of Hollywood. And it really isn't a big deal. Well, because people don't go anywhere because there's fewer places to go. There are fewer big places to go. It's true. Because when we started, there was CAA, UTA, ICM, William Morris, and there was Endeavor, and there was Gersh, which still is in Paradigm, and what's the artists and whatever.

54:31Anyway, and now it's like there's WME, CAA, UTA. Then there's a tier below. Yep. And then there's kind of nothing. And you don't get moved around a lot because you can tell them over. Even agents don't move around a lot anymore. The other thing which changed, which had started before this, but certainly accelerated during it, is like writers and directors and actors who just have managers who don't have agents at all anymore. Yeah. Or who are also British people who have their UK agent who's really up-repping them in the US as well. So I've seen that change happen. Yeah, the management thing is a big one.

55:07And management is worse. So we were fighting the agencies over packaging. That's all managers do. That is literally what they do. They exist to be producers on projects, which you can't be as an agent, to not charge their clients commission and instead get all their money from the production. And I don't understand why. So coming out of this, I signed a manager for the first time. And what's been helpful about having a manager is to have a person who can talk to anybody, who can call anybody because there's no vested interest in their own agency. They have relationships that are different, which has been really, really helpful.

55:50Yes. It really just comes down to who do they work for in the end. And then they're working for me. Yeah, that's good. The other thing which did change in the agency campaign, which is worth acknowledging, is that agencies now have to send every writer's contract through to the guild. And so the guild has so much more information about every writer's deal. So to know like how many weeks was this writer employed in this room? How many one-step writers have deals? that's actually been helpful. Even though, theoretically, all writers were supposed to send it. We were supposed to per our, yes. But my question is, what are we able to do with all that data exactly other than look at it?

56:26We can make choices in the negotiating cycle about what we're going to do for things. The other thing which it does is WJA enforcement, contract enforcement, which is the thing I know you'd like. We now know this writer had a guaranteed step and was not paid for this step. What happened here? We can actually proactively investigate these things. I would love to ask their lawyer, first and foremost, Hey, why didn't you do your job? Exactly. Kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, I guess the long answer short, Alan, for me is hard to tell what impact this has had. I think there have been positives and negatives.

57:00I do know that quite a few people were upset because once this ended and you could go back to your agent, their agent said, no, no, we're good. We don't want you back. But I think a lot of those people were not being well-served by that agent to begin with at that point then. I think they were just hearing from their long-distance girlfriend that it was over. Yeah. And that it was better because now they needed to find a representative that actually cared about them. So I think the overall goal of aligning incentives on a truly logical level happened, but what impacted that have on individual writers' careers?

57:35Harder to say. You know what? It just occurred to me that the real, maybe, maybe, the real value that we got out of that was that we, regardless of what the companies thought of what we did, it appeared that we were committed to doing stuff. Yeah. And that there was a unity there and there was some sense of aggression. Yeah. Now, did that ultimately matter? No, because then they said, fine, go and strike anyway, and then we did. But there was at least some, maybe it was just even for our own internal sake that we thought, oh, we could do a thing and not fall apart. And then after that, we did the strike and we did not fall apart.

58:22And we did not fall apart. Yeah. Let's answer one more question on bleeping. Moose has a question about bleeping. Moose writes, I'm an audio professional. I noticed that in episodes where someone drops a naughty word, you have the disclaimer at the beginning. And I'm wondering why you just don't bleep out the offending words. So how the sausage is made here, Craig and I don't swear on the show if we can sort of help it. I did today once. Yeah. And so sometimes if it's a very easy lift, we just, Matthew just snips it out and you never noticed that it was there. Especially when we have guests on and they swear, it feels, it's just hard to take that stuff out.

58:57And so we want it to be authentic to what the experience was to happen. We're adults. We're adults. And so we're making this podcast for adults, but also your kids can be in the car. And so we're just mindful of that. Yeah. That's why we put the little warning on if there's going to be some bad words. I have, I mean, just culturally, it is so much different now than it used to be. I mean, when we were kids, saying the F word was like, oh my God, you would get sent to the principal. No one seems to give an F anymore. Like, you know, it's like we have friends with younger kids and it's like language is not, because of the internet, I think, it's just become less taboo.

