720 - Watch Your Tone

23:53And I would say that what makes you good in a room is being in a room more. But what should get you in the room is being able to write the script. A lot of the process of running a show is kind of going back to my job's past and like where I didn't do a good job or where I would have done differently or where I like kind of can see my place in it. And I remember in a very, very early job, a very famous producer who I won't name, but here's a voice like this. And it was Alfred Hitchcock, wasn't it? It was Alfred Hitchcock. But he gave feedback, negative feedback about me that his certainty does not match with his experience.

24:38I took it to heart and I really tried to internalize it. And I do know where it came because I didn't know any other way to be in a room but feel that I had to feel strongly about my ideas. Now, running a show, it's like you can't just be like, it can be this, it can be this. Like, you have to be certain. But it is a process of just kind of knowing that, like, aha, I have the solution. But also like I am like the 17th person down on the hierarchy of this room. How do I do that? And it takes time. So I think now I absolutely love like helping other friends with their stuff, like coming up with ideas because I have no personal investment other than just like wanting to do it.

25:22And it's not like if you don't listen to my idea that like I am going to like it's going to hurt my heart. I absolutely don't care. but like I now have done so many versions of what a room is and what breaking a story is and what fixing a story is that like I have all of that ammunition. I only have that because I've been in a lot of rooms and I've only gotten those rooms because I was able to write the script. Let's talk about what is so specific and unexpected for me in your show is the tone in that first off, it's a period show that almost feels like it could have been shot in the time and some of that is how Susanna, you chose to direct it and like you're going for that pillar box format.

25:59So rather than widescreen, it's square screen. Obviously everything looks right and feels right and Budapest stands in really well for Moscow. But the camera movements and everything else, it tells you that we're in a 70s kind of place without a show shot in that time wouldn't have looked like that. It would have looked crappy and then this looks great. Right. But that is part of the tone, but also the comedic tone between the actors and sort of like how the world is presented and how the stakes are presented is just a little lighter than the equivalent other spy show would be. Yeah. And how early did you know that and how did you anchor into that?

26:36I mean, I think something that we've always been interested in is, you know, if most spy movies are sort of on plot most of the time, if you sort of went home with those people at the end of the day, they would still like call their moms and fight with their husbands. I mean, they would still have a life where they're not acting in character as spy. And so I think there is a truth to that. We sort of just wanted to shift where the lens is sometimes to that. So it naturally has like the other parts of a person's personality that come forward when they're not on the job in a high stakes situation are by nature lighter if their job is high stakes.

27:12And so we're interested in that. And if it feels true and grounded enough, then it doesn't feel like the tone is confused. And I think sometimes with a mixed tone and what scares people about it is people don't want it to feel like you're in two different shows. And hopefully if it all feels grounded. You feel like you're one show, but it's a very specific, unusual show to sort of be in. So The Americans is a great show where you have spies who are in their home lives. The difference is like they're incredibly competent. And so like you see the tension, even like they're the best of their game and they're still struggling with it.

27:40Here you have two women who are new to all this. They're fish out of water as they're sort of getting started in this. And that is essentially a comedic environment to be in. So they're in over their heads, which is relatable, but also fun. But just that's not a thing we see so often. and we saw it in Spidey. Spidey, yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, I think this is what, I mean, both of us bring a lot to our work because I think this is just how we are as people in the world. Like, I consider myself a funny person. I consider most people I surround myself with as funny people. If I am in a really tense situation, if I'm going into surgery, if I am going to a funeral, if I am, like, if I have, like, some sort of crisis in my life, I don't know that that part of me is still, I'm putting it away.

28:28Like, people are still making jokes. And this is another lesson I learned from, actually, when I was very briefly on Mad Men, was that the rule of writing comedy in a drama versus writing comedy in a comedy is that in comedy, like, other people in the scene are servicing your joke. And in a drama, there could be a funny person. The other person's purpose in that scene is not to set up your joke. But people are funny because this is the world that they're in. And Twyla in our show, Haley Lee Richardson's character, is somebody who uses humor as armor in her life. And that is just such a true thing for so many people who have had really difficult lives, as she has, that like that is who she is going to be.

