728 - Beats to Scenes with Drew Goddard

17:19John August:Yeah, it does. So it's helping me understand, something I've never really gotten about TV writing, TV writing with rooms, especially a network, is you do all this work to create these incredibly detailed outlines and sheets and then you get approvals on those and then someone goes off to draft. And it seems like going off to draft is kind of just like a, it's a short process and surprisingly simple. And like, I always say like, oh, well, I got to go off and write a draft. That must take like three weeks. And it's like, no, actually, if it was a really detailed outline, it could be incredibly quick because you know exactly what's in there.

17:49John August:I wish that was true. You wish that were true. Okay, yeah. And every writer that's gone through this is mad at you for saying that right now. Yes, it was great. Because you are invariably, you then get it off the board you get the outline and then you're sitting with that blank screen or page in front of you and you're like oh god none of this works none of this works what was I thinking? So when none of it works is it the stuff within the scenes that's not working or is it the flow from scene to scene to scene or both? Or both or just like you start to question your own existential reason for making it for writing this script like that happens a lot where you're like why did we think this was a good idea as a group?

18:28So sometimes you need just the emotional support. That's the other reason writers are helpful of like, no, no, no, no. We all know what it feels like to panic. Like, because that's the other problem. I would give anything for Reeds. I think the average Buffy was four days. Same with Lost, four days. And again, not a good way to do this. I'm not suggesting this. One of the nice things about how we've moved the model from 24 episodes to eight or 10 is you do have more time. It is the grind of being so far behind. but there's benefits of that part too because you also go, I can't second guess it.

19:02Let's just go.

19:03John August:Yeah. Because the beats are not so much dialogue based. And as you know, like dialogue is also really hard when you want to do it well. And so then if you get into that stuff, you're trying to shape it. No stage is easy. There's never an easy part of the process. So you've now as a showrunner, you've had situations where you've figured out a whole episode on the board. you transfer that down into a written document, you've assigned it off to a writer, and then the writer is struggling, or the writer's having a hard time doing it, what is the conversation with that writer who's having a hard time going from, this works as an outline, to this is working as a script?

19:39John August:Like, what do you do? I start from a place of compassion because I've been in that writer's shoes. Yeah. Like, I just have the amount of times I was having a nervous breakdown. And I remember early, some of my showrunners saying things like, it's okay, you might wipe out. Yeah. It's okay. That's why we do it this way. We do it this way. So if you wipe out, we are all clear on the story too. And I, you know, whoever's the show writers, I'm clear on this too. So it takes the pressure off of this doesn't have to be perfect. We don't, in fact, it's not going to be perfect. And in fact, there's things that we thought we wanted that you were going to write.

20:15And by you writing them, we're going to realize, oh, that's wrong.

20:17John August:So it wasn't necessarily their bad execution. Correct. It wasn't an execution. It was like, oh, this is what it is. And so I think it's important for writers to hear that. I do think that the fear of failure is one of the great things that stops us in our tracks and can really paralyze us as writers, right? Yeah. And by the way, as artists, it's with actors too. With any of the artists that is when I'm directing, I want to take fear of failure off the board. In fact, say failure is actually a wonderful part of the process. If we're not screwing something up, it means we're not pushing the boundaries hard enough.

20:50We're not trying to. But I think especially when you're early and you haven't worked with people before, it's really important to let them know it's okay. It's not going to be perfect. This is really hard what we're doing and we are going to get there. We're all safety nets for each other.

21:05John August:So advice to a staff writer who for the first time is taking this document and then turning it into the script, how faithful should you try to be to what that was? How much is it your own discovery process? When do you need to check in with the showrunner if it's not working or you just try it and deliver it? What's the best way to do it? I think the important thing is before you go to draft, start developing the skill of trying to figure out what's important to the showrunner. And every showrunner is different. And it's not always clear because you also have passionate people in a writer's room who have their own points of view of what's important.

21:41But the showrunner is the person that's going to have to arbitrate all of this, right? And so you really want to get a sense of oh, this scene is really important to the showrunner. And the showrunner, she's pitched this exact line of dialogue every single time we've talked about this. That line I better put in.

21:59John August:Yes. This place, she's adrift. Yeah. Let's try, let's do, let me play around here. Like that's what you're looking for. You're listening. And if you're unclear, talk to the showrunner. Like say, I'm not sure about this. And hopefully your showrunner will be able to talk this through a little bit. Yeah. So all this is sort of built around the classic broadcast model where the writers were employed in a room during this whole entire time and therefore had a lot more exposure to the showrunner. Now that we're getting on to shows that will have a 10-week development room and then maybe another 10 weeks to actually do the thing, there's less time around that writer to get that stuff.