59:37Context. Yeah. There are words that we used to throw around that you wouldn't get sent to the principal for. Now you do get sent to the principal for. And also context if you're using words in, you know, a sexual manner or something like that. But, you know, bleeping sounds stupid. Yeah, I always notice bleeping. And it's not actually a big tradition of bleeping in podcasts. It's not really a thing. No, because we're not like on the air at CBS. No. You know, it just doesn't make much sense. No, I agree. Let's do our one cool things. so my one cool thing I mentioned earlier on so it's a cinematographer her name is Valentina V so she is a LA or New York based cinematographer and director but a thing she's been doing recently is going through a show in this case Heated Rivalry and talking about the specific choices that the director and cinematographer are making as they're composing scenes so things from like blocking to locations to camera placement going through this this is a sense I had while I was watching the show but like it's really clear like they have no coverage.

1:00:36They basically, there's basically not a shot that they shot that's not in the show. And so often, they're basically just staying on one side. They're never, the camera's never coming around to the other side, which is because they had an incredibly limited budget and they had to maximize the value that they got out of that. So, these are directing choices, lighting choices, but fundamentally, they're also writing choices and I think that's why I really encourage people to watch these videos that she does because, again, you're seeing that The scenes are written in a way that they can be shot from one side.

1:01:07It's really about one character's perspective. And so therefore, it's not important that we see the other people who are talking off the screen because it's really about this one character's reaction to what is being said. One of my favorite things to do. I mean, I try very hard to cover things. I like options. I love an option. But as I talk about with my editors all the time, just because we have it doesn't mean we have to use it. We don't have to use any of it. We can just use one shot if we want. If it feels great and we just want to stay there, staying with somebody is terrific. Editing too much just because you have it, it just turns into ping pong talking head theater and there's no pace to it.

1:01:47The question is, what do I want to be with right now, in this moment? Who do I want to be with? Who do I want to be looking at? And if you know that you have limited time and limited coverage, get one shot right and then just nab something fast. You know, just to give yourself some little hinge bit, you know? But my suspicion is like, they didn't even have time for like that extra little. Because in some cases, they've really boxed themselves in where like they had no choice other than sort of the master that they had. And it works really well. When we're shooting things in tight situations, there's a shot that she does here where she has the two of them.

1:02:22They're sitting in profile, sort of a mini master kind of thing. So we could see both of them. They're looking at each other and they are sitting against a mirror, which creates depth that isn't there. If you put them against a wall, it's a dead shot. But that creates depth. The problem is the mirror will also see the camera. What do we, well, that's an easy one for us. As long as the camera, as long as they are not moving in front of the camera, you can paint it out. Especially if the background sort of drops away. So if you have money in post to get rid of these things, getting the camera, I will tell you that, because we're a handheld show.

1:02:57Yeah. The amount of times we have had to paint out one little bit of camera as it bobbed in because we really like this shot. It's just that as they were moving, A camera saw B and then B goes, oh shit, and gets out of the way. But that's okay. It's fine. That's okay. We do split screens. We do paint outs. We do blow ups. There's a billion ways to handle it. It's more important to get the work in than it is to, and this is actually good enough. Okay. Do we have an eraser to erase this thing later? Then don't worry about this. Yes. Just get this. Yeah. Right? That. Because the priority is, are you getting the performance or are you getting the shot overall?

1:03:37You can fix the other stuff. Performance, shot, feeling. If I love it, if I feel something, if it's making me cry, I don't care if I can see the reflection of a crew person over there. I'll get rid of it. One way or the other, I'll get rid of it. It is so worth it. That is what people connect to. Obviously, people are connecting to heated rivalry, aka the hockey show, in a profound way. Yeah. And that means they did a great job with the time and resources they had. And so what I like about this, so she was not the GP on this show. She's just breaking down shots she's seeing from it. So she's able to scribble on the screen and show like where camera was and stuff that was happening.