29:13And that is how she's going to deal with crisis. And Bea is very neurotic, not like you. Not like you. And, you know, was going to spin out. She was going to overthink her, yeah. And was going to overthink when, you know, when she is in crisis. And these are just true things that these people are going to do. And, you know, and it is still going to be enjoyable. And the fact that these are also people who have jobs in an office and also Moscow is a really weird place, particularly in the USSR. And that is funny. and so we are able to like try to live in a world that still feels like the world and that the stakes are high and that like when there is a life or death moment it's like it was very important to us that like the final sequence of our pilot, which I won't spoil, but like that it should really, really feel extremely dangerous.

30:07Yeah. But there are still jokes before them and there's still awkwardness within it and also like you better be scared. Yeah. I want to circle back to something you sort of raced through but was actually such a good point I want to sort of underline it. You're talking about Mad Men and how in a comedy the characters are there to set up the joke for someone to spike and in a drama that would feel really weird like there's just an expectation about sort of how people can be funny in a drama that's just so different than a comedy and so just a really smart distinction there. Thank you for that. Oh, you're very welcome.

30:41A few last things so looking through the script, it has act breaks and you feel them in the show also. Is that something that was always there? Did you ever consider taking them out? Because people were watching on a peacock. They might have ads, they might not have ads. We didn't write them with ad breaks. We were asked to put them in. Storytelling power. At what point did you know who could actually drive scenes by themselves? Because like in the pilot, you established that Andre can drive scenes by himself, which was a surprise when that happened. So talk to me about like when you decided who could hold scenes by themselves.

31:11Perspective-wise? Yeah. Behind the curtain, like, we added that scene of Andre late. That was the last scene of the entire series that we shot because we were looking at the already cut pilot and, you know, we knew how scary Andre was because we knew. Because we wrote in the script, like, this is the scariest person you've ever seen. And we knew what would happen in episode two. We knew what would happen in episode two, but we needed to have the audience feel that when we see him at the end of the episode that we are scared to death of his presence. And, I mean, we cast a fantastic but unknown actor, Artim Gills.

31:49And, like, if we had cast, like, a famous movie star who was famous for being a villain, then we would already know, like, if Christoph Waltz walked in, then we wouldn't have had to do that. So we gave him perspective. And I think we just learned more and more about our characters and what they brought and who gets their own scenes. So Dane, Adrian Lester plays him and he's B and Twyla's boss. He is somebody who is elusive in a lot of the shows. And part of what he brings is mystery. Like we don't know what his life is really like. We don't know what his secrets are. We have a sense that he has secrets.

32:28So we really wanted to build several episodes before we really kind of could see him be vulnerable and display some of his secrets. And, you know, we get a sense of who that man behind the curtain is because for the first chunk of the season, we want to see him as this all-knowing, unknowable person that he projects to be in Twyla. And we, the audience, know that that couldn't be true because no one is like that. Well, the rules of the world you've established, like, no one is especially competent. Right. It's not like they're bumblingly competent, but, like, they have very limited power to do things.

33:04Like, literally, they can't turn on the power to their own building. Mm-hmm. So, which is established. Let's wrap up by talking about Budapest because I think you probably knew that this was going to be shooting in Budapest or someplace like it from the start. It's not a show where you're forced to go to Budapest. That's the place where you go to shoot. Right, it wasn't Budapest for Boston. That's the place you go to do Moscow. It's a reasonable place. Talk to us about shooting there, pros and cons, things you loved, things you learned, shooting there in 2025. I mean, just to get out of the way, they have a bad government and they passed some really bad laws while we were there.

33:39and that did make shooting there complicated. Our studio's lawyers were really great and helpful and supportive and just trying to make sure that everybody felt safe because they passed some anti-gay laws while we were there. And it was very actually moving at the very end of our production. The Pride Parade, which was a thing that they banned, the people of the city did it anyway and it was... And came in from other European cities. It was the biggest, yeah. So on the cover of the New York Times. Yeah, multiple and larger than it had ever been. So it is a blue city and a red country. Our crew, for the most part, was very progressive and lovely.