22:37John August:That must be a real challenge for getting a sense of what the showrunner wants and needs and how the whole thing is going to fit together and work. It's not ideal. It's not. And it falls upon showrunners to carve it out and do what best they can to get as much time with the writers as possible. And it's a struggle we're all going through, you know, but it's crucial. It's crucial. So how do you as a showrunner decide which of the writers in the room is the right person to do a given episode? Is it the one that you see that they spark most closely to that they do it? Or is it just it's now we're rotating through and it's now this person's turn?

23:10It's a little of all of the above and every show is a little different. part of the reason I got so much experience so quickly at Buffy is they kind of went in the order of seniority and there's a reason for that is that then the seniority leaves to do an episode so that they can come back when it's time for the younger you know writers in the room to to be there so it sort of cycles but what happened at Buffy was suddenly everyone either had to go off on script or had babies yeah so suddenly it was just me by myself and so it was like oh come to set work with the showrunners on set and just learn how to do this because there's nobody else.

23:46Everyone's gone. I don't know that that was ideal. So part of it is weirdly the math of, well, if that person's off on script, who's in breaking the story? Who's figuring that part out, which is kind of in the back of your head as a showrunner? Because you know as a showrunner, you're going to get pulled 100 directions and you need to know who's in the room because some people are really good and it just comes with experience, frankly, at breaking story. And so you kind of don't want to abandon the younger writers in there. So you can sort of find what makes the most sense. And there's no right or wrong answer.

24:16John August:There are classically some shows that they have writers on staff and they are never in a room together. Yeah. They work on everything separately. So there's different ways that different shows work and you have to sort of understand what your show is. We've been talking a lot about TV, but I want to talk about features and beats and features are just as crucial. And yet there's not a room. It's just you. Can we talk about The Martian? Because we actually have pages from The Martian. Oh, boy. It's available for us here. So we're looking at pages 12 through 14 of The Martian. And what's happened in this section is the rocket has taken off without our hero, without Matt Damon.

24:50John August:And he's announced that Mark Watney is dead. The Earth has announced that Mark Watney is dead. And then we're back on Mars and we find that Mark Watney is not dead. And he was just passed out and he needed to go back to the base and he realized he's alone on Mars. Can you talk to me about your experience of reading this sequence in Andy Weir's book? And let's talk about what the beats were in the book. And then we can look at sort of specifically how you're implementing this, where the camera is in trying to tell the story. So in the book, I read Project Hail Mary, but I did not read The Martian.

25:24John August:Is it a third person? Is it a neutral POV on the thing? Or is it all from his point of view? All from his point of view. So this is very, very different. So even though it's a very close third person in the movie, it's a different experience. So tell me about reading it in the book and how we got here. Or at least I should say this part is all from the first book because then it does shift as we start cutting back to Earth. Yeah. And when I look at it, it's funny because this was the original opening to the movie. Great. So if you look at it, what I'm trying to do is start, and this is the way the book starts, which is a guy wakes up.

25:56John August:Yeah. Injured on Mars, which I always thought was delightful. I was like, oh, this is a wonderful way to begin a movie, right? Right? So if you look at this, what I'm trying to do here is find the moments. Okay, he's going to wake up and slowly but surely you're trying to look at the beats of the scene. He looks down, he sees a jagged length of antenna in his abdomen, right? We're telling a story. We're building the mystery of what the hell happened to this guy, right? At a certain point, I realized I need some context for this, which made the previous scene necessary. So I need, I was like, oh, it's too much.

26:32I'm throwing too much.

26:33John August:Yeah. I, what I need to know, the sentence that I need to do, which is the end of the first scene is, but Mark Watney is dead. I need the audience to know that the man they're about to meet, the world thinks is dead. I think that's really important to this next part, because then you're building this sort of mystery of what the hell happened. But also I try to be, you know, emotion first and foremost, right? I want the audience to understand just how lonely this man's about to become because when you it's one thing to survive on a planet it's a it's another thing that the world doesn't know you're alive yet yeah and i feel like that was a crucial part of this of this movie so you had to backfill and to get up to like well how do you actually get to that press conference and so they actually need to see the sequences so we need to spend tens of millions of dollars for this whole sequence of the escape from from mars and why he's left and what we did yeah that that sequence was in the middle of the movie Okay.

27:27Like that sequence was in the middle.