1:04:15And it's such a good example of a thing you can do in video that we just can't do as well in audio because you were just describing a thing. But in a video to actually draw and show is just so much more helpful. So I just like that people are out there using the medium in ways that we don't know how to use yet. Yeah. And I think people are interested in the silly tricks. I think there's probably a good video that I should do. After this season, I think what I'll do is take a little time with one of my editors, Tim Good. And we're going to put together a video called All the Tricks We Use. Yeah.

1:04:50Because the tricks that you can use in editing are incredible and so helpful. Yeah. So helpful and very helpful to know when you're shooting. Because there are times where I will watch a take and think, with trick number seven, I can get rid of the flaw in this take because the rest of it was great. Yeah, exactly. So knowing what you can do is a big part of it. And it's not all just via effects. So an example that she points out is that there's moments in the show where they just go to silhouette and where you're not seeing actors' faces, but it's not important for the scene because it's a physical comedy that you don't actually need to see the faces for it to work.

1:05:30And by going to silhouette, there's no crowd. The amount of extras they have is incredibly limited. And so they're making shots so you wouldn't see those people out there. Yes. When you look at sports movies, always look in the stands, look at boxing, who's out there. Boxing in particular, it's a ring that's overlit and then a crowd that is underlit in total shadow because there's no one there. And if the audio is creating the crowd, yeah. When you watch actual boxing, the entire place is lit up like a Kmart. No one knows what a Kmart is. Walmart. It's lit up like a Walmart. And in movies about football and baseball, you'll get a couple of sell it shots where they've either licensed the footage or they've done some CG people.

1:06:17And then it's just 18 people at a time in close-ups. Little box to boxes. Still good. Yep, yep. It's all everything. It's all the product of many meetings. We love it. Craig, what's your one cool thing? My one cool thing this week is a game, as it often is. This is for, well, I played it on iOS on my iPad. So, you know, I'm a big fan of the Rusty Lake games. Oh, yes. And one of the things about those games that I love is how freaking weird they are, sometimes deeply disturbing. They're specifically weird, yeah. Yes, they're very strange, surreal. and I came across a game there are a lot of knockoffs and I thought for a moment oh I think maybe this is going to be a Rusty Lake knockoff I'll play a Rusty Lake knockoff I don't care it was not a knockoff the game is called Birth!

1:07:05and it is made by a independent game designer named Madison Carr that's K-A-R-R-H which already I love because the spelling is gorgeous and what she's done is made a fairly satisfying puzzle game. I mean, the puzzles are sometimes too easy, sometimes they're tricky, but they're beautiful looking and so deeply weird. The entire thing is so deeply weird. And when you get to the end of it, it's also so sweet and satisfying. But it is, it's art. It's art. It's a lovely game. and also fun. Yeah. Because like a lot of, so, you know, I run into a lot of these things. I'm just going to whisper about this because I don't want the people that make these games to hear it, John.

1:07:58All right. But you know, there are like 5 ,000 games that you can get for your iPad that are about like grief. And they're not really games. They're just somebody talking about, you know, it's just like a very obvious metaphor for grief. And they're sort of games. And they're not fun. Yeah. Same way that they're joke boys. that things that have the structure of a joke but they're not actually funny. Yeah, they're really just like trading on sadness or whatever. Yeah. This is a game. Good. It's fun to play. And she did a great job. So, excellent work, Madison Carr, birth, exclamation point, well worth playing.

1:08:36Very nice. That is our show for this week. The script is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Cilelli. I don't think so. Outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnalvis.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 a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You'll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast.

1:09:03We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll get those at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes with the 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, especially the folks who just signed up new for the holidays or new for 2026. Thank you. 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 26 for 26. Craig, thanks for a perfect discussion of perfectionism and when good enough is good enough.

1:09:35Thank you.

1:09:47Thank you.