34:21But, you know, it's complicated. Are our crews in Budapest drawn from around Europe or is it really, it's a Budapest crew? They're Hungarian. They're mostly Hungarian, yeah. I mean, typically they have American, they have like a homegrown film industry of their own that is a different thing. But then they really are like home to many. This huge economic part of the country is like the film and TV that shoots there, mostly American and UK productions. They have an incredible like brain trust and really skilled top of their game people. And actually some expats, like our sound guy on our show who also did Spy Who Dump Me, did The Martian and did all that.

34:57But he's an American guy who went to like UT Austin and was living out in LA. And someone said, come do a movie in Budapest in the 90s. and then he just stayed in Budapest and married a Hungarian and had a family there. So there's a lot of people there that are like, there's expats living there. And then it's a city that's very used to hosting people who want to be insulated in a sort of bubble of a film. So it's not aggressively thrusting you into the culture if you want to be like staying at the Four Seasons and whatever, I mean, not on our budget, but on a budget, you can. It has those amenities.

35:32So I think it's sort of like user-friendly, but at the same time, if you stay there more than a couple weeks, you do. You just can feel the undercurrent of what's going on in that, like politically and otherwise, you know, in the city. And it's also beautiful. And there is so much aesthetic that we needed from our show that we had sets and our sets were beautifully built and we were on a stage. But I would say we were probably 60, 70 % location. And a lot of those locations felt like we were in time capsules where we were in these beautiful old buildings that just looked incredible that we just simply would not be able to accomplish in another place.

36:14We looked into, like I had shot small light in Prague. And so we looked into a couple of places like Prague and Berlin. Yeah, just sort of as things developed. And, you know, I think it would have been more expensive and we would have had a lot less production value and we would have probably had to send a satellite crew to Budapest anyway, or a place like it. So we just decided not to do that. But it's complicated. I mean, it's the same argument or the same debate, I guess, about like shooting in a state that passes draconian laws here. And you're like, well, I want to make my thing, but also, and I want to employ the people.

36:45I don't want to punish the crews that are living there for living there. But also, do I want to make a statement, which seems important to do, but also, I don't know. It's really challenging to figure that out. You know, we can't shoot everything in, I don't even know what country to name that isn't problematic now. So never mind. Yeah. Greenland. No, just kidding. Yeah, exactly. Venezuela? Yeah. It's a challenging time overall. Congratulations on the show. I really just dug it. So as this episode's coming out, it's just about to debut on Peacock, right? I think it's two days later. Two days later, great.

37:16And although I'm sad Craig isn't here, I like that on this episode, as far as television shows created by people who went to high school in Frield, New Jersey, about the USSR, we're the top one on this episode. This episode. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Let's answer some listener questions. We have one here from Richard. I find I can look at a scene on a particular day and think it's the worst thing I've ever written. And then two days later, I pick it back up and think, oh, that's actually not that bad. Do you guys get this too? And if so, how can we ever truly trust our own judgment? I rarely do I read something that's like, oh, this is absolutely awful.

37:55But honestly, the reverse happens more like, well, I absolutely love something when I wrote it. Yeah. And then I go back, It's like, oh, it's actually not. It's like bloated and dumb and aggressive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what I can relate to is I finished something and I think I'm happy with it. It did what I needed to do, but I do want a set of eyes on it. I think for that, you just need to have a very small brain trust of people that you really respect and trust. If you have a partner, if you have a friend, somebody who won't lie to you if it's bad will also be meaningful. if they tell you, you know, this is really good.

38:32You did a really good job. I think sometimes that is helpful. I also think that it is a trap to keep going back and reading the scene that you wrote a few days ago because if you are somebody whose head does that, who looks at it and then hates everything, you're really going to have a hard time writing that next scene. So just try to finish a version of it. Yeah, I would say try to finish it and then at whatever point you feel comfortable hearing it read out loud, that's really useful too. Yeah. Like we've had readings of scripts that we've written just for ourselves like in Dave's Garage and it's really incredibly informative every time.