27:29John August:When you're saying that this sequence was originally in the middle of the movie, in your early drafts or in early things you handed in to people? No, all the way through shooting. Oh, wow, crazy. All the way through shooting, including the first couple cuts. Yeah. This sequence was in the middle of the movie. The sequence that showed what happened to Mark before. Crazy. Was in the middle of the movie. And it was delightful. Like there was a building of like, oh, I want to see what happened. Oh, we're finally going to show you what happened. And it worked. But then Ridley at some point calls me and he says, you're going to hate this.

27:59Because we had talked about this a lot. He's like, but can I just show you a cut of the movie where we moved that before? And he was really nice because he wasn't sure himself. It wasn't like he was demanding. He was like, well, you just watch. Let's just watch and see. And I was grumbling, thinking this is not going to work for all these reasons. It's going to ruin all this beautiful tension I have created. And then we watched it. I was like, oh, it's better. It's just better. You just felt it. You're like, oh, I like this.

28:24John August:And by the way, the reveal of things later on in the course of the movie is what you end up doing in Project Hail Mary so successfully. And the whole movie is built around that, which is not the mystery engine of this. The mystery engine of Hail Mary is why is he there by himself in space? Getting to that point is built up throughout the whole course of the movie. This was a one-off. And you know, it's a good lesson of nothing ever really dies. Like, if I can't do something in one place, it'll work its way back in. If I really want to try something like that, and we definitely found in our places in Hail Mary.

28:55John August:Yeah. So the writing in the sequence is great. And the reason why I picked this is because there's essentially no dialogue. And it's a great way to sort of show like, oh, scenes are not just dialogue. Scenes are what characters are doing, the obstacles, the challenges, and how they move past, the choices that they make. So we are seeing him wake up on the surface of Mars, realize that he is, this piece of antenna is piercing a space suit, getting back to the airlock into the base, trying to treat his wound and realizing, oh crap, I am alone. And then we cut, smash cut to the title of The Martian.

29:29It means a lot to hear you say that it's fun looking at this because I do, I do take scenes seriously when there's no dialogue and I really feel like that's one of the things that sort of separates good from great in screenplays because nobody wants to read blocks of text, right? There's something in your brain, especially in a screenplay form, that you're used to the sort of how quickly it moves. And so I work, even just looking at this now, which I haven't looked at in 10 years.

29:55John August:It's well done. There's a reason why you should have gotten an Oscar nomination for it, and you did. Bless you, John. But if people are trying to learn, you can, without even reading the words, you can sit back and look at the page and see, oh, there's dense words in certain parts. We're taking space. And those words are, here's the character's name. Here's the thing the person's going through. I'm using italics sparsely. You're using italics, though, to show sort of what the internal mental state is. Like the thing that we could see it as an audience, we could register that on his face, but you need to stick it there on the page.

30:28John August:As the reader, we get it. I'm trying, if you look, what I'm trying to do is actually make the reader complicit in this. I'm trying to make the reader the main character. These are the main character's thoughts when I'm going into italics that are, in some cases, that are kind of putting you in his place, which I find is very effective, especially if you're trying to get people on board doing this. something that, you know, long sequences without dialogue, it really helps to have a point of view. Yeah. Things like on page 13, in parentheses, this is not exactly going to be easy to watch. Yes, and that's true.

31:03John August:And again, it's complicit. You're saying like, we're going to get through this together. And there's a point of view and a purpose. Drew Goddard, are you still a double spacer? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, you haven't changed. Oh, I will. Till the day I die. Yeah. How much do you want to hear my rant? Tell me a rant because I was a double spacer. I switched back, but tell me your argument for maintaining double spaces in the light of all rationality. Great, great. I will be happy to go down this well. Please. Let's start with the screenplay form. The screenplay form is ridiculous, okay? Take a moment and realize that the screenplay form is something that was designed because of typewriters and how quickly that we could use typewriters and how quickly you do revision pages, right?

31:46One of the nice benefits of the form that came to be is that in general, one page equals about a minute of screen time.

31:55John August:Yeah, the roughest approximation, but it's kind of crazy how close it comes. Like you're really, in most scripts, you're not that far off. Yeah. Like now each page might be way off. Yeah. But in the aggregate. Most scripts are about 120 pages or about two hours long. Yeah. And I found that kind of shocking. Yeah. Because I've written wildly different forms of scripts, you know, whether it's straight comedy or hardcore action or whatever it is, kind of end up at the same place, which I find incredibly useful. Like I find it incredibly useful to understand when you're getting into the budgeting phase, when you're getting into the directing phase, when you're getting into time management phase, it's really helpful to know how long this scene is going to be, right?

32:40So for me, why are we changing this? Like, It's arbitrarily because people don't text that way. Like, yeah, people don't write in Courier. Also, I'm a believer that the negative space on a page is almost as important as the positive space on a page. 100%. Right? I believe that if the goal is to be helping your reader through an artistic experience, the negative space on a page is a wonderful weapon at your disposal. Why would you want to crush that weapon? Why would you, like, let it flow? So I understand we'll all knife fight. I also understand I'm probably the last person on the hill. I really, like, if you want to see Drew lose his mind, like, there was points that we could talk about Hail Mary.

33:24There was parts when Chris and Phil would write, our directors would write scenes, and single spacer, and you would look at it and they would put the single spaces in the middle without a chain, which is the worst offense.

33:35John August:Yeah. Like, at the very least. Absolutely. If you're going to force it. If you're going to rewrite me, you should at least double space it. Or, or make it all single space and I will be ashamed. Yeah. But to jump back and forth is the most egregious in a script. Like to read like a script that you're like doing both, we should all be shot. So they have been cases where I've come in to do cabinetry work in a script where basically I'm not changing, but I'm just doing some certain scenes and it will try to match the style of whatever was there, including double spacing or just like the difference between double dash and dot, dot, dot.

34:07John August:I will do what the thing is just so it actually reads like the thing. Yes. But that said, if I'm doing a page one rewrite on thing, I'm searching for double spaces and making them down to one space because that's just where I'm at now. Yeah, I respect that. And I do the same, by the way. You and I do a lot of script doctoring. I want to be respectful, but I will start by talking to the writer and saying, are you sure? Because if you don't feel strongly, let's try it this other way. But if you feel strongly, we will go with your version. That's great. Let's talk about Project Hail Mary because it's just fantastic.

34:36John August:Andy Weir has written a new novel. At what point does it cross your transom? when do you start having the conversation like, hey, maybe Drew Goddard should adopt this movie since he did such a great job the last time? And you know, I have stayed in contact just in life since The Martian, but that's 10 years ago now, right? But I actually remember the date because it was so clear it was April Fool's Day. So April 1st, 2020. So two weeks after the pandemic shut everything down, world sky is falling, right? We are in full. It's not clear that civilization will survive. Like it really feels that way.

35:10Andy texts me and goes I don't know how you're doing but I did just finish a new novel do you want to read it and I'm like Andy I'm trying to find groceries right now no and he's like come on I'm like of course I do want to read it but I also was like are you messing with me on April Fool's Day because that's not

35:25John August:that's not cool but he was like no no it's lovely and I'm really proud of it and will you read it have you told you anything about it before right no he probably would have if I'd pressed but I tend to not press writers when they're in the middle of writing unless they want to open up. Yeah. Right? I'm happy to, I'd love to, but I also kind of don't like give it space to be nurtured. So I didn't know, I didn't know anything. And I prefer that. Yeah. Especially if it's something that I may want to work on, right? It's better so I can have a clean experience. So he knew, and then he said, Ryan Gosling is already attached.

35:58Oh, how that happened. So Andy's at CAA. I think CAA sort of put it together. So those are the two pieces I knew.

36:04John August:He's ideal casting. It's also, it's a weird situation to come in with just that piece. But luckily, yes, if it's in the list of weird situations, that's a weird situation you want, right? Like, great. But I was also insanely busy with other things and I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able, just life-wise, I'm not going to be able to do this, which I gently tried to tell him because I knew, I'm like, if you've got Ryan Gosling, you guys are going to go. You're going to be shooting soon and I'm not the person to be shooting soon right now just because of life. He said, we're going to wait.

36:35If you do it, we'll wait. and he was very sweet about that. And I said, well, don't do that. I'm not going to let you do that. He said, well, will you just read it? And then I read it. And when I'm reading something that I might do, I don't know if you're this way, John, I'm constantly looking for ways out.

36:51John August:100%. Right? I'm looking like all the reasons to not do this. Yeah. Because I know, especially if it's people I've worked with that I don't want to let down, I'm like, I want to do a good job for you. And so I'm looking for all the ways I'm about to do a bad job for them. Yep. Right? And so I'm kind of reading it and talking myself out of it, like trying to be like, because quite honestly, this book is a screenwriter's nightmare. It's a screenwriter's nightmare. And we're going to get to that in a second. Well, so I read the book well before I saw your movie. And so I was reading and thinking like, oh, Drew easily has this.

37:24John August:I mean, like, yes, it's challenging, but it's not impossible. And the reason why I want to talk about beats versus scenes is because like the beats of the book are the beats of the movie. It's just like it's the challenge is how do you actually implement them? and the fundamental decisions you're making in terms of how close you're sticking to his POV and how to get out of his head. I'm sure as you're reading that, you're thinking like, this is all inside his mind. It's all inside his mind. And then when you finally, and all right, let me tell you, I disagree with you passionately. It's going to be easy.