39:05Yeah. Yeah. The challenge, Richard, is you're always, you're both the creator and the critic. And so at the time you were writing it, you were the creator and like you have this feeling about it. And then you're also the critic and that critic is sort of a separate part of your brain. And maybe your critic's an asshole. Maybe your critic is like, that's not good. Like David, you were saying earlier about how you love helping out a person and helping out a writer, just like contributing. And it's sort of like, maybe your inner critic is just not actually recognizing what's good and how to improve it.

39:31It's just like seeing all the flaws and maybe just cultivate that critic a little bit more. Maybe talking to some other people about their work and being gracious with them will be a little bit nicer to yourself. Question from Daniel. I am a sophomore screenwriting student at an LA film school. I can tell my writing does get better with every script, but I'm not sure if I have that innate talent or ability you guys always speak about, mainly because with every script, where I say, I think I got it. I, in fact, do not have it. How do you guys realize that you have this innate talent and how long did it take?

40:05Hmm. Well, just to speak to the first part, I just want to offer some wisdom from a book that I didn't write called The Work of Art that came out recently. And I think it's Michael Cunningham who talks about the fact that he doesn't believe that there is such a thing as innate talent. It's just having a personality that is so obsessively committed to something being good, that it will just keep drilling down into something over and over and over until it becomes good. That to him is what makes a person skillful, not anything that they're innately born with. I don't know that I agree with that completely, but it did resonate with me that there's an obsessiveness that people have, who I admire, that I think they share.

40:47I think this question is very married to the previous question. I mean, first of all, definitely the stuff I wrote when I was in college, I wouldn't share it now as a reflection of my best work, but there were moments throughout my adolescence or into college or into like my early 20s where I would write a scene or a line or have an idea and I would just, it would excite me. It would be like, oh, like, that's it. Like, this is what I'm trying to do. And I couldn't imagine not having any version of that and still being excited about writing. So I've got to assume, I've got to give the question, give her the benefit of the doubt that you must have had some sort of moment that excited you enough to start doing it.

41:35And, you know, and from there, like, yeah, you just have to keep getting better, but you may have it. And also a lot of very talented people worry that they don't have that talent. That is also a very real thing that people... Yeah, feeling imposter syndrome at this point in your early career is totally natural and reasonable and makes sense. Like you don't know sort of what you're doing and that's true. I hope that in entering in film school, you're a sophomore now, people must have told you like, oh, you're a good writer. And you've had some external validation that like, oh, you really know how to do this.

42:04This is good. But there have been some moments where you felt like yourself like, oh, this was a good thing I wrote. Like I'm actually proud of this thing I did. And that's foundational. That's sort of going to get you going to the next one. There's this sort of meme I saw this week about thinking of yourself as a verb rather than a noun. And so think of you as the person who writes rather than the end product. And so, I don't know, just maybe spend this next year really focusing on writing as the verb versus like generating this thing and that thing and that thing and see if you like the actual process of doing it.

42:37We talk on the show so much about how writing kind of sucks. Like it's not a fun thing to do, but you sort of make peace with it. You come to accept that it's part of this process of getting to work that you're really proud of. And so maybe just focus a little bit more on that rather than the quality and see if you're digging it. Yeah, I also think there's a lot of noise outside the world of just you and your laptop or your notebook or however you write. And that when the noise gets really loud, it can be really hard to just focus on the actual like nugget of excitement that you have. And I talk to friends a lot now as people talk about how hard the industry is and there's a ton of just like negativity in the air, whatever you have to do to trick your brain into just being excited about a thing and sitting down and doing the work, like John was saying, that's kind of the most important thing you can do is just to stay optimistic and excited about whatever it is you're working on and not let the outside voices or your own internal critic, like stop you from actually just producing things.