37:51John August:It's going to be a fight. Because I also knew everyone else had said this to me all the time. It's going to be so easy for you. It's like The Martian. I'm like, it's not like The Martian. It's not like The Martian. It's surfacely like The Martian. Yes. But where it becomes wildly different. Yeah. You have a disaster movie where the threat, the disaster is microbial. So I have to get into microbiology to help the audience. You have a lot of good text from the book that can be incorporated into his drylands figuring out what's going on. Yes, but you try to make it visually interesting. Challenge, yes.

38:20Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not - Try to do that part. Yeah, try to shape it. Okay, that's step one. Step two, most of it takes place in a narrator's head who does not know what's going on. Exactly. Right? So not only do you not have someone to talk to, he actually doesn't know what's going on, which is challenging.

38:36John August:Yes, but fundamentally, there's a second character. Great, I'm glad you brought up that second character. That second character is a rock who speaks in whale songs. Yes. Right, he speaks only in whale songs. And he's a rock crep. And he's delightful. Don't get me wrong. But you realize, like, these are challenges. Once, when going back to scenes, you're like, I have an actor. Every crisis is an opportunity. I'm sorry. I'm going to sell you on adapting this book. And I said yes for the reasons that you're saying. but I also knew this is going to be way harder than everyone realizes. Because when you read it, it moves.

39:09But once you sit and go, wait, what's the scene? What is the scene? That's where you go, oh my God, I'm screwed.

39:18John August:Yeah, and so you had to make fundamental decisions. Like reading the book and then watching the movie, a lot of the choices you made were the choices that I sort of saw in my head. But the actual nature of the ship itself is much different because you needed to create physical spaces that would enable you to have individual scenes and moments in development and to get out of just his head. So we can have physical challenges to get through to demonstrate what the emotional, intellectual puzzle he's trying to face is. Yeah, exactly. And part of this is also your job is not just, I got to make a scene that Ryan Gosling wants to act in.

39:52I need to make a scene that my directors are going to want to direct. I need to make a scene that the production designer is going to want to design. And so that's in a good way. that sort of forces you to go, okay, let's think about the room. Let's think about the space that we're in. Let's actually be in this.

40:07John August:The spaces are bigger than I would have expected them to be, which is completely appropriate. To be fair, that's the directors also. That's Chris and Phil because what you're describing is expensive. And I'm like, I'm not handing you something that's going to drive the budget through the roof. And they're like, we got that covered. We're going to drive the budget through the roof. They can tell it all by themselves. And to their credit, I mean, I watched the movie and I'm like, I have no idea how human beings made this. It is a stunning feat of production design. It is unbelievable. But it was scary.

40:39And what we're really describing is my own fear of myself failing. Going back to fear of failure, I didn't want to fail for Andy. I didn't want to fail for Andy above all else.

40:48John August:So you read the book, you have all your excuses for why you're not going to do it. And then how did the yes come about? No, two thirds of the way through the book, something happens that I went, that made me sit up. Okay. And I don't want to spoil it for people, but you will know it. You will know because it will be the thing that you have not seen done yet. At least we can compare notes later. I don't remember it happening and I sat up and went, oh my God. Yeah. And there's four or five of those things in the movie, but there's one in particular that made me go, oh, I'm, all of the hardships that we are describing actually is set up for the thing that happens, right?

41:26All of the reasons that I'm complaining as I'm reading this book, I go, oh my God, this is what's going to make this movie transcend from my point of view. And so a couple of things I do when I finish the book like that, that I'm actually thinking of doing, I quickly write down the five or 10 beats that I think that I love more than anything. You know, that are the things because I know, and I write them out and I put them in giant font on my wall before I speak to anyone because I know at some point all of these things are going to come under siege. All of them. by not just, also not just the outside world, not just people working on the film, not just executives, not just, also by me.

42:05Because you do start to second guess everything in the course of making a movie. And I kept looking at that. And one of those things that I described is on that wall, which, you know, we don't have to get into that part, but there's a lot of fights about that. There's a lot of fights. Anything that's bold and different, I promise you somebody wanted to cut along the way. And so you sort of have to remember, oh, but when I first read it, That's why I wanted to do it.

42:28John August:Yeah. Watching the movie, so it's, you can say it's long, but it's really this full length. It does the whole, it does the whole thing and it's an entire experience. And luckily, I think we've become more appreciative of like long movies that just, that work really well. They don't feel long because like it's always exciting and always invigorating. And the Marvel movies to some degree are probably part of the reason why we've been trained to sort of take longer movies, which is great. You kind of get all the book in there. And so as I was watching through, it's like, oh, like what did, what did they actually cut?

42:56John August:And the cuts are so smart and so surgical. And they're generally things that a reader of a book who has all the time in the world and all the pages in the world can sort of like, oh, that's an interesting thing about how we paved the deserts of the Sahara. It doesn't affect the stakes of the movie that we're watching. And that was good and it was crucial. And there's reasons to go back to Earth and there's reasons not to go back to Earth. You basically chose not to go back to Earth when we didn't need to anymore. Having done this a lot, the thing that every time I'm working with a new novelist, I have to gently say I have room for about 5 % of your novel right like page count wise I have room for about 5 % of your novel so we all have to make peace with that and figure out like where are we what are we going to use so you know going in that you're going to have to do some brutal cuts that are going to hurt not just if you love the book like I love the book it's going to hurt me more than anyone one of the things on that list of 10 at one point we'll just talk about it because it's not in the movie was they make a decision to nuke the polar ice caps.

43:56Yeah, yeah. And it's wonderful. Like, I loved it. And I thought it was the one thing on the list that's not in the movie because we all were like, let's try to. But when you went to what is the scene for that, right? There's no version of seeing that quickly. If you want to do it correctly, you have to set up what is the problem? What are we trying to solve? Why is this the correct solution? You can't just say, and then we nuke the polar ice caps, right?

44:22John August:In a 10 episode series, it absolutely makes sense in a three hour movie it does not make sense at all and so but it was a late cut and then when we even after we had shot it we were still trying to be like can we try let's try let's mock it up let's do nice gaps well this is a credit to Chris and Phil our directors they are not afraid of anything they were like oh we've already shot a full movie great we can still and they've been right like it's been wonderful working with them because they're sort of they come from animation so yeah they're used to it yeah they're like if the idea is good we're gonna figure it out and there's something thrilling about that.

44:55But we tried, but part of it was, it's the scene. Like you couldn't figure out what the scene was that could do efficiently.

45:00John August:Whose POV are you in? Ryland doesn't really make sense for it. Sandra Hilliard's character. Could do it. Could do it, but what I like about what you do in the movie is that her character exists for how she interacts with Ryan Gosling's character. And that's the relationship. So when you're setting out to adapt something, you're going to make a ton of cuts. You need sort of a defining principle, right? and I very quickly, not that this is deep, but it's important to say it. You're like, this movie is about Grace and Rocky. Yeah. That's what this movie is about. So every scene needs to be in service, even if neither of those characters are in it.

45:33Yeah. It's on the B side, on the space side. And then it's about Strat and Grace on the A side. And that triangle is kind of telling the same story. Yeah. Right? It comes together. Trust, yeah. Yes, and sacrifice and what this means and what the bigger purpose of life is. Yeah. And so when you think about it like that, it's like, oh yeah, every scene is on theme, you know, between that. So when you start to divert from theme, you get into a lot of, it ends up on the cutting room floor.

45:58John August:Yeah. So you've decided to say yes. What is your internal process for coming up with an outline of beat sheet? Are you sharing that with anybody else? Anybody, or is that just yours? What was that process for you? Before I say yes, I like to sort of come up with a very simple beat sheet of like, okay, do I think there's a movie here that I can see? Even if I don't have the answers, is there enough that I go, okay, I don't want to disappoint anyone. I want people to know like, okay, we're going to figure this. It's going to be hard, but we're going to figure it out. So I'll do a very rough beat cheat only for myself before I even engage, right?

46:34Just to sort of, and it's very like in this 30 pages, this happens in this 30 pages, this happens in this 30, you know, it's sort of act breaks. It's not like thought through. It's more what happens every 15 quite a bit.

46:46John August:Well, so if it was a road trip, like what's it is you're going to stop at on the way? And what's great about Andy is he does have a wonderful sense of structure. He really does. And it's one of the things I respond to so strongly in his writing, that there is a inherent structure in what he does. So some of the - Like cliffhanger after cliffhanger after cliffhanger, which is what pulls you through the book so quickly. Exactly. And it makes all of the problems we were just talking about easier, right? Because you know, like, okay, we can build to these things. So I do that. But then at that point, Chris and Phil were on to direct.

47:17And Chris and Phil, we've sort of been friends for two decades now. We've had sort of parallel careers. We both sort of started in TV. They were kind of doing Jump Street when I was doing Cabin in the Woods. We sort of have always been fans of each other and trying to find things to do. So that was thrilling. But I also knew our processes could not be more different. Like they are very much, when we're talking about - They're jazz.