43:31If so, find the spark, whatever that is. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's really important. But if I find that spark, I think it's also reasonable to say like, if you decide like this is not actually a thing you like, like a thing you would enjoy, it's okay to say no. It's okay to find something else you really do love. You only have the one life. So do the thing that actually really excites you and you enjoy it. So more than talking about like an innate aptitude or something like you're born with a certain talent, maybe you have a set of interests and things that you actually want to be spending your time doing.

43:58And if this isn't it, that's fine. That's good. Go searching for what the thing is that you actually do really love. I mean, this is probably a bigger conversation for a whole other episode of this show, but I have really, I've spent a lot of time lately wrestling with what is the point of this. Not that I think it is without a point, but like, as I am in a position to, like, I'm releasing something out into the world, which is very scary. Yeah. And I think about when I first moved to Los Angeles, when I first wanted to work in film and television, and, you know, when I had this idea in my head that I wanted to, like, manifest of, like, sitting in a movie theater and seeing my name up there, that does not feel like what the goal is now, though I can't necessarily pinpoint what it is.

44:42I do like writing. I do like making things. It is also a thing that terrifies me. So I think it is a really tricky thing for me, for all of us people who've been doing this for decades to make sense of why we're doing it. So if you are kind of on the fence in your like first years, that is also might be a good sign that it may, But also just know that we are also wrestling with what the point is because it's complicated. A question here from Carlos. A few weeks back, I partook in a pitching workshop with a former executive from a big production company. One thing this former executive said really rubbed me the wrong way.

45:22He told us to stop writing pilots. He said that today, a lot of executives will turn down series pitches if they have a pilot attached because they want to be involved in the development stage from the beginning. So we should stop writing pilots and focus on just the story development, which kind of broke me since writing pilots is what I enjoy most from series development. Is this something that's actually happening? I know the situation is probably different over here in Mexico than on the other side of the border, but I still wanted to get your take on this. Really makes sense why this is a former executive.

45:54You know, David and I both, we produce a lot of other writers where we try to really support a lot of pitches that are not just our own pitches. And as a director, I take a lot of pitches out that I'm not the writer on. And really, every project is different. We've sold things that have a pilot. We've sold things that have a pitch. We've been dissuaded from having a pilot for one specific type of project that I just think it's dangerous to get mired in any one dogmatic idea about how to do anything. If you're enjoying writing pilots and you're writing things that you feel really represent your passions and that you're good at, the worst thing that can happen is you get some producer that wants to take your show out and they say, okay, let's send the pilot later.

46:33Let's develop the story. They're not mutually exclusive. And it just feels like it's such a tactical decision that shouldn't be your problem. It should be the problem of the person who's doing the selling and that should be your partner and not a person who's, you know, trying to tell you that you're doing it wrong. That's my opinion. Yeah. I also think how can you tell someone, you as a beginner writer, you are a good writer and you are worth backing and gambling on if no one is able to read what you are executing. I think that, yeah, perhaps for a very experienced writer who has a long track record, sure, you can pitch.

47:07I mean, I also think pitching is a scam, but it's a scam that we all participate in because you were sitting in a room saying like, this is what this is going to be, but you don't, I mean, I think I talked about this many, many episodes ago when we were last on Script Notes is that like I have taken out pitches that I just also needed to write the script first just so I knew what the characters sounded like and I knew what the jokes were because I don't really know any other way to do it. You're just saying, trust me, this is what it's going to be. Yeah. I mean, if you're a writer, you should write.

47:39Also, if you are going out, if you're a newer writer and there isn't something produced that people can look at as a sample of how you write and you're just like, I have all these ideas for the story, they're going to ask to see a writing sample. So it's such bad advice. And so we don't know where Carlos is at in his career, but like the good thing about writing a pilot is that you wrote a script that can be a writing sample. So maybe like this series, it's not the best way to sell this series, but like it's something someone else can read and David and Susanna can staff you on their show. I mean, it's a thing people can read.