47:41John August:Yeah, they are. And it comes from animation and it works really well for them, right? Right. Whereas I'm, it's not measured twice, cut once. It's measured 20 times, cut once. There, why are we measuring? Like, let's just cut, cut, cut. We'll just keep hacking away and building something. And I knew, okay, I was kind of excited because I was like, I knew it was important to try a different process. Right. It was important for me as an artist, when I respect the other artists to say, oh, let's, let's give this a try. Let's see how this works. And I think they probably felt the same that we were.

48:12And so I knew we need to talk about this now. Like we need to talk about what this is because we have very different process. And I, what I said to them was, I don't want my process to stop you from your process. And I think the way to do that is let me hyper-focus on structure. If I hyper-focus on structure so that we know this is when this needs to happen. This is the rough structure of the movie and we can agree on it. You guys can go crazy. Like you guys can have so much fun.

48:41John August:Yeah. Like have fun. I want that, but let's start with structure. And so those conversations were crucial because then as I'm doing outline after outline, the goal is to say, okay, let's find a structure that we can be playful inside of. And that is what's on the screen. You know, we've moved scenes around here and there, but if you look at the big arcs of the things, it's like, we have not deviated that much from the, from the initial outlines. Yeah. The movie is funny and funny in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect given the stakes of everything that's happening. And that's because I think you have both a very strong backbone for everything and then a lot of moments for the natural comedy that comes up that I'm sure was, some of it was scripted, but some of it was just sort of finding in the moments that can absolutely play.

49:26Without question. And I've learned from doing comedy and drama and sort of

49:30John August:the intersections. If the scene does not have a dramatic reason to exist, it's okay. Like, You can sometimes have diversions that are purely comedic, but it's really helpful if they have a reason to do both. Well, going back to the beat and scene description, it's like that beat that it just has a bunch of funny banter. It's not really a beat. It's not a thing that happens. Nothing changed over the course of it. So it's very unlikely it's going to sort of first survive the outline stage, but then actually survive the edit because it can go away. So therefore it will go away. Especially on something like Hail Mary, where screen time is a premium.

50:04so you're constantly having to look at like I need to do exposition in this scene I need to do emotional growth in this scene I need to drive the story forward I need to explain what the hell's happening with the science you kind of need to be doing all of it you can't do each one of those scenes on their own all of the scenes have to be doing a version of that for the most part and so you realize like what starts to happen as we got into it is Drew became the internal clock of do we have the page count? like do we have the page count? which I try not to do but at a certain point, you're like, it's going to really hurt us later in the editing room if we don't have a structure here.

50:40John August:Congratulations again on the movie. It's just so, so good. It's a joy to talk to you, John. It really is. Thank you for having me. We have a listener question here I think might be really good from Carlos. I'm currently working on a pilot. I've organized a schedule that requires me to write specific number of scenes per day, two to three tops, in order to meet the deadline. However, I find it hard to give my brain a rest in between writing sit-downs. Sometimes after an hour or two of writing, I find myself too mentally drained to start the next scene, even though I know what happens in it. Do you have any advice on activities that could help disconnect and recharge the brain battery effectively?

51:14I do. Yeah, please go. This is a great question. Yeah. When Twin Peaks The Return came out, right? There's an eighth episode that's all in black and white, and it's exquisite. Have you seen it? I haven't seen it. It's exquisite. Highly recommend. It's so bonkers that it made me go, whatever David Lynch does, I want to see what he does. And I started doing meditation. It's the thing that made me go, let me try meditation. Let me see. Because I'm not super new agey, but I was like, let me understand how this works. And what works for me is it calms the nervous system. It does exactly the thing that you're describing, Carlos, right?

51:49Which is how do you turn your brain off for a second? The other thing that works is walks. I'm a big fan of walks.

51:56John August:Yeah, I was going to say walk would be the right choice. Put the pen down, stop writing, just take a walk and build that into your process. Yeah. Because what will happen is those things will become the reward for the writing and both of those things really help me. Great. Yeah. Walks, showers, anything that gets you out of your... Showers. Yeah. I mean, showers, especially in the age of smartphones, they were always important. I know Sorkin, this Aaron Sorkin of which you speak, he also talks a lot about showers and there's a reason because it's forcing you to be bored. That's the other thing you're looking for is it's so hard to be bored right now in our world.

52:33And you have to force yourself to find ways to do it.