48:05They're going to ask to read something before they pay you to write something based on an outline of ideas of a show that doesn't have a writing sample. So I think it's bad advice no matter where you are in your career, Carlos. That person should not have a career and they don't. Let's do one last question from Alex here. A common note I receive from coverage services is that I need to differentiate my character voices because they often sound the same. Do you have any tips for how to subtly differentiate character voices without falling into caricaturish dialogue? Oh, we talk about this a lot.

48:36Yeah. What conclusions do you reach as you talk about it? Honestly, like sometimes I think about my first writing class I took when I moved out to LA at 21 at Second City sketch comedy writing class. And we talked about like the game of a character. And it was for comedic writing, but I use it all that we talk about it all the time. Like each character sort of has to have in your mind, like what is sort of the laugh with and what is the laugh at about that person? Like my opinion, my description of how I am is going to be different from my friend's secret gossip about what's annoying about me.

49:06You kind of have to know what someone would say behind that person's back, I think. And then write that person. There are ways in which we all lack self-awareness. And if there's a certain game of that person, like that person says things a million different ways because they, you know, use too many words to talk or that person is really passive aggressive generally. You know, if you just sort of have an idea about a person's flaw, it can just make their writing specific. Like we try to do that in our show a lot where we don't want anyone to show up in a scene, even a side character in the office and not have a specific personality or a tick or a quirk.

49:41So I don't know, that's... No, I think, I mean, first of all, Well, it's also not the absolute worst thing in the world. If you have a really strong, specific voice, yeah, sure. That might be your style. It's okay, particularly when you're starting out, because every character is kind of a version of you. I mean, I think the first time I really thought about this idea was, you know, Bombac's first movie, Kicking and Screaming, because a character in it tells the other characters you all talk the same. But actually, they don't. Like, all those characters are really specific, And I actually don't think you could interchange jokes from one character to another.

50:19But I think it was probably him being a little bit self-aware and self-conscious that these are all characters who are in a very similar life stage who have a very... Same education. Yeah, the wits still min issue. But yeah, I mean, you can also just look at how it looks on the page. Some people are more verbose. Some people are, you know, speak more simply. But yeah, you should never be able to move a joke from one character to another and have it work the same way. Everyone should have their own sort of voice and meaning. And that was what I was sort of talking about earlier that I have this sort of like ethereal belief of writing that like everything sort of exists behind a wall and you have to sort of find it.

50:55And I think that is truly characters. That is like most vivid with characters. if you start writing their dialogue and you start seeing them, you start hearing them, then you are really going to get a sense of who they are and what their specificity is. And yeah, the caricature thing is, it's okay if the first draft, they feel a little pushed or a little broad. I mean, you're either dialing something up or down. But I think if this is such a basic thing to say, but if it seems like how people would actually talk, or you could imagine a person in your life who would talk or act the way a character is talking or acting, sometimes we do things that are a little over the top as people in life.

51:28Like just as a director reading scripts that other people write and thinking about directing them, there's a sort of a first script problem that David and I talk about sometimes where just the main character feels like the avatar for the writer. So it's usually a person who's sort of more passively observing the world's hypocrisies and they're witty and funny and kind of everyone around them is an idiot and they're, you know, I mean, I'm like speaking in broad terms, but that character is, to me, it's like, it's not that interesting. I wouldn't know how to tell an actor what they're playing really.

52:04And so, you know, I recently read a script where that was the problem and it was by like a young writer. And I just thought, I bet this writer is in their twenties and I bet this is what amount of life experience they've had. And I can feel that in the way it's written. And in that case, it was like a really funny script. There was just a glibness to the writing and it felt like the writer was punching up their own best joke. I absolutely hear you there. And to me, usually those are the characters that, if it's the main character leading you through the journey and that character is sort of just a little bit of a cipher except for their elevated wit, it feels like a first script to me.

52:42So specific advice for Alex here, I feel like maybe you're having a hard time listening and hearing how people really are different. And so assuming this is a fair note that you're getting from multiple people that your characters are all sounding the same, I think you might try to do with your script is just like cast it in your mind, cast actual actors in all those places and imagine like how those actors are actually saying those lines. And doing that may give you a sense of like, oh, there's actually so many more variables I could be dialing in here for what this is. Like if I cast this as Christopher Walken versus Woody Harrelson or different, like what different choices would make sense given who's actually going to be doing these lines, that may give you a sense there because you might think like, oh no, and now I'm just impersonating someone else's voice.

53:22But like, you're not really, like you can't words you're writing in a script that's not going to sound like that whoever plays the part is going to be they're going to bring their own specificity but like if you write it for like one specific actor another actor can play that part and it will feel unique and different and it won't sound like all the other characters so that may be a first good exercise for Alex to try real people too like if you have an uncle who is always drunk I don't know whatever a drunk uncle whatever you have but you can just sort of like basing it on someone, whether it's your imagination of an actor or some person in your life that if you were asked in a private booth to talk about that person, you would be able to describe them good and bad.

54:04Yeah. I think the other way that I think a lot of newer writers get into the trap of just making characters feel similar, which is another way of saying generic, is that their supporting players, their one-line parts are extremely generic. Like, I would try to avoid too many police officer number twos and just a bunch of people that you were trying to differentiate between the characters who are important and the characters who aren't. If everyone feels like they have interiority and if everyone feels like they have some sort of vividness, then it does sort of come through everywhere in your script.

54:41And I think there's a lot of, Cameron Crowe does this really well, the Coen brothers do this really well. I would look at movies and just really focus on like the people who are in it for one scene and are really popping as a great way to just specify everybody in your script. Oh yeah. It may also be helpful to like, look at some movies that you really enjoy and love and watch them while you're reading the script and really get a sense of like, oh, it's not just the actress performance. Like it really was the words on the page that sort of got to that performance. And that may also remind you like, oh yeah, like dialogue, it does start here and characters are really found in these words I'm choosing to have them say.

55:15Yeah, I think also with the TV show, you know, we were asked the other day, like what, I go about like story engines for a show going forward. And one thing about this particular show, which just circles back to, about our show, which circles back to your original question about tone, John, was that we have a married couple in the show. And, you know, we sort of tried to make their marriage really specific, even though they're not the leads of the show and it's not a show about a marriage. They're just people in the office, but we ended up wanting more and more and more of them. So if every character sort of has something in a dynamic or in their voice that feels like, oh, I want to watch that person in a million different situations, then it sort of tells a buyer or whoever, if it's in a TV format, like I want to watch more episodes of those people.

55:59Totally. And it just like encourages them to see more of a long life or whatever it is you're pitching. You look at the office and just like how deep, how full that room was of very specific voices. They felt like, oh, you could follow any one of these people and it would be incredibly entertaining. The office is, I think comedies are a good way to study it too. I was going to recommend Jury Duty, which is like so largely improvised, but like each person is so specific. Yeah, you couldn't swap anyone's lines with anyone else's lines. That's on the broader side. I don't know what tone you're writing, but yeah, it's useful to try to do that with everybody.

56:29All right, it's time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article by Adam Mastroianni. I've linked to him a zillion times. I feel like I should be paid a referral fee here, but this blog post you did was so useful for the start of a new year called So You Want to Debog Yourself. And so debugging basically, you're kind of stuck in a rut. You're facing a problem, like a real life problem, not a story problem, but a real life problem. And what I think Adam is so good at doing is shining a spotlight on certain aspects of a situation and giving it a name so you can actually sort of identify, oh, that's what I'm doing.

57:02And so two examples here. First off is stroking the problem, which is like, I've got a big problem, man. I have this big problem. I have this thing and this thing and this thing. And you're not actually trying to solve it. you're just sort of stroking it. You're basically just like acknowledging there's a problem here and you're telling everybody about this problem, but you're not actually trying to solve it. So stroking the problem is a thing I'm going to probably start using a lot when people like express their issues to me. The second thing he calls out is the try harder fallacy, which is basically like, oh man, that didn't really work at all.