52:35John August:The other thing to remember is just like Carlos says, like after, you know, two hours of writing, I sort of can't do the next thing. It's like, yeah, because you're working really, really hard. If you were digging a ditch for two hours, you would know that you had to take a break. Your muscles would tell you you have to take a break. Your brain is telling you how to take a break. So yes, it's the right instinct to go do something else. It's a thing I don't think people who are not writers understand is that it is grueling. There is a fatigue that sets in. By the time I'm finished with any script, I do feel like I've run a marathon.

53:04I always talk about those videos of runners whose legs stop working just as they're getting to the finish line. That is how I feel when I get to the end of every single script.

53:13John August:Yeah, for sure. Let's try this question from James. My friend Simon and I had the same idea for a movie and decided to team up and write it. Because we have jobs, it took us two years to write the first draft. After Simon went through some personal issues as well as losing some interest in the project, we agreed that I take control of the rewrite. I was happy about that, as I thought we'd struggle to have a succinct tone and voice as a pair anyway. I'm aware that legally this script will always be written by James and Simon, and I've no intention of cutting him out of anything, but by the time I will have finished the rewrite, I'll probably rewritten 95 % of the screenplay.

53:48John August:When we start entering competitions or shopping it around, how can I position myself as the writer who has really made it what it is, even though the characters and story were a 50-50 effort. It's not about money. I just want to be recognized as the person who's put the extra hours in to get the screenplay where it is. Wow, it's a group project and someone who did most of the work in a group project. That's the reality of it and that it's probably always going to be true and there's never a partnership that is equal 50-50. This was not a good partnership. You probably should not write out another thing with this person.

54:19I think that's right. I think to answer your question, And if you really want that credit, you need to write something else.

54:25John August:Yeah. On your own, you know, if that's what you're seeking, it's probably not going to, even in the best of times, it's probably not going to happen, nor should it. All right, it's time for our One Cool Things. My one cool thing is Kalina. So K-A-L-I-N-A, which is the last name of Noah Kalina, who is a photographer in upstate New York and most of his landscapes. He has this series called Kalina on YouTube, which is a bunch of video wallpapers of just video from upstate New York, forests mostly that are so amazing and um meditative and just uh quiet and wonderful so you should watch them on the biggest screen you can so if you have the youtube tv app for your apple tv or for whatever put them on a big screen and just watch them there they're i think better than like the apple screensavers because they are lots of sometimes you're like in a forest and you're just watching him walking around deck taking photos but it's just like just one still shot, you hear the forest.

55:20John August:It is great. Sometimes it's snow, sometimes it's rain. Wait, say it again. That sounds fantastic. Kalina, K-A-L-I-N-A. So Noah also has a newsletter that's great also. You may have actually seen him once before because he was one of those first photographers who was taking a photo of himself every day. Oh, yeah. And it stacked up. And so you see like, you know, going from 20s to 50 or whatever, and just what time does to a person. But his nature photography is incredible. And to have it as video is just an absolute gift. So just free on YouTube. Often, like, we'll be watching a show, and then when we're done watching a show, but we're still not quite ready to go to bed, you pop that up on the TV.

55:58John August:It's delightful. Sounds fantastic. Great. Drew, what do you got for us? Okay, so I think teachers have been on my mind, because this movie is about teachers saving the world. My mom's a teacher. She's been teaching for 50-plus years. I love teachers. I would not be where I am without teachers. And since we're talking about screenwriting, The most important thing that happened to me in my career is that I arrived at the University of Colorado at the exact same time that Lucia Berlin, the author, showed up to start teaching. And we found each other. And she was the person who believed in me. And she was the person that said, I'm going to spend the next three years, you know, like with you.

56:38We're going to do this together. She was doing it with lots of other students too. But we really had a connection. She changed me as an artist and as a person. I think because this is on my mind I've been rereading her short stories I cannot recommend them more highly I think especially if you like the sort of stuff I do which is big in genre it's not that and yet you will see the influence so a good place to start her short stories got repackaged around 2015 and she finally sort of exploded she's been dead for a while but it was so she didn't get to see this and it would delight her but I would start I mean it's not with any of them quite frankly but a manual for cleaning women.

57:15John August:I've heard of that, yes. Yes, and it's exquisite and I can't recommend it more highly. Lucia Berlin? Lucia Berlin. Great, fantastic. Great. That is our show for this week. Script notes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Cilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaudix.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find the transcripts at johnaudix.com along with sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books.

57:46John August:We'll give you a Script Notes book while you're here. You'll 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. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drink wear. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. You'll find show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to 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. We get all those back episodes, including Drew Goddard's back episode and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on television.

58:19John August:Drew Goddard, an absolute pleasure chatting with you about film and TV and your incredible movie. John, it has been an absolute pleasure. I hope we get to do it again. Hooray.

58:44Thank you.