57:28We really need to try harder next time. And like, almost never do you actually need to try harder. You probably are trying as hard as you possibly could. You have no shortage of effort you put into it. Like you gave it everything. There's no secret reserve of energy that you could have, like, it just didn't work. And so you're going to need to try a different way to do it because trying harder is not going to get there. So it's two of many examples in this really good post about getting out of the muck that you find yourself stuck in. And it's for real life, but I guess it's our characters too because our characters are often sort of trapped in situations.

58:01And if we as writers are telling them to try harder or to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that's probably not going to actually really work. So a good post and I'll put a link in that in the show notes. David, what do you have for us? So I have a few connected cool things. So my first artistic passion was drawing and painting and cartooning and illustration. And kind of my origin story as a writer at all is because I wanted to draw comic strips and political cartoons. But like anything artistic, if you don't use those muscles, they atrophy. and I've been like drawing with my children and I realized like I'm just not as good as I used to be.

58:43So I'm a really big New Year's resolution person. So my New Year's resolution is trying to draw or paint or something every day, either with a pencil and paper, pen and ink, or on my iPad. And so the essential iPad drawing program is Procreate. And so there are a few companies that make brushes and color systems and fake paper to really emulate like some beautiful mid-century comic book style or illustration style. So Retro Supply and True Grit are two companies that do that. And Retro Supply also has a lot of great videos on like how to draw heads and color theory. And so that's really great.

59:26And then the other thing that is kind of keeping me honest with my New Year's resolution is the International Society of Character Artists of which I am a paying member, does something called caricature resolution in January. And so caricature artists all over the world, like from beginners to masters, draw the same celebrity every day of the month, of the month of January. And you can find this by searching for the hashtag caricature resolution 2026 on Instagram or on Facebook. And they also have an Instagram page. And it's just a really fun way to just see what different character artists are doing.

1:00:04And also, if it's something you want to try, whenever this airs, you can sure you can catch up. What was today's celebrity? So today was Bette Midler. Oh, great. Yeah. She feels like a natural person. She's got a lot of hair, a lot of big features. That's really right. And the other things you recommended, those are sort of plugins or things you put into Procreate? Yeah, yeah. So you can like download the brush packs and the fake paper and the color systems. Great. I love it. Susanna, what do you have for us? I saw an incredible independent film that I wanted to say, talk about. It's this movie called The Plague.

1:00:37And it's about 12-year-old boys at a water polo camp in the early aughts. And I watched it because I'm on the jury of the DGA first-time feature committee. So this time of year, I always get like a packet of movies that I either are just coming out, haven't come out yet, or I just wouldn't have necessarily heard of because they don't necessarily have like the marketing push. And I so relate to that that I feel really strongly about like seeing all these movies and getting excited about them and plugging them. But this one was really like incredible. Just the writing and directing was really impressive and singular and specific, but also just having known kids that age at that time, just the zeitgeist is like so perfectly captured.

1:01:18the music is perfect the performances which are almost all 12 year olds Joel Edgerton plays the coach but it's about like hazing and boys at that age and it's just it's really exceptional so I recommend that movie highly that's great that is our show for this week Script Notes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Cilelli Matthew did our outro this week if you have an outro you can send us a link to ask at johnautas.com we are low in the folder on listener outros in part because Drew like people are sending through outros that don't have the boom boom boom boom boom yes very important.

1:01:49That's basically that's one of our only rules. That is what you need to do. Can you just clip John just saying that and use that as an outro? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We definitely will. Yeah, we definitely will. So send us through your outros. We'd love to have more of those. Ask at JohnOx.com is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at JohnOx.com along with a sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting which has lots of links to things about writing. The Script Notes book is out and available wherever you get books. So get your Script Notes book.

1:02:16I bought it for a bunch of young writers and they've all really enjoyed it. Hooray, it's fantastic. We just got the British copies here, which are slightly narrower than the US copies, which is lovely. They write a little narrower. It's so pretentious. It's so pretentious. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube to search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You can find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll find 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.

1:02:45Thank you to all our premium subscribers. you make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all those backup episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on Taste. Susanna, David, it's so nice to have you back here. Yay. Thank you. This was really fun. Thanks so much.

1:03:16Thank you.